Elections and the Illusions of Choice. The political season has unleashed its predictable frenzy, much to delight of people who make a living off it. But to what end? There are only two types of politicians who end up holding office, wrote H.L. Mencken: “first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold their jobs.” The about sums it up. The plus side of elections is that sometimes the debates, discussions, candidates and parties raise fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to live in. That’s the best we can hope for. But there is a downside to all this hullabaloo: It gives the impression that the mere existence of the electoral process gives “we the people” a fundamental choice about the kind of state we want.
The whole election process leads people to believe that the state is in embedded in leaders. Different law and thriving off violence against person and property. Justice Drops Probe Of Leaker Who Exposed Bush-Era Wiretapping : The Two-Way. "The Justice Department has dropped its long-running criminal investigation of a lawyer who publicly admitted leaking information about President George W. Bush's top-secret warrantless wiretapping program to The New York Times," Politico reports. Thomas Tamm, as Gawker wrote back in 2008, was a Justice Department attorney and a "deeply implausible country-hurter ... [having grown] up in a family of high-profile FBI officials.
" He told Newsweek in 2008 that "I thought this [secret program] was something the other branches of the government — and the public — ought to know about. So they could decide: do they want this massive spying program to be taking place? President Bush condemned the leak, saying it was a breach of national security. Update at 1 p.m. According to Kemp, the Justice Department told him the investigation was being dropped partly because of concerns about how a jury might react to the controversial wiretapping effort. The "War on Drugs" The "War On Terror" Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science. Planned Parenthood pulls a 'Buffy' on the Right.
San Pedro, CA - For decades, anti-choice activists have claimed they are "pro-life", despite a demonstrable lack of concern about what happens once children are born. The US' appalling infant and child poverty rates, along with infant and child mortality rates - all more in line with Third World nations than with other developed nations - are stark evidence of how little real substance there is to the "pro-life" claim as a political stance, and how much merit there is to the counter-claim that "pro-life" actually means anti-woman. But it's never been a matter of reason. The shear intensity of the "pro-life" claim is enough to drown out all other thoughts... until it suddenly isn't anymore.
February 2 was the day that Planned Parenthood was supposed to crumble into dust. It says right there in the right-wing playbook: "Former allies turn against them, issuing denouncements in horror, disgust, outrage and dismay. " Why indeed? Komen in the spotlight Organisational destruction. Cruel and usual: US solitary confinement - Features. The spectre of Bradley Manning lying naked and alone in a tiny cell at the Quantico Marine Base, less than 50 miles from Washington, DC, conjures up images of an American Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, where isolation and deprivation have been raised to the level of torture.
In fact, the accused Wikileaker, now in his tenth month of solitary confinement, is far from alone in his plight. Every day in the US, tens of thousands of prisoners languish in "the hole". A few of them are prison murderers or rapists who present a threat to others. Far more have committed minor disciplinary infractions within prison or otherwise run afoul of corrections staff. Many of them suffer from mental illness, and are isolated for want of needed treatment; others are children, segregated for their own "protection"; a growing number are elderly and have spent half their lives or more in utter solitude.
No one knows for sure what their true numbers are. Prosecutor, judge and jury Isolating the mentally ill. Mass Incarceration and Criminal Justice in America. A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic—the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happens. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is all you need to know about Ivan Denisovich, because the idea that anyone could live for a minute in such circumstances seems impossible; one day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. It isn’t the horror of the time at hand but the unimaginable sameness of the time ahead that makes prisons unendurable for their inmates. The inmates on death row in Texas are called men in “timeless time,” because they alone aren’t serving time: they aren’t waiting out five years or a decade or a lifetime.
The basic reality of American prisons is not that of the lock and key but that of the lock and clock. Why are so many Americans in prison? - Inside Story Americas. The US has the highest prison population in the world - some of whom have been subjected to lengthy sentences for relatively minor crimes. And that population has surged over the past three decades. Although there has been a slight reduction in the past year, more than two million people are either incarcerated in prison or in jail awaiting trial. The US has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, with 743 people incarcerated for every 100,000 Americans. No other nation even comes close to these figures. One explanation for the boom in the prison population is the mandatory sentencing imposed for drug offences and the "tough on crime" attitude that has prevailed since the 1980s. But it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes US prison policy. These long sentences are leading to an ageing prison population - with eight per cent of prisoners now over the age of 55.
A black male is seven times more likely to be imprisoned than a white male. Hungry for Californian prison reform - Features. Thousands of prisoners in the US state of California have refused meals for more than a week as part of a hunger strike against the use of "group punishments" and for authorities to follow legal requirements for maintaining their mental and physical health. Prisoners housed in the notorious Security Housing Unit of California's Pelican Bay State Prison started the strike on June 1, but it has since spread to at least a third of the state's 33 prisons. Their demands include an end to the interrogation process which is used to claim prisoners' gang affiliation, an end to long-term isolation along the recommendations of a US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons report, and access to healthy food, programmes and privileges.
"The basis for this protest has come about after over 25 years, some of us 30, some up to 40 years, of being subjected to these conditions. A key concern for advocates and lawyers working on the strikers' behalf is their access to medications during the strike. The State of US Surveillance. Submitted by Doug Hornig of Casey Research The State of US Surveillance Lovers of liberty have seemingly had a good bit to celebrate recently. First, there was an unprecedented outpouring of negative public sentiment about the Congressional bills SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate); they are legislation that would have thrown a large governmental monkey wrench into the relatively smooth-running cogs of the Internet. Millions of Americans signed online petitions against the bills after seeing websites' various protests.
Google shrouded its search page in black; Wikipedia and Reddit went dark entirely (although Wikipedia could be accessed if one read the information available via clicking the sole link on its protest page); Facebook and Twitter urged users to contact their representatives; and many other core Internet businesses also raised their voices in opposition.
Such was the outpouring of dissent that even Washington, D.C. had to listen. Where We Stand The past year was no exception. A slippery slope... PRIVATE PRISONS AMERICA. Log In - The New York Times. Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This. What Will their Future Be – and What is the Government’s Proper Financial Role? Op-Ed Contributor - Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism. Religion in the US. AmericanPoverty.org. Contact and Petition.