I just got the press release (below) emailed to me by a friend, about the treatment of arrestees and prisoners in good 'ol 'progressive' San Francisco. This kind of abuse--and worse--is endemic in U.S. prisons.
Also, Judi Lynn just posted a new expose about a US Army PsyOps Group (US Army National Ground Intelligence Center--headquarters in Florida), with an overall budget of $8 billion (worldwide) which has been focusing on defaming the Chavez government in Venezuela since (at least) 2006. US Army Psyops has a far reach, within the corpo/fascist media, and around the world. How do we know that this focus on Venezuelan prisons is, a) true, and b) objective, undistorted? (Are prisons in other South American countries any better? What about Colombia, where rightwing death squad members and drug lords run their operations from prison, and where union leaders have short lives? Or, why not a comparison of several or
all Latin American prisons? Why just Venezuela?).
Is the Italian reporter, or the publisher, connected to the US Army National Ground Intelligence Center? Bear in mind that the forged Niger/Iraq nuke documents came out of Italy's (very fascist) intelligence service. Is Italy's media penetrated by SISMI, the way ours is penetrated by the CIA? And is this article an example of distorted, planted anti-left psyops?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x12704http://www.guerrillanews.com/forum/thread.php?id=34739 ----------------------
For Immediate Release Mark Merin attorney: 916-443-6911
March 12, 2009
City pursues right to torture & humiliate detainees
After losing twice, City Attorney takes case before “en banc” court
San Francisco. When the story that the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department (SFSD) was illegally strip-searching detainees and leaving them naked for hours in “cold cells” hit the front page of the Chronicle in September 2003, the public was both astonished and outraged. Gavin Newsom, then a candidate for mayor, said, “The departments involved must address these issues at once and take all appropriate steps to make sure that such conduct does not take place in the future."
Since then, a US District Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, who had filed a class-action lawsuit against SFSD for their strip-search and cold-cell policies. But instead of accepting the ruling, the City Attorney filed an appeal. Last year, the City lost its appeal—a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the arguments and also ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The City Attorney then requested an “en banc” hearing before 11 judges of the federal appellate court. This hearing will take place later this month on March 26, 2009 in San Francisco.
“One has to ask why the City is pursuing policies that outrage both San Franciscans and our political leaders,” said Sister Bernie Galvin, an advocate for the rights of homeless people and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “It really doesn’t make moral sense. Similar class-action lawsuits have been won in lower courts and then settled in counties far less progressive than San Francisco, including Sacramento and Dade.”
Mary Bull, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, was forcibly strip-searched and then left naked for 14 hours in a “cold cell,” after being arrested at an anti-war demonstration in November 2002. Bull stated, “When we were in mediation with city attorneys, I was shocked when they suggested they could win in the US Supreme Court, given Bush Administration policies that were soft on civil rights. The sad thing is, they may be right: The Bush-stacked Supreme Court may overturn all the hard-won victories against civil rights abuses in county jails, and ironically, San Francisco, considered one of the most progressive cities on earth, would be responsible for that travesty.”
Jonah Zern summed up the feelings of many of the plaintiffs, "The treatment of prisoners in U.S. prisons laid the foundation for torture in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and many will attest that conditions here are not that different. Illegal strip searches in the San Francisco County Jail must be addressed as part of a larger effort to stop the terrible human rights abuses affecting over two million prisoners currently held in the United States."-------------------------
I am disturbed by the efforts of posters upthread to "poison the well" of comment on this article on Venezuelan prisons, by characterizing the comments beforehand as an anti- vs. pro-Chavez flame thread. Are the anti-Chavez posters setting threads up this way, and then saying "nyah-nyah, SEE! here we go again!" to set the tone? Is this an example of such a "set up" thread? And are they also deliberately hijacking news and analysis threads, by jumping into every thread on Venezuela, right off the bat, with their brainless comments ("Chavez is a dictator," "Chavez is about to become a dictator...some day," "Chavez is a scumbag," etc., etc., etc.)?
I see a consistent pattern of this kind of posting, that resembles CIA and US military-style psyops--that is, deliberate efforts to defame democratic leaders with "Big Lie" techniques (repeating a lie so often that you wear your targets out), and "divide and conquer" tactics (such as starting flame wars on a leftist forum).
Donald Rumsfeld called for more US government involvement on the internet specifically to topple the Chavez government, in an op-ed in the Washtington Post, in Dec 07 (a year after the US Army National Ground Intelligence Center began focusing on Venezuela), entitled, "The Smart Way To Defeat Tyrants Like Chavez." Is this thread (and its original article) an example of US government war psyops, propaganda and disinformation on the internet?
The anti-Chavez posters at DU may be deliberately or inadvertently serving the worst fuckmeisters on earth--Rumsfeld and his operatives in the US military and the CIA.
"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html 
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