A Miscarriage of Justice, or Same Shit, Different Day

Maybe you have heard the story of a young Afghan man named Mohammad Jawad, who has spent the last seven years of his life in prison. Accused of a crime he probably didn't commit. He was only about twelve when he was arrested. I've read various news reports on it, and I have to inject my two cents, that the government doesn't really have a leg to stand on. Their defense is, never mind the torture that was involved, that a bone scan they did showed he was either 16, 17 or 18 depending on which version of their story you want to believe. I suppose that story is fine and well for the uneducated masses, but I've studied Archaeology and I know good and well you cannot accurately determine an exact age from a bone scan. There is variation in populations and that is only accurate within maybe three years in either direction making for a window of six years, and he could have had an advanced bone structure and been twelve or thirteen. I somehow don't think that defense would hold up in a court of law.

His mother says he was born in 1991, and for some reason, I have more reason to believe her than I do a government that lies about everything else. How sad, not only did they take away seven years of this young man's life that cannot be given back, but they took him away from his family, and didn't even bother to tell his family where he was until Red Cross workers delivered a message from him nine months later.

On top of the fact that they imprisoned a young minor, they tortured him as well, using sleep deprivation and what the Spanish Inquisition called "Strapado" where they bind your hands behind your back and hang you up by your wrists. Isn't that special? The news reports never identify what they're describing, might be a bit much for the masses to realize what our government has done. Then again, would they even realize? When 8% of North Carolinians don't even realize that Hawaii is a state, I somehow doubt it.

Makes me real proud of my country and of humanity in general, to know that my fellow countrymen carried out medieval torture like barbarians and all in the 21st century. Not.

Wanted: Torture Planner

Well that's a job description you don't see everyday. Apparently the Bush administration paid a couple of psychologists a lot of money to engineer how to torture people. Were they consulting the records of the Inquisition or what?

Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites.

You can watch a short video about it here, it doesn't have an option to embed.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7475437

If ever you believed the argument that this was just a couple of "bad apples" I think that argument doesn't have a leg to stand on. This was planned, organized, and implemented by those in the highest of places. And a few grunts took the fall, while the ones responsible for instituting it are still walking around free.

Swine Flu being used to Cover Up something?

Isn't it odd that all of a sudden we have the press attempting to spread panic over a flu that isn't a pandemic, and probably won't become one, by trying to say it might. There was absolutely nothing in the news about this flu before yesterday morning. A pandemic by definition is a virus that spreads quickly from person to person. The people who came down with it in the United States were sick two to six weeks ago. Two of the high school students who were sick in the United States have returned to school. If it were a pandemic, at least half the high school would have been sick. It would have spread all over the country by now, and we'd be closing everything up in an attempt to contain it. I live less than a hundred miles from the Mexico border, and I don't know anyone who is sick here or has been sick in the last two months. If we ever do have a pandemic, we'll see illness before we see news about it.

Indeed, a doctor at a hospital in Mexico City hasn't even seen a case of it.

"Outside Hospital Obregon in the capital's middle-class Roma district, a tired Dr. Roberto Ortiz, 59, leaned against an ambulance and sipped coffee Saturday on a break from an unusually busy shift.

"The people are scared," Ortiz said. "A person gets some flu symptoms or a child gets a fever and they think it is this swine flu and rush to the hospital."

He said none of the cases so far at the hospital had turned out to be swine flu."

Twenty people as of this morning (they're saying maybe 62 now) dying in Mexico, a third world country of the flu is no surprise. I mean how many people die in Mexico of the flu in any given year? Something is going on, something is happening, and someone doesn't want us to notice, they want it buried by this swine flu panic. Could it be the torture news about Cheney? Or something else? Is Mexico involved in something with us?

Cheney gathering documents?

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Or new torture photos?

Or is it something else we don't know about yet? Or is it merely a coincidence?

Made In Communist China

With all the right wing extremist wackos raving and ranting over socialist Venezuela (I dare them to define socialism, the fools don't even know what it is) and Obama the Socialist (huh? like, as if), I got to thinking about it and realized that these people are either one of two camps. They're either the powers-that-be, spreading misinformation for the purpose of advancing their Corporatocracy, or they're sheeple, parroting the last thing their talking head on Faux News or Conservative Talk Radio told them they should think.

Now, China on the other hand. China, which is communist and has terrible human rights violations, these so called capitalist (predominately) Christians don't have a problem with China. Nevermind that communism is further to the left than socialism. Nevermind that American corporations are using slave labor in China to increase their profits so they can make millions, and we can have our cheap plastic crap. So why aren't they decrying us doing business with China? Could it be because China serves us whereas Chavez has basically told us to go fuck ourselves?

From a historical standpoint, it seems that we can set up all the dictatorships we want, and we're fine with their human rights violations, because we seriously don't have any problem perpetrating them ourselves (Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, rounding up Japanese for internment camps in WWII, giving native Americans blankets tainted with smallpox, you get the idea), so long as the country we've jury rigged gives us our proper homage. The second they do something we don't like, well, we'll just set up a military coup. Like that couldn't possibly backfire...

Our Constitution dictates that our government should operate in a certain manner, under a set of laws, but so many Americans seem willing to ignore it, when it serves their purpose to do so. You know, I don't give a damn what your private opinions are, or what political party you like to back, but for the love of god, think. It won't kill you.

Speaking of which... do you think China could export some Reason and Common Sense?

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."--Siddhārtha Gautama

Convicted of Torturing Prisoners to Coerce Confessions

And here we have it folks, the New York Times has articles dating to 1983 when a sheriff and his deputies right here in the state of Texas were convicted of the crime of torturing prisoners by waterboarding them.

"The Sheriff of San Jacinto County has resigned after admitting he operated a marijuana trap on heavily traveled U.S. 59 as well as subjected jail inmates to water torture to gain confessions and testimony."

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/20/us/around-the-nation-texas-sheriff-is-guilty-of-torturing-prisoners.html

"Mr. Lewis, 26 years old, and Vernon Perry, 27, both convicted of burglary in 1976, said they saw the former San Jacinto County Sheriff, James Parker, direct his deputies to coerce confessions from two burglary suspects by draping a towel over each man's face and pouring water over it until the men gagged."

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/02/us/around-the-nation-two-witnesses-describers00.2torture-by-texas-sheriff.html

"Federal District Judge James DeAnda has sentenced a former deputy sheriff, Floyd Baker, to four years in prison for torturing prisoners to make them confess to crimes."

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/11/us/ex-deputy-gets-four-years.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/30/us/sheriff-s-aide-admits-charge.html


These require a subscription to view, but have to do with this:

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/15/us/ex-sheriff-guilty-in-torture-case.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/08/us/ex-sheriff-s-deputy-denies-inmate-tortures.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/01/us/ex-deputy-tells-jury-of-jail-water-torture.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/us/texas-sheriff-s-guilty-plea-shuts-a-road-trap.html

Torture Hannity for Charity

Hey, that kinda rhymes! I have to put my two cents in on this. Hannity knows nothing. Waterboarding has always been considered torture, as far back as the middle ages where the Inquisition used it because it didn't draw blood. He has no idea. I'm all for this. If I had the money, I'd give money to charity for each second he lasts. I'm wagering he wouldn't last more than a minute.

Thanks to the Progressive Puppy.

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Let's Waterboard Bill O'Reilly

I mean after all, he doesn't seem to see a problem with it. I don't understand what part of immoral and wrong, never mind illegal, (in laws both domestic and international) that these bastards don't understand. I don't get it. The end does not justify the means. Period. NEVER.

Via ThinkProgress

The Daily Show: Balzheimers and Stockholm Pt. 2

Torture does not work. It has been proven time and again (I can't even believe that we're even debating this in this day and age), that either one of two things will happen. The first, which is most common, is that people will say ANYTHING under torture, usually lies to hide the truth, but in an attempt to save themselves. They'll make things up, they'll point the finger at their own mother, or father or sibling to make the torture stop. The second thing that can happen, which is less common, is if the person truly believes in their cause they won't say anything at all, even under torture. They'll die first. So, torture doesn't work and why are we debating that it might. It is immoral and unconstitutional, something that certain political factions can't seem to wrap their tiny little brains around.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Balzheimers Disease
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

And part two, of the Stockholm Syndrome:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor