Monday, 24 January 2011

The Gun Lobby Removes Its Silencer

How Congress helped thwart Obama's plan to close Guantanamo

The Guardian Interview: Patti Smith

'I was called to duty' … Patti Smith. Photograph: Richard Pak for the Guardian
When, in the late 60s and early 70s, Patti Smith was working in bookstores in New York, often having to choose between art supplies and lunch, she stacked National Book Award-winning books on shelves, wrapped them up for customers, sold them. And as she did so, she told a rapt audience last November, choking up with tears, "I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf"; she hardly dreamed of having a National Book award of her own as well.
There were wet eyes in the house, too, and more than one person listening to her must have thought that there was a kind of rightness about the fact that the book with which she won the award last year, Just Kids, was about that time, and about the person, Robert Mapplethorpe, who experienced it along with her. He was the person who refused to "listen to me falter, question myself, question my abilities"; who held her fast to the idea that her art and her dreams mattered, and if she only could only hang on to them, they would win out.
He was, it must be said, working with willing material, in that she had outsize bravado, and despite their extreme poverty (when she first arrived in New York, she slept on benches in Central Park), an instinctive integrity: when she was still stacking books a couple of people "saw potential in me and offered me quite a bit of money to do records as early as 1971, '72, but not in my own way. They would have a vision of me – a pop vision, or how they could transform me, and the money didn't tempt me." Was there ever a moment when that was quite a hard choice? "No." The answer is sharp, immediate. "If somebody said I'll give you a million dollars, but you have to go against your own grain, you just have to do what I say – it would take me one second. I've never been tortured by something like that. Tormented more about what line to use in a poem, or the right word to use in a sentence. All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful."
This is, in part, what gives her her singular presence. Her appearance, of course – the strong, masculine face and honey hair, all crags and straw, the dark toque and oversize coat somewhat incongruous in a boutique hotel in central Paris – but more her sense of wonder, her openness to the possibility of wonder in herself and others. It underlines in her an unexpected warmth and delicacy. The openness has always been a kind of survival strategy too: for all its fierceness – and after she recorded her debut album, Horses, in 1975 and found herself on the path to being a rock star, defiance – her career has been one of reverences, of chasing and collecting icons and relics and friends from whom she could learn the things she needed to proceed. It's a pleasingly unironic predeliction: "I'm not an ironic person," she once said. "I'm not always articulate, and sometimes I'm just crap, but I'm never ironic."
So, famously, Rimbaud, whose Illuminations she stole from a second-hand book stall when she was a teenager, and whose incantatory poetry and rackety life have compelled her ever since; Blake, whose everyday visions of angels, whose merging of language with "drawlings" (as she says the word) in a pale gold palette both she and Mapplethorpe loved and emulated; Jim Morrison, whom she saw on stage, and, watching him turn poetry into performance, thought simply: "I could do that." Her new album, which will be finished within the next month, was inspired by her reading of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita – but also by St Francis of Assisi, and by a visit to Dylan Thomas's home in Laugharne.
Or Sam Shepard, whom she met when he was in a band, who became her lover and taught her: "When you hit a wall" – of your own imagined limitations – "just kick it in." William Burroughs, whom she encountered when she and Mapplethorpe were living at the Chelsea Hotel; from him "I learned more about how to conduct myself, how to make the right choices in terms of – keeping your name clean. William said, 'If you keep your name clean, your name will be worth more someday. If you keep your name clean, it will always be of use.' And even though my name's only Smith, I have found it useful." It is instructive that when she fell in love and settled down, she did so with a man, guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, who she believed was cleverer than herself, who had things to teach her.
When he died, in 1994, leaving her a widow with two young children, it was one of the few times she felt properly lost. "That was a very difficult time in my life, when I had to decide what I was going to do, without him. But you know, when I have these moments, I just go all the way back to being 11 years old, when I knew who I was. Seven, 11 – I go all the way back there and then begin again, in my mind."
Smith grew up in straitened economic circumstances – her mother was a waitress and her father worked in a factory, assembling thermostats, jobs that provided just enough, and sometimes not enough, to feed four children. But there were always books, music, and as much art as they could afford. Her father "would take Socrates to the factory with him" and read Plato aloud over dinner, while her mother made meatball sandwiches; her mother had sung in nightclubs in the 30s, and loved opera, and the emerging glimmerings of rock'n'roll.
Smith, who was often ill – scarlet fever gave her hallucinations and, for a long time, double vision – daydreamed about being an opera singer. Not the swooning, romantic women's parts, but "the tenor parts, the young Gypsy-boy parts. Being in Verdi, Il Trovatore, being Manrico or something." Or she wanted to travel to the Great Wall of China or join the Foreign Legion; she was unimpressed to discover she was expected to be a girl, and especially a girl in the 50s in rural America, where you became a hairdresser or a housewife, "and the boys went to Vietnam or became policemen. A girl had these few choices, and the boys had these few choices. And I wasn't interested in any of their choices. I was interested in the whole world, that was not even spoken about. I had more communication with my dog than I had with my surroundings."
Increasingly, books became her world, and by extension, wanting to write them. "Everything else grew out of that. More than anything that's been the thread through my life – the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I'm not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock'n'roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty – I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could."
At 20 she discovered she was pregnant; the way she speaks about it now, eyes nearly closed, reveals more about the climate for discussing such things in America than anything about herself. "Well, it's, you know – that's a huge decision for any person, especially a young person. It was not a sacrifice, and it was not a decision I took lightly, and I didn't have the emotional or financial stability, or even the motive – or even what it took to raise a child. I had a good upbringing, and a strong understanding of the value of human life, but it still was … I just did the best I could, that's all. Who can say?" What is clear from her memoir, though, was that it dragged her out of childhood and gave her focus and direction: sitting on her bed working up the courage to tell her family that she was pregnant, and that she had found an educated, childless couple to take the baby, "an overwhelming sense of mission eclipsed my fears … I would be an artist. I would prove my worth." She was dismissed from college; when she went into labour the nurses called her Dracula's Daughter and, almost fatally, as the child was in a breech position, ignored her. She will not say whether or not they have since been in touch.
Horses, as well as regularly being cited as one of the best debut albums ever, had a cover photo taken by Mapplethorpe that became an instant classic. "It was the most electrifying image I'd ever seen of a woman of my generation," Camille Paglia once said. It "immediately went up on my wall, as if it were a holy icon. It symbolised for me not only women's new liberation but the fusion of high art and popular culture." The trouble was, Smith's motivations were never to stand for anything but herself, particularly not any political movement, however worthy. She continued to explore wordscapes and the soundscapes that might make them live; her accidental career gave her choices, and the freedom to travel. But it didn't give her, eventually, the satisfaction or integrity she craved. So she left – she met Fred Smith, married him, and moved to suburban Detroit, becoming a non-driver (she is too dyslexic) stranded in a land of cars. "That's where he wanted to live," she told an interviewer some years ago. "He was the man."
Those who looked to her as a feminist pathfinder felt betrayed. They accused her of selling out, called her a "domestic cow", a phrase that clearly still stings. "I was still a worker. Some people said, 'Oh, well, you didn't do anything in the 80s – first of all, to be a mother and a wife is probably the hardest job one can have. But I always wrote. I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written Just Kids had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer." She wrote for three hours every day, from 5am to 8, when her baby woke; having two children, and a husband, "I had to learn, really, how to rein in my energies and discipline myself. And I found it very very useful. I rebelled against it at first, but it's a good thing to have." They recorded an album together, which didn't sell; as well as publishing books of poetry, she has produced "many unfinished books, a few books that I finished in the 80s but never published, a crime book, a character study, a book of travels"; right now she is writing, simultaneously, "an extension of the book I wrote for Robert, and working on a detective story, and a sort of fairytale. I'm always working."
After her husband's death, she had to perform again, to support her children – and many people rallied to help her: her lawyer found her children a place at a progressive private school, Michael Stipe, who credits Horses with beginning his career, found her a house, Bob Dylan asked her to play with him, Ann Demeulemeester gave her clothes. Now, increasingly, she works with her children – her son is a guitarist and married to Meg White of the White Stripes; the evening before we met she did a gig with her daughter, a composer. They will do more of these gigs in the UK next week, one in St Giles Church, which she likes because they do good things for the homeless, and another at the Aldeburgh festival, where she will improvise work based on WG Sebald's poem After Nature. She has spent the morning reading him, and "listening to Polly Harvey's new song – she has this new song, The Words That Maketh Murder – what a great song. It just makes me happy to exist. Whenever anyone does something of worth, including myself, it just makes me happy to be alive. So I listened to that song all morning, totally happy." Her face lights up, her eyes shine. And I think that the joy she finds in these things, the searching for them, the openness to them, the wanting to do them herself, are, finally, so much more interesting than being held to any creed; more interesting, more inspiring, and far more profound.
Aida Edemariam @'The Guardian'

Long live Reggae music - and hopefully in Jamaica

Can You Build a Better Brain?

Sarah Palin Battle Hymn

Julian Goes To Hollywood

Illustration: exiledsurfer
PS: Mr Surfer. Interesting that Morozov mentions Alvin Toffler in 'The Net Delusion'!

The First Decade of the Future is Behind Us

Ms Swinton as Mr Assange (Memo to Hollyweird)

Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk

The Music Bay: Pirate Bay Crew Instill More Fear Into The Music Industry

A few years ago the Pirate Bay crew registered a domain name that until now hasn’t been very active, themusicbay.org. At the time it was registered there were plans to create the most efficient music sharing system ever built, but these were put aside as other projects needed more urgent attention.
In recent days, however, rumors started to grow that The Music Bay domain might be put to use after all. It is currently setup to serve ads for The Pirate Bay website, but this spring it could be hosting a special surprise for the music industry.
The currently active subdomain fear.themusicbay.org is currently displaying a “comming soon” [sic] title so TorrentFreak caught up with a Pirate Bay insider to learn more about the plans for the site. Although the Pirate Bay crew is reluctant to release any specific details, their intentions are obvious.
“The music industry can’t even imagine what we’re planning to roll out in the coming months. For years they’ve complained bitterly about piracy, but if they ever had a reason to be scared it is now,” TorrentFreak was told. “It will be a special surprise for IFPI’s 78th birthday, and we’re thinking of organizing a huge festival in Rome where IFPI was founded.”
IFPI is of course the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, one of the most active anti-piracy outfits and a long-time adversary of The Pirate Bay. Formed under Italy’s fascist government of Benito Mussolini in 1933, IFPI will turn 78 in April of 2011.
TorrentFreak did ask for more details about “The Music Bay”, but the above is all we are able to reveal at this stage. What’s clear from the conversation we had, however, is that the major record labels are in for a big surprise. More details are expected to follow in the near future.
Without any hard evidence all the above can of course be interpreted in a million ways. We simply don’t know what the announced project will be, who will run it and what it will do. For all we know the entire project is nothing more that a domain name, registered and used just for the purpose to put fear into the already quite paranoid music industry.
Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'

Total football :)

Stuxnet Authors Made Several Basic Errors

Sunday, 23 January 2011

Former Commander of Headquarters Company at Quantico Objects to Treatment of Bradley Manning

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This is a preorder that's scheduled for release in mid - late February 2011.
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Amnesty International on Bradley Manning

BY FAX AND MAIL
Ref: AMR 51/2011/004
AI index: AMR 51/006/2011
The Honorable Robert M. Gates
Secretary of Defense
1400 Defense Pentagon
Washington DC 20301
USA
19 January 2011

Dear Secretary of Defense
I am writing to express concern about the conditions under which Private First Class (PFC) Bradley
Manning is detained at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia.
We are informed that, since July 2010, PFC Manning has been confined for 23 hours a day to a single
cell, measuring around 72 square feet (6.7 square metres) and equipped only with a bed, toilet and
sink. There is no window to the outside, the only view being on to a corridor through the barred doors
of his cell. All meals are taken in his cell, which we are told has no chair or table. He has no
association or contact with other pre-trial detainees and he is allowed to exercise, alone, for just one
hour a day, in a day-room or outside. He has access to a television which is placed in the corridor for
limited periods of the day. However, he is reportedly not permitted to keep personal possessions in his
cell, apart from one book and magazine at a time. Although he may write and receive correspondence,
writing is allowed only at an allotted time during the day and he is not allowed to keep such materials
in his cell.
We understand that PFC Manning’s restrictive conditions of confinement are due to his classification as
a maximum custody detainee. This classification also means that – unlike medium security detainees
–- he is shackled at the hands and legs during approved social and family visits, despite all such visits
at the facility being non-contact. He is also shackled during attorney visits at the facility. We further
understand that PFC Manning, as a maximum custody detainee, is denied the opportunity for a work
assignment which would allow him to be out of his cell for most of the day. The United Nations (UN)
Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMR), which are internationally recognized
guiding principles, provide inter alia that “Untried prisoners shall always be offered opportunity to
work” should they wish to undertake such activity (SMR Section C, rule 89).
PFC Manning is also being held under a Prevention of Injury (POI) assignment, which means that he is
subjected to further restrictions. These include checks by guards every five minutes and a bar on his
sleeping during the day. He is required to remain visible at all times, including during night checks.
His POI status has resulted in his being deprived of sheets and a separate pillow, causing
uncomfortable sleeping conditions; his discomfort is reportedly exacerbated by the fact that he is
required to sleep only in boxer shorts and has suffered chafing of his bare skin from the blankets.
We are concerned that no formal reasons have been provided to PFC Manning for either his maximum
security classification or the POI assignment and that efforts by his counsel to challenge these
assignments through administrative procedures have thus far failed to elicit a response. We are further
concerned that he reportedly remains under POI despite a recommendation by the military psychiatrist
overseeing his treatment that such an assignment is no longer necessary.
Amnesty International recognizes that it may sometimes be necessary to segregate prisoners for
disciplinary or security purposes. However, the restrictions imposed in PFC Manning’s case appear to
be unnecessarily harsh and punitive, in view of the fact that he has no history of violence or disciplinary
infractions and that he is a pre-trial detainee not yet convicted of any offence.
The conditions under which PFC Manning is held appear to breach the USA’s obligations under
international standards and treaties, including Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) which the USA ratified in 1992 and which states that “all persons deprived of
their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human
person”. The UN Human Rights Committee, the ICCPR monitoring body, has noted in its General
Comment on Article 10 that persons deprived of their liberty may not be “subjected to any hardship or
constraint other than that resulting from the deprivation of liberty; respect for the dignity of such
persons must be guaranteed under the same conditions as for that of free persons …”.
The harsh conditions imposed on PFC Manning also undermine the principle of the presumption of
innocence, which should be taken into account in the treatment of any person under arrest or awaiting
trial. We are concerned that the effects of isolation and prolonged cellular confinement – which
evidence suggests can cause psychological impairment, including depression, anxiety and loss of
concentration – may, further, undermine his ability to assist in his defence and thus his right to a fair
trial.
In view of the concerns raised, we urge you to review the conditions under which PFC Manning is
confined at the Quantico naval brig and take effective measures to ensure that he is no longer held in
23 hour cellular confinement or subjected to other undue restrictions.
Yours sincerely,
Susan Lee
Program Director
Americas Regional Program

Cc COL Carl R. Coffman Jr., Commander, U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Myer, VA
COL Daniel J. Choike, Base Commander, MCB, Quantico
HERE

The Ships of Poison Cover-Up - An Ecological Bomb in the Mediterranean

While the global and Italian national media focuses on allegations of Berlusconi's latest sexual exploits including reports of hedonistic orgies with teenage prostitutes at his luxurious villas, the much more devastating story of the intentional sinking of ships laden with radioactive and toxic materials into the Mediterranean Sea has quietly developed some new twists and turns in another of Italy's notorious and grand cover-ups. Surely Berlusconi's sexcapades make Bill Clinton's impeachable blow job pale in comparison, but the the tabloid headlines could be replaced by the indignation of the Italian Media at least, with the intentional contamination of the beloved blue waters of the Mediterranean and the dismantling of the Italy's social democracy rather than dedicating the entirety of their attention to prostitutes being paid to entertain one of our most sick and twisted world leaders.

We pick up this story in June of 2010 with the revelations that there is indeed what Italian state prosecutor Bruno Giordano called an "ecological bomb" in the valley of the Oliva river that flows down the mountains and past the towns of Aiello Calabro and Amantea on its way to the Tyrrhenian Sea. This is where it is believed that the cargo of the Jolly Rosso was intentionally dumped and buried. State agencies found the valley to be contaminated with thousands of cubic meters of industrial mud laced with very high levels of cobalt, nickel, mercury, lead, and other heavy metals. They found the presence of cesium 137, and they found more contaminated locations than previously anticipated, leading investigators to believe that not only was the cargo of the Jolly Rosso dumped here but that the area was then used as an illegal dumping grounds for years. There are no industries in this area that produce these materials so it is clear that they were produced and shipped in from other places. A formal request has been made to the minister of the environment Stefania Prestigiacomo to declare this zone an environmental disaster area and to begin cleaning it up. More than six months later there has been NO response.

State secrets still cloak the investigation into the case of what the Italian's call the Navi dei Veleni Ships of Poison. State secrets still mask the murders of key investigators into the network of international business men, the Italian military, SISMI (the Italian secret service), NATO and state governments as they worked together to create and hide a network of waste and arms trafficking traversing the high Seas from the major Italian port of La Spezia to Alessandria, Egypt, Beruit, Lebanon and onward to Africa and Mogadishu in Somalia. Key investigators into the story of the Ships of Poison, Naval Captain Natale de Grazia, journalist Ilaria Alpi and cameraman Miran Hrovatin lost their lives for what many believe was their discovering of key truths that could expose an international network involving the Italian government that traded military weapons for the disposal of hazardous industrial wastes. Alpi and Hrovatin were gunned down in Mogadishu on the 20th of March 1994 by a Somali commando unit. Captain Natale de Grazia died of sudden cardiac arrest on the 13th of December 1995 only days before he was to deliver his report on his investigation into the Ships of Poison...

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Michael Leonardi @'Counterpunch'

Saturday, 22 January 2011

If Wikileaks Scraped P2P Networks for "Leaks," Did it Break Federal Criminal Law?

Satellite launch California 20/01

A Boeing Delta 4 Heavy rocket, which may someday be used to send humans into space, rises from the launch pad during its first unmanned launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., Thursday Jan. 20.
Via

No-Suicide Contracts as a Suicide Prevention Strategy

Friday, 21 January 2011

"A little older, a little more confused." - Dennis Hopper in Wender's 'Der Amerikanische Freund'

Via

Russia's Medvedev calls for crackdown on neo-Nazis

Addicted to disaster porn

Damn! I want this...

This September, Dead.net will release a limited-edition, individually-numbered, Europe '72: The Complete Recordings boxed set which will feature more than 60 discs and over 70 hours of music - every single note recorded on the legendary 22-show Europe '72 tour. Each disc will be mixed by Jeffery Norman, primary mixer of Dead archival multi-track material, and mastered to HDCD specs by two-time Grammy-winning engineer David Glasser. While many of the recordings heard on Europe ’72 were sweetened in the studio after the tour, those tracks will be included in this collection without overdubs, where possible.
Every show will include its own liner notes by top Dead scholars (including David Gans, Steve Silberman, Blair Jackson and Nicholas Meriwether) and concert-goers, as well as many never-before-seen photos. This magnificent, unprecedented collection will also feature memorabilia and ephemera from the tour, and a coffee table-worthy book with a comprehensive tour essay by Blair Jackson and hundreds of never-before-seen photos - all housed in a groovy replica steamer trunk.
As a special bonus, the first 3,000 boxed sets issued will be personalized editions. This unprecedented release will be limited to orders placed, with a maximum of 7,200 boxes produced.
Additionally, to reward those loyal fans who have to wait until September to receive the final box set, Dead.net will offer several exclusive goodies over the coming months.

GRATEFUL DEAD EUROPE 1972 TOUR DATES
All shows included in their entirety

April 7 Wembley Empire Pool, Wembley
April 8 Wembley Empire Pool, Wembley
April 11 Newcastle City Hall, Newcastle
April 14 Tivolis Koncertsal, Copenhagen
April 16 Aarhus University, Aarhus
April 17 Tivolis Koncertsal, Copenhagen
April 21 Beat Club, Bremen
April 24 Rheinhalle, Dusseldorf
April 26 Jahrhundert Halle, Frankfurt
April 29 Musikhalle, Hamburg
May 3 Olympia Theatre, Paris
May 4 Olympia Theatre, Paris
May 7 Bickershaw Festival, Wigan
May 10 Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
May 11 Rotterdam Civic Hall, Rotterdam
May 13 Lille Fairgrounds, Lille
May 16 Theatre Hall, Luxembourg
May 18 Kongressaal - Deutsches Museum, Munich
May 23 Strand Lyceum, London
May 24 Strand Lyceum, London
May 25 Strand Lyceum, London
May 26 Strand Lyceum, London
Europe 72

Gold v. Water

Last August 7 in his inaugural speech as President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos said: “We are a nation with one of the largest biological diversities in the world, and with a great supply of water. Therefore we are called upon to care for them for our own benefit and that of mankind...We will create the National Agency for Water Resources, in order to guarantee greater protection of our natural resources”. In another segment of his speech President Santos emphasized the need to create jobs in order to reduce the highest unemployment rate in Latin America and he specifically pointed out focus areas which are indispensable if Colombia is to move forward, naming agricultural development, infra-structure construction, build additional housing, mining development and technological innovation.

Based upon President Santos’ speech, the challenges he must meet include protecting bio-diversity, guaranteeing sources of potable water, and creating employment for Colombia’s millions of unemployed, while overseeing an increase in mining operations such as those planned for the Santurban area.

Deep in the eastern mountain range of the Colombian Andes there is a collection of mountains known as Santurban. This is a territory of “paramos”, a Spanish term that in pre-Roman times meant “desolation”. And the lands of the paramos are desolate, because they are found at an altitude of 3,000 to 5,000 meters. Their vegetation and grasses are appropriate for such heights. They are in permanent action, retaining water vapor from the ever-present fog and transforming it into liquid water. The secret of this process is in the nature of their soils, which are of volcanic origin and contain organic material and aluminum. The organic material accumulates, due to the low temperature in the paramos, which slows the activity of microbes. Upon combining with the aluminum, particles are formed which are resistant to decomposition. It is in this way that the soil retains water for long periods of time. Water is freed slowly and continuously. The paramos do not produce water. It comes from rain, fog and snow from higher altitudes, which are above 5,000 meters and are snow-covered mountains. They collect water and regulate it. For this reason the Andean paramos are considered natural “factories” of potable water. In addition, because of the very nature of their soil, the Andean paramos store carbon from the atmosphere and thus help to control global warming. These mountains may be able to offer a response to global warming and to the shortage of water.

In the specific case of Santurban, its ecosystem shelters a high biodiversity, in addition to providing water to rivers and ponds. Santurban has 85 ponds, which give origin to a number of rivers and streams that sustain agricultural production and cattle-raising in the low zones, as well as supplying water for the 2.2 million inhabitants of the cities of Bucaramanga and Cucuta and 20 nearby municipalities...

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Cecilia Zarate-Laun @'Counterpunch'

Ad break #7

HERE

Simply because [< 3]

Thursday, 20 January 2011

From a comment in The Guardian: Britain in 2015

"Unemployment at record levels

Repossessions at record levels

Inflation at record levels

Interest rates at record levels

Hospital waiting lists at record levels

Crime at record levels

Suicide at record levels

Rioting in the streets

......................and bankers bonuses at record levels.

This is what the Tories do best."

@ 'The Guardian'

The Sultan's Signature

Americans Face Guantanamo-Like Torture Everyday in a Super-Max Prison Near You

Editor's Note: Courageous WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning is reportedly suffering some of the same horrible experiences detailed in the article below, including 23 hours a day of solitary confinement, which has been labeled torture by numerous prison and psychological experts.

“They beat the shit out of you,” Mike James said, hunched near the smeared plexiglass separating us. He was talking about the cell “extractions” he’d endured at the hands of the supermax-unit guards at the Maine State Prison.

“They push you, knee you, poke you,” he said, his voice faint but ardent through the speaker. “They slam your head against the wall and drop you on the floor while you’re cuffed.” He lifted his manacled hands to a scar on his chin. “They split it wide open. They’re yelling ‘Stop resisting! Stop resisting!’ when you’re not even moving.”

When you meet Mike James you notice first his deep-set eyes and the many scars on his shaved head, including a deep, horizontal gash. He got that by scraping his head on the cell door slot, which guards use to pass in food trays.

“They were messing with me,” he explained, referring to the guards who taunted him. “I couldn’t stand it no more.” He added, “I’ve knocked myself out by running full force into the wall.”

James, who is in his twenties, has been beaten all his life, first by family members: “I was punched, kicked, slapped, bitten, thrown against the wall.” He began seeing mental-health workers at four and taking psychiatric medication at seven. He said he was bipolar and had many other disorders. When a doctor took him off his meds at age eighteen, he got into “selling drugs, robbing people, fighting, burglaries.” He received a twelve-year sentence for robbery. Of the four years James had been in prison when I met him, he had spent all but five months in solitary confinement. The isolation is “mental torture, even for people who are able to control themselves,” he said. It included periods alone in a cell “with no blankets, no clothes, butt-naked, mace covering me.” Everything James told me was confirmed by other inmates and prison employees.

James’s story illustrates an irony in the negative reaction of many Americans to the mistreatment of “war on terrorism” prisoners at Guantánamo. To little public outcry, tens of thousands of American citizens are being held in equivalent or worse conditions in this country’s super-harsh, super-maximum security, solitary-confinement prisons, or in comparable units of traditional prisons. The Obama administration— somewhat unsteadily—plans to shut down the Guantánamo detention center and ship its inmates to one or more supermaxes in the United States, as though this would mark a substantive change. In the supermaxes inmates suffer weeks, months, years, or even decades of mind-destroying isolation, usually without meaningful recourse to challenge the conditions of their captivity. Prisoners may be regularly beaten in cell extractions, and they receive meager health services. The isolation frequently leads to insane behavior including self-injury and suicide attempts...

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Lance Tapley @'Alternet'

Aftershocks: Welcome to Haiti's Reconstruction Hell

When Alina happened upon a group of men—too many to count—raping a girl in the squalid Port-au-Prince camp where she and other quake victims lived, she couldn't just stand there. Maybe it was because she has three daughters of her own; maybe it was some altruistic instinct. And the 58-year-old was successful, in a way, in that when she tried to intervene, the men decided to rape her instead, hitting her ribs with a gun, threatening to shoot her, firing shots in the air to keep other people from getting ideas of making trouble as they kept her on the ground and forced themselves inside her until she felt something tear, as they saw that she was bleeding and decided to go on, and on, and on. When it was over, Alina lay on the ground hemorrhaging and aching, alone. The men were gone, but no one dared to help her for fear of being killed.
"We had this rape problem before the earthquake," Yolande Bazelais tells me. She is the president of FAVILEK (the Creole acronym stands for Women Victims Get Up Stand Up), an organization founded by women who were raped (PDF) during the 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We're sitting under a blue tarp in the driveway of another NGO's office, because FAVILEK doesn't have one, with four of the other founders and my translator, Marc. He works with FAVILEK sometimes, running rape-related errands, taking victims like Alina to the hospital or the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), an international lawyers' group, for legal support. "Now," Bazelais says, "we have double problems."
It's a terrifying statement, considering that a survey taken before the earthquake estimated that there were more than 50 rapes a day just in Port-au-Prince, based on just the reported rapes—and more than half of the victims were minors. That's how it's been for as long as anyone can remember, with the perpetrators ranging from neighbors to street thugs to, as the FAVILEK founders can attest, police and paramilitaries who use rape as a tool of intimidation and terror.
But nearly a year after the 7.0 earthquake that shook some 280,000 buildings to the ground and killed or maimed nearly twice that many people, FAVILEK's insufficient resources are stretched thinner than ever. The organization says that displacement camps are hornet's nests of sexual violence.
The French military policemen hanging around my hotel say the same thing. They are soldiers of MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and their faces darken when they talk about the camps. "Every day it is like this: fighting, a lot of violence, murder, a lot of rape," they say, shaking their heads. "A lot of rape." A 43-page report by the IJDH says so, too, with a pile of testimonials like Alina's. And there's Marc, whose phone is always ringing, who's "like an ambulance" because "people are always calling me to say someone got raped"—like the woman calling about her teenage daughter today. Marc, who waves at somebody on the street as we drive around Port-au-Prince and yells, "I used to work with that guy!" then explains that the guy quit immediately because he really didn't want to hear about five-year-olds being raped. FAVILEK gets three or four calls a week about new cases, and that's just from the dozen camps the organization attempts to cover. There are 1,300 camps in all.
The quake's immediate aftermath.It's the first thing you see when you step out of Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport: just across the street, a sea of tarps held together with sticks and strings, white plastic and blue plastic and gray plastic side by side by side under the glaring sun. Maybe there are some clothes drying in the very narrow paths between shelters. Probably there are people bathing in the open. The bigger settlements sport walls of portable toilets. Within Port-au-Prince, every spare patch of land from the airport to anywhere is covered in tent settlements. More than a million people live like that, no lights, no security. The tent cities are hot, hungry, and packed, and tension is the only thing in town being built...