Laughing with a mouth of blood

This blog has become monotonous as far as I’m concerned. Don’t expect much from...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 19:04:15 -0600

This blog has become monotonous as far as I’m concerned. Don’t expect much from me.

I’ll be back in england (london, manchester & liverpool) the 22nd-30th of april, send me a message if you want to try and meet up. If anyone gets down to south texas, same offer. See y’all around.

anarcho-queer: NYPD Stalks, Harass And Monitors Youth To...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:00:40 -0600

anarcho-queer:

NYPD Stalks, Harass And Monitors Youth To Dissuade Them From Committing Crimes

It’s like Father Connoly’s attempts to keep kids on the straight and narrow, but with fake Facebook accounts of hot teen chicks. The New York Times reports on an innovative (and highly invasive) program to keep kids who’ve been arrested from committing robbery.

The involuntary NYPD program called Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program (JRIP) targets youth (almost exclusively minorities living in housing) and subjects them to continual harassment at their school, home and in the streets and monitors their every move online with fake profiles:

Officers not only make repeated drop-ins at homes and schools, but they also drive up to the teenagers in the streets, shouting out hellos, in front of their friends. The force’s Intelligence Division also deciphers each teenager’s street name and gang affiliation. Detectives compile a binder on each teenager that includes photos from Facebook and arrest photos of the teenager’s associates, not unlike the flow charts generated by law enforcement officials to track organized crime.

Detectives spend hours, day and night, monitoring the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of teenagers in the program, known as the Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program, or J-RIP, and of their criminal associates. To do so, detectives create a dummy Facebook page — perhaps employing a fake profile of an attractive teenage girl — and send out “friend requests” as bait to get beyond the social network’s privacy settings.

Joanne Jaffe, the department’s Housing Bureau chief, commented on the program saying, “We are coming to find you and monitor every step you take”. “And we are going to learn about every bad friend you have. And you’re going to get alienated from those friends because we are going to be all over you.” Talk about creepy…

The program was started in 2007 in Brownsville, known as the highest concentration of low income public housing development in the North America and the worst neighborhood in New York City. In 2009, the program was expanded to East Harlem, the second highest concentration of public housing in the nation, closely following Brownsville. Both Brownsville and East Harlem are largely black and Latino, making over 85% of the population in each neighborhood, meaning JRIP disproportionately targets minorities who live in public housing and subjects them to continual harassment by the NYPD who claim to be practicing tough love.

"Like many other colonial territories, in 1946 Hawai’i was inscribed onto the United Nations List of..."

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:00:45 -0600

“Like many other colonial territories, in 1946 Hawai’i was inscribed onto the United Nations List of Non-Self-Governing Territories. As such, Hawai’i was eligible for decolonization under international law. However, the United States—in clear violation of UN policies and international law of the time and existing through the present—predetermined statehood as the status for Hawai’i. The 1959 ballot in which the people of Hawai’i voted to become a state of the union included only two options: incorporation and remaining a US colonial territory. In addition—among those who were allowed to take part in the vote that eventually marked Hawai’i’s supposed transition from colonial status—Hawaiians were outnumbered by settlers as well as military personnel.”

- J. Kēhaulani Kauanui (The Politics of Hawaiian Blood and Sovereignty in Rice v. Cayetano)

"Written by Michael Santos The Internet did not exist when I began serving my prison sentence in..."

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:00:47 -0600

“Written by Michael Santos The Internet did not exist when I began serving my prison sentence in 1987. I didn’t have direct access to the Internet as it dawned onto popular culture and became mainstream for many Americans, throughout the “You’ve got mail!” craze of the ’90s. Years would pass, until my release from prison in 2012 before I’d be able to experience the Internet first hand. While I served my prison sentence, I frequently dreamed of using the Internet. From reading numerous technology magazines and financial newspapers, I perceived the web as a powerful tool. From my perspective, it would become more influential to the advancement of society than television, radio and the telephone combined.”

- What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison (via aboriginalpressnews)

Biggest Threat to U.S. National Security: Wars

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:28:12 -0600

Biggest Threat to U.S. National Security: Wars:

In 2004, Osama bin Laden explained how his terrorists were going to win its struggle against a vastly more powerful adversary: al-Qaida sought to “blee[d] America to the point of bankruptcy.” Bin Laden is dead and his organization is a shadow of what it once was. Yet a new paper from a Harvard lecturer suggests that he had a point.

Linda J. Bilmes of the Harvard Kennedy School estimates that the wars bin Laden provoked the U.S. into launching over the past decade have cost “somewhere between $4 and $6 trillion.” She reaches that staggeringly high total by calculating not just what the U.S. spent on fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also what it will spend on veterans’ health care and benefits; equipment refurbishment; future commitments made to the Iraqi and Afghan governments the U.S. sponsors; and the repayment of the debt incurred by financing the wars through foreign borrowing. Notably, by Bilmes’ framework, the real costs of the wars will only manifest long after the troops have come home.

She’s also under-counting. The shadow wars in Yemen, Pakistan, east Africa and north-central Africa will not cost nearly as much as the Army-intensive wars of Iraq or Afghanistan. But they’ll still cost something, either through leased infrastructure to base aircraft and special-operations forces; political commitments to host governments; support to allied war efforts; and some personnel costs. All these wars have the same wellspring as Iraq and Afghanistan: U.S. overreaction to terrorism.

“One of the most significant challenges to future US national security policy will not originate from any external threat,” Bilmes writes. “Rather it is simply coping with the legacy of the conflicts we have already fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Money, ultimately, is power. In context, it would take a nuclear strike on the United States to inflict the kind of economic damage that the wars have reaped. The only nations capable of inflicting such damage are disinclined toward doing so; and no non-state actor will plausibly obtain the capability to match such a threat. All of that damage is the result not of what bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or the insurgencies that began in their wake did to America, but because of how American strategiests chose to respond. As Radiohead once sang, you do it to yourself, and that’s why it really hurts.

Bin Laden didn’t get what he wanted. The U.S. is not bankrupt. Any reduction of its political commitments to the Middle East, bin Laden’s strategic goal, occur on the margins, and should Iran disrupt the world oil supply — the anchor of the U.S. commitment to the region — they’ll quickly reverse. In wars, negative-sum outcomes are possible.

But the U.S. now has to labor under the economic strain of war costs that the wars’ architects did not consider. They have introduced a cost-benefit calculation to U.S. involvement in future conflicts, like Syria’s, that bellicose legislators find obnoxious or inconvenient. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan will be debated forever, but there’s a rule of thumb that they immediately provide: ask for the bill before ordering the meal.

US Sends Nuclear-Capable B-2 Stealth Bombers to Intimidate North Korea

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:19:27 -0600

US Sends Nuclear-Capable B-2 Stealth Bombers to Intimidate North Korea:

The Obama administration has sent nuclear-capable B-2 bombers to drop munitions on a South Korean island, in an unprecedented move intended to intimidate North Korea.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has repeatedly issued threats of war to South Korea and belligerently criticized the US, despite the North’s comparatively pathetic military capabilities – a deficiency Washington is fully aware of.

The US called the dramatic show of force a joint military drill with South Korea, but it is transparently understood to be a direct threat to North Korea.

“The announcement will likely draw a strong response from Pyongyang,” reports The Associated Press. “North Korea sees the military drills as part of a U.S. plot to invade and becomes particularly upset about U.S. nuclear activities in the region.”

Nevertheless, the US continues to militarily antagonize the mercurial authoritarian government in Pyongyang.

“The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea,” political activists Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers wrote earlier this month. “In November 2012 the US upgraded its weapons systems and announced an agreement with Japan that would allow South Korea to bomb anywhere in North Korea.”

This aggressive approach has served only to increase instability and tensions.

“Wise statesmen learn to abandon obsolete or unworkable policies,” writes Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, and Obama “needs to show the same judgment and courage by making a sustained effort at the highest level to establish something at least resembling a normal relationship with Pyongyang.”

Not only is Washington’s confrontational militarism counter-productive, it’s also an extremely expensive way to unnecessarily intimidate a weak adversary.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the B-2 stealth bombers cost $3 billion each and have flight costs estimated to be $135,000 per hour. At a minimum, writes John Hudson at Foreign Policy, that puts the cost of flying two of these bombers to Korea at $5.5 million.

"It’s been ten years since that clown-prince buffoon waded us into a terrible war of choice for the..."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:00:39 -0600

“It’s been ten years since that clown-prince buffoon waded us into a terrible war of choice for the benefit of his oily buddies. Just days before the 48 hours expired, millions of people around the world, myself included, took to the streets to try to stop this war. But no avail because the United States is not a democracy and couldn’t care less about domestic or international opinion. I was joined by the woman I would eventually marry and a tiny puppy. The dog has died, the woman has left me, but the war goes on. I think that is a fitting epigraph for American Imperialism, War: Lasts longer than love and man’s best friend.”

- John Karl Marsland, AIA Committee Member (via disobey)

Terrorized by Drones, Afghan Civilians Increasingly Flee Homes

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:04:44 -0600

Terrorized by Drones, Afghan Civilians Increasingly Flee Homes:

Afghans are increasingly fleeing their homes in fear “to escape relentless airstrikes from US drones,” which have markedly intensified over the past year in a process that is “feeding widespread anti-American sentiment,” according to a report by The Associated Press.

AP journalists who met Afghan families that decided to abandon their homes because they were terrified of the constant drones flying overhead reported the number of weapons fired in Afghanistan from drones “soared from 294 in 2011 to 506 last year.”

“They are evil things that fly so high you don’t see them but all the time you hear them,” one Afghan villager told AP. “Night and day we hear this sound and then the bombardment starts.”

And drones strikes might continue beyond the 2014 troop withdrawal date, despite the Obama administration’s claims the war is coming to an end.

“The strikes sometimes accidentally kill civilians while forcing others to abandon their hometowns in fear, feeding widespread anti-American sentiment,” AP reports, adding that ordinary Afghan villagers often disagree with NATO claims that those killed in drone strikes were militants.

“These foreigners started the problem,” an Afghan said of international troops. “They have their own country. They should leave.”

Emergency Motion: US Denying Gitmo Detainees Water

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:02:00 -0600

Emergency Motion: US Denying Gitmo Detainees Water:

US officials have been desperate to stifle reports of a massive hunger strike among detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and the latest tactic, having failed in their attempts to simply deny it, is to punish the strikers.

An emergency motion has been filed in a DC court by lawyers for the detainees, claiming that the military is now denying the detainees clean drinking water to punish them for refusing to eat provided meals.

The military has so far refused to respond to the motion, but insists that the claims of insufficient water are untrue. The motion warns some detainees are already experiencing kidney problems from lack of water.

Over 100 detainees are believed to be on strike. The military initially insisted it was only nine, but is now conceding to 31 “official” strikers. They argue that many of the others are secretly eating snacks when no one is looking and aren’t recognized strikers.

Even if the allegations of denying water as a form of punishment are confirmed, it isn’t clear that the US court system can force the military to do anything to stop it, since Guantanamo is mostly run extra-legally in the first place, and the Obama Administration has followed the Bush Administration in claiming that anything that happens there is outside of the courts’ jurisdiction.

Iraq: War's Legacy of Cancer | Dahr Jamail

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:00:45 -0600

Iraq: War's Legacy of Cancer | Dahr Jamail:

Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq.

Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates.

There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah.

Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.

As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest. [continue]

motherearthnewsmag: HOMEGROWN Life: What We Learned From Our...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:00:51 -0600

motherearthnewsmag:

HOMEGROWN Life: What We Learned From Our Year Without Groceries

By Farm Aid and Homegrown.org

en a year now since we started our year without groceries. We learned a lot in that year. We are definitely healthier, but also we’re happier. Our relationship with each other is stronger as we’ve had to learn how to really work well together.

CIA Boosting Covert Arms Shipments to Syria: NYT Report

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:31:08 -0600

CIA Boosting Covert Arms Shipments to Syria: NYT Report:

Confirming reports that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is aiding Syrian rebels in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad, new evidence has surfaced that several nations, including Turkey, have been working with the CIA over the past year to dramatically increase military aid to Syrian rebels, the New York Times reports Monday.

Referring to air traffic data, interviews with anonymous U.S. officials, and rebel commanders, the Times reports that the CIA has been helping coordinate massive arms shipments to groups within the Free Syrian Army, which have included more than than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at the Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

“A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500 tons of military equipment,” Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told the Times.

Fast paced weapons transfers reportedly began over a year ago, in early 2012.

“The intensity and frequency of these flights,” were “suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation,” Griffiths added.

In a more overt show of support for Syrian rebels, over the weekend Secretary of State John Kerry pledged an additional 60 million dollars in direct aid to the rebels, marking the first time Washington will directly supply rebel forces, Inter Press Service reports.

“Who are those good rebels we want to arm?” asked Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The interventionists seem to take for granted that we know them well. The fact is, the interventionists themselves and the U.S. government don’t know squat about Syria and know even less squat about these rebels.”

Gelb continues:

There is one path to sensible strategy and to staying out of trouble. It is for America’s leaders in Congress, the media, and, above all, the administration to learn the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam and get themselves to satisfactorily ask and reasonably answer the tough questions before we selflessly, inadvertently, and foolishly find ourselves in another war.

Pentagon Seeks Money for New Gitmo Prison

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:29:12 -0600

Pentagon Seeks Money for New Gitmo Prison:

Despite the supposed budget crunch across the military, the Pentagon continues to find all sorts of things it feels the need to squander millions on. With news already out of a $150 million plan to “renovate” Guantanamo Bay, SOCOM has upped the ante with a request for another $49 million on top of that for a new prison building at the base.

The “new prison” is distinct from the existing overhaul, which is focusing on improvements for troops and for the conditions of the vast majority of detainees, held in the crumbling “camp six.”

Rather, the new prison appears to be a replacement for the notorious “camp seven,” which the Pentagon rarely acknowledges to even exist and which has been described as a camp for “special” detainees.

The original camp seven was constructed to hold 14 people coming out of CIA black sites, but it is no longer clear how many people are even in such detention, and the administration has made much of its intention to bring the “high value” captives to trial, since those are some of the few detainees they seem to have any actual evidence on. A new facility suggested that either there is more to camp seven than meets the eye, or that officials foresee a new influx of “high value” captives that need to be sequestered from the rest of the camp.

Another Bagram Prison ‘Handover,’ But US Keeps Some Afghan Detainees

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:27:54 -0600

Another Bagram Prison ‘Handover,’ But US Keeps Some Afghan Detainees:

Another high profile visit of a US official means its time for the US to have another “handover” ceremony where they give the Bagram prison to Afghan officials. This time it is Secretary of State John Kerry’s turn, and as with multiple such ceremonies in the past, the handover means very little.

In reality, what little “handover” there has been already happened months ago, and today’s announcement, beyond giving Kerry and President Hamid Karzai some photo-ops, still lift the status of many Afghan and foreign detainees unchanged.

Since many of the people in Bagram have never been charged with anything, Afghan courts ordered a lot of releases after previous portions of the handover, and US officials have insisted that the “enduring security threats” can never be handed over to Afghan forces, since the Karzai government insists on giving them actual trials.

Despite repeated demands from US officials, Karzai insists he doesn’t have the power under the US-penned constitution to prevent courts from reviewing the detention of Afghan citizens, and since a lot of those “threats” don’t have enough evidence to secure a conviction, that’s a deal-breaker for the US.

What’s going to happen to them long-term is entirely unclear. The US still has an estimated 90 detainees it is holding, seemingly forever, at Bagram. With the US giving lip-service to leaving Bagram outright, sooner or later a new prison for the detainees to be held without charges will need to be procured.

Though officials are mum on this matter, the Pentagon’s intention to construct yet another “new” prison in Guantanamo for “special” detainees may be the key to this, though an influx of more captives from one notorious prison to another is likely to spark public attention officials would just as soon avoid.

Iran Will Submit Written Promise Never to Seek Nuclear Weapons

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:00:51 -0600

Iran Will Submit Written Promise Never to Seek Nuclear Weapons:

theamericanbear:

I thought that’s what this was about. Then again, like any bully, the US is all about humiliation.

thepoliticalnotebook: This Week in War. A Friday round-up of...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:00:55 -0600

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

A member of the EU’s Syria delegation was killed in a rocket attack.

A report from the charitable organization Save the Children details the murder, rape, torture and trauma inflicted on the children of Syria. [PDF] UNICEF released a statement calling this generation of Syrian children a “lost generation.”

Rebels released 21 UN peacekeepers on Saturday.

Ankar Kochneva, a Ukrainian journalist captive for several months in Syria, has escaped.

Syria has increasingly lost control of the border with Iraq.

The Guardian investigates why 110 bodies washed up in the river running through Aleppo.

The UN has disputed the claim that BBC video editor Jehad Mashshrawi’s baby son was killed in an Israeli rocket attack. The BBC is challenging this counterclaim, saying there is little evidence that the rocket was instead a Hamas misfire.

Hazem Kandil on deadlock in Cairo in the LRB.

An unemployed man who self-immolated in Tunisia’s capital died on Wednesday.

Journalists are on strike in Mali to demand the release of Boukary Daou, editor of the Le Républicain.

Kurdish rebels released 8 Turks in a promising move for the peace process.

Western weapons are the tools of a crackdown in Azerbaijan.

Seymour Hersh notes the tenth anniversary of the bombing of Iraq.

The Guardian tracks down the stories from the most iconic images of the Iraq War.

The New York Times’ Lens Blog reprints Dexter Filkins’ introduction to Photojournalists at War, an oral history of the war from the photojournalists who saw from the front lines.

The family of Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American former Marine who has been held in Iran for the last 19 months, is pleading for his release.

On the two year anniversary of the Saudi-led intervention, clashes between protesters and security forces have erupted in Bahrain.

The USAF is no longer reporting drone strike data from Afghanistan.

The Atlantic In Focus has a collection of stunning black and white photos (like the one above) taken of anti-Taliban militia activity in Afghanistan.

Mazar-i-Sharif is facing a wave of suicides, particularly young women.

A suicide bomber detonated at a buzkashi game on Wednesday in the province of Kunduz, killing ten.

Monday was the deadliest day so far this year for American troops in Afghanistan: 5 soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in the east.

Over this weekend, Staff Sgt. Bales will begin a court-ordered sanity review.

Parveen Rehman, a well-known Pakistani aid worker and the head of the Orangi Pilot Project to help people escape poverty, was killed by four gunmen on Wednesday.

Former President Pervez Musharraf will return home to Pakistan after four years of self-imposed exile in Dubai.

Gunmen kidnapped two Czech tourists in southwest Pakistan.

Peace talks may have begun with FARC and the economy may be looking up in Colombia, but the Afro-Colombian population seems to have been left behind.

A Chilean court has ordered the exhumation of Pablo Neruda as part of an investigation into allegations that he was poisoned following the 1973 military coup that replaced Salvador Allende with Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Remembering when journalists became part of the story during Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

Gen. Keith Alexander, the chief of the newly-created Cyber Command, testified before Congress this Tuesday alongside top intelligence official James R. Clapper Jr.

Court documents from the failed federal prosecution of Blackwater reveal a previously secret CIA past.

Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch asks what rules ought to govern drones.

Listen to Bradley Manning’s leaked court statement.

Secretary Hagel has ordered a review of the overturning of a jury conviction of an Air Force Lt on charges of aggravated sexual assault.

Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand grilled military leaders over this case and sexual assault in the military in a Senate hearing.

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at torierosedeghett@gmail.com.

Photo: Logar Province, Afghanistan. Farzad Akbari, the young son of anti-Taliban militia commander Farhad Akbari, poses armed for a photograph. Vikram Singh.

"Should Congress approve a proposition included in an agriculture bill up for vote this week, biotech..."

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:49 -0600

“Should Congress approve a proposition included in an agriculture bill up for vote this week, biotech companies like the Monsanto Company could win yet another victory in Washington. The US House of Representatives is expected to weigh in on the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for Fiscal year 2013 this week, and included within the act lies the “Farmer Assurance Provision,” a small subsection that has so far earned opposition from hundreds of thousands family farmers, environmental interest groups and other advocates. Those hoping to defeat the bill have gone so far as to dub the provision the “Monsanto Protection Act.””

- ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ to be voted on by Congress — RT USA (via aboriginalpressnews)

How the US public was defrauded by the hidden cost of the Iraq war

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:00:52 -0600

How the US public was defrauded by the hidden cost of the Iraq war:

sinidentidades:

When the US invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration estimated that it would cost $50-60bn to overthrow Saddam Hussein and establish a functioning government. This estimate was catastrophically wrong: the war in Iraq has cost $823.2bn between 2003 and 2011. Some estimates suggesting that it may eventually cost as much as $3.7tn when factoring in the long-term costs of caring for the wounded and the families of those killed.

The most striking fact about the cost of the war in Iraq has been the extent to which it has been kept “off the books” of the government’s ledgers and hidden from the American people. This was done by design. A fundamental assumption of the Bush administration’s approach to the war was that it was only politically sustainable if it was portrayed as near-costless to the American public and to key constituencies in Washington. The dirty little secret of the Iraq war – one that both Bush and the war hawks in the Democratic party knew, but would never admit – was that the American people would only support a war to get rid of Saddam Hussein if they could be assured that they would pay almost nothing for it.

The most obvious way in which the true cost of this war was kept hidden was with the use of supplemental appropriations to fund the occupation.By one estimate, 70% of the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2008 were funded with supplemental or emergency appropriations approved outside the Pentagon’s annual budget. These appropriations allowed the Bush administration to shield the Pentagon’s budget from the cuts otherwise needed to finance the war, to keep the Pentagon’s pet programs intact and to escape the scrutiny that Congress gives to its normal annual regular appropriations.

With the Iraq war treated as an “off the books” expense, the Pentagon was allowed to keep spending on high-end military equipment and cutting-edge technology. In fiscal terms, it was as if the messy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were never happening.

More fundamentally, the Bush administration masked the cost of the war with deficit spending to ensure that the American people would not face up to its costs while President Bush was in office. Despite their recent discovery of outrage over the national debt, the Republicans followed the advice of Vice-President Dick Cheney that “deficits don’t matter” and spent freely on domestic programs throughout the Bush years. The Bush administration encouraged the American people to keep spending and “enjoy life”, while the government paid for the occupation of Iraq on a credit card they hoped never to have to repay.

US Looks to Overhaul Massive Immigration Detention System

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:51:37 -0600

US Looks to Overhaul Massive Immigration Detention System:

Rights groups and government officials here have been testifying in a string of hearings, before both bodies of the U.S. Congress, on how to overhaul the United States’ huge immigration detention system, the scope of which has expanded massively in recent years in ways that some suggest impinge on civil and human rights.

According to official estimates, the federal government will detain some 400,000 people on immigration charges this year, at a cost of around two billion dollars. Activists say the size and functioning of the immigration detention system are out of alignment with “U.S. values” – and, increasingly, Washington politicians appear to agree.

“We are a nation of immigrants, but our immigration law is inconsistent with America’s values,” Senator Chris Coons stated at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. “Our immigration system exacts a high cost on families, on civil liberties and on human dignity. This cost is unnecessary, unwarranted and unfair.”

Coons said the U.S. government is currently paying more than 160 dollars per day for those kept in some 250 immigration detention centres. He also noted that Congress-stipulated “bed quotas” – around 34,000 at any given time – for these centres appear to be driving policies at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are responsible for keeping far more people under detention than otherwise would be necessary.

That’s “enormously expensive”, Coons noted. “It could be cheaper while also better serving both our national security and our national commitment to civil rights.”

Indeed, the hearings come in the aftermath of a surprise announcement, early this month, that the government would be releasing nearly 2,300 people awaiting immigration trials. That number included “many who did not require detention by law”, according to testimony at the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday by John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While Morton explained the move as a necessary cost-cutting measure given the massive budget-cutting that came into effect at the beginning of March, the decision has outraged some conservatives. Yet ICE will save tens of millions of dollars on this move alone, simply in allowing immigrants awaiting trial to remain out on their own recognisance.

“It looks to me like maybe there’s an overuse of detention by this administration,” Representative Spencer Bachus, a conservative, told Morton, at Tuesday’s House hearing. “If these people are not public safety risks … why are they detained at all?”

In response, Morton admitted, “For many of the long-term residents, frankly, it doesn’t make any sense either as a matter of policy.”

The hearings are part of a flurry of bipartisan activity, both in Washington and nationally, aimed at reforming the United States’ sprawling, creaky immigration system. On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi, a key Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, expressed optimism that the Congress would approve a comprehensive immigration reform package “before summer”.

Yet Senator Coons, who chaired Wednesday’s Senate hearing, warned that comprehensive reform “cannot be truly comprehensive if it does not address serious current flaws that deny immigrants minimum due process rights that are consistent with America’s values.”

He warned that today’s detention system “looks in many ways like a criminal proceeding”. Unlike in an actual criminal case, however, U.S. law does not offer those brought up on immigration charges the right to an attorney.

"By Daniel Ellsberg on Tue, Mar 12, 2013 Today, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:50:13 -0600

“By Daniel Ellsberg on Tue, Mar 12, 2013 Today, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that I co-founded and for which I serve on the board, has published an audio recording of Bradley Manning’s speech to a military court from two weeks ago, in which he gives his reasons and motivations behind leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks. Whoever made this recording, and I don’t know who the person is, has done the American public a great service. This marks the first time the American public can hear Bradley Manning, in his own voice explain what he did and how he did it. After listening to this recording and reading his testimony, I believe Bradley Manning is the personification of the word whistleblower.”

- A Salute to Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, As We Hear His Words For The First Time - Boing Boing (via aboriginalpressnews)