The Occupy movement is holding a national day of action in support of prisoners. This post will be following the actions as they unfold. Updates will be posted regularly through the rest of the afternoon and evening.

The focus on Guantanamo over the past couple years has hidden the fact that the number of detainees there has been dissipating somewhat. The number of detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan has exploded, with detainees captured throughout the world moved over to Bagram and shielded from any habeas proceedings. Bagram has become the black hole. So it’s good news, on its face, that the Administration wants to repatriate non-Afghan detainees out of Bagram.

Prisoners at Guantanamo are marking the tenth anniversary of the opening of the prison with a hunger strike and peaceful protests. A counsel to a number of detainees at Guantanamo, Ramzi Kassem, told Democracy Now! and UK-based journalist Andy Worthington that for a three-day period they will engage in “sit-ins” in “communal areas” of the prison.

Los Angeles county sheriff is suffering through the worst performance record in the country outside of noted racist Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona. First, Sheriff Lee Baca had to endure credible allegations of mistreatment of prisoners in county lockups. Now, he has a new scandal on his hands.

The United States was founded on the principle that no individual is above the law. We are, as John Adams said, “a nation of laws, not men.” But that principle is under assault, as Glenn Greenwald explains in his powerful new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful.

This deportation review is unlikely to stop the record level of deportations, which hit 400,000 last year. Obama Administration official Cecilia Munoz admitted on a Frontline documentary this week that “As long as Congress gives us the money to deport 400,000 people a year, that’s what the administration is going to do.”

That’s a pretty shocking admission.

According to California sources, “nearly 12,000 prisoners were on hunger strike, including California prisoners who are housed in out of state prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma.” This is the second hunger strike in less than four months, with prisoners at the Supermax Pelican Bay Prison and other California state prisons protesting the use of long-term solitary confinement, in addition to four other main demands, including provision of adequate and nutritious food, and an end to administrative abuses.

A US State Embassy cable marked “confidential” and published by WikiLeaks reveals details on the detention of juveniles held in “Site 4″ in a Iraq Interior Ministry (MOI) detention complex. The juveniles allege sexual abuse by Iraqi interrogators, specifically that rapes were being used in the prison to induce confessions. The discovery of widespread abuse and torture, according to the diplomat who wrote the cable, is the worst since the infamous Jadriyah “Bunker” facility was discovered in 2005.

More than three weeks later and after building up great support from activists, academics, celebrities and others in the US and around the world, the leaders of the prison hunger strike in the Pelican Bay supermax prison have brought an end to their strike and have begun to eat again. They emphasize that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has given them a few good-faith token gestures and that the end of this strike is entirely conditioned on achieving the long-term policy changes that they have demanded.

Even when someone is on a hunger strike medical care should be given. In fact it is critical that there is regular checks as slowly starving can affect other organs and turn south very quickly. This is not happening for the Pelican Bay hunger strikers.