Posts in category Police State/Big Brother
Written by Court: Former Bush official cannot be sued over ‘enemy combatant’ memos
Washington (CNN) — A convicted American terrorist plotter and his mother lost another legal round Wednesday in their efforts to hold accountable a former Bush administration official who issued legal memos supporting harsh interrogation techniques for suspected enemy combatants.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit from Jose Padilla and his mother, Estela Lebron, who claimed the man’s constitutional rights were violated when he was held for years in solitary confinement at a military prison in South Carolina.
The issue was whether John Yoo, who worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, deserved “qualified immunity” as a government official from such suits. A federal judge earlier had said the litigation could proceed.
Student abandoned in DEA holding cell drank own urine to survive
Daniel Chong, a 24-year old student at UC San Diego, was taken into custody during a drug raid and abandoned in a holding cell for five days without food or water, according to NBC San Diego.
“They never came back, ignored all my cries and I still don’t know what happened,” he said. “I’m not sure how they could forget me.”
On April 21, Drug Enforcement Agents raided an apartment where Chong and his friends were smoking marijuana. Nine people were arrested and the agents reportedly seized ecstasy pills, marijuana, prescription medication, psychedelic mushrooms and weapons, according to CBS 8 News. Seven of those arrested were taken to jail and one was released.
Man Shoots Unmanned Police ‘Speed Enforcement’ Vehicle In Sante Fe
Via Talking Points Memo: “One Santa Fe man is fighting back against the city’s program to crack down on people who speed by taking the matter into his own hands — literally. A video released Friday shows an elderly gentleman clad in a white nightgown pull up next to an unmanned speed-enforcement vehicle at about 1:20 a.m and casually unload five gunshots into the windshield before proceeding to drive off…”.* Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur break it down on The Young Turks.
Don’t You Dare Try to Feed the Homeless in Bloomy’s NYC (Nanny of the Month, March 2012!)
This month Alabama lawmakers were itching to make it a criminal offense to annoy people online (isn’t that what the interweb is all about?), and a national poll exposed the split personality of Americans who pretend to support individual responsibility, all the while cheering bans on smoking, transfats and the like.
But this month top dishonors go to the man who is perhaps the busiest busybody of them all, the big-city mayor who decided to halt private donations to his city’s homeless shelters (after all, who can be sure that such donations wouldn’t fill homeless people with fatty or salty food?!).
Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for March 2012: New York City Mayor Meddlin’ Mike Bloomberg!
China Reportedly Threatens ‘Torture’ For Tibet Informants
Media rights advocacy group Reporters Without Borders says Chinese authorities openly threaten with “torture” those who circulate information on the situation in Tibet.
In its statement Thursday, the Paris-based group expressed outrage at the policy of terror, which it said is openly pursued by the Chinese authorities in Gan Lho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in the northwestern province of Gansu. The statement says police have posted notices in public places in which those who circulate certain views and information are threatened with “beating” and “torture.”
It says the information on the posted notices was exposed in Tibet Post International and a Tibetan news website based in Dharamsala, India, the center of exiled Tibetans.
Reporters Without Borders says that the aim of the torture threats is “to instill terror in all those who might circulate information about the government’s repressive policies” against Tibetans. The group warns that posting warnings of physical reprisals is in violation of Article 2 of the international Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which China has signed.
T.O. man says cops beat him in front of wife, kids
TORONTO – It all started with a knock, knock on the door.
The blood stains that remain from where his head hit his front walkway are the result of what happened next.
It looks like either two plainclothes cops laid a severe beating on a Toronto dad’s face or the man’s face did a number on the police’s fists.
The question today is was the beat-down James “Ross” Kennedy took from Toronto Police on his own front step justified?
And did it have to happen in front his tiny now “traumatized” children?
When the dust settled, 25-year-old Kennedy was the one with a body full of contusions, cuts, bruises, sore ribs and a concussion — as well as finding himself before the courts charged with two counts of assaulting police.
Blacklisted: UK workers fighting job market ban
After years of unsuccessful attempts to find jobs, thousands of UK construction workers have found out why. Skilled engineers have discovered their names were on an “employment blacklist” – an illegal document which shattered their lives.
City Council members protest NYPD force aimed at Occupy Wall Street demonstrators
Police violence against the Occupy Wall Street movement last Saturday night, resulting in the arrest of 73 people at Zuccotti Park, has provoked an indignant reaction from some City Council members who blame the NYPD for using excessive force.
“On Saturday, I stood right next to peaceful demonstrators who, in return for exercising their rights, were hit by NYPD police officers” Councilman Ydanis Rodríguez (D-Upper Manhattan) said at the park on Monday surrounded by injured movement protesters and a group of elected officials.
Rodríguez and his fellow protesters returned to the birthplace of the OWS movement to denounce the excessive tactics employed by NYPD officers on the protest’s six-month anniversary. They called on New Yorkers to rally Saturday to protest the use of what they called official violence aimed at the peaceful demonstrators.
“The park was full of people,” Nathan Kleinman, 29, an OWS organizer from Jenkintown, Penn., told the Daily News.
Protesters “were sitting and talking and laughing and singing and dancing, celebrating six months of the movement,” he said. “And without any warnings or prompting, a few hundred cops just started sweeping through the park and knocking people over and dragging people off the ground.”
Obama’s Executive Order: A preparation for war with Iran? Late last week President Obama signed The National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order. This order gives him the authority to take hold of all of the US assets that are necessary to secure peace in times of war, essentially declaring martial-law in America. Many believe that this step was taken to prepare for a war with Iran. Reporters have questioned the Obama administration on if the recent move was in preparation for war with Iran, but the question was laughed off. Charlie McGrath, founder of WideAwakeNews.com, joins us to discuss if this new Executive Order is a laughing matter.
Late last week President Obama signed The National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order. This order gives him the authority to take hold of all of the US assets that are necessary to secure peace in times of war, essentially declaring martial-law in America. Many believe that this step was taken to prepare for a war with Iran. Reporters have questioned the Obama administration on if the recent move was in preparation for war with Iran, but the question was laughed off. Charlie McGrath, founder of WideAwakeNews.com, joins us to discuss if this new Executive Order is a laughing matter.
Outlaw Occupy: US set to strangle protests with jail threats
New York City police are investigating death threats made against staff through the phone and on twitter. This after officers forcibly arrested more than 70 people during an Occupy Wall Street protest. Since the start of the movement, nationwide protests have faced numerous cases of police brutality with batons and tear gas often used to disperse crowds. As the movement continues, so to does Washington’s desire to silence the American public, as RT’s Marina Portnaya explains.
TSA Nabs Suspected Al Queda Terrorist At O’Hare International Airport, A toddler in a wheelchair
A toddler in a wheelchair is stopped by the TSA at ORD (O’Hare Airport in Chicago) and forced to into a sequestered area. On his way to a family vacation in Disney, this 3 year old boy is in a body cast for a broken leg. Despite assurances from his father that “everything is ok”, he is physically trembling with fear while he watches his two siblings, mother, father, grandfather and grandmother pass through along with everyone else…only to be singled out.
Video: NYPD shut down OWS protest on 6 month anniversary
A number of OWS protesters have reportedly been arrested and several injured at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan during celebrations of the movement’s six-month anniversary. Police broke up the peaceful rally that had gathered almost 600 people to OWS’ founding.
