Audacity of Nope: US prison tells inmate that Obama's books harmful to national security

[lindisfarne]

Source: AP

The federal government's most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material "potentially detrimental to national security" and rejected an inmate's request to read them.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

But prison officials, citing guidance from the FBI, determined that passages in both books contain information that could damage national security.

Read more: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090709/world/us_prison_obama_s_books_1

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more at link

[Bicoastal]

1. Talk about a misleading headline...

...but I actually agree with the prison.

Call me paranoid, but I really don't want a would-be presidential assassin obtaining a psychological profile on Barack Obama.

[Posteritatis]

6. A few problems there

One, he's kind of in a supermax prison, so his Obama-killing capabilities are somewhat restricted.

Two, if he did get out for one reason or another, there are these things called libraries. Do you think we should ban the books entirely? Plenty of would-be assassins probably out on the streets, after all.

Three, if the prison and FBI were right, the fact that I, a Canadian, was able to buy one of his books on this side of the border probably means that there's a bunch of people down there need espionage charges or the like.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dbmk]

10. Lol!

There are thousands like him out there - free to get those books in a multitude of ways. I doubt that this guy would come out as Al-Qaedas resident psychological expert on Obama.

They MIGHT consider that it could trigger an obsession, though.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

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[No Elephants]

21. What about the headline is misleading?

[boppers]

2. WT...

F?

Really?

In 30 years, Obama would be long gone, so this isn't about Obama... but his ideas about policies?

[DUlover2909]

3. Prison guards love to thwart anything a prisoner wants.

It's standard operating procedure. Make him write a kite and go to the law library and get legal aid to take it to court.

[tomm2thumbs]

4. Seems bizarre if the guy is in a SuperMax prison that they entertain 'any' requests

How about 'The Disney Channel' the 'Weather Channel' and perhaps if you wanted to torture 'em, home movies from the Bush family. (no, wait. that is to cruel for anyone...)

[Swagman]

5. "home movies from the Bush family " : Cruel and Unusual Punishment

[Flaneur]

8. Wow, what a totalitarian mind-set in the prison administration.

Now that's a shocker.

Supermax prisons are hell on earth, purposefully and evilly designed that way. They are one enduring violation of human rights and human decency. Any society that creates them needs to reflect deeply on its values.

[vadawg]

9. was going to stay out of this one but here goes

the books are not allowed for any of the inmates in their system, dosent matter if its a guy doing 30 years or 30 months, its a decision they made so they have to be non discrimatory about it, now the supermax house the most evil and desperate criminals in the system, these are the guys who have already killed witnesses, other inmates, guards etc or have indicated they will, they are not some dude with some pot, but rather the hitmen of the salvadoran gangs, the cartels, gangsters from the treys and pirus, these are not people you want mixing with even th criminals of general population.

[JonLP24]

13. Are you talking about all books?

Nothing in this article mentions that all the books are banned and it would be noteworthy to mention that. All it does say is they had an issue with a couple of pages rather then the whole book. I haven't found a mainstream news source that said inmates were or weren't allowed to books. One source that isn't a mainstream news source said that inmates are allowed to request books, receive edited newspapers, etc. Several mention they are allowed a TV but that can be taken away.

This isn't the only source that mentions a TV but I did find it interesting in case you don't take an inmate's word for it.

<snip>
Not at supermax though, where Harrelson was something of an ideal inmate, gaining privileges such as a TV and radio over time. As a "tenant of this hospice," as Harrelson put it, he seemed resigned to the fact that there was no way out.
<snip>
Harrelson, as a "cooperative" inmate, enjoyed his earned privileges inside, such as the ability to watch some television alone in his cell.

"I watch David Letterman's monologue. My other TV watching is nearly all CNN and/or PBS." He wrote that he liked "Nova," "Frontline" and "Nature," explaining to his pen pal and friend that life was bearable.
<snip>

This is the funny part
-----------------------
"It could be infinitely worse," Harrelson told Tiernan."I could have been raised in one of those religious families. I could have been born in Darfur or Baghdad or Jerusalem or somewhere in another of those Third World countries where every bite of beans is a struggle," Harrelson wrote. "Hell, I could have been a Republican (shudder)! Those are only a few of the fates for worse than this one."
http://i.abcnews.com/TheLaw/Story?id=3435989&page=4

:rofl: Being a republican is worse then being in ADX Florence. :rofl:

However if you ask me the Prison people may have a point considering he was said to be in a plot to assassinate Bush. However when it comes to books in general I can trust an inmate at ADX with a book considering he is isolated 23 hours and gets strip searched for the one hour in isolated recreation.

The one thing concerns me is what psychiatrists identified as SHU syndrome which is often caused by the lack of stimulation, activity and natural light given to these inmates. How bad these guys are is always used to minimize the slow and inhumane mental torture.

Which is why I won't like it if they send PRE-TRIAL gitmo detainees to ADX Supermax.

---------------

Edit: Most of the sources I was referring to comes to this site which has a collection of multiple stories and blogs. I can't find out if books are allowed one way or the other but there is less then mainstream sources that mention a library.
http://www.supermaxed.com/Federal-SM-Page.htm

[No Elephants]

22. Prison guards are not my first choice for compiling a list of acceptable books.

[Flaneur]

24. I know who goes to Supermaxes.

These are people who need to be confined for society's protection. But that doesn't mean their confinement has to resemble torture. Keeping people in solitary confinement 23 hours a day for years is torture. Our prisons are a scandal, and the Supermaxes are some of the worst.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

As for the totalitarian ban on Obama's books being applied to all prisoners, not just this guy, well, that's not an impressive argument.

[mucifer]

12. I used to do prisoner's rights activism in California. They restricted many books

and even educational literature about AIDS. Until a law suit was started educational materials about AIDS were rejected and not only in maximum security prisons, minimum security prisons also. The federal prisons excepted educational materials better. Once the lawsuit was started I remember receiving a letter thanking me for sending in materials from the warden from the state prison. Knowledge is power.

[followthemoney]

20. I, as a member of the United States Air Force, had a copy of...

John Lennon's Shaved Fish confiscated at a base exchange before I could pay for it. This was for my own good, I was told. There are authoritarian bastards everywhere trying to 'protect' our freedoms.

[ColbertWatcher]

14. I'm going to guess because they're autobiographies.

And may contain info that some stalker could use.

:shrug:

[followthemoney]

19. The book is unquestionably dangerous.

At least one of his books has his picture on the cover. If this information could be communicated to some terrorist operatives outside of stir, they might be able to make a visual identification of Obama. The fact that he writes his own books could be a tip off to a ne'er do well to stalk publishing houses in their attempt to apprehend him.

[No Elephants]

23. I suggest not guessing to try to justify the unjustifiable. Any newspaper "could"

contain info about Obama that "some" stalker could use. So does every radio and television show. So does the Internet. So do books of political analysis. His whereabouts and itineries are well known, with very few exceptions. So is information about his family members.

And a prisoner already in a super max prison is probably not the greatest threat to Obama that keeps the Secret Service up at night.

[ColbertWatcher]

15. I'm going to guess because they're autobiographies.

And may contain info that some stalker could use.

:shrug:

[deacon]

16. I'm so sick of these idiotic hit pieces. It's friggin' nuts. n/t

[wial]

17. supermax prisons are more of a threat

than al-qaida to America's national security, since they undermine our legitimacy politically and rot our soul morally, let alone the prison system's capacity for manufacturing a permanent criminal class.

As for the particular case, it's sweet the prison guards care enough about Obama to want to protect him in their swinish way. I pity them. There are two jobs Buddhists are not supposed to do because they are so bad for the karma: butcher, and prison guard. As long as the American prison industry continues unchecked we are all prison guards just as we are all butchers as long as we fail to stop America's unwarranted foreign military adventures.

Probably working to ban campaign contributions by captains of prison industry would be a good start. Wisconsin's ex-governor Tommy Thompson was kept in power for years that way. Well, he had help from Exxon which wanted to rip apart the North Woods mining for copper (an Exxon lobbiest got him elected and ran his administration) and the road builders were in there too. But the prison caterers were always there to make sure their industry's market was well populated.

I'm reminded too of the time the prison guards tried to take everything away from Gandhi. They took his books so he said "thank you, that was very thoughtful, I've been meaning to write more." So they took his paper and he said "thanks, I've been meaning to meditate more." They couldn't take that away. One is forced to wonder if Al-Qaida operatives have a similar attitude. Probably not.

[slackmaster]

18. This happened on our watch

:silly: