http://youtu.be/Ka3nKBR2mIU
Category: Terra Terra Terra!
I don’t think I like this country much anymore
If half the people are this fucking immoral:
Just over half of Americans say they believe the interrogation methods the CIA used against terrorism suspects in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were justified, polling data released Monday showed.
About 30% said they believed the tactics were unjustified, and the remaining 20% said they did not know, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center.
Opinion on the CIA’s torture of its prisoners differs notably by partisanship. Democrats were split, the poll found, with liberals much more likely to say that the CIA’s tactics were not justified. Republicans across the board said the interrogations were justified.
President Obama banned the CIA’s use of methods such as waterboarding, extended sleep deprivation and beatings, which had been authorized under President George W. Bush. Obama and other Democratic elected officials have referred to the CIA’s actions as “torture.”
Hostage taking in Sydney
![Woman runs to the arms of a NSW, Tactical Operations Unit (TOU) Officer, after escaping from an ongoing hostage situation in Sydney's CBD. - xpost from /r/policeporn [650x488]](https://i0.wp.com/farm9.staticflickr.com/8632/16026087695_20289fcc78.jpg?resize=500%2C375 "Woman runs to the arms of a NSW, Tactical Operations Unit (TOU) Officer, after escaping from an ongoing hostage situation in Sydney's CBD. - xpost from /r/policeporn [650x488]")
Not a whole lot you can do to prevent individual acts like this:
SYDNEY — A gunmen took dozens of patrons hostage at a busy Sydney café on Monday morning, using some of the captives as human shields and forcing others to hold a black flag with white Arabic writing against the window.
The drama transfixed the normally calm Sydney, known for its laid-back vibe and relaxed population. By Monday night, five hostages had escaped and the Central Business District was virtually deserted.
The incident began during the morning rush hour, when a man with a gun entered the Lindt chocolate and coffee shop at Martin Place, a major transportation hub typically teeming with professionals and tourists. Authorities have declined to say how many hostages are inside, but no one has been injured, according to Police commissioner Andrew Scipione.Authorities have been in contact with the gunman who has made a number of demands apparently including the right to speak to Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Local media have reported that he also requested an Islamic State flag. Earlier in the day hostages were seen with their hands up, pressed against the window while holding a flag that read: ”There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God.”
Who are the people in your neighborhood?
So you have to figure we have a one out of four chance at guessing, right?
WASHINGTON — For several months before the Senate Intelligence Committeereleased a summary of its controversial report on the CIA’s torture program on Tuesday, Senate Democrats were locked in a well-publicized battle with the executive branch over whether to redact the aliases used for CIA officials used in the document.
But even as the White House and the CIA engaged in this dispute with the Senate, a separate, and potentially more serious, set of revelations was at stake.
According to several U.S. officials involved with the negotiations, the intelligence community has long been concerned that the Senate document would enable readers to identify the many countries that aided the CIA’s controversial torture program between 2002 and roughly 2006. These countries made the CIA program possible in two ways: by enabling rendition, which involved transferring U.S. detainees abroad without due legal process, and by providing facilities far beyond the reach of U.S. law where those detainees were subjected to torture.
The officials all told The Huffington Post in recent weeks that they were nervous the names of those countries might be included in the declassified summary of the Senate report.
The names of the countries ultimately did not appear in the summary. This represents a last-minute victory for the White House and the CIA, since Senate staff was pushing to redact as little as possible from its document.
Russell Brand gets the point
I can’t stand this woman
What do you expect her to say? She was Bush’s press secretary, she’s a true believer. She LOVES torture!
Missing voices
Oh sure, we all remember this. I think that’s why I got wiretapped by the Bushies — I was interviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer right before the war started, and I called Bush et al “war criminals”. I know that doesn’t sound so unusual now, but most people were cowed into silence and saying things like that back then was unusual. Even when it was really obvious that I was being tapped, I still couldn’t quite believe it. Like, “Really? One person with a small blog?” But even my mother could tell. “Susie, are they bugging your phone?” “Yes, mom, say hello to the nice man from the NSA.”
A new analysis of mainstream TV news has found there was almost no debate about whether the United States should go to war in Iraq and Syria. The group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or FAIR, found that of the more than 200 guests who appeared on network shows to discuss the topic, just six voiced opposition to military action. On the high-profile Sunday talk shows, out of 89 guests, there was just one antiwar voice — Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation.
Here is a link to the actual study, published by FAIR
Nov 14, 2014
No Debate and the New War
Study finds little opposition to US attacks on Iraq, Syria
Canadian Parliament on lockdown after three shootings
As is often the case with these stories, we don’t really know what happened. At the moment, it sounds like there were three separate shootings that appear to be coordinated, according to Twitter accounts. I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to amp up those terror alerts! Via CNN:
There were two soldiers standing guard at the war memorial in Ottawa, and a gunman shot one of them, a witness told CNN on Wednesday. Peter Henderson, a journalist, said other soldiers doing drills nearby ran to help the fallen soldier. Henderson said he knew the person shot was a soldier because of the ceremonial uniform the soldier was wearing.
[Previous news update, posted at 11:41 a.m. ET]There were “several shooting incidents in downtown Ottawa” on Wednesday morning, police said on Twitter. “Incidents occurred at National War Memorial, near the Rideau Centre and Parliament Hill.” All Ottawa police buildings remain on lockdown and are closed to the public, police also said on Twitter.
Horrific day on parliament hill. Shots fired inside centre block during our caucus meeting. I'm safe locked in a office awaiting security.
— Kyle Seeback (@KyleSeeback) October 22, 2014
Part 2
In an interview with The Huffington Post, former LA County Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Juarez, who served with the department from 1976 to 1991 and was later convicted along with several other deputies in 1992 during a federal investigation of sheriff officers stealing seized drug money, described a drug war culture that frequently put law enforcement officers into morally questionable situations that were difficult to navigate.
“We all started getting weapons,” said Juarez, who served five years in prison for skimming drug-bust money. “We were hitting houses coming up with Uzis, AK-47s, and we’re walking in with a six-shooter and a shotgun. So guys started saying, ‘I’m going to get me a semi-automatic and the crooks are paying for it.’ So that’s how it started.”
But Juarez, who served in the LA County Sheriff’s narcotics division for nearly a decade, explained that what started as a way for some officers to pay for extra weapons and informants to aid in investigations quickly devolved into greed. Since asset forfeiture laws at the time allowed the county to keep all cash seized during a drug bust, Juarez says tactics changed.
“It got to where we were more tax collectors than we were dope cops,” Juarez recalled. “Everything seized was coming right back to the county. We turned into the same kind of crooks we’d been following around … moving evidence around to make sure the asshole goes to jail; backing up other deputies regardless of what it was. Everyone, to use a drug dealer’s term, everyone was taking a taste.”
And now we find out exactly how much the CIA had to do with destroying his reputation and hounding him to his death.
Beheading vs. drones
Why do Americans hate beheadings but love drone killings? What accounts for our irrational response to these two very different forms of illegal execution, one very profitable and high-tech, usually resulting in many collateral deaths and injuries, and the other very low-tech, but provoking fear and righteous condemnation from the citizens whose country prefers the high-tech?
The answer lies in human psychology. And probably like the old observation about history, people who refuse to understand human psychology are doomed to be victims of psychological manipulation. How is it that even members of peace groups have now come to support U.S. bombing?
One woman framed the issue like this: “I request that we discuss and examine why the videotaped beheading of a human being is understood to be more egregious than the explosion (almost totally invisible to the public) of a human being by a missile or bomb fired from a drone.”
H/t Terry Eaton.