Around 7:15 AM, eight individuals including myself left the Keene Activist Center in Keene, NH in order to make it to Palmer, MA District Court for a 9:00 AM pre-trial hearing for Ian Freeman of Free Talk Live. Four people in the Palmer area also made it to the hearing. Ian was arrested for filming inside of Palmer City Hall during an allegedly public tax sale on October 25, 2012. It was claimed that he was being “disorderly” by filming in the public space.
Upon entering the courthouse, the man operating the security theater (badge #245) asked what Cecelia (of Ladies in Keene) and I were there for, to which I responded, “A hearing.” After further questioning, I noted that it was a pre-trial hearing. Cecelia was told cell phones were not allowed in the courthouse, so she went to return it to the vehicle. Having emptied my pockets before entering the building, I walked through the metal detector and stepped off to the side to wait for my friends. Cecelia and Jay (who runs www.mail-to-jail.com) came through security, but Ian was questioned about why he had a tripod – as that was an indication that he had a camera. Ian shared the notice to record he had filed and convinced the man (badge #245) to hold his equipment at the desk until after the notice was reviewed by the judge; he was let through, without his recording equipment. (more…)
On the evening of December 3, the Bradley Manning Support Network sponsored a presentation by Manning’s attorney David Coombs. Coombs played down the media’s role in covering the military tribunal, yet acknowledged the more humane treatment that positive press coverage resulted in after Manning was removed from harsh conditions in Quantico, Virginia and moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. See the full hour video embedded below, featuring Emma Cape, Michael Ratner, and David Coombs. A detailed writeup is available from the Dissenter.
The high-and-mighty sociopath, Delmar Burridge, a sociopath who just won re-election as Keene state representative, is already insulting the average, non-college educated person in NH. He has proposed new legislation to ban guns from government buildings across NH, saying, “It’s outrageous…I don’t think public employees, people who go to college should be subjected to this.”
The United States Senate has passed an amendment to Section 1021 of the NDAA that in theory would forbid the President from ordering the indefinite military detention of American citizens. The amendment is far from perfect as the Federalist Society overviews in an excellent blog.
Being a lifelong New Hampshire resident, I find it particularly embarrassing that our own Senator Kelly Ayotte (R) (who talks a good game about our “Live Free or Die” motto) voted against this. How can one “Live Free” when they’re subjected to indefinite military detention, on American soil, without access to the court system?
If someone proposed something like the NDAA for white men in 1950s, a visit to HUAC would have been called for. The NKVD did this stuff, not us. It is absolutely “Un-American” to deny the accused the right of access to the court system.
Earlier this month passed another Veterans Day, which formerly commemorated the signing of the armistice which would end Europe’s World War the first. Often forgotten in the celebration associated with the cessation of war are the victims who suffer from its ills long after alleged peace deals are signed. The effects of WWI on the culture of the US and the world were not fully actualized as events were transpiring. If history was any indicator, the nation would find itself in the same brutish death trap just over a generation later.
Conscientious objectors at Camp Lewis, WA. Nov 1918
A violent militarism, which could be described as an antipacifism, swept the United States, with an even stronger sentiment arising in the more war-ravaged Soviet Union. One of the darkest examples of this hostility towards civilians during WWI is the treatment of pacifist Hutterites following the draft which began just over a year before the war would come to an end. While saukerkraut makers were changing their product names to ‘Liberty Cabbage’ and South Dakota was banning instruction of the German language in government schools, four members of a 400 year old pacifist, communalist Christian sect received draft notices to risk their lives in Europe for the mythical Uncle Sam. Perhaps it was by chance and perhaps deliberately that four names from an antimilitant community found their way onto the draft register. There had already been tension building between the area Hutterites and their neighbors, as the community had refused to buy war bonds the year prior. (more…)
