Streets of Minneapolis — Springsteen

Madison, Wisconsin — The power of the righteous, love for liberty and empathy have taken our country far.

I love the people of Minneapolis for what they have done in the face of fascism, murder and mayhem.

They have fought with truth and honor.

In times of moral crisis, we need the voice of artists and writers.

Bruce Springsteen has stepped forward again with Streets of Minneapolis.

We really needed this, Bruce. Peace. 

Streets of Minneapolis

Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
By the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead
Their claim was self defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight

In chants of ICE out now
Our city’s heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis 
 

ICE Shoots Another in Cold Blood in Minnesota

NFL great and human rights
activist, Alan Page, protesting 
ICE killings and abductions,
is pictured above.

Democracy Dies
Democrats, Cops Supine in Response

Commentary

Watched video of second ICE shooting Saturday morning. 

Sick ICE bastards.

We no longer live in a classical liberal democracy. 

At moment, ICE is bombarding citizens in Minneapolis with gas after ICE shot and killed a man on the sidewalk.

"They're not cops; they're not ICE; they're NAZIs," a witness told Status Coup News.

Facebook videos below show some eight ICE personnel shooting another protester. Another video shot multiple ICE shootings, as an ICE conspirator claps. 

Trump's Leap to Fascism Comes Atop of Liberal-Woke Edifice, with Wokists Cushioning His Fall

When fascism comes here, Zionist Judenraete; fanatics aided
by woke liberals in the Universities and media will violate
liberties, and declare their power to prevent the lives of
anyone questioning anything, all in self-defense of course.
The ever widening gap between the government and
the people today casts suspicion on the people,
not Trump's government, in Trump's perverse view.

Free Mahmoud Khalil; Presidential Acts to Protect National Security Are Less Than Credible

Commentary

Madison, Wisconsin — Donald Trump is employing the machinery of government against Americans and permanent residents in State retribution for voicing thought at variance with purveyors of Genocide.

Trump's war against perceived wrong-thought annihilates sacred rights of American Due Process, the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment and cherished valuation of the individual.

His war is worse than the liberal establishment's odious lawfare, and malicious prosecutions launched against Trump by Democrats and liberal political opponents the last four years. It's worse than Democrat Censorship for which this party of parrots can never be forgiven.

Trump builds on liberals' ludicrous notions that truth and falsity of propositions are logically determined by how a proposition makes a reader or listener feel, and the related notion that someone's subjective feeling is equivalent to safety.

No great leap for Trump emulating the Biden-Harris administration determining expression of thought against Genocide is to be viewed with suspicion.

For example, since artist Roger Waters opposes fascism and Genocide in his art and music, Roger Waters must really be an anti-Semite, as determined by the U.S. State Department under Biden, (AP; Reuters).

That the U.S. State Department and Biden-Harris are perpetrators of Genocide is a fact that must go unacknowledged.

Consider as well the case of permanent U.S. resident and college student, Mahmoud Khalil.

As Krystal Ball notes in Breaking Points on the ideological framework of the Biden-Woke bunch employed by Trump today.

Once the pro-Palestine protests were portrayed by the liberal Biden administration as being effectively Hamas, it did not take a large leap to criminalize anyone who was affiliated with them, [pro-Palestine protests].
To throw Visa holders and permanent residents (such as Mahmoud Khalil) out of the country altogether for participating [in protests] or for even liking the wrong Tweet.

Mahmoud Khalil

Mahmoud Khalil is a graduate student at Columbia University School of International Affairs, a permanent U.S. resident, married to a U.S. citizen. Khalil is also a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student organizations objecting to Genocide against Palestine.

On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in New York by agents of ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It's not clear what crime or immigration law Mr. Khalil is alleged to have violated, (New York Times).

His wife, Noor Abdalla, is eight-months pregnant and is due to give birth in April. She was threatened with arrest outside their apartment, though ICE has not followed up yet against her alleged crime(s), (St. Clair, CounterPunch).

ICE, which collectedly resembles a gang of sociopaths with badges, sports a webpage with a front page that three times invites readers to report and phone ICE, should readers see "suspicious activity." Further, the front page features a link to an ICE Tip Form, on which Americans can inform on all manner of suspicious people.

Accusations of fascism cry out from human rights workers, civil liberties organizations and writers at the outrageous arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, now slated to be heard in federal district court in New Jersey, (New York Times).

Congressional Democrats, ensconced in neocon foreign policy and well-versed in employing McCarthyite attacks against Trump after morphing into an anti-free speech Party, not surprisingly offer a muted defense of Mr. Khalil and his family.

Writes Yasmine El-Sabawi, in Middle East Eye:

When Michigan Congresswoman and Palestinian native Rashida Tlaib shared a letter to her social media account on Tuesday, [March 18], demanding that immigration authorities free Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil - a man never charged with a crime - it only contained 14 signatures.

For perspective, there are 220 Democrats in the House of Representatives, all of whom have been unabashedly vocal in their criticism of the Trump administration’s actions on a near-daily basis.

There are 45 Democrats in the Senate.  

That the two major American political parties are united in committing Genocide and evisceration of foundational liberties of free expression and free speech in America ought be causing everyone's fascism detectors to be blinking red.

Mahmoud Khalil, dictating a letter to the Columbia Spectator, pens his determination to carry on this weekend. Writes Khalil:

In his last message to a world that betrayed him, the beloved Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat said, I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.

So too do we believe that it is the highest honor of our lives to struggle for the cause of Palestinian liberation. The student movement will continue to carry the mantle of a free Palestine. History will redeem us, while those who were content to wait on the sidelines will be forever remembered for their silence.

I'm with Mr. Khalil.

Far worse than 1970s elites pronouncing an excess of democracy by the Peace and Civil Rights movements, today, liberal elites have declared there is no objective truth; and the American people must fight it out against themselves using their imposed subjective identities as shields and weapons. 

If many deplore Trump for his fascism, (and rightfully so), wokists and Zionists should be counted among other perpetrators.

Pro-Human Thinking Against White Supremacist Administrations

Otto Dix. The Wounded Man. Dix, (1891–1969) was an
anti-fascist, anti-war German artist whose work is known
for brutal depictions of the madness of war and oppression

Banding together against the toxic combination of belligerence and hate from white supremacists, Trump and Walker

The Trump adminstration is preying on people systemically and capriciously, partnering with the most anti-human, authoritarian forces of American society.

As Trump and Scott—"Divide and Conquer" families—Walker work against people, a nugget of wisdom comes from cj bakken in some 60 words:

As a Native American I just had an epiphany about undocumented DACA people. How big of a coronary would trump and ryan have if the tribes welcomed the DACA folk onto the reservations, affording them protection under the sovereignty of the tribes......

— cj bakken (@Eaglewoman4) January 24, 2018

Great idea. See also George Pyle, Salt Lake Tribune.

The Trump and Walker adminstration are clear and present dangers to our Republic and the state of Wisconsin.

Notes Charles Pierce commenting on the 2016 Republican presidential primary that featured Trump and Walker, both of whom were leading the Iowa primary at one point before Walker was "called" away by god and sub-one percent approval ratings in September 2015:

[A]lone among the crowd of candidates, Walker most clearly is running on his record of being a complete prick to the right people – which include teachers and nurses and the people who clean up after Alzheimer's patients in group homes. Running against the right people is a staple of all campaigns, right and left, but it's rarely as clear the raison d'etre of one as it is the raison d'etre of the Walker campaign. It is a toxic combination of belligerence and aggressive victimhood. 

Innovative ideas in launching a United Front against fascism are critical.

Swastikas, Pro-Trump Graffiti Defaces Anti-Fascist Plaque Outside Synagogue in Madison, Wisconsin

Unknown person(s) defaced a plague honoring the anti-fascist
Abraham Lincoln Brigade outside the Gates of Heaven Synagogue
building at the popular James Madison Park in Madison, Wisconsin.
Photo is from Dylan Brogan at the Isthmus.

Update: See also Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism's report on the incident and the series documenting hate, (Ibrahim and Hall).
 ---
Madison, Wisconsin — A plaque celebrating the Abraham Lincoln Brigade's anti-fascist battles during the Spanish Civil War was defaced with swastikas some 20 yards outside the Gates of Heaven Synagogue building at the popular James Madison Park about one mile from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The community is at a loss for words, (Isthmus, Wisconsin State Journal).

As even progressive cities face emboldened rightwingers, long-time Madison residents do not know where the bottom of racist activity lies.

Reports Rob Schultz:

'I'm horrified, I'm sad. I would have hoped that we were beyond this — especially in Madison,' said Dawn Berney, the executive director of Jewish Social Services of Madison. 'But xenophobia is everywhere, even in Madison.'

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin said that the graffiti was the act of ignorant people. 'Given the enabling rhetoric from Donald Trump, particularly since Charlottesville, we know that vicious racist and Nazi attacks have increased. While we know that over 99% of the people of Madison abhor and reject this terrible act, let it stand as a reminder that there are always a few ignorant people who would destroy our liberty and rights,' Soglin said in a statement. 'I ask that they come forward not to be punished but to explain themselves. True patriots never hide and attack in the darkness; striking in silence and in the shadows lies in the heart of cowards and fools.'

The act was committed in the progressive and activist Madison Isthmus, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the first of the Jewish High Holy Days.

Wisconsin has for many decades been a home to anti-Semitic groups such as the John Birch Society and assorted hate groups.

Most concerning is the generic fascism in rural and small-town Wisconsin often dominated by xenophobic white people who vote Republican and support Gov. Scott Walker.

Fascism in America Rises in the North

The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)

Madison, Wisconsin — A Georgia voice offered comment by phone asserting racism is more prevalent in the rural North than the rural South.

Fascism in America—Trump, Republican-ruled rural jurisdictions in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and likely your local police force—comes with a northern intonation of sorts as often as a southern drawl

Wisconsin Republicans and their religious right allies, for example, staff virtually every tentacle of government from the Census to polling sites to local planning commissions and school boards, and their mission is malice for Jesus.

If you meet a dominionist, religious fundie staffing a polling place, (a Ron Johnson or Dale Zahorik of Fitchburg, Wisconsin for example), it won't surprise to find a frightening ignorance of, and hostility to voting rights and the rights of blacks and Latinos, who are, goddamn that Fourteenth Amendment, full citizens under the law.

Advice this weekend before Mal signs off: Treat calls for "unity" with proper derision.

Fox News Blames Jews for the Holocaust: What is Happening to America?

See the Ring of Fire.

Opposing the Common Good and the F-word—Fascism

An extremist, and if we're honest (and we should be), neo-fascist wing of the Republican Party now holds sway in many states, and in the U.S. House of Representatives.

And this network (often underground of course) is literally targeting everything community-minded, the formal structures of representative democracy such as voting (a tactical mistake for American fascism) and ... women.

This explains why the Catholic Church hierarchy has consolidated its alliance with the Republican Party: Misogyny, and convenience. Power is needed, and an alliance with religious misogyny is part of the fascist coalition with grandiose aims.

Public resources, sell them out to private interests, as is now on stark display in Wisconsin as mining interests seek $billions as they ravage pristine land. Writes Wisconsin resident, Jimmy Fawcett, commenting on a piece in Esquire entitled, Wisconsin Inc:  "I live in Ashland, WI and even the very notion of this mine being put in is an abomination. I've never seen a darker, more volatile time period in Wisconsin than the one I've lived in since Walker took office. There is a war going on, and it's only going to get worse. I wish I could say that was an exaggeration, but it truly feels this way." Native Americans have already made clear that  militant, violent opposition is an option.

As for public education, destroy it.

This neo-fascist movement has a ready array of instruments to rush into law to codify its objectives—for example, ALEC, the American Legislative  Exchange Council.

Fascist is the right word for the Kochs, Clines, and so on and their tools: Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, the Tea Party, the GOP, and the religious right; so many more as bystanders in America rush home to their televisions to view whatever reality shows are on TV now-a-days.

And we ought not be frightened of the word, fascist, for fear it is too harsh to describe people whom when we meet personally often turn out to be kind in person, not monsters.

This is the face of fascism: Normal people complicit in destruction.

Nativist, bigoted, superstitious, ignorant, rapacious, racist, misogynistic and narcissistic. Sure.

But we won't see the SS here; just a prison-industrial complex and militarized, local police forces (see for example, ACLU report; March 2013) that few question, but even this armed display won't touch most of us. If you're male and black (urban): Different story.

A passing thought, a lot more war coming out of view, if the fascists get their way.

If I had one book to suggest to America's youth, to anyone, it is Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (University of Chicago Press. ©1955).

Mayer, an American Jewish writer who had gone to Germany in the 1930s, made friends with some 10 people, all of whom were members of the NAZI Party. He found them courteous, funny, genuine human beings whom he called "friends." They were also fools and certainly were guilty.

Today's destruction of the planet's eco-systems, oppression of minorities, program of defunding of public education, attack on women's health and very dignity, the disregard for the common good, these features and more already define the American neo-fascist movement that declares itself the defender of liberty and family values against an array of external and internal enemies.

No, the neo-fascist, American movement is not the German NAZI Party, though its racism and militarism, its anti-human rhetoric on the worth of individuals ('takers') ought to remind anyone with a sense of history of what trends are accelerating.

Fascism is wreaking destruction upon the United States, and the world.

And right now, many merely 'sense' it; though most readers here will remain comfortable in our lifetimes; and if we choose removed from human, politicized concerns. Fascism never was inflicted uniformly upon populations, by definition.

Noam Chomsky has a piece out today on this critical moment in the history of the United States, though of course the domination of economic royalists of many types has been an ongoing concern since the birth of the United States.

Here's a paragraph:

For those whom Adam Smith called the "Masters of Mankind,” it is important that we must become the stupid nation in the interests of their short-term gain, damn the consequences. These are essential properties of contemporary market fundamentalist doctrines. ALEC and its corporate sponsors understand the importance of ensuring that public education train children to belong to the stupid nation, and not be misled by science and rationality.

Dark and volatile times, indeed.

Marine Discusses Wall Street Protest and NYPD: Time for Police to Back Off

Another Dangerous Terrorist Captured -
Oh She's a Bad One for Sure! - Just Look at Those Eyes
 Republican Rep Eric Cantor (VA) said he is "concerned"
about this woman and her growing "mobs" of fellow protestors.

 A Vietnam War combat veteran sees the movement and speaks out.

I remember Vietnam, the real Vietnam, the Vietnam of the Marine rifle squad, the senselessness of it, the suffering. We all knew it as what it was, a huge con.

Now, nobody doubts the War on Terror was the same thing, Afghanistan, the drug producing capitol of the world, Iraq, the farce staged by the Bushites to loot oil and empty America’s treasury. ... I am more than familiar with what 'on the job' means.

[See live stream at Global Revolution. Democracy in action; fascism in the street of New York as brave souls - the young, labor, veterans, grow by the day and spread to cities across the country. Panic from the powers that be is next. See also #OccupyWallStreet.]

Fascism as American as Apple Pie

Our Vietnam War Marine veteran friend has another typically fascinating piece out at Veterans Today, Background to Tyranny: Bush Family Terror Ties Decades-Old.

The roots of American authoritarianism are long and deep. From Gordon Duff:

Does the following sound crazy? It's not crazy. Just history that is impolitic to report.

In 1934, the Bush family helped organize a military attack on Washington in order to install a Nazi government. Sound outlandish? It is American history. It is call 'the Business Plot (BBC).'

Conservative 'think tanks' still spend millions to edit this from our history books. Sites are taken off the internet and Wikipedia is still erased, even decades later.

Would two rigged elections, a mysterious 9/11 attack, torture and totalitarian rule be surprising if Americans were allowed to know their own history?

Nixon: Abort If Blacks and Whites Conceive Together

Charlie Savage reports in the Times on newly released Nixon tapes:

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster 'permissiveness,' and said that 'it breaks the family.' But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

'There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,' he told an aide, before adding, 'Or a rape.'

Nixon is a true American fascist who found a home in the Republican Party.

Bush's Hijacking of Supreme Court

Via ThinkProgress, We know that Fifteen percent is the number of Americans who can name the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, compared with 66 percent of Americans who can name “at least one of the judges on the Fox television show American Idol.”

That's the kind of thing that scares me. So, Bush can appoint a guy like John Roberts, call him a strict constructionist who upholds the Constitution, and most people will not have a clue as to the lie Bush is telling. [Not that Bush has a clue either; he just recites the lines.]

Roberts is a strict constructionist, alright: A judge who wishes to make abortion illegal, sees no great defined liberty rights in the Constitution, is a lousy scholar of Constitutional thought, and will overturn any judicial precedent if it fits with the right wing political network.

Hell, these strict constructionist guys like Roberts would even halt an election and appoint a man like George W. Bush to the presidency if they ever had the chance. I kid you not.

###

Jose Padilla and America’s Descent into Fascism

Update: Verdict Reached in Padilla
Case; to be read at 1:00 Central.

[- with thanks to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library reference department -]

Warren Richey’s three-part series in the Christian Science Monitor shines a light on the tyranny and inhumanity of the Bush regime—functioning with the passive compliance and active participation of assorted generals, admirals, prison guards, flacks, hacks and flunkies and one U.S. District Judge, Marcia G. Cooke.

Reading Richey’s work is an experience, an endurance exercise in revulsion and anger at all—and that ought to include us—who let this obscenity occur in our country, in our names.

Links to the series:

US terror interrogation went too far, experts say; Reports find that Jose Padilla's solitary confinement led to mental problems.

Investigators broke Padilla with intense isolation; Despite warnings, officials used 43 months of severe isolation to force Jose Padilla to tell all he knew about Al Qaeda.

Beyond Padilla terror case, huge legal issues; His detention and interrogation in the US raises basic constitutional questions.

Editorial - A verdict on Padilla – and the USA; Monitor series reveals the damage done to a citizen's rights and thus the US ability to wage this war.

George W. Bush. Bush is of-course most responsible for this obscenity.

America does have an enemy combatant in our midst; and he works in the White House.

Some highlights from the series:

Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda operative. But he does now.

The Muslim convert was subjected to prison conditions and interrogation techniques that took him past the breaking point, mental health experts say.

Two psychiatrists and a psychologist who conducted detailed personal examinations of Mr. Padilla on behalf of his defense lawyers say his extended detention and interrogation at the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., left him with severe mental disabilities. All three say he may never recover.

Beyond the outcome of his Miami trial, larger issues loom. Chief among them, legal scholars say, is whether Mr. Bush acted within his constitutional authority when he ordered Padilla, a United States citizen, held without charge as an enemy combatant at the brig for three years and seven months.

Padilla's treatment in the brig raises another issue, these scholars say: whether the Constitution ever permits the government to force a man to confess to involvement in terrorist plots and, in doing so, risk destruction of a portion of his mind.

The judge in Padilla's criminal case has already ruled that Padilla is suffering from a mental disability, but she refused to allow defense lawyers to explore the issue of whether the disability was caused by Padilla's treatment in the brig.

"He is not the same man who was taken into custody in 2002," says Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist in New York who spent 22 hours examining Padilla. "Whatever happened to him in there has radically changed him."

Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, says Padilla's experience in the brig has left members of his family stunned and frightened. "People who have known him and loved him before his military detention don't feel they can even bear to see him because he is so clearly mentally ill."

Padilla is a US citizen who was arrested and detained on US soil. Because of this status, his case was closely followed at the highest levels of the US government. The president himself signed the order authorizing Padilla's detention.

In 2002, the Justice Department produced a "torture" memo stating that victims would have to experience pain equivalent to organ failure to prove torture.

"The development of a mental disorder such as post-traumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which can last a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement" to prove torture, the memo says.

Drs. Hegarty and Grassian say Padilla's psychological condition exceeds even the high standard for mental damage set by the 2002 torture memo. "This whole issue of torture turns on the question of what are the types of effects that one would expect from putting a person in this situation in the brig," says Grassian. "If you would expect a person to become so deranged as to become psychotically terrified, to me that constitutes torture."

Some psychological tests place him on par with individuals who have suffered brain damage ...

Padilla's treatment in the brig is classified as a state secret.

During her week-long effort, (Dr.) Hegarty would arrive each morning to discover Padilla once again unwilling to talk. She says the experience was like the movie "Groundhog Day," in which the same events repeat over and over. "The 22 hours I spent with him, it was like it never happened," Hegarty says. "It was chilling."

Grassian relates in his report that Padilla's mother found it emotionally difficult to visit her son in Miami because it involved observing his diminished mental condition. Padilla tried to reassure her that he was fine, that the government was treating him very well. At one point, Grassian says, Padilla suggested that his mother write directly to Bush to help her speed through red tape to arrange her next visit. The president was sure to help her out, Padilla assured his mother.

"It was utterly irrational," Grassian writes in his report. "After all, it was President Bush who had ordered him detained as an enemy combatant."
Padilla's mother became increasingly anxious. Finally she confronted her son: "Did they torture you?" she asked.

"He turned towards her, his face grimacing, his eyes blinking, and in panic and rage he demanded: 'Don't you ever, ever, ask that question again,' " the Grassian report says.

What makes Padilla's case especially challenging from a psychological perspective is that he denies having any symptoms of psychological distress. Experts say it is an attempt by Padilla to avoid being viewed in any way as mentally disturbed.

"He was told not to talk about what happened in the brig and that if he ever spoke about what happened, people would think he was crazy," Hegarty says. "This admonition has power over him," she says. "He becomes visibly terrified as he is saying it."

Critical focus on the brig

"As soon as you try to approach a subject related to the brig he starts grimacing and you can just see he becomes mentally disorganized. Anyone who watched this with a reasonably unbiased eye would find it so creepy," Grassian says. "You can see the terror come out of him."

It is unclear what Padilla thinks about the possibility of an acquittal in Miami. But Hegarty says that if Padilla's lawyers win the case it could mark the worst possible outcome for him. That's because the president might try to move Padilla back to his old cell in the brig.

"There is no question in my mind that his first and most important priority is to not go back to the brig," Hegarty says. "This is what leaves me chilled, if one were to offer him a long prison term or return to the brig, he would take prison, in a heartbeat."

When Padilla's case originally reached the high court in 2004, it was dismissed on technical grounds by a 5-to-4 vote. The vote allowed the continued harsh treatment of Padilla.

Justice John Paul Stevens, a US Navy intelligence officer during World War II, filed a dissent. He quoted a 1949 opinion by then Justice Felix Frankfurter.

It said: "There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men."

In May 2002, a month before he entered the brig, Padilla was taken into custody, held in New York City, and given access to a court-appointed lawyer, Donna Newman. Two years later, when the Bush administration first allowed Padilla to see his lawyers again, Ms. Newman and another attorney visited.

"There is no question he had changed," Newman says. "Prior to his being held in South Carolina there was no reason to suspect that he had any kind of [mental] problem."

Investigators broke Padilla with intense isolation

Padilla was delivered to the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., where he was held not only in solitary confinement but as the sole detainee in a high-security wing of the prison. Fifteen other cells sat empty around him.

The purpose of the extraordinary privacy, according to experts familiar with the technique, was to eliminate the possibility of human contact. No voices in the hallway. No conversations with other prisoners. No tapping out messages on the walls. No ability to maintain a sense of human connection, a sense of place or time.

In essence, experts say, the US government was trying to break Padilla's silence by plunging him into a mental twilight zone. Padilla was not the only Al Qaeda suspect locked away in isolation. Although harsh interrogation methods such as water-boarding, forced hypothermia, sleep deprivation, and stress positions draw more media attention, use of isolation to "soften up" detainees for questioning is much more common.
Padilla is on trial in Miami on charges that he became a willing recruit and attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla denies the allegations. Jury deliberations in the three-month trial are expected to begin this week.

Although the issue of Padilla's treatment in the brig arose briefly in the Miami case, no judge has ruled on its legality.

According to defense motions on file in the case, Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over. There was a toilet and sink. The steel bunk was missing its mattress.

He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years.

For significant periods of time the Muslim convert was denied any reading material, including the Koran. The mirror on the wall was confiscated. Meals were slid through a slot in the door. The light in his cell was always on.

Those who haven't experienced solitary confinement can imagine that life locked in a small space would be inconvenient and boring. But according to a broad range of experts who have studied the issue, isolation can be psychologically devastating. Extreme isolation, in concert with other coercive techniques, can literally drive a person insane, these experts say. And that makes it a potential instrument of torture, they add.

When then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved isolation as an aggressive interrogation technique for use at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Defense Department lawyers included a warning. "This technique is not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days," the April 2003 memo reads in part. Longer than that required Mr. Rumsfeld's approval.

By April 2003, Padilla had already spent 10 months in isolation at the brig. Ultimately, he was housed in the same cell, alone in his wing, for three years and seven months, according to court documents.

So-called coercive interrogation methods — including isolation — have been specially authorized for certain units in the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The technique is not new. The Soviets used isolation and sensory deprivation to identify and discredit political dissidents

US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment.

Fear of "brainwashing" prompted the CIA and Defense Department to underwrite research in the 1950s and '60s into the impact of isolation and sensory deprivation. The findings were included in a 1963 CIA handbook, later declassified. The book discusses the possible use of such techniques, including isolation. But it warns of the "profound moral objection" of applying "duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage."

That's what happened in Padilla's case, says Grassian. "It is clear from examining Mr. Padilla that that limit was surpassed."

He has "undergone a profound, tremendously prolonged psychological stress involving extended periods of utter isolation and deprivation," the psychiatrist writes. Grassian's report concludes: "Given the extensive research on this issue, much of it funded by the United States government, it follows necessarily that the United States government was well aware of the likely consequences of its conduct in regard to Mr. Padilla."

Padilla has referred to this period as the "terrible time."

"It was not unusual for Mr. Padilla to go four, five, or six days without even brief [visual checks] by the brig staff, who were, in any event, under instruction not to converse with him," Grassian writes. Other than the brief checks by brig guards, Padilla went through stretches of 34 days, 17 days and 15 days without any human contact, the report says. "And when he did have such contact, it was inevitably with an interrogator," Grassian says.

That was by design. Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed a portion of the government's interrogation strategy in a 2003 court affidavit. "The Defense Intelligence Agency's approach to interrogation is largely dependent upon creating an atmosphere of dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator," he wrote. "Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool." Admiral Jacoby wrote the affidavit to urge a New York federal court not to allow Padilla to consult his lawyer.

(A)s an enemy combatant, he was stripped of every other constitutional protection and right, including the right to know that a constitutional challenge had been filed on his behalf.

Many legal scholars and intelligence experts say Padilla's ordeal highlights the danger of a government that obtains information through secret, coercive means and then selectively releases some of it to justify its actions.

"This is the hallmark of an authoritarian state," says Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism official and former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

"At many of the points at which the government said 'dirty bomb,' there was no opportunity to respond for the reason that Mr. Padilla was in solitary confinement and no lawyer had been able to talk to him about the charges," says Diane Amann, visiting law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Although they seek a life sentence, prosecutors introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any specific terrorist plot or violent act.

There is a reason the government's case is so thin, legal analysts say.
If prosecutors brought the dirty-bomb plot or other alleged illegal actions by Padilla into the Miami case, it would open the door for courtroom scrutiny of the government's use of coercive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects, including Padilla. And that would have taken jurors deep into the shadowy underside of America's war on terror – a journey in Padilla's case that wends its way from his cell on an isolated wing of the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., through covert CIA interrogation sites overseas to an alleged torture chamber in Morocco.

This is a part of the war on terror the Bush administration would rather keep quiet. But details are emerging.

What they reveal is the aggressive – and at times, ruthless – pursuit of intelligence information, and the selective public release of some of that intelligence when it serves the administration's goals.

Plot hit airwaves in 2002

The Padilla story burst into the national consciousness in June 2002 when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft interrupted a trip to Moscow to make a dramatic televised announcement.

"We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive 'dirty bomb,' " he said. Padilla was a "known terrorist" who had trained with Al Qaeda, studied how to wire explosives, and researched radiological dispersion devices, he told the world.

What he didn't say was that Padilla had been locked in a solitary confinement cell in New York City for the past month and that Padilla was only now being taken into military custody on the eve of a scheduled court hearing that would have required the government to legally justify Padilla's continued detention.

Instead, President Bush declared Padilla an "enemy combatant" who posed a "continuing, present, and grave danger" to US national security. The president said Padilla possessed intelligence information that could help prevent Al Qaeda attacks on the US.

Although civil libertarians protested Padilla's detention without charge, there was no significant public outcry.

Senior Bush administration officials made clear that once an individual is classified as an enemy combatant, he is no longer entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution.

Because Padilla was held in solitary confinement under secret conditions, no one was aware of what was happening to him. The initial constitutional debate revolved around whether Padilla had a right to consult a lawyer or whether the government could hold him in isolation indefinitely.

In February 2004, then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales told a meeting of the American Bar Association that citizens who take up arms against America don't deserve legal counsel. Any individual rights, he said, "must give way to the national security needs of this country to gather intelligence from captured enemy combatants."

Two months later, lawyers were arguing Padilla's case before the US Supreme Court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wanted to know if there was any check on the powers being claimed by the executive branch to collect intelligence through coercive interrogations. "Suppose the executive says, 'Mild torture, we think, will help get this information'?" she asked. "Some systems do that to get information."

"Well, our executive doesn't," said then-Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement.

A few minutes later, Justice Antonin Scalia, an anchor on the court's conservative wing, said he found nothing in his research to support Bush's assertion of unchecked authority to wage the war on terror. "It doesn't say you can do whatever it takes to win the war," he said.
His comment raised a huge red flag for the administration. That evening, coincidentally, the CBS program "Sixty Minutes II" broadcast the first images of detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

A month later, at the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal and with Padilla's case pending at the Supreme Court, the Justice Department held a highly unusual press conference. Officials announced that after two years of interrogation, Padilla had confessed to involvement in the dirty-bomb plot and other activities with Al Qaeda.

Padilla's Supreme Court case was dismissed by a 5-to-4 vote on a technicality. The justices said Padilla's lawyers should have filed their suit in South Carolina rather than New York. Scalia provided the key fifth vote in a decision that effectively allowed the administration to continue to hold and question Padilla in the brig.

Padilla's lawyers filed a new suit in South Carolina and, by 2005, were again at the steps of the Supreme Court. But rather than allow an airing of the issue at a high court that many analysts believe to be sympathetic to Padilla, the administration transferred him from military custody into the criminal-justice system.

With jury deliberations about to begin in Miami, legal scholars expect more major twists and turns in the Padilla saga. Among moves to watch:
•If Padilla is acquitted, will the government try to return him to the brig?
•If Padilla's lawyers file a civil suit to try to get his military detention case before the Supreme Court again, will the government argue that such a suit must be immediately dismissed to avoid revealing state secrets?
When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents first took Padilla into custody, administration officials thought they had nabbed an intelligence prize. Five years later, legal and intelligence analysts say, these claims look increasingly hollow as the administration maneuvers to keep Padilla from having a meaningful day in court. Its tactics are also keeping the public from knowing the truth about Padilla and the dirty-bomb plot, they say.

"You don't go on the Internet and spend a day reading and become an expert on how to put together a dirty bomb," says Mr. Johnson, the counterterrorism expert. "I'm not knocking folks who work at Taco Bell, but that's not a place you'd go to ramp up your skills" as a nuclear jihadist.

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Bush's New Exec Order Does What?

Steve Hanson at Uppity Wisconsin writes that "President Bush has signed yet another executive order allowing the blocking of property of - um - well - it sounds like damn near anybody that does anything that blocks our mission in Iraq."

The text of the order is below. La-di-dah.

I don't know what the idiot is doing, but, I say of Bush, I hereby politically disrupt every mission objective, section, and sub-section of the policy described below executed by this boy playing president. Does this mean the moron wants our property taken if we oppose the moron's war.

I hereby encourage resistance and disruption of this moron-in-chief's office and government, ultimately leading to impeachment.

I hereby call for a reversal of the policies toward Iraq described below, and enforcement of that reversal. I encourage foreign powers to disrupt and block the aggression and lawlessness of the policies of President Bush on Iraq, especially effort by the United Nations.

Block, block, undermine, form alliances to block, undermine and disrupt Bush's illegal and deadly war in Iraq

Ohh, and President Dickhead: How about treating the veterans you put in harm's way a lot better, okay?

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:

(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;

(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and

(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.

Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.

Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.

Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

July 17, 2007.

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