OVO

The Horn of Africa nation is widely using military conscription without end, as well as arbitrary detention of its citizens, says HRW.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Eritrea becoming ‘a giant prison’

Communication Management Unit Houses Environmental Activist | GreenIsTheNewRed.com

We have 5% of the world’s population; we have 25% of the world’s known prison population.

Jim Webb’s courage v. the “pragmatism” excuse for politicians – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

How Peter Viereck inspired-and lost-a movement.

Life and Letters: The First Conservative: The New Yorker

… Now, with unfolding eyes, we see The paradox of every fight, That both are wrong and both are right, That friend is foe, and foe is friend, And nothing matters in the end.

Niel Johnson on George Sylvester Viereck

George Sylvester Viereck ( born December 31, 1884 in Munich, died March 18, 1962) was a German-American poet, writer, and propagandist.

George Sylvester Viereck – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision [I know exactly one person in prison. What does that say about me? Or you?]

Cost of locking up Americans too high: Pew study | U.S. | Reuters

When this thread was posted, 220,000 people were confined to supermax facilities in the United States.

Supermax Nation | MetaFilter

A judge generally can issue either a civil or criminal contempt charge whenever he or she feels that a party has disobeyed an order or has disrupted a proceeding.

No Charge: In Civil-Contempt Cases, Jail Time Can Stretch On for Years – WSJ.com

The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships | World news | The Guardian

The United States is being accused by human rights groups of holding terror suspects on “floating prisons.”

Plan your next vacation on a U.S. Government Prison Ship! – 236.com – News

Ask Reddit: Has anyone on Reddit been to prison? If so, what was it like?

The therapy is part of a strategy to combat Islamic extremism in Britain’s jails where Muslim prisoners are serving time for terrorist offenses, the paper reported. The Ministry fears that if they are left alone, their violent, jihadist interpretation of Islam will spread.

FOXNews.com – Controversial Therapy Aims to ‘Cure’ Extremists – International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

Voting Rights for People with Criminal Records: 2008 State Legislative and Policy Changes

American Civil Liberties Union

Missing in action is a status assigned to a member of the armed services who is reported missing following combat. The person in question may have been killed, wounded or captured by the enemy. [...] In May of 1991, the Minority Report of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee concluded that “any evidence that suggested an MIA might be alive was uniformly and arbitrarily rejected… ” A resolution to create a Senate Select POW/MIA Committee, introduced by U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith, was passed in the Senate months later. Senator John Kerry was eventually named chairman, and was joined on the committee by Senator and former POW John McCain, who had been a strong opponent of the creation of a Senate Select POW/MIA Committee. Six live sighting investigators hired by the committee unanimously concluded that the live sighting intelligence through 1989 showed Vietnam and Laos were still holding American prisoners. [...]

In 2006, the National Alliance of Families found 1992 documents discussing the admission by Vietnam of capturing a number of missing Americans. The National Alliance contacted the families they could locate, and found that the Vietnamese admissions had been concealed from the families by the U.S. government. The U.S. and Vietnamese governments had given every indication to the families that the men had been killed in their loss incidents. However, at least one MIA, San Dewayne Francisco was reported to be alive by a North Vietnamese newspaper which was confirmed by radio transmissions by Francisco immediately after his aircraft crashed. A bill including criminal penalties for deliberately withholding POW/MIA records in violation of the law unanimously passed the House of Representatives in the 1990s. However, penalties were stripped from the law due to the efforts of former POW John McCain.

[Article continues at link.]

I went to jail as a teenager for a rape and murder I didn’t commit. Here are the reforms necessary to make sure it does not happen again.

I Spent 16 Years in Jail for a Crime I Didn’t Commit. Here’s What Should Be Done. | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

I’m not an anarchist. At least I wasn’t one of the kids running around the Xcel Energy Center in black handkerchiefs during the St Paul RNC. Nor did I store my urine in a bucket for a week to throw on delegates, and I didn’t break any windows either. But, I was one of the people detained by police on Monday. One of my co-workers even saw me on the Channel 11 news, zip-tied like a hog, being led away walking backwards by two riot police. I’m assuming that he knew me well enough to reason I wasn’t there with violent intent, but asked nonetheless why I went to downtown St Paul that day. I thought about it for a second, but couldn’t give a good answer to why I’m now in an FBI database. “I wanted to take pictures” and “I wanted to see it for myself” was what I managed. Then he asked why I was arrested. I had a much clearer answer for that. [...]

I thought about the original question my co-worker asked, “Why did you go down there?” and when the next coworker asked I had a much better answer. Thinking about the huge lines of police and being humiliated on TV, I answered, “Because I had a right to be there.” They looked at me like I was an idiot for getting involved. I don’t know how to explain that either, but I believe it in my core. I didn’t go to protest, or for any other reason but for the right to be there. And the fact that nobody seemed to “get it” made it all the more important. After thinking about it more, that’s the scariest thing to me now: [your] government can arrest you for walking down the street, and nobody seems to care.

[Article continues at link. Tyranny needs no Leader, no Symbol, no Force, tyranny needs only indifference. - Trevor Blake]

In French, oublier means “to forget” and when it was a person that the French wanted to oublier, it was into the oubliette they went. A normal oubliette was simply a narrow shaft with a locked grate on top into which a prisoner was lowered; usually, gleefully flung. They were simply forgotten, and left to starve to death.

Curious Expeditions » Blog Archive » Only the Penitent Man will Pass…

The German American Internee Coalition (GAIC) was formed in 2005 by and for German American and Latin American citizens and legal residents who were interned by the United States during World War II. We are former internees, or their families and friends.

German American Internee Coalition

German American Internment refers to the detention of people of German ancestry in the United States during World War II. Many of the detainees were American citizens.

German American internment – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia