Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site?CMP=share_btn_fb
5 comments
We should torture in Quaker meeting halls: A modest proposal
We don't keep records. We speak when moved by a greater power. No one knows who "owns" our spaces. Very few attorneys in presence. Holding people for 12-24 hours is common. I think someone died during meeting last week and no one noticed.
We don't keep records. We speak when moved by a greater power. No one knows who "owns" our spaces. Very few attorneys in presence. Holding people for 12-24 hours is common. I think someone died during meeting last week and no one noticed.
Summary:
Located in a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side is where, according to the Guardian, one can find the domestic equivalent of a CIA "black site" - an illegal, off-the-books interrogation compound used by Chicago special police units, one which renders "Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside"; a place whose former occupants say is where you end up when you are "disappeared"; a place which confirms that when it comes to the eternal "who is better - us or them" debate, there really is no difference: "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.” It's a Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib rolled into one. In short: it is a place where the US constitution and basic human rights have absolutely no access.
According to an exclusive piece by the Guardian that is sure to send not only shivers down the spine of those who are still paying attention, but ripples across the "land of the free", not least because if there is one dark site on US soil, there are countless more - places where every single constitutional right of US citizens is trampled on - the secretive warehouse known as Homan Square is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. However, there is one huge difference: while those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
Every former communist block country had them: hidden, dark places where the secret police could have their way with you, and even kill you if it so desired, and nobody would have any clue or recourse of action; something for which the "evil empire" was mocked by the "free western world."
And while the ubiquitous "terrorism" excuse for any and every extra-constitutional action could apply here as well, the reality is that Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several special units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces. If police “want money, guns, drugs”, or information on the flow of any of them onto Chicago’s streets, “they bring them there and use it as a place of interrogation off the books.”
Located in a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side is where, according to the Guardian, one can find the domestic equivalent of a CIA "black site" - an illegal, off-the-books interrogation compound used by Chicago special police units, one which renders "Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside"; a place whose former occupants say is where you end up when you are "disappeared"; a place which confirms that when it comes to the eternal "who is better - us or them" debate, there really is no difference: "It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.” It's a Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib rolled into one. In short: it is a place where the US constitution and basic human rights have absolutely no access.
According to an exclusive piece by the Guardian that is sure to send not only shivers down the spine of those who are still paying attention, but ripples across the "land of the free", not least because if there is one dark site on US soil, there are countless more - places where every single constitutional right of US citizens is trampled on - the secretive warehouse known as Homan Square is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. However, there is one huge difference: while those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.
Every former communist block country had them: hidden, dark places where the secret police could have their way with you, and even kill you if it so desired, and nobody would have any clue or recourse of action; something for which the "evil empire" was mocked by the "free western world."
And while the ubiquitous "terrorism" excuse for any and every extra-constitutional action could apply here as well, the reality is that Homan Square is hardly concerned exclusively with terrorism. Several special units operate outside of it, including the anti-gang and anti-drug forces. If police “want money, guns, drugs”, or information on the flow of any of them onto Chicago’s streets, “they bring them there and use it as a place of interrogation off the books.”
This comment and your other top-level comment are copy-pasted in their entirety from http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-24/secret-black-site-r...
In fact communist states had it arguably better in the latter XX century - they didn't have war on dissidents with weapons and all, so it was usually enough to scare a dissenter using words - e.g. hint on losing a job or scholarship.
Talking heads on TV who hold the "wrong" views or journalists who ask the "wrong" questions just don't get invited again. People still get fired for holding unpopular views, and many high profile people in the western world are still afraid to speak up out of fear of losing their position.
Jeśli mój przyjaciel we wrocławiu powiedział coś złego o Ameryce jego firma będzie upewnić się, że policja go uwolnić. Ponieważ jego firma jest amerykańska firma.
How would he land in police in the first place? I understand most of the words but not the precise meaning :)
If this is so well known by the lawyers, how is it that nobody is taking the police to court? Are the lawyers afraid of the police?
Chicago is among the more notoriously extra-legal government zones in the US. I'd call it a municipality, but that doesn't do justice to the machine that is Chicago. It's essentially run by a powerful, unaccountable government-criminal-corporate organization structure, and has been for a century or more.
Look, Chicago has corruption problems, but calling it an "extra-legal government zone" is so hopelessly hyperbolic that it hurts any sort of real argument. The police have had literally thousands of lawsuits paying out hundreds of millions of dollars over just the last 5 years. Police officers, a police chief, mayors and even governors have been arrested and jailed over everything from bribery to brutality. If lawyers aren't suing on what looks like a slam-dunk case of civil rights violations, why have they sued (and won) so many other times?
It's incredible that someone as patently deranged as Richard Daley was allowed to run Chicago for 22 years. I'm still bitter about Meigs Field.
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I wonder what the apologists will say, there certainly is no lack of imagination when it comes to defending torture and murder when done by the government.
They'll say what they always say: I have nothing to hide, I've done nothing wrong, why should I worry personally, I'm sure they're just targeting criminals.
They'll cower like they almost always cower, shrinking from a confrontation they're deathly afraid of: the one in which they're ultimately responsible for ensuring their own liberty, with the requirement being they have to stand-up to a vast and powerful authority. I'm not speaking of modern Americans, but of all people at nearly all points of history, whether Soviet Russia or modern Chicago.
They'll cower like they almost always cower, shrinking from a confrontation they're deathly afraid of: the one in which they're ultimately responsible for ensuring their own liberty, with the requirement being they have to stand-up to a vast and powerful authority. I'm not speaking of modern Americans, but of all people at nearly all points of history, whether Soviet Russia or modern Chicago.
I'm "excited" to watch larger American news outlets systematically fail to cover something America-related published in the Guardian.
- Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
- Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
- Shackling for prolonged periods.
- Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
- Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
- At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.