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. 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! 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) 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. 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. The Torture Inc.: America’s Brutal, Inhumane, Anti-”Human Rights” Prisons. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.