Stunning. posted by Richard Seymour

Via Qlipoth. Okay, so the United States government has applied a stun belt to Zacarias Moussaoui to ensure that his testimony isn't, er, distorted by any outburts. The fuck? Seriously?

But yes, it happens all the time apparently. Check this out:

For the offense of talking too
much in court, a three-strikes defendant wearing an
electronic security belt was zapped with 50,000 volts by
order of a judge.

Ronnie Hawkins was acting as his own attorney when
Municipal Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani, angered by his
repeated interruptions, last week ordered her bailiff to
activate a stun belt that had been fitted under Hawkins'
jail jumpsuit.

"He made no aggressive movement toward anyone, he
was not a threat," Deputy Public Defender Matthew Huey
said Thursday, one of three bystanders in the courtroom
who complained.

Hawkins, 48, was facing 25 years to life during a
sentencing hearing held last week. He was convicted of
petty theft in April.

Zapped for interrupting. Amnesty International places this in the context of the US supplying electro-weaponry to other violent states. It is strapped to prisoners in court, who are told that in the event of their moving suddenly, shouting, refusing to obey a verbal command and so on. They are told that they might shit themselves and piss in their pants, and that they will certainly be incapacitated and fall to the ground (although it isn't mentioned that heart attack, vomiting and memory loss may also ensue). Two metal prongs positioned above the left kidney deliver the shock for eight seconds. Amnesty comments on the pain it delivers, quoting officers who had to take a short 'training' shock from the belt:

One officer in Maryland has recently described how it felt as if "you had nine-inch nails and you tried to rip my sides out and then you put a heat lamp on me." Another in Ohio said that "it felt like every muscle in my body short-circuited at the same time." It should be noted that prisoners, unlike officers who wear the belts for a few minutes in a training exercise, do not have the opportunity to prepare for the moment when the electro-shock will be delivered, and wear the belt for far longer.

And I bet those officers were thinking: "cool, can't wait to try this shit out!" This electrical shock treatment has been meted out to prisoners for some time. Here's what happened to one prisoner:

I woke up a short time later to very intense shocking pain running through my body. This electrical current was so intense that I thought that I was actually dying. I had not been causing any trouble, I was belly chained, shackled, seat belted in, and there was a fence between the officers and me, so there was absolutely no reason for them to be using this device on me... I think they shocked me a second time while I was still in the van. When we arrived, I was unloaded from the van and taken to a holding cell.... Once I was in the cell, several officers came into the cell and again I was shocked by the stun belt. This electrical blast knocked me to the floor, and I could hear the officers laughing and making jokes.

Speechless. Torture at the touch of a button. The US tortures its own prisoners as a matter of policy and now uses the threat of electrocution to discipline alleged felons in court? This is barbarism.