Tag Archives: supreme court

US “Strip-Search”: Same As Soviet Gulag’s

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http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/women-src/images/nightsearch.jpg

Gulag history: online exhibit

This is a drawing by Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia, a former prisoner of the Soviet Union, of prisoners stripped of their clothes by prison guards in the Soviet gulag.

[Courtesy of Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia Foundation, Moscow.]

Note: These are political prisoners in a concentration camp in the Soviet Russia.

Note: “Strip-searches” that humiliate the subject in exactly the same way as in Soviet Russia, and to the same extent (and worse), are conducted routinely as “standard procedure” in the United States, without any kind of sustained questioning from the media and academic institutions.

QUOTE (Preet Bharara about Khobragade’s strip-search)

“He said she was “fully searched” by a female deputy marshal in private and called it standard procedure for “every defendant, rich or poor, American or not.”

[The red herring is the emphasis by Bharara on the notion of equality.

Of course, the treatment of a diplomat as though she were a random citizen is in itself an issue.

A gross violation of international protocol/law is clearly a hostile act by the Dept. of State and the NY attorney.

But the outrage among Indians over the matter was perfectly appropriate, even beside the question of the immunity of foreign diplomats in a host country.

Strip-searches, regardless of the status of the victim, are barbaric and violate human rights.]

In the US, such searches are being used for mere suspects, people not yet found guilty of anything at all, people arrested for any charge whatsoever.  In practice, people have been strip-searched for trivial offenses like unpaid traffic-tickets.

Please note that visual inspection of cavities which is a part of all standard strip-searches requires the subject to bend over and part the buttocks for inspection of the anus, often with a flash-light. It also requires the subject to move the testicles or bare the labia for visibility.

Often, the subject is asked to squat on his haunches and cough while baring his genitals. These are, by any standard, deeply humiliating and self-demeaning acts for any one, innocent or guilty, to perform in public, especially in front of a uniformed stranger, subject to few or no restraints. and especially when the procedure is also video-taped, ostensibly for security, thus harnessing the subjects not only into acts of voyeurism but into their pornographic representation and subsequent replication ad infinitum in contexts and for audiences over which he/she has no control, practical or legal.

Strip-searches – whether they include visual inspection of the body-cavities or digital probes of body-cavities  – constitute a type of custodial rape or sexual molestation, and have been deemed so by the laws of some countries.

But they have been defined as constitutionally sanctioned behavior permissible to the state, even in the case of minor offenses, by decree of the US Supreme Court:

QUOTE:

“Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,” Justice Kennedy wrote, adding that about 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation’s jails.

The procedures endorsed by the majority are forbidden by statute in at least 10 states and are at odds with the policies of federal authorities. According to a supporting brief filed by the American Bar Association, international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.”

Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom:

“The arrival at the corrective labor camp turned out to be the culmination of the humiliation. First we were made to strip naked and were shoved into some roofless enclosures made out of planks. Above our heads the stars twinkled; below our bare feet lay frozen excrement. An enclosure measured 3 square feet. Each held three to four naked, shivering, and frightened men and women. Then these ’kennel cages’ were opened one after the other and the naked people were led across a courtyard‘the camp version of a foyer‘into a special building where our documents were ’formulated’ and our things were ’searched.’

The goal of the search was to leave us with rags, and to take the good things ’sweaters, mittens, socks, scarves, vests, and good shoes’for themselves. Ten thieves shamelessly fleeced these destitute and barely alive people.

‘Corrective‘ is something that should make you better, and ‘labor‘ ennobles you. But ‘camp‘? A camp wasn‘t a jail. So then what on earth was going on? ”

“The night search, the most degrading procedure, was frequently repeated. “Get up! Get undressed! Hands up! Out into the hall! Line up against the wall.” Naked we were especially frightened. “Among the blind, the one-eyed is king,” and next to them I was still a hero—for the time being. Our hair was undone. What were they looking for? What more could they take away from us? There was something, however: they pulled out all the ties that had been holding up the nuns’ skirts and our underwear.”

Courtesy of Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia Foundation, Moscow. Translation by Deborah Hoffman.

Elena Kagan, Out And Proud Neo-Liberal

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Update (May 18): As solicitor general, she intervened on behalf of Monsanto’s right to contaminate non-genetically modified food with GM food, in Monsanto vs. Geertson Seed.

Update: Just to clarify the reference to neo-liberal, Elena Kagan has extensive ties to Goldman Sachs, D.E Shaw, and to Larry Summers on her resume. In other words, her so-called progressive positions are in the service of the kleptocracy.

Update (May 15 PM):

The Boston Phoenix has this, substantiating the main point of the Cockburn piece I’ve posted below it:

“On matters of executive authority — where the judicial branch has been a vital bulwark against post-9/11 “war on terror” civil-liberties violations — Kagan’s record indicates an ideological departure from Justice Stevens, who authored watershed detainee-rights opinions and organized the five-justice majorities that struck down other Bush administration power grabs. Continue reading →

Do Wise Latina Women Judge Differently from White Males?

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There’s a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about likely Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s remarks in 2001 when she was an appeals court judge.

““I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor.”

(Published by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal)

At The Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler finds the implication of her remarks troubling. He suggests that they go beyond simply stating that each individual’s perspective matters to negating the existence of an objective stance altogether.

Ho hum. This is such a tired battle. No one ever seems to say anything new or insightful. It all seems to boil down to a power struggle. Those upholding objective standards claim they do so because indeed standards are “out there” – i.e. objective.

Those arguing for identity as the trump card claim that the objective standard merely disguises power relations and the (white, male) identity of the powerful.

Can I say anything new? I don’t know, but it’s worth a try if only to spare myself future boredom reading the reasoning on both sides of these kinds of debate.

Back later with more.
******
OK. Here’s how I see it.
Experience always alters perception, so, to that extent, Sotomayor is not saying anything inaccurate.

I think the part that bothered Adler is this one (and I can see why): He says she “quotes approvingly” law professors who have said that “to judge is an exercise of power.”
Again, note the problem with reasoning in the social sciences here. There is an elision, a gap, in which changes in meaning are lost.

To say something is an act of power is not the same thing as saying it’s only an act of power. Moreover, power has a connotation in today’s political lingo that’s inherently negative.

Supposing then you were to substitute the word “will,” for the word “power,” what then?
Sotomayor would then be saying that people’s experiences influence the way they think, which informs their judgment. Their judgment is as much an act of will as it’s the logical conclusion of reasoning independent of the actor who performs it.

Instead of discussing power relations (politics), we’d end up in a much more fruitful arena, exploring the relationship between our will and our perceptions and reasoning. We’d be in the territory of cognitive science and philosophy. And we’d be much more likely to come up with something useful.

And all from looking at our language a bit more critically.

Of course, I have no idea whether that’s what Sotomayor meant. I’m just saying that a nuanced reading of words might be a place where both sides of the debate could start.

Instead, the debate ends locked in what I think I’ll label a Catholic (God is all-knowing*) versus Protestant (God is all-powerful) polarity, with judge substituting for God.

* I originally wrote all-rational, which seems to have led to a misunderstanding. I meant “reason” (as in ‘right reason’ rather than Reason, as in Enlightenment rationality)