I usually don't post these because of their regularity, but this one really stands out. San Antonio police officer Craig Nash raped a woman while on duty, she said. He faced a life sentence for the felony charges, but he was able to plead that down to a misdemeanor and will serve just one year. Why? I'm sure it's not because the woman who said he raped her was a transgender sex worker. Reminds me of the Memphis cop who pleaded down to two years after beating the crap out of Duanna Johnson using his handcuffs as brass knuckles. Texas is the worst place in America to be transgender, as evidenced by two widows whose marriages were legally challenged after their husbands' deaths. Christie Lee Littleton's marriage was declared illegal after she brought a suit against her dead husband's doctor. That set the legal precedent for the whole state, which means Nikki Araguz faces an uphill battle after her firefighter husband died on duty last year. Her in-laws are challenging the death benefits she's entitled to receive.

Official oppression earns ex-cop a year behind bars

"Turkey allowed the US to use its airbase at Incirlik in southern Turkey as part of the 'extraordinary rendition' program to take suspected terrorists to Guantánamo Bay, according to a US diplomatic cable."

[ LISTEN: Direct MP3 link, and embedded audio. ]

---

On today's episode of the Southern California Public Radio program The Madeleine Brand Show, I joined host Madeleine Brand for a discussion of the role technology and social media played in the recent political upheaval in Tunisia.

Tunisia's interim leaders announced a new government today after a surge of violent demonstrations toppled autocratic president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Many reporters and bloggers (and now, uh, Muammar Qadaffi) have been quick to credit Wikileaks, Twitter, and Facebook with fomenting unrest in the country. But is it accurate to describe what is unfolding in Tunisia as "a Twitter revolution"?

Some related reading today:

• Tunisia: That 'WikiLeaks Revolution' meme (CSM)
• The brutal truth about Tunisia (The Independent)
• Qaddafi Sees WikiLeaks Plot in Tunisia (NY Times / The Lede)
• Tunisia: Fears of Insecurity Overshadow the Joys of Freedom
• Arab World: Where is Ben Ali Headed to? (Global Voices)
• Tunisia: How the US got it wrong (Al Jazeera / opinion)
• Tunisia invades, censors Facebook, other accounts (CPJ)
• Wikileaks - US embassy cables: Tunisia - a US foreign policy conundrum (Guardian)
• The 2010-2011 Tunisian protests (Wikipedia)
• First thoughts on Tunisia and the role of the Internet (Foreign Policy)

(PHOTO at top of post: Students hold placards and flowers during a sit-in protest in Beirut January 17, 2011, organized by Lebanese activists Tunisians living in Lebanon to show solidarity and support for the people in Tunisia. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi)

(REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra)

Rioters burn a policeman's hat during clashes with the police in downtown of the capital Tunis January 14, 2011. Tunisian President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali declared a state of emergency on Friday and warned that protesters would be shot in an increasingly frantic effort to quell the worst unrest in his two decades in power. Then, he fled the country.

More on the fast-moving changes in Tunisia today, and protests in which tens of thousands called for change, at this Boing Boing post. More photos follow, below. But this one, taken after Ben Ali flew out of the country, may really sum it up best.

Read the rest

Fast-moving change today in Tunisia (not that you'd know it from watching American cable TV news—if you're in the US, keep your eye on Twitter, blogs, and more worldly online news organizations instead).

• New York Times: "President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia has left the country amid growing chaos in the streets, French diplomats say, and the prime minister went on state television Friday night to say he is in charge."

• Here is a YouTube playlist of eyewitness videos from the protests in Tunisia.

• The Awl points to this helpful primer on Tunisia in Mother Jones Magazine.

• Al Jazeera is all over it. Jillian York's opinion piece at Al Jazeera is worth reading: "Tunisia's taste of internet freedom."

• Here is one Arab affairs live-blog of the events, in English, at al-bab.com. • Here's a report at Al-Arabiya.

• This Wikileaks-leaked State Department cable became a catalyst in the social upheaval.

• Here's a Foreign Policy Magazine piece that puts forth an argument that Wikileaks and social media played important roles.

• Responding more or less to those who might describe it as "a Wikileaks revolution," Ethan Zuckerman tweeted earlier, "Think it would be a mistake to give too much credit to Wikileaks [...] this has much more to do with unemployment, poverty, and inequality."

• Evgeny Morozov echoes this sentiment in his Foreign Policy opinion piece: "First thoughts on Tunisia and the role of the Internet"

At Firedoglake, David House writes a lengthy and detailed report from visits with Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been in military detention for months for being the presumed source of Wikileaks' most damning US government leaks. He has not yet been convicted of a crime. Manning's lawyer and others have written about his detention conditions as "extreme" and amounting to cruel and inhumane treatment. The sleep deprivation, movement deprivation, solitary confinement, and other elements of his current condition amount to torture, by widely accepted definitions.

Before this, no one has heard from Manning himself about those conditions. Snip:

I am one of the few people allowed to visit Bradley Manning while he is detained in the Quantico brig. Manning is held in "maximum custody," the military's most severe detention policy. Manning is also confined under a longstanding Prevention of Injury (POI) order which limits his social contact, news consumption, ability to exercise, and that places restrictions on his ability to sleep.

Manning has been living under the solitary restrictions of POI for five months despite being cleared by a military psychologist earlier this year, and despite repeated calls from his attorney David Coombs to lift the severely restrictive and isolating order. POI orders are short-term restrictions that are typically implemented when a detainee changes confinement facilities and these orders are lifted after the detainee passes psychological evaluation.

Our conversations, which take place in the presence of marines and electronic monitoring equipment, typically revolve around topics in physics, computer science, and philosophy; he recently mentioned that he hopes to one day make use of the GI Bill towards earning a graduate degree in Physics and a bachelors in Political Science. He rarely if ever talks about his conditions in the brig, and it is not unusual for him to shy away from questions about his well-being by changing the subject entirely.

When I arrived at the brig on December 18th I found him to be much more open to lines of inquiry regarding his circumstances, and in a two and a half hour conversation I learned new details about his life in confinement.

Bradley Manning Speaks About His Conditions (firedoglake)

The article includes a petition to the brig commander, asking him to remove Manning's uneccessary POI status.

A note about the author of the piece: David House is a 23-year-old researcher at MIT who helped set up the Bradley Manning Support Network, a group raising funds for Manning's legal defense. Glenn Greenwald has an account here of House being harassed at the border, like others associated in one way or another with Wikileaks.

Dafna Linzer at ProPublica reports on an Executive Order the White House is currently preparing related to the practice of indefinite detention:

[The order] will provide periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, according to several administration officials.

The draft order, a version of which was first considered nearly 18 months ago, is expected to be signed by President Obama early in the New Year. The order allows for the possibility that detainees from countries like Yemen might be released if circumstances there change.

But the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

(Image contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by BB reader Tom Blanton)

A reminder that various news organizations are still doing the hard work of digging through the Wikileaks-leaked US diplomatic cables, and parsing out the newsworthy contents. The Guardian's archive of daily recaps is here. We're now 23 days into Cablegate, and today's edition is here: it includes a nod to related coverage in the New York Times and Der Spiegel.

In today's batch, cables concerning nuclear reactors in Bulgaria; Richard Branson's disdain for the quality of the UK's education system, Libya vs. Marks & Spencer in Tripoli; and Syria's belief that Israel was behind the sniper killing of General Muhammad Suleiman, President Bashar al-Assad's top security aide.

Also, revelations of Afghan heroin growers holding back reserves of the drug like bank savings; surveillance of "individuals moving radioactive substances" around London waved off by British security services before the poisoning of Litvinenko.

And finally, the US threatening Italy to ensure no international arrest warrants were issued for CIA agents accused of being involved in cleric Abu Omar's abduction.

A lot of leaks for one day. If my count is correct, less than 2,000 of the 250,000 cables have been released or reported on to date—just a fraction.

David E. Coombs, the attorney representing Bradley Manning, discusses the laws that apply for attempting to secure more humane treatment for the young man in the Marine brig in Quantico:

The defense has raised the conditions of PFC Bradley Manning's confinement conditions on multiple occasions with the Quantico confinement facility and the Army Staff Judge Advocate's (SJA) Office assigned to handle this case. Our efforts, unfortunately, have not resulted any in positive results. To its credit, the SJA office is attempting to correct this situation. However, given the fact that Quantico is a Marine Corps facility, it has similarly had no success.

PFC Bradley Manning, unlike his civilian counterpart, is afforded no civil remedy for illegal restraint under either the Federal Civil Rights Act or the Federal Tort Claims Act. Similarly, the protection from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment and Article 55 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) does not generally apply prior to a court-martial. Thus, the only judicial recourse that is available is under Article 13 of the UCMJ. Article 13 safeguards against unlawful pretrial punishment and embodies the precept that an accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Article 13 provides that:

No person, while being held for trial, may be subjected to punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against him, nor shall the arrest or confinement imposed upon him be any more rigorous than the circumstances required to insure his presence, but he may be subjected to minor punishment during that period for infractions of discipline.

Read the rest