By Kim Hearty and Nicholas Ellan - April 26, 2013

Consecutive increases in police budgets have given the VPD more resources for a dual strategy of heightened ticketing in the DTES and the increased criminalization of protest. Under [Vancouver Mayor Gregor] Robertson’s direction, Vancouver’s police have been pressed into a campaign of harassment and intimidation against democratic protests perceived as anti-business.

Boston's marathon bombings leave disturbing questions unanswered. Official accounts lack credibility. Mounting evidence suggests FBI responsibility. It doesn't surprise.

By Tom Carter - 25 April 2013

What history will remember as most significant about the events in Boston will not be the bombing near the marathon’s finish line or the perpetrators or their motives. What will be remembered instead will be the unprecedented military lock-down of an entire major American city, with military vehicles in the streets and heavily armed soldiers going house to house — tromping through living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, staring down their assault rifles at terrified, barefoot families in their pajamas.

Lynne's wrongfully imprisoned. She's one of America's best. For 30 years, she defended its poor, underprivileged, unwanted, and forgotten. Without advocates like her, they're denied due process and judicial fairness.

By Keith Jones - 24 April 2013

Canadian authorities boasted Monday afternoon that, working in concert with the FBI and other US national security agencies, they had broken up a terrorist conspiracy involving an Iranian-based al-Qaeda cell. The announcement, made at a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) press conference, came just as the House of Commons was set to debate new anti-terrorism legislation that would give the state draconian new powers.

This month, a 30-day action campaign was launched demanding the release of Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz from solitary confinement, where he has been held for over 23 consecutive years, and 28 of the last 30 years, in Pennsylvania prisons. On April 8, when the campaign began, Maroon’s legal team sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC), demanding his release from solitary confinement and promising litigation against the PA DOC if he is not transferred to general population by May 8.

By DAVE LINDORFF - April 22, 2013

Now when police have a “situation” anywhere in the country, it’s a good bet they’ll adopt the new Boston model as the option of choice, “locking down”...whole towns or cities to give police a free hand...What we are seeing in Boston is a preview of [a] police state...The mindless post-capture applause for the army of police who implemented the “lock-down” of the city after the marathon bombing was part and parcel of that police state.

April 18, 2013 - CBC News

Tanya Belleau, 26, says she was walking home alone when police stopped her at the corner of Hastings and Carrall streets for no apparent reason..."Two of them were talking to me at the same time, one asked me my name, one asked me where I'm going..."

By Sandy English - 18 April 2013

Plaintiffs in an ongoing trial in federal court in New York City have alleged that the city’s Police Department (NYPD) has violated the constitutional and civil rights of millions of people in its decade-long stop-and-frisk program...The NYPD stops hundreds of thousands of people a year on the streets and sidewalks of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. Most are young and working class, and 88 percent are African American or Latino.

By Nathan Crompton - April 18, 2013

After nine steady weeks of nightly protests by anti-poverty activists in front of the PiDGiN restaurant in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, police have stated that they plan to arrest picketers. In a press conference delivered yesterday, Vancouver Police Department spokesperson Brian Montague stated that his department is “anticipating an arrest soon.”

Today, April 17, 2013, marks 41 years that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have been unjustly incarcerated in solitary confinement in Louisiana. This is 41 years of living in concrete and metal cages of 6 x 9 feet; 41 years of being separated from their families and loved ones; 41 years of being wrongly accused of a murder they did not commit.

By Tim Groves - April 16, 2013

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is disclosing intelligence to private companies despite a law that does not permit this sharing...There is a “new imperative” for the Service to work closely with industry partners, according to the 2010 “Review of CSIS’s Private Sector Relationships,” created by the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), the body that oversees the spy agency’s compliance with the law.

By Steven Hsieh - April 12, 2013

In Texas, hundreds of thousands of students are winding up in court for committing very serious offenses such as cursing or farting in class. Some of these so-called dangerous criminals...will face arrest and even incarceration, like the honors student who spent a night in jail for skipping class, or the 12-year-old who was arrested for spraying perfume on her neck.

By DAVE LINDORFF - March 29-31, 2013

Right-wing Americans love to call the US a “nanny state,” claiming that the federal government is always trying to pass laws regulating people’s lives. What the US really is, though, is a “puni-state” — a nation that thrives on vengeance and retribution, and that rejects the whole notion of rehabilitation or character change.

By Paul Tetrault - April 10, 2013

In 2002, Omar Khadr was captured by the Americans in Afghanistan. He was 15 years old. Eleven years later, he's still in jail, and his sentence runs for seven more years...Last year, the Conservative government was finally forced to repatriate Omar Khadr to Canada where he is now incarcerated in Millhaven maximum security penitentiary, without access to basic education and rehabilitation programmes.