Hello Dalai

Nearly 16,000 people turn out for the Dalai Lama at Gillette Stadium.

Is Rape Serious? Is Torture Serious?What About the Heartache of Mirror Neuron Retardation Syndrome?

Hey, there, boys and girls! Let's play pattern recognition!

What do these two stories and mirror neuron retardation have in common?



Nicholas Kristoff: Is Rape Serious? Answer: no.


Is torture serious? Answer: no.

But it pays well. CIA does.

Become a CIA Torturer. Thousand bucks a day.

That ain't workin.'

That's the way you do it.


Money for nothin' and the chicks for free.

Newsweek Whitewashes Waterboarding Torture: Would That Count As Numbing & Avoidance? Why, Yes! It Would!

This person, who is, apparently, a professional (sic) Newsweek media person, actually said this:

[T]o pursue criminal charges against officials at the highest levels—including the former president and the former vice president . . . would set a terrible precedent. . . . That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law . .

But -- sometimes they're above the law?

And this Newsweek person thinks that committing torture and undermining the rule of law does not set a terrible precedent?

What is wrong with the pro-torture crowd? What is wrong with their media whore media enablers? Why does this Newsweek person even have a job? Why is the media whore media working so very hard to spin and spew cute little minimizing numbing & avoidance fairy tales, working so hard to let torturers get away with torture?


Yes, thanks, Mr. Newsweek, I'd love to have another serving of moral bankruptcy. Please, sir, may I have some more?


---
Thoughts on teh Pro-Torture Crowd: Lambert. BTD. RJ Eskow.

WaPo Headline Puts Torture in Quotes. Well, Torture's Not Quite the Same as "Torture," Is It?

Military Agency Warned Against 'Torture'.

An otherwise fine article on BushCheneyRrummy admin being warned that torture does not produce useful info, besides being, you know, "wrong."

My beef with the headline is that it continues the neo-Orwellian habit of the US media whore media to minimize torture by calling it "harsh interrogation," "harsh methods," making it not really torture because if you don't say it's torture then it just isn't, is it?

None dare call it torture?

Language: this is how we "create" our "reality."

Court Rules Gitmo Detainees Are Not Persons

See, if they were persons, you'd have to NOT torture them.

But if you change their label from PERSON to NON-PERSON, you can do anything you want.

Court Rules.

The Pro-Torture Crowd Retards Run Amok -- Empathy Will Get You In Big Trouble

Told you it was all about they're missing big fat chunk of their [empathy] brain, did I not?

Let's remember the death of this soldier:

"A. Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. . .

"The official probe of [Peterson's] death would later note that earlier [Peterson] had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners."


Come on, pro-torture retards. Come clean. This is what you did. In our name. Well, not in my name.

The soldier who refused to torture, Peterson, wound up dead.

Of course, Peterson's death is still being described as suicide? Pftt.
Tell it to the marines.

Why It's OK to Call the Pro-Torture Crowd "Retards"

That's because they're actually missing part of their brains.

OK, so maybe that doesn't make them retarded. It makes them handicapped.

Handicapped? Is that the right word? How about "deficient"?

We're not just talking about Cheney and Rummy. And Geoffrey Abu Ghraib Gitmo Colonel.

But talking head Peggy Noonan. She's not playing with a full deck, either.

And talking head Cliff May. Oy. I can remember way back when Cliff was Clifford, and a liberal. I think. Didn't think he was pro-torture. Why would anyone be? What happened? Did someone brainwash the miror neurons out of his brain?

Beyond finally acknowledging the dreadful state of moral decay that has crippled the empathy centers of vast numbers of Americans, there is the question of -- how did this plague come to pass?

Who or what removed/inactivated the mirror neurons from millions of Americans?

What happened?

Did Mommy long ago leave out the instruction on not doing shitty things to others, in particular, not hurting other living beings?


LEARNING MOMENT FOR GEORGE AND MOMMY

It's ok to kick a rock. It has no feelings.

Rock. Frog. They're different.

Stop. No. That's a frog, Georgie, don't put that firecracker in the frog, George. No. I said, no.

Stop it, George!

George, if you put a lit firecracker in one more frog, I am going to slap you silly.

There. [sound of slap]

Now, do as you're told.

Stop torturing those frogs.

[sound of brutal slap]

Got that, boy?





Yup. Got it.

Anyone for ahimsa?

Torture By Any Other Name Would Be "All-American Harsh Interrogation Techniques Move Along Don't Think Twice It's Alright"

How could anyone think that chinese water torture was unfit to become american water torture, eh?

Yes, it's that funny. Blame for torture now goes to failure to understand the lessons of history, thus being condemned to repeat it.

Haha.

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

The top officials, not having studied that particular part of history, you know, the "we don't do shitty things to others" part, couldn't see that, well, drowning someone might, well, you know, be regarded as -- well, chinese water torture. No mirror neurons. Slept through that class in college?

Cyclic existence? Samsara as usual? We're sorry, nobody told us that pulling the wings off butterflies was wrong? What about putting lit firecrackers in toads? No one could have foreseen . . .

CIA/US Oympic Waterboard Torture Team Wins Best in Show

Well!

Don't these CIA guys and gals have the very best work ethic in the universe?

They sure were following orders!

Waterboarding people three times a day? Is that what is meant by "three squares"? Or is that a type for three quarts? Probably more like 3 gallons? I dunno. How much water does it take to drown a guy or gal? Not so much really. Plus, it's earth week. No waste water wanted.

But you have to admit the zeal of the US Waterboard Torture Team is/was magnificent.

So. Celebrate their success. Just do it. Instead of getting all bitchy and PMS and hot an bothered about silly pussy things like moral bankrupcty and undermining the rule of law, shouldn't we join Obama and Rahm and just STFU?

Shouldn't we be passing the hat around to support them, taking up a collection so they can afford to develop some mirror neurons?

Waterboarding [E.g. Chinese Water Torture] Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects.

2 suspects, eh?


Would that be -- Cheney? And Rummy?


Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Bushist Fascist Teabag Sadist Mafia Sez: Hey, There Boyz 'n Girlz! Remember --Torture WORKS!!

No, it's not like anyone likes inflicting pain on others. (Well, of course there was that toad-exploder thing, the dobsondogbeater thing, the vitter diaper thing, I forget what else. Oh. Yeah. The canned hunt/killing for fun kinda thing.)

How can we ever hope to save the all-important moral values of Western Christian civilization if we don't torture other people? AND -- their kids?

Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling [eg. the torture] produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said. [instant karma much?]

Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.” [told you so. and of course, you'd think a normal person, finally noticing that he was doing something "wrong" might u, you know, "stop."]

C.I.A. officers adopted these techniques only after the Justice Department had given its official approval on Aug. 1, 2002, in one of four formerly secret legal memos on interrogation that were released Thursday.

A footnote to another of the memos described a rift between line officers questioning Abu Zubaydah at a secret C.I.A. prison in Thailand and their bosses at headquarters, and asserted that the brutal treatment may have been “unnecessary.”

Unnecessary?

Oh. Ya think?

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Secret Bushist Fascist Pro-Torture Sadist Sez: DON'T TELL THE TERRORISTS ABOUT THE CHINESE WATER TORTURE! THEY'LL IMPLANT EXTRA LUNGS!

God, I do hate the stupid. I really do. I know it's wrong of me -- even rong of me. But I do.

F*ck.

From [Cheney? Rummy] some dude some dude at Politico listened to:

“It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. … Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again . . .

No, really, it's true, we need to keep the whole BAMBOO SLIVERS UNDER THE FINGERNAILS THING reallly hush-hush. You talk about stuff like that, and whoa, you SO lose the Element of Surprise!

Yeah, we all better shut up about BOILING PEOPLE IN OIL because really, it might give them ideas, you know what copycats them terrists is.

And really, STFU about all our copyrighted 60 WAYS OF MAKING HUMANS REALLY REALLY REALLY WISH THEY WERE DEAD because nobody could have imagined -- oh wait, that's about the other -- because if they find out what we did, then bad things will happen. Like they'll to it to us. Of course, they want to do those thing to us anyway.

Or more like, what if they find out that we were like into anal rape of kids well that wouldn't be good would it? Remember those tapes at Abu Ghraib that so suddenly disappeared because they were like, um, just toooooo awful? Well this stuff is just toooo awful, too. That's why we want to shut up about it, and we're hassling Obama into shutting up about it, and that's why we're going to get away with it because all the evil things we've done are just tooooo vile, so, you know, STFU!! How hard is that?

It's not like we planned it that way. Oh well, of course we did, but like, hey. Any means to the end. Wait that's a commie thing. Like being a socialist. Socialist means someone who wants to take his kids to the doctor. We want doctors to revive our torturees so they're awake enough to FEEL THEIR excruciating pain. Now, that's not socialist. We bushist fascist teabag sadists, of course, feel no pain, we just inflict it. On others. We don't even feel our own pain.

Wow. There ya go.


WE BUSHIST FASCIST SADIST TEABAGGERS DON'T FEEL ANYONE'S PAIN, ESPECIALLY NOT OUR OWN.

I mean, how cool is that? See? Torture works!



Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

None Dare Call It Torture. Not Quite "None," But Close

However, turns out that NOT prosecuting torture is a violation of international law. Oopsie.

The United Nation’s top torture investigator has suggested it is illegal under International law for President Barack Obama to announce that the United States government has no intention of prosecuting low-level CIA officers who carried out torture sanctioned by the Bush Administration.

President Barack Obama’s release on Thursday of four Bush administration memos sanctioning torture has been widely praised. However, word that government will go so far as to offer a fully-paid legal defense for agents who applied torture techniques to terror war prisoners has triggered loud criticism.

“Like all other contracting states to the UN convention against torture, the US has committed to conduct criminal investigations of torture and to bring all persons to court against whom there is sound evidence,” Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, told Austrian weekly paper Der Standard.

“They are party to the convention and the convention is very, very clear,” Nowak told the paper. “The fact that you carried out an order doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility.”

“In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manfred Nowak [...] said the United States had committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Note to teabaggers: pay your taxes like a man

This is why:

Desperate veterans turn to suicide.

You break it, you buy it.

Several branches of the military are reporting significant spikes in the number of suicides committed by both active-duty troops and veterans returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts are calling the number of military-related suicides sweeping the country an "epidemic."

Survivors of veterans who committed suicide are starting to file lawsuits, accusing the VA of medical malpractice. The agency also has come under attack by lawmakers and veterans' groups charging that it failed to treat injured veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury, the signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The agency also has been accused of manipulating suicide statistics to downplay the problem and systematically misdiagnosing returning combat soldiers who suffer mental illness because their resources are tapped.

I wrote long ago about the cons deliberately mis-diagnosing PTSD in an attempt to deny services. Click on PTSD; I can't elaborate because I'm off to a seminar. On treating PTSD, as it happens. More later.

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

You Can Never Be Too Rich, Too Thin or Too Traumatized. or, PAY YOUR [expletive deleted/warningintentional use of sexist frame] TAXES LIKE A MAN

Teabagging. [coughchoke spit].

So the cons are trying to tough that one out? Bwahahah. Now teabagging is their BRAND.

And they're too pussy to pay their taxes.

Oy.

So, some otherwise perfectly nice people for whom I was set to volunteer my valuable time and really very high end clinical skills [it's not me, it's my training] to treat Vets with PTSD.

Some otherwise perfectly nice people started saying some critical things about Obama [which I am perfectly capable of doing myself, mind you] and I reminded them that in addition to being a card-carrying buddhist [well, actually I didn't remind them of that] I am a card-carrying bleeding heart liberal [and why else would I be offering to work for NOTHING].

And one of them said it was fine as long as I wasn't a socialist.


No, really.


I kid you not.

I thinktheir idea of being a socialist means being someone who's for universal health care, btw.

So -- what am I, boys and girls? Socialist?

How about "commie
pinko"?

Dept. of "As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap," or: Build Roads While Wearing Sad Faces of Regret re: the Decay of Our Puny Social Infrastructure

Hey. Turns out the Dems don't give a crap about the sick, poor, the insane, the elderly, the young, the vulnerable either. And here I was just blaming the Republicans. But there's enough blame to go around, really. Because, you know, these are hard times. Somebody has to suffer. If they're already suffering, what's the bad thing about piling on a little more, eh?

States Slashing Social Programs for the Vulnerable.

No reason to slash progams for the invulnerable, is there?

Saudis, Si! Cuba, No!

It's obvious that it's OK to trade with the Saudis, who treat their women like dirt, and it's OK to sell off our country to the genocidal Red Chinese, but Cuba?

Pfft.

Why would we trade with them? Why would we visit them? They've got a health care system that actually works! Can't expose our population to that, can we?

In the meantime, we're still dependent on and trading with a country that thinks marrying off 8-year-old girls is swell. Saudi Arabia. Marrying off an 8-year old girl to her Daddy's 47-year-old male "close friend."

"It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in remarks last January quoted in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."

Saudi, si! Porque no?

More Evidence We've Still Not Reached Peak Stupid

So getting elected President of the United States isn't enough of a big deal to qualify Barack Obama for an honorary degree?

Well, no. No, it's not. Not to ASU. To Notre Dame, it is. But not to Arizona State University. Nah.

One takes this special opportunity to seize teh day, and email the unfortunately-presciently-named yet karmically-correct President Michael M. "Eat" Crow of Arizona State University, here, and let him know if you concur: granting an honorary degree to the actual already-well-degreed President Obama is just too much, too soon.

Torture. It's a Tough Job, But Somebody Has To Do It.

The US has to torture. The CIA has to torture. Preferably torturing by trained medical professionals, eh?

Because -- we can torture if we say it isn't what it obviously is.

Sort of like "a rose by any other name would ---" except backwards.

Anyhow, no wonder humans who did stuff like this -- you know, torturing -- might not want word to get out about it. Oh but wait. It's out. Well never mind. We'll get out of it somehow. Heck, we only torture because we must. We was only following orderss.

Here's some fun facts about the CIA's notion of patriotism in action:

Raise your hand if you think doing unto others the following things puts you in the category of "good person" (sic):

*Suffocation by water poured over a cloth placed over the nose and mouth...
* Prolonged stress standing position, naked, held with the arms extended and chained above the head...
* Beatings by use of a collar held around the detainees' neck and used to forcefully bang the head and body against the wall...
* Beating and kicking, including slapping, punching, kicking to the body and face...
* Confinement in a box to severely restrict movement...
* Prolonged nudity...this enforced nudity lasted for periods ranging from several weeks to several months...
* Sleep deprivation...through use of forced stress positions (standing or sitting), cold water and use of repetitive loud noises or music...
* Exposure to cold temperature...especially via cold cells and interrogation rooms, and...use of cold water poured over the body or...held around the body by means of a plastic sheet to create an immersion bath with just the head out of water.
* Prolonged shackling of hands and/or feet...
* Threats of ill-treatment, to the detainee and/or his family...
* Forced shaving of the head and beard...
* Deprivation/restricted provision of solid food from 3 days to 1 month after arrest...

The ICRC report further clarifies the report's frequent use of the term 'ill-treatment':

The general term "ill-treatment" has been used throughout the following section, however, it should in no way be understood as minimising the severity of the conditions and treatment to which the detainees were subjected. Indeed, as outlined in Section 4 below, and as concluded by this report, the ICRC clearly considers that the allegations of the fourteen include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques -- singly or in combination -- that amounted to torture/and or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

"Furthermore, nine of the fourteen detainees reported that they had been subjected to threats of ill-treatment that included waterboarding, electric shocks, infection with HIV, sodomy, arrest and rape of family, torture, being brought close to death, and interrogation sessions where "no rules applied."


How do torturers sleep at night?

Answer: not well.

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Military Blows Up Live Pigs. Makes Them Dead.

I wonder what percentage of the military, so heavily Talibangelical, considers itself to be strongly pro-life (sic). Like ex-Preznit Toad Exploder.

More here.

Love Hurts

I'm not making this up.

Why it is ok that vaginal sex hurts. Ok, well, he's making it up.

Demo using tomato. No, its an apple. Dutch guy explains it all. Really. Well, or not really. Yes, not really.

And arguably the worst part is -- that one really cannot tell bushistfascist unseen-inherently-satirical-reality from regular reality-type satire anymore. Oh my. The thin thin thin thin thinnest line. (Refers readers to stories on adopting snowflake "babies" frozen feti and christian domestic discipline and talibangelical christian daddies' inappropriate balls, and and and . . .)

Before We Get All Weepy About Frozen Feti, Might We Attend to the Fate of the Post-Born, Esp. Those With Sadistic Mommies &/or Daddies &/or BFs?

Yes, Virginia, one of the reasons our society is so well-defended against bringing abusive parenting into consciousness is because it's just so vile that we really don't want to hear about it. Count me in that category.

On the other hand, if we push it out of consciousness, we'll never reach the point where, as a society, we've really had enough.

Here's an angry Daddy whose anger was known to the authorities and to his neighbors.

Carolyn and Raymond Bader, who used to live across from the home where the children were found, said they often heard the father screaming and yelling at the children.

The Baders said they called the sheriff's department and Child Protective Services several times with concerns about the family.

"We did all we could to help these kids," Raymond Bader said tonight. "We tried to protect these kids. We did what we could."

Carolyn Bader said a friend had called her with the news of the deaths.

"I couldn't believe he'd actually done it. Do I think he was capable of it? Sure," she said, referring to the father. "It just shocks me. I'm totally shocked. What could five children do that was so bad? I can't imagine what would go through someone's head to make them do something like this."

Dale Lund, another neighbor in the mobile-home park, said the boy who was killed played at times with his grandson and the two shared the same school-bus stop. The boys attended elementary school together, Lund said.

The slain children played in their own yard most of the time, he said.

"They pretty much kept to themselves over there," Lund said of the family.

Lund's wife, Sheree Lund, said, "We're tore up. We're just tore up. Why the kids, you know?"

Lund said the father was considered by neighbors to be "plenty mean" and he "kept a real tight rein on the kids."

"Plenty mean"? He killed his five children. Yuh, that counts as domestic violence, does it not?

But really, some people are waaay more moved by the fate of feti and the fate of frozen feti than with protecting actual children. Whyever would that be?

Department of Cutting Social Services & Encouraging Random Parenthood

Abusive mother of the month.

Mass. mother charged with stabbing 2-year-old girl

Friday, April 3, 2009; 11:02 AM

GARDNER, Mass. -- A woman who believes she was being stalked by a cult has been charged with stabbing her 2-year-old daughter 100 times with scissors . . .
Johnson, 38, also used an electrical cord from a dryer to try and strangle the toddler, police said, but the security guard and two residents separated mother and child just before police arrived.

"I heard a woman screaming very loudly that she was going to 'Kill, kill, I have to kill you, Die, die, die,'" said resident Real Belliveau, 65, who lives just down the hall from the laundry room. . . he thought the child was already dead because she was limp, covered in blood and had the cord wrapped around her neck.

The girl was taken to a hospital suffering from as many as 100 wounds to her head, neck and torso, but many of them were superficial, police Chief Neil Erickson said. The child, who is now in the custody of state child welfare authorities, was taken to a hospital and is expected to survive.

[and then she'll come and see someone like . . . well, NBFH. Who has heard this story before, thank you very much.]

The state Department of Children and Families made a check on the girl at her home in Turners Falls, about 35 miles west of Gardner, the day before the attack, . . . the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and WBZ-TV reported. Department spokeswoman Alison Goodwin refused to confirm the report Thursday and said only the department is now investigating.

[DCF checked on her the day before. DCF workers have twice as many cases as are recommended. Do you think that workers carrying a recommended caseload might have done a better job?]


. . .Johnson has a history of depression and had not been taking her medication . . .[Oh. Well, that wouldn't have had anything to do with unaffordable health care, would it? Or being unable to afford her meds and treatment? How about health insuance not paying for coordination of care?] Binder said, adding she does not remember the attack in the laundry room.

"She seems to be very paranoid," he said.

Johnson was held without bail on a number of charges including attempted murder and ordered to undergo a competency evaluation at her arraignment Thursday in Gardner District Court. A dangerousness hearing was scheduled for April 17.

Oh, and this is child abuse month, isn't it?

Hey, Kidz! What Day Is It? In China? Why, It's Anti-Dalai Lama Day!!

China Observes Anti-Dalai Lama Day!!

But how does that exactly work?

It works like this:

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness! [NOT]

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering! [NOT]

May all beings rest in the great evenness of mind
free from passion, aggression, and prejudice! [NOT]

That being the case -- isn't EVERY day in China Anti-Dalai Lama Day????

Well, If You Can Ban a Peacemaker from a Conference on Peace, Why Not Bring A Rape-Victim-Blamer to Rape Victim Fundraiser?

I'm sure Bill O'Reilly will be happy to tell them it's all their fault. They should just have been wearing burqas the little sluts.

Of course, if the group has no funds, isn't it their own damn fault?

From NewsHounds:

Bill O’Reilly, however, has shown his total disregard for rape victims in the following statement made on his radio show: “Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway . . .

Walking by herself? In a mini-skirt? Without an escort? Without a burqa?

What would the Saudis think?

[hat tip to Jesus' General.]

Technorati Tags: c

Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace-Prize Winner, Banned from South African Conference on Peace: Guess We've Still Not Reached Peak Stupid

Nobel Peace Prize winner banned from a peace conference?

Yep.

Nope, I'm not making this up. I don't have to. I never have to.

Dalai Lama Banned from South African Peace Conference

"Nobel [peace prize] winners Desmond Tutu and FW de Clerk to boycott anti-racism conference in World Cup run-up after Chinese pressure forces ban on Tibetan spiritual leader


Two of South Africa's Nobel peace prize winners, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and FW de Klerk, have pulled out of a Johannesburg conference to fight racism after what they branded as Pretoria's "disgraceful" decision to ban the Dalai Lama from attending following Chinese pressure.

The Nobel peace prize committee also said it would boycott this Friday's conference, which is dedicated to tackling racism ahead of the 2010 World Cup.

The row threatens to draw in Nelson Mandela, who, with his fellow South African laureates, invited the Tibetan spiritual leader, and further embarrasses South Africa, which has been accused of squandering its moral authority since ending apartheid by blocking UN security council moves to pressure rogue governments in Burma and Zimbabwe.

Tutu, who won the prize for his resistance to white rule, told Johannesburg's Sunday Independent newspaper he will not attend the conference to discuss how to use the World Cup preparations to combat racism and xenophobia if the Tibetan spiritual leader is not present. . . "

[hat-tip to billy-bob neck]

china loses face, dalai lama, south afric peace conference