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By Benny Morris
By Tom Segev
$23
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Flickr / hobvias sudoneighm (CC-BY)
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As the Salon scribe points out, it can be “quite difficult to really internalize” America’s superpower implosion, but the numbers don’t lie. Our life expectancy ranking is dropping like a rock, while we’re getting better and better at imprisoning, executing and selling guns to people. USA! USA!
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A small note of warning to our readers about the content of this video: It is definitely, as they say, NSFW. It’s a bit rude. But it’s also, like many things that come from the Onion News Network, good for a laugh. Happy Monday!
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AP / Dima Gavrysh
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By Chris Hedges — By the end of Howard Zinn’s 423-page FBI file one walks away with a profound respect for the historian and a deep distaste for the buffoonish goons in the FBI who followed and monitored him.
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A group of heavily armed militants in military uniforms stormed a Yemeni intelligence headquarters Saturday, killing 11 and reportedly freeing several prisoners. The gunmen were suspected to be local al-Qaida members.
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AP / Laura Rauch
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By Max Blumenthal —
Business is booming in Arizona, thanks to a disturbing federal immigration program that transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to a private prison company, parasitic attorneys and other opportunists.
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AP / Ahn Young-joon
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Robert Park, a 28-year-old Korean-American missionary and human rights activist, was arrested on Christmas Day after entering North Korea. Now the country’s state-controlled media is reporting that Park will be released.
Posted on Feb 5, 2010
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AP / Henry Griffin
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By Chris Hedges — Martin Luther King Day has become a yearly ritual to turn a black radical into a red-white-and-blue icon. It has become a day to celebrate ourselves for “overcoming” racism and “fulfilling” King’s dream. It is a day filled with old sound bites about little black children and little white children that, given the state of America, would enrage King.
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AP / Brennan Linsley, pool
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President Barack Obama made waves just after taking office when he announced his administration’s intent to close the infamous Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba by Jan. 22, 2010, but it looks as if he’s going to miss that deadline. Obama and his sidekicks in the federal Bureau of Prisons had been looking to ... (continued)
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AP / Charles Rex Arbogast
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The Obama administration may have hit upon a potential answer, if not a solution, to the still-pressing problem of what to do with Guantanamo Bay detainees once the Cuban prison is shuttered. According to The Washington Post, the government has picked the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois as a destination for “dozens of terrorism suspects”—but it’s not clear whether they’ll be prosecuted prior to their move.
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AP / Charles Rex Arbogast
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A deal is being brokered that would probably make a state prison in rural Illinois the new home of detainees now held at the prison in Guantanamo Bay. Republicans have voiced outrage at the prospect of bringing the detainees Stateside, citing security threats.
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flickr.com / babaghan
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Encompassing an estimated 78 percent of e-mail, spam remains the bane of many Internet users. The man who has declared himself spam’s godfather, Alan Ralsky, has been sentenced to 51 months in prison for his role in an e-mail stock scam.
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remhq.com
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The veteran alt-rockers of R.E.M. are joining forces with other musical acts such as Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and Roseanne Cash in a bid to close Guantanamo Bay. Their group effort, the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, sprung in part from their joint outrage about their music reportedly being blared at high volumes to upset prisoners held at the detention center in Cuba.
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Flickr / ThisParticularGreg
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Executing people is expensive. A new report by the Death Penalty Information Center says California is spending more than 10 times as much on capital punishment—$137 million a year—as it would on an alternative life-without-parole system. New York and New Jersey repealed ...
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journalperu.com
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While serving time in a Peruvian clink, Ex-President Alberto Fujimori found time in his schedule to be convicted of corruption. The sentence handed down in his fourth and final trial on charges of illegal activity in office calls for extending his jail stay by six years.
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Muntadhar al-Zaidi’s simple but powerful gesture of lobbing his shoes at then-President George W. Bush brought him international notoriety, praise, scorn and nine months in prison. Now it looks like the Iraqi journalist is nearing the end of his jail time.
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Wikimedia Commons / house.gov
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Former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, who memorably repurposed his freezer to accommodate an illicit stash of $90,000 in cash, was convicted by a federal jury Wednesday and could be looking at 20 years in the slammer.
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AP / Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service
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Although his wife is usually the one making headlines about international relations these days, former President Bill Clinton put on his diplomat’s hat Tuesday, visiting North Korea in an attempt to negotiate the release of two American journalists jailed there. Updated
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Flickr / Rennet Stowe
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President Obama has ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by January 2010. To meet that deadline, the administration may push for a new detention facility on U.S. soil. Such a compound, sources tell AP, would include space for the indefinite detention of prisoners deemed too dangerous to face trial.
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AP photo / Amy Sancetta
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By Chris Hedges — If you have defrauded banks and customers and investment firms of billions of dollars, as AIG or Citibank has, you get taxpayer money. If you are moral scum in America we take care of you. But if you are poor, if you are, say, Tearyan Brown of Trenton, N.J., you are in trouble.
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Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune —
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AP photo / Khampha Bouaphanh
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By Andrew Becker and Hugo Cabrera, CIR —
While the nation’s understaffed immigration courts strain under a backlog that has grown to more than 200,000 cases, thousands of new border agents have been hired and the number of government attorneys who argue for deportation has increased by 35 percent, pushing more cases onto an already overburdened system.
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welt.de
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U.N. drug chief Antonio Maria Costa believes drug use should be treated as an illness and not criminalized. Costa says international law enforcement should shift focus to traffickers rather than users, an intriguing (look at the U.S. prison population) but problematic (look at Mexico’s drug war death toll) strategy.
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thebeatwithin.org
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This week on the podcast: Sheerly Avni and Omar Turcios from The Beat Within, a magazine written by and for the troubled kids in juvenile prisons. Such facilities could be “recruiting grounds for crime fighting,” argues Avni, and that’s in our self-interest.
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thebeatwithin.org
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This week on the podcast: Sheerly Avni and Omar Turcios from The Beat Within, a magazine written by and for the troubled kids in juvenile prisons. Such facilities could be “recruiting grounds for crime fighting,” argues Avni, and that’s in our self-interest. “If you want to stop crime—very simple. You look at a bunch of 5-year-old kids in the ghetto. Ask yourself: ‘Do I want them to be criminals or not in 10 years? What’s that going to do to the value of my home?’ ”
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a.abcnews.com
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Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi just got back to the States following six years in Iran, the last four of which she spent in prison under an allegation of spying—a charge she initially confessed to but later recanted. Saberi recounted her story on Thursday’s edition of “All Things Considered” on NPR, one of the outlets for which she reported while in Iran.
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“Cruel and Unusual” by Anne-Marie Cusac reveals a startling reality: Since 1973, America’s imprisonment rate has jumped more than five times and is now the highest in the world. Why?
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The publication of Sontag’s early diaries provides a revelatory look at the self-inventions of the late writer.
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pewhispanic.org
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A new study by the Pew Hispanic Center reports that Latinos now constitute the largest single ethnic group in the U.S. federal prison system. The rising arrest and detention levels are driven largely by changes in immigration law that criminalize undocumented immigration, with nearly half of all Latino offenders jailed on immigration-related “crimes.”
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By Amy Goodman — As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Much like an unsympathetic friend counseling you after a breakup, recently installed Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is calling on the world to “get over” the wrongs of President Robert Mugabe.
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abc.go.com
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As previously reported on Truthdig, there’s a lot going on in Homeland Security that doesn’t make it onto the reality show of the same name. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s G.W. Schulz continues to dig into the department’s unsavory bits, including an immigration officer who was arrested for allegedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl in Rio while there on official business.
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Making good on his pre-inaugural pledge, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year—and that was just one of three orders he inked Thursday, signaling a significant break from Bush-era “war on terror” policies.
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By William Pfaff — The impending end of the Bush administration and the inauguration of Barack Obama pose the enormous and explosive question of what to do about those responsible for what are regarded by a significant part of the world as war crimes.
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chicagotribune.com
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The good news for embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in this report is that a Chicago artist is using the governor’s likeness as inspiration for his latest painting.
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By William Pfaff — George W. Bush’s war against terror has brought out of the darker places in America a lot of people who want to torture, or like the idea of it. We know it doesn’t work, so what drives Dick Cheney and his colleague to champion such moral depravity?
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By Eugene Robinson — The federal manslaughter indictment of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards for the horrific massacre of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad may look like an exercise in accountability, but it’s probably the exact opposite.
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AP photo / Isaac Brekken, pool
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O.J. Simpson’s fame in the football and film arenas was eclipsed by his nationally polarizing murder trial in 1995. On Friday, he was back in court in Las Vegas facing kidnapping and burglary charges, but the outcome was not in his favor this time.
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White House / Paul Morse
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George W. Bush pardoned 14 criminals Monday, including a convicted violator of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Of the 14, 12 were from states that voted for the president in 2004. Most had been convicted of drug-related crimes.
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White House / Eric Draper
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It’s that time again. Felons seeking pardons and commutations had best get in line, as the president already has a backlog of applications, including convicted congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham and junk bonder Michael Milken. So far Ted Stevens and “Scooter” Libby haven’t asked.
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By Marie Cocco — It was nothing Bush did—no decision he made, no policy he pursued, no faith that he placed in ideological dogma—that he finds regrettable. Bush told a cable network, “I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said” over the course of eight tumultuous years.
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Wikimedia Commons
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By Robert Fisk — In the dying days of the Bush administration, yet another presidential claim in the “war on terror” has been proved false by the withdrawal of the main charge against six Algerians held without trial for nearly seven years at Guantanamo prison camp.
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By Marie Cocco — For a steel sculpture of migrating salmon, amongst other goodies, Ted Stevens—one of the lions of the Senate—was willing to forfeit the kingdom.
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syracuse.com
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Want proof that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has brought the democracy it promised? You won’t find it in this case. An appeals court resentenced Parwez Kambakhsh, a student arrested for distributing an article on women’s rights, to a mere 20 years in prison, overturning the controversial death sentence he was given last year.
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A devastating and growing problem is explored in Michael Paul Mason’s riveting new book, “Head Cases.”
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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Jokes about religion often play with the boundaries of tolerance and taste, but they don’t always carry the consequences that Sabina Guzzanti now faces. The Italian actress could go to jail for upsetting the powers that be with a satirical zinger about the pope and two gay devils.
Jokes about religion often play with the boundaries of tolerance and taste, but they don’t always carry the consequences that Sabina Guzzanti now faces. The Italian actress could go to jail for upsetting the powers that be with a satirical zinger about the pope and two gay devils.
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AP photo / EyePress
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When Beijing was chosen to host the Olympics, the Chinese government pledged to make human rights improvements, but Amnesty International says the situation has actually gotten worse because of the coming games: “Specifically we’ve seen crackdowns on domestic human rights activists, media censorship and increased use of re-education through labor as a means to clean up Beijing and surrounding areas.”
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
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soberaniachile.cl
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Former Argentine army officer and current scumbag Luciano Benjamin Menendez finally got what should have happened to him 30 years ago: a life sentence in jail for the kidnap, torture and murder of anti-dictatorship activists in 1977.
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AP photo / Denis Farrell
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During his 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela might not have imagined that he would make it to his 90th birthday. The U.S. government gave him an early gift just recently by removing the former South African president and freedom fighter from its terrorist watch list. For his part, Mandela plans to mark the occasion quietly with family at home.
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The Rev. Jesse Jackson quickly switched to damage-control mode Wednesday after Fox News picked up a “crude” and “private” comment that Jackson made about Barack Obama when he thought wasn’t being recorded. Multiple updates.
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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