Experts have indicated time and again that torturing prisoners almost always yields wrong information, and that there are other more effective methods of interrogation.
But, the duo of Dick Morris and Sean Hannity being what they are — media terrorists, prefer to go straight to the LYNCHING! The same thing [they] did to the Indians, Blacks, Mexicans, Non-Anglo Saxon Immigrants, …..more recently, Iraqi mothers and their children.
Meanwhile, Fox News hosts, contributors, and guests have called for profiling of Muslims by airport security personnel. But, several national security experts have termed such policies ineffective, with Bush administration secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff stating that “relying on preconceptions or stereotypes is actually kind of misleading and, arguably, dangerous.” [ READ MORE ]
Dick ‘FAT’ Morris: “If we don’t take our country back in 2010, it’s not going to be there for us to take back”
Dick ‘FAT’ Morris: “The reason 9-11 happened is that Bill Clinton treated the ‘93 bombing of the [World] Trade Center as a crime”
Sean Hannity on Abdulmutallab: “We ought to be waterboarding this guy“
STUPIDSteve Doocy ignores Bush policies to claim Abdulmutallab criminal charges “takes us back to the days of the Clinton administration“
Bonus Video: Americans Funding Terrorism
A new report in The Nation details how U.S. tax dollars are being used to “pay off” Taliban killers to keep them from bombing and shooting at U.S. convoys. Robert Greenwald, director of “Rethink Afghanistan” discusses.
Cameron Todd Willingham: An Innocent Man Executed in Texas — Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004. Willingham was convicted of murder in 1992 after his three young daughters died in a fire at his Corsicana, Texas, home.
The prosecution claimed he intentionally set fire to his home in order to kill his own children. Willingham, who was asleep in the home when the fire started, always said he was innocent. He was convicted based on the testimony of forensic experts who said the fire was intentionally set and a jailhouse informant who said Willingham had confessed to him.
In the days leading up to Willingham’s execution, his attorneys sent the governor and the Board of Pardon and Parole a report from Gerald Hurst, a nationally recognized arson expert, saying that Willingham’s conviction was based on erroneous forensic analysis. Documents obtained by the Innocence Project show that state officials received that report but apparently did not act on it.
Months after Willingham was executed, the Chicago Tribune published an investigative report that raised questions about the forensic analysis. The Innocence Project assembled five of the nation’s leading independent arson experts to review the evidence in the case, and they issued a 48-page report finding that none of the scientific analysis used to convict Willingham was valid. [ READ MORE ]
An investigation into claims that faulty evidence led Texas to execute an innocent man in 2004 was at a “crucial point” when the state’s governor replaced three of its members. Gov. Rick Perry’s shake-up of the Texas Forensic Science Commission came two days before it was to hear from the author of a scathing report in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. That Friday session has been postponed indefinitely in the wake of Perry’s new appointments, and critics of the governor accused him of trying to quash the Willingham probe.
Perry, who faces a Republican primary challenge in his bid for a third term next year, refused to issue a last-minute stay of execution for Willingham in 2004 and has said he remains confident that Willingham was guilty. So have authorities in Corsicana, south of Dallas, who prosecuted Willingham in his daughter’s deaths.
It is very evident that Rick Perry let an innocent man be put to death for political purposes — to please his Republican base of RACISTS, TEA-BAGGERS, and KILLER ARMED WHITE CHRISTIANS. [ READ MORE ] [ MORE ] [ TRIAL BY FIRE ]
WASHINGTON: Private contractors hired by the US government have jeopardized security at the American embassy in Kabul with lewd, drunken conduct and an understaffed guard force at a time of rising violence in the Afghan capital, a watchdog group said on Tuesday.
The non-partisan Project on Government Oversight sent US secretary of state Hillary Clinton a letter documenting complaints about guards working for ArmorGroup, North America, and photos of nearly naked men behaving lewdly at their camp.
The firm employs 450 guards to provide security at the Kabul embassy under a five-year, $189 million State Department contract. The department extended the contract in June.
Pictures obtained by the group showed male guards, scantily dressed in G-string style garments, dancing around a bonfire and urinating while others snapped photographs. Video showed them pouring alcohol down the bare backside of a new recruit and trying to drink it as it spilled from the man’s buttocks. [ SEE PICTURES BELOW ]
According to one whistle-blower, these naked pool parties involving sexually deviant acts have been held regularly for at least a year and a half, at the urging of senior officers.
These are the latest of many allegations of misconduct by private security contractors hired by the US government to perform duties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“These are very serious allegations and we are treating them that way,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said at a briefing, adding that the issue had been turned over to the department’s inspector general.
About 150 guards are Americans or from other English-speaking countries. The remaining 300 are identified by the Project on Government Oversight as Gurkhas from India and Nepal who speak little or no English. The group said the language barrier between English-speakers and Gurkhas was so severe it would be difficult for them to communicate in a crisis.
This is ample proof that Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident. Sexually deviant behavior (accompanied with prisoner torture) amongst US Military personnel and hired guns (guards) who are mostly ex-military, is rampant in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Why?
Because this animal behavior is tolerated and orchestrated by deviant senior military officers — who get a sexual kick out of it. The hierarchical command structure of a military force, especially the most potent one in the world, cannot witness such behavior without putting a stop to it — unless, as in this instance, and many others, the crude animalistic rituals are encouraged and sanctioned by senior military and private militia officials. In fact, in an interview with ABC News, one guard, a U.S. military veteran, said top supervisors of the ArmorGroup were not only aware of the “deviant sexual acts” but helped to organize them.
Torture and sexual abuse are part of a systematic military/militia program deployed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, unbeknownst to Obama, who is busy fending other menacing tea-bagging hyenas at home front.
The Bush Conservatives worked overtime to portray the events at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, as nothing more than fraternity pranks, and not blatant violations of the Geneva Convention. Right-wing pundits, like Rush Limbaugh, tried to sweep under the rug any investigations into prisoner abuse, whether it was at Abu Ghraib or at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was all an isolated incident involving a few soldiers, the Bush administration said.
The problem with that analysis is this: it was not true then and it’s not now. The Bush torture program is still intact, and it seems Obama thinks it ended — when he decided to holding back thousands of pictures depicting homosexual torture and bestiality — involving guard dogs.
Imperialist torture is nothing new. The Brits were masters at it, and the United States picked up where the European colonialists left of. The British — the greediest land grabbing thieves the world has ever known, ran horrific torture camps. They invaded countries, stole massive tracts land, and imprisoned entire civilian population in detention camps — wherein testicles were crushed, electric shocks were administered, cigarettes and fire were used to wantonly inflict physical and mental suffering on natives. Broken bottles, gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin and hot eggs were thrust up men’s rectums and women’s vaginas. The British whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated “suspects.”
I am not surprised at the lewd behavior of these “Guards” (soldiers of fortune) — it’s in the DNA — the horrors of European colonialism, the American lynchings during slavery, and the 500 pound bombings on Iraqi civilians in the last eight years, is testament.
To make matters worse, the US military has been granting more waivers to recruits with criminal backgrounds — this process has grown nearly 65 percent in the last five years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003 …., Department of Defense records show. The sharpest increase was in waivers issued for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide. The number of waivers issued for felony convictions also increased, from 8 percent to 11 percent of the 8,129 moral waivers granted in 2006. [ Source: New York Times ]
One can only imagine how lax the “for profit” private militia companies like ArmorGroup are in their recruitment process. It must be horrible!
Yes, deviant criminals with a license to kill!!
Before Army Sgt. 1st Class Randal Ruby was accused in Iraq of beating prisoners and of conspiring to plant rifles on dead civilians, he amassed a 10-year criminal record in Colorado and Washington state for assaulting his wife and in Maine for a drunken high-speed police chase, for which he remains wanted.
Before Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes stabbed an Iraqi private to death, angering the soldier’s unit of coalition soldiers, he was hospitalized after threatening suicide in high school, accused of assault, disorderly conduct and trespassing, and, in the months leading up to deployment, twice linked to drug use.
Before Army Spc. Shane Carl Gonyon was convicted of stealing a pistol at Abu Ghraib prison, he was convicted twice on felony charges and arrested four times, once for allegedly giving a 13-year-old girl marijuana in exchange for oral sex. He enlisted weeks after his release from a federal prison in Oregon.
The lax regulations have also opened the military’s doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and gang members — with drastic consequences. Some neo-Nazis have been charged with crimes inside the military, and others have been linked to recruitment efforts for the white right. A recent Department of Homeland Security report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” stated: “The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.”
Therefore, it should not surprise anyone that a sizeable chunk of “America’s Finest” are dangerous criminals, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and tea-bagger terrorists out to lynch anyone who doesn’t look like them — and while doing so, involve themselves in lewd, sexually deviant and animalistic acts as we see in the pictures below, and previously in Abu Ghraib:
It is time for the United States Department of Justice to intervene and conduct an independent and comprehensive investigation of the brutal murder of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The Justice Department must send a strong message that violence targeting Latinos will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
We need you, and so does Luis Ramirez’s family. Will you join me in making sure the DOJ does its job and brings justice to Shenandoah, Pennsylvania?
On July 12, 2008, Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old Mexican immigrant residing in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, was tragically beaten and stomped to death by a group of teens as he walked through the town. Witnesses overheard anti-Mexican and ethnic epithets shouted by his assailants during the violent attack. A retired Philadelphia police officer testified during the preliminary hearing that she heard one of the defendants yell, “Tell your [expletive] Mexican friends to get the [expletive] out of Shenandoah or you’ll be [expletive] laying next to him.”
On Friday, May 1, 2009, a jury in Schuylkill County found two of the defendants accused of beating the 25-year-old, father of two, not guilty of third degree murder and ethnic intimidation. Despite the mounting evidence of a hate-driven attack, the jury convicted them on charges of simple assault. The jury’s conclusion is an outrage. Most shocking is the recent news article describing the Jury Foreman’s view that trial of the defendants was biased because of racism and prejudice he noted among his fellow jurors. Luis Ramirez was brutally murdered and even in death, Ramirez remains a victim of extreme racism, which denies his family the justice they deserve.
Now, we need your help in calling upon the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice to conduct a thorough and comprehensive federal investigation surrounding the fatal beating of Luis Ramirez and to bring appropriate federal hate crime charges against his assailants.
In the mythology of white male editors, guys like Markoff don’t kill. They golf. With newspaper editors. Most of whom look like Markoff. Philip Markoff is just like 85% of U.S. serial killers — young, white and male. When will we get that these guys are the rule, not the exception?
[ Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez ] The New York Times described alleged killer Philip Markoff as having led a “seemingly normal” life before he was arrested for killing a woman he’d met through Craigslist and for robbing at least two others.
The New York Daily News described Markoff as “clean cut” and “a high-achieving dentist’s son.” The Boston Globe also described the shaggy-haired Markoff as “clean cut” — as did countless other media outlets. Politico.com called Markoff “all-American,” while the Associated Press and dozens of others called him “handsome“; PR Insider said, simply, that “by all appearances, he had it all.”
Over and over again, coast to coast, American media outlets told us how good-looking, smart and “normal” Markoff was, or should have been.
As I read and watched the media coverage of the 22-year-old alleged killer, I was stunned — though not surprised — by the fawning tone taken by the nation’s reporters.
After all, given the available information, Markoff could have been painted as weird, anti-social, woman-hater, irresponsible, deeply in debt, broke and in the midst of eviction from his apartment. He could have been presented as a stone-faced, emotionless creep who scared classmates by forcing kisses on them and had a long history of strange behavior.
Hell, one look at the guy at a bar, and most women I know would have shuddered and walked the other way.
But Markoff wasn’t served up to the public this way by the media.
[ The Killer -- Philip Markoff: Handsome and clean cut, or creepy freakin' loner? If you're a news editor, the former; if you're me and everyone I know, the latter.) ] Rather, Markoff was served by the media on a silver platter, described as a great-looking, charming, rich guy (none of which were true), whose alleged crimes were ostensibly all the more shocking for one simple and disturbing reason: Markoff had stepped outside of our racist culture’s perceived norm for his type.
I’ll say it again, in plain language: In the mythology of white male editors, guys like Markoff don’t kill. They golf. With newspaper editors. Most of whom look like Markoff.
The hidden code in the news coverage of Markoff, as it was for “preppy killer” Robert Chambers and countless other white male killers, has been clear: tall, young white guys, especially middle-class or wealthy ones in college, just don’t do stuff like this. Except that they do.
History inconveniently proves the U.S. media perception of privileged white men as nonviolent rulers of the earth to be counter to fact.
The United States has produced more serial killers than any other nation on earth, and 85 percent of them have been white men, according to a study by Apsche. The average age that serial killers take their first victim is 28; 62 percent target strangers exclusively and 71 percent operate in a specific geographic area.
From this description, it appears that Markoff, rather than being the shocking exception to an imaginary rule where white guys are the good guys, was pretty much the classic manifestation of the real rule of creepy serial criminals of a certain type. Not to mention that this nation was created through the rape, murder, robbery and enslavement of dark-skinned people, by guys who looked like Markoff.
(It is estimated that 100 million Native Americans were slaughtered by European “explorers,” and 50 million Africans perished as the result of the American slave trade. None of this, however, seems to have any impact on the media’s continued belief that educated white men are nonviolent.)
So, why the disconnect from reality among the media? That’s easy.
The media has long been in the business of selling perception over truth, especially when it comes to issues of race, socioeconomic class and sex. If you wish to know the myths and prejudices of a time, read its newspapers. If you wish for the truths, read its poetry.
Sexism plays a part in the media coverage, too. That Markoff targeted women selling escort services only helped the media to see him as a good guy led astray by Jezebels.
In her book, Virgin or Vamp: How the Media Cover Sex Crimes, Columbia University journalism Professor Helen Benedict beautifully illustrates the distinctions placed upon victims and perpetrators of sex crimes, depending upon the reputation, dress, race, occupation and economic class of the female victim.
In cases such as the Markoff slaying and robberies, the underlying message in media coverage tends to be that the women were somehow asking for it. In presenting Markoff as “handsome,” this mythology is underscored; after all, a handsome guy doesn’t need an escort service. The women must have been asking for it.
Benedict places the blame for this sort of media coverage on the fact that most editors, reporters and copy editors in the national media are white men who find themselves relating, at a visceral level, to the alleged perpetrators. Thus, the media’s description of Markoff as “normal.”
Whose normal? Normal to white male editors who live in white neighborhoods and have only white friends, one assumes.
If ever there was an argument for the need for increased diversity in America’s newsrooms, it is the recent coverage of Markoff.
Sadly, we are nowhere near such a goal. In fact, fewer minorities work in the news media now than 10 years ago, according to a recent report in Columbia Journalism Review.
In an increasingly nonwhite America, you do have to wonder if blatantly biased news coverage of alleged criminals like Markoff have anything to do with one after another newspaper filing for bankruptcy or outright closing down.
The New York Times described alleged killer Philip Markoff as having led a “seemingly normal” life before he was arrested for killing a woman he’d met through Craigslist and for robbing at least two others.
Rather, Markoff was served by the media on a silver platter, described as a great-looking, charming, rich guy (none of which were true), whose alleged crimes were ostensibly all the more shocking for one simple and disturbing reason: Markoff had stepped outside of our racist culture’s perceived norm for his type. 
