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America has deliberately driven hundreds, perhaps thousands, of political prisoners insane.  It is the current doctrine of US psychological torture.  If the panorama could be viewed all at once, the American people would see an administration that, by the summer of 2003, felt it could do whatever it wanted to anyone.  Bush's inner circle validated every cliché about the arrogance of power, and Americans are noticing at long last the Bush White House's habitual contempt for the nation's legal and constitutional traditions. In modern media context, the Bush administration's defense of their omnipotence means destructive counter-tactics against any critics who dare speak out.

 

Dirtying up one’s opponents is the name of the game. “Controversialize” your enemies so the public won’t take them seriously. Turn them into laughingstocks. Declare them to be crazy or incompetent.  Humiliate, defame, and demoralize them. Assassinate character and career.  Cut off the proverbial head and the body soon follows.

 

Upon Lt. Shine's graduation from the academy he received dual congressional and presidential lifetime appointments. Earning his U.S. Naval Commission with Top Secret security clearance and more; he sailed as a Federal Maritime Engineering Officer for the United States embedded within numerous shipping lines (now flying foreign flags).  Lt. Shine has been afforded broad access to the inner workings of our government, its corporations and industries from many vantage points. Yet today, despite his multiple accomplishments, Lt. Shine is hunted and hounded as victim of unlawful retaliatory counter-prosecution by the United States and Department of Homeland Security.  . 

 

Lt. Shine is a “whistle blower."  His problems started when he filed a series of grievances regarding ship maintenance; procedural; safety and regulatory issues - including illegal dumping from Government vessels, and civil rights violations committed by numerous federal contractors, including pay and due process; basic food inequities (serving 2 meals instead of 3 per day as contracted for by Federal shipping articles),etc. Because of Lt. Shine’s intrepid actions, he was punished even denied rights to compassionate leave when his father lay dying, then terminated upon his father's death,

Determined to change the corrupt practices he has witnessed, he contacts the 23 Members of the Senate Commerce Committee, offering testimony on what he considered serious and dangerous practices now routinely allowed despite the law and what he was taught at Kings Point. He is then contacted by the Department of Homeland Security, subjected to a endless nightmare of legal harassment that denies him both his right of free speech, effectively silencing him with charges of 'depression.' No one will listen, he finds himself entirely alone.

 

While suffering continuing harassment, personal, and professional injuries from his Federal Officers Association and the Shipping companies, Lt. Shine uncovered that the statutory Board setup by Congress was unlawfully dissolved so as to facilitate theft of tens of billions of dollars of Federal Defense and Federal Transportation funds.  Since there is no proper neutral system to redress grievances, its now impossible for shipboard Federal Officer's to file or pursue any complaints from simple pay issues to smuggled nukes. Instead a complaint system is used to identify, attack, even euthanize complainants like Lt. Shine.  Tip of the iceberg in what Lt. Shine has uncovered.

 

Adding insults to his injuries, Federal Officers went as far as to suggest that Lt. Shine put a gun to his head and blow himself away. Assaulted verbally and physically battered, Homeland Security increased the pressure and retaliations by putting out a BOLO or "Be On the Look Out" poster on Lt. Shine declaring him to be dangerous. .

 

Lacking any recourse, Lt. Shine finally took complaints into Civil Court against two major shipping companies, General Agencies of the United States, and the Federal Officer's Association, which all colluded to protect each other. Many retaliatory counter-prosecutions were pursued only to protect overarching war profiteering and privateering by maintaining a climate of fear. 

 

Beginning with the HW Bush administration and finalized in the wake of the events surrounding 9-11 and unbeknownst to Lt. Shine, the Federal Officers Association and Shipping Companies opportunistically banded together with this Bush Administration to finish dismantling all statutory grievance and arbitration processes to turn them into systems of administrative counter-prosecution.

 

The co-defendants, all undeclared Agencies of the United States, filed motions to move Lt. Shine’s civil suits out of State into Federal Court where he was intentionally detained for years. After Lt. Shine was sufficiently roughed up and beaten down by the General Agencies, Homeland Security stepped up to the pressure. They  initiated a bizarre rendition program and internment process used to not only detain “foreign enemy combatents” but  U.S. Citizens as well, including Federal, Military and Constitutional Officers who once had enormous legal rights and protections.  One only need look at related court records to see there is much more going on here then the alleged "incompetence" of Lt. Shine or his feeling "depressed" after being tortured. Constitutional Officers are now prosecuted for speaking their conscience and trying to enforce Constitutional rights, as in the case against Lt. Erin Watada. 

 

On March 06 of 2003, "Homeland Security" swung for a grand slam by stepping in and filing an Executive-Administrative cross-complaint against Lt. Shine, actually charging him with, "being depressed.”  This essentially, effectively quashed Lt. Shine’s pre-existing Article III judicial civil complaints in violation of the separation of powers using falsified medical records as "evidence" against him. To cover up the involved corrupt federal contracting schemes, from 2003 to present, Homeland Security aggressively attempted to prove, at enormous expense to U.S. taxpayer and great injury and expense to Lt. Shine, that he is medically and mentally incompetent.  Dating falsified investigations all the way back to 1984, Lt. Shine’s homes were seized, property and rights liquidated. 

 

Since 2003 or before, Homeland Security has been monitoring Lt. Shine.  Keeping him in a "virtual prison" of sorts, the government has seized his federal maritime professional engineering license, associated degree, officer’s papers, personal and medical records to detain him in legal limbo, bugged his phone and other communications and more. They have effectively denied him access to the courts and proper redress.  Now you know why the administration wishes to do away with Habeus Corpus and other ancient rights.

 

In what can only be reminiscent of a Franz Kafka novel, Lt. Shine as charged and prosecuted for "being depressed", is somehow expected to defend himself and shoulder costs for his defense against a "shock and awe" program of the "United States".

 

This utter and complete travesty of injustice - failure and refusal of right to a fair trial and judicious due process, no access to charges or redress for underlying grievances, inability to face his accusers and see and or hear evidence or charges being held against him – all this must be stopped before this same program is turned upon us all where complainants can be turned into defendants with a wave of administrative hand by Homeland Security.

 

According to Lt. Shine, his plight is but a symptom of our country’s pervasive top to bottom feudal corporate culture of corruption as this government careens recklessly and intentionally toward authoritarianism, fascism and overt criminality to legalize "torture", "overlook federal contracting violations", even "war profiteering", "privateering" and more. Disturbing implications of this must be clear to all:  citizens are defined as haves and the have nots; or haves and have more;  the masters -- and their slaves. 

 

Anyone who believes in justice must step forward and demand immediate relief and redress for Lt. Shine.  Without such rights and protections, our Constitution is in jeopardy where due process is nothing but a series of kangaroo courts, jumping from witch trials to star chamber, where all are used to violate every tenet the Constitution stands for and our government is required and commanded to respect and uphold.

 

Will America, its people and those who serve her become functionaries, economic units for a State that is nothing more than an arm of global corporations? A flag flutters, blurred in the distance. As we approach it what looked like the America stars and stripes morphs into the flags of corporations, flying, larger than life over America.

 

You must, we all must step forward now and do what is necessary to support and protect Lt. Shine.  After all, if this can happen to Federal and Military Officers with strongest constitutional and statutory protections provided, akin to those of a U.S. Ambassador, it can and will happen to any one of us in Bush’s Oedipal "Brave New World."

 

Shukrije Gashi, a pro-independence activist in Kosovo, was jailed by Yugoslav authorities in 1983 and spent nearly two years as a political prisoner. Strictly speaking, she wasn't tortured, but 2 1/2 decades later it still feels that way, she says.

 

Gashi was confined to a cramped, unventilated cell and fed small rations of often-rotten food. Allowed to shower just once a month, she endured frequent beatings and verbal abuse.

 

Today, she still trembles whenever she sees the police. Her ordeal, she says, is "a spiritual burden that stays with you forever."

Gashi copes by writing poetry and running a center for conflict management.

 

But 24 years later, she still can't erase the indelible memories of what she endured.

 

"The treatment in prison was horrific," she said. "I remain psychologically burdened. Memories of the violence follow me like a shadow."