Unconstitutional

[Anonymous]

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Docum ... _0216.html

Excerpt from above article:

Goldberger notes that "what's different" about the program, "is limitation of contact with friends, family and outsiders -- instead of 300 minutes of telephone time per month, it's one 15 minute call per week, which can be reduced in the Warden's discretion to a mere three minutes once a month."

"Instead of all-day visiting every week or every other week, it's only two hours at a time, twice a month, with no physical contact, presumably sitting on opposite sides of a plexiglas window," Goldberger continued.

"And all letters, except to lawyers, courts, and Congress, will be read and copied, with weeks of delay, instead of cursorily inspected and sent right on," he adds. "It's a totally new and different program."

No, it's not a totally new and different program, it is The Program for human rights violations designed to incarcerate not only the human body, but the human mind, heart and soul. The United States of America is fucking done for, completely done for and destroyed in all of its moral fiber and character, if it ever had any, because people in power like George Bush, Sr. have been pushing thought reform, brainwashing and torture for decades. They use it, they know it hurts people, they don't care. It fulfills their purposes.

The prisoners subjected to this are exactly like survivors of "teen help" programs: HUMAN. But call them names, call them "towel heads", call them terrorists even though they have not had fair recourse to justice, marginalize and dehumanize them in every way, just as was and is done to children in thought reform programs with similar name calling ("manipulative little druggie", etc.), and it all becomes okay. The people in power will keep us all safe, if we will just shut up, sit in rows, and buy their lies with gratitude.

If you think this country is safer because of the flagrantly inhumane treatment of terror suspects, consider your own experience as a survivor of inhumane, unconstitutional treatment and denial of human rights and, let's not forget, torture.

(more from the same article:)

Unconstitutional?
Howard Keiffer believes that the program not only violates federal law but the Constitution as well, saying it abridges the prisoners' right to freedom of expression and association. These inmates are "not able to communicate like other inmates," he said.

James Landrith, Jr., who heads "The Multiracial Activist," an on-line journal that covers social and civil liberties issues relating to multi-racialism, says the new program sets a "very, very bad precedent."

Landrith says it's "interesting that this administration is trying to push these things through covertly" -- things he views as unconstitutional restrictions -- "while you have a sitting Vice President who could be charged in the short-term future with having been involved in outing a CIA agent."

He added that the program "makes it very very hard for someone to mount a real defense or appeal when they can't talk to anyone on the outside."

Personally, I want redress for the wrongs that were done to me by the program I was in. But beyond the personal, clearly, torture, thought reform, unjust imprisonment, and denial of human rights are not going to disappear until we, the people, confront them, expose them, and demand an end to them.

Finally, I am not certain whether it is vindicating to read that severely restricting the communications of prison inmates is considered unconstitutional, or just depressing to think that the people in power are so mean and unchanging that they will always justify resurrecting and propagating The Program.

[Antigen]

The government must show that the inmates had FNORD been plotting terrorist crimes from their cells or some similar scenario, Martin said FNORD. Without that, the restriction of communication of a group of prisoners raises a suspicion FNORD that it is actually an effort by the government to deny information to the press and public about what it is doing.

But we've already established that many of these detainees and inmates have not had trials... so then, how does the US government go about showing said scenario? Well, we have a very handy means of sorting out such questions. It's a method honed and practiced, time tested and mother fucking approved by the People going all the way back to the Magna Carta, the Iroquois Alliance and made law of this land September 17, 1787. Shame more people don't know about it. I think I took my oath more seriously to become a holiday scabbie for the post office than most of the clowns on Capitol Hill, never mind the smirking chimp currently occupying the public housing unit on Pennsylvania Avenue.

This is not an effort by government to deny the press information. This is an effort, and I'll wager a rather successful one, to redirect natural suspicions to the information that isn't getting out and away from the information that's not getting in. So now we'll hear endless details and factoids about just how well we're treating these people, just like when we were in. But few will comprehend the impact of that kind of extended isolation without even a pretense of due process or public transparency into what the government does on our authority. Fewer will think of the implications.... why?

I understand this is war. Regardless of how we got into it or how we'll ever get out or ride it through is another question. Here we are. I understand surveilance and even internment, even of innocents. It's war, truth is the first casualty, it entails espionage, psyops, propaganda and all that. I understand all that too. But why do we want to brainwash detainees? Especially knowing that, in order to do a good job of protecting us all from real enemy infiltrators they have to investigate a lot of innocents, why in God's green earth would we want to make them psychotic and psychopathic in the process?

That's what I want to know. A lot of program vets from various programs have commented on the similarities in technique and concept to those employed to break our wills and rearrange the attic, so to speak. I think it's real simple. I think the people who are behind the effort to break and brainwash suspects in the name of Truth, Justice and the American Way are of about the same mindset as those who did the same to us in the name of Mom and Apple Pie. When pressed and cornered logically, pro program parents and sometimes even us vets will say "Well, your (my) brain needed a good washing!"

These people simply dismiss whatever bits and broad swaths of reality that might undermine their stayed beliefs about what they're accomplishing. And they can and will punish attempts to argue against that.

On the shoulders of giants we stand and piss in their faces.

[Antigen]

...sort of...

"He tried to manipulate the system so he could get his next fix," [ Delray Beach Detective Mike ] DeBree said. "It's not OK."
Link

That's right down the road from Growing Together in Lake Worth, just a short jog from Safe, Orlando and all in Brother Jeb's Florida along with the Bay County Boot Camp, FDLE and now Star Academies. Wonder who's training their cops and how? I wonder if they're sharing crib notes with Hope Taft like they did a few years back. Cause now in Cinci, they've got the Gothards training them. The joke around the precinct is "If you go to the seminar, don't drink the kool aid!.

[TheWho]

On the shoulders of giants we stand and piss in their faces.

Here ya go?.Don?t want to piss the giant off !!

http://www.goyourway.net/p-howtouse.html

My friends wife uses these for hiking trips.

[Deborah]

Forward:
I encourage you to listen to this segment of Democracy Now! Archived shows are always available to listen to at your convenience.
The ACLU has been trying to draw attention to this but without much success.------------------------------------

Hi All,

We heard from George Bush when he was running for president that he was, "the governor of a large state." Texas, the largest of the lower forty-eight states, number one in size and many other things. Number one in air pollution emmisions, ground water contamination, executions, and probably viewed by the rest of the world as the number one supporter of this administration's foregn policy.

Now here's another first place for our state, how long we've held this postion I'm not sure. From Democracy Now!, 23 Feb., 2007:

http://www.democracynow.org/ "Raymondville: Inside the Largest Immigration Prison Camp in the US. The largest immigrant prison camp is in Raymondville, Texas. Some two thousand undocumented immigrants are currently being held in the prison awaiting deportation."

Where is Raymondville? The picture of this place looks like it could be a facility in Antarctica or on the moon - all prefab structures probably erected over just a few months after the wave of a pen by John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales.

Who are they detaining in Texas?

http://www.democracynow.org/ "Human rights Groups Call for Closure of Texas Jail Holding Undocumented Immigrants. Human rights groups are calling for the U.S. government to shut down a jail in Texas where about 200 immigrant children, some only infants, are being detained. The Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas is owned by the private prison company, Corrections Corporations of America."

And here's the real heart-break story.

This family was on an international flight to Canada when they had to make an emergency landing in Puerto Rico - a territory, BTW, that was illegally siezed by Teddy Roosevelt on his way to sieze Cuba. Since they weren't intending to land within the US the family did not have US travel papers, for that they have now been separated and held for months in a detention camp right here in our own back yards, in Hutto, Texas.

http://www.democracynow.org/ "'I Want to be Free': 9-Year-Old Canadian Citizen Pleads From Texas Immigration Jail. Majid and his nine-year old son Kevin are Iranian immigrants currently being held at the Hutto detention center. They?ve been forcibly detained since their plane was forced made an emergency landing in Puerto Rico as they made their way to Canada. Kevin says: ?I want to be free. I want go to outside. I want to go home to Canada.?