Archive for May 28th, 2009
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
It only took five years, but the mainstream media has finally acknowledged the truth behind why certain photos and videos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison camp have been blocked from public release – they show U.S. soldiers and other prison guards raping female detainees as well as children.
In an interview with the London Telegraph, Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, confirmed the details of hisoriginal army report, that the unreleased photos showed rape and sexual abuse of women and minors.
“At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee,” reports the Telegraph, adding, “Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.”
Taguba also verified the credibility of eyewitness statements from other detainees that described an American-Egyptian male translator in uniform raping teenage boys.
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph.
Taguba’s confirmation that the photos depict rape mean that President Obama could only have been lying when he claimed, “I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”
As we reported last week, such horrors have been on the record for years, yet corporate media coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal still frames the entire issue in the context that the “abuse” consisted merely of college fraternity-style humiliation and stacking prisoners in human pyramids.
In reality, the very worst of the torture has never been seen and it includes raping women and children, as well as brutally beating detainees to death.
Further details were also made public by New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who in July 2004 told an ACLU conference,
“Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?” said Hersh. “Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”
Following his refusal to release the unseen photos, the ACLU charged that President Obama “has essentially become complicit with the torture that was rampant during the Bush years by being complicit in its coverup.” The Obama administration has also sought to protect intelligence officials involved in torture from prosecution at every turn.
Sotomayor on the Supreme Court: A Gun-grabber’s Dream Come True
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
Obama Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor believes that suspects captured on the battlefield must receive all rights afforded to American citizens under the Constitution. That’s the good news. Now here’s the bad. She thinks American citizens don’t have the right to own firearms.
As a graduate student at Princeton University, Sotomayor wrote a these entitled “Deadly Obsession: American Gun Culture.” In the text, Sotomayor makes the argument that the Second Amendment does not actually afford individual citizens the right to bear arms. She believes only the military has this right. According to Sotomayor, it has been illegal for individuals to own firearms since the passing of the Bill of Rights.
In 2004, in U.S. v. Sanchez-Villar, a three-judge panel that included Sotomayor wrote that “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.” In another case, Sotomayor ruled that it is illegal for citizens to keep nunchakus in their homes.
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said on Wednesday that “Judge Sotomayor’s position on the Second Amendment is a clear signal that Mr. Obama’s claim that he supports gun rights is nothing but lip service,” reports CBS News.
“Judge Sotomayor’s record suggests hostility, rather than empathy, for the tens of millions of Americans who exercise their right to keep and bear arms,” said Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute.
Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council believes her nomination amounts to “a declaration of war against America’s gun owners.”
Earlier this year, Sotomayor ruled that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment’s commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, according to CNSNews. In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments.
Sonia Sotomayor would be a perfect Supreme Court justice for the Obama administration. Obama the supposed constitutional scholar is a notorious gun-grabber, although the corporate media refuses to underscore this fact. He endorsed the unconstitutional Illinois gun ban. In classic doublethink fashion, he has declared support for the Second Amendment in principle but backed local gun bans. Obama wants to ban “all forms” of semi-autos. But it is not simply semi-automatics — he would even ban most common rimfire target pistols, including those used in Olympic competition. For more on Obama’s gun-grabbing philosophy, see Barak Obama’s Gun Control Positions.
Many Americans understand Obama wants to outlaw guns and in response they are purchasing guns and ammo in record numbers. “Gun sales are on the rise across the U.S. and many dealers are having trouble keeping guns and ammunition in stock. Sales of guns moved sharply upward last November, the same month voters chose a new president,” reports VOA News.
A growing number of states understand the federal government is gearing up to not only outlaw firearms and trash the Second Amendment, but possibly confiscate them as well.
For instance, Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen has promised to sign a bill today making it legal to possess a firearm during martial law. “Sponsors say martial rule is the same as martial law at the federal level. They say the law is necessary after law enforcement in New Orleans went door to door seizing weapons in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” reports the Associated Press.
“FBI! Get on the floor!”
Those were the words Roger Spohn said he heard as four gunmen masquerading as federal agents stormed into his Wallingford home.
The men wanted one thing: marijuana – which Spohn was growing plenty of for legal medical use – and they took off with several pounds of it.
But when Seattle police responded to the home invasion call, Spohn didn’t get sympathy or protection. Rather, according to him, a bigger crime was committed.
Officers and detectives moved in and hauled away hundreds of marijuana plants that were a part of a large growing operation inside the house.
Spohn, who is legally able to grow up to 15 plants for medical use, said he was cultivating a larger amount for fellow medical marijuana patients.
“Every patient can’t grown their own 15 plants. It’s fairly difficult getting them to root and keeping them alive,” he said.
Growing good, medical-grade marijuana is not easy, according to Spohn. But patients with terminal or debilitating health conditions rely on it.
No matter, Spohn was detained for hours as police chopped up the plants and stuffed them inside bags.
“It was pretty terrible. I really felt negative about it,” he said.
Medical marijuana attorney Douglas Hiatt described Spohn’s experience as “ridiculous.”
“They shouldn’t be confiscating it in the first place. It’s only going to sick people. None of it is being diverted. None of it is being sold on the open market,” he said.
Hiatt said Seattle police recently changed its tone on confiscating marijuana even if it’s being grown for medical purposes.
For years, he says there’s been an understanding about how some places have larger growing operations. But that policy of acceptance is apparently not being followed now.
“A lot of patients that band together to grow their medicine together,” Hiatt said. “So when you come into a situation like this, you’re not dealing with one person’s medicine; you’re dealing with as many as a hundred or more.”
Advocates say an incident like this fuels an already severe shortage of medical marijuana.
Police and prosecutors refused to comment on the confiscated plants and whether the Seattle Police Department has, in fact, adopted a new policy on medical marijuana confiscation.
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