Destor on Ordering a Pizza Conservatively in Texas
Ramona: Hatred in a Lovely Church
Gallup: Obama 46, Romney 46
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Destor on Ordering a Pizza Conservatively in Texas Ramona: Hatred in a Lovely Church Gallup: Obama 46, Romney 46 |
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There are a lot of Republicans that say what we did to the detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other blacksite prisons was not torture. That represents an increasingly small number, though, as the release of the torture memo's and the imminent release of more stomach churning photo's has made it very hard for them to argue that position and not be seen as an ignorant uninformed fool. But unfortunately - the position they are now taking further illustrates the darkness that lies within them. If you can be for torture - your soul died a long time ago.
I put them into two groups. There are those who are seriously worked up by the issue. They have a totally misguided view of the world, and believe America is right in everything we do. When pressed - they loudly proclaim "So what - it's torture but REMEMBER 9/11!! - REMEMBER WHAT THEY DID TO US!! THESE PEOPLE ARE SAVAGES!!!!!" - and just as their heads are about to explode fall to their knees, rip off their shirt - holding both hands in the air and look toward the sky screaming ISLAMO-FASCISM!!!!! People like Bill O'reilly belong in this category. These are actually the ones don't scare me as bad.
The ones who frighten me are the ones who probably knew it was torture all along. They took the other position because it was politically necessary for them to do so. But they believed we were torturing people about the same time as the reports started coming out a few years back and those on the left started to voice concern. And as the controversy grew and more evidence came out - they became certain that we tortured. They don't get worked up over it - it is just a fact. Ya - we tortured - "so what". (Like Dick Cheney said when he was told a majority of the American people didn't support his wars). People like Sean Hannity (who may get worked up on TV - but that's for entertainment value.)
The reason I fear the people in group 2 more is not because they've come yet another step toward the cliff. When they can support torture, is it REALLY that hard to convince themselves to get a gun and wipe out a school? No. Does their heart have to grow that much blacker before they can start construction on their own private torture chamber in the backyard - and they start salivating just thinking of which minority they will bring home first? No - sadly it doesn't. They are very close to the edge.
But I believe there is one final step they can take in order to step off that cliff and reach a point of no return. Very soon it will become clear that some of the detainees died during the brutal torture we inflicted. We took a human being into a room, and provided severe, brutal and unyielding torture on them until nothing was left was a lifeless corpse. I can just imagine the silence in the room, the CIA torturers standing there, still looking at the dead detainee on the floor. Hopefully they would have had have not been desensitized enough by what their government had demanded that they would still be able to throw up.
If their (group 2 people) reaction when you question them is still "So" you should turn and RUN as fast as you can, because most likely they are thinking of what they'll do with your skin after they cut the meat from your bones. Trust me - just look in their eyes and you'll know. Just don't look too long - you don't want to be hypnotized and not be able to run.

By Elizabeth Weingarten, ForeignPolicy.com, May 23, 2012
It was 2009 in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mossarat Qadeem was sitting on the floor of a house with about a dozen young Pakistani men -- some of whom had nearly become suicide bombers. Qadeem's goal: to undo the destructive brainwashing of the al-Qaeda and Taliban teachers who trained them in extremism, in part by asking the students to narrate their life stories.
"We were handling one of the boys, and he just came, put his head here in my lap, and he started crying and weeping," Qadeem recalls. "I was taken aback. It is very unnatural in my country that a man that tall can just sit at your feet and put his head here. [The other men] were all crying with him, and I was looking at him, and thinking, ‘my God.'"
All in a day's work for Qadeem. She's the national coordinator of Aman-o-Nisa, a coalition of Pakistani women that convened in October 2011 to combat violent extremism in Pakistan at the grassroots level. [....]
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
.......
“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
By Ismail Kahn, New York Times, May 23/24, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden's location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region [....]
By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2012
MOSCOW — Stiff new penalties aimed at opposition protesters were given preliminary approval Tuesday by Russian lawmakers loyal to President Vladimir Putin, the target of mass rallies and demonstrations before his March election victory.
The bill, which opposition parliament members termed draconian and protested by threatening to file out of a legislative session, calls for fines of up to $50,000 and up to 200 hours of community service for organizers of rallies and demonstrations that grow violent or exceed the approved number of participants.
The sanctions were approved on first reading by parliament's lower house, which is controlled by Putin's United Russia party. They mark a return by the Kremlin to a tough stance against critics after concessions during the recent election campaign [...]
Also see:
Russians back Putin, strong leadership
Washington Post, May 22, 2012
A Pew survey of 1,000 Russians found that President Vladimir Putin is well-liked by more than 70 percent of citizens, especially older adults.
Associated Press, May 21, 2012
HAVANA — It was all sunshine, smiles and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro had hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age on the island.
More than a year after the February 2011 ceremony on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba, and 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, the government never mentions the cable anymore, and Internet here remains the slowest in the hemisphere. People talk quietly about embezzlement torpedoing the project and the arrest of more than a half-dozen senior telecom officials.
Perhaps most maddening, nobody has explained what happened to the much-ballyhooed $70 million project....