Partly as a consequence of my natural rambunctiousness, I’ve spent a total of five months over the past few years of incarceration being held in 23- to 24-hour-a-day Special Housing Unit confinement cells, collectively and informally known as “the hole,” at three different prisons and in stints ranging from six to 60 days; indeed, my first three Intercept columns were composed from the SHU over at Federal Correctional Institution Fort Worth. But as these were given over largely to rambling self-promotion and some rather intemperate attacks on several contemporary novelists, I’ve never gotten around to providing a real sense of what it’s actually like to live in one of these federal dungeons.
The chief thing to keep in mind is that dungeons vary. The most fundamental division lies between those in which inmates are kept singly in cells along a corridor set off from the rest of the prison and purposefully denied human contact to one extent or another, and those in which two prisoners are kept together in such cells, usually with a window or metalwork grill on the door through which inmates can communicate with others in their corridor via the age-old medium of shouting. The first — known as solitary confinement to everyone but prison officials, who’ve gradually replaced the term with an assortment of euphemisms — is often conflated in the public mind with the second, lesser-known setup, but at any rate the nature of one’s detention is such that human contact is either intentionally and elaborately absent or haphazardly and excruciatingly omnipresent.
Even within these two categories, one finds a great deal of variation from institution to institution, but day-to-day SHU life at FCI Fort Worth should make for a useful baseline. There, a weekday begins at 6 a.m. when the lights in one’s cell come on. A few minutes later the rectangular slot in one’s door is unlocked and a guard pushes in a plastic tray containing breakfast along with a couple of little plastic bags of milk. It’s rather dehumanizing, this matter of having to drink milk out of bags like a common Canadian, but getting breakfast in bed every day makes up for it. Fifteen minutes later the guard comes back and takes up the trays, and then one of his colleagues will walk down the hall jotting down the names of those who want to go outside for one’s permitted daily hour of weekday recreation. Having compiled the list, the guard goes back to his station and tries to arrange things such that incompatible inmates aren’t placed together in the same recreation cage. This sort of reminds me of the old riddle about the farmer who has a fox and a rooster and a bag of corn but can only take one at a time across the river in his boat and the fox will eat the rooster and the rooster will eat the corn if either pair is left together unattended (the solution, incidentally, is to shoot the fox, because it’s a fox).
If you are indeed going to rec that morning, the guard opens the hatch and you back up to it and put your hands through to be handcuffed, and then your cellmate does likewise regardless of whether or not he’s going out as well, as the door isn’t ever supposed to be opened until both occupants are cuffed. When the door does open, you walk out backward before being patted down and scanned with a hand-held metal detector, led out to the courtyard, placed in one of several large cages with your scientifically designated playmate, and then uncuffed through the slot in the gate. After an hour of kicking around a deflated basketball while yelling old Symbionese Liberation Army slogans at the other prisoners, you’re cuffed back up through the gate slot and returned to your cell. A bit later we get lunch, and then dinner a few hours afterward, followed by mail. Three days a week we’re cuffed up and taken to the other end of the hall for showers. On weekends we generally don’t leave our cells at all.
It’s a schedule that leaves prisoners with a great deal of free time, much of which tends to be spent in sleep or exercise. The chief workout routine in the SHU, as well as in jail units and other locales where even improvised equipment can be hard to drum up, is something called burpees, which entails an alternating series of push-ups, squats, and leg thrusts and which I refer to as Berbers because “burpees” is vulgar. Not that I do them anyway, or any other exercise, and I’ve never approved of excessive sleeping, either, for life is not meant to be spent in rest, but rather in conflict or preparation for future conflict.
There is one common SHU activity in which I do happily participate, though, simply because it’s something that can’t be done elsewhere and naturally I’m trying to experience all the touristy prison things before my release just in case I don’t come back for a while. The SHU is the only place of which I’m aware where it’s socially acceptable to yell random nonsense where other people can hear it. Now, much of the yelling that people do through gaps under the door or the crack between the door and its mounting or the metal grills that serve as windows in some units, as the case may be, is entirely purposeful communication consisting of gossip, plots, threats, lyrics, Symbionese Liberation Army slogans, vows, requests, and commercial offers, and this sort of thing will go on throughout the day, with peak times occurring after meals and other periods when everyone tends to be awake (as to how those commercial offers are accepted, there is a process known as “fishing” or “shooting the line” by which small items may be transferred among inmates, but a full column’s description will be required to do it justice; suffice it to say that string and persistence are involved).
But in addition to all of this more or less mundane intercourse, there’s also a wholly distinct and inimitable element of shouting-for-the-sake-of-shouting. Some of this takes the form of memes; at Seagoville Federal Detention Center, for instance, the guards once brought in a drunk off the compound who, after being placed in his cell, spent the next hour banging on the door and yelling out some sloshy, inconsequential narrative that he would punctuate every few sentences with the refrain, “They hear me but they don’t FEEL me, though!” Thereafter this phrase became a very popular meme that would be shouted out several times a day; it had been incorporated into the vibrant oral culture of our particular SHU corridor.
But SHU shouts can be, and often are, more or less apropos of nothing. I myself was fond of drinking six or seven lukewarm cups of the freeze-dried instant coffee we can buy from the weekly commissary cart, going up to the door grill, and calling out in a raspy, feminine voice, “My brother is coming … with MANY FREMEN WARRIORS” about 20 or 30 times in a row, often capped off with a triumphant, “Meet the Atreides Gom Jabbar, grandfather!” And it wouldn’t occur to anyone to inquire as to why I’d done this; people in the SHU wake up every morning with a sort of preternatural awareness that someone could start yelling out lines from David Lynch’s highly underrated 1984 film version of Dune at any moment and will either assume that the yeller needed to do this to feel self-actualized or, alternatively, that he’s one of the untold thousands of mentally ill prisoners whom U.S. prison authorities have allowed to languish in punishment cells for years on end (though in my case, people tended to recognize me by voice as the guy who was always kicking around the deflated basketball and calling for death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people).
Aside from sleeping, screaming, and exercising, there’s also reading. Federal SHUs generally have book carts that are rolled up the hallway once a week; inmates crouch next to their door slots to view the selections and point to what they want. Prison book carts are always exciting, tending to be largely composed of donations from ancient rural branch libraries that have just given up and closed down or whatever, such that one can always expect to find a stray gem or hilarious oddity. On one occasion I grabbed an award-winning 1962 volume on Jefferson by Dumas Malone in which the claim that the third president engaged in a sexual relationship with the slave Sally Hemings is dismissed as “wholly unwarranted.” But my best find to date remains the early ’80s sci-fi novel I came across a couple of years back in which the U.S. has fallen under a dystopian theocracy after having rather unwisely elected a Mormon president.
Fortunately, SHU inmates are allowed to receive books through the mail from commercial retailers just as we can in the prison itself, with the only difference being that we can’t get hardcover books lest we use them to make shanks. When the editors at The Intercept sent me a hardback copy of the new Jonathan Franzen tome Purity last year, I was only given it after a guard tore off the cover. This was a rather upsetting thing to have witnessed, though halfway through the narrative I was kind of wishing he’d finished the job.
I try to keep a copy of something by Hegel with me at all times as well, not so much with the intent of reading it straight through, but rather as a means by which to play a little game I’ve invented called Shut the Fuck Up, Hegel, You Fucking Fraud. What you do is, you flip to a random page in any volume of Hegel’s works and look for the inevitable instance of hyper-oracular nonsense, such as this line I just randomly came across from page 129 of Lectures on the Philosophy of History:
The spread of Indian culture is prehistorical, for history is limited to that which makes for an essential epoch in the development of spirit. On the whole, the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb, deedless expansion, that is, without a political act. The people of India have achieved no foreign conquests, but have been on every occasion vanquished themselves.
Then you write in the margin, “Shut the fuck up, Hegel, you fucking fraud.” And from page 51:
What spirit really strives for is the realization of its own concept; but in so doing it hides that goal from its own vision; it is proud and quite enjoys itself in this alienation from itself.
“Whatever, douche.”
Indeed, to live in the hole is to be thrust into a world in which everything must be repurposed and all possibilities pursued. One day I decided to compose a list of unnecessary people throughout history and had jotted down Ezra Pound, the Emperor Aurangzeb, Carlos Mencia, Charles IV, and Gary Bauer when it became clear that I’d cast my net too wide, at which point I abandoned the project. Instead I tried to decide which city I’d destroy if I had the chance, other than Houston. I eventually decided on Singapore, which I feel has been setting a bad example for the other cities.
SHU time is a time for remembrance. I thought of all the strange and interesting people I’d met throughout my incarceration, such as the fellow who would conclude all of his assertions with the phrase, “Even a small child knows that.” Among the things a small child knows, it seems, is that sentences handed down for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamines tend to be much harsher in Texas than in California and that a particular guard who works the morning shift is kind of a dick sometimes but not always. There was also the guy who feted me with coffee and candy bars during a weeklong transit stop at a local jail, at one point showing me the program from his father’s funeral a few years prior; the cover bore a photo of a man dressed all in yellow, right down to his cape and top hat, and who apparently went only by the name Yellow Shoes. As noted in the program text, Yellow Shoes was survived by well over 30 children. His father had been a famous East Dallas pimp, my friend explained, somewhat unnecessarily. Now he himself had been indicted as a drug dealer when in fact he was a pimp like his father before him, something he planned to explain to the judge at the first opportunity. Frankly, I’d say he had a strong case.
Finally, SHU inmates also spend some variable portion of each day reflecting on the astonishing degree of injustice they’ve had the chance to observe, as well as cultivating a healthy contempt for the system that perpetrates that injustice and the society that continues to permit it. Some months ago I asked The Intercept to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Bureau of Prisons in pursuit of all records pertaining to yours truly in hopes of documenting further instances of government misconduct to add to my collection. Recently the BOP provided us with 175 pages, all of which we’ve posted online — including the fully one-third that the BOP has completely redacted. Tellingly, some clear and potentially criminal wrongdoing actually crops up even among those pages that the agency has not gone so far as to completely blank out, as we’ll see in a moment. First, let’s get the vital statistics from Ben Brieschke of the BOP’s notoriously shady South Central Regional Office, who prepared the cover letter:
After a careful review, we determined 89 pages are appropriate for release in full; 28 pages are appropriate for release in part; and, [sic] 58 pages must be withheld in their entirety.
Most of these redactions are being justified under two FOIA exemptions, one of which is intended for those files or portions thereof “which would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions,” with the other pertaining to those bits of information “which could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or personal safety of an individual.” This latter consideration certainly sounds serious, and one can get a sense of the peril to which BOP staff are forever subject by the fact that first names are blocked out with the “(b)(7)(F)” box throughout these documents, lest they be tracked down by violent ex-prisoners or what have you. One can likewise get a sense that even the BOP doesn’t buy its own bullshit in this regard by the fact that it has failed to block out the first name of a member of the BOP’s Special Investigative Services (SIS) security division, and in another document has left in the typed-out first, last, and middle names of some dozen other officers and staff, an act of negligence that — what was that phrase again? — “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or personal safety” of the individuals it itself has just fully identified, if we take the BOP’s own word for it (though in my infinite benevolence, I’ve asked The Intercept to block out the names in question, for all men know of my great regard for the comfort and well-being of American law enforcement officials).
Of course, the reality is that despite these names having sat on the internet for weeks before I came across the regional office’s slip in my paper copies and had them redacted, no one has been endangered by the BOP’s incompetence here, as the (b)(7)(F) exemption is less a necessary security measure than it is a convenient smokescreen by which to cover up its own misconduct. And at many institutions, employees tend to be less wary of inmates than they are of the administration itself; when medical staff at several BOP prisons spoke to USA Today earlier this year about the bureau’s despicable tendency to regularly use them as prison guards rather than, say, having them work full-time providing the medical care that’s already in short supply, all of those coming forward chose to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
Speaking of retaliation, have a look at this inmate progress report prepared by two Fort Worth staff at the end of August 2015 in which I am commended for my “good sanitation” and continued FRP payments (the monthly restitution I’ve been ordered to pay to my corporate “victims”). Elsewhere it’s noted that I’m “currently participating in the GED program” (until recently the BOP refused to acknowledge that, in addition to my good sanitation, I’m also a high school graduate; as a result I had to sign up for high school equivalency classes). And here are the signatures of the staff members in question, S. Vanderlinden and M. Gutierrez, along with my own, perhaps not terribly impressive signature. Now take a look at this other document composed 12 days later, after I’d been thrown in the hole again, and signed by the very same two staff members, which I was never supposed to see. Now it seems that I’ve shown “poor institutional adjustment,” “poor program participation,” and even “poor living skills” — true enough if we’re talking about signature design — and thus must be moved to a medium security prison immediately.
This would be my new favorite illustration of the casual criminality that has long marked the BOP’s operational culture had I not also acquired this other, even more extraordinary specimen — the latest response from the BOP regarding the Administrative Remedy complaint I filed over a year ago regarding the retaliatory seizure of my email access, the first of a string of bizarre incidents at Fort Worth that would culminate in the confiscation of my notebook outside the law library. As I’ve noted before, the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1986 — passed during a period in which U.S. domestic policy was being determined largely on the basis of questionable anecdotes — requires that inmates who wish to sue the BOP and its employees first complete an arcane and multilayered regimen of paperwork to the satisfaction of the BOP and its employees. Inmates who find that the process itself is being violated by the BOP and its employees are free to file another complaint for review by the BOP and its employees. Astonishingly, this process is not always free from abuse by the BOP and its employees.
When we last checked in on my own complaint about my email access having been seized by BOP Washington liaison Terrance Moore an hour after I’d used it to alert a journalist to BOP misconduct, the regional office had rather despicably claimed that my appeal had been late, even though it clearly hadn’t, as the failure by the warden’s executive assistant Jerry McKinney to respond to my BP-9 form within 20 days of the day he logged it in, as well as his failure to request the 20-day extension to his own deadline until well after his first deadline had passed, as well as his failure to meet even that extended deadline, allowed me to consider this a rejection at the institutional level and freed me to proceed to the regional level, as is noted in the BOP’s own policy guidelines — except that I couldn’t, because, as I’ve also documented via forms signed and dated by McKinney himself, McKinney failed to return the original documents to me for another month despite messages I sent over the internal staff notification system requesting that he do so.
Finally he brought me back a triply late and thus invalid rejection — even handing it to me nine days after the date it was signed, as is again documented by his own dating and signature. The regional counsels know this fully well, and also know that just a few days later I was placed in the SHU and thereafter shipped to Oklahoma for processing and then to my current prison, where I filed my regional appeal as soon as I received the box containing my legal papers. They know this because, as I learned recently when I complained that the BOP was now apparently violating the law by holding some of my mail for nearly two weeks, I’m on some ultra-rare and secretive classification known as “Inmates of Greatest Concern,” which requires that everything I do be monitored and scrutinized for the benefit of some unspecified outside agency.
Nonetheless, the region rejected my appeal due to it being “untimely,” made an inappropriate request that I obtain “staff verification” that this wasn’t my fault from staff at a prison I am accusing of systematic retaliation and whom I have no means of contacting since I’m no longer housed there, and demanded that my appeal be reduced to a single typewritten page and resubmitted, all within 15 days of the date of this rejection, which just happened to be 15 days prior to my receipt of it. Thus I’d been given zero days to comply, including mail time.
I documented the entirety of this in a column months ago and wrote back to the region’s legal counsel, explaining in detail why his requests were impossible. Several weeks later I received another rejection notice in which the counsel ignores my explanations and maintains that I missed the deadline, although he himself seems confused as to when that deadline actually was since he lists it as having fallen on two different dates.
And just so I understand that the zero days thing wasn’t a mistake, the rejection notice is dated December 4 — and they’d delayed mailing it to me such that it didn’t even arrive at the warden’s office until December 29. This time, then, I’d been given negative 10 days to comply.
My email access was finally reinstated several months ago by the security staff at my current prison, who immediately determined that there was no legitimate reason why I shouldn’t have it; my continued pursuit of this process is intended to force an admission of wrongdoing from the BOP as well as to illustrate how it actually operates. This, after all, is the only procedure by which my 200,000 fellow federal inmates are able to protect the last human rights remaining to them, whether they’ve been subject to ongoing retaliation, or they’ve been kept in the hole for years on end contrary to law and all decency, or they’ve been beaten while in handcuffs, or they’ve been denied basic medical care — all issues that have been encountered by people I’ve known and interviewed over the past few years. Here’s a list of grievances logged in at Fort Worth in 2014 and 2015, which we’ve obtained via another FOIA request; keep in mind that for every complaint filed, there are dozens of incidents that go undocumented because veteran inmates are aware of the near impossibility of getting heard by the court under a system that can be violated without consequences.
Imagine spending a year in the hole due to a mistake, trying all the while to get a court to order your release, and getting back a demand that you include two extra copies of a document and that you do this six days ago. This sort of thing happens regularly, throughout the system, although the problem appears to be particularly systematic in this regional district.
The truly disturbing part is not that this happens in the first place, but rather that it will likely continue happening despite now having been fully documented. For it is not just the prisons that are broken, but the media as well.
To help illustrate the manner in which the press has become largely incapable of performing its necessary watchdog role even when large parts of its job are done for it, and how certain parties have managed to benefit from this state of affairs, next time we’ll discuss why it is that I happen to be in prison. We’ll also talk about a man named Peter Thiel. As it happens, these subjects are very much intertwined.
Quote of the Day:
“At the very outset we have the antithesis between the goal of the state as the abstract generality on the one hand, and the abstract person on the other; but when subsequently, in the course of history, personality gains the ascendant, its breakup into atoms can only be held together externally; then the subjective power of rule comes forward as if summoned to fulfill this task. For abstract legality is this; not to be concrete from within, not to have organization from within; and this, having come to power, has only an arbitrary power as contingent subjectivity as what moves it, as what rules it; and the individual seeks in the developed private law solace for his lost freedom. This the purely secular reconciliation of the antithesis.”
— Fucking Hegel
Drawing by Paul Davis. Fee donated to Barrett Brown’s legal defense fund.
How can I help?
You’re story is one that I believe and struggle to find reason for. I want to help. Books, messaging, letters?
Thanks for giving us the low down Barrett. Hope you are doing well, and you get a chance to read the DFW bio I just sent you.
Hey Barrett… mona is obviously our Hegel!
I hope knowing we are all reading this is helping you pass the time. Loved your line about not sleeping.
Definitely my last comment: Still LOLing at “…naturally I’m trying to experience all the touristy prison things just in case I don’t come back for a while.” Just in case, yeah. Can’t be too careful.
Oh, and: this whole thing about people in a large and somewhat chaotic semi-public space shouting random nonsense? Sounds EXACTLY like /b/, and, later, IRC. Nostalgic! *snf*
I’m a very lucky man to spend nearly all my time in SHU. I don’t understand why any sane person would object to peaceful solitude. Not all company is worth keeping IMO and that goes for 99.99% of genpop.
P.P.S. *Which* Symbionese Liberation Army slogans? I NEED TO KNOW
“Don’t volunteer for anything…”
https://books.google.com/books?id=g19YFuKqKeUC&pg=PT54&lpg=PT54&dq=vacaville+prison+sla&source=bl&ots=Y097DRDQS4&sig=hys0UzGH3fEHwL8QtFhnv-SZ_ww&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZu4aTh-_NAhWERCYKHROFBk0Q6AEIQzAF#v=onepage&q=vacaville%20prison%20sla&f=false
Google does not care to let me read that link. One of the more important practical things for any revolution, however small, is that readers need to make their own Fair Use of text and not just accept the unwritten rule that only Google and a few other companies are allowed to do it on their behalf, should they wish to.
The link led to a book that discussed government-funded mind control experiments on prisoners at Vacaville prison. The experiments were conducted, in part, on inmates by a psychological warfare expert name Dr. Colston Westbrook. The experiments were part of a “behavioral modification” program that was aiming at the development of methods that could coersively control the the thoughts, emotions, and actions of its test subjects. Among those inmates who”participated” in the study was Donald DeFreeze (Cinque Mtume), the government-named head of the SLA.
almost makes a guy not want to go to prison
So a GED from Texas doesn’t prepare its graduates for reading Hegel. Who’d have guessed? … Just kidding. Keep doing you, BrownLOL. :)
Also: reading the Review of Arts and Letters and Prison always causes my editorial-red-pen hand to twitch; you could cut 20-25% of the words from most of his sentences and they’d still make perfect sense … but then the resulting text would no longer be in BrownLOL’s distinctive prose style, now would it?
A final thought: The Intercept might do well to give Stan and Mona their own column (if they even are two different people; I have my doubts). Fascinating, absolutely riveting stuff, and not at all like every other comments-section war ever.
P.S. Never expected to find myself feeling concerned on Peter Thiel’s behalf, but here we are. What a time to be alive.
A joy to read as always, Barrett.
I’ve always hated Hegel, too.
Up until the point where he drags in the FOIA, I was of the opinion that reform in prison is indeed possible. It was looking like prison had actually made this clown masquerading as a journalist into a pretty good writer. Finally. But then he gets back to his favorite subject, himself, and it was all down hill from there.
This “clown,” eh? Three Intercept columns by Barrett Brown: “A Visit to the Sweat Lodge,” “Santa Muerte, Full of Grace,” and “Stop Sending Me Jonathan Franzen Novels” won him the 2016 National Magazine Award.
Further, his book Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny is as hilariously entertaining as all hell. (I guess that would make him a “clown” in the best sense?)
Clowns can be scary. I prefer humor/humourist Mona. .. and Barrett Brown is fast becoming one of my favorites.
*compared to the flock of dodos masquerading as journalists at the NYT (and Gruan) thesedays, he’s like a breathe of fresh air.
I posted a link to the Mother Jones piece around here last week. Informative, graphic and Top Knot piece of work, imo.
*re. your Idaho link on ‘staffing’ problems w/ CCA: know a local person who spent 36 days in a CCA-run shit hole here who says he never even saw a guard the whole time!
Evidently, they just put them all in one extremely overcrowded room and it’s root hog … or die.
If the idea is to ‘cut costs’, hell … why not ship ’em all to Siberia (or Texas.) and cut out the middle man?
They can even out-source the fucking transportation …
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/us/prisoner-transport-vans.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
Prison Sisyphus = Shoving Shit Uphill…
Two of our main pillars of democracy are thoroughly compromised. One is the judiciary and the other is the press. Don’t expect either to perform their watchdog roles. We hope that despite this and other hurdles Barrett Brown will ultimately triumph. He is undoubtedly a genius and a good person.
It’s not for nothing that Donald Trump gets so much support for his “Make America Great Again” slogan. Almost anything will be an improvement. We need a good president.
I know a lot of people dislike Donald Trump. For them I have a piece of advise. When Trump becomes president, all the other countries of the world will gang up against us and prevent us from eliminating any more of the Muslims in the Middle East. Now won’t that be good?
But that won’t happen as there are very few smart and honest Muslims who will refuse to suicide-bomb themselves.
Which of the pillars of democracy are not compromised if the judiciary and the press are?
I spent time in that hole at FCI Fort Worth. It wasn’t that bad. But that was over 20 years ago. I remember it being like like you got of prison when they put you in general population. Being in solitary makes you reevaluate your life at a time when you shouldn’t.
Reading Hegel is dizzying: sometimes the sentences make more sense if you read them backwards, as that way you get to the point he’s decided to make before he forgets what he was on about.
This line, “I’ve never approved of excessive sleeping, either, for life is not meant to be spent in rest, but rather in conflict or preparation for future conflict” actually made my cat laugh out loud.
Relatedly, journalist Shane Bauer went undercover as a guard at a Louisiana prison owned by the Corrections Corporation of America . Bauer’s extraordinary, long-form investigative piece is highly worth reading. It’s in 5 chapters: “Inmates Run This Bitch,” Prison Experiments, The CCA Way, “You Got to Survive,” Lockdown.
(Bauer spent two years in an Iranian prison, much of that time in solitary confinement.)
It should be remembered that the federal prison system is a different beast than the state prison system; political prisoners (which is what Barrett Brown is) are always sent into the federal system, (Leonard Peliter of the American Indian Movement is another good example). Other federal prisons are like Club Meds for wealthy white-collar criminals.
State prisons are full of nonviolent drug offenders, property crime offenders, and violent criminals charged with murder, assault, rape. Parole is common, unlike federal prisons, where parole was eliminated by a 1984 act. (This is another reason political prisoners are always sent to federal prisons).
Jails are run by counties and cities and are full of poor people who can’t pay bail, various low-level offenders, and violent criminals who have avoided being sent to state prisons by various means – i.e. the Stanford rape case, where the judge sent the wealthy offender because he “was concerned about his future.”
You can more or less divide up the US prison population (the world’s largest) into poor prisoners, wealthy prisoners, and political prisoners. That’s what determines how the so-called “justice” system treats them and where they are incarcerated.
P.S. What do you think about those Russian prison rules on no hard cursing of other inmates, Mona?
Um, why would we discuss particulars about Russian prisons when this site devotes a great deal of space and time to the American prison system? And Brown’s article is about his experience in an American prison.
Moreover, yes, I am fully aware that federal prisons are different from those in the states. Brown is not incarcerated in one of the low security federal prisons where time is relatively easy. He’s doing pretty hard time.
As for the rest of your points, yes, on Twitter I follow multiple people who are prison-reform activists and they link to many horrifying articles about both state and federal prison. One that just come onto my timeline was about the prison company Shane Bauer wrote about in Louisiana: Idaho inmates’ lawsuit against CCA over violence, understaffing to go to trial in Dec.
Courts have not been very receptive to such suits. It is well past time for that to change.
Finally, the problem of bail for the poor is greatly exacerbated by what has been called the criminalization of poverty. Absurd fines and court cost which can’t be paid and so poor people convicted of misdemeanors end up in jail. In my state of Michigan activists have been struggling to call attention to what has essentially become the return of debtor’s prison.
Remember kids: Don’t embed more than one link in your comments. I sent this post yesterday and it just now showed up on the 11th — apparently liberated from wherever the naughty multiple-link comments go.
Wow Mona!!! From Atreides to Zarathustra (or, if you prefer, from fiction to fiction) you really have a knack of muddying the waters in which Mr. Brown is attempting to swim (Gee whiz, is there anything that that gal doesn’t know?). Sometimes, less is more. No one is interested in your endless stream of pretentious nonsense (whether expressed by you or one of your sock puppets). Honestly (yes, I recognize that this is a futile appeal to a moral abyss).., Do you really believe that Barrett Brown either needs or appreciates your insufferable cheer leading? For Christ’s sake (futility knows no bounds), give it a rest. Mr. Brown’s multidimensional posture and prose are only demeaned by your own endless lack of both. So quit kicking up the muck like some spineless bottom feeder.
Fascinating, thanks for the recommendation.
You are quite welcome. The senior editor of Mother Jones considers that one of the finest piece of investigative journalism they’ve ever run — a justified opinion.
Prison reform is a passion of mine, and if you appreciate Bauer’s excellent work on a CCA prison in Louisiana, you might also wish to see this article which was just tweeted by an activist I follow: Idaho inmates’ lawsuit against CCA over violence, understaffing to go to trial.
Altho the prison in question is a state one, the suit is in federal court, which can make a positive difference. Indeed, the judge has ruled:
Who have we become? Why is such a brilliant light shut away? I grieve for Barret, and all the others who had the balls to stand up and tell the truth. We the USA are a cruel and stupid country, we bring death, torture, wars…but worst of all, the mass propaganda machine to delude our fellow citizens about the true state of affairs. Right now there are gods know how many innocents in prisons and jails. While our very own War Criminals responsible for an untold amount of false imprisonments, deaths and rampant torture will receive our tax dollars to ensure this obscene spectacle continues. Disgusting.
The Good ole US of A has the Highest number of incarcerations in the world? Ladies and gentlemen, if you are incarcerated, please look up the judge and where his/her investments are. Most judges are invested in these private prisons. Cops, judges, water department, trash pickup, ect…. Is all about state control. The city of Tuscaloosa, AL used to have 2 trash pickup days/week, then we got a Liberal Democtatic mayor In (Walt Maddox). He then cut all trash pickups to 1 day/wk and gave himself a $50,000 raise. I then told the city I was going to start a trash pickup company because the city and state are useless, and I get threatened. Who in the f*ck around here thinks we live in a free market capitalist society? Taxation is theft, the state is your enemy, and anyone I mean anyone working for the state are criminals. ANY GOVERNMENT WORKER SEARCHING THIS SITE, YOU ARE TRASH AND YOUR PAYCHECK IS COLLECTED BY THEFT. Get a real job you f*cking high scoop losers.
School*
The briefest of googles demonstrates your weak grasp of the facts.
http://abc3340.com/archive/tuscaloosa-mayor-could-become-highest-paid-in-state
Thanks for stopping by.
Sure, just leave the garbage to pile up on the streets. . . taxation is theft. . . whatever.
Along BM’s comment, a quick search for Tuscaloosa City Budget turns up . . .
Oops, shortfall of $7 million for water/sewer/garbage, must be made up by taxes.
But I guess your argument is that if we were a true free-market capitalist society, we could choose to flush the toilet right into the street and avoid those sewer hookup fees! Damn those government regulators and tax collectors . . . when will the injustice end?
If you want to propose something constructive, how about a citywide curbside pick-up recycling program to reduce garbage output and increase revenues? That’s pretty normal in other parts of the country, you know.
Someday, a book(s) will be written about Barrett Brown and his letters/columns from prisons will be heavily quoted. It will be a superb book, provided the author is good (and Brown can’t really be the one to write it, so…)
Again Barrett Brown I marvel at your ability to withstand the mind-destroying, soul-sicking conditions you write of:
Fucking Kafka.
You’ll be free relatively soon, Barrett Brown. And when you are, oh, the world of best journalism will be your oyster.
Dear Sock Puppet,
You were exposed as a serial liar and you doubled down.
Answer the questions.
Q 1. Are you sincerely convinced COINTELPRO ended in the 1970s? Are you that naive, or just casually lying out of an unbreakable habit?
Q 2. If you think COINTELPRO continues in another form do you believe there is some metric of celebrity or a minimum cash balance marking the lower boundary of interest to the Stasi’s Zersetzung goons? If so, do tell. What is this metric and how did you come to be in possession such information? If you speculate only celebrity activists are targeted, please explain your reasoning? I f you think you can psycho-evaluate me then don’t be shy, give us your analysis of the Torture Community’s rank and file.
Dear Readers: Stan is one of these unfortunates. Many or most are metnally ill. At one time they inundated this site with their delusional paranoid thinking until many, including Stan, were banned by multiple Intercept authors.
The Stan-Mona dialogue is much like the craigsummers-Mona dialogue; remarkably free of coherent arguments and rational polite debate.
If we want to talk about COINTELPRO in relation to the Barrett Brown case, well, first we must do some research – go to Google, and enter:
Stratfor hack FBI informant
This turns up fascinating material with a strong smell of COINTELPRO-type activity:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/exclusive-how-an-fbi-informant-helped-anonymous-hack-brazil
Yes, that’s how Barret Brown was set up and sent down; linking to the Stratfork hack data followed by FBI harrassment and a biased judicial process.
This is highly similar to other FBI activities over the past few decades; using informants to infiltrate environmental groups and encourage their members to engage in violence (in exchange for sexual favors, in one case), or the terrorist recruitment program (in which informants have encouraged Muslims to commit acts of violence).
And of course, government agencies and corporate interests use public relations agencies to get their messages out on internet comment threads, Facebook, wikipedia – the strategy is to have someone camp out on a comment board, gain ‘credibility’ over time, and then attempt to divert or orchestrate conversations. This is also how the wikipedia editor gains credibility, before hiring their services out to Internet PR companies.
Isn’t that right, Mona? You want to tell everyone how Big Pharma is on the side of the angels, again? Nice act, but I think your credibility is in the toilet.
Mona’s (in)credibility may be found suspect in a lot of things, but a toilet isn’t one of them.
Almost nothing that you purport to be my views, and nothing you argue about me, is likely accurate. It’s been that way since I and multiple other well-respected regulars smacked you down for your appalling lack of empathy for pain patients, and horrible accusation that all activists for those in intractable pain are in the pocket of Big Pharma.
You also feel that objecting — as I and many here do — to the racism and xenophobia driving, and driven by, both Brexit and the Trump candidacy, is to traffic in “propaganda,” which would necessarily include the strong statements from Jeremy Corbyn on that subject. In sum: you are a most unreasonable person who has commenced following me around from thread to thread and inserting these topics where they have no relevancy at all.
For the sake of other readers I request that you stop mucking up the threads all over this site with your interest in spewing rants at me.
“The Stan-Mona dialogue is much like the craigsummers-Mona dialogue; remarkably free of coherent arguments and rational polite debate.”
how many dialogues are there?
Among the reasons Stan is upset with me lately is that I posted this recent New York Times piece (emailed to me by an Intercept author) about this disturbing affliction that, among other things, is endemic in comments sections at sites focusing on national security: United States of Paranoia: they See Gangs of Stalkers
This site’s national security editor also did a long-form piece on these sad cases about a decade ago at WaPo. Don’t have it handy at the moment but it’s linked in the article in my first comment in this sub-thread.
There you have it folks. A one-stop shop: Mona, WaPo, and the NYT, the most authoritative and credible sources for information about the on-topic issue of 21st century COINTELPRO you could possibly find.
Mona, answer the questions.
Rational people do exist. Concerned people who actually think for themselves are acutely aware the US launched a torture and killing spree in 2001, which continues to this day. They are aware the US has militarized its domestic police organizations, has the ability to ‘collect it all’ on anyone, anywhere, and know the American state murders black people on a whim, in broad daylight in the streets. It is not a stretch to assume white dissidents are being covertly attacked in all sorts of ways in inside the US and in any country the US Stasi has infiltrated. Only a whack job would categorically deny attacks on dissidents are being carried out while refusing to answer the reasonable and pertinent questions I put to you.
Answer the questions.
In an age where most cell phones have video capability and go-pro and home surveillance cameras are cheap, how is it you are unable to document your numerous run-ins with these stalking agents?
Instead of assertion, verifiable proof would be far more convincing.
Can’t you admit that unsubstantiated rants are indeed a problematic approach if getting the truth out is your goal?
Can’t you also admit to yourself that demanding that Mona prove a negative also makes her characterization of you appear to be accurate?
And, with so many victims, isn’t there a massive labor pool you could organize to work together with and catch these goons in the act?
I ask these questions as someone who wouldn’t put anything past our government… but also someone who cannot rely on faith to believe such claims. So, rather than flogging a dead horse and expecting it to jump up and gallop around, go out there and get it done and put it on YouTube already!
The proof is out there.
I could be wrong but I assumed it naive to believe my videos and pictures are going to be allowed to stick around on you tube, but here’s the first.
These two were lurking at my car at the CVS parking lot on N. First Street in San Jose, when I arrived home from work on Oct. 29, 2015
I noticed them while at the cash register, and asked the cashier to call the cops on these two stalkers. She responded by calling one of the store’s security guards.
After the security guard arrived to meet me I told him there were two stalkers waiting for me at my car, and I would like him to accompany me and my wife from here the car, while I film them. I told him that it is legal to video people in public places as long as the recording device’s microphone is disabled, and he confirmed this was also his understanding.
I asked him if I could video is his face, and he agreed, as we approached the two stalkers.
As we neared, they moved away from my vehicle as the taller one said something like “You should ask people for permission to film them, ya know”. Again, if my microphone had not been plugged and disabled I would have been violating CA law.
I responded, “Filming in public places as long as audio is not recorded is legal here, stalking is illegal”.
The taller one continued to move away while still glued to his phone, saying, “stalking… Stalking! Stalking!! Stalking!!!”.
That is all he had to say as my wife and I entered the car and drove away.
The geo location data of this video is accurate on my iPad, but I cannot assume it has not been tampered with on the you tube site.
Whatever sounds accompany the video were not recorded by my recording device.
More to come, You Tube permitting…
A factual error to fix.
This is wrong: “These two were lurking at my car at the CVS parking lot on N. First Street in San Jose, when I arrived home from work on Oct. 29, 2015.”
The truth is these two were lurking at my car in the CVS parking lot on N. First Street in San Jose while I was with the CVS cashier, on Oct. 29, 2015.
Waiting at my apartment door for me to return home from work. Oct. 1, 2015
Throughout an approximately two year tenancy in this north San Jose apartment complex stalkers often waited near my door as I left for work, and when I returned home.
This one was waiting for me at my door when I arrived home from work on Oct. 1, 2015. I think he saw I had my recording device at the ready and quickly walked away.
I decided to follow him and snapped a few photos, then filmed him until he was inside his ‘apartment’. I was right behind him all the way and he pretended not to notice me and my camera, or confront me, unlike the stalkers waiting for me at my car at the CVS about a month later, on Oct. 29, 2015.
A link to the accompanying video will be linked in the You Tube photo album description.
To be precise I should have referred to my approximately two year residence in this apartment “unit”, not “complex”, as I had previously stayed some weeks in another unit in the same complex.
Navel Gazer at Newark’s Airport July 13, 2015
The airport is one of the Stasi’s favorite playgrounds, and these three photos show how playful they can be.
This was taken at the Newark Airport, after spending a weekend in NYC with another target to first, verify he was for real, and two, compare notes.
I move around a lot from seat to seat to get away from these people, but they are persistent. This guy, assume a cadet, was pretty funny. He sits down next to me — that’s my luggage to the left — and I get up to take a few snapshots. Instead of confronting me he played with his belly button.
On a more serious note…
One Saturday morning I while running routine errands I decided to go the local police station to see what would happen if I paid it a surprise visit to “report many crimes”.
After mucking around at the very large court, sheriff’s office, and police station complex I finally found the the police station on 201 W. Mission Street. It was twelve sharp on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Regular business hours.
Their web site lists “Lobby Hours: Every day from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM”, with the caveat “The number to call to confirm the lobby is open is 408-277-8900 or 311″.
Right after I parked my car in the lobby parking lot and stepped out a young man walked up to me to say “They’re clooOOooosed.” (Sorry no photo.) When I walked to the door I noticed a hastily written sign saying they were closed, and noticed two employees behind the door, ignoring me.
One photo shows the address, the second shows the closed sign on the door. I found out what would happen if I paid an impromptu visit to the SJPD to “report many crimes”.
Correction: “behind the door” is accurate but not precise. The two employees ignoring me were “behind the lobby desk”.
Central Park Stalker – July 11, 2015
Here is an NYC stalker in Central Park, taking pictures with his with zoom lensed camera.
The first photo was taken with an ipad and should have embedded geo-location data.
The second is a screen shot of the zoomed-in first photo.
Coffee Shop at my apartment complex Sept. 29, 2015
One of the stalker’s typical habits is to take a seat near the target and get up when the target does to cross his path and let the target know what’s going on.
Here are a couple of my San Jose fans.
A video of the second of two San Jose coffee shop lurkers fidgeting in the elevator.
They like elevators as much as airports, especially if there is no other way in or out of the target’s residence and target has a regular work schedule.
I was in the elevator with my wife as he entered halfway to my floor. Slow this down as far as you can, if you can. You’ll notice him fidget. He eyes the lens of the iPad loosely held down at my hip in one hand. He stays uncomfortable until my wife releases the tension for him by saying “so slow…” I have repeatedly asked her not to talk to the wildlife whenever she traveled from our home in Brazil to stay with me in SJ.
Destroying my laptop? Who knows. July 30, 2015
I had a hard time buying a laptop in Austin, Texas for the express purposes of writing about some of my adventures because strange error messages on the North Austin Fry’s credit card authorization system kept repeating “Do Not Honor” even while on the phone with a Chase Bank rep telling us to “try it again… try it again.. I don’t understand…” My credit card payment was not overdue, and I do not recall the last time I was late in paying it off.
Then I tried my bank debit card tied to an account with a positive balance and the Fry’s windows / transaction computer crashed.
So it was back to the credit card… Finally, the Chase employee was kind and said “Ok, I’ll override the security authorization protocol.”
Admittedly it was cheap, the cheapest I could find, as all I wanted to do with it was run word processing software. Anyway, I took it with me on my flight to my San Jose residence on July 29, 2015, and the next day, having decided to take it with me wherever I go, I set it down next to me at the table in the coffee shop (the location of the July 30 photos).
Suddenly this guy walks in with a wheeled cart piled with what I recall to be a suitcase, a briefcase, a box of dried spaghetti with strands hanging out of it, clothes, and who knows what else. He then goes about hooking up the black device’s charging unit to the wall socket right next to me, and sets the phone (?) down on the floor right next to me and walks off. The vertical angle of the last two photos do indeed show it (bottom center) is on the ground, right next to me.
I go home, turn on my brand new laptop to find the Boot Disk is missing. It was there before my trip to the coffee shop.
Funny Insurance Underwriters
After some trouble I finally found a job working at a Chinese run tech R&D outfit in San Jose, and with 3 days notice I moved from Sao Paulo, BR to San Jose around October 17, 2012. One of first things I had to do was arrange for rental car insurance, which I purchased from a State Farm agent. The premium was about $50 a month. No problems so far… And thinking of my wife, I quickly decided to take a life insurance policy with State Farm and began the process. It involved strange phone calls at night from the firm, repeatedly asking about my health history. It was creepy. Then they insisted I give them some blood, and they would send a nurse to my hotel room. A young girl entered and set up her gear, and proceed to stick me in both arms and draw not one drop of blood. Not one. She promised she would return later to try again. I lost interest in a State Fame life insurance policy.
Then, my auto policy premium went up %1000. Yes, from $50 dollars a month to $500 dollars a month. An honest mistake, I was sure… I called the agent who said “it’s a problem with the underwriter, they’ll fix it”. Nothing was done. I visited the agent’s branch, and she assured me it would be fixed. Then I was informed it was fixed and I would get a refund on my credit card, and I did. Then my card was charged $500 again by the nameless “underwriters”. (I can’t find those charges on my credit card statment; I wish I could, and I’m more careful now about keeping records of these sorts of happenings.)
I cancelled State Farm and switched to AAA right after New Year’s 2013. Everything went swimmingly, except for a strange, unsigned letter from AAA’s “Underwriting Department”, informing me of a homeowner policy premium overcharge, which they would correct, and follow up with a refund check, of One Dollar.
Here is a photo of the unsigned letter, addressed to my last name first, then first name, then ” /: “from the “Underwriting Department”.
Nothing strange about it except it follows up two hard to fix %1000 overcharges from State Farm’s Underwriters and a State Farm “nurse” who couldn’t get any blood from sticking needles in both arms and insisting she will have to come back and try again.
Another correction (sorry).
“A young girl entered and set up her gear, and proceed to stick me in both arms and draw not one drop of blood. Not one. She promised she would return later to try again. I lost interest in a State Fame life insurance policy.”
The young woman who stuck me with needles for nothing was in her early or mid twenties. I mistakenly characterized her as a young girl. And “State Fame” is “State Farm”.
You apparently do not understand their tactics, specifically designed to reduce the possibility of getting caught while increasing the chances people like Mona can support these activities with impunity.
What I have shown you here today is just a tiny sample of hundreds of strange incidents, only dozens of which I was able to record over a very small time interval, compared to the decade-plus duration of constant harassment — a mild characterization — which includes physical torture, unfortunately not filmed for my own benefit.
Stan, every Targeted Individual swears they just can’t get any hard proof because the “cabal” is so darned crafty. TIs have been pestering various ACLU offices, journalists — including those here at The Intercept — and many prominent voices in the field civil liberties vis-a-vis national security and electronic surveillance.
I’ve spoken to several of these journalists and activists TIs regularly assail and not one of them thinks there is merit to your claims — indeed, two feel TIs are dangerous and have called security when the TI became angry and agitated for not being taken as seriously as they felt they should be.
I’ll say the same thing to you I’ve been saying for months now: please, please seek professional mental health assistance.
Oh.
Geez dude.
Sorry I wasn’t specific.
I meant putting them on YouTube for other people to see.
Clips of random people doing nothing (based on your descriptions) doesn’t interest me at all.
Sao Paulo, Brazil — January 21, 2016
This video was taken from an iPhone with it’s non-activated cell chip removed in the hopes it might not be used to track me. Therefore there is no geo-location data.
It is a short video of a man I noticed watching me as I approached the entrance gate to my Sao Paulo apartment, about 10 or 15 yards away. It will not win any cinematography awards but when slowed down and watched carefully the viewer will notice the man on the left in camo shorts, t-shirt, and ubiquitous smart phone ear plugs, becomes aware I have an iphone and he turns his head away and down as I pass him.
The behavior of stalkers here in Sao Paulo is different than in the US. They are in general less playful and more menacing, and seem more concerned about being filmed. In most cases they make obvious moves to avoid having their images recorded, but sometimes display hostility if it cannot be avoided. In one case I was almost assaulted.
It seems filming stalkers here in Brazil incurs more risk for both sides.
Correction, this video was taken about 30 yards from the entrance gate to my apartment.
Leaving For Work – San Jose October 13, 2015
This was taken as I was leaving my apartment’s parking garage on my way to the office.
The man with the orange shirt is concealed from me by the large SUV until I pass it. I only got a quick glimpse of him as I pulled out and turned left.
It can be interpreted as anything innocent, including a good man on his way to work, as the parking lot for the grounds maintenance crews is behind him.
He seems intently focused on me during a time I seemed to be getting a lot of attention from people like those in the other videos I recorded during the summer and fall of 2015.
I remind you only a tiny fraction of the many obvious and aggressive behaviors directed at me for more than ten years have been captured on video, and only a tiny fraction of those are being posted on You Tube.
I wonder how many other sites are out there with pictures of you taking pictures of people, who complain that you are one of the “gang stalkers” targeting them… ;) Honestly I don’t know if this is all a lot of confirmation bias or not, but I would need more proof that someone is going beyond the ordinary. What do you do to make yourself of any interest to them anyway? What do you do to make yourself of so much interest that they need to send actual humans to spy on you or intimidate you rather than just tracking your cell phone and archiving your emails like everybody else? From these Intercept stories it seems like people usually have to do quite a bit to get investigated, though it does happen and sometimes it is unfair.
I believe that of the set I posted, only one of them: Two Stalkers Waiting at Car , cannot be spun to your liking. I perceive your post as a bit of a struggle to explain this away and if correct I view this as a moderately good sign.
Given your attempt to find a new way to smear me — “what do you do (wrong)” versus the usual “mentally ill” game-plan — I cannot be too concerned with your needs. And if anyone else assumes it is easy to capture photographic evidence of violent incidents and death threats on my ever-ready table or phone, I assure them it is not.
I will respectfully respond to the “From these Intercept stories it seems like people usually have to do quite a bit to get investigated” remark by reminding other readers that TI has treated ongoing COINTELPRO type abuses as a non-issue, and a source of record on the topic cannot be found at First Look nor any other American media company.
Well, we have to be realistic here, and your notion of a huge cast of characters out to spy on you when you haven’t even done anything remarkable (AFAIK) just doesn’t scale. Mass surveillance is mass surveillance because it’s achievable — because it follows the first and foremost rule from private business of hiring very few people and relying on machines to do the job no matter whether they work or not. Anyone who’s ever called into a hospital or a government agency knows there’s nobody waiting on the other end of the phone, just a machine. But here you’re telling us you’ve got guys chillin’ out by your car, logging hours of work in order to do five minutes of not very clear intimidation. It doesn’t seem like how the government or the spy-industrial complex actually works.
I don’t mean this as a smear – I suggest you are wrong without *smearing* you, because there is no crime in being paranoid in a society where so many crazy things are going on. But I do think you are wrong about at least the bulk of the incidents you cite.
I have often said salaried American patriots are more than a little stupid and violently sensitive about the way their national character is perceived, so I am grateful your ongoing struggle over this relieves me of the need to repeat myself.
I suggest your state’s narratives accompanying its predilection for committing casual acts of violence such as the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, its habit of shooting black people for sport, and the large allocation of resources spent on defending the Fatherland against innocuous citizens have a slap-stick quality about them.
I am curious how one or more this site’s full-timers would like to spin this.
Humor me.
It’s clear from this article that Hegel, not Barrett Brown, should be in jail. But Brown is not entirely innocent either. He has an annoying tendency of questioning why prisons are organized in a particular way and refusing to meekly accept the rules. So he probably can benefit from being in prison, although I’m not sure if he is receiving proper treatment for his oppositional defiant disorder. It would be a shame if he emerged from prison with his irreverent attitude intact. This to me is a wake up call, an indication that prisons must do a better job of reforming the inmates. What is the point of incarcerating our writers and intellectuals if they emerge unrepentant and continue to disseminate their disturbing ideas and encourage the more susceptible citizenry to imitate their rebelliousness and defiance?
The first step, obviously, is to stop giving the prisoners any reading materials. Reality TV is good enough for the general population; it dulls the imagination and thereby encourages people to be more compliant. This is precisely what Mr. Brown appears to need, as his restless intellect appears to be continually searching for new ways to create trouble. The cost of implementing this would not be great. In fact, advertisers, delighted to have a captive audience, would probably foot most of the bill.
The other problem appears to be that prison simply affords too much time to think. Why is Mr. Brown not subject to an intensive regime of harsh physical labor? This would ensure he was too exhausted at the end of each day to even think about writing.
However, I don’t mean to appear unappreciative of Mr. Brown’s writing efforts. If nothing else, they are a clarion call to the urgent need for prison reform So while Mr. Brown’s poking fun at the authorities and respectable citizens such as Mr. Thiel is annoying, it may still serve some larger purpose. At least, I hope so.
Excellent snark
I don’t have access to a copy of “A Patriot’s Dictionary and Etymology” so there is no chance I will ever become fluent in rightlogic and rightlanguage, as similar as it is to English; I am restricted to observing Stasi behavior up close and making inferences about how its mind works. With patience and diligence I hope to gradually align thought with requirement.
For example, over the years I have observed the Stasi’s odd habit of hurling the extremely hurtful and derogatory epithet “enlightened” at their targets with as much frequency and accuracy as its synonym, “terrorist”. I just didn’t get it. For decades I believed Galileo was a scientist and technologist while Ghengis Khan was a war criminal. I thought these two individuals were very different kinds of animal. But of course I was wrong, and historically challenged. Correcthtink masters know enlightened equals terrorist. They are right, this has been true since before the Inquisition.
That took too long. I’ll be dead before I meet even 1/50th of the requirements. I would not have to spend so much time trying to figure out how and what to correctthink if the Stasi would just sell me their super-double-top-secret school books. It would make life easier for them too, unless doing so would be detrimental to the bottom line, which I suspect is the case.
But we all must do with what we’ve got and support patriotic causes as best we can. One way is to take a moment to scribble a note and drop it into the suggestions in-box as Mussolini has done by pointing out Reality TV has been an effective weapon against extremely dangerous enlightenment threats in the field. I’ve seen Big Brother Brazil’s prophylactic effects on some of Sao Paulo’s population during the coup. I’m sure others have also noticed its superior range and blast radius, leaving physical structures undamaged beyond the gradual decay of the target society’s infrastructure. It is a miracle weapon, and cheap too, bottom line issues aside. I have to agree with the suggestion this weapon be deployed to Mr. Brown’s cage even if it negatively impacts profits. He’s just too dangerous. Money is no object where threats to the Fatherland are concerned.
“In fact, advertisers, delighted to have a captive audience, would probably foot most of the bill.”
Typical liberal. Next, you’ll call for a federal minimum wage for prisoners so they can actually buy the goods and services (well, some of them) that would be advertised to them. Admittedly, that would make them a more attractive target market for advertisers and help generate interest.
SNITCH.
You didn’t say what you had for breakfast with the milk so I’m going to imagine it was grits with cheese on them
Those BOP people sound super into themselves
Schopenhauer, so the story goes, lectured to empty rooms at the same time as Hegel lectured to crowded rooms. I used to think this was funny. Now I’m thinking it’s more like he was muttering “fucking Hegel” while shouting his own pessimism to his own solitary confinement wing.
Of course, one could start muttering “fucking Schopenhauer” too…
You rock!
This reminds me of my childhood in Jesuit boarding school (in Europe). Many differences but the not in the ‘spirit’ of it.
Wish you a long lived youthful and rambunctious character.
The Hegel quotes, especially the last one, are extremely reminiscent of the sort of thing a university student might write having taken a Benzedrine tablet the previous night before a test in the Philosophy of History — obviously a mistake as witness the incoherence of the types of thoughts resulting. So what might Hegel have been taking. I do not think even in the original German the last quote could really be said to have any meaning but rather pieces of meaning stuck together by a beleaguered mind.
Great piece of writing by B. Brown. Eventually fitting all this together in a book will be wise. Another Soul On Ice or Soul On Computer Chip.
I can’t wait.
It’d be far more appropriate to yell “Yngvi is a louse!”
Fucking brilliant. Hang on.
You’re brilliant, Barrett. Stay strong. You deserve so much better than your current situation and I hope that it will change for the better as soon as possible.
I always enjoy your posts, Barrett; they’re good for at least 5-6 belly laughs. I’m glad you’ve kept your sense of humor in a system that has run aground against its Peter Principle. Corrections by insects!
Always entertaining and enlightening BB.
A few questions came to mind-
How was the $890.000 or so in restitution calculated?
I saw no mention in the documents, nor whether it was being collected for disbursement to the “victims” or kept by the state.
I’d appreciate it if anybody has a link… or perhaps BB will cover it in the forthcoming piece he alluded to this round?
Why are they redacting publicly accessible news articles?
How is it that cursive is used by guards on these forms?
Is printing or at least legibility not a consideration?
How is that nobody else in the SHU is familiar with Dune?
I never understood the “grandfather” thing though… anybody?
Thanks.
She was talking to her grandfather on her mother’s side at the time. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was Lady Jessica’s actual father under the secret Bene Gesserit breeding program, and so Alia Atreides was his the evil Baron’s granddaughter – just as her brother Paul, the Kwisatz Haderach, was his grandson.
I should have expected that to be the question that gets answered.
Not that I don’t appreciate the reply.
OK, so why the big stink about Jessica only having daughters so the two families could finally be brought together?
The grandfather thing seemingly makes that redundant… but also explains the unexpected success of the breeding program.
It’s been 30 years or so since I read the book… maybe I should pick it up again.
The movie made no prior references to these facts.
Maybe it was too hard to suspend disbelief that the Baron could spawn a beauty like Jessica.
But grandchildren marrying each other makes Herbert a bit more twisted than I remember.
“But grandchildren marrying each other makes Herbert a bit more twisted than I remember.”
That’s just the modern perspective; it was pretty common in the era of divine kings and queens – they didn’t want to pollute the royal blood with that of commoners, so keeping it all in the family was not unusual, accounting for the relatively high rate of inherited genetic disorders in various royal dynasties.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Habsburg-Jaw-And-Other-Royal-Inbreeding-Deformities-and-Disorders
Other good Frank Herbert quotes:
It was never about just bringing any two families together in particular so much as the Bene Gesserit were always trying to produce a truly prescient male (that they could control) as a main goal of their breeding program. By producing a son a generation or two earlier than they wanted (for her Duke Leto Atreides) it meant they weren’t yet prepared, it wasn’t at the time and place of their choosing and they would never control him.
Back-story: The Reverend-Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam blackmailed The Baron, who didn’t like women sexually, into their breeding program and he was so angry he raped her violently. She in turn used her Bene Gesserit abilities during the rape to get some revenge of her own and infect him with the disease that then plagued him for decades, making him grossly fat with ugly sores everywhere. (book “House Harkonnen,” I believe)
In the original Dune, the Baron only learned of his grandchildren as a died at Alia’s hand from her personal Gom Jabbar. Jessica and the BeneGesserit never told him Jessica was his daughter with Helen Mohiam. And Alia was, after all, a Reverend Mother with access to “other voices” (ancestors, mostly previous Reverend Mothers) from before she was born, as Jessica went through the water of life transformation while pregnant, making Alia what they called an abomination. She knew from her ancestral voices within what he didn’t, and informed him of it as he died.
Some of this back-story was filled in years later in a series of many books written by Frank Herbert’s son Brian together with Kevin J. Anderson. They’ve written some 14 books in the Dune Universe filling in the complete back story of the Butlerian Jihad and the Great Houses with prelude, including the Machine Universe of Omnius and Erasmus – and even series far into the future of Frank’s original Dune. Um, I guess I’ve sort of read them all – for decades now.
They’re in fact still at it with a couple more already in the works according to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Herbert
Please, the Brian Herbert books are awful, awful, awful! One of the most pathetic efforts to flog a parent’s name into a literary cash payoff ever seen. Utter garbage, bottom of the barrel scrapings.
Frank Herbert had a real grasp of how dictatorships and empires rise and fall, and he wove in ecology and history in a unique way. That drivel produced by his son is embarrassingly bad in contrast.
Some weren’t that great, but some weren’t nearly as bad as some of Frank’s own efforts either.
Especially in my younger years I devoured fantasy / sci-fi realms as a form of escape, although less so for that reason the last decade so much as author chasing. For instance, for a year or three in the ’08 – ’10 time frame I couldn’t get enough of R.A. Salvatore and read most everything he ever wrote. When I read for entertainment or escape it’s never about construct so much as storytelling and being taken elsewhere, like with good music – if the storytelling transports you places that can be enough.
And please yourself, btw, I never recommended the books or made any claims about them whatsoever. But I’ll tell you this, I’ve never read a single Brian Herbert / Kevin J. Anderson book of the Dune universe as bad as Dune Messiah, which I read the year it was released, by Frank Herbert himself.
anybody around these parts prefer the more radical 60s-70s SF? Thomas Disch, Norman Spinrad, Kate Wilhelm, Tiptree/Sheldon? Ballard? PKD?
In the late ’60s I was in jr. high, Vic, and still reading mostly Asimov and Heinlein. But there was some Philip K Dick, Bradbury and others in there, too.
That stuff is okay, but the problem with SF, is it gets dated really quickly. Frank Herbert and Ursula K. LeGuin are major exceptions, however; PKD however while good, from a modern perspective is full of social stereotypes from an earlier era; if you want good modern scifi, try William Gibson’s various series, and Ian Bank’s Culture novels.
The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are favorite UKLs, brilliant novels.
yeah as I expected.
Oh dear, not “social stereotypes from an earlier era”? How can I cope as a reader with my “modern perspective” I can’t possibly think beyond. Stay away from those 19th C books man, the authors actually thought 19th C thoughts and weren’t even ashamed of it. And there’s books from even earlier still around, it’s terrible.
Well, I was specifically referring to the dialogue in the movie where Jessica was berated… I skipped the quotation marks due to uncertainty about the precise wording, but the gist is accurate… bringing the two families together part.
I’m sure the movie isn’t true to the book, but your response suggests the dialog in the movie was actually false, and that is surprising.
My bad, you’re right and it was indeed at that time about getting Harkonnen and Atreides bloodlines together. I was just saying that alone wasn’t a true culmination of the secret Bene Gesserit breeding program, as their plans had been for something bred with more loyalty a generation or three later.
Don’t remember your darker Frank Herbert? Read up again on the Bene Tleilax and Axlotl Tanks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Tleilax
Ah. OK.
Thanks.
And thanks for the background info too.
I’m gonna have to pick up the whole series now.
I’ve been reading some wiki links trying to verify my aging memory and half-hearted claim “Dune: House Harkonnen” was the book where Reverend Mother Mohiam blackmailed the Baron into sex – and discovered it was instead the first book in the prelude series, “Dune: House Atreides.” Also, I’d forgotten her original genetic engineering attempt with the Baron failed to produce desired results, so that child was killed and she went to him a second time. It was then that he got violent as his revenge, so she simultaneously manipulated her body chemistries to give him his disease – as her revenge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Harkonnen
I should also reiterate this though, so you’re clear on the book’s original position:
The Bene Gesserit were, and I’ll use the word again for as much accuracy as possible, “never” concerned with uniting the two families, only those bloodlines. Jessica went against her training and broke the order’s rules for the love of her Duke Leto. Nobody, including the Padishah Emperor and the Bene Gesserit – or the families themselves, was trying to get them together or somehow make peace between them – before, after or because of Jessica’s unplanned for love-children. The Emperor disliked and feared both Great Houses and enjoyed having them at each other’s throats. And any bloodline connections producing Jessica’s children were always meant to be kept secret by everyone, just like the Sister’s entire breeding program – even though it spanned the Known Universe.
I hope that helps a little. I can’t even begin to answer any of your BB questions, but could probably drive everyone crazy talking Dune.
Thanks for the inside view of the federal prison complex, it’s very enlightening.
My immediate inclination was to compare-and-contrast the above report with the Russian prison complex as described in Don’t Trust Dont’ Fear Don’t Beg, by Ben Stewart. I don’t think I’d like either one much, although the Soviet system seems to have more opportunities for cell-to-cell communication via the sock relay system – doroga. On the other hand, the quality of the food in Russian prisons seems much lower:
http://www.alternativesjournal.ca/community/reviews/dont-trust-dont-fear-dont-beg-extraordinary-story-arctic-thirty
Here’s how the Greenpeace detainees were welcomed by the other prisoners – an educational note:
Here’s another nice feature of the Russian prison complex:
Hilarious, Russian prisoners treat each other more politely than many TI commentators do. Funny isn’t it? But then, those who engage in such tactics are most likely “stars”, I’d say, out to disrupt conversations – although when you have to share a cell with people, it’s probably wiser to be polite. Food for thought?
Here’s another interesting feature of the Russian prison complex, one that could be imported to the United States:
One of the reasons killer cops and dishonest prosecutors and dirty federal agents from outfits like the FBI and DEA and ATF tend to avoid prison time is that judges worry about their fate in prison; they’d be hated by everyone. However, if you set up segregated prison units for such people, the justice system might be more willing to throw them in jail. Great idea, isn’t it? Works for the Russians, apparently.
Here’s some more good advice:
All in all, It seems like the U.S. federal prison complex is the more Stalinist one, with all the solitary confinement games and efforts to prevent prisoners from developing support networks and obsessive fears along those lines; in addition the U.S. won’t put crooked members of the justice system in jail, while the Russians do.
Again, thanks for the report from the inside.
good post, p
Thx for the good read Barrett and for getting the systemic nonsense meant to silence and bury prisoners in the system and protect the BOP from the law, out there. One question for a future column? Does this ‘stonewall’ extend to those attempting to get review of their convictions?
Love to you Barrett. Thanks for documenting the outrageously unjust processes suffered by incarcerated persons & sorry you are going through this.
Totally with you on both Franzen and Hegel.
You might enjoy the very straightforward “Listen Little Man” by Wilhelm Reich, just a thought. ??
Those question marks were supposed to be a smiley face, what a mystery
Wonderful, witty and sad writing, stay strong Barrett!
Love the Hegel bits . . imagine the translator. I’d suggest “Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra” next but don’t want to destroy your angst. Look forward to your next dispatch.
J’adoooooooore
Barrett Brown’s verbal flyswatter led me in a few steps to http://search.freedomarchives.org/search.php?view_collection=344 , a collection of the mimeographed newsletters of the “above-ground support group of the SLA”, and truly a wonderful resource for the budding historians around here. (Apparently the group would be much easier to understand if one or more of the people reporting about it in media would try) Alas, I don’t know if there’s any way he could read it.
Fucking Hegel
Barrett had better be careful. Next time they will give him negative TWENTY days to comply. The bureaucrats are inhuman but, thankfully, they prefer round numbers that can easily be recorded.
“Never give an inch” — Ken Kesey
Wonderful writing, Barrette. You are our new Hunter S. And though many do not realize it, we desperately need your artful pros in our lives. Not to mention your important work reviewing books.
I agree, Hegel is a bit of a chew. Instead, we should send Mr. Brown the collected books of Carlos Castaneda.
Start with The Active Side of Infinity and read backwards.
In solidarity with Mr. Brown , I shall reread the book Camp Concentratin by Thomas Disch.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/553907.Camp_Concentration
Poor Barrett. Thrown in the hole for refusing orders, drinking toilet hooch, and taking morphine.
A real victim.
“They hear me but they don’t FEEL me, though!”
Poor Nate, throws in his petty and sadistic little jabs, not realizing that he seems like an execrable little TWAT by comparison with the brilliant and hilariously anti-authoritarian human being he is attempting to smear. The poor Nate. It must feel very small.
How are they petty and jabs when he’s the one publishing them for all to see. At least I read them! You should as well, they give you a much better idea of what happens.
Here’s some other facts from his file, some of which are just the full quotations that he referenced in his article:
* “Mr. Brown has maintained poor institutional adjustment since his arrival at this facility on February 25, 2015. He has received two Greatest severity level Incident Reports.”
* “His security level increased as a result of poor program participation, poor living skills, and three Incident reports.”
* Barrett has paid less than one percent of his restitution.
* When busted on opiate use, stated: “I am guilty, I did it.” Sanctions included 90-day loss of phone, email, commissary (ouch), visits (man, that’s harsh), and 30 days in the hole. “Inmate Brown…displayed a poor attitude during this investigation.” Barrett’s characterization of taking the morphine pill: “I’m afraid I’m back in the hold after failing my latest ‘random’ drug test which tested positive for one of the little morphine pills that people sell here. I know it was stupid of me, so it’s not necessary for everyone to explain that to me again. Please keep in mind that I’m an untreated substance abuser living in a ??? with literally a thousand drug dealers…
* Two months before this, Barrett was placed in the hole for alcohol use. An officer searched “Brown’s locker and found a coffee mug full of homemade intoxicants” which “tested .400 with the Alco-sensor IV” (potent!!) When the officer questioned Brown if he was intoxicated he responded. “No, but have you?” (LOL). “He bought it from the hooch distributor within the unit.” “At his hearing he stated “I’m guilty.” This time “he displayed a fair attitude during the investigation.”
* So to put this in a timeline, Barrett got sent to the hole for alcohol in June 2015. He got out in July 2015. One month later he was back in the hole for drugs.
* Despite his abuse issues and comments about being untreated, his August 2015 Progress report says “Mr. Brown declined interest in the Residential Drug Abuse Program. He has not participated in any drug education programs.” The next review indicates he has to “enroll and complete the 100-hour drug abuse program within 12 months. Remain incident free until next review.”
Where do the petty vices of a man fall by comparison to those keeping him as a political prisoner?
“Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.” (Proverbs 31:7)
Dammit, Nate. I thought you were better than that.
I was reserving Barret’s fantastically creative Hegel line for CraigSummers, but:
“Shut the fuck up, Nate, you fucking fraud.”
Hey Nate, don’t let the rabble get you down. I suspect that Mr. Brown would rather have one honest response to this self-deprecating conveyance of his Sisyphean misadventures than a hundred obsequious reflections whose feigned sympathies utterly fail to reflect even a rudimentary understanding of the author’s comical madness as he attempts to reconcile his unfailing propensity for self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness in a penal system that is designed to view such behavior as being antithetical to its unyielding intention of frustrating, and eventually pacifying, such anti-authority impulses.
Say, decent “Fucking Hegel” impression.
This comment is a perfect case in point of those whose demonstrable ignorance requires them to reflexively focus on and reflect a single element of a deeply nuanced and highly sophisticated article with the hope that they too can be perceived as being aesthetically possessed of the author’s artistic sensibilities. Yes, we get it nfjtakfa… You hear him, and you feel him, and you would be him, but for the fact that you are not him.
Excerpts: ‘The Elements of Style’ Strunk And White
Hi Kitt. Long time, no insult. Let me respond to your criticisms of style by referring you to the opinions of your fellow sheep on such matters:
– John Kelly
– Altohone
And, speaking of twats that aren’t here for the content…
The true sheep can’t face reality.
Baaaa.
Karl, I don’t even consider them a rabble, just some people commenting in a forum. I don’t believe their sympathy is faked (maybe hollow) but that they don’t know any way to express it other than fawning and drooling all over his articles. As if his pariah status renders his articles immune to criticism. They don’t seem to mind that in spite of Barrett’s intentions to “expose wrongdoing” in the prison system, he himself keeps breaking the rules and doing wrong. He mostly takes the low hanging fruit: talks about screaming in the SHU for comedic purposes, when a lot of people in SHU are mentally ill and not just creating funny material for TI; the guards are morons, admin staff cannot spell, etc.
So as is clear, I don’t sympathize with Barrett’s self-inflicted plight. But reviewing his 177-page FOIA record attached to this article, the one thing that made me feel for the guy was seeing his visitor log: Mother, father, grandmother. That’s it for the timeframe presented. I’d imagine while serving time, you learn who your real friends and family are.
Rabble are defined by their tendency to act as a herd as they have a natural tendency to engage in group think. Group thinkers are reflexively prone to attacking anyone who reminds them that they themselves lack authenticity. It is deeply ironic (and highly humorous) that demonstrable group thinkers like Kitt, Mona, nfjtakfa etc. find themselves defending the very person who would clearly hold their type in utter contempt.
And, speaking of projection…
No. I enjoy the in-your-face bravery of this man. Your fawning over the rules as if some benign entity made them is a pure authoritarian wet dream, and you are a petty oozing carbuncle… especially when compared to B.B. Those, like you, who care more about rules than they do about the incredibly cruel punishment meted out by your sadistic masters, are mentally ill, empathy-free little toadies who just can’t resist piling on when someone is being made to suffer for no fucking reason. “He broke the rules”… oh well then, chop off his hands and make him eat them. No punishment is too harsh for these terrible rule breakers.
Nicely said.
I’m reminded of the types who dwell on typos and grammar to avoid the content too.
But I’m laughing that he spent time reviewing and quoting the FOIA release to attempt to defend himself by regurgitating information we all already knew but couldn’t care less about.
Yep, I sleep with a copy of prison rules under my pillow.
Seriously, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that a prison must have rules, including ones that restrict drugs and alcohol.
Made to suffer for no reason!? Alcohol and drugs = “no reason.” Got it!
Very melodramatic.
Thanks for making the case for your consideration as authoritarian tool of the day. Winning! Rules that have excessive punishments attached are not about anything but sadism. I don’t give two fucks whether or not B.B. gets drunk or high… well, actually I think he should be able to if he so desires. There is no harm attached except for the punishment… the punishment that gives sad little fucks like yourself a such a raging hard-on. Prisons need to be abolished for non-violent “offenders”. They are place of rape, torture, medical neglect, and murder… not to mention taking people’s freedom for trite reasons. You are sick, and there is no cure for what ails you.
sighs I think we need to wrap up this discussion. You get more juvenile by the moment.
It really doesn’t matter what you think. Your safety isn’t at stake. Drugs + Alcohol + Criminals = What Could Go Wrong!? I’m sure that while pondering your decision you considered the safety of both the guards, inmates, and the public. Those rapist and murders that describe would surely show restraint with the drugs & liquor. Get a grip. The irony of your argument is that if a federal prison was knowingly allowing drinking and drug use, or facilitating its smuggling into the facility, there would be criminal charges directed at the staff involved. But Barrett is a brave guy so he get’s a waiver. Uh, no.
Hey, there is one thing we can agree on! Segregation should not be the punitive option of first resort, and that the list of punishments assessed for Barrett’s drinking and drug use was very harsh. Especially the length of stay in segregation and the removal of visitation.
Again, stop typing your emotional response and ponder what harm there may be if inmates are using drugs and alcohol in the institution. This is not controversial.
And spare me your faux indignation and breathless insinuation about hard-ons for punishment; it only makes you sound like a petulant child.
Impressive levels of stupidity demonstrated by authoritarian ass-hat. Thanks, very revealing. Harm? hah! The only harm is perpetrated by sadists like you.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
I wish you a good night Mr. Kelly!
Whatever insults I have for you fail miserably to convey the level of disdain I have for your petty trolling, your lack of empathy, and your sadistic pleasure at the suffering of others.
Yah, but that’s the thing – you forget that in our eyes Barrett Brown is NOT a criminal, just someone who looked at information that the public is supposed to pay for and be responsible for but not know about, just someone who says a few nasty words when jack-booted thugs put his family in jail on trumped up charges just to pressure him.
Remind me, did he plead guilty on charges of obstruction of justice and making threats to a federal agent?
Save your euphemisms and spin.
Remind me, do people plead guilty because they recognized they did a terrible thing and hope that sitting around in a cell for five years will help them become better people and a boon to society, or do they do so because they do not have enough confidence in the random decision-making process of conscripted citizens who are looking for a quick way to get back to making money at their jobs, when the consequence of rolling the dice is staying in prison what would appear to be forever?
(Well, not literally — most of them get out when the Zeta Emperor is coronated in 2032, or during subsequent reactions by Chinese peacekeepers. But they don’t know that when they plead guilty, so it doesn’t really matter; besides, what use is it to get out of jail if there’s an execution coming right afterward?)
Common sense tells me that the reason for entering into a plea bargain must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Barrett took the deal because he accepted responsibility for his “idiotic” and “stupid” actions (his words, not mine):
Well said. I’m passing this one on.
Reactionaries are often a hoot, but pseudo-intellectual reactionaries are a hootenanny.
How painful it must be to fall short of the level wittiness and intelligence one fancies oneself to possess. Perhaps belittling one’s superiors, like a yappy chihuahua nipping at the pack’s alpha’s ankles, offers some consolation, offers a fleeting sensation of adequacy.
Reactionary? This is a very interesting charge. Care to provide one jot of evidence to back it up? I have dozens of posts on the intercept website – so you can begin there. Of course terms like “reactionary” become very malleable to anonymous putzes like yourself when challenged. Yet I am enticed by the prospect of your brilliance. Please enlighten us all with your insight and I will gladly consider the rest of your claim that you and yours are my “superior.” Absent that evidence however, you will just prove to be another one of Mona’s many sock puppets like nfjtakfa et al… (Hi Mona). keep it coming, every insult from the likes of you (and yours) is merely another feather in my bonnet.
P.s. Nice touch using Barret’s last name.
I find you full of jargon, self-contradictory (I’m thinking the semantics you use are above your capabilities), and slightly boring. I say this as encouragement, not an insult. I prefer a good tete-a-tete
Reading BB seems to make everybody else write better. This was an entertaining exchange.
The critics agree:
“a feast of delightfully inventive invective”
“unless you yourself are a petty oozing carbuncle, you won’t want to miss the ensuing hootenanny”
“the feel good moves of the summer”
“not since Malvolio was tricked into wearing yellow stockings have such a pair as Nate and Karl emerged to amuse theatergoers….sidesplitting merriment”
Thanks again MONA; your cowardice is duly noted. Now you and your chorus of sock puppets can get back to impressing all who do not know you with your vast knowledge of Hegel, Dune, and prison systems. I am quite certain Mr. Brown realizes that, in reading the commentary thus far, his talent has largely fallen on tin ears.
dude, you’ve posted here for ages and you still don’t recognize the different names of regular posters? Not an attentive student of prose style I see.
Nothing says “I’m losing the argument” like claiming one poster is really some other poster. It’s a cry for help.
Nothing says “I lost the argument before I began” like multiple responses to the same post by Mona and her sock puppets.
Names of posters mean nothing. In making that argument, you reveal yourself as either an unwitting fool or puppet.
Styles in prose can vary radically depending upon the skill of the author. For instance, many characters in a well written novel like Huckleberry Finn have their own uniquely colloquial dialect – and this venue is no novel. But thanks for the instructive feedback.
You are a peabrained dingledorf, but I believe there is room for you and Craig & Nate to all exist in this world and post approximately the same brand of dipshit arguments here (see, I can fucking remember the names of the other posters on this site!) without imagining you must all really be the same person.
Anyway, don’t respond to me and I will continue to happily not respond to you. Your posts suck furiously which is why I almost never acknowledge your existence. Mona, who as you know perfectly well is not me or for that matter anybody else here, engages with you twits at length. I don’t; you are a blur of scrollpast.
Virtually every exchange between us has been initiated by you (at least under your current avatar). So to end this last oafish exchange on yet another lie speaks volumes to your consistent lack of integrity. Again, this is why it is so easy to assume that Mona and yourself share the same core identity. I will not resort to the same level of “vulgarity” as you have displayed here upon being exposed for what and who you truly are, rather I will simply say, “Have a nice day and don’t slam the door on your way out.”
I suppose it is comforting for you to imagine that all the different people ridiculing you are really just the same person.
Zee patient manifests paranoid zymptoms of zee zolipzistic zelf-defenze.
First of all Barrett Brown, chin up: it’s clear this fucking Hegel dude likes to talk just to hear his own head rattle. There’s a lot of that going around. He’s probably a big wig at some prestigious university of higher education.
Having gone all the way through the 9th grade, I read Dune. While I enjoyed the book, I could detect no semblance between it and ‘the movie’. Idk what’s wrong with you … but it’s severe whatever it is.
What I don’t understand is: why do you owe Peter Thiel money and how do you get/access Email?
Ah, this is most likely why you’re in Jail Barrett Brown. First you take the chicken over. Then you take the bag of corn over and Bring Back the chicken. Then you take the Fox over. Finally, going back for the chicken again.
xo
bah.
Hang in there Barrett your half way thru
I talked to you in the past on one of those mini-chatroom thingies
you were brilliant and you still are
When you get out you’ll stake your claim
you already have a good job and rep
You give me great hope, Alia, I too might survive such torment with humor and sanity intact.