Human Rights

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell, 1984

This Author has a weapons collection. It is not a very large collection, as I am not that economically empowered. As I am American, it includes firearms, but few and in the categories that I need for home defense. The portion of the collection that is not firearms is the part that is relevant to the scenes of CPB agents whipping Haitian asylum seekers at the US – Mexico border broadcast around the world on September 21st 2021.

The Guardian.UK has recently released a series of stories on NSO Pegasus, which is privately funded spyware used by goverments around the world to hack the cellphones of targeted so-called terrorists. Since 2019, this spyware has turned up on the phones of over 180 dissident journalists, and humand rights activists as well as lawyers and loved ones.

As a disclaimer I need to note Lee Camp and I go back a ways. This allows me to say assurance he has always been able to be funny about things that are horrible. I first became aware of him in October of 2012 when I had my first big story. I had caught Mitt Romney, through a not very long chain of proxies that included his son Tagg, having an ownership interest in Hart Intercivic, the company that manufactured and maintained the voting machines that would be used in my home state (and other states) in the upcoming election.

Nobody has seen the Mueller report. What is in the Mueller report does not matter even if we could see it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had stated that impeachment is “off the table” before the mystery report was even in. Paul Manafort has been sentenced to 73 months in prison, 30 which will be served concurrently with his 43 month sentence in a separate case. He has yet to actually walk in the prison gates and hear the door slam shut.

The family of Donna Dalton-Castlebury expressed tenative relief this week Andrew Mitchell, a 31 year police veteran and vice cop, was arrested on charges by the FBI. He was charged in connection with his apparent pattern of forcing alleged prostitutes to give him sexual favors in his car in exchange for not being arrested. He is being held without bail and the City of Columbus is “reviewing” weather to overturn some or all of the prostitution arrests he made in the last year. Mayor Andy Ginther quickly put out a self-congratulatory press release asking for more information.

The Mockingbird has previously reported on a nationwide campaign of work stoppages, labor strikes and hunger strikes began on August 21 in dozens of prisons. As the campaign was about enter it's third week local organizers from Black Queer Intersectional Columbus and the Incarcerated Workers Committee of the Industrial Workers World held a demonstration on September 4th outside the Franklin County Court and Jail complex on High Street.

Ethnic cleansing is a clear priority for America right now. The publicity surrounding the separation of families, the lies about the practice, the trafficking of children to connected faith based kidnappers and plans to strip citizenship from those already here has garnered headlines. A pair of moves by the Trump administration in that cloud of crimes against humanity indicate a clear ramping up of what can only be called America's concentration camp system.

On June 30th and number of political groups are calling for a national day of action at ICE facilities around the country in opposition to America's growing network of public and private concentration camps for both adults and children.