Pvt. Manning and Imperative of Truth by Ray McGovern. When I was asked to speak at Saturday’s rally at Fort Meade in support of Pvt. Bradley Manning, I wondered how I might provide some context around what Manning is alleged to have done. (In my talk, so as not to think I had to insert the word “alleged” into every sentence, I asked for unanimous consent to using the indicative rather than the subjunctive mood.) What jumped into my mind was the letter Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham City jail in April 1963, from which I remembered this: “Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
Manning chose to break that promise. When Generals Lie Bradley Manning’s courage hits a personal nerve in me. Manning’s Motive Whoa! Command influence, anyone? Your Government: Committed to Keeping the Drug Market As Dangerous As Possible. How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses | Naomi Wolf. The discussion continues today at 12pm ET (5pm UK time) when Naomi Wolf takes your questions about her column. Join us for an hour long live chat about the supreme court, strip searches and sexual humiliation. In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time.
This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement. Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial suit, Albert Florence, described having been told to "turn around. Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually.
Where are we headed? Why is this happening? Feds ready whistleblower trial - Glenn Greenwald. [Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him] By Jesselyn Radack Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer John Kiriakou — the sixth whistleblower the Obama administration has indicted under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information — was arraigned this morning in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. As expected, Kiriakou pleaded “not guilty” to all the charges. No-nonsense U.S District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema set a pre-trial motions hearing for July 20, 2012 and trial for November 26, 2012.
The arraignment was more notable for who was not present than for who was there. Judge Brinkema’s No-Nonsense Approach Judge Brinkema is no stranger to national security cases. It does not take too much reading between the lines to know Brinkema is referring to other Espionage Act cases. Kiriakou’s Whistleblowing. The real criminals in the Tarek Mehanna case. The liberal betrayal of Bradley Manning. [Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him.] More than three years into the presidency of Barack Obama, it’s almost a cliché now to ask: What if George W. Bush did it? From dramatically escalating the war in Afghanistan to institutionalizing the practice of indefinite imprisonment, Obama has dashed hopes he would offer a change from the Bush’s national security policies – but he hasn’t faced a whole lot of resistance from liberals who once decried those policies as an affront to American values.
Like those on the right who now crow about fascism but spent the Bush years gleefully declaring left-wing celebrities “enemies of the state,” many of those on the liberal-left treat issues of war and civil liberties as useful merely for partisan purposes. Former dean of the Yale Law School Harold Koh, for instance, used to rail against the imperial presidency, speaking of the horror of torture and “indefinite detention without trial.”
How uncouth. The Hollow Point Men. I’ve often wondered why so many innocent people who are shot by police end up dead. Granted that police officers spend a fair amount of time training with their service revolvers, and are thus likely to be better shots with a pistol than your average gun-owner. But even so, in so many cases where some unarmed person is shot by police, the result is death, and it makes you wonder how cops, often in the dark and on the run, manage with their notoriously hard-to-aim pistols to hit a vital organ with such depressing regularity. The answer, I’ve learned, is that police in most jurisdictions these days routinely use hollow-point bullets, which are designed to do maximum damage to soft tissue targets.
Because the tip of the projectile is composed of hollowed-out lead, it flattens on impact and spreads out, vastly enlarging the hole made upon entry into a body, causing catastrophic damage to vital organs, internal bleeding and wounds that are hard to repair even in an emergency room. Thirteen Ways Government Tracks Us. Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens.
The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. The Future The technology for tracking and identifying people is exploding as is the government appetite for it. Soon, police everywhere will be equipped with handheld devices to collect fingerprint, face, iris and even DNA information on the spot and have it instantly sent to national databases for comparison and storage.
The advanced technology of the war on terrorism, combined with deferential courts and legislators, have endangered both the right to privacy and the right of people to be free from government snooping and tracking. Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You. The security and surveillance state does not deal in nuance or ambiguity. Its millions of agents, intelligence gatherers, spies, clandestine operatives, analysts and armed paramilitary units live in a binary world of opposites, of good and evil, black and white, opponent and ally. There is nothing between. You are for us or against us.
You are a patriot or an enemy of freedom. You either embrace the crusade to physically eradicate evildoers from the face of the Earth or you are an Islamic terrorist, a collaborator or an unwitting tool of terrorists. (Illustration: Mr. This is why the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was contested by me and three other plaintiffs before Judge Katherine B. Alexa O’Brien, a content strategist and information architect who co-founded the U.S. But that changed quickly. In early September, U.S. “Now you are really in over your head with this. “You seem peaceful, but #Anonymous will tarnish that reputation and FAST! “Just a heads up.
US Attack on Transparency Continues: CIA Whistleblower Indicted. Washington continues its attack on whistle-blowers today as CIA whistle-blower, John Kiriakou, has been indicted in court for charges of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and three counts of violating the Espionage Act. John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. officer, is accused of giving classified information to the news media. (Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press) Former CIA officer, Kiriakou, allegedly leaked information to journalists about classified CIA operations and included classified information in his 2010 book, "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror.
" Kiriakou had become a well know whistle-blower after he became the first US official to reveal the use of waterboarding, a torture technique used by the US. Kiriakou's indictment allows the case to proceed to trial without an evidentiary hearing. 'Reluctant Spy' indicted for leaking US secrets (Agence France-Presse): Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA Dosed S.F. Citizens with LSD - - News.
Illustration by Rick Sealock. It's been over 50 years, but Wayne Ritchie says he can still remember how it felt to be dosed with acid. He was drinking bourbon and soda with other federal officers at a holiday party in 1957 at the U.S. Post Office Building on Seventh and Mission streets. They were cracking jokes and swapping stories when, suddenly, the room began to spin. The red and green lights on the Christmas tree in the corner spiraled wildly. Ritchie's body temperature rose. His gaze fixed on the dizzying colors around him.
Rick Sealock Courtesy of Linda Russo Wayne Ritchie with his late wife, Virginia. Troy Hooper A photograph of a photograph of George Hunter White on file at Stanford Special Collections in Palo Alto. George H. This building at 225 Chestnut St. is the site of the infamous acid house where the CIA tested LSD on unwitting civilians from 1955-1964. Related Stories More About He fled to his apartment and sought comfort from his live-in girlfriend. It was over in a flash. Dr. How The CIA Doped San Franciscans With LSD. Fighting to Repeal California Execution Law They Championed. Jim Wilson/The New York Times Ron Briggs, who was once behind Proposition 7, a tough death penalty initiative passed in 1978, now wants it repealed. The campaign was run by Ron Briggs, today a farmer and Republican member of the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors. It was championed by his father, John V.
Briggs, a state senator. And it was written by Donald J. Thirty-four years later, another initiative is going on the California ballot, this time to repeal the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life without parole. Partly, they changed their minds for moral reasons. “At the time, we were of the impression that it would do swift justice, that it would get the criminals and murderers through the system quickly and apply them the death penalty,” Mr. “But it’s not working,” he said. California is not the first state to reconsider the death penalty in an era of questions about its morality and effectiveness. But Ron Briggs and Mr. “It’s been a colossal failure,” Mr. Mr. These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps. Defense Department seeks new authorities for counterterrorism fight - The Hill's DEFCON Hill.
As the Pentagon begins to wind down the war in Afghanistan, the smaller conflicts elite U.S. forces are fighting around the world are heating up. But DOD needs more than just men and materiel to meet these challenges — it needs additional authority from Congress to do so. "Most of the authorities that we have right now are narrowly construed to counterterrorism ... [but] I think for some countries we may need a little bit more flexibility to go in there," Michael Sheehan, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, told lawmakers on Tuesday. The majority of counterterrorism missions by U.S. special forces have been focused on al Qaeda and Taliban cells in Afghanistan and the Middle East region.
But growing numbers and types of threats, particularly in Africa and South America, require a new approach to U.S. counterterrorism operations, Sheehan told members of the Senate Armed Services’ subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities. NYPD Too Busy Beating Man on the Ground to Notice Being Recorded. The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ (updated below) New York Times, Editorial, November 1, 2004: [O]ne of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years [is] the Bush administration’s drastic expansion of needless government secrecy.
John Dean, Worse than Watergate, 2007: In fact, the Bush-Cheney presidency is strikingly Nixonian, only with regard to secrecy far worse. New York Times Editorial, June 24, 2007: President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything Americans do: our telephone calls, e-mail, and all manner of personal information.
Dawn Johnsen, Boston University Law Review, 2008: The privilege is especially vulnerable in the wake of a President who has abused it or operated with unwarranted secrecy, both of which describe the Bush presidency . . .President Bush’s . . . pervasive secrecy . . . LA Times, Editorial, January 14, 2009: Barack Obama, January 21, 2009: A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. Separate Justice System for Muslims. Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, genuine concerns about national security as well as politicking and fear have led to a shift in the balance between civil liberties and law enforcement. That much is indisputable, and widely discussed. Yet it’s rarely acknowledged that the attacks have also led to what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims.
In this system, the principle of due process is twisted and selectively applied, if it is applied at all. Examples of the Muslims-only legal system abound, even though politicians and the press shy away from calling it that: Special detention centers for Muslims (Guantanamo Bay and the network of secret C.I.A. lockups, now said to be closed, where prisoners were almost routinely tortured); special trial procedures for Muslim prisoners (military tribunals); special allowances for agents dealing with Muslim suspects (extraordinary rendition, i.e. officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreigners). Mr. The F.B.I., Mr. A Legacy of Solitary - Slide Show. Snapshot of Systemic Police Abuse. By LINN WASHINGTON, JR. I don’t know Temple University photojournalism major Ian Van Kuyk, despite his enrollment in Temple’s Journalism Department, where I teach. I do know that dynamics embedded in the recent arrest of Van Kuyk by Philadelphia police–an arrest now generating news coverage nationwide–provide yet another snapshot of the systemic abuses I’ve reported and researched during three decades spent examining and documenting the lawlessness of supposed law enforcers.
I also know that police attacking civilians for lawfully photographing public spaces, police routinely employing unlawful excessive force and prosecutors too frequently turning a blind eye to such police misconduct are all nationwide problems. These systemic abuses by police and prosecutors corrode public confidence in the justice system and cost taxpayers millions of dollars spent on settling lawsuits alleging illegalities by police. Historically, these problems receive short-shrift from most elected officials. U.S. Homeland Security Buys 450 Million Hollow-Point Bullets. Incarcerated Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher Moved to Restricted Cell. Climate activist Tim DeChristopher, who is serving a two-year sentence for unlawfully disrupting a Bureau of Land Management gas and drilling lease auction in 2008, has been moved from the minimum security section at the Herlong Federal Correction Facility in California to a more restrictive and isolating housing unit.
Supporters of the jailed environmental activist Tim DeChristopher are raising new concern about his treatment behind bars. The move, according to a statement from DeChristopher's supporters at Peaceful Uprising (an organization he helped build), took place on March 9th and has severely restricted both his movements and his communications with the outside world. According to the statement: "Tim was informed by Lieutenant Weirich that he was being moved to the SHU because an unidentified congressman had called from Washington DC, complaining of an email that Tim had sent to a friend. Democracy Now! And Jeff Biggers, writing at Common Dreams today, argues: How the New American Empire Really Works.
Capital Punishment: U.S. Ranks 5th On Global Execution Scale, Amnesty International Reports. Part 2: Former NSA Employee Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack on Obama Admin. Whistleblower Crackdown. Glenn Greenwald. The Polite Conference Rooms Where Liberties Are Saved and Lost. Twitter Won't Hand Over Data on Occupy Wall Street Protester. NYPD targets activists around the U.S. The Drone War on Journalists. 40 Years Ago, A Congressional Commission Told The Truth About Marijuana. Amazing People Arrested By Terrible People for Doing Something Good. Police State Blues. Ironies in American justice and political cheerleading. Radio: Chuck Todd - Department of Justice. Debating assassinations on “Real Time” Docs show NYPD infiltrated liberal groups. Internet providers to start policing the web July 12. Evidence Homeland Security Coordinated Occupy Crackdown.
FOIA Request Shows Feds Were Gathering Intelligence On Occupy Wall Street Before The First Tent Went Up. NYPD must spy on all Muslims to protect us from Iranian photographers - NYPD. Fighting Stop-and-Frisk Tactic, but Hitting Racial Divide. U.S. Relaxes Some Restrictions for Counterterrorism Analysis. NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Prevails Against Charges in Unprecedented Obama Admin Crackdown. Exposed: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center in Bluffdale, Utah. The Supreme Court hears arguments on whether children guilty of murder should be given life without parole. The United States Under Permanent State Of Emergency. The anti-protest bill signed by Barack Obama is a quiet attack on free speech. TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old In Leg Cast And Wheelchair. Sunshine Week Wrap-up: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. With Return of Wall Street Protesters, Mayor No Longer Seems Ambivalent. NYPD Scanning The Irises Of Arrested Occupy Protesters. NYPD Brutally Beat Occupy Protesters, Media at Zucotti Park.
Jack Goldsmith: The Great Legal Paradox Of Our Time: How Civil Libertarians Strengthened The National Security State. UN announcement on Manning a year late. 5 Freedom-Killing Tactics Police Will Use to Crack Down on Protests in 2012. Loss of US Civil Liberties. - StumbleUpon. CIA Chief: We'll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher | Danger Room. The TSA According To South Park. UN Torture Chief Slams Bradley Manning's Treatment as Cruel, Inhuman. "You're Gonna Feel It:" U.S. Military Unveils New Crowd Control "Heat Ray" Whistleblower Who Predicted Retaliation Gets Axe from State Dept. Manning Day Two: Closed Door Meetings Delay Hearing After Prosecution Cries 'Terrorist'
Police Pepper-Spray, Beat Occupy the Midwest Protesters Bloody. Senators say Americans would be ‘stunned’ by Obama administration’s secret application of Patriot Act. Former Bush officials under investigation for supporting terrorism. Let's have some more wars, TNR book critic says - The New Republic. SWAT Team Raids Occupy Miami Safehouse: This is What Democracy Looks Like? Virginia's NDAA Nullifying Bill Passed by State Senate. Filtered Transparency: The Freedom of Information Act in the Age of Obama. Admin May Appeal Order to Release Classified Document. 8 Creepy Spy Technologies That Can Be Hitched to Your Neighborhood Drones. FBI says paying cash for coffee is a sign of terrorist intent. BP's Influence Peddling In Congress Bears Fruit Two Years After Gulf Spill. Sealing Loose Lips: Charting Obama’s Crackdown on Leaks.
U.S. Faces Challenge to "Drug War" as Latin American Countries Mull Decriminalization, Legalization. 3/8 Glenn Greenwald, Assassination of Citizens. Why No Financial Crisis Prosecutions? Ex-Justice Official Says It’s Just too Hard. Telecoms immunized from suits. Schneiderman Is Said to Face Pressure to Back Bank Deal. Government Sachs: Goldman's Close Ties To Washington Arouse Envy, Raise Questions. Geithner Calendar: Met Goldman's Blankfein More Often Than Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, Boehner (EXCLUSIVE)
Kucinich: Targeted Killings ‘An Assault On The Constitution’ FBI wouldn’t exclude extrajudicial killings in the US. THE DRUG WAR INSIDE. Pat Robertson: "It's time we stop locking up people for possession of marijuana. We just can't do it anymore." New Suit in the TSA’s Favorite: US District Court :) « TSA Out of Our Pants! Tsaoutofourpants.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/corbett-v-us-complaint.pdf. $1B of TSA Nude Body Scanners Made Worthless By Blog — How Anyone Can Get Anything Past The Scanners « TSA Out of Our Pants! President Obama's muddy transparency record - Josh Gerstein. Imprecise Language and the Risks of H.R. 347. Illinois Judge Declares State Eavesdropping Law Unconstitutional.
Holder Promises To Kill Citizens With Care. H.R 347 could be making the First Amendment illegal. - Philadelphia Progressive. Holder Spells Out Why Drones Target U.S. Citizens. The cost of America's police state - War on Terror. The History Of The FBI's Secret 'Enemies' List. ‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World. Holder Explains Threat That Would Call for Killing Without Trial.