"Denied the chance of a baby - a decades long program of forced sterilization in America, left tens of thousands of women unable to have children. Once promoted as a way to build a healthy nation, its only recently that the traumatized victims of a eugenics programme, are being considered for compensation. RT's Marina Portnaya went to meet one of those who were left traumatised, by compulsory birth control." Continue reading →
"Many documents produced by the U.S. government are kept secret for questionable reasons. The fact that presidents and other government officials have the power to deem materials classified provides them with an opportunity to use national security as an excuse to suppress documents and reports that would reveal embarrassing or illegal activities. Now I have chosen 11 examples that were created—and buried—by both Democratic and Republican administrations and which cover assassinations, spying, torture, 50-year-old historical events, presidential directives with classified titles and…trade negotiations." Continue reading →
"Opponents of the post-9/11 use of indefinite military detention have filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to block a law they say allows innocent American citizens to be locked away without trial. The motion, submitted on Wednesday, asks the Supreme Court to reinstate an injunction against a key portion of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Unless the court does so, the motion argues, Americans are 'in actual and imminent danger of losing their core First Amendment rights and fundamental Equal Protection liberties.'" Continue reading →
"In the eleven years since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, America has effectively lived under a perpetual state of emergency. Last year, President Barack Obama while vacationing in Hawaii signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act which included an embedded provision allowing the presidency what some have termed as indefinite detention powers. The political firestorm and continuing controversy over both the Global War on Terror and the NDAA has led many American citizens to wonder just what all of this means for their individual freedom." Continue reading →
"Last Saturday, members of the Salt Lake City Prison Divestment Campaign told Utah’s Democratic Party the truth about Jane Marquardt, who sought a position as vice chair of the Utah Democratic Party’s Central Committee. You see, Jane holds another vice chair position: Vice chair of the board at Management and Training Corporation (MTC), America’s third largest operator of for-profit prisons. Yet the Democratic Party claims to stand for immigrants, the poor, people of color, and the LGBT community, all of which are groups that Jane Marquardt’s company cages and abuses for profit." Continue reading →
"Fifty-nine years ago, a CIA bioweapons expert named Frank Olson attended a secret meeting where he was unwittingly given a drink laced with an experimental hallucinogenic compound now known as LSD. In the early hours of November 28, Olson fell to his death from the window of a 13th-floor hotel room. The Agency described the incident as a suicide, concealing the LSD test until 1975. His sons now filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit claiming that the scientist was murdered to conceal illegal interrogations that had been conducted by the agency using biological agents he had developed, resulting in the deaths of detainees in Norway and Germany." Continue reading →
"CIA agents tortured a German citizen, sodomising, shackling, and beating him, as Macedonian state police looked on, the European court of human rights said in a historic judgment released on Thursday. In a unanimous ruling, it also found Macedonia guilty of torturing, abusing, and secretly imprisoning Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese origin allegedly linked to terrorist organisations. Masri was seized in Macedonia in December 2003 and handed over to a CIA 'rendition team' at Skopje airport and secretly flown to Afghanistan. It is the first time the court has described CIA treatment meted out to terror suspects as torture." Continue reading →
"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed an order Friday to send two Patriot missile batteries to Turkey to protect it from rounds crossing the border from Syria. The order includes 400 American personnel to operate the batteries. 'We are deploying two patriot batteries here to Turkey along with the troops that are necessary to man those batteries, so that we can help Turkey have the kind of missile defense it may very well need in dealing with threats that come out of Syria,' Panetta told the troops at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey." Continue reading →
"The Obama administration hasn't ruled out having the Air Force play a lead role in transporting troops and equipment for an African-led intervention to dislodge militant Islamists in Mali, the Pentagon's top Africa official said Wednesday. The United Nations Security Council is weighing whether to approve a West African force of about 3,300 troops to take over the desert expanses of the country's northern half, which broke away following a March coup. Mali and its neighbors oppose any intervention by non-African troops. The United States, however, is involved in advising the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), which is putting the intervention force together." Continue reading →
"One more noteworthy news item that went down the memory hole." Continue reading →