A U.S. Senate subcommittee is holding hearings on the practice of solitary confinement in our nation's prisons. Here's what Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years in prison for murder before being exonerated, had to say about the practice:
Ah Utah. Always upping the ante on truly abominable, horrifying things.
Food simulacra purveyor McDonald's has announced that it will "take actions" to "phase out" the use of gestational crates—tiny little pens for pregnant pigs that don't allow the pregnant pigs to turn around for four months, fucking them up in all sorts of ways—among the company's pork suppliers. "There are…
Shohn Huckabee is a 24 year-old Texas man who was arrested during a trip to Mexico in 2009, charged with drug trafficking, and given a five year prison sentence. He says that he was innocent, tortured by police and set up. His case became a cause celebre for activists, and he's finally been released after serving more…
The GOP's Presidential candidates split sharply on the question of whether or not to torture prisoners at Saturday night's national security debate in South Carolina. Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann aggressively defended the use of waterboarding, while Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman condemned torture as immoral and…
Talk about dick moves: Two British drug dealers, one of whom is named Richard Johnson, are in jail after admitting that they attacked a late-paying mephedrone customer by putting his penis between hot straightening tongs. The customer, 18-year-old Anthony Dabbs, was so traumatized that he fled the town. Small business…
Coverage of the war in Libya has exposed an incredible amount of atrocities — by both Qaddafi loyalists and rebels. And the video report below, by CNN's Dan Rivers, is yet another awful addition to the formers' crimes. Rivers visited a vacation home that belonged to Muammar's youngest son, Hannibal, and his wife Aline…
Are you feeling the heat from debt collectors? Or maybe you just aren't sure how you'll make your next credit card payment? Whatever the case, just be thankful you don't owe money to Citibank in Indonesia. And if you do, don't accept an invitation to settle in the bank's interrogation room.
48-year-old Catherine Kieu — better known as the woman who cut off her husband's penis and tossed it in the garbage disposal because "he deserved it" — appeared in court yesterday, where she was charged with torture and aggravated mayhem. And we now might finally know why the man "deserved it." Prosecutors claim that…
A graphic video of the corpse of a 13-year-old boy who appears to have been sexually and physically tortured by Syrian security officials has sparked international condemnation and riots across the country. The video shows Hamza Ali al-Khatib, a resident of the southern village of Jiza, and appears to have been filmed…
Sen. John McCain took to the Senate floor Thursday to condemn waterboarding and other torture techniques, saying that the debate over these techniques is ultimately "about morality. What is at stake here it the very idea of America."
Former vice president Dick Cheney took a break from feasting on his Mother's Day breakfast of Crisco porridge and deep-fried chrysanthemums to appear on television and call for the reinstatement of waterboarding, one of America's most popular intelligence-gathering techniques.
The first televised images many Americans saw when hearing the news about Osama bin Laden's death was a horde of preppies from George Washington University climbing trees and screaming arena chants most frequently heard at professional hockey games and roaring elatedly about death and blood. Sure, it was substantial…
Bradley Manning, the world's most famous WikiLeaker, will be moved from his deplorable conditions at Quantico to Fort Leavenworth. The Pentagon insists this is just a little inmate furniture rearranging, not a response to accusations of human rights violations. [NYT]
Democrats in Texas seem to be excited about this: They've convinced retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. Sanchez described himself to McClatchy over the phone, saying, "I decided…
A reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Robert Tait spent 28 hours blindfolded in the custody of Egypt's notorious state security apparatus last Friday. Here's part of what he heard:
The Associated Press' Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo have a breathtaking-but-sadly-unsurprising story detailing the CIA's habit of promoting the very people responsible for the Agency's most spectacular fuck-ups. The analyst responsible for illegally abducting, drugging, sodomizing, and beating a completely innocent man…
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke on Egyptian TV today and, as expected, announced that he wouldn't seek reelection. But he will stick around through an ill-specified "transfer of power," and may torture a few more people along the way.
David House, a computer researcher from Boston, is one of few people permitted to visit accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning at a military prison in Quantico, Va. He's relayed a message from Manning: My blankets hurt.
