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practice for citizen detention camps?

Over the past couple years, I've written numerous times about the serious left-right coalition that had emerged in Britain -- between the Tories and Liberal Democrats -- in opposition to the Labour Government's civil liberties abuses, many (thought not all) of which were justified by Terrorism. In June of 2008, David Davis, a leading Tory MP, resigned from Parliament in protest of the Government's efforts to expand its power of preventive detention to 42 days (and was then overwhelmingly re-elected on a general platform of opposing growing surveillance and detention authorities). Numerous leading figures from both the Right and Left defied their party's establishment to speak out in support of Davis and against the Government's growing powers. Back then, the Liberal Democrats' Leader, Nick Clegg, notably praised the right-wing Davis' resignation, and to show his support for Davis' positions, Clegg even refused to run a Lib Dem candidate for that seat because, as he put it, "some issues 'go beyond party politics'."

Listen to an interview with 18-year-old American Gulet Mohamed from his detention in Kuwait

Amnesty denounces the conditions of Bradley Manning's detention, while new documents shed light on detainee deaths

The forced "resignation" of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley -- for the mortal sin of denouncing the abusive detention of Bradley Manning -- has apparently proven to be a clarifying moment for many commentators about what the President is and how he functions in these areas.  Writing at Time's Swampland, Mark Benjamin identifies the real crux of the controversy:

Spurred by memories of the World War II-era roundup and internment of 110,000 of their own people, Japanese Americans, especially on the West Coast, have been among the most vocal and passionate supporters of embattled Muslims. They've rallied public support against hate crimes at mosques, signed on to legal briefs opposing the indefinite detention of Muslims by the government, organized cross-cultural trips to the Manzanar internment camp memorial in California and held "Bridging Communities" workshops in Islamic schools and on college campuses.

We no longer have freedom; there is only the appearance of freedom. We are consumed by an endless and vague war on terror in which the perfidiousness of our enemy, whose number, location and nature are never clearly defined, justifies the shredding of constitutional rights, torture, kidnapping, detentions without charges or trials and an occult-like battle against an absolute evil. And if you think the state intends to limit itself to the persecution of Muslims, especially once there is an increase in domestic unrest and instability, you know little about human history.

Barack Obamas indefinite detention claim, coupled with the enemy combatant right he inherited, enables him to lock up any US citizen forever without a trial, author and political consultant Naomi Wolf told RT.

Government officials and Quantico Marine base have blocked official visits to PFC. Bradley Manning by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Amnesty International, and the UN Special Rappateur on torture. According to Manning's attorney, Kucinich, Amnesty, and UN have been trying to get clearance for "official visits" to Manning at the Quantico Marine brig. An "official visit" is different from an "authorized visit" in that an "authorized visit" - one made by family or friends and approved by the brig and Manning - is subject to full surveillance by the brig. An official visit would be one conducted by those officials on government business, and would not be subject to monitoring by the brig. So essentially, the government and the brig are saying you can come visit Manning, but we're going to watch and record every thing you say, and those recordings could be used as evidence against Manning at his trial. Manning's attorney stated that Kucinich, Amnesty, and the UN are not allowed to have an official visit "because none of these individuals are conducting 'official government business.'" This is, of course, ludicrous. Rep. Kucinich is a sitting Member of Congress with a seat on the Oversight Committee, and he submitted official notices to the Department of Defense that he wanted to inspect the conditions of Manning's confinement. Additionally, the UN Special Rappateur on Torture has opened an investigation into Manning's detention and would be visiting in his official capacity. What is the government afraid that Manning will say to these officials when the Brig isn't able to record his every move? If Manning's torture is "meeting our basic standards," as President Obama says, what is there to hide?

Numerous media outlets -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and NPR, among others - last night published classified files on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees. The leak was originally provided to WikiLeaks, which then gave them to the Post, NPR and others; the NYT and The Guardian claim to have received them from "another source" (WikiLeaks suggested the "other source" was Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks associate who WikiLeaks claims took, without authorization, many WikiLeaks files when he left). The documents reveal vast new information about these detainees and, in particular, the shoddy and unreliable nature of the "evidence" used (both before and now) to justify their due-process-free detentions. There are several points worth noting about all this:

Since America's political and media class steadfastly ignore this glaringly obvious point, it's nice (albeit self-interested) of the Chinese to point it out for us.  As we endlessly hear about a massive debt crisis, the current President has started one optional war that has already exceeded its estimated costs, plans to continue (if not escalate) two more, is drone-attacking a new country on a seemingly weekly basis, expands sprawling covert military actions in still other countries, builds new overseas detention facilities, all while offering only the most modest, symbolic and illusory "cuts" in military spending.  The alleged need to slash the financial security of American citizens -- and the notion that America faces a severe debt crisis -- would be more persuasive if the country didn't continue its posture of Endless War and feeding the insatiable, bloated National Security State (to say nothing of the equally insatible and wasteful Drug War and its evil spawn, the increasingly privatized American Prison State, which the Obama administration is expanding as aggressively as the War on Terror).

Since the 2010 elections, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Republican legislators have introduced more than 2,000 bills related to women's reproductive healthcare. The assault on women's health and freedom denies millions of women access to affordable contraception, life-saving cancer screenings, testing for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. Some laws call for measures as drastic as imprisonment. In 2013, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, published the results of a study that examined cases in which a woman's pregnancy led to arrests and incarceration, detentions in hospitals, mental institutions, and forced medical interventions. The summary of some cases follows: