Feature Archives

The Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have launched a joint probe into the CIA's destruction of at least two videotapes documenting prisoner interrogations at a secret CIA prison. One of the tapes may have shown CIA agents waterboarding the Al Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah. The CIA withheld the tapes from the 9/11 Commission despite repeated requests for information on interrogations directed to top CIA and White House officials.

The Santa Cruz Sleeping Ban is a local law that defines sleeping at night as “camping” and prescribes a $97 fine for falling asleep outside a house or hotel within City limits. Using one’s vehicle as housing is illegal, even though the city provides no alternatives. Since there’s shelter space in winter for only 160 of the city’s 1500-2000 homeless residents, the law in effect makes it a crime to be homeless at night, unless you stay awake.

Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status on Wednesday, December 19th in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

On December 9th, the Washington Post reported that current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of four members of Congress who was secretly briefed in 2002 about interrogation techniques that included the torture known as waterboarding -- and Pelosi had not raised objections to it. The next day, about twenty Code Pink members and other antiwar activists gathered outside of Pelosi's local office to conduct an emergency protest.

By a margin of 1.4 percent, the forces of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez lost a December 2 vote on a referendum of social programs that also would have lifted term limits for the presidency. Chávez called it a "photo finish." The United States reportedly spent $8 million dollars to sway the vote, and a CIA document uncovered by the Chavistas spelled out a thorough program of psy-ops and destabilization.

On November 14, a routine CIA information and recruitment session was suddenly disrupted on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara when a small group of student protesters walked in and lead a man with bound hands to the front of the room, where he was laid on a table and (voluntarily*) tortured with a CIA-approved technique used to simulate drowning, known as water-boarding. The CIA speakers were struggling to speak over the "torture victim's" coughs and cries for help, while potential CIA recruits looked on with bewilderment at the grotesquely real portrayal of torture.

On November 11th, Vice Mayor Ryan Coonerty, Civil Rights Attorney Kate Wells and local ACLU representative Don Zimmerman debated the Santa Cruz Sleeping Ban on Voices from the Village, a live community television show with call-ins and public questions.