Civil liberties, justice, crime

13 August 2013: A hunger strike in prisons across California has entered its second month, and the remaining participants are mourning the first casualty of this action. Billy "Guerro" Sells was found dead in a Corcoran prison isolation cell on July 22, 14 days after he began refusing food. Sells' death has been ruled a suicide, but supporters of the hunger strikers "still think the [California Department of Corrections] is responsible for what happened to him," said Donna Willmott, a representative of the Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. This year's hunger strike was preceded by two...

Domestic violence (DV) is physical and sexual violence, psychological and emotional abuse, threats and intimidation, financial blackmail, harassment, isolation, also belittling and unreasonable criticism within an intimate or family relationship. It could be part of a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. It should include the abusive actions of extended family members including such things as forced marriage and “honour crimes”. DV cuts across boundaries of gender, age, race, religion, sexual orientation and class. However women are very more likely to suffer, and research shows the...

Leanne Connor is a recent graduate of the University of Bristol who wrote a dissertation on “Domestic Violence: a socialist feminist perspective? The impact of the coalition government’s spending plans on women’s domestic violence services”. In the course of the project she spoke to people working in domestic violence services. Below are some of her findings. In 2010 the Coalition government released a strategy called The Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls (CEVAWG). It stated that: “The gendered pattern of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) needs to be understood and...

Sexist and misogynistic “trolling”, particularly on social networking site Twitter, is in the news. A few years ago, an internet “troll” was someone who wrote things online for no other reason than to annoy people or elicit a reaction. “Don’t feed the troll” was a common expression, meaning, “Don’t end up in arguments with people whose only aim is to piss you off”. “Troll” has since come to mean something else — “someone who acts maliciously or nastily on the internet”. Equality campaigners, socialists and members of oppressed groups are often sent vile material because of their ethnicity...

Trigger warning/content note: detailed discussion of rape and sexual violence. What are we saying when we talk about “violence against women”? Well, one thing we’re not saying, because we’re not actually talking about it, is male violence against women. The biblical story of Potiphar’s wife established the myth of the vengeance of “a woman scorned” and the damage she could do to a virtuous man in rigidly patriarchal culture. The spectre of false accusation was presented as being as bad, if not worse than, rape. That tradition continued into the middle ages and beyond. The following is a...

Update - 21 August 2013 A military court has sentenced Manning to 35 year in jail for espionage, theft, and violation of military computer regulations. The below article was written two weeks ago, after the announcement of the verdict. Chelsea Manning [formerly Bradley: she has changed her name and gender identity] released military documents to WikiLeaks, documents which included footage of a US military helicopter gunning down a father taking his children to school; evidence of a death squad operating in Afghanistan; and files showing that Guantánamo held dementia patients, taxi drivers and...

The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) has been established to campaign for an independent public enquiry into the policing at Orgreave coke works during the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike. The campaign focuses particularly on events of 18 June 1984, when 95 miners were arrested and later charged with riot or unlawful assembly; the former charge carrying a possible life sentence at the time. The cases were subsequently dropped, but no apology has ever been offered. Campaigners also believe an independent enquiry could reveal the truth about the policing operation at Orgreave. Sign the campaign...

How would you feel if you found out the person you had been in a long-term relationship with had been acting out a fictional persona, using the name of a dead child, under the direction of the state and subsidised by the tax payer? That is what male undercover cops have done to unknown numbers of women according to this important Guardian investigation. Since the late 60s, “sleeping with the target” has been a central tactic of the police in their surveillance of political groups. Nick Herbert, Tory minister for police and criminal justice, thinks the tactic is justified. A specific ban on...

The state snooping scandal continues to grow. Since 6 June the Guardian and the Washington Post have revealed a court order making telecom giant Verizon give the US National Security Agency details of phone calls for millions of customers, and an NSA system for collecting vast amounts of data from internet communications. Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who blew the whistle, is in hiding. Google, Facebook, YouTube, Apple and others are trying to reassure internet users. David Cameron swears everything is fine, but other government leaders are bothered about the US spooks dredging data from...

More than 1,000 people marched past the main gates at Fort Meade in Maryland [USA] on 1 June in a demonstration against the impending start of a court-martial for WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. Manning should be returning to the civilian world right now. Instead, after three years of incarceration, Manning’s court-martial on 22 charges, including “aiding the enemy,” began on 3 June. According to the military Rules of Court-martial, Manning’s trial should have been held within 120 days of arraignment. While [presiding judge] Colonel Denise Lind claimed there were exceptional...