While some may be cheering the expiration of the Patriot Act – however temporary it may be – former presidential candidate Ron Paul notes: before Americans applaud a minor step toward transparency, they should recognize the corrosive nature of the CIA, a secret government operating far above the law. “[The CIA] is sort of the President’s own Praetorian Guard,” Daniel McAdams, …
More than a quarter of Chicago county jail inmates suffer severe mental illness By George Marlowe
Recent reports have highlighted the fact that at least a quarter of the prison population at Chicago’s Cook County Jail suffer from serious mental health illnesses. Speaking to the Chicago Tribune, the new head of the jail noted that out of the jail’s approximately 8,000 detainees, some 1,900 have been identified as suffering from mental illness. Dr. Nneka Jones, a 37-year-old …
America Is #1 in Police Killings Among Western Democracies, Yet We’re Only Just Discovering How Bad the Situation Is By Terrell Jermaine Starr
Even before the Washington Post [3] published its startling report this weekend on the astronomically high number of Americans shot and killed by police in the first five months of 2015, the U.S. was already easily number one. Number one among highly advanced western democracies with fully developed economies for police killings of citizens: at least 400 people a year, according to a …
Why The Privatization Of America’s Police Is Such A Dangerous Trend By Claire Bernish
Though a potent effort to silence dissent is underway in the US, directly doing so would be a flagrant breach of constitutional rights. And so the ostensible explanations for tactically-geared police at peaceful protests and insidious surveillance programs fall under nebulous terms like protecting public safety, keeping the peace or national security. But when Kinder Morgan wanted to push through …
The Other Conspirator By Barbara Myers
The witness reported men being hung by the feet or the thumbs, waterboarded, given electric shocks to the genitals, and suffering from extended solitary confinement in what he said were indescribably inhumane conditions. It’s the sort of description that might have come right out of the executive summary of the Senate torture report released last December. In this case, however, the testimony …
This Guy From Baltimore Is Raising a Christian Army to Fight ISIS…What Could Go Wrong? Jenna McLaughlin
In late February, a Baltimore-born, self-proclaimed freedom fighter named Matthew VanDyke beamed [2] into Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show from Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region. A few days earlier, he had announced [3] on Facebook that he was in Iraq to “raise and train a Christian army to fight” ISIS and that he had formed a company called Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) …
Towards a Militarized Police State in America? Explosive New Revelations over “Jade Helm 15 Exercise” and Potential False Flags – Joachim Hagopian
A growing segment of the American population is waking up to the implications of the Jade Helm 15 military operation to be conducted by Special Forces in conjunction with local law enforcement, the FBI, DHS, the DEA and Border Patrol across the entire Southwest. This massive unprecedented exercise will also commence in June sooner than first announced and last for 10 weeks through the …
Drug War Fail: More Heroin Addicts Are Created By Doctors Than Drug Dealers – Carey Wedler
A recently released Drug Enforcement Administration reportreveals not only that heroin use has exploded, but that 4 out of 5 new users have previously abused prescription drugs. The details of the analysis, titled the “National Heroin Threat Assessment,” unwittingly demonstrate that the Drug War has failed to curb drug use and has actually exacerbated the problem. The report opens with an overview of …
Obama ban on police military gear falls short as critics say it’s a ‘publicity stunt’ – Tom McCarthy & Lauren Gambino
It has become an emblematic image of police militarization: a half-dozen heavily outfitted officers, assault rifles drawn, advancing on an African American man in a T-shirt with his hands way up. The police – photographed in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer – are wearing helmets and goggles and knee pads and gas masks. The man is wearing a cap from Cabela’s, the …
Obama’s paramilitary police – Andre Damon
On Monday, US President Barack Obama travelled to Camden, New Jersey, America’s poorest city, to praise it’s brutal police department and reaffirm his support for federal programs that have transferred billions of dollars in military hardware to local police departments. Reports of police brutality by Camden cops have nearly doubled since 2011, and last year Camden had substantially more reported …