"The Militants, the Militants, the threat to society they pose."

[kpete]

Friday, May 16, 2008
Back in the Day
Facing a New Kind of Enemy

The United States faces an existential threat, one that threatens society to its very core. Militants are jailed by a War President. After they are jailed, there are meetings to decide how to keep them, meetings about what to charge them with. They are subjected to harsh conditions. Public opinion runs high against these people. Militants on Hunger Strike! the papers proclaim. The U.S. is required by a treaty to treat prisoners of war humanely, but these are not prisoners of war.

In their prison, the "high value detainees" are subject to solitary confinement, twenty four hours a day. They are denied access to lawyers, while lawyers fight to file habeas corpus petitions for them. They are stripped, they are slapped, reports surface that a detainee has been beaten unconscious and left on the cell floor, untreated. They are shackled by their wrists to the ceiling and left there overnight. Meanwhile, a prisoner with a heart attack is ignored, and denied medical attention, and dies. Meanwhile, immigrants and minorities are subject to some of the same privations. The health care for the poor is so bad that people go to prison to obtain medical procedures. Members of some immigrant groups are castigated and demonstrated against.

The detainees start to hunger strike. The alleged leader, already in solitary confinement, is subjected to a long interrogation, psychiatrists are asked by the government to help break the detainees. The President is kept at least nominally informed of the tactics, and makes public statements that the tactics are humane and gentle. The high value detainees are subject to sleep deprivation, bright lights are shone in their solitary confinement cells once an hour to keep them from sleeping. The hunger strike continues, they are subjected to conscious orogastric intubation, which causes gagging and vomiting. They are subjected to conscious nasogastric intubation, more vomiting. Their nasal passages and throats are raw and swollen. Still, public sentiment is that they have attacked the country at its core, and after all, the country is at war, the President is seen as right to deal with the militants. The Militants, the Militants, the threat to society they pose.



Alice Paul, and the other "Militants", members of the National Women's Party, are released from Occoquan Workhouse. The year is 1917.
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrage1900/a/suffrage_brutal.htm

more at:
http://humanityagainstcrimes.blogspot.com/2008/05/back-in-day.html