2 Grand Jury Resisters released

 
If you haven't already heard, two of the remaining three Grand Jury Resisters were released earlier this week.

According to the Seattle Times (here & here) and Salon (here), Matt Duran and Kteeo Olejnik were taken into custody (which I guess is different from being arrested?) September of last year, after refusing to testify against other activists in relation to last year's May Day protests (here). Maddy Pfeiffer, who was "taken into custody" in December, remains confined. None of them have been charged with any crime, though charges of "criminal contempt" are a future possibility. According to an affidavit signed by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (reports the Seattle Times), the Feds had been following them since April 2012.

Leah-Lynn Plante was also "taken into custody" last year, but was released shortly thereafter.

You might remember from elementary civics that the Sixth Amendment guarantees a speedy trial to the accused, so that they don't languish in jail indefinitely? Well, that protection doesn't apply to the unaccused.

The release order for Matt and Kteeo was written by the Honorable Dick Jones (here). It's an extraordinary document: Jones' reasoning is that A) the confinement was meant to "coerce" testimony from Matt and Kteeo, B) after five months confinement, it appears unlikely that either will break down and testify before the eighteen-month limit on their imprisonment passes; so, C) they should be released. That's right: because their imprisonment is unlikely to coerce them, they should be released. Without euphemism or trumped-up charges, the release order frankly acknowledges imprisonment without charge as a tactic of coercion by the government.

Find the closest Bradley Manning support event to you! This Saturday, Feb.23rd

55 protests show enormous public support for Bradley Manning as his 1,000th day in prison approaches. Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. 1,000 days without trial. Attend one of 58 events in support of Bradley! Join the international call to action in support of Bradley Manning, the heroic soldier who has been persecuted for doing the right thing - for exposing war crimes to motivate worldwide discussions, debates and reform. An enormous outpouring of support for Bradley Events include protests, rallies, hip-hop performances, concerts, and art. We ask you attend an event near you this weekend to educate others about Bradley, and also to show the military authorities that people worldwide support him. Soldiers are supposed to have the right to a speedy trial, not only under the US Constitution but also under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Yet Bradley's court martial has been delayed as the military has continuously created roadblocks in the defense's way to access important evidence and offer a whistle-blower plea. On June 3, 100 days from Saturday, the military prosecution will pursue a truth-chilling life sentence at Bradley's long-overdue court martial. Public demonstrations are the best way to give this young whistle-blower a fighting chance at freedom. There has never been a more important time to broadcast our support for exposing war crimes, international justice, and people’s right to know what the government does in our name. Find an event in your area, or host your own! U.S. Events Tucson, AZ Feb 23, 11am-5pm Tempe, AZ  Feb 23, 5:30-6:30pm Guerneville, CA Feb 23, 12-1pm Cahuenga (L.A.), CA Feb 23, 9-11am Los Angeles, CA Feb 23, 5:30-6:30 Long Beach (L.A.), CA  Feb 23 at 1pm until Feb 24 at 2pm Montrose (L.A.), CA Feb 23, 5:30-7pm Studio City (L.A.), CA Feb 22, 6:30-7:30pm San Francisco, CA Feb 23, 1-4pm San Diego, CA Feb 23, 7-9pm Denver, CO Feb 23, 12-3:30pm Washington, DC Feb 24, 6:30-9pm Ft. Lauderdale, FL Feb 23, 12-1:30pm Pensacola, FL Feb 23, 5:30-6:30pm Tallahassee, FL Feb 23, 12-1pm Honolulu, HI Feb 22, 4-5:30pm Chicago, IL Feb 23, 12-1:30pm Ft. Leavenworth, KS Feb 23, 1-3pm Boston, MA Feb 23, 1-2pm Augusta, ME Feb 23, 11:30am-12pm Portland, ME Feb 23, 12pm Detroit, MI Feb 23, 3-8pm Eatentown, NJ Feb 23, 12-1:30pm New Orleans, LAFeb 23, 2-6pm Minneapolis, MN Feb 23, 9:30am-12pm Wilmington, NC Feb 23, 12-1:45pm Albuquerque, NM Feb 23, 10am-12pm New York, NY Feb 23, 2-4pm Rochester, NY  Feb 23, 10am-12pm Toledo, OH Feb 23, 12pm Corvallis, OR ongoing Philadelphia, PA Feb 23, 2-4pm Newport, RI Feb 23, 1-2pm Austin, TX Feb 23, 10:30am Houston, TX Feb 23, All Day Bristol, VT Feb 23, 10am-12pm Seattle, WA Feb 23, 12-4pm   International Events Melbourne, Australia Feb 22, 2-4pm Sydney, Australia Feb 23, 11am-2pm Vancouver, Canada Feb 23, 1-5pm Paris, France Feb 23, 3-5pm Berlin, Germany  Feb 23, 12:30-3pm Brussels, Belgium Feb 23, 1-2pm Kaiserslautern, Germany Feb 23, All Day Rome, Italy  Feb 23, 4-5pm Oslo, Norway Feb 23, 10am-12pm Oporto, Portugal Feb 23, 3-6pm Seoul, South Korea Feb 23, 11am Kampala, Uganda Feb 23, 10am-12pm Dublin, Ireland Feb 23, 1-3pm Birmingham, UK Feb 23, 2pm London, UK Feb 23, 2pm Peterborough, UK Feb 23, 12-2pm Yorkshire, UK  Feb 23, 11am Fairford UK Feb 23, 9:30am-12pm Bangor, Wales Feb 23, 11am-2pm Cardiff, Wales Feb 23, 10:30am-2:30pm Wales/Ireland/Scotland/England ongoing Slovakia If you attend an event, please take photos and e-mail them toowen@bradleymanning.org Thank you for supporting Bradley Manning Help us continue to cover 100% of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today.

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Political Prisoners Birthdays for the Month of January

Obama's human rights abuses

Reasonable Americans everywhere gave a collective sigh of relief last night upon the determination that Willard "Mitt" Romney's influence on national affairs will be constrained to counting his Benjamins and punditing on Fox. It was like when you're in a group of friends and a Mormon missionary comes walking up toward you and everyone sort of looks away and hopes he'll go away and then, at the last moment, he'll start talking to some other sorry mark and everyone unconsciously says, "Whew!"

So the real-world analog to Mr. Burns/Lucille Bluth/HAL will not, repeat NOT, be lining the Oval Office with his etchings. I applaud, Mr. Obama! You saved us all from great embarrassment (and maybe a couple wars).

That said, there are still some serious problems with the Obama presidency. I'm not talking about the economy: it's a fantasy to think that recovering from the 2008 financial crash could have occurred quickly or easily (if, indeed, we are truly recovering and not just headed for a more serious crash). Obama's economic strategy has been prudent, practical, and Keynesian. He was able to deliver real results because he aimed for solutions, not miracles. No, the problems with Obama are essentially civil-libertarian problems, created in the context of the 'War On Terror.' Borrowing from the ACLU's candidate report on the president, I've listed some below. (Bizarrely, drone bombings are not mentioned on the ACLU list.)

1. Obama created an indefinite-detention system for those sad saps at Gitmo and elsewhere who are neither civilians nor POWs. They exist in a gray nether-space of legal non-status. Obama initially promised to close Guantanamo, but after Congress foiled his efforts, he appears to have embraced the Bush administration's strategy of ignoring habeus corpus for alleged terrorists.

2. Obama apparently stopped or at least cut back torture at secret prisons like Guantanamo, but did not try to prosecute or otherwise pursue those who'd committed it under the Bush administration. The ACLU reports that there have been "No reports of extraordinary rendition to torture or other cruelty under his administration," though Scott Horton disputes this (here and here). ('Extraordinary rendition' refers to the practice of switching prisoners around between governments without oversight; the US has used it to basically outsource torture to foreign governments.) So while treatment of prisoners has improved, our military (and police and intelligence forces, presumably) are still a ways from being consistently humane (under a conventional legal understanding of that term; I'm not even going to talk about the ways in which e.g. the police are inhumane in ways that aren't explicitly recognized by e.g. international law).

3. Obama embraces the PATRIOT Act just as much as his predecessor, which act e.g. allows the FBI to subpoena library records without prior court approval and place a gag-order on the persons subpoenaed (see here and here).

4. While he's made good on his promise to draw-down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama's also expanded the use of drone bombings. These remote-controlled bombers are especially prevalent in Pakistan, where they sometimes blow up someone US intelligence believes to be a threat and sometimes blow up civilians (actually, the ratio is one alleged terrorist to 49 civilian deaths). (See here, here, here, and here.)

I speculate that Obama doesn't relish the chance to decimate international human rights, domestic civil rights, or blow up poor brown people. And regardless of his tastes, it's just a fact that these four areas of abuse occur within a constrained set of options. Both morally and politically, Obama's actions are calculated responses to incentives, such as the imperative to effectively prevent terrorist attacks against Americans. Plus let's not forget that there's not overwhelming outcry against these abuses: most Americans, for example support drone bombing. I can report from a meeting with my own father (who's pretty middle-of-the-road, politically) that giving police and military the authority to torture, detain, etc. when they've got 'good reasons' for doing so is a fair price to pay for the safety of his family. In short, it's not like Obama went out of his way to commit these abuses. He commits them because, basically, we want him to ('we' being both the American public and the de facto power structure of American politics).

Yet abuses they are. And as an American citizen, I'm responsible for them: they're committed by my government (which I implicitly legitimized when I voted on Tuesday), in my name, using my tax dollars. I am responsible for the people who are kidnapped, tortured, and indefinitely imprisoned in the name of American safety. I am responsible for the expanding police-state in my country. And I am responsible for the Pakistani families who continue to die from drone bombings.

Patrick Henry famously said, "Give me liberty, or give me death." I wish he'd said "dignity" instead of "liberty": just as there was never anything dignified or decent about enslaving other human beings, there's nothing redeeming or excusable about the violence and coercion employed by my government in its attempts to protect American life and happiness. And maybe this will sound hokey or fake, but for my part, I'd rather die in a terrorist attack than have even one person kidnapped, tortured, and indefinitely imprisoned without trial. My safety is not that valuable.

So: four more years. We have four more years to push Obama toward behaving like the humanitarian he presents himself as.

Daily Bleed for 6.25

it plunges into the red flesh of the soil
it plunges into the blaxing flesh of the sky
my negritude riddles with holes
the dense affliction of its worthy patience.

— Aimé Césaire, excerpt,
"Cahier d'un retour au pays natal"
(Return to My Native Land)

Daily Bleed,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0625.htm

Excerpts,

JUNE 25

GEORGE ORWELL
British novelist, anarchist journalist, anti-Stalinist.

Spain: FIESTA OF STANA OROSIA. Pilgrims climb to murdered
maiden's mountain sanctuary where the saint's head is displayed,
picnic, sing, dance, drink, fight & make love.

FESTIVAL OF THE OPTIONAL HOLIDAY.

______________________________

___

1178 -- Five Canterbury monks report something exploding on the Moon.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/anarchist/@bomb.jpg

1694 -- Viagra? London contracts for the erection
of the first British lamp-posts.

1822 -- German phantasist ETA Hoffman dies, Berlin.

Daily Bleed Saint 2002-2005
German phantasist, visionary, proto-surrealist.

1825 - Capture of Bob Forbes, leader of Maroons
(blacks resisting slavery) in Virginia.

Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture
— Ron Sakolsky & SaintMeister James Koehnline, editors:

Lost history viewed through cracks in the
cartographies of control, including "tri-racial
isolate" communities, buccaneers, "white Indians",
black Islamic movements, the Maroons of the
Great Dismal Swamp, the Métis nation, scandalous
eugenics theories, rural "hippie" communes, & many
other aspects of North American autonomous cultures.
A festschrift honoring historian Hugo Lemming Bey of
the Moorish Science Temple.

1852 - Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi lives, Reus, Spain.
http://www.red2000.com/spain/barcelon/phgau.html

1856 - German ego-philosopher-anarchist Max Stirner dies, Berlin.
A left Hegelian with Karl Marx & others, gone bad. Wrote The Ego
& Its Own.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/StirnerMax.htm

1857 - Baudelaire's volume of poems Les Fleurs du Mal is
published. He & his publishers are prosecuted for offending
public morals.

1867 -- Lucien Smith patents barbed wire. Rhymes with Empire:
First used for military defense by US occupation forces in Cuba in 1898.

1876 -- Got Reservations?: Lakota, Cheyenne & Arapahoe, resisting
the authority of the US government efforts to herd them onto
"reservations", kill Red-baiting General Richard Armstrong
Custer & wipe-out his troops at Little Big Horn, Montana.
Euphemistically called "Custer's Last Stand".

1878 -- US: Despite mass protests, Ezra Heywood gets two years
hard labor for advocating free love / sexual emancipation as part of
women's rights in the US. Individualist anarchist "arrested" by
prude Anthony Comstock. Released on 19 December, & Beloved &
Respected Comrade Leader President Hayes issued a pardon the
following day.

1893 - Haymarket Martyrs' Monument is dedicated. Erected by the
Pioneer Aid & Support Association, an organization begun by the
anarchist Lucy Parsons, Albert's widow.

It features a woman as Justice placing a crown
of laurels on the brow of a fallen worker, while
preparing to draw a sword.

Sculptor Albert Weinert's design was inspired by
a verse from the French anthem, the "Marseillaise",
which the five anarchists sang before their hanging.

On the front of the monument are the last words
of August Spies:

"The day will come..."

On this day thousands of workers & visitors
to the World's Columbian Exposition marched to a
train station & rode to the cemetery. Floral tributes
were sent by several nations. Speeches were made
in English, German, Polish & Bohemian, & an orchestra
played the Marseillaise.

Every year on the Sunday closest to May 4,
& the anniversary of Black Friday, November 11th, labor
organizations come to this monument to pay tribute —
though most are loathe to recall or
avoid mention that the martyrs were anarchists.


"The day will come when our silence
will be more powerful than the voices
you are throttling today."

— August Spies

1894 - Eugene Debs leads strike of American Railway Union.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/07ref.htm#5/1894

1903 - Modern prognosticator George Orwell lives, as Eric Blair,
Motihari, Bengal, India.

The biting satire of Communist ideology, The Animal
Farm, followed his horrendous experiences with the Stalinists,
especially in the Spanish Revolution (see his Homage to
Catalonia). Then came his anti-utopian Nineteen Eighty-Four.

'All animals are equal,
but some animals are more equal than others.'

1913 -- Martinique: Anti-colonialist surrealist poet Aime Cesaire
lives, Basse-Pointe.

"I am talking of millions of men who have been
skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes,
trepidation, servility, despair, abasement."

— Discours sur le colonialisme

1921 -- Czechoslovakia: The word "robot" enters the world's
languages when Karel Capek's play "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal
Robots) premieres. Even the robots won't put up with lousy work &
crummier wages, & rebel.

1937 -- José Martins Fontes dies. Portuguese doctor, lecturer,
poet, anarchist, militant activist in Brazil.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/MartinsFontes/josemartins.htm

1940 -- Earl Robinson's "Ballad for Americans" premiers, NY Philharmonic.

1952 - Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges publishes Otras
inquisiciones.

1955 -- France: Pierre Morain, militant of the F.C.L. (Fédération
Communiste Libertaire) arrested. Sentenced to prison for one year.
Pro-Algerian revolution, the FCL's paper "Le Libertaire" was seized
seven times between 1954 & 1956. The five editors of the paper were
repeatedly prosecuted by the Ministry of the Interior. Criminalization
& surveillance of FCL activists led to it's dissolution in 1956.

1961 -- Iraq announces that Kuwait is a part of Iraq (Kuwait disagrees).
US marches in on it's moral horse to save the day, right?
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/Mad_Dogs.jpg

1962 -- U.S. Supreme Court rules official prayers unconstitutional
in public schools.

1967 -- "Summer of Love": 75,000 - 100,000 in Hashbury. Also, on
or about this day, author Ken Kesey is sentenced to 6 months in jail.

"You are either on the bus or you're not on the bus."

Kesey formed the 'Merrie Pranksters', bought an old school bus, &
toured America & Mexico with his friends. Their exploits were
immortalized in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1973).

1968 -- Got Civilization?: Pan-American Health Organization
reports that Central American Indians have a worse diet than the
pre-Columbian Mayans.

1968 -- In response to the passage of an anti-gay ordinance in
Miami, 240,000 people march in San Francisco in the first large-
scale version of that city's annual Gay Freedom Day Parade.

1968 -- US: Red, White & Rue? Congress makes it a crime
to desecrate the Merican flag.

1972 -- US: Help, I'm A Republican!? Martha Mitchell phones
a reporter, claiming to be a political prisoner.

1984 - French philosopher Michel Foucault dies, of AIDS, Paris.

1986 -- US: House reverses itself, approves aid to Nicaraguan contra
terrorists. & here you thought the American government was always
in reverse.

1990 "I am freer than anybody else. I am free to choose the
parents I want, the country I want, the age I want."

— author B. Traven,
according to Mrs Lujan (his widow),
"New York Times," June 25, 1990
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/TravenB.htm

2002 -- European Court of Justice rules that if cheese does not come
from Parma, it can't be Parmesan cheese. Daily Bleed rules if Blue
Cheese does not come from the (Blue) Moon it cannot be Blue Cheese.

________________

"No daring is required to protest against a great injustice."

— Emma Goldman
________________


— anti-copyRite 1997,3541,7762,1921,2010,punt

Book of Poems Published From Guantanamo Inmates

lifted this one from Al Jazeera.
wow. check out this book. even though it's filtered into English by Pentagon approved translators, I bet it packs a punch. Will report back once we get a copy.

by Tom Ackerman

It has been over five years since the US began locking up prisoners at its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The about 355 detainees have never been brought to trial, so not much has been heard from inside the jail.

But a book of poems written by Guantanamo inmates has been published, revealing some of their innermost thoughts.

A poem by Moazzam Begg, one of 17 Guantanamo detainees whose work is gathered in the slim volume:

Freedom is spent, time is up –
Tears have rent my sorrow's cup;
Home is cage, and cage is steel,
Thus manifest reality's unreal.

Some of the poets, like Begg and Martin Mubanga, have been released.

'A special risk'

Most, however, like Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, are still detained indefinitely.

Marc Falkoff, who represents 17 Yemenis at Guantanamo, collected the poems with the help of other defence lawyers.

At first, the poets were denied regular use of paper and pen, some resorting to scratch their words with pebbles onto Styrofoam cups.

For years, the Pentagon refused to declassify any of the writing.

They described poems as "a special risk", because they could contain coded messages.

The passages in Poems from Guantanamo were cleared before the Pentagon realised they would wind up in a book.

Falkoff, who is also the editor of the book, said the Pentagon has refused to clear any additional poems in the last year or so.

He said: "We believe that they've made an effort just to keep this book from coming into print."

Commander JD Gordan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the detainees "have attempted to use this medium as merely another tool in their battle of ideas against Western democracies".

The 22 poems in the book were approved only in their English versions, and translated only by security-cleared linguists.

"The result is that we have workmanlike translations that are not ideal. This of course is due to the Pentagon's restrictions," Falkoff said.

Expression

The poets, like in this excerpt of Death Poem by Jumah al-Dossari, a 33-year old Bahraini, speak of love and suffering:

Take my blood,
Take my death shroud and
the remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Other Guantanamo inmates have used poetry to express their anger with the US government that holds them captive.

Falkoff said: "There's some strong language, though, and I did not excise that. It's included in here."

An excerpt from Humiliated in the Shackles, by al-Haj, reads:

America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.
Bush beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.

Whatever their artistic merit, Falkoff says the poems shed light on the prisoners' humanity, and give the outside world rare insight into their hopes and fears.

TRULINCS - Online Limited Inmate Electronic Messaging System

What is TRULINCS?

The Trust Fund Limited Inmate Communication System (TRULINCS) is a pilot program currently being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide inmates with some limited capabilities to send and receive electronic correspondence without having access to the Internet and uses no taxpayer dollars.
One purpose of this program is to assist in the inmate’s eventual community reentry. Many of these inmates are nearing their release date. Electronic communications have now become a standard form of correspondence within most American homes and businesses and can now also serve as a way to keep inmates connected to their families. Strengthening or re-establishing these family ties assists the inmates with their successful reentry into the community and can reduce the possibility that they recidivate.

Check out this little e-mail we just received over at Earthlight Books, man, I'd read so much in prison it's almost tempting...

This is a system generated message informing you that the above-named person is a federal prisoner who seeks to add you to his/her contact list for exchanging electronic messages. There is no message from the prisoner.

You have only the following options in response to this message.

* You may APPROVE this prisoner for message exchanges by clicking here and then clicking the Send button; or

* You may REFUSE this specific prisoner's request for message exchanges by clicking here and then clicking the Send button; or

* You may REFUSE this and all future federal prisoners' requests for message exchanges by clicking here and then clicking the Send button.

Any additional response will not be delivered to the prisoner or the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

By approving this transaction, you consent to have Bureau of Prisons staff monitor the content of all electronic messages exchanged.

Once you have been approved by the Bureau of Prisons to correspond with the prisoner, the prisoner will be notified and must initiate messaging.

For additional information related to this program, please visit the www.inmatemessage.com FAQ page.

****************************************************************************************************
See Below for Spanish/Ver abajo para leer en español
****************************************************************************************************

Este es un mensaje generado por un sistema electronico que le informa que la persona susodicha es un preso federal que intenta agregarle a su lista de contactos para intercambiar mensajes electrónicos. No hay mensaje del preso.

Usted tiene solamente las opciones siguientes en respuesta a este mensaje.

* Usted puede APROBAR a este preso para intercambiar mensajes haciendo clic aquí y después hacer clic en el botón de enviar; o

* Usted puede RECHAZAR el pedido de este preso en específico para intercambiar mensajes haciendo clic aquí y después hacer clic en el botón de enviar; o

* Usted puede RECHAZAR este y todos los pedidos en el futuro de todos los presos federales para intercambiar mensajes haciendo clic aquí y después hacer clic en el botón de enviar.

Respuestas adicionales no serán entregadas al preso o a la oficina federal de prisiones.

Si aprueba esta transacción, usted consiente a que la oficina del personal de prisiones supervise el contenido de todos los mensajes electrónicos intercambiados.

Una vez que haya sido aprobado por la oficina de prisiones para corresponder con el preso, el preso sera notificado y el preso debera iniciar el intercambio de mensajes.

Para información adicional con relacion a este programa, visite por favor la página de FAQ de www.inmatemessage.com

State Inmates Outlive People on Outside

WASHINGTON (AP) -- State prison inmates, particularly blacks, are living longer on average than people on the outside, the government said Sunday.

Inmates in state prisons are dying at an average yearly rate of 250 per 100,000, according to the latest figures reported to the Justice Department by state prison officials. By comparison, the overall population of people between age 15 and 64 is dying at a rate of 308 a year.

For black inmates, the rate was 57 percent lower than among the overall black population - 206 versus 484. But white and Hispanic prisoners both had death rates slightly above their counterparts in the overall population.

The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics said 12,129 state prisoners died between 2001 through 2004...Read More...