Horrifying to think that anyone could think this acceptable.

http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2008/09/17/sarah-palin-how-is-stoning-women-feminist/

or burning them to death in a ditch?

http://friendlyatheist.com/2009/04/19/burned-at-the-stake-after-being-accused-of-witchcraft/

Add some new research to the volumes that already exist to show torturing prisoners just doesn’t work on any level. Results of research at Harvard University suggest torturing a prisoner predisposes prison guards to think the truth has been found, and, further, that the more a prisoner suffers, the guiltier guards perceive them to be.

“Our research suggests that torture may not uncover guilt so much as lead to its perception,” said the study’s co-author. The study stated torture can be a “self-justifying system” for those who administer the pain.

As the United States begins to phase out Guantanamo Bay, it’s important to remember why it never stood a chance of working in the first place.

Read the full study, Torture and judgments of guilt, here.

During my regular web digging today I came across a series of rather disturbing videos. These videos purport to show actual testimony before a US government panel, The President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experimentation, March 15, 1995.

The videos show witness after witness recounting acts of torturous experimentation they experienced as children. Torture including, electrical shock, radiation exposure and attempted mind control are consistent themes in testimony.

Never doubt that men in high places will do whatever they need to do to stay in power!

Read US Government Experiments on Children, An excerpt from “During The Cold War” by Carol Rutz

The testimony:

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November 16, 2009

AUNG SAN SUU KYI, OMAR KHADR, AND BARACK OBAMA: A DREADFUL TALE OF WHAT AMERICA HAS BECOME

John Chuckman

During his trip to Asia, President Obama called for the government of Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi, a noted dissident who has spent years under house arrest.

It made headlines, a fact which tells us more about the role of media as an outlet for government press releases than in communicating genuine news.  

Obama’s was hardly a brave or innovative act when you consider that it is a universally-condemned military junta keeping Aung San Suu Kyi penned up.

But when you appreciate the full context of Obama’s call, you may agree with me that it was more a cowardly act than anything else.

A year ago, after eight years of mind-numbing stupidity, countless public lies and bloody war crimes, Obama’s arrival on the American political scene thrilled the world. His intelligence, his grace, and his sense of decency were striking. His like as an American politician, quite apart from his race, had not been seen in the lifetime of many.

But the hopes raised by Obama, like so many flickering little candles in a fierce wind, already are largely extinguished. This polished, educated, liberal-minded and decent man, after only one year in office, has been overwhelmed by America’s military-industrial complex, a terrible machine which grinds on night and day, chewing people in its gears, no matter who is elected ostensibly to be in charge of it.

Much as I resent Burma’s treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi, it shines as genuinely humane compared to America’s treatment of Omar Khadr.

The key facts in the case of this young man, a prisoner at Guantanamo, are easily told.

Omar Khadr was born to a fundamentalist Muslim, highly political family whose father knew and died fighting for Osama bin Laden. In an era whose ruling myths are a clash of civilizations and a war on terror, Omar would seem to have been doomed from birth.

Under intense pressure from his family, fifteen-year old Omar went to fight in Afghanistan when America invaded it. In doing that, he was doing nothing that tens of thousands of Americans hadn’t done, both as idealists for causes and as soldiers of fortune in countless wars from the Spanish Civil War to the Cuban Revolution or the turmoil of the Congo.

Omar’s experience reminded me a little of American Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July, a story where the need for maternal approval helped drive his destructive participation in America’s Vietnam holocaust (three million Vietnamese slaughtered, many hideously with napalm, and the legacy of soil saturated with Agent Orange and littered with millions of landmines more than justifies that term).

The American claim against Omar is that he shot an American soldier, a medic no less, a fact seemingly almost designed to increase his infamy.

The story, as I heard it in an interview a few years ago with an American soldier, a friend of the dead medic’s, was that after a small firefight, Omar hid himself, then leapt up, heartlessly killing the medic whose only interest was the wounded. Omar was then captured and eventually sent to Guantanamo.

Even were that story true, and it is not, there would still be no excuse for sending a fifteen-year old child to Guantanamo. That act violated all international conventions on the treatment of child soldiers, but then almost everything America has done over the last eight years has violated international conventions, international laws, common decency, and the spirit of its own Bill of Rights.

For years, Omar, like hundreds of inmates at Guantanamo, was held incommunicado: he was allowed no contact with his family, he was allowed no visits from the International Red Cross (again in contravention to international conventions) and he was allowed no legal counsel. Omar was allowed no rights of any kind: being kept shackled in a secret prison ninety miles offshore was considered adequate to efface the entire spirit and meaning of America’s own rights and laws.

We now know that the soldiers who captured Omar, in fact, shot him twice in the back as the frightened boy tried to run. Despite life-threatening wounds and his young age, Omar was consigned to years of imprisonment and torture at Guantanamo. Indeed, his worst torturer, a soldier with a reputation at Guantanamo as perhaps its most vicious interrogator, deliberately contrived his sessions with Omar so that the boy had to sit in a position which pulled at his slowly-healing and painful wounds.

We also know now, evidence having just been published in Canadian newspapers, that Omar could not possibly have killed the medic: Omar was photographed hiding under a pile of rubble as the soldiers passed.

So who killed the medic? One perhaps should recall the case of Pat Tillman, an American football player killed by his own forces in Afghanistan, a case at first covered up the military, but even now full of unanswered questions.

And why did the Americans shoot Omar, twice, in the back?  One simply cannot avoid the suggestion that the American soldiers involved acted with cowardice and savagery.

Some readers may object that American soldiers are incapable of such behaviour, but let’s go back to that time in Afghanistan, reviewing some things we now know as facts, and think about what they suggest about the ethos prevailing there when a fifteen-year old was shot in the back and sent to be tortured.

America’s carpet bombing in Afghanistan was destructive beyond anything Americans have ever been told. Just as was the case in the First Gulf War when uncounted tens of thousands of poor Iraqi recruits were bulldozed into the desert after having been literally pulped into tailing ponds of human bits and fluids by B-52s, the true horror of what massive bombing did in Afghanistan was understandably not well advertised..

The public has been led to believe that, compared to the horrors inflicted upon Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan was almost bloodless. But I learned recently from an expert journalist – an American no less – with many years of experience in that country that a great deal of blood was shed. In Kabul alone, fifty to sixty thousand Afghans died in America’s brutal bombing and artillery cover for its Northern Alliance proxy army, itself a gang of thugs many of whom are not one wit more ethical or civilized than the Taleban.

We knew too, those who cared to search, of the brutal tactics of American special forces in the mountains after the initial “victory”: tales of heavily-armed goons marching into remote towns, throwing stun grenades, breaking down the doors of homes, holding women and children at gunpoint while their male family members were marched away with no explanation. The men were often kept for considerable periods to be “questioned.”

At the least suspicion, air strikes were called in, and in dozens and dozens of cases, those air strikes wiped out whole families or groups of villagers who had done nothing to oppose Americans. They were the victims, thousands of them, of young Americans filled with irrational resentments over 9/11, anxious to prove how good they were with their high-tech killing machines, and let loose on someone else’s country.

And we knew, at least again those who cared to search, the story of America’s hideous treatment of Taleban prisoners in the early days of occupation, of Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld’s Nazi-like public demand that all prisoners should be killed or walled away forever. One of America’s ghastly allies of the Northern Alliance, General Dostum, took Rumsfeld in deadly earnest: he had his men round up three thousand prisoners, seal them in vans and drive them out onto the desert to suffocate in the heat. The bodies were then buried in shallow mass graves. All this was watched by American soldiers who somehow failed to act the way Jimmy Stewart did in war movies. Instead they picked their noses or smoked cigarettes as they gawked.

We also knew of the terrible tales of boys being raped while American troops never lifted a finger to help them. In a strict fundamentalist country like Afghanistan, where young women are kept guarded and almost hidden, the sexual behaviour of men often takes on the character of that common in prisons everywhere: that is, young and vulnerable men are brutally raped and often treated as “bitches” by older, tougher prisoners.

Only recently, I heard the horrible stories of a Canadian soldier with post traumatic stress who told of seeing a boy with blood running down his legs as two Afghan allies raped him. The soldier could do nothing and was told later only to buck it up. He told too of a translator, a hired Afghan, gleefully relating to him about the way he liked to use a knife on boys he raped.

We all saw the ghastly pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Only now we know far uglier pictures and recordings have been suppressed, images and sounds of young Iraqis being raped and sodomized by American soldiers at the prison.

Those facts give us some realistic sense of the atmosphere in Afghanistan when American soldiers shot Omar in the back, falsely accused him of killing a medic, and sent a fifteen-year old boy off to years of torture.    

Omar remains a prisoner in Guantanamo, although the torture mercifully has stopped, but it was announced only a couple of days ago that he would be among those who would stand trial in New York.

Trial for what? For trumped-up charges of murder? Trial for acts in war? Trial for being an abused child soldier? Trial under American laws which never applied to Afghanistan? A trial where every scrap of government evidence is tainted with years of torture and human-rights abuse? Where the government doing the trying itself has acted against countless laws and treaties in invading and occupying two countries?

If there were one breath of decency left in America’s establishment, Omar and the other abused prisoners would all be released and allowed to live the rest of their lives in peace. They are no threat to anyone, most did nothing deserving imprisonment, and those who may have committed something we would regard as a crime have been viciously punished already.

Only days ago, Obama’s White House Counsel Greg Craig was let go. Craig, an old friend of the President’s, had promised to make his administration the most transparent in history. Craig was the main force behind the Obama’s promise to close Guantanamo in one year.

Well, there is no sign Guantanamo is to be closed any time soon, and the policy’s chief advocate is gone. But more importantly, when we speak of American torture chambers, it is easy to forget that Guantanamo is only the most publicized of many. What horrors go on at places like America’s secret base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, or in a number of other locations, all part of the CIA’s vast international torture gulag, is anybody’s guess.

Obama has not uttered a whimper about the CIA’s euphemistically-named extreme rendition, a practice whereby thousands of people have been kidnapped off streets and sent bound to some of the world’s hell-holes for months of torture. Afterwards, having been discovered innocent of anything, they find themselves dumped in some obscure place like Bosnia without so much as an apology for their treatment.

Obama told people repeatedly during his campaign that American forces in Iraq would be withdrawn promptly, saying “you can bank on it,” and people believed him because Obama did not vote in the Senate for that illegal war, but most of America’s soldiers remain there still.

Obama appointed a commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who has a background swirling with suggestions of black operations and dirty business, and now that ghastly man has said he needs forty-thousand more troops.     

American Predator drones, guided by buzz-cut, faceless men with computer screens in locked rooms in America, now frequently invade Pakistan’s airspace. One can just imagine them hooting and pumping their arms like young men playing a computer game when one of their terrible Hellfire missiles strikes its target, the home of someone not legally charged with anything, killing everyone who happens to be nearby.

No, I only wish the ugly stain on America’s flag was keeping a dissident under house arrest.

Three youths who tortured a 14-year-old girl in an Edinburgh car park and filmed the attack on a mobile phone are sentenced…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: cheapest mobile. For a different topic see watch. The blog is also related to: mobile phone deals.

1.  “I think that we’re going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don’t want to look at” is how American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denny LeBoeuf put it, according to the New York Times on Saturday.

No problem, says Attorney General Eric Holder, who claims to have “great confidence” that other evidence – apart from what may have been gleaned from the 183 times Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, for example – will suffice to convict him.

…

Rather, it appears that the Israel-Palestine connection is pretty much kept off limits for discussion.

Yet, as Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators go to trial, the FCM’s tacit but tight embargo will be under great strain. Eyes will have to be averted from the sensitive Israeli-Palestinian motive even more than from torture, which most Americans know about (and, God help us, are willing to explain away).”

http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2009/11/15/shining-a-light-on-the-roots-of-terrorism/

2.  “A Scoundrel With Permission

Such a person would not remain a minister in the cabinet of the U.S. or most European countries. In the homeland of the Nuremberg laws, he would not even come close to a government position.

Recently, during the operation “Cast Lead,” Yishai demanded that we “bomb thousands of houses, to destroy Gaza” – which does not hinder him from denouncing Judge Richard Goldstone as an abominable anti-Semite. He himself, by the way, never risked his skin as a combat soldier; this national hero served as an NCO for religious services in a transport unit.

Eight hundred years ago, Rabbi Moshe Ben-Nahman, called Nahmanides, coined the phrase “Scoundrel with the permission of the Torah,” meaning a person who does despicable things which are not expressly forbidden in the Bible.”

http://original.antiwar.com/avnery/2009/11/15/a-scoundrel-with-permission/

3.  “Camp Lejeune whistle-blower fired

As Dr. Kernan Manion investigated the two Marines’ claims about conditions at the North Carolina military base, the largest Marine base on the East Coast, he found they were true. Manion, a psychiatrist hired last January to treat Marines coming home from war with acute mental problems, warned his superiors of looming trouble at Camp Lejeune in a series of increasingly urgent memos.

But instead of being praised for preventing what might have been another Fort Hood massacre, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him, NiteLines Kuhana LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm says it let Manion go at the Navy’s behest. The Navy declined to comment on this story.

…

Manion left Camp Lejeune after he got fired, but he did not stop worrying about the potential for violence there. In mid-September, Manion filed a 14-page complaint with the Department of Defense inspector general. On Sept. 29, he warned the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery inspector general in writing of “serious mismanagement of post-deployment mental health services that was both endangering patient, staff and community safety as well as severely compromising the quality of care” for returning Marines. Manion noted that the poor care at Camp Lejeune continued despite “the ever present threat of life-threatening violence by distraught service members towards themselves or others.”

Finally, Manion wrote President Obama that same day. “Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I’ve never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness — literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience,” he wrote to the president. Manion added, however, that at Camp Lejeune, that immense problem was being met with “inadequate treatment” and “callous indifference.”

He still worries. “I don’t like seeing these guys mistreated,” Manion said. “This is akin to somebody dying on the battlefield and not being attended to,” he added. “These guys are saying they are broken and need help, and the system is saying, ‘next, next, next.’

http://www.salon.com/news/fort_hood_shooting/index.html?story=/news/feature/2009/11/15/camp_lejeune

4.  “Even our phony-baloney counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine admits, “The primary objective of any COIN operation is to foster development of effective governance by a legitimate government.” We’re never going to get legitimate, effective governance in Afghanistan. We just let one of the biggest political crooks in history – Hamid Karzai – steal two elections. He’ll never be seen as a legitimate leader, no matter how many times President Obama exhorts him to begin a “new chapter.” (Dear diary, my brother Ahmed made another million dollars U.S. in the heroin trade today, and the CIA sent him another fat check besides. Boy, does Ahmed owe me!)

The COIN doctrine has become the false military promise of the 21st century, having eclipsed naval power and air power and nuclear weapons as the ultimate answer to America’s security requirements and the leading excuse for our country’s distended military budget.

The difference between COIN and its militaristic philosophy predecessors is that its predecessors offered the promise of the end of war. Our foolhardy intercession in World War I, the war to end all wars, the war that would make the world “safe for democracy,” did neither. The lamentable end state of that horrible war set conditions that brought about Fascism and World War II, and the end state of World War II brought about global communism and the Cold War and the nasty little Third World wars (Korea, Vietnam, etc.) that accompanied it.

After World War I, air power was going to make all other forms of military power obsolete. After World War II, nuclear weapons were going to make all other forms of military power obsolete. Now we have COIN, which promises to make all forms of military power relevant for as long as our COIN wars last, which, if the American warmongery has its way, will be forever.”
http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/11/15/reading-the-af-pak-tea-leaves/

5.  Good:

“Cool welcome to Bibi may hint of upcoming US withdrawal from Mideast mess

However, it seems that something bigger is going on around here. As hinted this week by journalist Thomas Friedman, the Americans are closer than ever to reaching the understanding that they would sleep well at night even without the Mideastern food poisoning, and that they have better things to do in life than playing the role of babysitter for us and the Palestinians (two children that no amount of Ritalin is enough for.) “

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3804670,00.html

6.  “Motive vs. Justification

Thus, once we understand the motive of people who are intent on doing harm to the United States, the solution becomes obvious: Stop the sanctions and embargoes. Stop the invasions and occupations. Stop the killings, maiming, torture, and abuse. Stop the bombings. Stop the drone attacks. Stop the destruction. Immediately withdraw all troops and bring them home. Terminate all foreign aid, not only to Israel, Egypt, Saud Arabia, and Jordan but also to every other regime in the world. Stop the U.S. government from meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.

Sure, it’s theoretically possible that people might still want to retaliate for what the U.S. government has done in the past, but the likelihood is that once the U.S. government leaves people over there alone, people over there will return to their normal lives of making a living, raising a family, and so forth.

Why don’t U.S. officials favor examination into motive and instead do their best to confuse it with justification? Because they’re afraid that once Americans understand why foreigners are trying to kill them, Americans might demand an end to the U.S. government’s imperial overseas empire and its omnipotent power to sanction, embargo, invade, occupy, kill, maim, torture, and imprison people all over the world.”
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-11-13.asp

7.  “As such, the Palestinians are the most oppressed people in the world. There are other peoples who feel that they have the wrong citizenship and would like to secede, but at least they have a government and rights within that government’s framework. They have someone to give them a passport, which Palestinians do not. There are other peoples that are in conflict and being killed in fair numbers. A not insignificant number of Palestinians has been killed by the Israelis, whether through often indiscriminate and disproportionate violence or through food and services blockades (a lot of Gazan children are stunted owing to the bad nutrition caused by the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an illegal collective punishment of noncombatants,including children.) But of course there are other groups that are killed in larger numbers. But I would argue that the psychological toll taken by the imposition of statelessness on a people is more debilitating than the knowledge that some of the group has been killed by oppressors.

European Jews themselves were made stateless by Nazi decree, as were millions of other Europeans (leftists were denaturalized by Franco in Spain, e.g.). In the post-WW II world, citizenship has become recognized as key to basic human dignity and civil rights. There are only about 12 million stateless now, and the Palestinians are the single largest group of them.

If there is not a two-state solution, with the Palestinians gaining citizenship in that way, then ultimately there will be a one-state solution, and Israel will over the long term be forced to take them on as Israeli citizens. Boycotts of an Apartheid situation will grow in Europe and elsewhere in the world, and Israel is vulnerable to such pressures. The US has so far backed even the worst Israeli policies to the hilt, but those days may be coming to an end, and anyway the US is now itself an indebted nation rather than a creditor. It is the creditors who are in the position to deny Israel access to world credit markets over time.

I know it is hard to imagine now the situation in 50 or 75 years, but I believe it will be increasingly unfavorable to Israel if the Palestinians are kept as chattel without basic rights deriving from citizenship. The rise of al-Qaeda and other radical movements is intimately linked to the oppression that the Palestinians suffer, and that wave of radicalization is not over. The Israeli and Neoconservative hawks who hoped that if Saddam were removed from Iraq, that Iraq would suddenly turn friendly to Israel have been proved fools. The ways in which Israel lost both the Lebanon war of 2006 and the Gaza War of Winter 2008-2009 in the court of world opinion are astonishing if the situation is compared to 1967, when the West supported Israel to the hilt in its war with Egypt. The trend lines are downward.

So if the Palestinians could get the UNO to declare a Palestinian state and pressure Israel over it, they would actually be doing the Israelis a huge favor.

The bully Netanyahu announced that if the Palestinians unilarerally declared a Palestinian state, then Israel would immediately formally annex the largest Israeli settlements on the West Bank. It is unclear why Netanyahu thinks a formal annexation would be meaningful. Israel has already de facto announced that territory and no one in Israel is even hypothetically offering to give it back. The question is not what has been annexed but what will be annexed. There is every reason to think that the Israeli far right will just steal all Palestinian land over time if this sham ‘peace process’ continues as it has since 1993.”

http://www.juancole.com/

8.  “War ALWAYS Causes Recession”

PhD economist Marc Faber predicts that the U.S. will launch a war to distract people from the bad economy.

China’s largest media outlet – Sohu.com – wrote in October 2008 that the Rand corporation, a leading U.S. military advisor, lobbied the Pentagon for a war to be started with a major foreign power in an attempt to stimulate the American economy:

According to French media, well-known U.S. think tank RAND Corporation … has submitted [to the Pentagon] an evaluation report assessing the wage a war to shift the feasibility of the current economic crisis…

…
I asked if conventional wisdom that war is good for the economy is true, especially given that all of the spending on the war in Iraq seems to have weakened America’s economy (or at least, greatly increased its debt).

The economist explained the seeming paradox:

“War always causes recession. Well, if it is a very short war, then it may stimulate the economy in the short-run. But if there is not a quick victory and it drags on, then wars always put the nation waging war into a recession and hurt its economy.”

Given that America has been fighting both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars longer than it fought WWII, the exception obviously doesn’t apply.”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/11/war-always-causes-recession.html

9.  “Ex-Islamic radicals on what motivates — and impedes — extremism

the most potent weapon for undermining Islamic extremism is the efforts of Westerners to work against their own governments’ belligerent policies
…
In other words, the very policies the U.S. has been pursuing in the name of combating Terrorism — invading, occupying, and bombing Muslim countries; locking them up without trials; torturing them; violating the values we’ve been preaching to the world — have been the most potent instruments for fueling Islamic radicalism and terrorism.  By contrast, those who have been continuously accused of being “soft on Terrorism” and even being allied with the Terrorists — those who opposes our various wars, who demanded and provided basic human rights protections and equal liberties to Muslims, who objected to their own governments’ oppressive and belligerent policies — have done more to diffuse and impede Muslim radicalism than virtually anyone else in the world.
…
And even in the face of the most compelling evidence imaginable that accommodation to the Muslim world and treating Muslims equally and respectfully is the greatest threat to the Islamic extremist, people like Weisberg perpetually worry that we’re doing too much of that.  At some point, a rational person has to wonder whether people like Jacob Weisberg — who endlessly advocate policies that fuel Islamic extremism and intensify tension between the West and the Muslim world — aren’t desirous of exactly that outcome.  After decades of pursuing this blatantly counter-productive approach, what else could explain such moral and intellectual blindness?”

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

Middle East Online, First Published 2009-11-16


The allegations are being ‘investigated’

Former Iraqi detainee says was told to be executed after being sexually abused at British base.
LONDON – British soldiers forced an Iraqi detainee to wear an orange jump suit and told him that he was to be executed at the US-run Guantanamo Bay camp, according to allegations in a report Monday.

The 23-year-old man alleges he was beaten and sexually abused by female and male soldiers and flown to a British detention centre in southern Iraq which he believed was the “war on terror” camp in Cuba, the Independent said.

The man’s case is among allegations being investigated by Britain’s Ministry of Defence that soldiers tortured Iraqi civilians, according to the newspaper.

Continues >>

President Barack Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod told CNN’s “State of the Union” that Obama’s promised closure of the Guantanamo prison camp will not happen in late January of 2010, but that “We believe we’re going to substantially meet the deadline.” Obama had announced in January of this year that “Gitmo” would be closed within a year.

However, resistance from opponents and numerous legal issues are holding-up the base closure. The biggest problem: where to send the approximately 200 prisoners being held without charge, legal recourse, or a declared state of war that would make them prisoners of war.

Obama wants to bring the prisoners on U.S. soil and hold some sort of legal hearing/trial that will hopefully legitimize the six-year existence of the Guantanamo camp, and the controversial interrogation techniques practiced there. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been a strident opponent of closing the camp, citing secrecy and intelligence concerns.

The latest plan being floated is for the Federal Government to buy an unused maximum-security prison in Illinois and house the Guantanamo prisoners there as they await probable military “tribunals”.  There are opponents to the use of the military justice system who claim it does not have the same defendant rights and protections that the public justice system provides.

Those who oppose any form of legal prosecution seem to fear the possibility the Guantanamo prisoners will be released on technicalities stemming from the questionable legality of their six-year incarceration without due-process.

If these prisoners were members of the armed forces of a recognized nation or other governing body, then the use of military courts would make some sense. However, most of them are classifiable as civilians, which is why the Bush administration tagged them with the label “unlawful combatants” – a term with no legal referent, though it is similar to the term “enemy combatant“. As civilians it seems to make sense to try them in civilian courts under civilian procedures. But some fear our justice system isn’t up to the test in the cynical wake of show trials such as the O. J. Simpson and Robert Blake cases.

The bottom line: something must be done to clean this mess up, as the Guantanamo episode has become a national embarrassment. We don’t need a replay of the sad situation with Haitian refugees that also played-out at Guantanamo under the Clinton adminstration. Perhaps we should trust our own system and get civilian trials underway.

I Want a Justice System to Protect ME, not the Perverts 

Dear Honourable Judge Low,

If you didn’t read or at least skim through Part 1 and Part 2 then please do.  You will notice how the Scriptures I provide are in context to each other and the teachings of the overall context of the Bible.  Quick Review of Part 1 and Part 2 before I continue:

1. Part 1 Scripturally proves that God is not only Good, but he is also Evil.  Not only did he create evil, he creates men/women to do evil, he planned for Eve to sin (do evil), he planned for all evil, appointed a time for evil to happen, instructed evil, created Satan (the waster) to do exactly for the purpose of evil (Satan didn’t have free will to sin, he was created to sin/do evil), Eve had NO choice but to do Evil, it was planned according to the Will of God.

2. Part 2 Scripturally proves that EVERYTHING is according to the Will of God and men/women have no choice in what they believe, have faith in, what they do, when they are saved.  No free will choice that is outside the Will of God.  EVERYTHING is according to God’s “Pleasure”, “Desires” and “Will”.

TWO Scriptures I often reference are:

“Yet ALL is of God” (II Cor. 5:18)

“God is operating ALL in all” (I Cor. 12:6)  - To Operate means to Control the Function

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Since DavidC99 (A “Christian”) enjoys going around and insulting people by telling them they are ignorant and that others are intellectually inferior to him and so on and so on, I should stand for truth and be the witness for Jesus Christ because David clearly works for Satan…..if there really was one.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Part 3: ALL MEN WILL BE SAVED

The other day a commenter on my blog told me Jesus came to save sinners and she implied that I didn’t understand.  Like DavidC99, that blogger apparently is the one that didn’t understand what I understand and what God’s word states.  Let me post the Scripture they like to reference:

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation [do you accept it David?] that Christ Jesus came into THE WORLD to SAVE SINNERS…” (I Tim. 1:15)!

Are we not ALL sinners?  Do you believe Jesus will fail to save us?  Do you think he was sent to only save some sinners?  I doubt that if God sent his only Son who agreed to the job to save sinners, that he will fail to save them.

“And if any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge Him not, for I came not to judge the world, but to SAVE THE WORLD” (John 12:47)!

Hey DavidC99, I realize you believe I am ignorant and especially of issues dealing with Spirituality, BUT it seems your God agrees with me, not you.   It seems to me that the Father sent his SON to SAVE THE WORLD.  Do you think God will fail?  Do you think his SON will FAIL to do his commission?  Would that make him not so powerful, all powerful?

Am I exposing too much of the Lie of your Religion DAVIDC99?  Oh, don’t worry, I am so ignorant like your Judgment has stated and clearly that isn’t a false Judgement, right?  haha.

Shall we continue?

“For God sent NOT his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that THE WORLD through Him might be SAVED” (John 3:17)!

Again, it seems like I backup my statements with Scripture, doesn’t it David?  Why don’t you do that?  Are you not superior to me intellectually and spiritually.  Am I not the ignorant one, DAVIDC99?  I understand you can attempt to twist out of one or two Scriptures but I am not done yet.

Shall I provide another witness?

“…the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of THE WORLD” (John 1:29)!

“And He is the propitiation for our sins and not for our’s only, but also for the sins of THE WHOLE WORLD” (I John 2:2)!

“And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD” (I John 4:14)!

“…for when Thy  judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of THE WORLD will learn righteousness” (Isaiah 26:9)!

“…for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, , the Saviour of THE WORLD” (John 4:42)!

“To wit that God was in Christ, reconciling THE WORLD unto Himself, NOT imputing their trespasses unto them…” (II Cor. 5:19)!

Tell me how an ALL POWERFUL being that gives us his “word” and tells us that he will SAVE THE WORLD, will fail to save the world?   DavidC99, did you notice it wasn’t 5, 10 or 15 percent of the world, he stated the WHOLE WORLD.  It seem that most Christians want us to believe that only they will be saved and only they will be in heaven.  If you didn’t notice DavidC99, those ignorant people like me are also going to be saved so I guess you don’t get to have your hopes high that a loving God of compassion and mercy is going to torture me for eternity of horrific pain without compassion or mercy.

But you know what DavidC99, there are some Scriptures in a few VERSIONS of God’s word, especially the King James Version (one of the worst translations) that will translate some Scriptures incorrectly and thus allow some dishonest people that are Scripturally ignorant (David) to makes claims such that some of us are going to be tortured.

“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour: Who WILL HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (I Tim. 2:4).

WOW!!!!!

Did you catch that one David?  He stated he WILL have all men to be saved.  What is it that Christians don’t understand?  Here is a funny thing that some Christians that think they know God’s word attempt to do.  They attempt to claim that the Scripture above (I Tim.2:4) is improperly translated and of course that believe that would therefore make all other Scriptures wrong and this ONE correct.  They have told me that the word “Will” should be translated as the word “Desires”.  They think it should state “Who DESIRES all men to be saved”.

First, it is translated correctly but to avoid their continued excuses it is far easier to make another point.  Did God’s “word” tell us that his “will be done”?  Yeah, but he also stated his “DESIRES” and his “Pleasures” WILL be done.  So you see, it really doesn’t matter if they want to translate it as the word “desires”.  We also have to realize that if an all powerful being “desires” that something will happen.  Do you actually believe it will NOT happen?  Yeah, Christians hate to imagine that everyone is going to go to heaven because it doesn’t let them be so condescending towards others.  That is right, they are no better than others, even if they think they are.  Sorry David that this “ignorant” Agnostic had to be the one to expose your lies.

But if you would like David, we can go into the translation and meaning of the word “WILL” (thelo) if you would like.   We can go through the other “possible” translations for ‘thelo’ if you wish David but do you think I am too ignorant to backup my claims?  Or do you realize you are the only one that doesn’t backup his claims?

“Our Father Who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

Do you think God’s will will not be done both in Heaven and Earth?  I guess that last Scripture screws up any attempt to claim it isn’t going to happen on earth.   That is yet another example of the use of the word WILL and how God apparently believe it will be DONE.

Do you think your God is a liar and is NOT going to save ALL MEN, The World, The Whole World?  God is not one to lie, is he David?  Let’s see:

“God is NOT a man, that He should LIE:  neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not DO IT? Or has He spoken, and shall He not MAKE IT GOOD?” (Numbers 23:19).

Let me guess, DAVIDC99 still thinks his God will NOT save the world?  Probably, but that is because I am ignorant and can’t read the word that the “God” of all has provided for ALL to read.  Only David seems to have the superior mind to tell us a Loving God of Compassion and Mercy will torture billions in fire for eternity and thus expose the Opposite of those traits like Love, Compassion and Mercy.

DAVIDC99, can you show me a verse that states “God WILL NOT save all the world” or “God will NOT save all men”?  If you had such a Scripture you would be so happy to use it and claim you have proof that God will NOT save all men.  Guess what David, it isn’t there.  However, if a verse that contained the words “WILL NOT” would be of such great power and proof, then I would assume that the fact that Scriptures don’t contain the words “WILL NOT SAVE ALL” are a great powerful proof that God WILL save all men.  Is that logic too ignorant David, I am sorry, you know how us little people are so intellectually inferior to your that have such great knowledge of Scripture because you are so close to this God you can’t prove is real.

“The Lord…is NOT WILLING that ANY should perish [eternally]…” (II Peter. 3:9).

Again, I would guess if the All powerful creator is not willing that something will happen then it is NOT going to happen.  What do you think DavidC99.  Have you not read the many scriptures I provide as examples, proof, evidence to backup my statements?  Just because I don’t believe in your God or any God doesn’t mean that I would go around lying to others about what your God states.  I was brainwashed like you David, at one time.  I personally realized it and pulled myself out of the lies.  Once you start lying and making claims, it is easy to get caught-up in it and become accustom to doing it for everything, excusing everything because your ego needs to be feed into believing you are somehow superior to others.  Seems you are no better than anyone else, if you ask me.

“I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw ALL [Gk. "the" all] men unto me” (John 12:32).

DavidC99, do you believe Jesus was “lifted up from the earth”?  Oh, I get it, you believe just that part of the Scripture but since you were not talk the second part is acceptable, you believe he will NOT draw all men to him?  Now that is Pathetic how you can follow the Christian doctrine and your God and yet not actually know “His word”.

I know DavidC99, you think that only Christians are going to be saved, regardless of all the Scriptures I have provided.  The fact that I have provided so many Scriptures and millions of Christians still are not aware of them or wish to deny them is Pathetic.  But of course, I am far more ignorant than Millions of Christians.  Just like Muslims would consider you far more ignorant than them for not believing in their form of God.  Ironic, isn’t it?

Here is a Scripture that might add to the witness of the other Scriptures:

“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God Who is the Saviour of ALL MEN specially of those that believe” (I Tim. 4:10).

Note the word “specially”.  Davidc99, isn’t that an interesting word?  Specially does NOT mean exclusively, does it DAVID?  OH NO David, you don’t get to imagine this “willfully ignorant” person thrown into a lake of fire.  Darn!  You can still imagine it will happen if you make you feel better.

“For He is our Peace, Who makes both one, and razes the central wall of the barrier, nullifying the law of precepts in decrees, that He should be creating the two, in Himself, into one new humanity, making peace; and should be reconciling both in one body to God, through the cross, killing the enmity in it” (Eph. 2:14-16).

WTF?  Did you catch that one DAVID???  Do you need me to explain it to you?  That about states it all, doesn’t it?  Why don’t you attempt to explain that one to me David?  I can tell you how that speaks of ALL of us and not just Christians.  Being a “Christian” has NOTHING to do with getting into heaven or being forgiven.  Or did you not know that?

“Who is the Image of the invisible God, Firstborn of every creature, for in Him is all created, that in the heavens and that on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, or lordships, or sovereignties, or authorities, all is created through Him and for Him, and He is before all, and all has it cohesion in Him. And He is the Head of the body, the ecclesia, Who is Sovereign, Firstborn from among the dead, that in all He may be becoming first, for in Him the entire complement delights to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all to Him making peace through the blood of His cross, through Him, whether those on the earth or those in the heavens” (Col. 1:14-20).

Another WTF?  Do you need me to explain that one to you Davidc99?

Notice in the above Scripture (Col.1:14-20): EVERY CREATURE, killing the enmity, makes both on, creating the two, in the heavens, on the earth, the visible, the invisible, in ALL, all is created, before all, ALL, the ENTIRE, to RECONCILE ALL, on the earth, in the Heavens.

Hey Davidc99.  you know what I did NOT notice in any of these Scriptures?  The billions and billions of humans that Christians keep implying that are going to burn forever in Hell Fire.  I wonder why?  Did we expose yet another lie of the Christian doctrine?  You are welcome to debate it with me DAVID or you can ask the leader of your Church to show us how their God of the Holy Bible is NOT going to do what he stated he would do.  If you want to claim it is NOT going to happen and claim some Scripture you have states it will not happen then it would appear you have the Contradictions you state are not in Scriptures that are perfect and “literal” according to you.  Fcuk, that sucks, doesn’t it?

Oh, you mean I didn’t provide enough Scriptural proof?

Shall I continue?  Since I know how “willfully ignorant” I am, thanks to you tell me, I willfully will continue:

“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE should bow, of [those] in heaven, and those in earth, and those under [all who have died] the earth: And that EVERY TONGUE should confess that Jesus Christ IS LORD to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:9-11)

“I HAVE SWORN BY myself, the word is gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto Me EVERY KNEE shall bow, EVERY TONGUE shall swear” (Isaiah 45:23).

“For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, EVERY KNEE shall bow to me, and EVERY TONGUE shall confess to God” (Rom. 14:11).

What’s that DAVIDC99?  Let me guess, you still stick to what you have been told is true and not what the Scriptures actually say are true.  Right?  Yeah, I figured but maybe I am wrong about my judgment of you.

Since I am inferior and “ignorant”  to you David, I guess you are not going to try and state that I Cor. 15: 22 means only the all who are “in” Christ will be saved, (even though the order of words is clear in all translations), are you?

In case you are going to make that claim, it is not “all IN Christ” that is spoken of in this verse, but rather “in Christ ALL” that is spoken of (Can you believe that some Christians (DAVID) attempt to be dishonest and claim otherwise?).  But later, after resurrection, after judgment, “in the dispensation of the fullness of times,” we learn that, indeed, it is “ALL in Christ” and now the “ALL” is EVERYONE in heaven and on earth….— ALL of US, the world, even the Muslims and the Buddhist and yes, even “willfully ignorant me, DAVID!

In case you want to be like me and “willfully ignorant” and say that, yes, all will bow their knees, and if they don’t God will break their knees and force them to confess that “Jesus is LORD,” let me present this Scripture:

“…no man CAN SAY that Jesus is the Lord BUT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT” (I Cor. 12:3b).

Again, back to Free Will, did you notice that David?  So, you must be wondering how it is possible that all these Scriptures in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 seems to support each other and build a story that is the opposite of what Christians teach.  Could it be that I present the truth, back it up and it is all in context with respect to the entire word of God?  I know David, I am “ignorant” and not as superior as you intellectually, right?

Lets also point out that God wouldn’t need to break any Knees to force anyone to confess because common sense tells us that anyone standing before a being that is said to be the creator of all, have an all powerful spirit and greatness we can’t even imagine is clearly going to know that he is lord and confess.

O.K. maybe not someone as Ignorant as me and just can’t figure it out.

End of Part 3

Part 4 to come, DAVIDC99

In part 4 I will continue to expose the lies of Christianity and prove that NO ONE is going to literally burn in fire for an eternity.  But hey, that means if I prove that none will burn in literal fire for eternity then what I show will again agree with the Scriptures I just presented…if we are all saved we can’t burn for eternity, can we.  Thus, I have again shown that the context of the Scriptures I provide is true.

Isn’t that awesome David?  So, either your “word of God” contradicts BIG TIME with the Christian preaching/doctrine or I must be correct.  Ironic, isn’t it DAVID.  You go around and insult others, attempt to insult me and complain when you feel insulted and I have just thrown a HUGE wrench into the logic and the overall concept of the Christian version of Holy Scriptures.

But like you stated to others I must be “intellectually inferior” and as you told me, “ignorant”.

Show me I am wrong, DAVID.  Show me that ALL these Scriptures I have posted are wrong?

Peace

March 16. 2009

Barely two months into Barack Obama’s presidency, there remained very few historical accounts proving that the Bush administration authorized torture for its War on Terror. In mid-March, a journalism professor and New Yorker contribute added one of the most complete historical accounts of torture to date in an article for the New York Review of Books. Danner wrote about a confidential report he obtained from the International Committee of the Red Cross that listed, in detail, the torture techniques used on three suspected terrorists, Abu Zubaydah, Walid Bin Attash, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who currently awaits his civilian trial in New York City. I summerized Danner’s piece in a post for TPMmuckraker. Read my synopsis for some of the details about the horrific torture methods used against Zubaydah, Bin Attash, and KSM. Here’s the kicker:

Danner came to a few key conclusions after reading the ICRC report: most importantly, the Bush administration approved torture in its questioning of al Qaeda suspects as early as 2002. And everyone in the administration, including President Bush, knew it was happening.

Danner says that it is unclear exactly how successful these tactics were in gathering key information about potential terrorists. But one key comment from Khaled Shaik Mohammed indicates that the information is worthless. In the worst moments of torture, Mohammed says he “gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop.” This information undoubtedly “wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts.”