Gore Vidal and the Upside of American Military Prisons. So, here we are bringing democracy to the poor Afghans, but only the real democracy, of course, in the prisons, which we specialize in everywhere and which—one interesting thing that came out of all that mess was now the world knows how we treat Americans in American prisons.– Gore Vidal Only the late Gore Vidal, who the American media was almost universal in describing as iconoclastic in his obituaries, could find an upside to the torture of prisoners by American soldiers.
And only Vidal could find an upside that would be at the same time deeply witty, cynical, sensationalistic, and completely factual. I say completely factual because the torture and brutality that shocked the world in American military prisons from Guantanamo bay to Bagram to Abu Ghraib closely parallels and mirrors the United States’s own domestic treatment of prisoners. One doesn’t need to dig very deep to discover the degrees of brutality, torture, and sadism that are the main stead of American prisons. Pepper-spray-cop-original.jpg (450×300) Wide-5050-1322853230-10.jpg (950×633) Anaheim, Anaheim Pd, Opanaheim, Anaheimprotest, Apdriot, Anna, La Palma, Anaheim City Hall, Disneyland, Anaheimpd, Somosanaheim, Weareanaheim, Disney. 57UN: Well known sign from #Anaheim !
Hey Kids! Check out my military police! Spread it. Share it. Steal it! #OpAnaheim #FTP 57UN: Getting tweets from several tweeps not seeing Guy Fawkess at #Anaheims protests, well you are wrong! 57UN: According to many protesters in #Anaheim having protest sign there is big chance you get arrested. Occupy Ventura: Anaheim Police Say They Will Reach Out to Community After Shootings, Protests #Anaheim @nbcla 57UN: Police state is here. DailyDNews: New wave of Anaheim protests: 9 arrested as police disperse crowds (PHOTOS, VIDEO) ReporterClaudia: People outside state attorney generals office in downtown LA call for probe of #Anaheim PD. JohnNBCLA: Protest against Anaheim PD for police brutality - complaint files with State AG Office @nbcla StopMotionsolo: The #ndaa in #anaheim. 57UN: Welcome to #Anaheim!
57UN: USA Police state?! Total surveillance: NYPD launches new all-seeing 'Domestic Awareness System' The New Police Surveillance State. Occupy Wall Street’s (OWS) nationwide May Day campaign was undertaken in New York and some 100-plus other cities. Its goal was twofold. First, it sought to focus attention on the major banks, the principal culprits in the still lingering fiscal crisis. Second, it sought to highlight the growing inequality deforming American society, which still resonance as an election-year issue. The day’s gathering drew thousands across the country. Those who assembled were enraged and, for the most part, law-abiding citizen who drew the expected responses from local law enforcement agents, those duly sworn to protect the interests of the 1 percent — clubbings, roundups and arrests. In New York at least 50 people were busted and roundups occurred in many other cities as well.
The local police are increasingly being deployed to restrict if not prevent mass political actions, especially directed at the banks. May Day has come and gone, but there are lessons to be learned. On July 9th, Rep. Rep. The Real Crime in Anaheim. “He was a documented gang member,” say the Anaheim police of Manuel Diaz, a 25 year old unarmed man they shot dead around 4:00 pm Sunday.
They shot him in the buttocks as he ran, and as he stooped to his knees in someone’s yard they followed up by a bullet to the back of his head. Then they handcuffed their immobile quarry with a bloody face and a hole in his skull (as described by a 17 year old neighborhood resident), and searched his pockets before sending him to the hospital to die within three hours.
As I understand it, California law states: “Any person who actively participates in any criminal street gang with knowledge that its members engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity, and who willfully promotes,furthers, or assists in any felonious criminal conduct by members of that gang, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for a period not to exceed one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months, or two or three years.” The Torture Inc.: America’s Brutal, Inhumane, Anti-”Human Rights” Prisons. Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq? They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.
The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. If a prisoner doesn’t drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. Another prisoner has a broken ankle. Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking. Slouching Towards Nuremberg? Strange things are happening in the United States these days, and every day seems to bring additional scary news. The similarity to the erosion of civil liberties in Germany during the 1930s is a bit too close for comfort.
Many will regard this statement as hyperbole, and, to some extent, it is. But let’s take a close look at what is going on before we dismiss the comparison out of hand. In terms of the historical record for Germany, legal discrimination against Jews certainly existed before the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and grew steadily over time. In 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banned “non-Aryans” from the civil service.
In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and “Aryans.” In 1938, Jews with first names that were not characteristically Jewish had to adopt the middle name Sara (if female) or David (if male). In 1939, Jews living in German-occupied Poland had to wear the yellow star. I. Iran/Contra: Oliver North Questioned About Plans to Suspend the U.S. Constitution. U.S. Officials Sued Over Citizens Killed in Yemen. Phone Company Fights National Security Letter In Court. TSA Deems Complaining About TSA To Be Terrorist Indicator. Informed Citizen Rebukes Multiple ‘Nazi’ Checkpoints. The Increased Criminalization of Dissent. Patrick Fitzgerald's Legacy: Letting Rove And Cheney Go. WASHINGTON -- U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s prosecution of former CIA officer John Kiriakou for talking to journalists about the Bush/Cheney torture program has at least one thing in common with his conviction of I.
Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby in 2007. In both cases, Fitzgerald went for the little fish. But the big fish got away. (See related story on the Kiriakou case.) In the Plame case, Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby, then-vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for perjury and obstruction of justice related to the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA operative. But he stopped short of charging Cheney or top presidential adviser Karl Rove -- both of whom had been targets of his investigation. Fitzgerald was appointed as a special prosecutor in late 2003 to investigate the July 2003 leak of Plame’s identity, which came during a White House effort to discredit her husband, former U.S.
But Cheney was never charged. According to James B. Justice Department Wins Rosemary Award for Worst Open Government Performance in 2011. Washington, DC, February 14, 2012 – The U.S. Department of Justice has won the infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance over the past year, according to the citation posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org). The award is named after President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who erased 18 1/2 minutes of a crucial Watergate tape. The Rosemary Award citation includes a multi-count indictment of Justice's transparency performance in 2011, including: "Justice edged out a crowded field of contending agencies and career officials who seem in practical rebellion against President Obama's open-government orders," commented Archive director Tom Blanton.
"Justice's leading role as the government's lawyer signals every bureaucrat they don't have to stretch as much as Rose Mary Woods to cover up the government's business. " William Welch Anthony Yang Melanie Pustay But the canary in the coal mine is not singing any more. UN Envoys Still Wait For a Response To Letter On Occupy Brutality. Spying and profiling Muslims in New Jersey is apparently fine. Press non-freedom in the US. Senate Will Investigate National Security Leaks About Terrorism 'Kill List'
The Senate will investigate recent national security leaks to the news media in the wake of articles in The New York Times about a “kill list” for terrorists and the use of cyberweapons against Iran, a Senate official said on Tuesday. Tara Andringa, a spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the committee would hold hearings “pertaining to recent public reports of classified information.” Ms. Andringa’s comments came after Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, both called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the leaks. “Such disclosures can only undermine similar ongoing or future operations and, in this sense, compromise national security,” Mr. McCain said on the Senate floor. “For this reason, regardless of how politically useful these leaks may be to the president, they have to stop.”
Mr. Mr. The statement from the committee’s chairman, Mr. The Dark Side of “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness” Why is the World's Largest Organization of Psychologists So Aggressively Promoting a New, Massive and Untested Military Program? The January 2011 issue of the American Psychologist, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) flagship journal, is devoted entirely to 13 articles that detail and celebrate the virtues of a new U.S.
Army-APA collaboration. Built around positive psychology and with key contributions from former APA president Martin Seligman and his colleagues, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is a $125 million resilience training initiative designed to reduce and prevent the adverse psychological consequences of combat for our soldiers and veterans. At the outset, we want to be clear that we are notquestioning the valuable role that talented and dedicated psychologists play in the military, nor certainly the importance of providing our soldiers and veterans with the best care possible. Conceptual and Empirical Concerns Ethical Concerns The Limits of Positive Psychology. One Foot Off the Slippery Slope: NDAA Ruled Unconstitutional by Travis Kelly.
If the founding fathers were spinning in their graves like centrifuges over recent assaults on the Constitution, their RPMs slowed down a bit last Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled that Section 1021 in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), allowing military detention of American citizens without due process, is unconstitutional. The lawsuit was brought by veteran journalist Chris Hedges, with attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran doing the heavy lifting without compensation.
None thought they had a chance to win, given the juggernaut of military and police-state abuses that have rolled over us in the decade since 9/11. But as Hedges said after the verdict, “A stunning and monumental victory … every once in a while the gods smile on the damned.” It might as well be known as the “Enabling Act,” after the one in 1933 granting that mustached corporal extraordinary powers to combat terrorism after the Reichstag fire. Tell it your gullible uncle. Dept. of Homeland Security Forced to Release List of Keywords Used to Monitor Social Networking Sites. Warrantless spying fight. In 2006, The New York Times‘ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize for their December, 2005 article revealing that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on the electronic communications of Americans without the warrants required by the FISA law (headline: “Bush Lets U.S.
Spy on Callers Without Courts” “Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law”). It was then-Sen. Obama’s vote in favor of the FISA Amendments Act that caused the first serious Election Year rift between him and his own supporters. The only positive aspect of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was that Congress imposed a four-year sunset provision on the new warrantless eavesdropping powers it authorized. A key Senate panel voted Tuesday to extend a contested 2008 provision of foreign intelligence surveillance law that is set to expire at year’s end. Remember the George W. Third, there is ample evidence of recent abuse of the warrantless surveillance powers vested by the FAA.
Congressmen Seek To Lift Propaganda Ban. "The Whole System Relies on These Arrests": The NYPD's Racist Marijuana Arrest Crusade And Its National Implications. May 15, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Every morning, several sheets of paper are posted to the walls outside the arraignment rooms of New York City’s Borough Courts. Not that there is a credible challenger for the dubious honor. This is decreasingly a matter of accusation and anecdote. This is the story of 22-year-old Hakim R., a resident of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights who I met one recent morning after his arraignment.
“They just came up to me and started frisking me, making me take my shoes off, putting their hands in my pocket, before they even asked me my name [or] asked for ID,” says Hakim. According to Hakim, when the police found a five-dollar bag of marijuana in his back pocket, they charged him under 221.10 and brought him to the precinct station, where he was fingerprinted and locked in a cell for four hours. According to the law, it shouldn’t have mattered. When the school is the bully - Facebook. Glenn Greenwald.
Ron Paul, Adam Smith Push To End Indefinite Detention Of Americans. WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to end the law that lets the military indefinitely detain people arrested in America on terrorism charges. Ever since Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force against Al Qaeda and its allies after the 2001 attacks, the White House has asserted the authority to have the military seize suspected terrorists -- including Americans -- and detain them without trial as long as there is a war on terror.
That policy was enshrined in law with last year's National Defense Authorization Act, although President Barack Obama has issued rules barring authorities from detaining Americans. But that is not good enough, said House lawmakers on Wednesday, vowing to push an amendment by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) to this year's National Defense Authorization Act that would expressly require any suspected terrorist caught in the United States or its territories to be tried in civilian courts. "The system works. Judge Grants Class-Action Status to Stop-and-Frisk Suit. Robert Stolarik for The New York TimesThe police patrolled Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn in 2010.
A federal judge on Wednesday granted class-action status to a lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics, saying she was disturbed by the city’s “deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights.” The decision by the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, of Federal District Court, (see also below) provides possible legal recourse for hundreds of thousands of people who have been caught up in the department’s increasingly vigorous stop-and-frisk practice, which critics say unjustly ensnares blacks and Latinos.
Over the weekend, the police disclosed that they had made more than 200,000 such stops in the first three months of 2012, placing the Bloomberg administration on course for the largest number of annual stops in the 10 years the department has been measuring them. In the past, Mr. Obama’s new free speech threat. All the state's spies - AlterNet. Guantanamo Watchers Say Obama Gets Away With Legal Moves Bush Wouldn’t.
Secrecy News. USA Today Reporters Smeared After Investigating Pentagon Propaganda Outsourcing.