If you're looking for the textbook The Little, Brown Reader, click here.
is a free service provided by Lance Brown, Candidate for President in 2008. You can visit his campaign site and weblog here.
About Lance Brown
The Campaign "Elevator Pitch"
The Longer Pitch: The Future of America is Freedom
10 Easy Ways to Help the Campaign
Join the On-The-Road Support Network
Lance In The Media
Contact Lance
 |
Easy online actions for advancing the cause of freedom.
PNAC.info
An effort to investigate, analyze, and expose the Project for a New American Century, and its plan for a "unipolar" world.
CampusLP.org
Free web sites for campus libertarian clubs!
The Little Brown Reader
A rolling catalog of articles and web sites of significance that Lance is reading.
The Nevada County Libertarian Party
"Your Local Party of Principle" (Chairman)
The Nevada County Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Dedicated to Creating a Civil Liberties Safe Zone in Nevada County, California. (Co-founder)
The Free School on the Internet
A developing effort to create a superior online K-12 school, with free attendance.
StopCarnivore.org
Stop the FBI Spy Tool Carnivore Now!"
GreenLiberty.org
Where Green values meet Libertarian principles.
Pictures of The Bill of Rights
Tips for Promoting a Campus Event
198 Methods of Nonviolent Action
My (many) e-zine and list subscriptions
The History of Drug Prohibition in the U. S.
The Bill of Rights -- Full Text
Support freedom in our lifetime:
"I do not shrink from this responsibility, I welcome it."
A Little Worried About America
Boston Public: The Case Against Schools
The USA-PATRIOT Axe
The Nader 2004 "threat", and those poor, pitiful Democrats
Book Recommendation: Healing Our World
Taboos, skews, and contradictions
North Korea's Sensible Delusions
Lance on Regulation
June 20, 2004
TIME.com: New Abuse ChargesTIME.com: New Abuse Charges -- Jun. 28, 2004 Could the abuse of prisoners in Iraq have gone beyond the beatings and sexual humiliation already alleged? Unreleased, classified parts of the report on prison abuse from Major General Anthony Taguba, which were read to TIME, contain indications of mistreatment of female prisoners. In a Feb. 21 statement to Taguba, Lieut. Colonel Steven L. Jordan, former head of the Abu Ghraib interrogation center, said he had received reports "that there were members of the MI [Military Intelligence] community that had come over and done a late-night interrogation of two female detainees" last October. According to a statement by Jordan's boss, Colonel Thomas Pappas, three interrogators were later cited for violations of military law in their handling of the two females, ages 17 and 18. Senate Armed Services Committee investigators are probing whether the two women were sexually abused. The Pentagon declined to comment. Meanwhile, a class action filed in California on behalf of former detainees raises the specter of brutal physical abuse. |
Please click the following to help my rating at these sites:
Top 25 Libertarian Sites (Currently #8) Blogarama's 'What's Cool' List (Currently #6) Blogster Top 25 (Currently #14)
Recent Entries
Explore the Archives
Index of All Entries
June 2004
May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003
Category Archives
9/11 Animal Rights & Wrongs Big Brother Bipartisans is the Craziest Peoples! California Recall Civil Liberties Criminal "Justice" Democrats Drug War Educational Freedom Greens Human Rights Humor Left V Right Libertarians Media Presidential Campaigns RV Info and News Republicans Science Site Announcements The Big I Thought and Thinking Uncle Sam War Youth Rights
I'm a Member of:
Libertarian Party
Libertarian Party of California Nevada County Libertarian Party Nevada County Bill of Rights Defense Committee American Civil Liberties Union Amnesty International International Society for Individual Liberty
Blog Places
Blogarama
Top Blogs RCS Blogdex DayPop Technorati Blo.gs Popdex Blogosphere Blogwise Weblogs.com BlogCritics The Weblog Review Blogarithm BlogLinker Globe of Blogs BlogTracker Blog of the Day 
Blogroll
Web Rings I'm In
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
All contents of this site Copyright © 1996-2003 by Lance Brown for President in 2008.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
May 30, 2004
May 15, 2004
Guantánamo abuse same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Guantánamo abuse same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons
(Permacopy)
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington, Tania Branigan and Vikram Dodd
Friday May 14, 2004
The Guardian
Two British men who were held at Guantánamo Bay claimed that their US guards subjected them to abuse similar to that perpetrated at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In an open letter to President George Bush, Britons Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal accused US military officials of deliberately misleading the public about procedures at Guantánamo.
Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal, who were freed in March after being arrested in Afghanistan and held without charge for more than two years, allege that heavy-handed treatment was systematic.
"From the moment of our arrival in Guantánamo Bay (and indeed from long before) we were deliberately humiliated and degraded by methods we now read US officials denying," the men write.
The men describe a regime that included assaults on prisoners, prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, strobe lights, loud music and being threatened with dogs.
At times, detainees would be taken to the interrogation room and chained naked on the floor, the letter says. Women would be brought to the room to "inappropriately provoke and indeed molest them. It was completely clear to all the detainees that this was happening to particularly vulnerable prisoners, especially those who had come from the strictest of Islamic backgrounds," the letter says.
...
Foldvary: A History of Maltreatment
This is a superb opinion piece. I've excerpted the beginning below, but the entire article is just as worthy of your attention.
Foldvary: A History of Maltreatment
Many causes can be pointed to for the abuse of Iraqi detainees. American troops have been undermanned and ill prepared. The prisoner policy condoned and even encouraged rough treatment in order to extract information. The top chiefs did not lay down a clear policy and failed to monitor what was happening on the ground.
But we need to understand that this pattern of abuse has deeper causes that have been within American culture since colonial days, and is part of a broader European culture of cruelty. When the Europeans began to conquer and colonize the Americas, they murdered, enslaved, and pushed out the native Indians. In part, this reflected a European culture that was racist and also supremacist, as they regarded Christianity and European ways as inherently superior to the ways of the heathen natives. They treated the Indians as subhuman, like animals, so that they had no moral concern about killing them.
Slavery too reflected this racism and cultural supremacism. This cruel and supremacist streak in European culture goes back to the ancient Roman and Greek civilizations, in which the conquered nations were enslaved and subservient. Conquest and enslavement have been practiced world-wide. The American Indians created empires by conquest, the Mongols conquered a vast empire in Asia, and there were wars of conquest and domination in Africa. Violent cultures have come to dominate the world, because peaceful cultures get conquered.
Other nations and governments, such as Japan and Germany during World War II, and the previous regime in Iraq, have committed atrocities many magnitudes worse than the abuses committed by Americans in Iraq. But Americans have to acknowledge their historical maltreatment of persons. In addition to the evil of slavery and the genocide against the Indians, Americans lynched Blacks in the old South, mistreated captives in the Philippines during the rebellion after the war of 1898, and violated human rights in Vietnam. Moreover, there is plenty of cruelty inside prisons in the US, and few Americans are concerned.
Non-Americans who properly condemn America for its failings should equally admit their own evils. Every nation that is casting stones is not without sin. There are Muslims and Arabs massively violating human rights now in Sudan; where is the outrage for that?
Why do nice people do evil acts? In the old South, White folks who were polite to their families and neighborhoods would gang up to hang innocent Blacks. Germans who listened to classical music and were kind to their children would turn around and send Jewish children to death camps. Why? It is because human beings compartmentalize their thinking. We mentally divide the world into categories with different standards.
...
Copyright 2004 by Fred E. Foldvary, via The Progress Report
May 14, 2004
Andersonville: Earlier War Crimes 'Abuse' Trial
Andersonville: Earlier War Crimes 'Abuse' Trial
"Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of many established prison camps during the American Civil War," wrote researcher and Georgia historian, Kevin Frye. "It was built early in 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners kept in and around Richmond, Virginia, to a place of greater security and a more abundant food supply. During the 14 months the prison existed, more than 45,000 Union Solders were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements."
What--you rightly wonder--does this horrific prison, located in the heart of America have to do with the Abu Ghraib? Both Andersonville and now Abu Ghraib share the shameful distinction of being among the blackest marks in American military history. One military prison, Andersonville, witnessed the slow torture and death of thousands of prisoners through bureaucratic neglect, while the other--Abu Ghraib--saw the slow torture and death through a bureaucratic policy of malignant intent. Even in Andersonville, where death was slow and painful, guards rarely "interrogated" or tortured prisoners for bits of information.
Indeed, Union soldier Lt. James Page spoke of his Confederate captors in almost generous terms, from the time of his capture by rebel cavalry, through his internment and later transfer to Andersonville prison. Page and members of his company were captured after a superior force of Confederate cavalry surprised them near Culpepper, Virginia. Forced to flee, Page and the others ran and were ordered to halt. Captured unharmed, they were "genially interrogated by General A.P. Hill . . . and consistently treated with kindness by his Southern captors."
Page wrote in a published memoir after the war, that the Alabama guards assigned to the prison were generally kind and humane. "I said then, and I have ever since said, in speaking of our guards, the Twenty-fifth Alabama Infantry, I never met the same number of men together who came much nearer to my standard of what I call gentlemen. They were respectful, humane and soldierly."
Contrast that with the conduct of the US military guards in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. "It is a common thing to abuse prisoners," said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area and recently returned from Iraq. "I saw beatings all the time."
...
May 09, 2004
UK forces taught torture methods
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK forces taught torture methods
UK forces taught torture methods
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK forces taught torture methods
May 02, 2004
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Secret report from notorious Baghdad jail reveals beatings, rape and torture of prisoners by US troops
By Raymond Whitaker, Andy McSmith and Andrew Johnson
02 May 2004
Shocking new evidence of brutality by coalition troops against Iraqi detainees emerged last night in a secret US military report into the treatment of prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The revelation that US military police and intelligence officers had beaten Iraqi detainees, set dogs on them and threatened them with rape came as the world recoiled at photographs of British soldiers seemingly mistreating Iraqis in custody. The sight of servicemen humiliating and tormenting a bound and hooded Iraqi prisoner caused fury in the Arab world and brought condemnation from Tony Blair.
...
April 30, 2004
US military in torture scandal
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US military in torture scandal
April 20, 2004
Jim Crow Laws
Martin Luther King, Jr., NHS Jim Crow Laws
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.
Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
Yahoo! News - Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq (news - web sites) may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft.
"There's not an American ... that doesn't understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future," Senator Chuck Hagel told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq.
"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."
...
March 23, 2004
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
His campaign store sells a pullover from nation whose products he has banned from being sold in the U.S.
(TruthOut permacopy)
March 06, 2004
November 12, 2003
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- Their bodies scarred by beatings and their hands callused from breaking rocks, 74 boys as young as 4 received medical treatment this week after their rescue from Nigerian granite quarries where they had been forced to work.
Nigerian police rescued the boys Wednesday and repatriated them to Benin under an accord between the two nations on child trafficking and other cross-border crimes.
Following their rescue -- only the second of its kind in West Africa -- the children told authorities that over the previous three months at least 13 other boys died, succumbing to exhaustion, disease, hunger and abuse, Nigerian police and aid workers said.
"We would break the stones, and the men would come take them away in trucks," one boy said. Skinny, filthy, scratched and heavily scarred, the boy looked no more than 10.
...
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 65%
October 09, 2003
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
June 27, 2003
Amnesty International Flash Animation on Guatemala's EMP
Flash Animation about Guatemala's brutal EMP military police force
They'd like you to pass it on.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L5
Freedom Rating: 8
Learning Percentage: 90%
Guantánamo abuse same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Guantánamo abuse same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons
(Permacopy)
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington, Tania Branigan and Vikram Dodd
Friday May 14, 2004
The Guardian
Two British men who were held at Guantánamo Bay claimed that their US guards subjected them to abuse similar to that perpetrated at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In an open letter to President George Bush, Britons Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal accused US military officials of deliberately misleading the public about procedures at Guantánamo.
Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal, who were freed in March after being arrested in Afghanistan and held without charge for more than two years, allege that heavy-handed treatment was systematic.
"From the moment of our arrival in Guantánamo Bay (and indeed from long before) we were deliberately humiliated and degraded by methods we now read US officials denying," the men write.
The men describe a regime that included assaults on prisoners, prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, strobe lights, loud music and being threatened with dogs.
At times, detainees would be taken to the interrogation room and chained naked on the floor, the letter says. Women would be brought to the room to "inappropriately provoke and indeed molest them. It was completely clear to all the detainees that this was happening to particularly vulnerable prisoners, especially those who had come from the strictest of Islamic backgrounds," the letter says.
...
Foldvary: A History of Maltreatment
This is a superb opinion piece. I've excerpted the beginning below, but the entire article is just as worthy of your attention.
Foldvary: A History of Maltreatment
Many causes can be pointed to for the abuse of Iraqi detainees. American troops have been undermanned and ill prepared. The prisoner policy condoned and even encouraged rough treatment in order to extract information. The top chiefs did not lay down a clear policy and failed to monitor what was happening on the ground.
But we need to understand that this pattern of abuse has deeper causes that have been within American culture since colonial days, and is part of a broader European culture of cruelty. When the Europeans began to conquer and colonize the Americas, they murdered, enslaved, and pushed out the native Indians. In part, this reflected a European culture that was racist and also supremacist, as they regarded Christianity and European ways as inherently superior to the ways of the heathen natives. They treated the Indians as subhuman, like animals, so that they had no moral concern about killing them.
Slavery too reflected this racism and cultural supremacism. This cruel and supremacist streak in European culture goes back to the ancient Roman and Greek civilizations, in which the conquered nations were enslaved and subservient. Conquest and enslavement have been practiced world-wide. The American Indians created empires by conquest, the Mongols conquered a vast empire in Asia, and there were wars of conquest and domination in Africa. Violent cultures have come to dominate the world, because peaceful cultures get conquered.
Other nations and governments, such as Japan and Germany during World War II, and the previous regime in Iraq, have committed atrocities many magnitudes worse than the abuses committed by Americans in Iraq. But Americans have to acknowledge their historical maltreatment of persons. In addition to the evil of slavery and the genocide against the Indians, Americans lynched Blacks in the old South, mistreated captives in the Philippines during the rebellion after the war of 1898, and violated human rights in Vietnam. Moreover, there is plenty of cruelty inside prisons in the US, and few Americans are concerned.
Non-Americans who properly condemn America for its failings should equally admit their own evils. Every nation that is casting stones is not without sin. There are Muslims and Arabs massively violating human rights now in Sudan; where is the outrage for that?
Why do nice people do evil acts? In the old South, White folks who were polite to their families and neighborhoods would gang up to hang innocent Blacks. Germans who listened to classical music and were kind to their children would turn around and send Jewish children to death camps. Why? It is because human beings compartmentalize their thinking. We mentally divide the world into categories with different standards.
...
Copyright 2004 by Fred E. Foldvary, via The Progress Report
May 14, 2004
Andersonville: Earlier War Crimes 'Abuse' Trial
Andersonville: Earlier War Crimes 'Abuse' Trial
"Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of many established prison camps during the American Civil War," wrote researcher and Georgia historian, Kevin Frye. "It was built early in 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners kept in and around Richmond, Virginia, to a place of greater security and a more abundant food supply. During the 14 months the prison existed, more than 45,000 Union Solders were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements."
What--you rightly wonder--does this horrific prison, located in the heart of America have to do with the Abu Ghraib? Both Andersonville and now Abu Ghraib share the shameful distinction of being among the blackest marks in American military history. One military prison, Andersonville, witnessed the slow torture and death of thousands of prisoners through bureaucratic neglect, while the other--Abu Ghraib--saw the slow torture and death through a bureaucratic policy of malignant intent. Even in Andersonville, where death was slow and painful, guards rarely "interrogated" or tortured prisoners for bits of information.
Indeed, Union soldier Lt. James Page spoke of his Confederate captors in almost generous terms, from the time of his capture by rebel cavalry, through his internment and later transfer to Andersonville prison. Page and members of his company were captured after a superior force of Confederate cavalry surprised them near Culpepper, Virginia. Forced to flee, Page and the others ran and were ordered to halt. Captured unharmed, they were "genially interrogated by General A.P. Hill . . . and consistently treated with kindness by his Southern captors."
Page wrote in a published memoir after the war, that the Alabama guards assigned to the prison were generally kind and humane. "I said then, and I have ever since said, in speaking of our guards, the Twenty-fifth Alabama Infantry, I never met the same number of men together who came much nearer to my standard of what I call gentlemen. They were respectful, humane and soldierly."
Contrast that with the conduct of the US military guards in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. "It is a common thing to abuse prisoners," said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area and recently returned from Iraq. "I saw beatings all the time."
...
May 09, 2004
UK forces taught torture methods
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK forces taught torture methods
UK forces taught torture methods
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK forces taught torture methods
May 02, 2004
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Secret report from notorious Baghdad jail reveals beatings, rape and torture of prisoners by US troops
By Raymond Whitaker, Andy McSmith and Andrew Johnson
02 May 2004
Shocking new evidence of brutality by coalition troops against Iraqi detainees emerged last night in a secret US military report into the treatment of prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The revelation that US military police and intelligence officers had beaten Iraqi detainees, set dogs on them and threatened them with rape came as the world recoiled at photographs of British soldiers seemingly mistreating Iraqis in custody. The sight of servicemen humiliating and tormenting a bound and hooded Iraqi prisoner caused fury in the Arab world and brought condemnation from Tony Blair.
...
April 30, 2004
US military in torture scandal
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US military in torture scandal
April 20, 2004
Jim Crow Laws
Martin Luther King, Jr., NHS Jim Crow Laws
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.
Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
Yahoo! News - Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq (news - web sites) may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft.
"There's not an American ... that doesn't understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future," Senator Chuck Hagel told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq.
"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."
...
March 23, 2004
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
His campaign store sells a pullover from nation whose products he has banned from being sold in the U.S.
(TruthOut permacopy)
March 06, 2004
November 12, 2003
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- Their bodies scarred by beatings and their hands callused from breaking rocks, 74 boys as young as 4 received medical treatment this week after their rescue from Nigerian granite quarries where they had been forced to work.
Nigerian police rescued the boys Wednesday and repatriated them to Benin under an accord between the two nations on child trafficking and other cross-border crimes.
Following their rescue -- only the second of its kind in West Africa -- the children told authorities that over the previous three months at least 13 other boys died, succumbing to exhaustion, disease, hunger and abuse, Nigerian police and aid workers said.
"We would break the stones, and the men would come take them away in trucks," one boy said. Skinny, filthy, scratched and heavily scarred, the boy looked no more than 10.
...
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 65%
October 09, 2003
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
June 27, 2003
Amnesty International Flash Animation on Guatemala's EMP
Flash Animation about Guatemala's brutal EMP military police force
They'd like you to pass it on.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L5
Freedom Rating: 8
Learning Percentage: 90%
Andersonville: Earlier War Crimes 'Abuse' Trial
Andersonville: Earlier War Crimes 'Abuse' Trial
"Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of many established prison camps during the American Civil War," wrote researcher and Georgia historian, Kevin Frye. "It was built early in 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners kept in and around Richmond, Virginia, to a place of greater security and a more abundant food supply. During the 14 months the prison existed, more than 45,000 Union Solders were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements."
What--you rightly wonder--does this horrific prison, located in the heart of America have to do with the Abu Ghraib? Both Andersonville and now Abu Ghraib share the shameful distinction of being among the blackest marks in American military history. One military prison, Andersonville, witnessed the slow torture and death of thousands of prisoners through bureaucratic neglect, while the other--Abu Ghraib--saw the slow torture and death through a bureaucratic policy of malignant intent. Even in Andersonville, where death was slow and painful, guards rarely "interrogated" or tortured prisoners for bits of information.
Indeed, Union soldier Lt. James Page spoke of his Confederate captors in almost generous terms, from the time of his capture by rebel cavalry, through his internment and later transfer to Andersonville prison. Page and members of his company were captured after a superior force of Confederate cavalry surprised them near Culpepper, Virginia. Forced to flee, Page and the others ran and were ordered to halt. Captured unharmed, they were "genially interrogated by General A.P. Hill . . . and consistently treated with kindness by his Southern captors."
Page wrote in a published memoir after the war, that the Alabama guards assigned to the prison were generally kind and humane. "I said then, and I have ever since said, in speaking of our guards, the Twenty-fifth Alabama Infantry, I never met the same number of men together who came much nearer to my standard of what I call gentlemen. They were respectful, humane and soldierly."
Contrast that with the conduct of the US military guards in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. "It is a common thing to abuse prisoners," said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area and recently returned from Iraq. "I saw beatings all the time."
...
UK forces taught torture methods
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK forces taught torture methods
UK forces taught torture methods
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK forces taught torture methods
May 02, 2004
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Secret report from notorious Baghdad jail reveals beatings, rape and torture of prisoners by US troops
By Raymond Whitaker, Andy McSmith and Andrew Johnson
02 May 2004
Shocking new evidence of brutality by coalition troops against Iraqi detainees emerged last night in a secret US military report into the treatment of prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The revelation that US military police and intelligence officers had beaten Iraqi detainees, set dogs on them and threatened them with rape came as the world recoiled at photographs of British soldiers seemingly mistreating Iraqis in custody. The sight of servicemen humiliating and tormenting a bound and hooded Iraqi prisoner caused fury in the Arab world and brought condemnation from Tony Blair.
...
April 30, 2004
US military in torture scandal
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US military in torture scandal
April 20, 2004
Jim Crow Laws
Martin Luther King, Jr., NHS Jim Crow Laws
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.
Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
Yahoo! News - Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq (news - web sites) may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft.
"There's not an American ... that doesn't understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future," Senator Chuck Hagel told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq.
"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."
...
March 23, 2004
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
His campaign store sells a pullover from nation whose products he has banned from being sold in the U.S.
(TruthOut permacopy)
March 06, 2004
November 12, 2003
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- Their bodies scarred by beatings and their hands callused from breaking rocks, 74 boys as young as 4 received medical treatment this week after their rescue from Nigerian granite quarries where they had been forced to work.
Nigerian police rescued the boys Wednesday and repatriated them to Benin under an accord between the two nations on child trafficking and other cross-border crimes.
Following their rescue -- only the second of its kind in West Africa -- the children told authorities that over the previous three months at least 13 other boys died, succumbing to exhaustion, disease, hunger and abuse, Nigerian police and aid workers said.
"We would break the stones, and the men would come take them away in trucks," one boy said. Skinny, filthy, scratched and heavily scarred, the boy looked no more than 10.
...
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 65%
October 09, 2003
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
June 27, 2003
Amnesty International Flash Animation on Guatemala's EMP
Flash Animation about Guatemala's brutal EMP military police force
They'd like you to pass it on.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L5
Freedom Rating: 8
Learning Percentage: 90%
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Horrific new evidence of soldiers' brutality in Iraq
Secret report from notorious Baghdad jail reveals beatings, rape and torture of prisoners by US troops
By Raymond Whitaker, Andy McSmith and Andrew Johnson
02 May 2004
Shocking new evidence of brutality by coalition troops against Iraqi detainees emerged last night in a secret US military report into the treatment of prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The revelation that US military police and intelligence officers had beaten Iraqi detainees, set dogs on them and threatened them with rape came as the world recoiled at photographs of British soldiers seemingly mistreating Iraqis in custody. The sight of servicemen humiliating and tormenting a bound and hooded Iraqi prisoner caused fury in the Arab world and brought condemnation from Tony Blair.
...
US military in torture scandal
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US military in torture scandal
April 20, 2004
Jim Crow Laws
Martin Luther King, Jr., NHS Jim Crow Laws
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.
Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
Yahoo! News - Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq (news - web sites) may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft.
"There's not an American ... that doesn't understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future," Senator Chuck Hagel told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq.
"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."
...
March 23, 2004
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
His campaign store sells a pullover from nation whose products he has banned from being sold in the U.S.
(TruthOut permacopy)
March 06, 2004
November 12, 2003
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- Their bodies scarred by beatings and their hands callused from breaking rocks, 74 boys as young as 4 received medical treatment this week after their rescue from Nigerian granite quarries where they had been forced to work.
Nigerian police rescued the boys Wednesday and repatriated them to Benin under an accord between the two nations on child trafficking and other cross-border crimes.
Following their rescue -- only the second of its kind in West Africa -- the children told authorities that over the previous three months at least 13 other boys died, succumbing to exhaustion, disease, hunger and abuse, Nigerian police and aid workers said.
"We would break the stones, and the men would come take them away in trucks," one boy said. Skinny, filthy, scratched and heavily scarred, the boy looked no more than 10.
...
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 65%
October 09, 2003
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
June 27, 2003
Amnesty International Flash Animation on Guatemala's EMP
Flash Animation about Guatemala's brutal EMP military police force
They'd like you to pass it on.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L5
Freedom Rating: 8
Learning Percentage: 90%
Jim Crow Laws
Martin Luther King, Jr., NHS Jim Crow Laws
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.
Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
Yahoo! News - Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq (news - web sites) may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft.
"There's not an American ... that doesn't understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future," Senator Chuck Hagel told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq.
"Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force "our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face."
...
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
Bush campaign gear made in Burma
His campaign store sells a pullover from nation whose products he has banned from being sold in the U.S.
(TruthOut permacopy)
March 06, 2004
November 12, 2003
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- Their bodies scarred by beatings and their hands callused from breaking rocks, 74 boys as young as 4 received medical treatment this week after their rescue from Nigerian granite quarries where they had been forced to work.
Nigerian police rescued the boys Wednesday and repatriated them to Benin under an accord between the two nations on child trafficking and other cross-border crimes.
Following their rescue -- only the second of its kind in West Africa -- the children told authorities that over the previous three months at least 13 other boys died, succumbing to exhaustion, disease, hunger and abuse, Nigerian police and aid workers said.
"We would break the stones, and the men would come take them away in trucks," one boy said. Skinny, filthy, scratched and heavily scarred, the boy looked no more than 10.
...
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 65%
October 09, 2003
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
June 27, 2003
Amnesty International Flash Animation on Guatemala's EMP
Flash Animation about Guatemala's brutal EMP military police force
They'd like you to pass it on.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L5
Freedom Rating: 8
Learning Percentage: 90%
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
Young boys rescued from slave-like labor
COTONOU, Benin (AP) -- Their bodies scarred by beatings and their hands callused from breaking rocks, 74 boys as young as 4 received medical treatment this week after their rescue from Nigerian granite quarries where they had been forced to work.
Nigerian police rescued the boys Wednesday and repatriated them to Benin under an accord between the two nations on child trafficking and other cross-border crimes.
Following their rescue -- only the second of its kind in West Africa -- the children told authorities that over the previous three months at least 13 other boys died, succumbing to exhaustion, disease, hunger and abuse, Nigerian police and aid workers said.
"We would break the stones, and the men would come take them away in trucks," one boy said. Skinny, filthy, scratched and heavily scarred, the boy looked no more than 10.
...
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 4
Learning Percentage: 65%
October 09, 2003
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
June 27, 2003
Amnesty International Flash Animation on Guatemala's EMP
Flash Animation about Guatemala's brutal EMP military police force
They'd like you to pass it on.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L5
Freedom Rating: 8
Learning Percentage: 90%
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
Amnesty International Flash Animation on Guatemala's EMP
Flash Animation about Guatemala's brutal EMP military police force
They'd like you to pass it on.
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: L5
Freedom Rating: 8
Learning Percentage: 90%
