The New Disappeared - Sex Offenders, Civil Confinement and the Resurrection of Evil . . .

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosen05102007.html

One of the first acts of New York's newly-elected "liberal" governor, Eliot Spitzer, was to secure passage of the nation's most far-reaching civil confinement law. With its passage, New York joined nineteen other states that permit the continued imprisonment of sex offenders after they have completed their prison sentence. These inmates are defined as suffering a mental disorder and, thus, posing the threat of committing new crimes upon release. Civil confinement permits the state to transform a criminal sentence with a specified duration into an indeterminate life sentence.

Convicted sex offenders are joining a growing list of what can only be called "the new disappeared." Latin American dictatorships (under CIA and U.S. military supervision) pioneered "disappearance" as a government practice to deal with radical opposition during the tumultuous '70s and '80s. Today, both U.S. federal and state governments are instituting a less barbaric, but no less effective, means to ensure the disappearance of a variety of unacceptable citizens. In effect, once a person is convicted, sentenced and imprisoned, he or she can be disappeared from civil society for life.

Today, the terrorist, particularly the Muslim jihadist, and the sex offender, especially the pedophile, are perceived as the gravest evils to civil society. But they are not alone.

The new disappeared also includes those swept up in the CIA practice of "extraordinary rendition" or identified as "enemy combatants" and imprisoned in the American gulag, Guantánamo; those, like Sami Al-Arian, the Palestinian educator, and Josh Wolf, the indie video journalist (recently released), being held for an indeterminate sentence for contempt of a grand jury subpoena to testify under a questionable (if illegal) order; those, like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, the former Black Panther journalist and American Indian Movement activist, respectively, serving a life sentence or are on death row with no likelihood of release; those given extraordinarily punitive prison sentences reaching to 100 and 200 and even 900 years; and the nearly 6 million ex-felons and those awaiting trial who have been disenfranchised from civil society. America is practicing disappearance with a bureaucrat's smirk.

- much more . . . recommended . . .

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosen05102007.html

[wakeme2008]

1. this says it best

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

[jody]

2. I understand but the hysteria over Cho's mental condition being ignored by Virginia's govt. and

contributing to his murders/suicide at VT pose a real question, what is government's role in preventing people with mental problems that make them a threat to society from executing that threat?

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

3. That's a great article. I noticed the broad brush of "sexual offender" used more and more

to describe mass "arrests". And, of course, pedophilia and child porn are used as excuses to destroy our civil liberties through illegal surveillance and search and seizure.

MKJ

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. Where are you seeing mass arrests of sex offenders? n/t

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

5. Out here we had a big "bust" of about 30 wanted "sex offenders"

Here are just a few of the "mass arrests", being done in the name of protecting us. Sex offenders are always named as one group, along with others and in most cases, specifically targeted.

Just don't get caught peeing in public.

Dragnet nabs 10,000 fugitives
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/04/14/fugitive.


More than 1,100 sex offenders captured
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-27-sex-offenders_x.htm


Fugitives rounded up in central Illinois
http://www.cityhall.ci.bloomington.il.us/pnews.asp?id=8593


BALTIMORE FUGITIVE SWEEP RESULTS IN NEARLY 200 ARRESTS
http://baltimore.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel07/ba030707.htm


86 arrested in Bakersfield during Operation Falcon II
http://www.eyeoutforyou.com/news/local/2715166.html


MKJ