what everyone ought to know about Angola 3 and solitary confinement

Published on Amnesty International / Human Rights Now Blog, by Sarah Shourd, August 26, 2013.

Until recently, both Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox had been held in solitary confinement for 4 decades in Louisiana – longer than almost any other known prisoner in recent U.S. history. It’s long enough for one’s body to forget it ever knew anything else but four white walls and for the mind to be reshaped by extreme isolation. Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, says that after 15 days, further isolation can cause permanent psychological damage and constitute torture.   Continuer la lecture de « what everyone ought to know about Angola 3 and solitary confinement »

Latin America: Class Struggle and Resistance in the Age of Extractive Capitalism

Published on Dissident Voice, by James Petras, August 25, 2013 (Linked with our new blog: politics for the 99%).

Class struggle is central in framing the issues of political rule, the relations of classes, the economic structures and strategies, and the distribution of wealth.
Especially in the era of imperialist globalization, the class struggle takes on an international character, as multi-national corporations, international financial organizations and imperial states directly intervene, or act through proxy collaborator states, in ‘the class struggle between labor and capital’ … // Continuer la lecture de « Latin America: Class Struggle and Resistance in the Age of Extractive Capitalism »

Tokenism

Published on Dissident Voice, by Peter Breschard, August 24, 2013.

Imagine a large city somewhere in the northern United States where one night 2/3 of the population relocates to warmer climes.

Boom! Out of nowhere a massive number of houses are left abandoned. Boom! In an instant municipal tax revenues are insufficient to fund basic necessities of civilization. Boom! Everybody left in town has to stop what they’re doing and start bailing 24/7 because they know they’re on a rapidly sinking ship.   Continuer la lecture de « Tokenism »

A Monitored Populace is a Compliant Populace … Until It Isn't

Manning, Snowden and the U.S. Coup in Iran – Published on Counterpunch, by ROB URIE, August 23-25, 2013.

With the CIA finally admitting the open secret this week that it and its counterparts in the British oil mafia (‘intelligence’ service) were behind the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader Mohammad Mossadegh in a coup it orchestrated in 1953 the economic interests behind American geopolitics in the Middle East were partly revealed. Apparently left to be revealed another half century hence is the current open secret, that the U.S. war on and occupation of Iraq was also oil geopolitics sold to the always gullible American public as self preservation —‘attack them over there before they attack us over here.’   Continuer la lecture de « A Monitored Populace is a Compliant Populace … Until It Isn't »