Suppressing Dissent Archives:

3/03 - 12/03 

12/02-2/03

7/02-11/02 

Man's rap song called a threat to cops, so he's in jail for 2 years  8/1/2009 Orlando Sentinel 

9/11 FEMA videographer at Ground Zero goes public  6/22/2009 VoltaireNet: "There were many things, in hindsight, that were disturbing at Ground Zero. It was odd to me that I was dispatched to go to New York even before the second plane hit the South Tower, while the media was still reporting only that a “small plane” had collided with the North Tower — far too small of a catastrophe at that point to involve FEMA . FEMA was mobilized within minutes, whereas it took ten days for it to deploy to New Orleans to respond to Hurricane Katrina, even with abundant advance warning! It was odd to me that all cameras were so fiercely prohibited within the secured perimeter of Ground Zero, that the entire area was declared a crime scene and yet the “evidence” within that crime scene was so rapidly removed and destroyed. And then it was very odd to me when I learned that FEMA and several other federal agencies had already moved into position at their command center at Pier 92 on September 10th, one day before the attacks!"

Group Says Coal Protesters Unable to Make Bail  5/24/2009 NYT: "Environmental group Mountain Justice says six people arrested on trespassing charges during a coal mining protest are still jailed. The group said Sunday the six have been unable to raise $2,000 cash apiece to make bail. All six were arrested a day earlier at Richmond, Va.-based Massey Energy Co.'s Marfork Coal mining complex in Pettus. Mountain Justice says they were protesting Massey's plan to blast at the mine. Mountain Justice and a group called Climate Ground Zero say blasting could cause a coal slurry dam at the site to collapse."

FBI Agent on Synagogue Case Has Questionable Record  5/21/2009 Village Voice: 'The FBI agent with a high-profile role in yesterday's arrests of four men for plotting a terror attack in New York has a pretty interesting -- and controversial -- track record. Special Agent Robert Fuller, whose name appears at the top of the federal criminal complaint in the case, had a hand in the FBI's failure to nab two of the 9/11 hijackers, had one of his informants set himself on fire in front of the White House, and was involved in misidentifying a Canadian man as a terrorist leading to his secret arrest and torture -- a case that is now the subject of a major lawsuit."

Martial Law in America by The Corbett Report  11/22/2008 Global Research 

Right-Wing Intimidation Hits Home  10/15/2008 Huffington Post: "I'm sure you really don't know anything about me, let alone my political leanings. How is it then that you have my name and address and threaten to "publicize my involvement in leftist organizations in my local community?"

Guantanamo techniques applied on US soil: civil rights groups  10/8/2008 AFP 

After Being Detained in Preemptive House Raid, Democracy Now!’s Elizabeth Press Files Report on Police Crackdown in St. Paul  9/1/2008 Democracy Now: "The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave, we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16. We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don’t know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1,800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers.”

NYPD Officer Caught on Tape Body-Slamming Cyclist During Critical Mass Ride  8/1/2008 Democracy Now: "Over a million people have watched an online video shot by a tourist last week showing a New York police officer body-slamming and tackling a cyclist in Times Square. We speak with video activist and archivist Eileen Clancy about the incident and why the city is subpoenaing her organization, I-Witness Video, for hundreds of protest videos shot during the 2004 Republican National Convention."

Pak journalist in US jail on terrorism charges  7/28/2008 Daily Times, Pakistan 

Memphis police seek ID of critical bloggers  7/23/2008 AP: "Director Larry Godwin and the city have filed suit trying to force Internet service provider AOL to release records identifying the producers of the blog called MPD Enforcer 2.0. The bloggers, using the name of Dirk Diggler after a porn-star character in the movie "Boogie Nights," are often critical of police management and invite e-mails from readers with similar views… The lawsuit also seeks information on e-mail addresses and phone numbers associated with the Internet site."

Targeting Anti-Death Penalty and Anti-War Activists I was Spied on by the Maryland Police  7/21/2008 Counterpunch 

Taser death ignites racial tensions  7/19/2008 Chicago Tribune: "At 1:28 p.m. last Jan. 17, Baron "Scooter" Pikes was a healthy 21-year-old man. By 2:07 p.m., he was dead. What happened in the 39 minutes in between — during which Pikes was handcuffed by local police and shocked nine times with a Taser, while reportedly pleading for mercy —is now spawning fears of a political coverup in this backwoods Louisiana lumber town infamous for backroom dealings. Even more ominously, because Pikes was black and the officer who repeatedly Tasered him is white, racial tensions over the case are mounting in a place that's just 40 miles from Jena, La.---site of the racially explosive prosecution of six black teenagers charged with beating a white youth that last year triggered one of the largest American civil rights demonstrations in decades. And in a bizarre coincidence, Pikes turns out to have been a first cousin of Mychal Bell, the lead defendant in the Jena 6 case."

CNN reporter criticizes TSA, finds self on terror watch list  7/16/2008 Raw Story: "CNN's Drew Griffin reported on the bloating of the watch list, which an ACLU count pegged at 1,001,308 names Wednesday afternoon. Griffin's is one of those names, he says. "Coincidentally, this all began in May, shortly after I began a series of investigative reports critical of the TSA. Eleven flights now since May 19. On different airlines, my name pops up forcing me to go to the counter, show my identification, sometimes the agent has to make a call before I get my ticket," Griffin reported. "What does the TSA say? Nothing, at least nothing on camera. Over the phone a public affairs worker told me again I'm not on the watch list, and don't even think that someone in the TSA or anyone else is trying to get even." The TSA, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, said Griffin's name wasn't even on the watch list, and the agency blamed the airlines for the delays the reporter experienced. The airlines, on the other hand, said they were simply following a list provided by TSA."

The Spying Started Before September 11 -- That's The Whole Point  7/7/2008 OpeEd News: "No, it started a few weeks after Bush took office -- a time when the Bush administration was ignoring the terrorist threat. So it was about something else, and was a high enough priority to plan out during the transition. (Can you say "political spying?") One telecom company, Qwest, refused because it was flat-out illegal. The Bush administration punished them, blocked federal contracts, and in an early indicator of what was to come from the politicized Bush Justice Department, they prosecuted Qwest's CEO on trumped-up charges."

O'Reilly critic is fired from job at CN8  5/22/2008 Boston Globe: scroll down, thnis story is buried -- "CN8 host Barry Nolan , who publicly complained a few weeks ago about Bill O'Reilly receiving an award from the Boston chapter of National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, has been fired by the Comcast network. "Their take is that I was insubordinate," Nolan told us yesterday. "They wanted me to sit down and shut up." The host of "Backstage With Barry Nolan" had argued that O'Reilly, the volatile Fox News host and former Channel 7 anchor, was unworthy of the Governor's Award. (Past recipients include the likes of Mike Wallace, Ken Burns, and Natalie Jacobson.) "The idea of honoring someone who does their job with constant factual errors, name-calling, and mangling of the truth . . . It's ridiculous," said Nolan, who's married to Garland Waller, a veteran TV producer who teaches at Boston University. We're told Nolan was warned by his bosses at CN8 to pipe down, but at the May 10 dinner honoring O'Reilly he handed out a six-page document listing some of O'Reilly's wackier errors, utterances, and information about the talk-show host's sexual harassment settlement. Seems Comcast was concerned that Nolan's actions could harm the network's relationships with the academy and Fox. He was immediately suspended without pay for two weeks and then fired over the phone Tuesday."

Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions  5/12/2008 LA Times: "The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously. The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it."

REMEMBERING CONGRESSMAN GEORGE HANSEN  4/21/2008 Rumor Mill News: published 8/2002 - "Political prisoners and those who are considered trouble makers are given what prisoners call "diesel therapy". "Diesel therapy" consists of being put on diesel busses or airplanes and being tranported from prison to prison for weeks and months at a time. On the surface it sounds benign. What could be the problem with making a prisoner ride in a bus for hours at a time?"

ACLU: Military skirting law to spy  4/1/2008 AP 

Picket FBI Arrests of Avelion Gonzalez Claudio!!  2/8/2008 Break All Chains: "In the past few months, LUIS FRATICELLI, the director of the FBI in Puerto Rico, has intensified these acts of repression by issuing Grand Jury subpoenas to three young Puerto Rican Activists in New York and Puerto Rico. This past Thursday February 7th, the FBI in Puerto Rico arrested Avelino Gonzalez Claudio, anti-colonial combatant and Machetero, for his participation in the Wells Fargo Incident in the 1980s!!"

LETTER FROM AVELINO GONALEZ CLAUDIO DEFENSE  2/8/2008 IndyMedia, Cleveland: "Comrade Avelino Gonzalez Claudio was arrested by the F.B.I. today, and will be confronting charges which will be leveled against him outside of Puerto Rico. Avelino was one of the comrades that the F.B.I. had been unable to capture during its repressive onslaught against our movement in1985. That period saw the imprisonment of comrades like Papo Segarra Palmer, who spent 19 years of his life in U.S. prisons. We should not lose sight of the fact that the colonial police of Puerto Rico took part in the surveillance that was maintainedagainst Avelino Gonzalez, and his eventual arrest. This is after all an election year, and our colonial governor is susceptible to the pressures of the F.B.I. and a Republican Party in the U.S. which despairs over the failures of its undemocratic efforts against "terrorism," the very thing that they're guilty of inflicting on the world. Avelino Gonzalez Claudio is a militant who has pursued the decolonization of Puerto Rico."

The FBI Deputizes Business  2/7/2008 The Progressive: "One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law. InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm."

FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Will Now Tell All - and Face Charges if Necessary - to Any Major Television Network That Will Let Her  10/29/2007 Brad Blog: "Information omitted and covered-up regarding documented and confirmed case of a long-term FBI Informant & Asset who provided the FBI with specific information and warnings in April & June 2001 regarding 9/11 terrorist attacks. Information omitted & covered up regarding documented information in the procession of the FBI in July 2001 regarding blue prints and building composite information of Sky Scrapers being sent to certain groups in the Middle East by certain Middle-Eastern suspects in the State of Nevada. Information omitted & covered up regarding arrangements made between the State Department and certain countries to deport certain Middle-Eastern and Central Asian detainees from jails in New Jersey & New York off the record and without having them interrogated in November 2001. (Documents related to these suspects were forged at the FBI). Information omitted & covered up regarding nuclear related information illegally obtained by certain foreign entities and US persons (government officials) from several US labs being sold to a certain Middle-Eastern group in the United States in 1998-2000. The operation involved individuals with Diplomatic cover, foreign Ph.D. students, and US employees. Information omitted & covered up regarding money laundering & narcotics operations, some of which involved entities from the Middle East and the Balkans, in several US cities. Information omitted & covered up regarding certain Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI)-related activities linked to the 9/11 attacks between August & October 2001. Certain terrorist related Counterintelligence/FISA information & investigations were prevented from being transferred to counterterrorism & criminal division by the Department of State and the Pentagon; "preserving sensitive diplomatic relations" and "protecting certain US foreign business relations (mainly involving weapons procurement)" were cited as reasons. Intentional mistranslation & blocking of foreign language intelligence of FBI counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations."

FBI Puts Antiwar Protesters on Criminal Database; Canada Uses It To Ban Protesters From Entry  10/7/2007 OpEd News: "Two well-respected US peace activists, CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin and retired Colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, were denied entry into Canada On October third. The two women were headed to Toronto to discuss peace and security issues at the invitation of the Toronto Stop the War Coalition. At the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Bridge they were detained, questioned and denied entry. "In my case, the border guard pulled up a file showing that I had been arrested at the US Mission to the UN where, on International Women's Day, a group of us had tried to deliver a peace petition signed by 152,000 women around the world," says Benjamin. "For this, the Canadians labeled me a criminal and refused to allow me in the country.""

Anti-Gay Movement of Immigrant Fundamentalist Christians Threatens Western States  10/5/2007 Alternet: "In recent months, as energetic Russian-speaking "Russian Baptists" and Pentecostals in these states have organized to bring thousands to anti-gay protests, gay rights activists in Sacramento have picketed Slavic anti-gay churches, requested more police patrols in gay neighborhoods and distributed information cards warning gays and lesbians about the hostile Slavic evangelicals who they say have roughed up participants at gay pride events. Singh's death was the realization of their worst fears. "After a couple years of fundamentalist and Slavic Christian virulent anti-gay protests at almost every Sacramento gay event in the region," said local gay rights activist Michael Gorman, "what the gay community has feared for some time has finally happened." …A growing and ferocious anti-gay movement in the Sacramento Valley is centered among Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking immigrants. Many of them are members of an international extremist anti-gay movement whose adherents call themselves the Watchmen on the Walls. In Latvia, the Watchmen are popular among Christian fundamentalists and ethnic Russians, and are known for presiding over anti-gay rallies where gays and lesbians are pelted with bags of excrement. In the Western U.S., the Watchmen have a following among Russian-speaking evangelicals from the former Soviet Union. Members are increasingly active in several cities long known as gay-friendly enclaves, including Sacramento, Seattle and Portland, Ore."

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations  10/4/2007 NYT: "But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it."

Phone Company Censorship Exposed Free Press calls for Congress to investigate abuses of free speech  10/1/2007 Free Press: "Most recently, news has surfaced that both AT&T and Verizon reserve the right to disconnect subscribers who speak out against them. According to Verizon and AT&T’s nearly identical “terms of service” agreements, these companies can cancel the subscription of anyone who damages “the name or reputation” of AT&T or Verizon, “its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.” Verizon Wireless, which banned NARAL’s text messages, has even more explicit censorship policies. According to its guidelines: “Verizon Wireless reserves the right to remove or block access to any of the content, by whatever means it deems necessary in its sole discretion, without notice. … There is a zero-tolerance policy for non-compliance.”"

Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS  9/19/2007 Counterpunch: "At the conclusion of Kerry’s speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast’s book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast’s investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush’s impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran? At this point the public’s protectors—the police—decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, “I have done nothing wrong,” which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one. But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of “disrupting a public event.” "

McCain To MoveOn: Get Out - Senator Blasts Anti-War Group In New Hampshire  9/14/2007 CBS 

Bush Supresses "Impeach Bush" Press conference  9/7/2007 Global Research: "Less than 18 hours ago, National Park Service Police turned a September 15 Press Conference, held in front of the White House, into a chaotic scene. On the pretext that there was no permit for a three foot long folding table that the media placed their microphones on, the police intervened in the middle of the press conference to announce that it was an unpermitted activity. Three people were arrested and are still being held in jail. They include Adam Kokesh, an Iraq war veteran; Tina Richards of Grassroots America; and Ian Thompson an ANSWER Coalition organizer. The Parks Police even rode a horse directly into the crowd of reporters and shocked onlookers. The National Parks Police is an agency in the Interior Department whose Secretary is a member of George W. Bush's cabinet. In recent weeks September 15 organizers have been fined more than $30,000 for putting up posters promoting the September 15 March on Washington."

Pot Growers Are New Target in "War on Terror"  8/29/2007 Alternet: "We have kind of a reefer blindness," Walters explained during a Redding press conference on the ONDCP's Operation Alesia, a cannabis-eradication program coordinated by the California National Guard's Counterdrug Taskforce and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. Walters followed that clever turn of phrase with the reliable terrorist designation to describe the armed growers cultivating cannabis in Shasta County. "These people are armed; they're dangerous. [They're] violent criminal terrorists." He even went so far to argue that the "terrorists" growing weed in Shasta County, as the Redding Record Searchlight reported, "wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties."

How We Can Take the Constitution Back From the Brink  8/9/2007 Alternet: "The American Freedom Campaign has stepped up to the plate and is working to build bipartisan grassroots support "to reverse the abuse of executive power and restore our system of checks and balances." The group was spearheaded by Wes Boyd, the founder of MoveOn.org; David Fenton, the executive director of Fenton Communications; William Haseltine, a scientist and social entrepreneur; and Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. They've been joined in their efforts by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, MoveOn.org, and other partner organizations."

Who Killed Pat Tillman? And why?  7/30/2007 AntiWar: " "The Army used him," says his mother. "They knew right away he was killed by fratricide and [they] used him for their own purposes to promote the war, to get sympathy for the war, for five weeks." Mary Tillman has long suggested that her son was deliberately murdered by his fellow soldiers. After initially dismissing her allegations as a case of grief-gone-over-the-edge, I've come to believe that there is something awfully fishy about this whole incident. After all, why were Army attorneys sending "congratulatory e-mails" to each other for fending off criminal investigators on the case? The general who kept the details of Tillman's death from the Tillman family and the public claimed that he was having a problem with his memory, and that's why he just couldn't recall any important details of how Tillman's death was handled. Doctors who tried to reconcile the forensic evidence with the official account urged that a criminal investigation be pursued, but they were rebuffed. What's really suspicious, however, is that evidence of enemy fire at the scene was singularly lacking: no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any equipment damaged. According to numerous reports, there were no Taliban in the area."

The CIA's Family Jewels - Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents  6/22/2007 National Security Archive 

How Not to Counter Terrorism  6/18/2007 Consortium News: "Everyone wants security. But all too few recognize that security and liberty are basically flip sides of the same coin. Just as there can be no meaningful liberty in a situation devoid of security, there can be no real security in a situation devoid of liberty."

And Most Americans Don't Know - An Iron Curtain is Descending  1/30/2007 Counterpunch: "It is clear from my experience--as well as that of U.S. Green Party and peace activists barred from entering Canada during anti-globalization demonstrations two years ago, that a million or more former peaceniks and other radicals will now see more and more attempts to keep them at home… Aside from the expense of passports, which puts the usual strain on low-income people, having to have passports even to go and come from Canada or Mexico will limit a very large number of Americans from international travel, period. With the passport requirement, several huge new segments of the American population will be unable to travel abroad, even on day-trips from Detroit to Windsor, Buffalo to Niagra Falls, or Calexico to Mexicali."

The New Top Spy Negroponte's likely replacement makes civil libertarians nervous.  1/4/2007 Newsweek: "Still, some of McConnell's longtime associations may cause him headaches during Senate confirmation hearings, especially with the Democrats taking over Congress. One such tie is with another former Navy admiral John Poindexter, the former Iran-contra figure who started the controversial "Total Information Awareness" program at the Pentagon in 2002. The international consultancy that McConnell has worked at for a decade as a senior vice president, Booz Allen Hamilton, won contracts worth $63 million on the TIA "data-mining" program, which was later cancelled after congressional Democrats raised questions about invasion of privacy. McConnell will be named by week's end to replace John Negroponte, who will move on to become Condoleezza Rice's deputy secretary of State, according to a White House official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. While his role in the TIA program is unlikely to derail McConnell's nomination, spokespeople for some leading Democratic senators such as Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Ron Wyden of Oregon, say it will be examined carefully. McConnell was a key figure in making Booz Allen, along with Science Applications International Corp., the prime contractor on the project, according to officials in the intelligence community and at Booz Allen who would discuss contracts for data mining only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "I think Poindexter probably respected Mike and probably entrusted the TIA program to him as a result," said a longtime associate of McConnell's who worked at NSA with him."

W pushes envelope on U.S. spying  1/4/2007 NY Daily News: "President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned. The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions. That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it."

Houston Mounted Police Run Over Protesters  11/18/2006 Mother Jones: "The horses came all of a sudden. They started jumping on top of people. I heard the women screaming. A horse stomped on top of me. I fell to the ground and hurt my arm. The horses just kept coming at us. I was terrified. I never thought the police would do something so aggressive, so violent."

59TH REPUBLICAN WARD EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE FILES CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST CITIES OF PARIS AND SUBURB FOR ‘GLORIFYING’ INFAMOUS PHILADELPHIA COP-KILLER  11/12/2006 Politics PA: "Criminal charges were filed against the city of Paris and one of its suburbs, Saint Denis, for ‘glorifying’ Wesley Cook, a/k/a Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted July 3, 1982 for capital murder for the December 9, 1981 slaying of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, during an early morning traffic stop at 12th and Locust Street in Center City Philadelphia; by the 59th Republican Ward Executive Committee, encompassing the Germantown portion of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania."

Nick Turse on the Bush Planetary Lock Up  11/2/2006 Tom Dispatch 

Activist opposing the government's policies is charged with crimes against the state, declared mentally unbalanced, and forced to take psychotropic drugs in a military prison  10/12/2006 Wayne Madsen Report: scroll down to first entry for October 12, 2006 - "On September 8, Susan Lindauer, a one-time congressional staffer for Rep. Peter DeFazio and Sen. Ron Wyden or Oregon [Wyden is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence], and journalist, was ordered released from incarceration from the Bureau of Prisons Carswell Federal Medical Center located at the Naval Reserve Air Station in Fort Worth, Texas. Lindauer, who was never convicted of any crime, spent seven months in the prison hospital and was transferred to New York City where she spent an additional four months in prison. Lindauer claims that from August 1996 to the outbreak of the Iraq war, she served as a back channel intermediary with the Iraqi Mission to the UN in New York and was constantly supervised by her handlers in the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). In March 2004, Lindauer was arrested by the FBI at her Takoma Park, Maryland home and charged with acting as an unregistered agent for the Iraqi government from October 1999 to February 2004 and engaging in illegal financial transactions with the Iraqis. Federal prosecutors also charged Lindauer with meeting Iraqi intelligence agents during a 2002 trip to Baghdad, including a meeting at the Al Rashid Hotel. Lindauer claims that she was one of three CIA assets who were covering the Iraqi Mission to the UN. She said she and the other two assets, who were also being run by the FBI, were charged with being agents for Iraq. From the beginning, the government's case against Lindauer was unique. In his decision ordering Lindauer's release from federal custody, Judge Michael Mukasey of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan ruled that the government could not force Lindauer to take psychotropic drugs in order for her to stand trial in the case. In in a rare departure, Mukasey commented on the government's case against Lindauer before the trial. He stated, "There is no indication that Lindauer ever came close to influencing anyone or could have." The Justice Department maintained that Lindauer attempted to influence her cousin to prevent a U.S. military attack on Iraq. Lindauer's second cousin is none other than Andrew Card, who served as George W. Bush's Chief of Staff and who is a major source for Bob Woodward's revealing book about the Bush march to war, State of Denial. Lindauer's father is John Lindauer, the 1998 GOP candidate for governor of Alaska, who was defeated by Tony Knowles."

Full Statement of Those Who Occupied the Stage Why We Confronted the Minutemen at Columbia  10/8/2006 Counterpunch: "In the aftermath of the protest on the night of October 4 against Jim Gilchrist and the racist Minutemen at Roone Arledge auditorium, we want to state clearly: We are proud to send the message to the country that racist and fascist groups are not welcome at Columbia or in New York City. As Chicanos and Latinos, alongside African Americans and progressive people of other nationalities, we took it as our responsibility to give voice to the undocumented immigrant families who live in fear at terrorist vigilante groups like the Minutemen. Armed patrols by these groups force more and more people desperate for work to find even more hazardous ways into the United States. Over 3,000 people-including hundreds of children-have died in the desert. Their blood is on the hands of Gilchrist and his thugs. Fascist scapegoating is not up for academic discussion. Like Hitler in pre-Nazi Germany, Gilchrist and the Minutemen attempt to demonize foreign-born poor people, blaming "illegals" for society's problems. His group doesn't present reasoned debate. It spouts racism and hatred, aiming to divide people against one another."

This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like  9/29/2006 Alternet: "The crux of the issue before Congress can be boiled down to a simple question: Is waterboarding torture? Anybody who considers this practice to be "torture lite" or merely a "tough technique" might want to take a trip to Phnom Penh. The Khymer Rouge were adept at torture, and there was nothing "lite" about their methods. Incidentally, the waterboard in these photo wasn't merely one among many torture devices highlighted at the prison museum. It was one of only two devices singled out for highlighting (the other was another form of water-torture -- a tank that could be filled with water or other liquids; I have photos of that too.) There was an outdoor device as well, one the Khymer Rouge didn't have to construct: chin-up bars. (The prison where the museum is located had been a school before the Khymer Rouge took over). These bars were used for "stress positions"-- another practice employed under current US guidelines. At the Khymer Rouge prison, there is a tank of water next to the bars. It was used to revive prisoners for more torture when they passed out after being placed in stress positions. The similarity between practices used by the Khymer Rouge and those currently being debated by Congress isn't a coincidence. As has been amply documented ("The New Yorker" had an excellent piece, and there have been others), many of the "enhanced techniques" came to the CIA and military interrogators via the SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape] schools, where US military personnel are trained to resist torture if they are captured by the enemy. The specific types of abuse they're taught to withstand are those that were used by our Cold War adversaries. Why is this relevant to the current debate? Because the torture techniques of North Korea, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and its proxies--the states where US military personnel might have faced torture -- were NOT designed to elicit truthful information. These techniques were designed to elicit CONFESSIONS. That's what the Khymer Rouge et al were after with their waterboarding, not truthful information."

JUDGE ORDERS WORLD CAN'T WAIT ACTIVIST TO JAIL PSYCH UNIT  5/9/2006 World Can't Wait: "In a hastily called hearing yesterday, Judge McGinty made a highly unusual and outrageous decision to force Carol to undergo a state psychological exam as part of her pre-sentencing investigation. From the very start of Carol's case, the judge has openly said that she must have mental problems for resisting an unlawful and brutal encounter with Cleveland Heights police. He went even further in yesterday's hearing, saying that her opposition to the Bush regime makes her "delusional." The small courtroom on the 21st floor of the Justice Center was ringed with 5 armed court bailiffs. McGinty started off the hearing by making Carol stand up and had one of her attorneys read her t-shirt, which said: "Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime "If you are going to insist that crossing borders illegally is a crime which cannot be tolerated, how about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice (and yes, Colin Powell) and the rest of that gang, with their highly illegal, and violent, 'crossing of the border'-into Iraq, among other places?!"

Nativists declare open season on undocumented immigrants - Neo-Nazi groups and rabid radio talk show hosts are ramping up the violent rhetoric  5/4/2006 Working for Change 

Not Showing Up: Black, Military Recruitement, and the AntiWar Movement  4/27/2006 Black Commentator: "But Hutchinson’s contention, and one put forward by many on the Left, that Blacks aren’t actively opposing the war is simply not accurate. In March 2005, the U.S. Army reported that the enlistment of Black youth was at an all time low, dropping from 23 percent in 2001 to 14 percent by 2005. The report indicated that many youth were afraid of being killed in the conflict. However many also conveyed a lack of desire to serve in a war they felt was unjust. Additionally, the report showed that key role models – parents, ministers, and the like – who have traditionally encouraged military enlistment, are now actively discouraging Black youth from signing up. So the Black community has become actively involved in steering Black youth away from the military. Why is this not considered an act of radical defiance, especially considering the lack of options for Black youth?"

May 1st and America's New Race War - Immigration Endgame  4/27/2006 Counterpunch: "The recent mass raids are part of a Homeland Security / ICE plan called ENDGAME. The plan bluntly states the aim of the Bush administration: to deport all deportable migrants by the year 2012."

Remember ‘66! The police do  4/20/2006 SF Bay View: "Later, it was said by one of Bayview’s boys-in-blue, that it was a domestic situation in a home on that block. Yet, Palou and Quesada were both blocked off completely by cop cars, and residents on those avenues were “evacuated.” Two white negotiators were seen on the corner of Third and Palou talking on the phone to the person who, witnesses say, was the suspect. Meanwhile, news choppers, tanks, SWAT and tactical units, as well as about 20 or 30 uniformed officers made their way back and forth between the two locations – carrying AK-47s. A battering ram was even positioned on top of a waiting vehicle… Being that we in the Bayview are constantly under siege by police terrorism, I think it is very important that we stay on top of these tactical exercises and let SFPD know that we are not target practice or training for the next head buster to enter the Bayview Precinct. We are citizens. We are residents. We are human. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Hunters Point uprising, days that everyone who lived here then will remember forever. Tanks rumbled down Third Street, cops fired into the beloved Opera House and still residents stood their ground. In 1966, one life lost in Hunters Point at the hands of SFPD was too many. HP wasn’t having it! And we’re not having it now. Who remembers those “riots” that broke out just weeks before the Black Panther Party was born? Come forward; send us your stories. Don’t let this legacy of revolution and of power die. The constant intimidation and terrorism SFPD has inflicted on us has bent us, but damn it, we ain’t broken. Remember ‘66!"

Path to Deportation Can Start With a Traffic Stop  4/14/2006 NYT: "These trends include a housing boom that attracted growing numbers of illegal workers, especially to distant suburbs and exurbs, where federal resources are especially thin; an apparent stagnation in the size of the federal immigration police force, which has remained at about 2,000 for several years; and increasing local opposition to illegal immigration, again, especially in the suburbs. George A. Terezakis, a Long Island immigration lawyer, said that in his practice, he had seen a trend. "The heat is definitely getting turned up. Not just on criminals, but against people I would consider charged with relatively minor offenses: Having an invalid driver's license, a fake Social Security card. A person with a job and a family can end up sitting in jail for months, and then being deported." ...Until fairly recently, it was viewed as inappropriate, even unconstitutional, for the local or state authorities to be involved in the enforcement of federal law. In Los Angeles, the police still operate under an internal rule that says "undocumented alien status is not a matter for police enforcement." Similar policies apply in San Francisco and New York City. But that may be changing, partly because the local authorities have decided to play a more active role and partly because of an unabashed call from the federal government seeking help from states and localities."

The McKinney Affair-Rampaging Racism and a Cowardly Caucus  4/13/2006 Black Commentator: by the BC publishers - "We at BC had previously believed that April, 2005, when 37 percent of the 42 Black House members voted for Republican bills, was the lowest point in Congressional Black Caucus history. A year later, the CBC has found a new nadir. On the evening of April 5, undoubtedly on orders from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, CBC chairman Mel Watt gathered twenty or so members to browbeat McKinney into firing her legal team and cease appearing before the media. Watt absented himself from the beat-down, so that it would not appear to be an “official” CBC event. As congressional aides wandered in and out of the room, some Members dutifully echoed Pelosi’s demand that McKinney not frame the March 28 confrontation with the policeman as a “racial” incident, and that she issue an apology on the House floor the following morning. According to several sources who spoke with BC on condition of anonymity, and based on an account given by McKinney staff assistant Faye Coffield to a weekly Atlanta meeting of the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, a “consensus” was reached that McKinney would deliver the apology and abandon efforts to defend herself in the media (although not her legal team). The next morning, at the appointed hour, McKinney was prepared to offer her apology to the House. But Mel Watt had already put the word out that CBC members were to renege on their part of the deal. The Caucus must not stand with McKinney when she stepped to the microphone. Mel Watt, Nancy Pelosi’s poodle, attempted to enforce his Mistress’s wish that McKinney appear utterly isolated and alone. Nothing should distract from the Democrats’ non-strategy of doing and saying nothing until mid-term elections in November. The Republicans must be allowed to self-destruct without interference. McKinney’s charge of racial profiling was a distraction from the Democratic non-strategy – so she must be shunned. Mel Watt was the enforcer – the designated shunner-in-chief. Pelosi appears to harbor a deep hatred for McKinney, whom she cannot control. Most recently, the 51-year-old Georgia lawmaker defied the Leader’s orders, voting in favor of a Republican bill, cynically modeled on Democrat John Murtha’s measure for a quick exit from Iraq. She was among only three Democrats, and the only CBC member, to do so. McKinney also ignored Pelosi’s order that Democrats boycott hearings on Katrina and leave the field to Republicans."

The Washington snake pit and Cynthia McKinney  4/13/2006 On Line Journal: "It is true that I have changed my hairstyle. It is true that at the time I was not wearing my pin. But many Members of Congress aren't wearing their pins today. Just in the last hour, at least eight Members of Congress have been spotted speaking from the well of the House without their pins and even more have been seen on the Hill today not wearing their Congressional pin. How many of them were stopped by Capitol Hill Police? Do I have to contact the police every time I change my hairstyle? How do we account for the fact that when I wore my braids every day for 11 years, I still faced this problem, primarily from certain white police officers? “This morning at approximately 8:57 a.m., I was going to a Budget Committee meeting due to start at 9 a.m. I was rushing to my meeting when a white police officer yelled to me. He approached me, body-blocked me, physically touching me. I used my arm to get him off of me. I told him not to touch me several times. He asked for my ID and I showed it to him. He then let me go and I proceeded to my meeting and I assume that the police officer resumed his duties.”

THE BELOVED CYNTHIA McKINNEY - A White Ex Cop Speaks Out About a Georgia Congresswoman - by Michael C. Ruppert  4/11/2006 From the Wilderness: "I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia McKinney maybe eight to ten times. I have walked into and out of the Cannon and Longworth house office buildings with her. I have walked to hearings in the Rayburn house office building with her. I have walked the underground tunnels from one of those office buildings directly to the edge of the House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell you one thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it. Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from just about anyone else on the Hill. It’s subtle, but so is the taste of dirt when it’s in your mouth… Cynthia McKinney had been the only member of congress to ask real questions about 9/11. And she didn’t stop or forget when she got back either. More than that, she continued to do—no matter what—the things that her conscience bade her to do as an African-American woman who is anything but a racist (unless you want to refer to the human race). In hearings she questioned Donald Rumsfeld about the multitude of wargame exercises I had identified in my book Crossing the Rubicon. She asked repeated questions about 9/11 in repeated hearings and no one on the Democratic side backed her up when her questions were brushed aside, ignored and forgotten… When she was returned to congress, her party, overlooking well-documented procedure with a number of historical precedents, refused to give her back the seniority to which she was entitled. In terms of committee assignments, instead of being a six-term senior member of her committees, she was a freshman. This placed her last on the list of questioners, last in terms of pecking order, last in terms of recognition, and last in terms of agenda setting. She was denied her old spot on the House Foreign Relations committee. She was moved further and further away from the coveted and influential title of “ranking member” that she should have been approaching. Should the House revert back to Democratic control this year she might have even chaired a committee. God forbid!"

The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney  4/7/2006 Counterpunch: "Journalists are reporting this story as though it were their job to "get" her, breathlessly revealing that the woman who receives more hate mail than Teddy Kennedy employs a part-time bodyguard, as though it proved something about her mental state. But note, please, Rep. McKinney did not take back anything she has said about racial profiling in the nation's capitol. And the fact remains that, while each day's mail brings a new wave of personal threats, some of the people charged with protecting her affect not to recognize her. A Republican colleague offered the suggestion that she could announce "I am a Member of Congress" each time she passes a security checkpoint. But McKinney has served for eleven years, not eleven minutes."

Cynthia McKinney as role model by WILBERT A. TATUM Publisher Emeritus and Chairman of the Board  4/6/2006 Amsterdam News: "And today it is Cynthia McKinney from Georgia. Tomorrow it will be Maxine Waters from California. The next day it will be everyone and everybody who committed the crime of the century, as Oscar Brown Jr. would have put it, ''the crime of being Black, hungry and poor.'' Who is to say what the Capitol Hill policeman did to Cynthia McKinney, who is a six-term member of Congress and one of the most respected politicians in the Black community. Maxine Waters, who is more articulate than Cynthia McKinney and a whole lot more street smart, would have taken her switch blade if she had one and cut that turkey in the White House to ribbons for coming close to touching her, bringing up images of a slave time in a slave state."

Grand Jury to Hear McKinney Run-In Case  4/6/2006 AP 

Racial Profiling from the Halls of Congress to the Studios of MSNBC - The Assault on Cynthia McKinney - By REMI KANAZI  4/6/2006 Counterpunch: Remi Kanazi is the primary writer for the political website www.PoeticInjustice.net He lives in New York City as a Palestinian American freelance writer, poet and performer. - "It didn't concern Scarborough that a class action lawsuit has been filed by black Capitol Hill police officers against the United States Capitol Police department or that McKinney has been targeted by the brave protectors on Capitol Hill in the past. Race just isn't an issue in America anymore-we all learned that after Hurricane Katrina. Apparently it wasn't enough to bash McKinney alone, so Scarborough brought on founding editor of Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox (the quintessential apologist democrat). Cox echoed Scarborough's assertions and added, "I worry [as a democrat] that she [McKinney] makes us all look a little crazy." Cox need not worry, incompetence and feebleness trumps craziness, and the democrats have enough to go around."

A BLOW FOR US ALL - McKinney strikes back  4/6/2006 Greg Palast: "When McKinney landed her response, she landed it for Duane - and for Rosa Parks who was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger; for the Black folk stopped by the cops when trying to flee flooded New Orleans into the safety of the white Metairie; for Willie Steen, a Black man in Florida stopped from voting because he looked like a "potential felon". And she landed one for me and for you, for all of us of all races afflicted with the racism that remains in the DNA of the body politic. So here's to you, Cynthia, our champ, still undefeated."

McKinney Says Police Officer Touched Her 'Inappropriately'  4/1/2006 AP 

Lawyer Says McKinney a Victim in Scuffle  3/31/2006 AP 

Student Protests Echo the '60s, but With a High-Tech Buzz  3/31/2006 LA Times: "Using modern technology — mostly their communal pages on the enormously popular MySpace website — they pulled off an event with surprising speed and dexterity. Planned in mere hours on little sleep, lacking any formal organization, the protests were chaotic and decentralized and organic. They were also a reminder that there are more than 35 million Latinos in the United States, about 40% of them in California. At least 8 million are in the country illegally. But many of their children — including many of the student leaders — are citizens by birth. And they represent a voting bloc that could help shape the politics of the West for years to come."

McKinney Faces Arrest for Scuffle  3/31/2006 News 11 

More on African American NSA analyst Ken Ford and his crooked trial  3/31/2006 Wayne Madsen: scroll down to one of the March 31, 2006 - "In yesterday's sentencing hearing for former NSA analyst Ken Ford, Federal Judge Peter Messitte mentioned the defense's contention that the classified NSA documents Ford was accused of removing from NSA had been planted in Ford's home. Messitte also stated, "no one knows how he [Ford] ended up with these documents." Messitte also referred to Florida resident Tonya Tucker [one of many aliases], the government's confidential informant who initiated the sting against Ford, a "curious figure." Yet, even with such doubts about the case against Ford, Messitte sentenced Ford to six years in prison. In fact, the prosecution engaged in gross and illegal misconduct for the duration of the trial and pre-trial. The prosecutor, Assistant US Attorney David Salem, relied on false affidavits, perjured testimony, and a tainted jury -- complete with a government plant who did not identify himself as a former employee of NSA contractor Northrop Grumman, and coached witnesses to get his conviction against Ford, the only U.S. intelligence employee who has been jailed as a result of his expressed doubts about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Ford prepared a May 2003 NSA signals intelligence report, based on intercepts of Iraqi communications and interviews with NSA counter-proliferation specialists, that disproved the Bush administration's theory about Iraqi WMDs. That report eventually ended up in Vice President Dick Cheney's office. The same type of retaliatory "work up" used on Ambassador Joe Wilson and his covert CIA wife was launched against Ford. However, as a young GS-9 and African American, Ford was much more vulnerable to being set up in a criminal sting than the more savvy and experienced members of the US Intelligence Community."

After criticizing Bush, Harry Belafonte says he was disinvited from delivering eulogy at the Coretta Scott King funeral  3/29/2006 SF Bay View: "Harry Belafonte: It is in culture that I think we come to know one another. And we are in countries murdering, killing, destroying people, and we have never heard their song. And perhaps if we had and perhaps if we would listen to their song, we might find that we are not capable of sending off our sons and daughters to murder (them). It's a great place to be, in the arts. It's a gift that's very hard to define. So many great practitioners of art have already said so much, but there is a spirit in it. There is an essence in it, that if it's applied to the human heart, if it's applied to inspire people to trust, I think the rewards from it are forever. One of the things that was a mechanism and a device used to cruelly punish artists who would speak out was to cut them off from their livelihood. They did it to Paul Robeson. They wouldn't give him a passport. Carnegie Hall wouldn't hire him or give - or rent him the hall. Many of the places that he had sung, where people loved him, were closed to him for a long period of time. But when that case was fought and won in the courts, he was nourished again, because everybody in the world were waiting for him. And what has permitted me to sustain my own life in the midst of so much cruelty and degradation - I've lost a lot from those who control culture, those who will not let my song be in the environment of their sponsorship - just my remarks on President Bush, that he's a terrorist, I lost a lot of work, even in universities, not even singing, just fraternities and students that have invited me to come to speak. Many of those doors in those universities were closed to me, because those who sit on the board and the board of trustees said we are displeased with what he said. "He'll have no place in this institution. And if he does, you'll no longer have our support." So the president and the dean become frightened and become concerned. And it's easier to let go than it is to stand against the oppressor. "

Ten Lessons from the Criminalization of Dissent  3/28/2006 Earth First! 

The Anti-Minutemen Five - Think Twice Before You Oppose the Minutemen  3/27/2006 Counterpunch 

Students Rally On Streets, Downtown Freeways Mayor Meets With Students To Discuss Immigration Bill  3/27/2006 NBC4, LA: "The Senate Judiciary Committee approved election-year immigration legislation Monday that clears the way for millions of undocumented workers to seek U.S. citizenship without having to first leave the country. After days of street demonstrations that stretched from California to the gounds of the U.S. Capitol, the committee also voted to strip out proposed criminal penalties for residents found to be in this country illegally. The panel's vote cleared the way for the full Senate to begin debate Tuesday on the emotional immigration issue. "All Americans wanted fairness and they got it this evening," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who played a pivotal role in drafting the legislation, approved 12-6."

To the Streets! Hispanic Media at the Forefront of Protest March  3/27/2006 Pacific News 

The Civil War in America  3/16/2006 Black Commentator: "The right to abortion became the law of the land with the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. In the absence of that decision being overturned by the court, the action of the South Dakota legislature gives the finger to the United States constitution and anyone who believes in it. South Dakota has fired on Fort Sumter. Congressman John Conyers stated, “Victory in the South Dakota case will give conservatives renewed momentum to challenge all the other freedoms we hold dear.” When the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision outlawed segregation in public schools, southern states decided to ignore the law. Some didn’t desegregate and dared anyone to complain. Others closed their public schools and deprived black children of their right to an education. South Dakota’s legislators are like the segregationists of old. They have intentionally broken the law. They are hoping for court challenges and expect Bush appointees Alito and Roberts to live up to right wing expectations and overturn the Roe decision."

Dictatorship is the danger - A Reagan-appointed supreme court justice voices her fears over attacks on US democracy  3/13/2006 Guardian, UK: "Then she spoke the D-word. "I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." Delivered by someone who was, until recently, one of the nine guardians of the US constitution, these are spine-chilling opinions, and you might have thought they'd have been all over the papers the next day. Not so. I happened to catch Totenberg's NPR report last Friday, and have been following up references to it. A cable TV talkshow and a handful of blogs have mentioned Totenberg's piece: otherwise there's been a disquieting silence, as if the former justice had laid an unsavoury egg and had best be politely ignored... These are peculiar times, and when Republican politicians appear to endorse the killing of judges who make rulings of which they disapprove, it's maybe understandable that a distinguished judge like Sandra Day O'Connor, expressing views calculated to enrage Republican politicians, might sensibly look to a small podium with a weak sound system for fear of being heard too clearly by the likes of Cornyn and DeLay."

O'Reilly threatened radio show caller with "a little visit" from "Fox security" for mentioning Olbermann's name on the air  3/3/2006 Media Matters: "On his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly threatened to turn over the personal information of a caller to "Fox security" because the caller mentioned MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. As Media Matters has noted, in recent weeks, Olbermann has repeatedly awarded O'Reilly the "Worst Person in the World" designation during his show, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'  2/21/2006 Consortium News: "Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy."

10-Year U.S. Strategic Plan For Detention Camps Revives Proposals From Oliver North  2/21/2006 Pacific News Service: by Peter Dale Scott - "In consequence, the United States is being redefined as a vast gated community, hoping to isolate itself by force from its poverty-stricken neighbors. Inside the U.S. fortress sit 2.1 million prisoners, a greater percentage of the population than in any other nation. ENDGAME's crash program is designed to house additional detainees who have not been convicted of crimes. Significantly, both the KBR contract and the ENDGAME plan are open-ended. The contract calls for a response to "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of other emergencies, such as "a natural disaster." "New programs" is of course a term with no precise limitation. So, in the current administration, is ENDGAME's goal of removing "potential terrorists." It is relevant that in 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants." On Feb. 17 of this year, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country's security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called "news informers" who needed to be combated in "a contest of wills." Two days earlier, citing speeches critical of Bush by Al Gore, John Kerry, and Howard Dean, conservative columnist Ben Shapiro called for "legislation to prosecute such sedition."

The FBI and the Myth of Fingerprints - A "100 Per Cent Certainty"  2/20/2006 Counterpunch 

‘We can do what we want to do’ - Patriot Act retaliation against Black NSA whistleblower  2/15/2006 SF Bay View: "A travesty of justice occurred on Dec. 15, 2005. Kenneth Wayne Ford Jr., an honest and honorable young African-American man, was judged guilty of espionage and lying on a federal form by a jury of by no means his peers. Ford faces up to 15 years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines. He is to be sentenced on March 1. An intern-analyst for the super-secret National Security Agency, Ken Ford authored a signals intelligence report that told the truth about nuclear WMD (weapons of mass destruction) components in Iraq. That earned him the wrath of the Bush administration. In the Clinton White House, Ken Ford had been a uniformed member of the U.S. Secret Service. He was trained to take a bullet for President Clinton or the first lady. Will either President Clinton or Sen. Clinton be present at his sentencing in gratitude and in solidarity? Will other whistleblowers, human rights and antiwar activists, Congressional Black Caucus members and intelligence and military veterans stand idly by while an innocent Black man is lynched?"

Report: US is abusing captives  2/13/2006 Financial Times: "A draft United Nations report on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay concludes that the U.S. treatment of them violates their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constitutes torture. It also urges the United States to close the military prison in Cuba and bring the captives to trial on U.S. territory, charging that Washington’s justification for the continued detention is a distortion of international law."

Letter from the parents of wrongfully-convicted former NSA intern-analyst Kenneth Ford, the author of a signals intelligence report that questioned Iraqi nuclear WMD components  2/13/2006 Wayne Madsen Report: Ford is African American - "This editor will be present at the March 1 sentencing at the US District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland in a show of support for Ken Ford and his parents. How many among the whistleblower community, civil and human rights communities, Congressional Black Caucus, antiwar movement, Democratic Party, and intelligence agency and military veterans will join me there to support an individual who faces up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for telling the truth about WMDs in Iraq? Ken Ford Jr., was a uniformed member of the U.S. Secret Service who worked in the Clinton White House. He was trained to take a bullet for President Clinton or the First Lady. Will either President Clinton or Senator Clinton be present in Greenbelt in gratitude and in solidarity?"

Former NSA analyst Kenneth Ford  2/4/2006 Wayne Madsen Report: scroll down to February 4, 2006 - "A former White House Secret Service officer, Ford, a young African American with three college degrees, was what NSA wanted as a future senior executive at America's signals intelligence agency. That was until Ford's first internship assignment brought him face-to-face with what the Bush administration was cooking up for Iraq. After having transferred from NSA's Information Assurance X72 branch to start his internship in the Signals Intelligence Division (SID), Ford found himself assigned to the all-important "Iraqi shop," the branch responsible for analyzing communication intercepts of Iraqi military, civilian government, diplomatic, and commercial traffic for signs of weapons of mass destruction activity or proliferation."

Here's What Really Happened - Getting Busted at the State of the Union - By CINDY SHEEHAN  2/1/2006 Counterpunch 

Brutalized & Arrested in Cleveland for Posting "Bush Step Down" Posters  1/29/2006 World Can't Wait: ""Ma'am! Hundred dollar fine unless you take those posters down." He is pursuing me across the street. Damn! OK fine, I say, I will take them down (not wanting to get into a confrontation, because I have lots to do today!) But this too is not enough for the cop. He wants my ID. I say I dont have my ID. He grabs my arm. I say let go of me, I am not doing anything wrong, I will take the posters down. People are watching to see what happens, are outraged but very afraid. The cop wont let go, he clearly wants more grief from me, and he is in the spotlight. He wants people to be scared. He pushes me against a store window and next thing I know I am face down on the sidewalk with two cops on top of me, one with his knee in my back. I am trying to call out to people, to tell them what the posters are about. They keep pushing my face into the sidewalk. I cant breathe. I have osteoradionecrosis in my jaw, resulting from radiation treatments for cancer. My jawbone is slowly deteriorating, is very fragile, and doesnt heal well. I am 53 years old, not exactly a spring chicken. A hand comes down again to push my chin against the concrete. By this time there are four cops on the scene. My hands are tightly cuffed behind my back. They lift me up and shove me onto a parkbench and shackle my legs. I am still calling out, telling people what this is about. One of the cops says to me, "Shut up or I will kill you!", "I am sick of this anti-Bush shit!" "You are definitely going to the psyche ward." Then somebody calls the EMS, and a fire squad shows up. The cop superviser appears and puts his finger in my face: "I dont like it when people treat my men like this and if you don't obey the law you will suffer the consequences." I am lifted into the EMS truck, hands still cuffed behind my back. I ask to make a call and this is refused, but a fireman offers to make a quick call for me. If not for this, no one would have known where I was or what was happening, a fate shared by many immigrants in this country. At the hospital, I am treated as an arch-criminal. Escorted by four policemen, I shuffle into the emergency room, legs still shackled, covered with leaves and mud. I think to myself, if I was Black, I would not have made it this far. I would probably be dead by now. People in the emergency room are shocked by the scene and by what I am saying happened. I probably do look pretty crazy by now."

Yahoo Kills Countersurveillance Mail List  1/11/2006 Cryptome: "On January 10, 2006, Yahoo killed my TSCM-L mailing list, and they are playing games with me about it. The last time this happened was during the DNC when I posted details to the list about the really appalling bad security that was being implemented during the DNC, and numerous government employees and contractors applied pressure to Yahoo and they pulled the list.. Eventually they reactivated the list (after the DNC), but pulled it down during the RNC a few months later only a restore it a couple of days later. You will recall that the government applied pressure to you about the DNC (in)Security report and that you were able to determine that a government contractor was behind the attempt to censor the data and squelch me. The curious thing is that on January 5, 2006, I had uploaded a series file into a folder on the files section of my TSCM-L list titled bugs02a.icf, bugs02b, etc.. which I suspect really upset some government types. The files contained detailed programming instructions and data files that would be used to command an inexpensive Icom scanner or receiver to hunt down bugs. Each file contained roughly 900 to 1000 bug frequencies, and the technical parameters of various bug bands which would allow a victim of eavesdropping to purchase a scanner for a couple of hundred bugs and detect and locate the majority of illegal bugs, government bugs, spyshop bugs, and bugs used by intelligence agencies worldwide. In the file I included the frequencies of FBI bugs, DHS bugs, military bugs, CIA bugs, MI5 bugs, RCMP, and related agencies plus the "house frequencies" of all the major manufacturers of eavesdropping devices. These files would give someone who is hunting for bugs an enormous advantage over an eavesdropper. Early this morning several people sent me Email that they had tried to download the file, but that it was missing from the file area and that the folder in which it was located had also been quietly deleted... then a few hours later Yahoo quietly deleted the group altogether."

Cheney-Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s  1/3/2006 Pacific News 

Cheney-Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s  1/3/2006 Pacific News 

Evangelical Christians dominate Air Force Academy, report says  4/30/2005 Seattle Times: "Religious intolerance is systemic and pervasive at the Air Force Academy and, if nothing changes, it could result in "prolonged and costly" litigation, according to a report issued by a group advocating strict separation of church and state. The 14-page report, released Thursday, listed incidents of mandatory prayers, proselytizing by teachers, insensitivity to religious minorities and allegations that evangelical Christianity is the preferred faith at the institution. "I think this is the most serious, military-related systemic problem I have ever seen in the decades I've been doing this work," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "There is a clear preference for Christianity at the academy, so that everyone else feels like a second-class citizen." "

Are newspapers covering Akbar case under a military gag order and not reporting it?  4/29/2005 Media Matters: "The restrictions on the press reportedly include a ban on speaking without permission to any civilians or soldiers at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Army base where the trial was held. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press have all covered the trial, but none has reported allegations that the Department of Defense (DOD) imposed restrictions on coverage, nor did they report -- as would be the case if DOD did, in fact, enforce such a policy -- that their own reporters agreed to and complied with those restrictions. While it is not known whether those papers actually acceded to the restrictions as a condition of getting access to the trial, none of the four media organizations -- all of which evidently attended the proceedings -- in fact included any quotes from civilians or soldiers on the base who were not involved in the trial."

When authorities screen your children for mental illness ...  4/26/2005 Mother Jones: "Aliah Gleason is a big, lively girl with a round face, a quick wit, and a sharp tongue. She's 13 and in eighth grade at Dessau Middle School in Pflugerville, Texas, an Austin suburb, but could pass for several years older. She is the second of four daughters of Calvin and Anaka Gleason, an African American couple who run a struggling business taking people on casino bus trips… Six weeks later, in January 2004, a child-protection worker went to Aliah's school, interviewed her, then summoned Calvin Gleason to the school and told him to take Aliah to Austin State Hospital, a state mental facility. He refused, and after a heated conversation, she placed Aliah in emergency custody and had a police officer drive her to the hospital. The Gleasons would not be allowed to see or even speak to their daughter for the next five months, and Aliah would spend a total of nine months in a state psychiatric hospital and residential treatment facilities. While in the hospital, she was placed in restraints more than 26 times and medicated -- against her will and without her parents' consent -- with at least 12 different psychiatric drugs, many of them simultaneously."

Justice Sunday Preachers  4/26/2005 The Nation: "Senate majority leader Bill Frist appeared through a telecast as a speaker at "Justice Sunday," at the invitation of the event's main sponsor, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. "Justice Sunday" was promoted as a rally to portray Democrats as being "against people of faith." Many of the speakers compared the plight of conservative Christians to the civil rights movement. But in sharing the stage with Perkins, who introduced him to the rally, Frist was associating himself with someone who has longstanding ties to racist organizations. Four years ago, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), America's premier white supremacist organization, the successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke."

Air Force Cadets See Religious Harassment  4/19/2005 AP: "There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet. The 4,300-student school recently started requiring staff members and cadets to take a 50-minute religious-tolerance class."

Italian Journalist: U.S. Lied  4/12/2005 CBS: "Pelley's interview with Sgrena will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Wednesday, April 13, at 8 p.m. ET/PT… "Seven hundred meters more and we are in the airport and we will be safe...and in the same moment, [American soldiers] started the shooting," says Sgrena, who tells Pelley that, contrary to claims by the U.S. Army, her car was not warned by hand signals, arm signals, flashing white lights or warning shots."

US turns away KLM plane with unwanted visitors on board  4/10/2005 AFP: "A Dutch airline KLM plane on a direct flight from Amsterdam to Mexico was forced to turn back after US authorities barred it from entering their airspace because it was carrying two unwanted passengers. The plane, which had been carrying 287 passengers, had not been scheduled to land in the United States but needed to fly through US airspace to pass from Canada to Mexico. The aircraft was already nearing Canada when the pilot was told he would not be allowed to enter US airspace, KLM spokesman Bart Koster told AFP on Sunday... The suspected passengers were not arrested on their return to the Netherlands because Dutch authorities saw no reason to detain them, the ANP news agency reported."

Homeland Security memo reveals terrorism records are being sanitized  4/7/2005 Narcosphere 

St. Joseph's Night Gone Blue  3/29/2005 Best of New Orleans: "On Saturday, March 19 -- St. Joseph's night -- Mardi Gras Indians were dancing and singing their way over to A.L. Davis park. Then came the sirens."

I'D RATHER NOT SAY GOOD-BYE, DAN  3/9/2005 Greg Palast: "In 2003, BBC Television questioned George Bush's career as Viet Nam era Top Gun fighter pilot. In the British broadcast, I held up a confidential letter from Justice Department files stating that Poppy Bush had put in the fix to get Junior Bush out of 'Nam and into the Texas Air Guard. George could spend the war protecting Houston from Viet Cong attack. A year after the BBC broadcast, the I'm-going-to-be-a-real-journalist-now Rather decided to run the same story on 60 Minutes. And just as he predicted, the press-police at the network and in the White House seized him and lit the tire around his neck. What was Dan's mistake? Yes, yes, he shouldn't have embellished the story with a document he couldn't fully source. But that memo (not the one in the BBC report) was about a side issue, not the key accusation, that Senior Bush got Junior out of the draft. Despite not a jot of evidence that the main story of draft-dodgin' George was wrong (BBC never withdrew it), CBS cited Rather's insistence on the veracity of that report as grounds to crush his career and his reputation. Rather was convicted by a corporate kangaroo court. Dickie Thornburgh, who had been Poppy Bush's Attorney General and owed his big salaries and career to the Bush family, ran an "independent" investigation which concluded -- surprise! -- the Bushes had done no wrong. It was Dan that committed the evil. That whacky conclusion went along just fine with the diktat of Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom, CBS' owner, that a "Republican administration is better for media companies." "

What Did I Really Say? And Why Did I Say It? By Ward Churchill  2/22/2005 Znet 

Ward Churchill under attack  2/9/2005 SF Bay View 

OK to call for Arundhati Roy to be blown up, but not Arnold Schwarzenegger?  2/3/2005 Columbus Free Press: "The bottom line of Churchill's argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-11-style attacks on the United States is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. "The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation." What's wrong with any of this? The late Susan Sontag said much the same sort of thing in the New Yorker shortly after 9/11, and though there was some huffing at the time, her sentiments seem to be commonsensical, as in these words: "Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq?" But now a storm has burst over Churchill's head, provoked by protests at Hamilton College at his scheduled participation on a panel called "Limits of Dissent." He's been forced to resign his chairmanship of the department of ethnic studies, and now, politicians are howling for his blood."

Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen The Sounds of Bigots  2/2/2005 Counterpunch 

America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb  12/13/2004 Consortium News 

Police scoff at Ashcroft speech  11/17/2004 USA Today: "The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) said that cuts by the administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever to public safety threats. The 20,000-member group also said in a statement that new anti-terrorism duties for local cops - which have come as state and local budgets have declined and historically low crime rates have crept upward - have pushed police agencies to "the breaking point.""

The CIA's Disappeared  10/26/2004 Washington Post 

Indymedia Seizure Hits Two Nations  10/13/2004 AntiWar: "Federal prosecutors in both Switzerland and Italy have confirmed they are investigating Indymedia, and the Italian prosecutor reportedly said there are suspicions the network may "support terrorism," says Indymedia. A representative for the network in the United States said the group still has received no official explanation for the shutdown. "But apparently this morning the Swiss said they had never asked the FBI to seize the servers, just that they were looking at the photos [of undercover police]," David Meieran of Indymedia Pittsburgh told IPS."

Statement by ANSWER Boston on the Harassment of Activists by Homeland Security  9/1/2004 Axis of Logic 

Big Apple keeps eye on pair of Hub anarchists  8/27/2004 Boston Herald: "A report in the New York Daily News citing unnamed police sources, said Toure, a Black Panther with arrests for bank robbery and gun charges, has been ``training younger militants.'' The report also said Picariello has been ``recruiting others into extreme measures.'' New York police refused comment on the report… Jamie Bissonette, who has worked with Toure at AFSC for several years, called the charges ``completely off-the-mark.'' She said neither Toure nor anyone from AFSC is going to New York. ``He's not involved in electoral politics,'' she said. Dustin Langley, of ANSWER in New York, called the charges against Picariello ``ludicrous'' and said police are practicing ``fear-mongering'' to distract the public from a dispute over protest sites."

How Torture Came Down From the Top  8/27/2004 Washington Post: "There it details how President Bush, on the advice of his White House counsel and attorney general, decided in February 2002 that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to captured members of al Qaeda and Afghanistan's Taliban. This, despite the objections of the State Department and "many service lawyers," who worried that the decision "would undermine the United States military culture, which is based on a strict adherence to the law of war." In October 2002, Schlesinger recounts, authorities at the Guantanamo Bay prison "requested approval of strengthened counter-interrogation techniques," and in December, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld authorized a number of harsh methods. He was challenged by the military lawyers whom he had failed to consult, and the policy was revised in April 2003."

GOP Protester Has Terror Bombing Rap Sheet  8/26/2004 NewsMax 

Anarchists hot for mayhem Police on guard vs. violent tactics  8/26/2004 NY Daily News 

Doctor May Get Life for Violating Iraq Sanctions  8/19/2004 New Standard: "In the eighteen months since central New York oncologist Rafil Dhafir was arrested and charged with violating the U.S. embargo against Iraq, he has been sitting in a Syracuse jail, ignored by most of the national media, as prosecutors continue to add charges threatening him with a maximum sentence of almost 300 years in prison."

Drugs Used to Torture Prisoners at Gitmo  8/2/2004 Capitol Hill Blue: "Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi had concerns "about the interrogation techniques and medical experiments" at Guantanamo, Jacques Debray said outside the headquarters of the DST domestic intelligence service where the two men were being questioned. A letter from Sassi said "bizarre" medicines had been given to inmates at night and that one caused some prisoners to break out in spots, Debray told reporters. He gave no other details."

Ronstadt casino ban may be lifted  7/22/2004 BBC: "Singer Linda Ronstadt, banned from a Las Vegas casino for supporting the anti-George Bush film Fahrenheit 911, may be allowed back to the venue. Robert Earl, one of the men buying the Aladdin casino where the incident happened, said he was "very sorry" to hear Ronstadt had been banned. "We respect artists' creativity and support their rights to express themselves," he said."

Red Cross suspects U.S. hides detainees  7/13/2004 AP 

Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists  7/11/2004 Amazon.com: "A vital reminder of the importance of academic freedom, Threatening Anthropology offers a meticulously detailed account of how U.S. Cold War surveillance damaged the field of anthropology. David H. Price reveals how dozens of activist anthropologists were publicly and privately persecuted during the Red Scares of the 1940s and 1950s. He shows that it was not Communist Party membership or Marxist beliefs that attracted the most intense scrutiny from the fbi and congressional committees but rather social activism, particularly for racial justice. Demonstrating that the fbi’s focus on anthropologists lessened as activist work and Marxist analysis in the field tapered off, Price argues that the impact of McCarthyism on anthropology extended far beyond the lives of those who lost their jobs. Its messages of fear and censorship had a pervasive chilling effect on anthropological investigation. As critiques that might attract government attention were abandoned, scholarship was curtailed."

Acoli parole decision deferred  6/30/2004 Home News Tribune: ""In these days of violence and terrorism, a so-called domestic terrorist should not be sent back into society until at least his sentence is complete," he told the Home News Tribune this week." Nor should a Nazi cell in the NJ State Troopers go unchecked.

Parole decision due for N.J. trooper's killer  6/29/2004 Home News Tribune: "Sundiata Acoli will learn today whether he will gain his freedom or continue serving time for the May 3, 1973, murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster."

Enemy Combatants Win Right to U.S. Courts  6/28/2004 AP 

Free-speech lockdown  6/17/2004 SF Bay View: "California prisons are a reporter’s nightmare - will new legislation change that?"

The Pinochet Principle: Bush Defends Torture in the Name of National Security  6/9/2004 Democracy Now 

How Big Brother Is Watching, Listening and Misusing Information About You  6/8/2004 Capitol Hill Blue 

Massive U.S. Prison Population Jumps By 57,000  6/6/2004 New Standard: "The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country and the US prison population represents almost a quarter of all the world’s prisoners, according to figures compiled by the British Government."

RECRUITMENT-OFFICE PROTEST - If only he’d put women’s underwear on his head instead  6/4/2004 Boston Phoenix: "So if Previtera didn’t mention a bomb, what exactly constitutes a bomb threat? "It can be implied, with fingers and wires — especially in a heightened state of alert, as we are," says Officer Michael McCarthy, Boston Police Department spokesman. And McCarthy thinks this is common knowledge, even if the wires are accessories to a costume. "Mr. Previtera should know better. He’s a young adult educated at Boston College from a wealthy suburb. I’m sure he knows wires attached to his fingers, running to a milk crate, would arouse suspicion outside a military recruiters’ office [when he’s] dressed in prisoner’s garb." [Except for a detail - the article shows a photo of Previtera with the wire clearly not connecting with the milk crate, which is empty anyways, so that no one should have reasonably mistaken it for a bomb.]

Boston Protester Faces Felony Charges For Protesting Abu Ghraib Abuse  6/4/2004 Democracy Now: "A 21-year-old college student could spend years in jail on bomb threat charges after he stood silently outside a military recruitment office dressed like an Iraqi prisoner: in a black cape, hooded, wearing stereo wires hanging from his fingers. The police charged Joseph Previtera with making a bomb threat since the stereo wires resembled wires to a bomb."

Commission Named to Uncover Truth of Greensboro Tragedy  5/28/2004 Black America Web: "Nov. 3, 1979 left an eternal stain on Greensboro, N.C. That day five activists protesting the treatment of workers in North Carolina mills at a “Death to the Klan” rally were attacked and killed by Ku Klux Klan members and American Nazis."

www.bigbrother.gov  5/21/2004 Seattle Weekly: "In the past 20 months, Harris has become America’s leading critic of electronic voting (see “Black Box Backlash,” March 10). Her reporting on the problems with new computer voting machines has been a key component in a national, grassroots movement to safeguard voting. Her astounding discoveries have resulted in important studies by distinguished computer scientists. She has been leaked thousands of pages of internal memos from Diebold Election Systems, one of the country’s leading electronic voting companies. She is frequently cited by newspapers across the country and is a guest on national and local television and radio stations. Thousands of people visit her Web site and participate in its reader forums. Now, Harris claims, the government wants our names, forum messages, and computer addresses."

Guantanamo: US guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp  5/16/2004 Guardian: "Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed. The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to speak until now, prompted demands last night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately. They say that if the contents are as shocking as Dergoul claims, they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees has become an institutionalised feature of America's war on terror."

Brutality starts at home  5/15/2004 Asia Times: ""Five years ago, after prison scandals gripped California with tales of guards setting up inmates in human cockfights and then shooting them dead, the state Department of Corrections vowed to change its ways," read a December 28, 2003 article from the Los Angeles Times. Notably, the article was entitled "Despite State Promises, Reform Eludes Prisons", illustrating a well-established official pattern of effectively condoning abuse, then paying lip-service to outrage and reform when a scandal breaks." - long list of ignored violations in this article.

"Harsh Methods" Aren't Torture, Says the New York Times  5/14/2004 FAIR 

Guantánamo abuse same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons  5/14/2004 Guardian, UK: "The Guardian has learned that some of the British detainees released from Guantánamo Bay have reported that they were sexually abused. There is no way to independently verify these details. According to a source, who has interviewed them in secret since their release, they were initially too ashamed to talk about it, and are only now starting to give details. The source said: "They are embarrassed about talking about it because they feel humiliated. We have had an account that their religion was used against them, that a copy of the Koran was brought in front of them and pages torn out." "

Secret US jails hold 10,000  5/14/2004 New Zealand Herald: Al Qaeda has its roots in the jails of Saudi Arabia - "Some of these detention centres are so sensitive that even the most senior members of the United States Congress have no idea where they are. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Cuba, this American gulag is driven by the pressure to obtain "actionable" intelligence from prisoners captured by US forces. The systematic practice of holding prisoners without access to lawyers or their families, together with a willingness to use "coercive interrogation" techniques, suggests the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib now shocking the world could be widespread."

Torture as Normalcy - As American as Apple Pie  5/9/2004 Counterpunch 

From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib - Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell  5/7/2004 Counterpunch: "When he sat down in front of Arab tv audiences on Wednesday to explain the true American way, he could have pointed to an October, 1999 story in the Austin American Statesman that detailed how female prisoners there were regularly kept in portable detention cells for hours at a time in summer heat with no water. "In fear of more time in the cages," the article explains, "many women submit sexually to their oppressors and are raped, molested and forced to perform sodomy on their captors." And in 1996, if Bush hadn't so busy handling the transfer of $9 billion in public funds over to the University of Texas Investment Management Company, the governor might have had time to read about the videotape that surfaced that year depicting prison guards brutalizing inmates in the Brazoria County Detention Center in Angleton, TX. The tape, which was originally shot for use as a training video, showed riot-clad guards beating prisoners (arrested on drug violations) and forcing them to crawl while kicking them and poking them with electric prods. Had Bush cleared a little time to watch this video, he would had an easier time digesting the images out of Abu Ghraib, and thus saved himself those few moments of humiliating supplication in front of all those Arabs, based as they were on the faulty assumption that those pictures "weren't America." "

Rall receives death threats over Tillman cartoon  5/5/2004 AP: "Cartoonist Ted Rall says he has received numerous death threats over a cartoon he did this week that satirized the media's response to the death of Pat Tillman, the former pro-football player killed in Afghanistan."

BVHP under siege by occupying army  5/5/2004 SF Bay View: "For 16 hours on Monday, in blatant retaliation for the killing of Officer Isaac Espinoza on April 20 in Hunters Point, the sky rumbled with the sound of a California Highway Patrol plane and helicopter as an unprecedented armed force of countless city cops joined by 32 CHP officers moved in to occupy Bay View Hunters Point under the pretext of curbing traffic violations, stopping over 250 cars and arresting 30 community members. The young man accused of killing Officer Espinoza is Hunters Point resident David Hill, 21, but the SFPD is retaliating against the entire neighborhood… When several police and CHP cruisers and a total of 22 officers jammed the intersection of Third and Quesada at one point on Monday evening, a young onlooker cried out, “We need to rise UP!” He was immediately arrested."

Milestone in U.S. secret terror surveillance  5/1/2004 SF Chronicle: "Federal and state courts authorized the use of wiretaps and other electronic surveillance in 1,442 criminal cases last year, according to data released Friday by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. By comparison, the FBI says the number of warrants filed last year with the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington jumped to more than 1,700."

Decently, Kill the Muslims  4/29/2004 Village Voice: "Jay Severin, a Boston radio talk show host, had some advice on the subject of Muslims for a caller to his show last week. "You think we should befriend them," he told Chris from Rhode Island, according to a transcript of the show obtained by a local newspaper. "I think we should kill them." "

A survivor tells her story - Treatment for a leftist: Kicks, freezing water and electric shocks. In between, a visitor from the CIA.  4/24/2004 Baltimore Sun: The Sun republishes this story first seen in 1995 - "The CIA's visits to the jail are significant because U.S. officials in Honduras repeatedly claimed at the time that they had no evidence that the Honduran military was engaging in systematic human rights abuses. In his testimony, Stolz said: "I have no facts to contradict Ms. Murillo's statement that she suffered physical abuse at the hands of the Honduran military interrogators." Stolz also confirmed that two battalion members, Florencio Caballero and Marco Tulio Regalado, were trained by the CIA. Murillo accuses those battalion members of being among her torturers. The two men graduated from a CIA interrogation course on March 13, 1983. It was the same day that Murillo was seized by Battalion 316… The ambassadors he met, including U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte, expressed interest in the Murillo case and said they would ask about her when they talked with Honduran officials."

US agents grill Bush Radio man  4/16/2004 Cape Argus, SA: "Cape Town radio man Zane Ibrahim was taken off an international flight minutes after it landed at Baltimore airport by United States Homeland Security personnel and interrogated for almost 12 hours. Ibrahim, an award-winning journalist and managing director of Bush Radio, had flown to the US from Cape Town via Amsterdam to deliver a keynote address on 10 years of South African democracy at a conference at Goucher College, near Baltimore. Ibrahim said today by telephone from the US that his aircraft was still on the runway when guards boarded the flight, removed him, strip-searched him and interrogated him in the airport building for nearly 12 hours yesterday… "I don't know what was wrong with these people, but they seemed really angry about an anti-war campaign we had running on Bush Radio, called Bush Against War." Ibrahim said that when he did not appear at the airport, colleagues who were there to meet him made inquiries and eventually he was released, without an apology. "They simply told me that I could go about my business, but I should remember that they were keeping a very close eye on me." "

Two Reporters Forced To Erase Tapes Of Scalia's Speech  4/9/2004 NBC: "The reporter initially resisted but later showed the deputy how to erase the tape after she took it from her. The deputy also made a reporter for The Hattiesburg American erase her tape. The exchange occurred in the front row of the auditorium while Scalia told his audience that the Constitution's true meaning must always be protected."

Be careful what you say on campus  4/2/2004 Seattle Post Intelligence: "The most ominous threat to academic freedom in decades looms in a seemingly innocuous Senate bill expected to come up for vote shortly. A short but critical clause would rob our society of the open exchange of ideas on college campuses that is vital to our democracy. House Resolution 3077 passed last fall. It included a provision to establish an advisory board to monitor campus international studies centers in order to ensure that they advance the national interest. While the law would apply to all federally funded institutes with an international focus, the target is clearly the nation's 17 centers for Middle East studies. The driving force behind this provision is the same group of conservative ideologues who have long promoted the war on Iraq and who support the extreme right-wing politics of the Sharon government in Israel. Their aim is to defend the foreign policy of this administration by stifling critical and informed discussion on U.S. campuses."

Jury convicts 3 Miami cops in gun-planting conspiracy  4/1/2004 Sun Sentinel 

An Outside Takeover of the Sierra Club  3/20/2004 Sierra Club: "The three candidates of primary concern are Dick Lamm, Frank Morris, and David Pimentel. Advanced by a group called "SUSPS," these candidates have no Sierra Club experience -- but they do hold interlocking roles on the governing Boards of outside anti-immigration organizations, some of whom are actively seeking to influence the Sierra Club's election."

Revealed: the full story of the Guantanamo Britons  3/14/2004 Observer: "they endured three months of solitary confinement in Camp Delta's isolation block last summer after they were wrongly identified by the Americans as having been pictured in a video tape of a meeting in Afghanistan between Osama bin Laden and the leader of the 11 September hijackers Mohamed Atta. Ignoring their protests that they were in Britain at the time, the Americans interrogated them so relentlessly that eventually all three falsely confessed. They were finally saved - at least on this occasion - by MI5, which came up with documentary evidence to show they had not left the UK; ...The three men said that as far as they could see, there were few if any genuine terrorists at Guantanamo Bay: perhaps at worst, a few mullahs who had been loyal to the Taliban. They voiced grave fears for the future of Begg and Abbasi, who are due to face trials by American military commissions, saying that their own experience of the Guantanamo interrogation and intelligence gathering process was 'almost a recipe' for other miscarriages of justice."

Group to act against rapper profiling  3/12/2004 Miami Herald: "Members of the Miami Beach Black Host Committee, a group created by the city's mayor to help improve its rapport with black residents and visitors, say they are deeply offended by the police department's monitoring of rappers and their associates."

The Siege of the Sierra Club  3/12/2004 Znet: ""Without a doubt, the Sierra Club is the subject of a hostile takeover attempt by forces allied with ... a variety of right-wing extremists," said the Southern Poverty Law Center in a warning letter. "They hope to use the credibility of the Club as a cover to advance their own extremist views." "

Retired Georgia State professor on trial for anti-war protests  3/2/2004 Signal, Georgia State: “I am deeply troubled that Sen. Miller knew that these and many other serious questions demanded answers before the war was even considered, and that he chose to ignore them instead,” said Parko. Feeling like their right to meet with a public official was being denied, the protesters went to Miller’s Colony Square offices to conduct a peaceful anti-war protest. Some of their questions centered around the reliability of evidence for weapons of mass destruction, the number of casualties to be expected in the event of war in Iraq, the length of time that troops will be in Iraq and the cost of war to American taxpayers. These questions have yet to be answered by Sen. Miller, and many Georgia State students and faculty do not agree with the arrest of the “Atlanta Five.”

The Ideology Police  2/25/2004 Village Voice: "In a gesture that consolidates the 1990s culture wars, the post-9-11 chill on dissent, and the relentlessness of hawkishly pro-Israel lobbying, the U.S. House voted unanimously last fall to establish an advisory board to monitor how effectively campus international studies centers serve "national needs related to homeland security" and to assess whether they provide sufficient airtime to champions of American foreign policy… "The priority of those behind this is defending Israel from any criticism," says Zachary Lockman, director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center at New York University. "They understand that universities are one of the few places where debate and argument take place that cannot be heard in the media or anywhere else." "

Police infiltration of protest groups upsets rights activists  2/19/2004 Chicago Sun-Times 

Internal Law Enforcement Services Policies - AGENCY: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Interior.  2/10/2004 Cryptome: "'This notice publishes internal policies on Cross-Deputation Agreements, Memoranda of Understanding, Memoranda of Agreement, and Special Law Enforcement Commission Deputation Agreements. These policies apply to all Cross-Deputation Agreements, Memoranda of Understanding, Memoranda of Agreement, and Special Law Enforcement Commission Deputation Agreements."

Feds Win Right to War Protesters' Records  2/7/2004 AP: "In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists. In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said… In addition to records about who attended the forum, the subpoena orders the university to divulge all records relating to the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based legal activist organization that sponsored the forum. The group, once targeted for alleged ties to communism in the 1950s, announced Friday it will ask a federal court to quash the subpoena on Monday. "The law is clear that the use of the grand jury to investigate protected political activities or to intimidate protesters exceeds its authority," guild President Michael Ayers said in a statement."

Are You On Uncle Sam's No Fly List?  2/5/2004 CBS: "The list is now alleged to include not only suspected terrorists and those believed to be a threat to aviation security but civil rights activists say it also targets people based on their political views. A list that is thought to include members of the Green Party, a Jesuit priest who is a peace activist and two civil rights attorneys. In Gordon and Adams’ case, the ACLU believes the couple may have been targeted for their work on War Times, a free bilingual newspaper that has been critical of the war and the Bush administration's policies on terrorism."

East African Churches Slam US Pressure on Anti-Terror Bills  2/4/2004 Antiwar: "The Church in Africa is concerned about the U.S. pressure on African countries to introduce anti-terror legislation on pretext of fighting terrorism. The church is cautioning African governments against enacting such laws blindly, which it warns infringe on human rights. Uganda and Tanzania have already passed Anti-Terror Acts amid protests from human rights groups. Neighbor Kenya may soon join the bandwagon, if the Bill, published last April, sailed through parliament."

'Embedding' CIA Agents Within Local Police Depts  2/4/2004 Antiwar: "H.R. 3439, making its way through Congress, would authorize the federal government to "embed" CIA agents within local police departments to blur the distinction between local cops and feds. The Campaign to Demilitarize the Police is organizing to stop the bill, and has been targeting the bill's author, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), with protest actions."

OPEN LETTER TO REP. CAROLYN MALONEY  2/4/2004 Demilitarize the Police: "We are writing you this letter to express our extreme displeasure at your sponsorship of HR3439, a piece of legislation which to our mind poses great danger to our civil and human rights. We strongly urge you to withdraw this legislation immediately! "

Prosecuted for politics, not security  1/31/2004 The State, SC: "Mr. Thurmond would have you believe that my arrest, under the statute that deals with threats to the president, was simply a case of me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I would argue that I was in the right place at the right time to take a stand against the Bush administration’s dangerous foreign policy and the erosion of civil liberties in this country."

America as a One-Party State  1/25/2004 American Prospect: "Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself."

Still no answers for brothers held in custody in the Philippines  1/25/2004 Indianapolis Recorder: at least one of the two brothers was a Panther way back when.

Computer reportedly seized from Frist's office - Democrats say their computers were infiltrated by GOP staffers  1/24/2004 Knox News: "Federal investigators reportedly have seized a staff computer in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office in a probe to find Republican aides who improperly accessed Democrats' memos on opposing judicial nominees."

GOP staffers in Senate accused of infiltrating files  1/22/2004 Boston Globe: "From spring 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings in which judicial nominees Democrats would fight and with what tactics were discussed. The office of Senate Sergeant at Arms William Pickle has launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a Web site last November."

Government attacks on MLK show need to protect rights  1/22/2004 Radio Progresso: "On Nov. 23, 2003, reporters revealed an internal FBI memo showing that the agency has closely monitored antiwar organizations that demonstrated against the Bush administration's belligerent foreign policy. The FBI, which had previously denied the charges, fessed up, but argued that it narrowly limits its surveillance to criminal elements. But the document shows the government singling out even entirely legal activities such as online fundraising and videotaping arrests at protests to record police abuses. In May 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced new FBI guidelines that, with the help of the Patriot Act, allow the agency to have undercover agents infiltrate church groups and political organizations, even without any evidence of a criminal activity. Julian Bond, a prominent 1960s civil rights activist and current chair of the NAACP, recently quipped that we now live in the times of “J. Edgar Ashcroft.” "

Bush Pushes Plan to Permit Internet Surveillance  1/21/2004 AntiWar: "This is a bad treaty that not only threatens core liberties, but will obligate the United States to use extraordinary powers to do the dirty work of other nations," says Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the oldest civil rights group in the country. "We are opposed to this treaty," says Cedric Laurent, a senior policy fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC), a public interest research group based in Washington, DC that specialises in issues of democracy and technology. The treaty criminalizes acts such as hacking and the production, sale or distribution of hacking tools, and expands criminal liability for intellectual property violations that nations must have on their books as crimes. So far, only four countries – Albania, Estonia, Hungary and Croatia – have ratified the treaty since it opened for signatures in 2001."

War protesters proud they got to jeer Bush  1/17/2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "For two years, the antiwar movement in Atlanta has waited for the moment Thursday when President Bush's motorcade pulled up at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. "No protester has ever been that close to Bush," crowed organizer Kelli Potts on Friday afternoon as she recalled the Thursday protest when about 1,000 people shouted "Bush Go Home" and waved antiwar placards as the president laid a wreath beside the crypt of Martin Luther King Jr."

Miami federal court has 'secret docket' to keep some cases hidden from public  1/8/2004 Sun Sentinel, FL: "A secret docketing system hiding some sensitive Miami federal court cases from public view has been exposed and is being challenged in two higher courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. "We don't have secret justice in this country," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The Washington-based journalists watchdog group is asking the appellate courts to open up two Miami federal cases it says were litigated in secret."

Letters from Leonard Peltier on the genocide of Native Americans (Part II)  1/6/2004 Final Call 

Quarantining dissent - How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech  1/4/2004 SF Chronicle: "When Bush visited Australia in October, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mark Riley observed, "The basic right of freedom of speech will adopt a new interpretation during the Canberra visits this week by George Bush and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to speak as much as they like just as long as they can't be heard." "

The alleged patriots who want to do a replay of the 50's need to consider that one of the roots of Al Qaeda was a Saudi dissident movement that turned violent in House Saud's torture cells in the early 90's.