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Prisoner used flip-flop to open cell door

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:31:57 GMT

Prisoner used flip-flop to open cell door

US sheriffs have launched disciplinary action after a prisoner escaped from a jail in Georgia by using his flip-flop to unlock the cell door.

Deante Gholston, 20, was recaptured the next morning and is now back in Bibb County jail on a new charge of escape as well as his original charge of armed robbery.

Sheriff Jerry Modena blamed a staff shortage, prison overcrowding and a defective lock for Gholston's unlikely escape, reports the Macon Telegraph.

He said Gholston was one of five prisoners put into a holding cell to relieve overcrowding.

"We were understaffed," he said, explaining the jail was operating with between six and eight fewer employees than needed at the time.

The sheriff's office is conducting a disciplinary investigation, Sheriff Modena said.

Somehow, Gholston was able to unlock the cell door and an alarm sounded, he added. When jailers checked the cell they found the door ajar, and only four people inside.

New York Post embroiled in racism row

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:54:57 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Probably all over American media, others may be interested though.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

The New York Post is facing allegations of racism and sexism in a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled former employee

Sandra Guzman was sacked by the newspaper at the end of September and believes she was targeted because she had spoken out about discrimination at the paper, and because she is black and female

In documents filed in the District Court in New York, Ms Guzman says there is a culture of discrimination at The Post that goes all the way to the top

Ms Guzman relates a series of alleged incidents involving executives from the newspaper making sexist, offensive and racist remarks

"Virtually all the executives, managing directors and news reporters are white males who wield enormous power and influence at the company,"

The paper's editor, Australian Col Allan, earned the nickname Col Pot for his take-no-prisoners approach to editing Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

'Racist' cartoons

One of the officers says to the other, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill".

Tags: racism

New jihad code threatens al Qaeda

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:34:31 GMT

clipped by: lakotahope
clipper's remarks: This may well be the small straw that will eventually, break the camel's back, per se. This group needs to be watched and studied to see what exactly, their contribution shall be to eliminating al qaeda.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- From within Libya's most secure jail a new challenge to al Qaeda is emerging.

Leaders of one of the world's most effective jihadist organizations, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), have written a new "code" for jihad. The LIFG says it now views the armed struggle it waged against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's regime for two decades as illegal under Islamic law.

The code's most direct challenge to al Qaeda is this: "Jihad has ethics and morals because it is for God. That means it is forbidden to kill women, children, elderly people, priests, messengers, traders and the like. Betrayal is prohibited and it is vital to keep promises and treat prisoners of war in a good way. Standing by those ethics is what distinguishes Muslims' jihad from the wars of other nations."

In essence the new code for jihad is exactly what the West has been waiting for: a credible challenge from within jihadist ranks to al Qaeda's ideology.

Tags: libyan islamic fighting group

The ten lies of Dick Cheney

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:48:20 GMT

clipped by: aperiozar
clipper's remarks: A career liar exposed.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part One)

On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a compelling report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody (PDF), based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if captured, were reverse engineered and applied to prisoners captured in the "War on Terror."

The techniques, taught as part of the SERE programs (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) include sleep deprivation, the prolonged use of stress positions, forced nudity, hooding, exposure to extreme temperatures, subjecting prisoners to loud music and flashing lights, "treating them like animals," and, in some cases, the ancient torture technique known as waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning that the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition called "tortura del agua."

Wash U Shuts Down Freedom Memorial on 20 Year Anniversary of End of Communism- It Was Too Offensive Video

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:45:36 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: “We’re hoping to elevate the thinking of students about the connection between socialism, tyranny, and murder. Too often, we tend to think about state control in the abstract. This event is an opportunity to show the student body what socialism really is,” said junior Dirk Doebler, student leader of Young Americans for Liberty and lead organizer of the event. “We’re just twenty years away from the collapse of the Soviet Union’s despotic enslavement of hundreds of millions of people, yet everyone seems to forget that socialism killed over 150,000,000 people in the 20th century. All that gets lost in the convenient narrative our professors would have us believe. With this event, we’re striking down false notions. We’re speaking truth to power.”

This event aims at showing the horrors of the implementation of that idea.

** There is more video to come of the university shutting down the gulag.

Clip Source: gatewaypundit.firstthings.com

Jim Hoft

The gulag was too offensive.

(Twitpics)
The students of Young Americans for Liberty hosted a rally to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at noon today on the lawn outside the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building at Washington University.

The students set up a gulag complete with prisoners, guards and barb wire on the Wash U campus.

Students constructed a memorial to the victims of socialism as a stark reminder of the horrors of socialism, and of its victims.

[Video]

YAL leader John Burns reported on the event today.
The university shut it down… It was too offensive.

Young Americans for Liberty is a growing student group at Washington University in St. Louis. YAL agrees with Nobel Laureate in economics Frederick Hayek, that socialism leads to totalitarianism. Socialism is a faulty idea that kills.

UPDATE: ACORN pimp-daddy James O’Keefe was in town and stopped by the protest. Darin from Reboot Congress interviewed James here.

Tags: 150 million people killed-20th century, collapse of the soviet union, freedom memorial, video (2:12), washington u-st louis, young americans for liberty

Guantanamo conditions 'deteriorate'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:38:25 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: No claims that the torture has continued. May just be that they want to get out and sue America for illegal kidnapping; or worse, revenge.

Clip Source: english.aljazeera.net

On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay's high security Echo Block.

He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying he was going to change things, that he would close the prison," Gharani, who was released in June, says.

"Even the guards were telling us that if he won, things would improve for us."

They were to be disappointed. A year after Obama's election win, Al Jazeera has learnt that despite the new president's pledge to close the prison and improve the conditions of detainees held by the US military, prisoners believe that their treatment has deteriorated on his watch.

Tags: too, hard, basket

Near death, aided by ghostly companion

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:42:23 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Sevigny had had a premonition that he would die like this. He just didn't have any inkling that it would happen on this spring morning.

When Sevigny awakened, he could barely stand. His back was broken in two places, his knees were busted, and he had internal bleeding. He gave up hope of surviving and curled up in the snow to die. But then he felt an odd sensation. He felt someone behind him and heard a voice: "No, you can't give up. You have to live." Read all about cheating death

What happened next was so profound that Sevigny, a scientist who disdains organized religion, says he couldn't talk about it for years afterward without crying. Sevigny still doesn't know who that voice belonged to, but another man does. He calls it "The Third Man."

John Geiger has sifted through the survival stories of people like Sevigny for six years. Adventurers, sailors, prisoners of war and pilots, they all tell strikingly similar stories of being saved from death by a mysterious presence, he says.

Tags: death, ghosts, belief

YOUNG OFFENDERS LOCKED UP FOR LIFE

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:44:27 GMT

clipped by: ellington
clipper's remarks: IS LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT FOR JUVENILE OFFENDERS CONVICTED OF NON-HOMICIDE CRIMES,

Clip Source: roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com

Young Offenders Locked Up for Life

Terrance Graham, left, at 15 in 2002. He was sentenced to life in prison at 17 for a home invasion robbery. Joe Sullivan, right, at 31 in June 2007. He was convicted at 13 for rape and sentenced in 1989 to life in prison.

Is life without parole cruel and unusual punishment for juvenile offenders convicted of non-homicide crimes?

Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project and Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation are debating this question today on Room for Debate.

This morning, the Supreme Court hears arguments on the cases of Terrance Graham and Joe Sullivan, two prisoners in Florida who were sentenced to life without possibility of parole for crimes they committed as minors. In 2005, the court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited the execution of juvenile offenders. Does sentencing a teenager to die in prison for crimes in which no one was killed also violate the Eighth Amendment?

Tags: life, without, parole

Lithuanian President Announces Investigation into CIA Secret Prison

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:09:21 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Lithuanian President Announces Investigation into CIA Secret Prison

The president of Lithuania called for an official investigation Tuesday into an ABC News.com exclusive report in August that the CIA housed a secret prison for al Qaeda suspects in Lithuania for more than a year beginning in 2004.

"If this is true," President Dalia Grybauskaite said, "Lithuania has to clean up, accept responsibility, apologize, and promise that it will never happen again."

At a press conference with the Council of Europe Human Rights Commission, Grybauskaite announced the investigation after it was clear a previous attempt by the Lithuanian Parliament was insufficient, according to a Council of Europe official.

ABC News reported that the CIA built a secret prison in a residential section of Vilnius from September 2004 through November 2005

to detain and interrogate top level al Qaeda prisoners captured around the world after 9/11.

23 Americans Convicted in Italy for CIA Kidnapping

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:46:33 GMT

clipped by: sahara
clipper's remarks: The Americans were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany. He was then moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He was released after four years in prison without being charged.

The trial is the first by any government over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, which transferred suspects overseas for interrogation. Human rights advocates charge that renditions were the CIA's way to outsource the torture of prisoners to countries where it is permitted.

Italy's government has denied involvement.

Among the Americans acquitted was Jeffrey Castelli, a former Rome CIA station chief, who prosecutors had alleged coordinated the abduction. The two other acquitted Americans were also assigned to the U.S. Embassy in the Italian capital and thus were covered by broad diplomatic immunity.

Clip Source: www.telegram.com

MILAN — An Italian judge today convicted 23 Americans of the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street, in a landmark case involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in the war on terrorism.

Citing diplomatic immunity, Judge Oscar Magi told the Milan courtroom today that he was acquitting three other Americans.

Former Milan CIA station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, received the stiffest sentence, eight years in prison. The other 22 convicted American defendants each received a five-year sentence.

The Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, were tried in absentia. Their lawyers entered innocent pleas on their client's behalf. They are considered fugitives from Italian justice.

In Washington, CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the convictions. He said, “The CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar,” the kidnapped man.

The CIA has declined to comment on the case

Cat banned from visiting Buddhist inmate

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:54:21 GMT

clipped by: drgreenfingers

Clip Source: www.ananova.com

Cat banned from visiting Buddhist inmate

A Buddhist bank robber has been refused permission for his cat to visit him in jail - even though he says it's the reincarnation of his mum.

Peter Keonig, 46, is serving five-years for armed robberies in Whirl, Germany, reports the Daily Telegraph.

He went to court to demand the right for his cat Gisela to be allowed to visit him in jail "because she is my dead mum".

Buddhists believe that people come back as other animals after death.

He said: "I know it is mummy. She looks after me just the way she did. I need to see her like other prisoners see their wives and children."

The court ruling said: "While we respect the religious freedom of individuals, the accused has not been able to furnish proof that his deceased mother has been reborn in a cat. Therefore, the request for visiting rights for the feline is rejected."

The court did say he would be allowed to write to the cat.

Guantanamo Bay Torture edit - 2008

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:11:10 GMT

clipped by: katsteevns
clipper's remarks: Go to source for interviews

Clip Source: www.spectacle.co.uk

Guantanamo Bay Torture edit - 2008

Rough cut with BITC. Interviews taken during 2007 and 2008.

This short film is a preliminary edit exploring the experiences of torture of prisoners held captive at Guantanamo Bay. The accounts from Lawyers, campaigners and ex-prisoners at the camp challenge the legitimacy and morality of the methods employed.

Interviewees include:

Moazzam Begg, spokesperson for Cage Prisoners and former Guantanamo Bay Detanee

Shakeel Begg, Imam, Lewisham Mosque

Gareth Pierce, Birnberg Pierce and Partners

James Yee, Former U.S. Military Chaplain at Guantanamo Bay

Tom Wilner, Stearman and Sterling LLP

Zachary Katznelson and Clive Stafford Smith from Reprieve

Collective Action Problem - Freerider

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:23:07 GMT

clipped by: calluna

Clip Source: www.answers.com

Assurance games are trivial once the parties can communicate; other collective action problems including both Chicken and Prisoners' Dilemma may be harder to solve. These often involve free-riding dilemmas which are important in politics (should I voluntarily pay taxes, clean up the environment, vote…?). It would be best if everybody did, but each individual is usually better off to try to free-ride and let others provide the good. However, if all or most people free-ride, the good is not provided. See also public good.

Prisoner's Dilemma

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:21:22 GMT

clipped by: calluna

Clip Source: www.answers.com

The most famous of all non- zero-sum games. Two prisoners are held in separate cells. The District Attorney knows that they jointly committed an armed robbery, but only if at least one of them confesses will he have the evidence to guarantee a conviction. If neither of them confesses, they will be sentenced to two years in prison for illegal possession of firearms. The sentence for armed robbery is twenty years. However, if they both plead guilty, it will be reduced to ten years. If one confesses and the other does not, the one who confesses will be set free altogether and the other sentenced to the full twenty years. The DA visits each prisoner, inviting him to confess. Should he?

Should Inmates Pay Rent ?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:47:37 GMT

clipped by: ljsdesign
clipper's remarks: "If the court determines that sheriffs have the authority " as part of their duties and responsibilities " to institute fees, there are millions of dollars in savings to the taxpayers as a result of inmates paying a very small portion of their fees and services," Assad said.
Walker said the majority of inmates are indigent, so the money in their canteen accounts is sent to them by family members so they can buy basic items that are not supplied by the jails.To deduct money from those accounts is like placing an unlawful tax on prisoners' families, she said

Clip Source: wbztv.com

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson's controversial program to charge inmates for rent, haircuts, medical visits and high school equivalency tests raised $750,000, but outraged inmate advocates who said the fees violated their constitutional rights and amounted to an unlawful tax.

Hodgson said he believed they could help teach inmates to accept responsibility for their actions and ease the burden on taxpayers,

a Superior Court judge ordered Hodgson to stop charging the fees, agreeing with inmates who claimed in a class-action lawsuit that the fees violate a state law requiring Hodgson to safeguard inmates' funds until their release

In his appeal, Hodgson argues that the fees fall under the broad discretion sheriffs have to manage their jails

But the legal group representing inmates argues that the fees amount to a second punishment.

"There is no statute that says the sheriff can collect a fee to have the pleasure of being incarcerated,"