Domestic Terrorism in the USA.

All over the world, our rights to free speech and non-violent protest are repressed - Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger has been sentenced to 1000 floggings and 10 years in prison, simply for calling for the freedom of speech. This disregard for rights we are all entitled to is repugnant and must come to an end, but how are we to seek change when opinion is so widely suppressed, and even punished?

The United States Government is using flawed and misleading information in training agents to identify and investigate 'domestic terrorist' groups such as 'black separatists', anarchists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists. FBI agents were cautioned of activists using the Freedom of Information Act, and engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, and gathering in coffee shops. 

The chief focus of these presentations is gathering as much information as possible on what activists are calling  a 'public relations war'. The FBI issued warnings to activists attempting to use 'false employment'. This is undeniably in regard to activists seeking employment at factory farms and vivisection labs, with the objective of exposing animal welfare abuses - this has been considered worthy of terrorism charges in some cases. In addition the FBI is targeting 'black separatists', anarchists, animal rights activists and environmentalists in almost identical methods - made apparent by the scarcity of innovation where tactics are involved. The FBI manufactures such terrorism threats through conflation. Largely disparate groups are being fused across ideological divides, in order to present them as one united threat - deemed 'domestic terrorists'.  

It is execrable to unify the methods of such dissonant groups, Animal rights activists tactics include Freedom of Information Act requests and examples of 'civil disobedience' such as 'Sleeping Dragons' (a form of civil disobedience in which people lock arms in PVC pipes). Juxtapose these with the tactics of militia extremists and white supremacists who have murdered, lynched, bombed, assaulted government officials, and created weapons of mass
destruction.


Such an abrupt disparity between these groups - deemed with exact punishment explicitly indicates fault and suspicious policy making within the FBI and United States Government.

Guantanamo Bay.

This month marks the 13th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay, a U.S military detention centre in Cuba - set up in response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and subsequent military operations in Afghanistan. Existing migrant detention facilities at Guantanamo were re-purposed to hold detainees in the 'war on terror' . Behind closed doors, for 13 long years, Guantanamo Bay has kept prisoners under inhumane conditions, many of them tortured - and most importantly, most of them didn't even see trial. Men who have been cleared of their said 'crimes' remain in Guantanamo, because they've seen too much.

Waterboarding has been a popular method of torture at Guantanamo, a water-based method which gives the victim the sensation of drowning. Detainees are immobilized at around 10 or 20 degrees, with a cloth placed over their faces. Torturers pour water over the victim's breathing passages, which usually causes an almost immediate gag reflex. The Central Intelligence Agency admitted to using waterboarding as a form of torture in 2002 and 2003. This technique can cause irreversible damage to the victim's lungs, and due to the starvation of oxygen to the brain, often brain damage. This is merely one example of the injustice that goes on every day in Guantanamo Bay.

There has been reports of 7 deaths in custody since the opening, however there is much speculation around the numbers. Guantanamo still detains prisoners who have been cleared, perhaps there is more than meets the eye - of course there is. Detainees have been reported to have committed suicide, under such harsh detention, this would be near impossible.

The inhumanity that resonates at Guantanamo Bay each and every day has to come to an end. It is time for Barack Obama to follow through with his executive order to close Guantanamo within a year, an order signed 6 years ago.