Prison hunger strike succeeds...

at one prison, continues at others
Don't worry, peaceniks, it's a "non-lethal" weapon... unless I choose to shoot y'all in the face, which is my right because (I can say) I feel threatened -- even though I have a gun, reinforcements, and am specially trained to control, corral, and torture.

Tortured on the street and finished off behind bars. That is what US citizens can expect due to living in the freest country in the world, which the entire world envies. Of course, we are only the strongest empire. We are far from free. As we stand in solidarity with one another, 99 percent of us, we will first be stripped even of the appearance of rights. Police have official permission to riot, to provoke, antagonize, torture, and then to arrest and retaliate for the trouble they have been put through.

Those who sit on juries will sympathize with PR firms, legal consultants, county prosecutors and the tales the three concoct. But as the people occupy Wall Street and every major city in the country, there is hope that we can turn these human rights abuses around. The lowliest among us, our prisoners, have stood up to the outrages of officially sanctioned torture. And there may be a modicum of justice as the internal policing mechanism investigates itself.

The other hunger strike solidarity prisons have not even been granted that, so the protest continues. Meanwhile, on the streets of now more than 1,000 US cities, the occupation is on. Los Angeles in particular catches our attention, even though recently Occupy San Diego and Occupy Wall Street faced mass arrest for not moving on demand. Some unlucky LA demonstrators may soon find themselves in the very hell we have been protesting. Most citizens of the empire (that's us) do not care a whit about "prisoners." We may start when we suddenly find ourselves judged, juried, and waiting to be executed by a Sheriff guard having a bad day.

U.S. widens inquiry into abuse at L.A. County jails
Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times
Unconvicted men at the LA County Jail are routinely abused by sheriffs. The Sheriff's Department runs the jail under Lee Baca with rookie trainees who are forced to first work as guards to harden them for abusing suspects, minorities, and other "undesirables" and covering up such crimes once on the street.

Sheriff's Department seeks to curtail the extent of subpoenas, which seek data on workers since 2009. Federal authorities have widened their misconduct investigation into the Los Angeles County jail system, demanding internal Sheriff's Department documents detailing deputies' use of force on inmates over several years, as well as other records.

Sheriff's officials balked at the size and scope of the subpoenas when they were served several weeks ago and are negotiating with federal prosecutors to reduce the number of documents they must produce. More

• Code of silence among jail guards hinders abuse probes, watchdog says
• ACLU files suit over alleged racial profiling of students
• Convicting an officer is a tough challenge, experts say
• Full coverage: Jails under scrut

Alternatives to Prison (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, StreetVisuals.posterous.com/Prison Industrial Complex

Is privatization and the creation of "Gladiator Schools" in a prison-industrial complex the answer?

If asking one prison to beat, maim, or kill another is not effective, torture is prescribed (forced cell extraction, sitting on, arm twisting, manhandling, hog tying, pepper spraying, stripping naked, beating, concussion, choke holds, beatings, shooting, blinding, and on to death) at the discretion of prison guards and officials. Crime? Disobeying or not obeying quickly enough to suit draconian standard procedures. This torture is filmed because it complies with standards and practices. The camera is turned off when guards choose to employ "cruel and unusual" measures they would never likely be prosecuted for or even charged with.

• PrisonerHungerStrikeSolidarity: Amnesty Int'l
• "US banks must pay!"
• Must banks pay for botched foreclosures?
  
• PrisonerSolidarity.org
  
• BostonReview.net
  

Occupy Wall Street protesters driven by varying goals
[W]eeks into an anti-greed sit-in, the "leaderless resistance movement" is at a crossroads. Day # of Occupy Wall Street begins with a march through the streets of Lower Manhattan (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

NEW YORK (LA Times) - Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon have dropped in. A seasoned diplomat dispenses free advice. Supporters send everything from boxes of food and clothes to Whole Foods gift cards. They even have their own app, for the legions of fans following them on iPhones and Androids. Source

Alternative to Incarceration, Reentry in New York

• Afghan Women's Mission comes to America
  
• Chaung Yen Monastery (BAUS.org)
• Energy Enhancements, salvation or scam?
• Shamanism (nomadictrails.com)
• Native American Meditation
• Disinformation versus Truth
• Saving the Disabled in Sierra Leone, Africa
  

OccupyTogether.org

Torture Continues, US Prison Strike Resumes

Wisdom Quarterly
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity

One might say "I don't care about people in jail" or argue that torturing prisoners is okay -- as long as it is hidden behind walls and bars, where convicts are stripped of human rights at the hands of barbaric paramilitary jailers.

These are not prisoner gangsters but prison guard gangsters, who soon become worse than the prisoners they torment, taking on much of the behavior they torture them over.

If they say they have to employ military tactics against civilians, they should know. Prisoners have no rights to say otherwise because the entire "justice" system undermines and brutalizes them as if torture were redeeming and the path to rehabilitation.

But the issue here is torture for being labeled ("validated") as a gang member when one is not. This is not additional punishment. It is tormenting and inflicting unimaginable suffering. Many do not survive it intact, and the guards/police who inflict it become damaged personalities.

Damaged former guards stand ready to torture non-prisoners without a second thought. (Sheriffs in California must first be jail guards where they are desensitized to torturing "criminals," indoctrinated into a racist system, and taught to lie and cover it up conspiratorially as part of a "code of silence" that shields fellow jailers and officers).

Simply being labeled a "gang member" for any reason whatsoever -- it is really at the sole discretion of guards and officials -- gets one sent without trial into isolation for years. There may, however, be an administrative hearing -- run by and for prison administrators.

An "indefinite" sentence means one is locked up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and comes out of a miniature cell to "exercise" in a slightly larger cell. This is torture and leads to derangement.

The way out? Death by becoming an informant (prison "snitch") even when there is no information to reveal. Invent it, because that whatever names are given up in the process will lead to their torture and administrative relocation into "security" housing.

This is the treatment Bradley Manning received to break him and have him falsely accuse Julian Assange so that his testimony could be used to convict the founder of WikiLeaks. Holding someone indefinitely for the purpose of extracting information is illegal by international standards.

Prison officials get all the say, and prisoners get all the torture. Meanwhile, the American public is told:

"Oh, these prisoners are complaining because they want more dessert, but we explained to them that they would have to do their homework first. Then they spit at us so, of course, we had to cripple, maim, and in some instances kill them and make it look like suicide. O, can you leave that last part out, you know, about the maiming and killing." And mainstream media and politicians are more than happy to oblige by keeping the deceptive message on point.

Why?
Why is it being done at the cost of hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars? It is being done because it is highly profitable (for guards, the guard union, corporations, and politicians who use it as a "getting tough on crime" campaign platform, the police state).

Those who profit, particularly corporate interests, have been dubbed the "prison-industrial complex." There success leads to the US having the largest (and growing) per capita imprisonment rate in the world.

Almost all of them will get out. We are not safer for them having been tortured; we are imperiled now in terms of outrageous costs (it would actually be cheaper to send each outcast prisoner to an Ivy League college) going into the pockets of corporations and politicians and later in terms of recidivism (new crimes being committed in the future).

Stop the insanity. Stop the torture. Stop the mindbogglingly unfair (motivated by base desires for aversion, revenge, and ignorance) treatment of not only human beings but American citizens. Because we allow it here with members of our community -- and due to extreme sentencing -- our own friends and neighbors, we do not seem to think much of it when our military and CIA tortures in our name around the world.

Enlightened self-interest is the way to freedom. Torturing prisoners or anyone harms all of us.

California Prisoner Hunger Strike Resumes

Sept. 26, 2011 (prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity)

Prisoners at Pelican Bay’s SHU (Security Housing Unit) and Calipatria’s ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit) resume their hunger strike.

The strike this past July exposed the conditions and practices of Pelican Bay’s SHU. Referring to the first round of the hunger strike, Mutope Duguma (aka, James Crawford), a strike representative in Pelican Bay’s SHU writes:

• “This is far from over. And once again, hopefully for the last time, we will be risking our lives via a peaceful hunger strike [beginning] on Sept. 26, 2011 to force positive changes. For 21 1/2 years we have been quietly held in Pelican Bay State Prison solitary confinement under some of the most horrible conditions known to man. So we continue to struggle to be treated like decent human beings.”

Now over 100 hunger strikers at Calipatria State Prison -- in solidarity with the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay -- are risking their lives to expose the conditions of the ASU at Calipatria.

According to Calipatria ASU prisoners, roughly 80% of the prisoners in the ASU have been given indefinite SHU terms. They are placed in this isolation unit awaiting transfer to one of California’s three other SHU’s for men, namely Pelican Bay. Most of the prisoners currently in Calipatria’s ASU have been awaiting transfer for 3-4 years.

ASU prisoners at Calipatria report that prison officials have not been implementing the changes addressed by the five core demands written by the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay even though the demands refer to all SHU-status prisoners throughout California, not just at Pelican Bay. More


Treat 'em like slaves. That'll teach 'em to disobey! Hey, lock 'em up and throw away the key. And I don't care what they done. Maybe they ain't done nothing -- we gotta keep 'em down. Mercy for prisoners? Hell, I ain't got no mercy for no one, except we got a badge.

Legal "Slave Labor" taking US jobs (ALEC)

James Wilson, a Berrydale Forestry Camp farm squad prisoner, finishes loading collard greens on a truck at the Univ. of Florida West Florida Research and Education Facility in Jay, Florida, Feb. 7, 2011 (Meggan Haller/The New York Times).

The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor
Mike Elk and Bob Sloan, The Nation (Report, August 5, 2011)

This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduces the series.

The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners.

At the Union Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken, and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products... More

• 

FRESH AIR: “[Republican legislators] now hold more state legislative seats than at any time since 1928, the year that Herbert Hoover came to the presidency,” says reporter John Nichols. “They control 25 states [with] both houses of the legislature. There are also 21 states where Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governorship. And in the backroom of politics, that’s what people really want. If you’ve got governor, state House and state Senate, you can pretty much roll through whatever legislation you want.” Nichols, a political reporter for The Nation, recently wrote the introduction and co-authored two in a series of articles about the relationship that state-based legislators have with a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is a group that brings together state legislators and representatives of corporations to draft model bills that can then be introduced at the state level of government. An archive of ALEC documents was recently leaked to the Center for Media and Democracy. “All of those pieces oflegislation and those resolutions [in the documents] really err toward a goal, and that goal is the advancement of an agenda that seems to be dictated at almost every turn by multinational corporations,” Nichols tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “It’s to clear the way for lower taxes, less regulation, a lot of protection against lawsuits, [and] ALEC is very, very active in [the] opening up of areas via privatization for corporations to make more money, particularly in places you might not usually expect like public education.” MORE

• Plutocracy Now: A Vast Right-wing Conspiracy

ALEC: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America
American Association of Justice (justice.org)

The Koch Brothers, big tobacco, insurance companies, and the drug industry: all behind the shadowy corporate front group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

On the surface, ALEC is mostly comprised of thousands of state legislators, each paying a nominal fee to attend ALEC retreats and receive model legislation. In reality, corporations pay ALEC a king’s ransom to access legislators to distribute radical legislation that puts corporate interests over American workers and consumers.

So, while the membership appears to be public sector, corporate money dominates ALEC. In fact, public sector membership dues account for only around one percent of ALEC’s annual revenues. ALEC claims to be nonpartisan, but its pro-corporate, anti-consumer mission is clear.

Read about ALEC’s hand in protecting oil companies, chemical manufacturers and Wall Street banks in AAJ’s report here: More

• AAJ Release: Report lifts veil on ALEC's pro-corporate, anti-consumer mission
• Anthony Tarricone: ALEC Ghostwriting the Law (HuffPo)
• Disappeared News: Hawaii's hidden history, slave labor
• GO FISH: How to Win Contempt and Influence People:

CDCR lies about Prison Strike Resolution

Wisdom Quarterly


KPFK Evening News (July 21, 2011 6:00 pm)

• LISTEN NOW (Download)

As it turns out, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDRC) has continued its propaganda campaign or public relations effort to undermine the prisoner hunger strike protesting torture, inhumane conditions, and unfair assignment to psychologically damaging (and extraordinarily expensive to taxpayers) super maximum imprisonment.

• California prison hunger strike still on More than 400 inmates remain on hunger strike at the California State Prison in Corcoran...

The hunger strike is not over -- in spite of the fact that this is exactly what the CDRC reported. Knowing that there was no resolution but reporting one means the difficult to trust CDRC is now caught spreading disinformation to spare itself embarrassment as helpless prisoners call attention to their treatment and the injustices inherent in the present system.

• LIE: Hunger strike over, according to prison officials
• REALITY: Striking prisoners show signs of starvation
  

We are sad to have reported a resolution along with the misled mainstream media. It is not possible to contact prisoners because all of their activities are controlled, censored, and adjudicated by prison officials. Therefore there was no independent confirmation possible to verify their claims. Lawyers are attempting contact to find out exactly where the hunger strike stands.

Why we love prisoners; Inmates halt strike

Prison hunger strike solidarity demonstration (Los Angeles Times/Mel Melcon)

Pelican Bay inmates halt hunger strike
Sam Stanton (Sacramento Bee)

Inmates who began a hunger strike at Pelican Bay State Prison on July 1 to protest [torture] their treatment inside the facility and the Security Housing Unit have ended the effort, officials with the CDCR announced today. The inmates halted the hunger strike Wednesday "after they better understood CDCR's plans, developed since January, to review and change some policies regarding SHU housing and gang management. These changes, to date, include providing cold-weather caps, wall calendars, and some educational opportunities for SHU inmates." More

Why is Wisdom Quarterly Covering This?


We do not work for the prisoners, and we do not work for the wardens. But we oftentimes do work for Kwan Yin, the Buddhist "Goddess" of Compassion.

A bodhisattva (someone intent on supreme enlightenment to benefit all beings) does not limit her compassion, so why would we limit ours? As a society we imprison more citizens than any country in the world. It has been made into a for-profit industry (the prison industrial complex) with a goal to imprison and go worldwide.

We are not being enriched or profiting in any way as a state or nation. We are less safe for it, and poorer. That profit goes to private industry and to a massive prison guard's union, which lines the pockets of politicians who sing themselves to election with the refrain "tough on crime, tough on crime."

This "toughness" we support by voting for such politicians out of fear is bankrupting us, impoverishing us ethically and spiritually, debasing our humanity, and NOT making us safer.

There may be a worldwide fascist movement (remnants of Nazis who were brought to this country to work on nuclear bombs, space travel, intercontinental missiles, social control, propaganda, public relations, etc.), active CIA covert operations, hypocrisy from Israel and other nations on a level never before seen). But that does not mean we have to cave in to the insanity or the untruths that hold it in place.

Ordinary citizens cheer for the killing and torture of our prisoners in the name of revenge -- calling it "justice" and calling themselves "good" for doing it.

Good (such as justice, progress, and humanity) is not brought about by "bad" means -- police misconduct, kangaroo court trials, routine torture, inhumane isolation, degradation, rape, bestial violence, careless misappropriation of tax dollars, state-sponsored executions.

We think it's okay so long as we imagine these injustices are being done to the "other." There is no other.

WE are a society and prisoners are part of it. As such, everyone here is entitled to fairness, protection, and compassion.

Why does Wisdom Quarterly cover this unpopular segment of society? A better question might be why others interested in peace and justice or socially-engaged Buddhism do not.

The Buddha never limited his compassion to those deemed "good." In fact, our compassion is needed most for the least among us.

• Ksitigarbha's compassionate vow to free all hellions
  

Stop Torturing Our Prisoners

Is Prison Hunger Strike resolving?

Wisdom Quarterly

"The real measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members."

The weakest means its imprisoned citizens, the disenfranchised, impoverished, jobless, its animals. These are in need of more compassion, not less.

There are unconfirmed reports that Pelican Bay torture (Special Handling Unit) victims have begun taking food. Their hunger strike to call attention to deplorable conditions tantamount to CIA-sponsored secret prisons on foreign soil. Pelican Bay is in California and represents a kind of prison built for psychological and physical torture.

• Prisoners on Hunger Strike to Protest Conditions
  

SuperMax housing is not more secure housing, as it is intended to be. It is less safe by virtue of the fact that victims of this kind of treatment go insane by being deprived of human contact. Worse is the fact that what gets one sent to such facilities has little to do with the danger they present. Any documented affiliation with a gang -- even standing in a picture with a prisoner who is later determined to be a member -- means permanent lock up in maximum security. The real reason for this? Pressure by California's largest and most powerful union, the Prison Guard's Union ensuring is growth and success. As difficult as this is to believe, three-strikes legislation was also lobbied for and financed by this union. And going deeper, the real reason behind this SuperMax movement is a worldwide fascist movement. The Nazis did not lose WW II as we are taught. They went underground (often invited to America to work and prosper here teaching SS techniques to clandestine services like the CIA, NASA, FBI, NSA, Mi5, Mi6, Moussad, KGB, and so on around the world. Impossible? Our CIA would never do that or teach others to do that?

Repression Breeds Resistance!

PrisonerHungerStrikeSolidarity, July 20, 2011
Reaching at least 6,600 prisoners across 13 prisons, this massive and inspiring act of solidarity and people power across prison-manufactured and exacerbated racial and geographic lines has dumbfounded the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, nothing about routine torture). While the daily numbers of hunger strikers fluctuates, the CDCR is underestimating how many people inside prison are participating in and supporting this strike.

Richard C. Hoagland put together the pieces -- NAZIs, NASA, and global fascism because the NAZI movement itself lived on stronger than ever after WW II.

Poll finding: Fewer prisoners, Lower taxes

USC College, July 20, 2011

For the second year in a row, USC (University of Southern California) Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences is partnering with the Los Angeles Times for a public opinion poll about the state of California.

• Poll finds shift in attitudes toward release of prisoners
  

The poll finds Californians would rather release prisoners than pay for more prisons or have their taxes misappropriated, reversing a trend promising to get "tough on crime" that has bankrupted the state without making it any safer. In fact, politicians, the private prison industry, and the prison guard's union have been enriched at staggering taxpayer expense. Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, and Evan Halper, Sacramento Bureau Chief from the Los Angeles Times, discuss how the public feels about what to do about the current prison system. Visit USC Dornsife Web site for more info: dornsife.usc.edu/poll

• VIDEO: USC putting artifacts in students' hands