Category Archives: Attacks on Civil Liberties

Mother Jones Reporter Goes Undercover in Private CCA Prison

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My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard

Mother Jones (2016)

Film Review

My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard is a troubling documentary about a Mother Jones senior reporter who goes undercover to work as a prison guard in a private Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) prison in Winnfield Louisiana. The film mostly consists of Shane Bauer’s video diary and interviews with other prison staff and former inmates. Cameraman James West, who attempted to film outside the prison, was arrested by sheriff’s officers for criminal trespass.

Filmmakers mainly focus on the extremely demoralizing working conditions. Entry level guards earn $9 an hour – even in Winn this is insufficient to live on. Working conditions are incredibly dangerous. To save money (and increase profits), CCA keeps staff numbers low, which means there are rarely sufficient security personnel to cope with inmate violence. In fact, guards at Winn Correctional Center are trained not to intervene in shank fights, which are a routine occurrence.

The failure to provide adequate food or medical or mental health care for inmates is even more shocking. Bauer highlights the case of a diabetic inmate who had to have several fingers and both legs amputated for gangrene because prison authorities refused to get medical attention for him.

Parts 2-6 start automatically when Part 1 ends.

Read accompanying article at My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard

 

Black Liberation: How Obama Abandoned the Black Community

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The following is a presentation by Keehanga-Yamahtta Taylor about her book from #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. The main focus of the talk is the total abandonment of the black community by America’s first black president Barack Obama.

African Americans have double the unemployment rate of other US workers, 40% of African American children live in poverty, 55% of black workers earn under $55 and police shoot and kill an average of 900 African Americans a year.*

What Taylor finds even more galling is that Obama persistently blames African Americans for their own living conditions. When most of the world Wall Street for the economic cataclysm visited on white working class in 2008, Obama proclaimed there was “no excuse” for African Americans living in poverty.

Taylor  goes on to discuss the disproportionate shut down of public services (schools, libraries, hospitals, etc) and safety net programs in black communities.

She also points out the total disconnect between policing and crime, which is declining. She gives the example of New York and other cities that use their police force to help meet budget targets, New York City, for example, generates $10 million a year from parking tickets and $1 billion from court fines (derived disproportionately from African American neighborhoods because New York police deliberately target them).

She also cites the problem of overt police racism, as evidenced by the texts cops send each other – with racist messages such as “white power”, “niggers must be killed” and “niggers must be spayed.”

*This number is an underestimate as only 1,000 out of 18,000 urban police departments report police killings to the Department of Justice.

Whistleblower Leaks Secret Assassination and Kill List Documents

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In the following video, Jeremy Cahill discusses his book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program. For the most part, the book consists of leaked documents about the CIA’s “secret” drone assassination program. This is the first time any official documents have been made public.

Cahill’s latest book includes documents setting out the criteria for putting Americans and others on the terrorist “watch list.” Other documents describe the “kill chain,” the process by which prospects are moved from the “watch list” to the “kill list.” When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she signed off on every targeted assassination carried out by the Obama White House.

According to Scahill, the watch list contains over one million entries, including 21,000 Americans. Among other data, the watch list includes bank records and confidential medical records.

Scahill begins his talk with fascinating commentary on the three main presidential candidates. Among other observations, he points out 1) that Bernie Sanders supports both the kill list and drone warfare 2)  that Trump didn’t bring fascism to the US – that he merely brought existing US fascism into public view and 3) that Bill and Hillary Clinton were using her private email server to operate a parallel government structure.

In Scahill’s words, Hillary is the “empire candidate.” She has already been endorsed by William Kristol, Max Booth and other neoconservatives. He maintains most of the Republican leadership is preparing to support her presidential campaign.

Scahill is also scathingly critical of Ben Rhodes and the other 20 to 30-year-old “frat” boys who manage Obama’s foreign policy, ie make the decision who to kill next and which countries to invade.

 

Kim Dotcom and America’s Diabolic Intellectual Property Laws

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kim dotcom

The Secret Life of Kim Dotcom: Spies, Lies and the War for the Internet

By David Fisher

Paul Little Books (2013)

Book Review

Kim Dotcom, a recent German billionaire immigrant to New Zealand, continues to fight a US extradition order for alleged Internet piracy, money laundering and racketeering. Dotcom, who legally changed his name from Kim Schmitz in 2001, was first arrested January 20, 2012 – during a military-style assault by an elite anti-terrorist team on his Auckland home. It would be nearly four years, in late 2015, before the New Zealand government convened an extradition hearing. The court granted the request for extradition, which is currently under appeal.

The case has caused great embarrassment for New Zealand prime minister John Key. Not only did the Government Security Communications Bureau (GSCB) illegally spy on Dotcom primary to his arrest, but New Zealand courts ruled the arrest warrant and the government order to seize his assets were illegal.

Fisher provides an excellent summary of Dotcom’s financial empire and the legal and technological intricacies of the case against him. The book paints an ugly picture of a servile National government that seems to view New Zealand as a US colony and happily suspends the New Zealand Bill of Rights at the behest of the FBI and US corporate interests – in this case the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The case revolves around Megaupload, a service Dotcom created in 2004 (preceding Dropbox by three years) enabling Internet users to store and share large files. The MPAA cried foul when Megaupload users began sharing downloaded new release films.

Fisher (and the lawyers Dotcom consulted prior to starting Megaupload) maintain he is in total compliance with the US Digital Millennium Copywrite Act (DMCA). This law holds sharing websites (like YouTube) harmless for copyrighted materials posted by third parties, provided the sites remove them after being notified by copyright owners. Dotcom’s lawyers also contend that copyright violation isn’t an extraditable offense. This is why the US government has added additional charges of money laundering and racketeering.

Despite Dotcom’s status as a New Zealand resident, the US Department of Justice is claiming jurisdiction because all global email traffic passes through eastern Virginia. Dotcom (and Fisher) believe the FBI targeted the billionaire after he made a $50,000 donation to Wikileaks. Additionally, Fisher believes Dotcom may have influenced Edward Snowden’s decision to flee to Hong Kong. Dotcom started Megupload in Hong Kong prior to moving to New Zealand and still has major business ties there.

Dotcom’s appeal against the extradition order will likely extend into late 2017.

HUD Ends Blanket Ban on Renting to Ex-Felons

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ban the box

At the beginning of June, Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) ruled that landlords who exclude ex-convicts as renters may be breaking the law under the Fair Housing Act.*

The new rule reads, “A housing provider violates the Fair Housing Act when the provider’s policy or practice has an unjustified discriminatory effect, even when the provider had no intent to discriminate.”

In essence it prohibits a blanket ban against tenants with criminal records. It still permits a case-by-case assessment of whether tenants could pose a threat. In other words, the new guidelines allow a landlord from excluding an ex-convict if that person represents a threat to the safety and security of the other residents in the building.

The new rule also cautions landlords against selectively enforcing a ban on applicants with criminal records: denying housing to black ex-felons while accepting white people with criminal histories.

Supreme Court Ruling on Disparate Impact

The new guidelines follow a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling last June that the 1968 Fair Housing Act applies to disparate impact as well as “discriminatory intent”. The ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v Inclusive Communities Project prohibits any housing policy that results in poorer outcomes for protected groups, such as black Americans, regardless of whether they were intentionally discriminatory.

The HUD requirement remains that local public housing authorities ban (for life) anyone convicted of producing methamphetamines on public housing property, as well as registered sex offenders. HUD guidelines also require public housing authorities evict public housing residents if they or someone in their unit – even an unrelated guest – commits a drug crime.

The Felon Next Door

On April 4, the British Guardian ran an excellent and (in my opinion) balanced article about the cruel bans on housing and employment for formerly incarcerated African American and Hispanic men who have been preyed upon by a brutally racist criminal justice system.** Because of systemic housing discrimination – even by public housing facilities – many of these individuals have been doomed to homelessness on their release.

Contrast that with a blatantly racist article in Investors Business Daily about the Obama administration making it easier “for felons to move in next door.”  IBD accuses the Obama administration of trying to “racially balance” the US ZIP code by ZIP code. The outcome they claim will be to import violent crime into the suburbs, while lowering property values and negatively impacting local schools.

*The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968 and signed into law by President Lyndon B Johnson. It prohibits discrimination in housing on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Criminal history is not a protected status under the law, but HUD’s new guidelines rely on the concept of “disparate impact”, noting that black and Latino people are disproportionately incarcerated and therefore more likely to excluded by blanket policies.

**In The New Jim Crow, African American attorney Michelle Alexander gives a heart breaking account of police bounty systems that deliberately target minority neighborhoods looking for pot smokers and innocent black arrestees forced to cop felony pleas because they can’t afford decent legal representation.

 

Third World Mental Health Initiatives Put US to Shame

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People and Power – Out of the Shadows

Al Jazeera (2015)

Film Review

Out of the Shadows celebrates the hard work of third world activists who have dedicated their lives to bringing mental health care to their countries. It presents a striking contrast to the neglect and abuse the mentally ill experience in the US.

Globally half a billion people suffer from mental disorders, such as depression, bipolar illness and schizophrenia – more than all AIDS, malaria and TB cases combined. Yet owing to profound stigma, publicly funded mental health services are virtually non-existent in many third world countries. India, for example, spends less than 1% of their health budget on mental health. And in Togo, mentally ill men and women are chained to trees.

The documentary highlights activist-created programs providing free mental health services (funded by private European and Canadian donors) in India, Benin, Ivory Cost, Burkina Faso and Jordan.

US Barbarism Towards the Mentally Ill: A Crime Against Humanity

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This is Crazy: Criminalizing Mental Health

Brave New Films (2015)

Film Review

This documentary showcases US policies which are shutting down psychiatric hospitals and community mental health centers and warehousing America’s mentally ill in jails and prisons. It features in-depth interviews with two mentally ill women who survived lengthy incarcerations, as well as commentary by psychiatrists, mental health workers and prison reform advocates.

America’s barbaric treatment of the mentally ill constitutes a crime against humanity under international law. Sadly it’s not a new problem. Thanks to the steady cutbacks in mental health services and housing subsidies that began under Reagan, it was clear by the mid-eighties that most mentally ill Americans were ending up in jails and prisons and on the street.

In 2002, Bush junior made even deeper cuts in mental health funding to finance the wars in the Middle East. Meanwhile, thanks to the 2008 global economic scam (which effectively transferred billions in taxpayer dollars to billionaires), states cut an additional $5 billion in mental health services* and eliminated 4,500 psychiatric beds.

Police Harassment of the Mentally Ill

The documentary begins by highlighting the brutal treatment of the mentally ill at the hands of police. When I practiced in Seattle, police routinely underwent crisis intervention training that enabled them to recognize when suspects were psychotic and to appropriately de-escalate threats of violence. This training also made it far more likely mentally ill offenders ended up in treatment facilities – as opposed to jail or prison.

Thanks to ongoing budget cuts and the militarization of local policing, most cities have abandoned routine crisis intervention training. In recent years, it’s become common for cops to kill psychotic individuals when they create a disturbance on the street – either by shooting them or repeatedly tasering or beating them to death. The lucky ones end up with lengthy prison sentences.

To his credit, New York city mayor Bill De Blasio re-instituted crisis intervention training for New York cops in 2014.

Private Prisons (Housing 1/3 of Mentally Ill Offenders)Are the Worst

This is Crazy continues by examining the brutal treatment psychotic inmates receive from prison guards. There is often no effort, especially in private prisons, to ensure they receive their prescribed medication. Instead guards physically abuse them and put them in solitary confinement in a (mostly futile) effort to get them to comply.

Warehousing the mentally ill in jails and penitentiaries also rips of taxpayers – as it costs $15 billion more annually than outpatient mental health treatment.

Once mentally ill convicts are released from prison, they rarely get appropriate aftercare. Conventional probation services make no effort to ensure that they access housing or appropriate aftercare services. Many end up returning to the streets to live.

*Between 2009 and 2012.

Banking Scam Targets Prisoners and their Families

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debit cards

Leave it to the banksters to come up with new ways to gouge poor people who are forced to use their services and pay their exorbitant bank charges.

According to Al Jazeera, federal and state prisons are aiding and abetting the latest banking scam by substituting release cards for the cash they owe prisoners and immigrant detainees on their release. The funds on the pre-paid debit cards include cash confiscated at the time of incarceration, the remainder of money sent by family members and scant earnings from prison jobs.

In addition to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 17 states are using them in state prisons. Their use is even more widespread in city and county jails.

Gouging Prisoners with Astronomical Fees

Unlike consumer debit cards, prison-issued cards are unregulated and subject to exorbitant fees.  On reviewing contracts in various states and counties, journalist Amadou Diallo found banks were charging nearly $3 per withdrawal and $1.50 per balance inquiry, in addition to weekly account maintenance fees up to $2.50. Cardholders who try to close or their accounts can be charged closing fees of $30.

Diallo gives the example of one inmate who left prison with $120 – he could only use $70 of it because of the fees. Inmates with less than $30 on their cards can’t use them at all because of the closing fee.

Immigrants who are deported on release from detention centers have it even worse, as most cards don’t work outside the US.

JPMorgan Chase Exclusive Federal Prison Vendor

JPMorgan Chase is the exclusive release-card vendor in federal prisons. At state and local facilities, the cards are provided by a handful of smaller vendors such as JPay, Keefe Group, Numi Financial and Rapid Financial Solutions.

JPay also operates electronic money transfers for 25 state department of corrections agencies and 60 county jails. Families can be charged 30 percent or more on funds transferred to love ones in prison. Money orders have been eliminated as an option for sending funds at some facilities. Facilities that still allow them require families to mail the money orders to the banking vendor – not the prion or jail where inmates are held.

Serving a combined population of more than 1.4 million inmates netted JPay $50 million in revenue in 2013, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

For more information and to join the campaign to stop banks from profiting off the misfortune of prisoners, detained immigrants and their families, go to the Stop Prison Profiteering website at http://nationinside.org/campaign/StopPrisonProfiteering/

photo credit: Bad Credit History? via photopin (license)

French Activists Real Target of State of Emergency

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Paris State of Emergency

Medialien (2016)

Film Review

Paris State of Emergency is a short documentary revealing how French police are using the state of emergency declared in November 2015 to target social justice activists rather than Islamic terrorists.

This has resulted in numerous warrantless house searches by armed SWAT teams, as well as arbitrary arrest and heavy police violence against squatters and peaceful protesters.

French activists find themselves in a similar position as US activists after 9-11 and the passage of the Patriot Act. The latter has targeted vastly more activists than terrorists for surveillance, home invasion and arrest.

The French activists interviewed also complain of heavy infiltration of their organizations by police informants – which explains how French authorities could immediately target key organizers once they declared the state of emergency.

TPP: Police undertake riot training

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New Zealand’s propaganda machine is in full swing.

4 Feb

by Morgan Tait

From New Zealand Herald

New Zealand Police have been undertaking mass riot training ahead of the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Auckland next month.

The trade agreement, that has sparked widespread controversy due to its closed-door negotiations, will be signed by international diplomats on February 4.

Dozens of large-scale protests have been held across the country as the five years of negotiations for the deal came to a close in the US last year.

The Herald understands that increased riot training – officially known as public order training – has been taking place ahead of the signing, as police prepare for more possible civil unrest.

Police Association vice-president Senior Sergeant Luke Shadbolt said that the TPP signing was the focus of annual public order training.

The Herald understands that the training goes over and above previous annual training, and involved more staff on a “mass” scale.

Police National Manager of Response and Operations, Chris Scahill, said police were responsible for all security aspects of the event.

He would not be drawn on any operational details for the event – including staff numbers.

“We can however say that we plan for every eventuality which can be anticipated, and the measures we take will be appropriate and thorough.”

The police operation will be overseen by Police National Headquarters, and will involve staff from a number of police districts.

Read more here