IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME

ACLU Sues Ex-Psychologists Who Designed CIA Torture Program

George Washington would not be pleased if he were here today....

Trouble in the American Psychological Association, where an independent review reported they were 'complicit in brutal military and CIA interrogation.'

A beautiful letter to Amy Schumer about the shooting at the Trainwreck movie.  Because apparently we just love our guns more than our children.

And some of those gun-lovers really really want a war with somebody.  Anybody.

9/11 NSA coverup?

You must eat MORE sugar!

Fetal-tissuegate

What Windows 10 will do whether you are aware of it or not.

Sunday slurry

Robocall justice.  I promise never to buy any product being sold by cold calling people.

Science!

Prisoner's dilemma.

Explaining what privilege means.

Torture doctors could be prosecuted?  It's about time!!  Jean Maria Arrigo needs to be praised as well.

Wonderful graphs showing that human activity is warming the world.  And plastic in your food will kill you.

Donald Trump will allow Jeb to position himself as the sane one.

More guns = more crime.

Can we finally get a War Crimes Tribunal?

CIA torture appears to have broken spy agency rule on human experimentation.  We knew this then, we know this now.  What is so awful is the inability to admit we went full-Dr. Mengele on the people in Gitmo.  We tortured.  Admit it.

And then send the people responsible for this horrible moral and ethical failure to jail.

Tetris to torture.

Why we love Tetris.

Make your own solar system.

Clinging to their guns... so they can take down the government...

Dryer sheets are filled with toxic chemicals?

Mars mystery 'flower'.

A letter to Kathryn Bigelow on Zero Dark Thirty's apology for torture

The fungus among us...

Why does the far right seem to ooze out from under the rocks when the economy is shaky and politics are polarized? Easier to blame others and reach for guns rather than work together to fix things?:

The far right is on the rise across Europe as a new generation of young, web-based supporters embrace hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to examine the phenomenon.

Research by the British thinktank Demos for the first time examines attitudes among supporters of the far right online. Using advertisements on Facebook group pages, they persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires.

The study reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men. Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU, their generalised fear about the future is focused on cultural identity, with immigration – particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence – a concern.

"We're at a crossroads in European history," said Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch MEP who heads the anti-racism lobby at the European parliament. "In five years' time we will either see an increase in the forces of hatred and division in society, including ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, or we will be able to fight this horrific tendency."

I have to admit I was shocked at the rabid savagery aimed at protesters of the Iraq invasion during Bush's reign of terror. The delight at going to war.. any war... after 9/11. The belittling of the humanity of the citizens of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, etc etc. The bizarre embrace of torture with assurances it wasn't really torture and besides the detainees were islamofascists and Jesus would have approved. The suggestion that using nukes really wouldn't be so horrible. We have our own American Taliban and Nazis right here, despite our best efforts in education and exposure to other cultures.

They must hatch like toadstools, surrounded by bullshit and darkness. Sunlight is the only cure.

News worth pulling your hair out over...

DEAR GOD. WTF?! Top Bush-era GITMO and Abu Ghraib psychologist is WH's newest appointment.

What's inside a Japanese quake grab bag?

American workers got what they deserved

A quote from Bob Herbert's last column for the New York Times:

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

Why we need to watch the Japanese radiation leak patterns carefully.

Five myths about the UN.

Farmers Sue USDA Over Monsanto Alfalfa - Again

Bradley Manning

We are judged by how we treat our prisoners. 243 days imprisoned and denied contact with an approved visitor.

Do they want him to go insane?

Stupidity and insanity and banksters run amok

Wisconsin Senate hopeful Ron Johnson in all his glory.

Rand Paul.

Teapartiers love Ayn Rand but have no idea who she really was. Sickeningly,

...she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation.

Being rewarded for torture:

A psychologist whose research was used in constructing the US's program to torture terrorism suspects has been granted a $31-million no-bid Army contract to provide "resilience training" to US soldiers.

The Pentagon needs more money:

The latest talking point du jour has been around in one form or another for years. It asks us to forget that A) America spends more on defense than every other major nation combined and B) the Pentagon, whose annual budget is now approaching World War II levels in inflation-adjusted terms, has lost track of trillions of taxpayer dollars. In light of those troubling truths, we are nonetheless urged by Beltway Republicans to focus on the fact that defense spending is "4.9 percent of our gross domestic product, significantly below the average of 6.5 percent since World War II," as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial proclaimed.

That widely circulated article, aimed squarely at grassroots conservatives, was jointly written by three of the most influential Republican think tanks in Washington -- the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foreign Policy Initiative. And like clockwork, the "percentage of GDP" nugget went from their pen to the GOP's well-oiled media machine.

For those who just don't have enough:

A gold and jewel bedazzled version of Monopoly worth $2 million is heading to Wall Street this Friday. That's not a metaphor.

Crafted by master jeweler Sidney Mobell and 22 years in the making, the set features dice with 42-cut diamonds and a photo-etched 18k gold board.

Krugman on the lack of property mortgage documents:

True to form, the Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that might upset the banks, like a temporary moratorium on foreclosures while some of the issues are resolved. Instead, it is asking the banks, very nicely, to behave better and clean up their act. I mean, that’s worked so well in the past, right?

The response from the right is, however, even worse. Republicans in Congress are lying low, but conservative commentators like those at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have come out dismissing the lack of proper documents as a triviality. In effect, they’re saying that if a bank says it owns your house, we should just take its word. To me, this evokes the days when noblemen felt free to take whatever they wanted, knowing that peasants had no standing in the courts. But then, I suspect that some people regard those as the good old days.

What should be happening? The excesses of the bubble years have created a legal morass, in which property rights are ill defined because nobody has proper documentation. And where no clear property rights exist, it’s the government’s job to create them.

That won’t be easy, but there are good ideas out there. For example, the Center for American Progress has proposed giving mortgage counselors and other public entities the power to modify troubled loans directly, with their judgment standing unless appealed by the mortgage servicer. This would do a lot to clarify matters and help extract us from the morass.

One thing is for sure: What we’re doing now isn’t working. And pretending that things are O.K. won’t convince anyone.

Good.

Have at it.

In a move that will put Britain's relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies under intense and possibly damaging scrutiny, British Prime Minister David Cameron has launched an unprecedented inquiry into whether security services were involved in the torture of terrorism suspects.

Americans don't 'torture', remember? (Nudge nudge wink wink) We just do necessary enhanced interrogations!



Renaming a war crime doesn't change the fact it's a crime, Georgie. Semantics won't save your prezidenting legacy.

We knew this all along

US medical staff experimented on terror suspects: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Medical personnel apparently experimented on terror detainees during CIA-led torture after the September 11 attacks, aiming to improve interrogation techniques, a human rights group said Monday.

"There is evidence that they were calibrating the harm inflicted by these techniques allegedly and also looking to extend their knowledge about the effects," said Nathaniel Raymond, from Physicians for Human Rights.

The group said it had used public records showing health professionals worked under the supervision of the Central Intelligence Agency during interrogations of "war on terror" detainees after the 2001 attacks.

The doctors and medical staff witnessed waterboarding, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes and prolonged isolation among other techniques.

"What we see is doctors collecting data that is used to draw conclusions related to whether or not the techniques or behaviors that they are observing violate the Department of Justice standard on what constitutes a level of harm, what makes it torture," Raymond told a press conference.

Who are these people? Did we just raise a generation oblivious to the horrors of WWII? Did we just create our very own Dr. Mengeles?

Who on earth could justify any of this?

“Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” the former president told a business audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I’d do it again to save lives.”

Oh yeah. Him. And what about Cheney?

To many, Cheney is the dark side of the Bush administration, and this program will only cement that judgment. ``Frontline" chronicles the brutal campaign by two consummate political in-fighters -- Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- to decimate the CIA, politically emasculate Secretary of State Colin Powell, and construct a near-limitless concept of executive power during war. While many of these strands are familiar, they have not been assembled as effectively before on television to present a coherent picture of what happened after 9/11.

Cheney didn't trust the CIA after it missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian revolution, and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, so he created through Rumsfeld's Pentagon his own intelligence network to suit his agenda. Powell and former CIA director George Tenet were no match for this pair, who have known each other for three decades. By the time that Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis ``Scooter" Libby, was indicted last fall, Powell and Tenet were long gone and the CIA was in shambles.

My theory is that these guys got off on torture. You don't need to waterboard somebody 183 times to get information. You do it because it makes you feel powerful. Non-military, cowardly, craven blunderers, they thought it made them manly and tough. What it actually did was make everything ten times worse.

And these 'doctors' who were involved in the torture?

We want their names.

If you had only been listening to us...

We could have told you that in the beginning.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

[snip]

He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent detainees released was because “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were”. This was “not acceptable to the Administration and would have been severely detrimental to the leadership at DoD [Mr Rumsfeld at the Defence Department]”.

Referring to Mr Cheney, Colonel Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent ... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”

He alleged that for Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld “innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks”.

He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”

Shows how empathic Bush and his cronies were, doesn't it? How deeply concerned they were that they were torturing innocent people...





How soon they forget that they are NOT lords of the earth and sky, but elected officials who were asked to actually do something good for the people.

Pictures to remind you:



Or this one?

Lacking in empathy and feelings of concern for their fellow man doesn't even begin to describe the Bush administration.



But remember this revelation is only one of hundreds of actions the Bush administration did that harmed not only Iraq and Afghanistan, but the world.



Never forget the fact we did not need to attack Iraq.



Those innocent people did not need to end up in Gitmo.

NOW we can get him for war crimes!!

Right? Right? You heard him, he confessed right there!

Former Bush Adviser Karl Rove says he's "proud" the Bush administration used techniques like waterboarding "that broke the will of these terrorists, and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots."

In an interview with the BBC, Rove was asked about the Bush administration's interrogation techniques, and whether he is "proud" of its use of waterboarding.

"I'm proud that we kept the world safer," he replied. These techniques are "appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with U.S. law."

Keep us safe? Really? Your actions were the greatest recruitment tool al-Qaeda ever had. Safe? You activated the worst planned vanity war in American history and broke our military. Safe? Historians will look back on the Bush era as the point where the USA finally stepped over the line and ceased to be a superpower. Safe? I don't fucking think so.

Jon Stewart's interview with Marc Thiessen

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

How really very odd....

John Yoo's emails are missing. Who could have predicted....?

Taking steps

To start undoing what has been done in our name:

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, introduced an amendment to the 2010 intelligence authorization bill imposing a 15-year criminal sentence on any “officer or employee of the intelligence community” who tortures a detainee. (Twenty years if the torture involves an “act of medical malfeasance”; life if the detainee dies.)

And

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is concerned about possible misconduct in Afghanistan by the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater and has promised to review the issue, the Pentagon said.

So what does Blackwater do?

A Code Pink protester claimed a high-ranking Blackwater official threatened his life during a break of a Senate Armed Services hearing focused on the military contractor's actions in Afghanistan.

Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin reported that the threat was made by Johnny Walker, a program manager with one of Blackwater's subsidiaries. Walker testified at the hearing about the role his company, Paravant, played during its mercenary deployments to the Middle East.

But then this is going on:

In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. “They’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” Gates said, according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”

And the realization that if we didn't have mercenary groups, we'd be unable to fight the wars we're in. We don't have the troops.

Yet the court sides against Rumsfeld:

CHICAGO � A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm.

U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen's ruling did not say the two contractors had proven their claims, including that they were tortured after reporting alleged illegal activities by their company. But it did say they had alleged enough specific mistreatment to warrant hearing evidence of exactly what happened.

Andersen said his decision "represents a recognition that federal officials may not strip citizens of well settled constitutional protections against mistreatment simply because they are located in a tumultuous foreign setting."

Andersen did throw out two of the lawsuit's three counts but gave former contractors Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel the green light to go forward with a third count alleging they were unconstitutionally tortured under procedures personally approved by Rumsfeld.

Update 3/7:UPDATE:

A Xe spokesman has told Talking Points Memo that they are unaware of any plans for the RNC to hold a fundraiser at their Moyock, N.C. facility. The spokesman said he was unsure why there was a slide in an RNC fundraising presentation that suggested otherwise. RNC Communications Doug Heye also told Politico's Ben Smith, who broke the story, that "No such Blackwater event ever existed," despite the calendar entry.

The Republican National Committee plans to hold an April fundraiser at a Moyock, N.C. compound owned by the military contracting firm formerly known as Blackwater, Politico reports.

According to an RNC fundraising document uncovered on Wednesday, RNC "Young Eagles" -- party major donors under 40 -- will meet at the facility in the spring.

Blog sprinkles

4000 years of Choice:

4000 Years for Choice visualizes the ancestral traditions passed down for millennia by lineages of mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. The rediscovery of these practices is deeply transformative when one considers “the right to choose”, especially for those who have been exposed to the “abstinence until marriage” and “anti-abortion” rhetoric.

Our not-so-secret war in Pakistan: The Drone Wars. (With a cool interactive map to see how many people we've killed.)

Yes. We want their names:

The process needs to start with the full disclosure of the identities of the medical professionals who were involved in the torture system, especially within the CIA and Department of Defense. Americans need to know about the qualifications and experiences of the medical personnel who serve them, and that includes knowing how seriously they treat their professional ethics obligations.

Before the doctors and lawyers since back down into the ooze and flow quietly back into society... we want their names.

DarkBlack at SteveAudio's has a slightly NSFW pic of Bunning.....

It's like getting mad at Mom for not picking up your room fast enough after an all night party with your friends. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:

CHUTZPAH WATCH.... David Kurtz ponders a thought this morning that I consider literally every day.

One of the truly galling Republican political maneuvers over the last 10 years is to go from squandering a huge budget surplus, wracking up trillions in debt, ballooning the deficit, and leaving the next Democratic administration with an economy in shambles -- then as soon as the Democrats are in charge refashioning themselves as budget hawks. You might even think they're setting the Democrats up to fail. I know, hard to believe.

Why Republicans aren't simply laughed off the stage at this point when they try to argue against budget deficits says a lot about Democratic ineptness, media collusion, and short political memories. But I still find it amazing.

I should be used to it by now, but I find it amazing, too. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) recently conceded when Republicans controlled the levers of power, "it was standard practice not to pay for things."

Think about that concession. Then consider that the very same GOP lawmakers who believed it was standard practice not to pay for things are now outraged that Democrats -- who aren't relying on deficit spending to finance their agenda -- aren't acting quickly enough to clean up the budget mess Republicans left for them.

The Night of White Sheets and Knives?:

SPLC's annual report sees explosive 244% growth in 'Patriot' extremism -- thanks to Tea Parties

JJ has bathing hedgehogs. Really.

Phila of Bouphonia discusses Mommy/Daddy issues.

Squirrel fight!! (h/t to Mahablog)



Who else can curse, stomp the floor, fight, AND eat sunflowers seeds all at the same time? I have to admit the damned squirrels have talent!

WHY does John Yoo have a teaching job?

At UC Berkeley no less.

Torture Advocate John Yoo Justifies Need For Radical Legal Paradigm By Citing Death Toll Of Terrorist Attacks

Listening to him justify horrific inhumane torture in that calm smarmy voice just set my teeth on edge.

*Update* TPM has all three sections of his conversation with John Stewart.

Do people really want him to educate their college students? Really?

Balance what Yoo claims were just treatments of Gitmo prisoners to this ex-Gitmo guard (my bold):

The journey of reconciliation began almost a year ago in Huntsville, Texas. Mr Neely, 29, had left the US military in 2005 to become a police officer and was still struggling to come to terms with his time as a guard at Guantanamo.

He felt anger at a number of incidents of abuse he says he witnessed, and guilt over one in particular.

Highly controversial since it opened in 2002, Guantanamo prison was set up by President George Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to house suspected "terrorists". But it has been heavily divisive and President Barack Obama has said it has "damaged [America's] national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda".

Mr Neely recalls only the good publicity in the US media.

"The news would always try to make Guantanamo into this great place," he says, "like 'they [prisoners] were treated so great'. No it wasn't. You know here I was basically just putting innocent people in cages."

Watch the two videos and read the full story to get an inkling of what the 'legalized' use of torture has done to us as a nation. Thanks to the work of John Yoo.

A reminder of who we had in the White House

During the Bush administration:



Glenn Greenwald:

Jonathan Schwarz notes that in 2005, Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Lithuania and visited a museum in Vilnius which once housed a KGB prison, where the Soviets tortured prisoners. That museum exhibits "solitary confinement rooms which were used to break down the prisoners and make them confess." Shockingly, "the walls are padded and soundproofed, made to absorb the cries and shouts for help," as it was the site of barbaric acts like this:

Prisoners either had to stand in ice-cold water or to balance on a small platform. Every time they got tired they fell down into the water.

After his visit, Rumsfeld released an "Open Letter to the People of Vilnius," in which he solemnly observed that "the museum was a stark reminder of the importance of preserving our liberty at all costs." Schwarz asks: "Did Rumsfeld Tour KGB Torture Museum to Pick Up Useful Tips?"

I wouldn't doubt it. Remember, they went down to Guantanamo to watch. And Rumsfeld complained that standing wasn't torture:

Forced Standing: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," Donald Rumsfeld wrote in a 2002 interrogation memo. "Why is standing limited to four hours?" Rumsfeld would probably feel a little differently about this if he had to stand in place for 8-10 hours, which can cause ankle swelling, bruising, and excruciating pain.

It has always been about oil, hasn't it?

Even the torture and death of innocents doesn't get in the way:



This will be where our next few wars will be.

h/t to Errington Thompson of Where's the Outrage? for the video.