1. “WHORES ON TERROR
Never mind the waterboarding, here’s the sodomy
“Yasser tearfully described that when he reached the top of the steps ‘the party began…They started to put the [muzzle] of the rifle [and] the wood from the broom into [my anus]. They entered my privates from behind.’ …Yasser estimated that he was penetrated five or six times during this initial sodomy incident and saw blood ‘all over my feet’ through a small hole in the hood covering his eyes.”
–Physicians for Human Rights, Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact
Waterboarding. It’s all we seem to discuss when comes to American torture. Whenever you see people discussing “enhanced interrogation” on your TV, chances are they’ll be throwing around the same tired arguments, all revoling around waterboarding. Why, of all the things we’ve done to our suspected (and not-so-suspected) terrorist detainees, is waterboarding the issue? Why confine the rapidly dwindling debate to that single technique? We’ve engaged in a lot of other practices that qualify universally as torture. Are sleep deprivation or “Palestinian hanging” not controversial enough? Is solitary confinement too mundane?
How about sodomy? Is that something we consider unremarkable?
“This is highly consistent with the events Amir described, including a traumatic injury and subsequent scarring process. Examination of the peri-anal area showed signs of rectal tearing that are highly consistent with his report of having been sodomized with a broomstick.”
–Physicians for Human Rights
That’s right; sodomy. Forcible anal penetration. The documentation of this and other forms of sexual humiliation is too extensive to be denied or pawned off on a couple of redneck privates. And we know now that sexual humiliation techniques were among those discussed and approved by the National Security Principals Committee, including Cheney and John “History will not judge this kindly” Ashcroft.
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The key to winning the debate on torture is to eradicate any illusions about just what this was, which is sick, twisted, and freakish beyond any usefulness in gathering information. And it becomes very clear in the light of a rectally inserted lightstick. Raise the specter of White House-authorized sexual abuse, and anyone who doesn’t shrink away from defending it will be doomed to be remembered as the guy who defended ass-rape and forced urine-drinking, which is the very least an American should suffer for trying to justify brutally raping prisoners.
But no one will pull the trigger. Even as more proof is revealed, nobody seems to mention the sodomy. The torture debate is limited to waterboarding alone. Why? Forget the 48 photos Obama has flipped on releasing (like the putz he’s turned out to be). There are known photos—you can see them at Salon.com—of a female prisoner being raped, and a male. Not to mention the kinky naked slave-stacking and forced masturbation–and the prisoner with a banana up his ass.
We blared Metallica at them 24 hours a day while they shat themselves, chained to the floor. We kept them in coffin-sized boxes for hours on end. We hung them from the ceiling. We made them jack each other off. We beat some of them to death. Many have lost their minds. Some these people were guilty of nothing but being in Afghanistan or Iraq and being swept up as part of an intelligence “mosaic.”
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What’s so sick about it is that the sexual nature of the torture seems so unnecessary. I mean, even if we were going to torture them, we could have stuck to waterboarding, pulling some fingernails or just beating the shit out of them. But menstrual blood smeared on their faces? Ass rape? What kind of people do that? What possible purpose does that serve that outweighs becoming known as the country that ass-rapes people? We couldn’t get enough answers, or false confessions, or whatever we were looking for, from regular brutality? We had to go all BDSM on these people?
The upshot is this: America is the country that rapes its prisoners. We’re sex criminals. That’s our thing now. And Obama’s refusal to “look back,” i.e. prosecute these incredibly serious crimes, ensures that it’s our permanent legacy. No national reputation can survive this simply by shrugging it off. We used to be seen as a bastion of freedom and decency around the world. That shit is over, folks. We’re like the Soviet Union with better movies now. When we talk about human rights, we are an international joke.
And when we talk about torture, we stick to waterboarding, because nobody, not even the “liberals,” are willing to face what we’ve done.”
http://buffalobeast.com/137/sodomy.html
2. “Israel’s settlements are on shaky ground
International law mandates that they must be removed and that the Palestinians should be compensated for their losses.
The debate over Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is often framed in terms of whether they should be “frozen” or allowed to grow “naturally.” But that is akin to asking whether a thief should be allowed merely to keep his ill-gotten gains or steal some more. It misses the most fundamental point: Under international law, all settlements on occupied territory are unlawful. And there is only one remedy: Israel should dismantle them, relocate the settlers within its recognized 1967 borders and compensate Palestinians for the losses the settlements have caused.
Removing the settlements is mandated by the laws of the Geneva Convention, which state that military occupations are to be a temporary state of affairs and prohibit occupying powers from moving their populations into conquered territory. The intent is to foreclose an occupying power from later citing its population as “facts on the ground” to claim the territory, something Israel has done in East Jerusalem and appears to want to do with much of the West Bank.
The legal principles were reaffirmed in 2004 by the International Court of Justice, which cited a U.N. Security Council statement that the settlements were “a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/thatseemsfair/latimes0229.html
3. “Democrats and Republicans Join Hands Over Immigration
Even the most optimistic Obama supporter should cringe in response to the White House’s recent “bi-partisan immigration talks.” What could Democrats and Republicans possibly have in common over immigration? Quite a lot it turns out.
An enormous sell-out is being prepared for the U.S. immigrant population and Latinos especially — who came out in record numbers in many swing states to vote for Obama last year. Attached to these votes are huge expectations.
Obama has, again, shifted another campaign promise far to the right — pro-immigration reform has turned into its opposite. And like all of his other betrayals, Obama is attempting to sell this one to the public as a “compromise.” But immigration, like health care, peace, the environment, etc., has very little room for backroom deals and finding a “middle ground” with an increasingly hysterical right wing.
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The Democrats have conceded the immigration issue to the Republicans because they benefit equally from it. Not only do both groups require exploitative “guest worker programs” for their corporate donors, but also benefit immensely from the scapegoating effect. For example, the Democrats are now beginning to be correctly viewed by most Americans as “tools of Wall Street”, especially after the bank bailouts. Better that the resulting rage be directed towards society’s most vulnerable people.
This is why it is especially sad that labor unions and some national immigrant right’s organizations have opportunistically fallen behind the Democrats/Republicans “immigration reform,” the inevitable result of which will be further border militarization and consequent deaths along the border, while increasing immigrant scapegoating and consequent hate crimes. Workplace intimidation will also increase.
If the emerging reform becomes law, it will be a springboard for the extreme right, like the Minutemen, who will benefit from the bill’s scapegoating essence, while also incorrectly denouncing the Republicans and Democrats for granting “amnesty.”
The honest “left,” therefore, must do the opposite. Promoting “amnesty for all” is the only consistent, progressive argument around immigration — all others fall victim to the evils of scapegoating and “border security.” The foundation for an “equality for all” argument lies not only in the fact that immigrants are workers too, but in recognition that the immigration issue is used as a central wedge to divide and conquer all working people, thus allowing a tiny financial elite to dominate the country in the pursuit of endless wars and corporate bailouts.
U.S. immigration policy must return to its roots — most eloquently explained by the inscription at the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14151
3. “Coup d’Etat Underway in Honduras: OBAMA’S FIRST COUP D’ETAT
Foreign Minister Rodas has stated that she has repeatedly tried to make contact with the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens, who has not responded to any of her calls thus far. The modus operandi of the coup makes clear that Washington is involved. Neither the Honduran military, which is majority trained by U.S. forces, nor the political and economic elite, would act to oust a democratically elected president without the backing and support of the U.S. government. President Zelaya has increasingly come under attack by the conservative forces in Honduras for his growing relationship with the ALBA countries, and particularly Venezuela and President Chávez. Many believe the coup has been executed as a method of ensuring Honduras does not continue to unify with the more leftist and socialist countries in Latin America.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14152
4. Yet ANOTHER thing he campaigned against – was he the most dishonest candidate ever?
“Obama administration preparing order for indefinite detentions
Following in Bush’s Footsteps
The Obama administration is drafting an executive order that would give the US president the power to arrest without charge, and imprison indefinitely without trial, foreign nationals it accuses of being terrorists, according to several senior government officials who spoke with the Washington Post and a reporter for non-profit news source ProPublica on condition of anonymity.
The order, should it be released, would likely reuse arguments made by the previous administration of George W. Bush that the laws of war allow the executive branch to disregard the established judicial system and domestic laws and rights, such as those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
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Obama won millions of votes of those disgusted with the police-state policies of the Bush administration.
Now, only five months into his administration, Obama has cast aside all of his promises to curb the new anti-democratic powers of the state. Obama has promised there will be no investigation, let alone prosecution, of Bush administration officials or CIA agents who ordered or carried out torture, and has moved to block from public view further evidence of prisoner abuse. Invoking the “state secrets” doctrine, the Obama administration has maneuvered to shut down civil court cases of those who were abducted and tortured in the war on terror. And the National Security Agency, it has been revealed, continues to monitor the e-mail communications of millions of US citizens, even as the Obama administration moves to establish a military “Cyber Command” that would have new authority over the nation’s computer networks.
Obama’s increasingly open embrace of all the anti-democratic methods of the Bush administration—with even superficial differences vanishing—demonstrates the impossibility of defending democratic rights through one or another capitalist politician or party. The criminal methods of the “war on terror” arise not from the mistaken policies of individual politicians. Rather they arise inexorably from the deeper criminal act of launching wars of aggression, which in turn arises from the US political elite’s drive to offset the decline of US capitalism by seizing critical natural resources and strategic advantage over its main imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14157
5. “For all the chatter about “judicial activism” and that dreadful Roberts metaphor of “a neutral umpire calling balls and strikes,” it is so striking how frequently conservative judges invalidate policies which conservatives dislike as a political matter. Here we have the conservative wing of the Court declaring illegal the employment decisions of local government officials, who used a political approach — diversity — which conservatives dislike on policy grounds. So often, the outcomes of the allegedly neutral conservative judges are completely consistent with (and aggressively advance) the political preferences of conservatives (Bush v. Gore being only the most obvious example). Indeed, few things are rarer than conservatives Justices invalidating policies that conservatives like politically, or upholding policies they despise — the true test for whether one applies the law independently of political and outcome preferences.
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Regardless of one’s views on affirmative action, the complaints about not-merit-based factors cut both ways. As for Sotomayor, the Court’s 5-4 decision today ought to put an end to the attempt to use Ricci to depict her as being somehow out of the judicial mainstream and thus unfit for the Court.
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Establishment view of Obama’s civil liberties record
One of the most cherished weapons for dismissing political arguments without having to engage them is to claim they come from “the Far Left” or are confined to ”liberal ideologues.” For years, that was what was said about withdrawing from Iraq even as majorities of Americans supported that position, and it is how the political and media establishment now demonize the call for investigations into Bush/Cheney crimes, despite large percentages and diverse ideological support for those views . Exactly the same tactic is used to dismiss those who criticize Obama for adopting Bush policies in the areas of civil liberties and secrecy: only people from the Far Left fringe or civil liberties extremists would equate Obama and Bush when it comes to such matters.
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That Obama is replicating the Bush/Cheney approach in these areas isn’t a by-product of some civil liberties extremist refusal to appreciate the joys of pragmatism or Leftist-purist dissatisfaction with all dogmatic imperfection. That this observation is heard from The Washington Post Editorial Page (of all places), from right-wing advocates such as Wittes and Goldsmith, and from mainstream, liberal and pro-Obama outlets (TPM this weekend: preventive detention approach is “the latest installment in the Obama administration’s tendency to mimic the Bushies on war on terror tactics“) demonstrates that rather conclusively. Rather, it’s just a blindlingly clear fact that any minimally honest person is compelled to acknowledge. When one combines that with the fact that Bush’s actions in the areas of civil liberties, Terrorism and secrecy were (at least ostensibly) central to the widespread anger about the Bush presidency, it’s impossible to understand how anyone whose objections over the last eight years were sincere (as opposed to a handy weapon opportunistically used to politically weaken Bush) could be supporting what Obama, in these areas, is doing now.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
6. “Bloodless Coup A Real Letdown”
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30906?utm_source=infocus
