For the end of the year, the Moyers & Company website offers various people writing on the most overlooked stories of the year. They asked me to write on my choice, which was kind of them. Heres what I wrote -- and I offer one other example, but check them all out! Tom The CIA’s Global Campaign of Kidnappings Tom Engelhardt, editor, TomDispatch The media was convulsed by the recent release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report. For days, the torture story led the news, 24.7, just about everywhere — and yet a crucial part of that story, probably the grimmest part of all, filled with criminalities of every sort, was missing in action. Left in the dustbin was the CIA’s global campaign of kidnappings, known as “renditions” or “extraordinary renditions,” aided and abetted by 54 other countries, in which “terror suspects” (often enough innocent people) were swept off the streets of major cities as well as the backlands of the planet and “rendered” to countries, ranging from Libya and Syria to Egypt and Uzbekistan, with their own handy torture chambers and interrogators already much practiced in “enhanced” techniques as grim as, or worse than, those the CIA was employing in its own black sites. This was done consciously with, you might say, malice aforethought by Washington’s representatives who, in the process, effectively condoned the torture practices of some of the worst regimes on the planet. You would think that it would continue to play a significant role in any American torture revelations, but no such luck. The Rise of the Prison-Industrial Complex Maya Schenwar, executive director, Truthout In the past year, while mainstream publications have devoted increasing attention to prison reform efforts, they’ve neglected to point out the insidious nature of some of these “reforms.” In many cases, these initiatives actually expand the size of the prison-industrial complex. Truthout delved into many of those rarely told stories: Victoria Law looked at how California is using private prisons to “address” overcrowding, James Kilgore documented the expansion of electronic monitoring as a “fix” for mass incarceration, Nancy Heitzeg and Kay Whitlock demonstrated how right-wing agendas dictate the terms of “bipartisan reform,” Aaron Cantú exposed the anti-black racism intrinsic to “predictive policing,” and Glenn E. Martin revealed the race and class biases that come along with the risk-assessment tools that guide many newly proposed reforms. As a growing consensus builds against mass incarceration, we must remain conscious of the encroachment of new oppressive structures. billmoyers/2014/12/22/underreported-stories-2014-2/
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 16:00:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015