Pakistan Refugee Crisis

Queen Noor of Jordan:

Yesterday in Cairo, President Obama eloquently underscored the importance of human security, and the need for everyone to have a safe, dignified and prosperous place in the world. Realizing this aspiration is a daily challenge in the face of widespread human rights violations and vulnerability caused by persecution and conflict.

One challenge to the world's capacity to care for its citizens is taking place right now in Pakistan, where the conflict between the government and militants in the northwest has forced almost three million people from their homes. According to the UN Refugee Agency, this is the most rapid large-scale displacement the world has witnessed since the movement into the Congo after the Rwandan genocide.

More than 80 percent of the displaced are staying with host families, posing a tremendous burden to already poor people, and making it difficult for humanitarian agencies to reach the most vulnerable. While food needs are largely being met, there are severe shortages of shelter, medicine, clean water, and sanitation facilities.

Reports from relief workers in daily contact with the displaced suggest that they are discouraged by the meager response to their plight so far. A crisis of such proportion has the potential to create a mass of people who, out of despair and hopelessness, might become part of another vicious cycle of frustration and violence. The risk to Pakistan's overall stability is very real, and this ultimately poses risks to the United States and its interests in the region as well.

As someone deeply committed to refugee causes for many years, in the Middle East and beyond, and as a member of the Board of Directors of Refugees International, my plea is that the world respond more effectively to this crisis than it has to date. The most immediate need for action is simple -- for funding to be made available to agencies that can deliver assistance directly to the refugees at the village level .

Donate here:Interaction: American Council for Voluntary International Action.

Department of Better Late Than Never

See previous post(s).

HuffPo Smears the Secretary of State -- Again.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.




Not sure how long they'll keep it, but right now there's a huge headline at HuffPo about an embassy couple who've been spying for Cuba. Its sole illustration is a picture of the Secretary of State, above.


Follow up is an article-- and its sole illustration is a picture of -- the Secretary of State.















Interesting philosophy of illustration they got there goin' at HuffPo. Walter Ken Myers -- no pix of the perp?


What, they couldn't get a picture of a palm tree? Or Gitmo?

Think Arianna's got um -- CDS issues?

Huffington Post Posts Sexist Post Because None Dare Call It Sexist?

Don't get your panties in a twist, ladies.

Or gentlemen.

As the case may be.

Just want to assure you that it's SO not sexist to write articles where readers get to rate the clothing of the Secretary of State of the United States.

Along the prettiness/non-prettiness continuum.

Because -- why not? It's a free country!

We used to do it for Henry Kissinger and George Schultz and Colin Powell!!

All-the-time.

Really. Don't you remember? Sure you do.


"COLOR HIM BAD . . . AND GOOD. VOTE FOR AL HAIG'S PRETTIEST AND NOT-SO-PRETTY PANTSUITS"

Department of Karma, Cause & Effect: O'Reilly's "Tiller the Baby Killer" Rant

Malicious words. Like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, is it not, Billy?

Bill O'Reilly has blood on his hands for this nasty piece of work: Tiller the Baby Killer.

I have never agreed with Billy's fetal position: that fetuses trump the post-born in terms of being worthy of our compassion.

Bill O'Reilly, in addition to being a sexual harasser, is a loudmouth and a narcissist. One who conducts himself in a way that makes him complicit in murder by domestic terrorism. As is Cheney, and the rest of the shrieky hysterical mirror-neuron-deficient, pro-torture, anti-life Talibangelical terrorists: by their works shall ye know them.

How can anyone claim to be Christian, yet fail to follow the golden rule?




---
Jesus' General on O'Reilly, God's Destroying Angel.

Sexism and Judge Sotomayor

Really, you've gotta love this.

Hat-tip to Tennessee Guerilla Women.

The evolution of headlines at the New York Times.

Sotomayor's Sharp Tongue Raises Issues of Temperament 5.28

Sotormayor's Blunt Style Raises Issues of Temperament 5.28

And then there's this one, not available online, but available as an actual newspaper arrived at our doorstep yesterday. Love that sub-head.


Assertive Style Raises Questions on Demeanor
Colleagues Call Sotomayor A Potent Force


Oh my.

Clueless Self-Injurious Behaviorist Gordon Liddy Fears Sotomayor: re: Riding the Cotton Pony!!

Little Gordy don't know much about women, do he?

bwahahaha.

How embarrassing for him. Someone needs to send him a book on physiology, do they not?



hat-tip to bluegal.
Corrente: big tent watch

US Military Rape: STFU

The rightwing Talibangelical government-forced maternity crowd likes to protect a rapist's right to breed. Now the government is protecting rapists' identities.

There are pictures that depict the US military, carrying out the "get tough" orders of George W. Bush, using warcrime rape as a weapon of torture.

There are pictures. Videos. We heard of them long ago. Haven't seen them.

The still unreleased photos relate to abuse alleged to have taken place between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Taguba, now retired, supports Obama’s decision to block the release of the photos, which Obama had previously said would be released according to a court ruling in support of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph. “I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it,” Taguba said.

Horrendous. Right. The description is enough.

Hunh? They're too awful for anyone to see? So we really really have to keep them secret. Because if everyone saw what the US really did, they'd really might get their panties in a twist, and hey, that would really suck.

Yes, it's heinous. So heinous. Just calling the pix "heinous" is really enough.

But not heinous enough to prosecute the rapists, for example. Why not? The pictures are just too hot to handle? They'd just make everyone upset? Obama's ok with helping everyone to just STFU?

Why would shutting up about atrocities be a good thing? Why would letting people get away with comitting atrocities be in any way acceptable?

If there are images, there are victims and perps.

Why are happy to have our tax dollars spent protecting a rapist's right to rape?

Iscellany-may

Your tax dollars at work: Detainee Describes His 7 Years at Guantanamo.

Welcome Back to Pottersville, Supreme Court Edition.

James Dobson: Jesus Hates

Darth Cheney: Suddenly Scared About Karma, Cause & Effect

So morally bankrupt torture enthusiast and mirror neuron retard Big Dick Cheney's scared about going to jail?

So he should be.

The Pussy Frame: Just Like the Nigger Frame Except It's Acceptable

It's all about insult.

You want to insult a guy, you call him a girl.

If you're the governor of california, you call a guy a "girlie-man." If you're a politician, you call a yappy little dog you don't want a "girlie-dog" or you call a woman "sweetie." And you can get away with it.

If you're casting aspersions on candidates, you imbue them with female characteristics: you tar them with stereotypical female qualities/weaknesses: vanity, superficiality, etc. -- complaining about their haircuts, clothes, their color choices: Edwards as "Breck girl," Gore's "earth tones," Clinton's $400 haircuts, Kerry windsurfing like a sissy. You're about to fake-waterboard some loudmouth Con radio host, you tell him he's gonna "moan like a little girl." You want to justify torture, you frame your opponents as wimps and wussies.

You want to insult the [female] Speaker of the House of Representatives to further your rightwing political agenda, you call her a pussy.

And -- you can get away with it.

Mancow Waterboard

People who do not suffer from Mirror Neuron Retardation Syndrome don't have to BE waterboarded like this guy had to, in order to realize that waterboarding is torture.

Is it "torture"?

Watch conservative Radio host Mancow attain sudden and complete enlightenment.




Waterboard Cheney. Waterboard Rummy. Waterboard Rush, Bush. Waterboard Geoffrey Miller. Waterboard the whole entire pro-torture crowd. Then we'll talk.

Al-Gonzo Okays Torture Prior to Torture Memo Saying Torture Is Okay

Maybe Alberto needs to get all lawyered up?

GOP Cons End "Era of Apology" -- Without Even Apologizing

Michael Steele Hails End of "Era of Apologizing."

You have to give them points for creating their own reality. As in unilaterally ending an era it just unilaterally created.

But then you have to take all them points away for their destroying our reality.

I just wish they would shut up and slink off. Really, I do.

Oh Lookee -- Sadists4Christ Have Been Running an UnConstitutional Theocracy All This Time!!

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Separation of Church and State. Well, sorta. But, you know, sometimes there just isn't, and so we have to do stuff we don't really wanna do. Like not having a separation of church and state. And like torturing people. We know it's wrong, but we do it anyway, because we had to. I mean, we had to.

Like Rummy had no choice when he blatantly shamelessly resorting to using specifically Christian battle themes and quotes as Bible propaganda to propagandize his message to the troops.

Sure, it's illegal. And unconstitutional. But God told him to do it? Well, I don't know what God did, reallly. I dunno. Does Rummy think that God's been updating His communication stream? Why separate church and statet when you can update church as state. It makes a brave new world, don'tcha get it? Next thing you know, Christ won't get tortured and die on the cross, He'll get tortured and then waterboarded to death. (Then we'll all be forced to wear little golden waterboards around our necks. . . ?)

Anyhow. Wow. This blatant bible stuff is real disturbing. I mean, sure looks like Rummy's got issues.

Hands up, boys and girls, if you think that little Donny Rumsfeld got the living crap beaten out of him on a regular basis by a big powerful omniscient omnipotent Daddy, one who told little Donny that it was all his fault that Daddy (or maybe Mommy) had to make little Donny pay for his misdeeds with pain?


---hat-tip to Revpaperboy at The Woodshed.

Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto . . .

Department of "No, we can't care for the children we already have, so let's browbeat women into having more and more little unwanted children regardless of ability properly to care for them, and if guilt-tripping women doesn't work, there's always the laws of government-forced maternity which protect a rapist's right to breed, because really, so what?"

VICTORVILLE, Calif.—Investigators say the parents of a 2-month-old boy have been jailed for child abuse after the infant was hospitalized in Victorville with broken legs, wrists and ribs.

Yvette Barragon took the infant to St. Mary Medical Center with a swollen leg earlier this month, saying her toddler pulled too hard on the infant's leg.

Further examination determined the infant had a two broken femurs, two fractured wrists, a break in his lower leg and four broken ribs.

San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Karen Hunt says the 23-year-old mother and the child's father 29-year-old Gilbert Scott were arrested and booked for investigation of willful harm to a child.

But wait! There's more!.

A 28-year-old San Mateo man pleaded not guilty Tuesday to beating his 7-year-old son for getting two minuses on his report card, a prosecutor said.

Solomona Tafao allegedly struck the child with a belt 10 times, punched him in the shoulder and kicked him multiple times, said San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. Tafao is scheduled to go to trial June 29.

During an earlier attack, prosecutors say Tafao hit the boy in the head for speaking disrespectfully to his grandmother. The child's head then struck the corner of the kitchen table, Wagstaffe said.

So Daddy hits his son in the head for "speaking disrespectfully" to Grammy? Is that where Daddy got his awesome parenting skills from? Or did they just spontaneous arise? Will Little Johnny be recruited for for the CIA/Gitmo Future Torturers of America?

The theme: people who love you get to hit you and hurt you.


Link here.

Media Whore Media to Elizabeth Edwards: Shut Up, B*tch

Yes, it's all her fault. It is all the fault of Elizabeth Edwards. What did she hope to gain from writing this book, the bitch? I hear there's a back-lash building against her!

No need to be ashamed to join the media whore media blame the victim-fest; it's all the rage, see more via VastLeft at Corrente. Click through to blame.

My personal fave remains the still-employed the incomparably superficial and nasty MoDo of the New York Times, who penned a breathtakingly sleazy anti-Elizabeth Edwards column, excoriating Elizabeth for (ooh!) writing a book (ooh! do they let girls DO that?) that has the unladylike gall to mention (ooh! uppity!) her husband's affair (ooh! shut UP, bitch!):

[she] has dragged him back into the public square for a flogging

.

Boundary issues much, MoDo?

Scores Tortured to Death or Murdered in US Custody: Pro-"Life," Pro-Torture Crowd Revels in Moral Bankrupcty

What is wrong with these people?

Oh. Right. I remember now. They have no mirror neurons.

So much for the noble rules of war and the rule of law.

[T]he May 10, 2005, Bush Administration torture memo by Stephen Bradbury notes that doctors were nearby to perform a tracheotomy if during waterboarding the suspect is approaching death.

“Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue of psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness,” Bradbury wrote. “An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately, and the integrator should deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water. If this fails to restore normal breathing, aggressive medical intervention is required….’”

The memo says CIA doctors were on hand with necessary equipment to perform a tracheotomy if necessary during waterboarding sessions: “[W]e are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present—although not visible to the detainee—during any application of the waterboard.”

Technorati Tags: torture, torture memos
torture memos

The Heartbreak of MNRS Goes On, But Unmanly Christian Minister Comes Out Against Torture!!

Every real Christian rilly needs to cowboy up. Especially this here minister guy, givng aid and comfort to the enemy, a lily-livered gentle Jesus freak minister Richard Land actually coming out against torture.

Sheesh.

Is nothing sacred?

Dr. Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, says he believes the interrogation technique of waterboarding is torture because it inflicts personal physical harm and "contravenes an individual's personhood and their humanity."

In a statement, Land said waterboarding "violates everything we believe in as a country," arguing "There are some things you should never do to another human being, no matter how horrific the things they have done. If you do so, you demean yourself to their level." Land explained his stance to OneNewsNow.

"I support capital punishment, but I don't think I should support capital punishment unless I am willing to personally give the lethal injection," Land says. "Well, the more I thought about and prayed about it, I couldn't waterboard somebody -- and if I couldn't waterboard them, then I don't have the right to ask others to do it or to condone their doing it."

In his written statement, Land states he sees no circumstance in which torture should be a permissible interrogation technique employed by American officials -- "even if the authorities believe a prisoner has information that might involve national security."

Gol'durn long hair Pussy Christ and his long-haired Pussy Christ defenders. Get rid of them!

What did Jesus do while being tortured? Oh, he'd prolly said sompin' girlie-man like: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" or some shit like that, the pussy.

Why didn't He just take it like a man, and say -- "BRING IT ON!"

No wonder God forsook Him.

The Heartbreak of Mirror Neuron Deficiency Syndrome

Three cases of MNDS (Mirror Neuron Deficiency Syndrome) in the news, and 2 cases of mirror neuron abundance.

Tennis pro Yelena Dokic's father proudly admits he beat her, says he did it for her sake. Then he reveals he, too, was phsically abused as a child, and asserts that multi-generational child abuse is a rilly rilly good thing. {see alice miller, sidebar].

Face transplant person, as reported by our minimizing media whore media:

Buried down on paragraph six, we finally find that face transplant recipient's facelessness was due to domestic violence: uh, that would mean, in this case, having been shot in the face by her own husband. Who received all of seven years. Wow. No doubt the Mrs. richly deserve it? 'Twas all her fault?

And here's the odious Kathleen Parker, at the forefront of the forefront of the forced maternity crowd, still wanting to cram her personal religious beliefs down the throats of all those who do not share them. Mirror-neuron deficiency syndrome (MNDS) strikes again. So much compassion for the pre-born, and none for the post-born. Let the little unwanted feti come forth be abused, neglected and then grow up to be perps and victims who perpetrate and victimize. We can't properly care for the kids we already have, so, you know, bring 'em on!

Fom the mirron-neuron-ly well-endowed Lambert at Corrente (& on to Froomkin), Torture the Fault of Peasants, Not Versailles.

Yesterday's News

Nothing to see here. move along.

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.