12-04-22 Torture: It did not start in GITMO, Abu Ghraib, or Afghanistan, but in the medieval prisons in the territorial United States

The degree to which the US has degraded itself can be gleaned from the fact that the treatise "Democracy in America" (1835 ) was the outcome of de Tocqueville's travels in the US to survey the prison system.  At the time it was considered by far more humane than any of its European counterparts.  Today, the situation is dramatically reversed.
     Water Boarding
The Rampart Scandal and the Criminal Justice System in Los Angeles County.By Erwin Chemerinsky:  Guild Practitioner, 57:121 (2001)"This is conduct associated with the most repressive dictators and police states... and judges must share responsibility when innocent people are convicted."     “No single reform can be sufficient.  Reform is not an event, but a process that will take many years to complete.
READ MORE:http://www.scribd.com/doc/27433920/
____Torture Inc. - Americas Brutal PrisonsSavaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?
By Deborah Davies (2005)
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. ‘Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.’

If a prisoner doesn’t drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There’s a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.

Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can’t crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes. 

READ MORE:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm

____The American Prison and the Normalization of Torture
By H. Bruce Franklin
The prison has become a central institution in American society, integral to our politics, economy, and culture. Between 1976 and 2000, the United States built on average a new prison each week and the number of imprisoned Americans increased tenfold. With a current prison and jail population of over two million, America has become the uncontested world leader in incarceration. Prison has made the threat of torture part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States, especially the 6.9 million currently incarcerated or otherwise under the control of the penal system. More insidiously, our prison system has helped make torture a normal, legitimate, even routine part of American culture.

Imprisonment itself, even when relatively benign, is arguably a form of torture. This is implicit in our society using prison as the most dire legal form of both "punishment" and "deterrence," except for execution. Moreover, in the typical American prison, designed and run to maximize degradation, brutalization, and punishment, overt torture is the norm. Beatings, electric shock, prolonged exposure to heat and even immersion in scalding water, sodomy with riot batons, nightsticks, flashlights, and broom handles, shackled prisoners forced to lie in their own excrement for hours or even days, months of solitary confinement, rape and murder by guards or prisoners instructed by guards--all are everyday occurrences in the American prison system.

READ MORE:http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/resources/torture/brucefranklin.html

____What Goes On There Is More Like Gulags Of Centuries Ago.Regarding the imprisonment of "Birther" Lt. Commander Walter Fitzpatrick, III, in Monroe County, Tenessee.(2011)

READ MORE:http://www.scribd.com/doc/72546279/ 

12-04-21 Half of America is officially poor

Half of America is officially poor

 


While it’s no surprise that nearly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, new statistics from the US Census show that almost 100 million others are counted as low-income citizens, making half of the population of America officially poor.

READ MORE:http://rt.com/usa/news/half-poor-america-poverty-909/ 

12-04-21 How Goldman Sachs Captured Europe

In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress. But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair. Paulson’s plea for a —the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.

By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a for European banks without asking anyone’s permission. And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was with barely even a mention in the press. The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.

READ MORE:
http://www.nationofchange.org/european-stabilization-mechanism-or-how-goldman-vampire-squid-just-captured-europe-1334847067

12-04-21 BUSH made torture legal, OBAMA only took the concept a step further...

 

How America Came To Torture Its Prisoners

I read nearly 140,000 formerly classified documents about America’s abuse of prisoners since 2001. Here is what I learned.
By Larry Siems|Posted Friday, April 20, 2012, at 1:37 PM ET
   
             
A Guantanamo detainee's feet shackled to the floor. "Gitmo" has been a source of controversy regarding the torture of prisoners.

Michelle Shepard/AFP/Getty Images.
It began with one document.

On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush sent a 12-page Memorandum of Notification to his National Security Council. That memorandum, we know now, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to set up and run secret prisons. We still don’t know exactly what it says: CIA attorneys have told a judge the document is so off-limits to the courts and the American people that even the font is classified. But we do know what it did: It literally opened a space for torture.

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit­a lawsuit the New York Times has called “among the most successful in the history of public disclosure”­we now know much of what happened in those secret spaces the Bush administration created. Under that litigation, the American Civil Liberties Uniongathered nearly 140,000 formerly classified documents from the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the CIA that detail the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in the “War on Terror.” My job, as the author of the website www.thetorturereport.org and then of the book The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America’s Post-9/11 Torture Program, was to dig through that incredible trove of documents and figure out for myself what, exactly, my country had done.
READ MORE:http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/04/george_w_bush_and_torture_america_s_highest_officials_are_responsible_for_the_enhanced_interrogation_of_prisoners_.html

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12-04-21 Bet Tzedek Gala production! (June 30, 2012) SANDOR SAMUELS as the Scarlet Letter of the Los Angeles Jewish Community

The charade goes on - SANDOR SAMUELS, one of the key figures in criminality that underlies the financial crisis, appears as the “President and CEO” of BET TZEDEK (“The House of Justice”), an affiliate of the LOS ANGELES JEWISH FEDERATION. The evidence shows him engaging in racketeering even in his capacity of President of BET TZEDEK, but both BET TZEDEK and the LOS ANGELES JEWISH FEDERATION refuse to address the matter.  ADL – of "justice and fair treatment for all" – remains mum, when it comes to one of the best documented Jewish rackets.  There is no way of telling how many lives have been ruined for the greed of SANDOR SAMUELS, DAVID PASTERNAK and TERRY FRIEDMAN.

 
DAVID PASTERNAK (former President), SANDOR SAMUELS (President/CEO), TERRY FRIEDMAN (former Executive Director) – Jewish racketeers of BET TZEDEK (the "House of Justice"), an affiliate of the LOS ANGELES JEWISH FEDERATION                                       

View as PDF:     http://www.scribd.com/doc/90523513/View video:      Streamlining Mortgage and Foreclosure Fraud, or How Sandor Samuels became Mr Jewish Justice... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-IXHL99zVY    ("Blocked in some countries")http://flix.tapuz.co.il/showVideo.asp?m=4077568https://vimeo.com/40712077http://www.myspace.com/video/rid/111196214
Los Angeles, April 21  – “The charade goes on - SANDOR SAMUELS, one of the key figures in the criminality that underlies the financial crisis, appears as the “President and CEO” of BET TZEDEK (“The House of Justice”), an affiliate of the LOS ANGELES JEWISH FEDERATION,” comments Joseph Zernik, PhD, of Human Rights Alert (NGO), regarding the upcoming June 30, 2012 Bet Tzedek gala production, “SAMUELS and BET TZEDEK are bound to be remembered as the Scarlet Letter of the Los Angeles Jewish Community.”

As Chief Legal Officer of COUNTRYWIDE FINANCIAL CORPORATION and later Associate General Counsel of BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION, SANDOR SAMUELS was:

• Starting at least in the early 2000s - key figure in establishing corrupt organization practices in Countrywide, with an unprecedented fraud on the US tax payer, on shareholders, and on homeowners nationwide;
• Starting in the early 2000s – key figure in corruption of the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles and the US District Court, Central District of California;
• Starting March 2007 – central figure in conduct amounting to racketeering in the Los Angeles Superior Court, on the grounds of BET TZEDEK, as President of BET TZEDEK; [i]
• In January 2008 – directly responsible for the collapse of COUNTRYWIDE, following the publication of news of fraud through the filing of “Recreated Letters” as evidence in the US Bankruptcy Court in PA by COUNTRYWIDE’s attorneys. [ii]
• In March 2008 – directly responsible for the fraud in the US District Court, TX by attorneys for COUNTRYWIDE, and the Memorandum Opinion by the Hon Judge Jeff Bohm, which reads as a catalog of fraud methods by COUNTRYWIDE in courts throughout the United States. [iii]
• Starting July 2008 – directly responsible for establishing the same conduct in BANK OF AMERICA. [iv]
• 2010 – key figure in Human Rights Alert’s report, which was incorporated into the United Nations Human Rights Council Staff Report, with a note referring to “corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California”. [v]

The LOS ANGELES JEWISH FEDERATION and BET TZEDEK have been repeatedly requested, since 2007, to initiate corrective actions. [vi] Both have consistently refused to respond.

In the meanwhile, SANDOR SAMUELS continues to serve on the boards of other Los Angeles Jewish institutions as well:

• ADAT ARI-EL SYNAGOGUE
• AMERICAN JEWISH UNIVERSITY, LOS ANGELES
• SHALHEVET SCHOOL
• ZIEGLER SCHOOL OF RABBINIC STUDIES

The synergistic corruption of the US justice system and US financial institutions is at the heart of the current crisis. [vii]  And SANDOR SAMUELS, one of the key architects of the corruption, is now re-invented by the LOS ANGELES JEWISH COMMUNITY, as Mr Jewish Justice. 

“Public corruption is properly reserved for describing corruption in full public view.  SANDOR SAMUELS is a fine example,” concludes Dr Zernik,  “There is no way to tell how many lives have been ruined for the greed of BET TZEDEK’s SANDOR SAMUELS, DAVID PASTERNAK and TERRY FRIEDMAN.
Note:
Releases, pertaining to corruption in BET TZEDEK and the LOS ANGELES JEWISH FEDERATION were copied to the ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE (ADL), to BET TZEDEK, and the LOS ANGELES JEWISH FEDERATION with requests for comments.  No comments have been returned so far. [viii]

LINKS[i] 10-06-11 Call for Accountability by the Jewish Community for Rampant Fraud at Los Angeles Superior Court
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32918651/
10-10-05 The Los Angeles Jewish legal community again asked to assume accountability for conduct of Bet Tzedek “The House of Justice”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38696210/
10-10-11 Holly Fujie and Bet Tzedek the Los Angeles Jewish Legal Community Again Asked to Assume Accountability for Conduct of Bet Tzedek The House of Justice
http://www.scribd.com/doc/39099300/
11-03-17 No shame left in the Los Angeles Jewish Community; Countrywide’s Sandor Samuels is again President of Bet Tzedek - “The House of Justice”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/50960691/
11-06-06 PRESS RELEASE: Bet Tzedek – the Los Angeles “House of Justice” - a Jewish Justice Celebration!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/57205711/
[ii] 08-01-08 Case of Borrower Hills (01-22574) - in the US Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh. Countrywide's Three "Recreated Letters" and a Transcript
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25003494/  
[iii] 08-03-05 Case of Borrower William Parsley (05-90374), Dkt #248: Judge Jeff Bohm's Memorandum Opinion, rebuking Countrywide's litigation practices, Countrywide's false outside counsel scheme - appearances by counsel who are not Counsel of Record, with "no communications with clients" clause:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25001966/
[iv] 10-05-05 Countrywide, Bank of America [NYSE;BAC], and its President Brian Moynihan Compilation of Records Evidence of Racketeering
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30975368/
10-05-05 Chairs of US Congress Committees of the Judiciary and Banking Are Requested to Join Senator Feinstein's Inquiries on Comptroller of the Currency
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30979882/
10-07-06 Complaint Filed with US Attorney Office Los Angeles Against Moynihan Bank of America [NYSE:BAC] Bryan Cave LLP Alleging Racketeering
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33971099/
10-07-06 Complaint Filed with US Attorney Office, Los Angeles, Against Brian Moynihan, Bank of America [NYSE:BAC], Bryan Cave LLP, Alleging Racketeering and Large Scale Financial Institution Fraud
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33971099/
[v] 10-04-19 Human Rights Alert (NG0) submission to the  United Nations Human Rights Council  for the 2010 Review (UPR) of Human Rights in the United States as incorporated into the UPR staff report, with a note referring to "corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination  by law enforcement in California".
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38566837/
[vi] See [i], above.
[vii] 11-08-08 PRESS RELEASE: Fraud and Corruption in the US Courts are Tightly Linked to Failing Banking Regulation and the Global Economic Crisis – presentation in the 16th World Criminology Congress, Japan
http://www.scribd.com/doc/62153608/
[viii] 11-05-05 PRESS RELEASE: Anti Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman is asked to opine on allegations of Public Corruption, Racketeering in the Los Angeles Jewish/Legal Community
http://www.scribd.com/doc/54666630/[ix] 11-07-04 Joseph Zernik,PhD, Biographical Sketch
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46421113/___________Joseph Zernik, PhD [ix]Human Rights Alert (NGO)  
The 2010 submission of Human Rights Alert to the Human Rights Council (HRC) of the United Nations was reviewed by the HRC professional staff and incorporated in the official HRC Professional Staff Report with a note referring to “corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California.”  The 2010 UN UPR report called upon the United States to stop executions, restore habeas corpus and close GITMO, abolish slavery, criminalize torture...
Human Rights Alert online  Flag Counter: 137http://inproperinla.blogspot.com/ 
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http://human-rights-alert.blogspot.com/ Total Reads: 780,060 + 116,012 Followers: 1,448http://www.scribd.com/Human_Rights_Alerthttp://www.scribd.com/SeyagLizhuyotHaadam Total Reads: 30,547http://twitter.com/inproperinla
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http://www.examiner.com/x-38742-LA-Business-Headlines-Examinerhttp://www.facebook.com/joseph.zernik Facebook Friends: 1,611_____________________________
Take away justice, then, and what are governments but great bandit bands?Saint Augustine, Civitas Dei (City of God,4.4)
_____________________________WHAT DID THE EXPERT SAY ABOUT THE CURRENT FINANCIAL CRISIS?
*  "I think it's difficult to find a fraud of this size on the U.S. court system in U.S. history," said Raymond Brescia, a visiting professor at Yale Law School who has written articles analyzing the role of courts in the financial crisis. "I can't think of one where you have literally tens of thousands of fraudulent documents filed in tens of thousands of cases." Reuters (Jan 22, 2012)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/79572282/* Foreclosure fraud: The homeowner nightmares continueCNN (April 7, 2011)
* About 3 million homes have been repossessed since the housing boom ended in 2006… That number could balloon to about 6 million by 2013 Bloomberg (January 2011)
* "...a system in which only the little people have to obey the law, while the rich, and bankers especially, can cheat and defraud without consequences." http://www.scribd.com/doc/50753639/Prof Paul Krugman, MIT (2011)
_____________________________
WHAT DID THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA?* "...judges tried and sentenced a staggering number of people for crimes they did not commit." Prof David Burcham, Dean, Loyola Law School, LA (2001)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29043589/
* "This is conduct associated with the most repressive dictators and police states... and judges must share responsibility when innocent people are convicted."     Prof Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, Irvine Law School (2001) http://www.scribd.com/doc/27433920/* "Innocent people remain in prison"* "...the LA Superior Court and the DA office, the two other parts of the justice system that the Blue Panel Report recommends must be investigated relative to the integrity of the system, have not produced any response that we know of..."LAPD Blue Ribbon Review Panel Report (2006)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24902306 /_____________________________
WHAT DID THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IN CALIFORNIA?* "...corruption of the courts and the legal profession and discrimination by law enforcement in California." United Nations Human Rights Council Staff Report (2010)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38566837/_____________________________
WHAT DID THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE STATE COURTS IN THE UNITED STATES?
* "On July 26, 2010, Laurence Tribe, Senior Counsel for the United States Department of Justice, Access to Justice Initiative, delivered an important speech to the Conference of Chief Justices, challenging them to halt the disintegration of our state justice systems before they become indistinguishable from courts of third world nations."Prof Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School (2010), per National Defender Leadership Institute (2010)
http://www.nlada.net/library/article/national_dojspeechto%20chiefjustice07-26-2010_gideonalert
_____________________________
WHAT DID THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE CONDITIONS IN THE PRISON IN MONROE COUNTY, TENESSEE?* "What goes on there is more like gulags of centuries ago."ACLUhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/72546279/_____________________________
WHAT DID THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES?* "More than 100 law professors have signed on to a letter released today that proposes congressional hearings and legislation aimed at fashioning "mandatory and enforceable" ethics rules for Supreme Court justices for the first time. The effort, coordinated by the liberal Alliance for Justice, was triggered by "recent media reports," the letter said, apparently referring to stories of meetings and other potential conflicts of interest involving Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas among others."More than 100 law professors, as reported by the Blog of the Legal Times (February 2011) http://www.scribd.com/doc/49586436/_____________________________
WHAT DID CHIEF JUDGE OF THE US COURT OF APPEALS, 5TH CIRCUIT, SAY ABOUT THE US JUSTICE SYSTEM?
* "The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition..."
Chief Judge, US Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit, Edith Jones, speaking before the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School (February 2003)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/50137887/_____________________________
WHAT DID THE CHAIR OF THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE SAY ABOUT THE US JUSTICE SYSTEM?* In a speech in Georgetown University, Senator Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee called for a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" on the US Department of Justice.Transcript of Senator Leahy speech (2009)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38472251/
_________________________________________~ If it ain't a Party, it ain't my occupation ~

OccuParty Jerusalem-AlQuds!
August 17 - ?, 2012
Love, Peace, Justice 
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