So the state of Oklahoma tortured a man to death last night...

[Clayton] Lockett, 38, received the first dose of the three-drug cocktail at 6:23 p.m.The drugs were midazolam, which causes unconsciousness; vecuronium bromide, which stops respiration; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. They are administered in that order. The state has said the procedure is meant to involve three doctors with hand-held syringes, injecting the drugs into IV lines in both the inmate’s arms.At 6:33 p.m., 10 minutes after the execution began, a doctor said Lockett was unconscious. But three minutes later, Lockett began to nod and mumble and writhe, witnesses said. [...]A spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections [...] confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Lockett did not die immediately after the lethal injection was administered.“The director did say that it appears that a vein [in Lockett's body] blew up or exploded, it collapsed, and the drugs were not getting into the system like they were supposed to,” spokesman Jerry Massie said.Massie said that after the new injection was administered, the condemned man “was obviously showing some movement.”“After several minutes, five minutes, he was not unconscious,” Massie said. “They made a decision to halt the execution, but at 7:06 he suffered a massive heart attack and expired.”

Using God to justify being a vicious prick

Pastor Sean Harris of the Berean Baptist Church Fayetteville, North Carolina is the latest pro-Amendment One pastor to demonstrate just how virulently anti-gay the campaign is. In his sermon this past Sunday, he gave the parents in his congregation “special dispensation” to use violence against their children if they violate gender norms. For example, if you see your four-year-old son “dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.” Pastor Harris says boys should have their girlish behavior “squashed like a cockroach” and similarly advises forcing girls to conform to female gender norms

For those who argue biblical justification for their bigotry against gays: If you saw your brother working on the Sabbath would you bash his head in with a rock? Do you believe in the death penalty for eating shell fish? If our country defeats another country in a war, do you believe that gives us a right to slaughter their children and take their women as sex slaves? No? Then you are already picking and choosing which parts of the bible you will follow and which you won't, the fact that you embrace the passages that justify bigotry against gays says more about you than it does about a rule book written for nomadic goatherders thousands of years ago.

Freedom for capital, not people

Neil Reynolds today demonstrates the traditional fondness of right wing libertarians for dictatorial authoritarian regimes with a column expressing almost unalloyed admiration for Singapore, a country even Reynolds is forced to admit is severely authoritarian.

Some may be surprised at how a self professed libertarian could seem so enthusiastic about a borderline totalitarian state with pervasive, constant surveillance, barbaric criminal law and a rigidly authoritarian state apparatus.  Silly rabbit, right wing libertarians don't want liberty for people, people sometimes use liberty to band together against the depredations of capital, and capital is the only thing Reynolds and his ilk want liberty for.  Capital and those who have it.

That's why right wing libertarians still profess misty eyed admiration for the murderous regime of General Pinochet in Chile, who came to power through a violent coup of an elected government and then used that power to decimate civil society ruthlessly suppressing unions, leftists and any and all opposition to his 'libertarian' economic agenda through torture, death squads and 'disappearences'.

So-called 'Free Markets' are the only freedom Reynolds gets passionate about, free people can become obstructive to that freedom through quaint concerns about the environment or workers rights or a decent social safety net and that's a freedom he seems to believe should be discouraged

Paul Krugman is 100% right

The Right have gone mad with rage at Paul Krugman's 9/11 post.  It's far too honest.

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

The most specious complaint is the disrespect card, like Krugman I would argue its far more disrespectful to those who died that day and in the Neo-con wars of choice since to perpetuate the mythology that allowed them.

I have no time for the 9/11 'Truthers'.  I believe 9/11 happened because 19 pissed off Muslims with x-acto knives made it happen, where we agree is that the Neo-con regime in the White House did leap on the terrible events of that day to perpetuate their own ideological agenda at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives since that day.

9/11 was used to perpetuate lies and death and torture and vanished freedoms.  It baffles me that there can even be any argument about any of this.

Police left rape victim tied up, naked and surrounded by officers for FIVE HOURS

More evidence that many police officers extend their 'us and them' attitude to all of us not just criminals.

A woman who was bound and sexually assaulted by her then-neighbour, Col. Russell Williams says the police left her tied up for five hours after responding to her 911 call.

Laurie Massicotte says Ontario Provincial Police officers told her they had to leave her in the harness, fashioned by Williams, until an OPP photographer arrived to take pictures of her in the restraint.

"I was left for five hours, still in my harness, still tied up, naked, lying under a comforter," Massicotte, 47, told the Ottawa Citizen in a telephone interview Friday.

"Five hours, no medical attention. I was in total shock. I didn't know what the heck was going on."

The OPP, she said, treated her like a criminal in the early hours of the investigation.

Scenes of Horror

Our government and right wing media worked overtime to whip up fear and contempt for the Tamils who huddled in a ship's hold for weeks in a desperate effort to escape from their former home to Canada. Some of you probably remember the Toronto Sun's inexcusable and unforgivable 'Lock and Load' editorial.  Most especially, every effort was made to avoid  giving any validity to considering Tamils escaping Sri Lanka refugees.  The preferred terms were criminals and terrorists.

Now, new footage has gotten out of the final war zone making it quite clear why desperate Tamils were willing to cram their whole families into a ships hold for an uncomfortable and dangerous flight to escape the clutches of victor's justice in Sri Lanka.  Warning the following footage is graphic and horrifying.



Doubtless conservatives will consider the source of the story, Al Jazeera, to be reason enough to discount it, but the pictures speak for themselves.

And they speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves.

I wonder how many horses the Stampede will kill this year?

The Calgary Stampede has started and now we wait to find out how high the body count will be.

The Stampede chuckwagon races routinely feature grotesque and devastating accidents. They've caused the death of 22 horses in the last decade. That's right, an average of two a year, beautiful, majestic animals dying in splintered agony or from heart attacks caused by the terror and strain the races put them through.

So we wonder how many will die this year and wait to mourn them.

Update: That's one. Not the Chuckwagon event but another horse driven to fatal heart attack in a cattle penning event. How many more will there be this year?

Update: Monday night and two more, bringing it to three dead horses so far only four days in.

Update, Tuesday Morning: Another one last night, bringing it to four dead horses in just the first three days of competition. I feel like I'm bearing witness to a massacre.

UPDATE, Friday morning: Six now.

To Serve and Protect

Born Free

M.I.A.'s controversial new video, directed by Romain Garvas is bleak and uncompromising. It has the same basic plot as South Park's Ginger hate episode, just taken completely literally. Stir in Arizona's new immigration law and insurgency warfare's ugliness brought home and you have a provocative and heady brew.

NSFW. Extremely NSFW.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Omertà

"One redeeming factor is that it would appear that the victims involved are of Polish descent and their respect for the priesthood and the Church has made them refrain from making these allegations public or laying a criminal charge against a priest. Had this happened elsewhere there would be every danger that charges would have been laid long ago with all the resultant scandal." - Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ontario

The cynicism on display here is blunt and ugly; 'fortunately he picked children from a priest-ridden community and the parents know their place and understand the reputation of priests and church is more important then their children's pain and terror.'

There is no recognition that the abuser probably made the same calculation when he chose his victims that the hierarchy is making when they congratulate themselves on being able to keep his crimes hidden.

The Church's primary defense has been that this kind of abuse is widespread in this sinful modern world and focusing on that by priests is unfair, but of course the issue isn't the abuse, it's the institutional response to that abuse. Other organizations facing similar scandals have responded with alacrity, fired people, informed the police and expressed remorse quickly and without attempts at minimization or attacking the victim.

The Catholic Church's response has been marked by evasiveness, entitlement, resentment, arrogance and a disturbing tendency to view the rape of children as a minor moral peccadillo - certainly not important enough to risk their standing.

This is a church hierarchy that has piteously decried the modern world's increasing secularization and the creeping erosion of their power and influence - but it is those very changes that have finally allowed their drifting, dwindling followers to challenge an institutional culture that seems to view them as property. In the past the Church has manifestly depended on their unchallenged authority over their flock to keep horrific crimes hidden and unchallenged.

As their followers become less priest ridden and reflexively deferential, it becomes harder to sweep scandal under the rug.

UPDATE from Andrew Sullivan:

Celibacy is part of the problem, but deeper still is the authoritarianism.
It means no accountability for enormous power. That guarantees, in this fallen world, abuse of power. It is this abuse which is integral to the systematic nature of the sex abuse. Which is why Benedict's assertion of even more rigid Papal and centralized authority compounds rather than addresses the core problem.
So, no, K-Lo, greater fidelity to that authority and whatever it says and does is not the solution. It helped create this problem. And this problem means the rape and abuse of thousands of defenseless souls and bodies. The church can either grasp this nettle and restore the spirit and openness of the Second Vatican Council, or it can curl up in its authoritarian cocoon and die of a collapse in moral authority.

Vatican Abuse: Follow the Money

Andrew Sullivan, a pained and idiosyncratic but still religious Catholic, has been following the priest abuse scandal with the kind of serious reporting nobody else is doing. In his 'How long has this been going on?' series he demolishes the 'It's the iniquitous modern world's fault' argument the Vatican has been trying to push.

His readers have been writing in, new ones every day, detailing stories of abuse by priests over the decades and centuries. Rape and torture of children by priests has been gong on for centuries its only started getting reported in the last few years as the church loses its stranglehold of unquestioned authority over its flock.

Now he does a huge piece on the most unreported element of the story. The money, in the form of thick wads of unmarked bills in plain brown envelopes to cardinals, bishops and other Vatican authorities that blocked oversight and protected abusers.

Struggling to give context to the donations, this cleric continued: "You're saying these laypeople are good and fervent, it's good for them to meet the pope. The expression is opera carita -- 'We're making an offering for your works of charity.' That's the way it's done. In fact you don't know where the money's going." He paused. "It's an elegant way of giving a bribe." ...
When Martínez Somalo, a Spaniard, became head of the congregation overseeing religious in 1994, Maciel dispatched a priest to Martínez Somalo's home. The young priest carried an envelope thick with cash. "I didn't bat an eye," he recalled. "I went up to his apartment, handed him the envelope, said goodbye. ... It was a way of making friends, insuring certain help if it were needed, oiling the cogs."
Another critical figure who was the recipient of vast amounts of Legion money was Cardinal Sodano. Sodano was critical to fending off investigation of Maciel once formal charges were brought in 1998:
"Cardinal Sodano was the cheerleader for the Legion," said one of the ex-Legionaries. "He'd come give a talk at Christmas and they'd give him $10,000." Another priest recalled a $5,000 donation to Sodano.
Sodano was also the key Vatican figure who this Easter derided the latest stories of abuse as "petty gossip" and declared the church united in defending the Pope. He has refused to answer Berry's questions about the Legion's cash gifts to him over the years.
So this multiple rapist and bigamist essentially got away with his crimes because he bought silence from key Vatican officials, at the very least by ingratiating himself by donating huge amounts to the church and at the very most by directly bribing key officials with envelopes stuffed with cash.

Moderation in all things

VATICAN CITY—Calling the behavior shameful, sinful, and much more frequent than the Vatican was comfortable with, Pope Benedict XVI vowed this week to bring the widespread pedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church down to a more manageable level.
Addressing thousands gathered at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, the pontiff offered his "most humble apologies" to abuse victims, and pledged to reduce the total number of molestations by 60 percent over the next five years.
"This is absolutely unacceptable," Pope Benedict said. "It seems a weakening of faith in God has prevented our priests from exercising moderation when sexually abusing helpless minors."
"And let me remind our clergy of the holy vows they all took when they entered the priesthood," he continued. "They should know that they're only allowed one small child every other month."

Yes it's the Onion.

Sinead on the Pope's apology

I brought up Sinead last year when the report on systematic child abuse in Ireland was released, now she responds to Pope's response to that report.

Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization. The pope must take responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. If Catholic priests are abusing children, it is Rome, not Dublin, that must answer for it with a full confession and in a criminal investigation. Until it does, all good Catholics -- even little old ladies who go to church every Sunday, not just protest singers like me whom the Vatican can easily ignore -- should avoid Mass. In Ireland, it is time we separated our God from our religion, and our faith from its alleged leaders.

Almost 18 years ago, I tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on an episode of "Saturday Night Live." Many people did not understand the protest -- the next week, the show's guest host, actor Joe Pesci, commented that, had he been there, "I would have gave her such a smack." I knew my action would cause trouble, but I wanted to force a conversation where there was a need for one; that is part of being an artist. All I regretted was that people assumed I didn't believe in God. That's not the case at all. I'm Catholic by birth and culture and would be the first at the church door if the Vatican offered sincere reconciliation.

Quote of the Day

"The church wants wriggle room for the one crime no one can think about without vomiting...Don't let's call it child abuse. It's the rape and torture of children."

-Christopher Hitchens

Slap of the hand

South Park was right; the Vatican really does seem to believe that its everyone else's problem.

The children keep revealing what was done to them, the media is insufficiently deferential to their holiness and ask impertinent questions, their waning supply of believers want to know why child raping predators were protected and enabled and now that the cover-up scandal has come right to the Pope's door he's actually expected to take personal responsibility for his actions.

People keep asking if a culture of celibacy, of deliberately pushing those who reveal they are gay in confession to suppress their sexuality in the priesthood, of secrecy, authoritarianism, deference from the laity and unquestioned authority and access to vulnerable children are part of the problem.

Don't these disrespectful people understand that protecting the reputations of priests and bishops and the Holy Father himself is more important than a few dozen...hundred...thousand raped and beaten children?

If this was a new religion, IE a cult, the police tanks would have been knocking down church doors by now.

The church keeps trying to blame the evils of the modern world, claiming that permissiveness and waning adherence to faith are the cause of these problems - but it seems far more likely that these horrible acts have been happening throughout history and only now have people lost enough deference and awe of the church and priesthood to start holding it to account. The worldwide ebbing of faith is the only reason that the church is now getting seriously challenged on abuse and the protection of abusers.

Faith was the problem. Secularization was the solution.

Clueless irony alert

Fox news hosts shocked, (Shocked I say!) that TV can influence people to think torture is ok.

French documentarians conducted an experiment where they created a faux game show -- with all the typical studio trappings -- and then instructed participants (who believed it was a real TV program) to administer electric shock to unseen contestants each time they answered questions incorrectly, with increasing potency for each wrong answer. Even as the unseen contestants (who were actors) screamed in agony and pleaded for mercy -- and even once they went silent and were presumably dead -- 81% of the participants continued to obey the instructions of the authority-figure/host and kept administering higher and higher levels of electric shock. The experiment was a replica of the one conducted in 1961 by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, where 65% of participants obeyed instructions from a designated authority figure to administer electric shock to unseen individuals, and never stopped obeying even as they heard excruciating screams and then silence. This new French experiment was designed to measure the added power of television to place people into submission to authority and induce them to administer torture.
None of this should be at all surprising to anyone who has observed, first, the American political and media class, and then large swaths of the American citizenry, enthusiastically embrace what was once the absolute taboo against torture, all because Government officials decreed that it was necessary to Stop the Terrorists. But I just watched an amazing discussion of this French experiment on Fox News. The Fox anchors -- Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum -- were shocked and outraged that these French people could be induced by the power of television to embrace torture.

"All of this has happened before..."

"...and all of it will happen again."

In October 2002, on becoming concerned that torture and extra-judicial killings were taking place in Uzbekistan, Craig Murray made a controversial speech at a human rights conference in Tashkent, in which he claimed that "Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy" and saying of the boiling to death of two men, "all of us know that this is not an isolated incident." The speech was cleared by the Foreign Office, but not before a dispute over its content. Later, Kofi Annan confronted Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov with Murray's claims.

The result of this principled stand revealing western participation in torture and abuse?

Murray was dismissed from his position as ambassador in 2004, following his first public allegations that the British government relied on torture in Uzbekistan for intelligence.

"We are not pleased"

The Obama administration reacts with royal displeasure over a British court rejecting claims that the Americans will withdraw intelligence cooperation if its revealed that, among other things, interrogators took scalpels to a detainee's genitals in Guantanamo.

Today's Guardian calls the Court's ruling "a devastating judgment," reporting that the "judges roundly dismissed the foreign secretary's claims that disclosing the evidence would harm national security and threaten the UK's vital intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US." The article also notes that the Court simply did not believe that the Obama administration would follow through on these threats, but instead issued them only at the behest of British officials, who needed a pretext for ongoing concealment.

The Obama administration, The Most Transparent Ever, condemns the British court decision to reveal what was done to Mohamed:

Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said: "We are not pleased", adding that Washington kept such information confidential "to protect our own citizens".

Canadians will be familiar with the 'you're risking our intelligence gathering!' argument from security über alles apologists in the Canadian media bemoaning that our government can't even imprison and torment people with vaguely justified security certificates because if we reveal the abusive methods used to get information used to target these individuals then the cool kids will take their toys and go home and the Americans will never play with us again.

It's crap and Canadians should have nothing but contempt for the argument.

Chuckwagon horse slaughter continues

It's never a matter of if any horses will die during the Stampede Chuckwagon races. The only question, year in and year out is how many. Twenty-two in the last decade.

Twenty-two!

Twenty-two beautiful majestic animals dead to cater to the juvenile ego of idiots showing off how big their balls are.

One so far this year. Driven by macho idiots to terrified, exhausted death by heart attack.

A horse has died of a heart attack after completing a race at the Calgary Stampede.

Stampede officials said the horse died on Sunday night after the first heat of the GMC Rangeland Derby chuckwagon race, an event where teams of horses pull wagons around a dirt track.

The animal was returning to the barn when it collapsed.

How many more before this murderous idiocy is finally over?

They had decided to electrocute him before they even saw him

In the car on the way to the airport as revealed in an email the government finally revealed on what was supposed to be the last day of the Braidwood Commission.

And you thought the RCMP's behavior couldn't look any worse.

This e-mail was one of 260 documents on a CD sent by the RCMP to the justice department last April, yet the federal lawyers didn’t open the CD until last week.

Last week? Evidence delivered in April didn’t get opened until last week?

What?

Helen Roberts had every reason to be in tears Friday as she apologized to the public inquiry into Dziekanski’s death for failing to disclose what appears to be not just germane but also startlingly important evidence.

If Roberts had cried over Dziekanski mother’s pain, I would be moved — but a veteran lawyer wet-eyed over another screw-up in this case? I think they were crocodile tears.

Commissioner William Elliott’s carefully parsed press release was equally unbelievable: “This was simply an oversight. Unfortunately in an exercise of this magnitude, such an oversight can occur.”

Bollocks. No one but a moron overlooks the import of an e-mail like this.

The officers deny the explosive content is true and Roberts says Bent was wrong in what he said. But their protestations ring hollow after almost 18 months of bluster and denial. So does Elliott’s threadbare these-things-happen excuse.

The situation is as bad as the most virulent critics of the Mounties feared. This is no longer about four officers who made mistakes in judgment: It’s about an organization that thinks it is above the law.