Sunday, April 3, 2011

**JP** War Criminal Obama Killing Civilians




War Criminal Obama Killing Civilians
In Six Counties And Accuses Gadhafi of Same

By Jay Janson

01 April, 2011
Countercurrents.org 

http://www.countercurrents.org/janson010411.htm


If Gadhafi is killer of civilians, "it takes one to know one.' Gadhafi ? Obama? Who is killing? "It's all in the eye of the [CNN] beholder.' Karzai, all Afghanis, plead Obama to stop killing them. Pakistani Senators take Obama to court, Pakistanis march against Obama killing their children with Predator and (Grim) Reaper drones. Libya civil war another CIA- al Qaeda orchestration? UN rates Libya living standard #1 in Africa The President, in his speech of March 28, intended to explain his ordering air strikes on Libyan government forces, made so many seemingly unnecessary untruthful statements? 

Surprising was his falsely quoting Gadhafi. 

If, as the president and media have charged, Gadhafi has been indeed targeting civilians and not heavily armed insurgents, why should Obama have felt the need to put words in Gadhafi's mouth, as if there a need to further enflame the hatred for Libya's leader already successfully aroused by long anti-Gadhafi Western media. 

Obama: "Gadhafi declared he would show "no mercy" to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment." 

Reuters News Agency, March 21, 2011 click here 

"Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them. 

In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear... 

He also told his troops not to pursue any rebels who drop their guns and flee when government forces reach the city." 

When something seems 'too bad to be true' our suspicions are aroused. 

Obama: 
"Gadhafi ...launching a military campaign against the Libyan people. Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested, sexually assaulted, and killed. Supplies of food and fuel were choked off. Water for hundreds of thousands of people in Misrata was shut off. Cities and towns were shelled, mosques were destroyed, and apartment buildings reduced to rubble. Military jets and helicopter gun ships were unleashed upon people who had no means to defend themselves against assaults from the air." 

"In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day. Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we wanted -- if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.". 

Somehow this insidious portrait made some of us recall the horrific and ghastly stories Americans were fed about about the VietCong (heroic Vietnamese fighting a brutal U.S. Armed Forces occupation after earlier having fought the French and Japanese military.) Reminds one of other demonizing tall tales - Iraqi soldiers pulling out the life-support tubes of babies in a Kuwait hospital. Western media demonized the Vietnamese fighting for their independence, and made the world accept U.S. war on Iraq. 

Gadhafi is the leader for African Unity against European economic neocolonialism and for ending colonial power control of the United Nations though the U.S. dominated UN Security Council, which Gadhafi called "the Terror Council." And no one is forgiven for nationalizing one's own nation's oil production profits. 

We can take the President's words about Gadhafi as true, it is what all Western media has been reporting, but we really didn't see much of "unleashed' planes and tanks until truck loads of heavily armed rebels were on the roads toward Tripoli. One does remember two planes defecting to Malta, two others falling out of the sky, one shot down over the ocean, CNN repeating that Gadhafi planes were bombing cites, but showing for many days the same bomb crater outside of town and reporting no one killed. 

President Obama left unmentioned in his description of Gadhafi's behavior, Gadhafi's almost daily having asked for negotiations, talks, communication, constantly pleading for the UN or any country to send investigators to Libya to see for themselves what was happening. Even after the U.S. bombing started, some networks reported the UN Secretariat ignoring his latest communication request. 

And Reuters is among the few Western media to have reported rebel killings, even executions of more than fifty-five people, some by hanging, and a rape story as well.(*) 

Obama seemed to pad a laundry list of nastiness that as it went on a included along with genocide, much smaller examples unneeded to further justify his ordered military attack. Even to the point of including a rape reported by a woman to Western journalists, who were then arrested and held temporarily for physically interfering with the police,(**) and accusing Gadhafi for the deaths of a couple of journalists in Benghazi who apparently died in crossfire from unidentified sources.(***) 

The speech explaining why the U.S. again went to war devoted a lot of time to convince us that Gadhafi was insufferable. But CNN and all TV networks and press have made it abundantly clear that Gadhafi be some kind of evil monster heading a bloodthirsty Libyan dictatorship of thugs. Could it possibly be 'In the eye of the [CNN] beholder?' 

Other Speech Highlights and Commentary: 

"Libya sits directly between Tunisia and Egypt - two nations that inspired the world when their people rose up to take control of their own destiny." 

"Inspired the world" by overthrowing long U.S. supported tyrants? President Obama was "inspired" ? He told Mubarak to hold on, while protesters were dying - make some reforms? 

"For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth," 

How so? if by nationalizing Libya's oil, Gadhafi brought Libya the highest standard of living of any nation in Africa - UN Human Development Index, 2010 

" ... murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world - including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents." 

"Americans who were killed by Libyan agents." Who? Where? Is new evidence, or is this the same accusation of double homicide in a cafe in Germany that President Reagan used to make himself judge, jury and executioner, sending U.S. warplanes to bomb Gadhafi's home killing the accused' daughter and one hundred other Libyans? 

And the proof that Gadhafi murdered people? No conviction needed? And was Gadhafi himself not the target of numerous assassination attempts like Fidel Castro had to endure for nationalizing his country. 

"Last month, ... Libyans took to the streets to claim their basic human rights. "As one Libyan said, "For the first time we finally have hope that our nightmare of 40 years will soon be over." 

Quoting one unidentified Libyan in agreement with you? Does that strengthen your case or cause us to be be skeptical? 
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0 ,1518,752580,00.html 
Der Spiegel Online International , quotes a pro Gadhafi cab driver in Benghazi in Libyan Rebel Stronghold - Frustration Mounts on the Streets of Benghazi By Jonathan Stock in Benghazi 3/30/11, "Benghazi isn't a pure rebel stronghold, there are Gadhafi supporters here too. They're keeping a low profile and waiting for better days. Some still see Gadhafi as the strong leader he claims to be, as the man who promised to build half a million new houses, which haven't been finished yet. 
"Gadhafi Good!" 
A driver waiting in front of a hotel who overheard that I was German said: "Gadhafi good! Gadhafi - Germany - good!". Whenever he came to rebel checkpoints, he gave their "V for Victory" sign, but when he had driven past them, he raised his fist the way Gadhafi does at 

"I made it clear that Gaddafi had lost the confidence of his people and the legitimacy to lead, and I said that he needed to step down from power." 

Well, okay, but strictly speaking, you, as the president of foreign nation, should, after all not be the one who should have the say. 

"the Arab League, appealed to the world to save lives in Libya." 

Yes, but Arab countries that have not been under the heel of U.S. supported dictators, Algeria and Syria, voted against the Arab League's asking for a no-fly-zone. 

"At my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass an historic Resolution that authorized a No Fly Zone to stop the regime's attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people." 

President Karzai of Afghanistan has been pleading for you and to President Bush before you, to stop killing his citizens from the air to no avail - seven children a few days ago - nine last week. Pakistani Senators have tried to take you to court and Pakistanis from all walks have been marching against your killing their brothers and sisters and children with Predator and Reaper [named after the grim reaper] drones by Hellfire Missiles. If Gadhafi is a cruel war criminal guilty of crimes against humanity - how does that saying go? "it takes one to know one.' 

"I authorized military action to stop the killing. ... We hit Gaddafi's troops in neighboring Ajdabiya, allowing the opposition to drive them out." 

Meaning, you bombed inside a city to protect civilians from their government? (CNN depreciates as a mere claim, the Libyan government reporting civilian death tolls, passing on the suspicion that Gadhafi's men are just trying to make America look bad.) 

"Gaddafi has not yet stepped down from power, and until he does, Libya will remain dangerous. Moreover, even after Gaddafi does leave power, forty years of tyranny has left Libya fractured and without strong civil institutions." 

UN Human Development Report for 2010 awarded Libya #1 in Africa far above most all the U.S. backed African dictator's nations. Lowest infant mortality, best hospitals, free education and investment in higher education, highest living standards. Libya has an Arab Socialist constitution. 

"a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries" 

Obama failed to share with us the fact that Russia and China are denouncing bombing beyond the "no-fly-zone and along with the Arab league and African Union are calling for an immediate halt. 

"a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves." 

Correction: At least from some of the Libyan people. 

"Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different." 

Really? Does the USA look at American atrocities in Vietnam straight in the eye? 

"I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action." 

Like the bulldozed mass graves for the bodies of many of the 100,000 Iraqi soldiers shot in the back while retreating from Kuwait? 

"there are those ... who have suggested that we broaden our military mission beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people, and do whatever it takes to bring down Gaddafi and usher in a new government.' 

This is just what is being done, no? Air power blasting away at the Libyan army so insurgents can successfully attack. 

"there is no question that Libya - and the world - will be better off with Gaddafi out of power." 

Because Gadhafi like Nkruma before him, leads a movement for African unity against European economic exploitation? Because he calls the U.S dominated UN Security Council "a Council of Terror for the 65 wars it has failed to prevent." 

"broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake." 

Did listeners and viewers not feel they were being jerked around with double talk? 

"If we tried to overthrow Gaddafi by force, " 

Isn't that what is being done by air power cover for the insurgents? 

"... our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground, or risk killing many civilians from the air." 

Why, if you say we mustn't "use force" for regime change? 

"we are hopeful about Iraq's future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars." 

No, more than a million Iraqi lives. Too bad about the money. "That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya." 

"We will ... work with other nations to hasten the day when Gaddafi leaves power." 

Doesn't that go against Libyans choosing their own destiny? 

"But it should be clear to those around Gaddafi, and to every Libyan, that history is not on his side." 

Because President Obama said he must go. 

" I will never hesitate to use our military defend our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests. That is why we are going after al Qaeda wherever they seek a foothold." 

But it has been admitted that al Qaeda elements are within the ranks of the insurgents in Libya whose cause we a helping? And if so, it wouldn't be the first time CIA used al Qaeda. [Three articles. two with West Point and Embassy documents are appended in the footnotes](****) 

"That is why we continue to fight in Afghanistan," 

... where CIA once funded Saudi Arabian al Qaeda before they went on to 9/11 

"even as we have ended our combat mission in Iraq and removed more than 100,000 troops from that country." 

But have left 47,000 plus thousands of armed contractors and the CIA, which New Yorker Magazine investigator reporter Seymour Hersh expected was involved in the sectarian violence for many years. 

"when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and values are." 

Sure, the interests of private U.S. investment capital, but values? Which values? 

"As we have in Libya, our task is instead to mobilize the international community for collective action." 

What if some day an international community mobilized for collective action to protect Americans in the U.S.? 

" when one of our airmen parachuted to the ground, in a country whose leader has so often demonized the United States - in a region that has such a difficult history with our country - this American did not find enemies. Instead, he was met by people who embraced him. One young Libyan who came to his aid said, "We are your friends. We are so grateful to these men who are protecting the skies." 

Propaganda Minister Goebells always reeled out such endorsements from people in nations the Nazis invaded. 

"There are places, like Egypt, where this change will inspire us and raise our hopes." 

Oops! So people many people were murdered by U.S. thirty-year supported dictator Mubarak. Some after you sent envoy Weisner to tell Mubarak to hang in there. 

"And there will be places, like Iran, where change is fiercely suppressed." 

Oops! CIA overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953 for the oil, backed and aided Saddam Hussein's eight year invasion of Iran to the cost of a million lives, backs a reform movement led by a former eight-year prime minister who oversaw execution of socialists and union leaders and a former president who is the richest man in Iran. 

Maybe decades from now, when another batch of CIA files is declassified, Obama will be found to have known nothing about the plan that took advantage of the thousands of years of cultural and political independence of Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya) from Tripoli to covertly manipulate sincere differences into violent disorder through murderous provocations with the aim of creating a civil war in Libya - as CIA and its wide network of organizations have successfully accomplished in so many other vulnerable countries. 

Footnotes - Search Results: 

(*) 
In Deaths caused by Anti-Gaddafi forces, Wikipedia has this entry. 
"Among the security forces there had been more than 450 dead, including civilians in support of the government, mercenaries and government soldiers. There have been many reports that members of the security forces have been killed by both the government and the opposition. On February 18, two policemen were hanged by protesters in Benghazi. Also, on the same day, 50 African mercenaries, mostly from Chad, were executed by the protesters in al-Baida. Some of them were killed when protesters burned down the police station in which they locked them up and at least 15 were lynched in front of the courthouse in al-Baida. The bodies of some of them were put on display and caught on video. By February 23, the government confirmed that 111 soldiers had been killed." 

Reuters was among those reporting that rebels had killed many government soldiers, executing fifty Africans. 

Only by scanning the Internet, can one come across: 

Libya: Seconds from a bullet in the head , by Mohammed Abbas, 3/4/11, Scotsman "this alleged African mercenary was captured by furious Libyan opposition fighters yesterday and was about to be shot before a foreign reporter persuaded them not to execute him, 
click here 

(**) 
Coverage of incident in which woman (not a journalist as mistakenly referred to in speech: 

Dragged away after rape claims 
Sydney Morning Herald , 3/28/11 
TRIPOLI: A distraught Libyan woman burst into a hotel housing foreign journalists in Tripoli and accused security forces of torturing and raping her. 
Iman al-Obeidi was dragged away by plain-clothes officials and driven off to an uncertain fate after she breached security at the government-run Rixos Hotel. 
''Look at what Gaddafi's militias did to me,'' she told reporters, crying and upset as she described her ordeal. ''They swore at me and they filmed me. I was alone. There was whisky. I was tied up. They violated my honour.'' 
[Article includes action photo of scene] 

click here 
----------------------- 
Rape claim woman charged with defamation 
Sydney Morning Herald, 3/28/11 

A woman who stormed into a Tripoli hotel where foreign journalists were staying and accused Libyan soldiers of raping her will be charged with defamation, although inquiries are continuing, a government official spokesman confirmed today. 

"Accusing someone of a sex crime in a conservative society like ours is a very serious matter," government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said about the woman, Iman al-Obeidi. 
"She gave the names of the people she accused of raping her and they have lodged a complaint for defamation and calumny against her." 
----------------------------------- 
click here 
Libya says woman claiming rape is now free , AP, 3/27/11 

(***) 
Der Spiegel, Germany, 3/22/11 has reported shots from unidentified gunmen killed the two journalists, and cameraman during the violence in Benghazi. 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0 ,1518,752580,00.html 
Der Spiegel Online International , 3/30/11 

Benghazi isn't a pure rebel stronghold, there are Gadhafi supporters here too. They're keeping a low profile and waiting for better days. Some still see Gadhafi as the strong leader he claims to be, as the man who promised to build half a million new houses, which haven't been finished yet. 
"Gadhafi Good!" 
A driver waiting in front of a hotel who overheard that I was German said: "Gadhafi good! Gadhafi - Germany - good!". Whenever he came to rebel checkpoints, he gave their "V for Victory" sign, but when he had driven past them, he raised his fist the way Gadhafi does a n 

Only by scanning the Internet, can one come across: 

(****) 
click here 
Libyan Rebel Commander Admits his Fighters Have Al-Qaeda Links Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. by Praveen Swami, Nick Squires and Duncan Gardham, The Telegraph 3/26/11 
n an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya". 

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008. 
------------------------------------------------------------------- 
click here 
Libya Rebels: Gaddafi Could be Right About al-Qaeda - 
Two documents suggest northeast Libya, centre of rebellion, is an al-Qaeda hotspot. By Alexander Cockburn, First Post, 3/24/11 

" a secret cable to the State Department from the US embassy in Tripoli in 2008, part of the WikiLeaks trove, entitled "Extremism in Eastern Libya", which revealed that this area is rife with anti-American, pro-jihad sentiment. 

According to the 2008 cable, the most troubling aspect "... is the pride that many eastern Libyans, particularly those in and around Dernah, appear to take in the role their native sons have played in the insurgency in Iraq " [and the] ability of radical imams to propagate messages urging support for and participation in jihad." 

The second document, or rather set of documents, are the so-called Sinjar Records, captured al-Qaeda documents that fell into American hands in 2007. They were duly analyzed by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point. Al-Qaeda is a bureaucratic outfit and the records contain precise details on personnel, including those who came to Iraq to fight American and coalition forces and, when necessary, commit suicide. 

The West Point analysts' statistical study of the al-Qaeda personnel records concludes that one country provided "far more" foreign fighters in per capita terms than any other: namely, Libya. 

The records show that the "vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their home town in the Sinjar Records resided in the country's northeast". Benghazi provided many volunteers. So did Dernah, a town about 200 kms east of Benghazi, in which an Islamic emirate was declared when the rebellion against Gaddafi started. 
------------------------------------------------------------------- 
click here 
The CIA's Libya Rebels: 2007 West Point Study Shows Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk Area was a World Leader in Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Recruitment , By Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D., Tarpley, Washington D.C., 3/24/11 
"The rebels are clearly not civilians, but an armed force. What kind of an armed force?" 

Afterword : 

As the days go by, those wild faces against Gadhafi are strikingly dissimilar to the beautiful, noble, charming, earnest, simpatico look of the faces of Arabs in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain demanding better living conditions, jobs, decent wages, schools and health facilities. Libya has the highest life expectancy rate on the continent. Education and health receive special state attention. The cultural level of the population is without a doubt higher. Its problems are of another nature. The population is not in need of food or basic social services. The country requires many foreign workers to implement its ambitious production and social development plans. Libya therefore offers employment to hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other nations, especially African nations. 

For American led private finance investment capital's magnates, controlling all commercial media since end of WW II and fielding a powerful CIA, able to orchestrate, foster, arrange, participate and benefit from civil wars all around the world, Libya was perhaps especially easy. 

Cyrenaica (Benghazi) and Tripoli had been separate entities until 1934 when Mussolini invented Libya (ancient Greek name for all N. Africa). From 1911 the Italians had governed them separately, as had the Turks, Arab Caliphates, Byzantine and Romans. In the 7th century BC Phoenicians founded what would be Tripoli and the Greeks Cyrenaica to its East. King Idris I of Libya, put in by the withdrawing British in 1951 and overthrown by Gadhafi was from Cyrenaica. 

Apparently the decentralized Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya underwrote this cultural ethnicity, and made perhaps fertile ground for what surely was not merely an internal affair since February 19, 2011. 

Also helpful for any purposefully planned civil disturbance is the fact that Libya recently loosened its strict control over foreign media. CNN has been able to imbed itself and cheerlead the armed rebellion against the long established pariah of the powerful nations. Quite quickly, it seems, defecting politicians and army officers in Benghazi form a government recognized first by CNN and then by French President Sarkozy. (After WW II, France had wanted to keep Fezzan, or S. Libya, which adjioned French Algeria.) 

Will history books credit all this bloodshed to Gadhafi having targeted protesters demonstrating mid February, or was there a lot of orchestrated firing and killing meant to provoke confusion and violence while heavily armed elements were ready to be activated - it is known that CIA agents are everywhere. 

One wonders who might be writing Obama's speeches? Who might be reviewing before approving them? CIA, Pentagon, the trusted of the military industrial complex of private investment capital's jungle kingpins? Won't awareness of the mediocrity of the product surely arise pretty soon. 

For a lot of us, the charming young former Harvard Law School graduate of high in his class distinction is coming across like a boy pretending maturity. Perhaps Barack is beginning to feel the strain of being stuck in something he will continue to have no input, just acting out his constantly predescribed role. 

There must be moments in which the bright-eyed young man who enjoyed and was inspired by the beautiful, musical, humorous but soul bracing ethically revolutionary sermons of his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright still lives. If so, what a crushing feeling it must bring when Obama turns back to his Presidential desk prison, and shame for the perfidious acts, especially the murderous orders he has felt it necessary to go along with, all the slinky pats on the back from deep pockets and their hatchet men and media notwithstanding. 

Feel sorry him, we should. We know not his anguish in pretending to been be allowed some personal fine tuning in what media reports as the president's decision. To not have been permitted real participation in at least some of what those playboys of private investment capital planned so approximately, but strictly, for him to say and do, and conveyed to him though their tough guy intermediaries. 

Take action --  contact your local newspaper or congress people: 
No invasions, bombings of other countries. Simple! Nice Superpower!


Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, India, England and the US, and now resides in New York City. 

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Cruel but Not Unusual


Cruel but Not Unusual
Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever.
By Dahlia LithwickPosted Friday, April 1, 2011, at 7:43 PM ET

In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana. Having already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case, he opted not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial. He was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison -- 14 of them isolated on death row -- and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson's private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial. This evidence included the fact that the main informant against him had received a reward from the victim's family, that the eyewitness identification done at the time described someone who looked nothing like him, and that a blood sample taken from the crime scene did not match Thompson's blood type.

In 1963, in Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must turn over to the defense any evidence that would tend to prove a defendant's innocence. Failure to do so is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. Yet the four prosecutors in Thompson's case managed to keep secret the fact that they had hidden exculpatory evidence for 20 years. Were it not for Thompson's investigators, he would have been executed for a murder he did not commit.

Both of Thompson's convictions were overturned. When he was retried on the murder charges, a jury acquitted him after 35 minutes. He sued the former Louisiana district attorney for Orleans Parish, Harry Connick Sr. (yes, his dad) for failing to train his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million for this civil rights violation, one for every year he spent wrongfully incarcerated. The district court judge added another $1 million in attorneys' fees. A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. An equally divided 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed again.
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But this week, writing on behalf of the five conservatives on the Supreme Court and in his first majority opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas tossed out the verdict, finding that the district attorney can't be responsible for the single act of a lone prosecutor. The Thomas opinion is an extraordinary piece of workmanship, matched only by Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion, in which he takes a few extra whacks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent. (Ginsburg was so bothered by the majority decision that she read her dissent from the bench for the first time this term.) Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy. Their disregard for the facts of Thompson's thrashed life and near-death emerges as a moral flat line. Scalia opens his concurrence with a swipe at Ginsburg's "lengthy excavation of the trial record" and states that "the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors." But only by willfully ignoring that entire trial record can he and Thomas reduce the entire constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor.

Both parties to this case have long agreed that an injustice had been done. Connick himself conceded that there had been a Brady violation, yet Scalia finds none. Everyone else concedes that egregious mistakes were made. Scalia struggles to rehabilitate them all.

One of the reasons the truth came to light after 20 years is that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room. The prosecutor to whom Deegan confessed said nothing about this for five years. While Scalia pins the wrongdoing on a single "miscreant prosecutor," Ginsburg correctly notes that "no fewer than five prosecutors" were involved in railroading Thompson. She adds that they "did so despite multiple opportunities, spanning nearly two decades, to set the record straight." While Thomas states the question as having to do with a "single Brady violation," Ginsburg is quick to point out that there was far more than just a misplaced blood sample at issue: Thompson was turned in by someone seeking a reward, but prosecutors failed to turn over tapes of that conversation. The eyewitness identification of the killer didn't match Thompson, but was never shared with defense counsel. The blood evidence was enough to prove a Brady violation, but it was the tip of the iceberg.

In the 10 years preceding Thompson's trial, Thomas acknowledges, "Louisiana courts had overturned four convictions because of Brady violations by prosecutors in Connick's office." Yet somehow this doesn't add up to a pattern of Brady violations in the office, because the evidence in those other cases wasn't blood or crime lab evidence. Huh? He then inexplicably asserts that young prosecutors needn't be trained on Brady violations because they learned everything in law school.

Scalia and Thomas are at pains to say that Connick was not aware of or responsible for his subordinates' unconstitutional conduct, except -- as Ginsburg points out -- that Connick acknowledged that he misunderstood Brady, acknowledged that his prosecutors "were coming fresh out of law school," acknowledged he didn't know whether they had Brady training, and acknowledged that he himself had 'stopped reading law books … and looking at opinions' when he was first elected District Attorney in 1974." And Connick also conceded that holding his underlings to the highest Brady standards would "make [his] job more difficult." As Bennett Gershman and Joel Cohen point out, the jury had "considerable evidence that both Connick and prosecutors in his office were ignorant of the constitutional rules regarding disclosure of exculpatory evidence; they were ignorant of the rules regarding disclosure of scientific evidence; there was no training, or continuing education, and no procedures to monitor compliance with evidentiary requirements; prosecutors did not review police files; and shockingly, Connick himself had been indicted by federal prosecutors for suppressing a lab report of the kind hidden from Thompson."

It's not just that a jury, a judge, and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Connick knew his staff was undertrained and he failed to fix it. It's that it's almost impossible, on reviewing all of the evidence, to conclude anything else. Nobody is suggesting that the legal issue here is simple or that there aren't meaningful consequences to creating liability for district attorneys who fail to train their subordinates in Brady compliance. But those aren't the opinions that Thomas and Scalia produced. Their effort instead was to sift and resift the facts until the injury done to Thompson can be pinned on a single bad actor, acting in bad faith. It's a long, sad, uphill trek.

Beyond that, there is no suggestion in either opinion that this is a hard question or a close call or even a hint of regret at their conclusion. There is only certainty that the jury, the appeals court, and above all Ginsburg got it completely wrong in believing that someone should be held responsible for the outrages suffered by John Thompson. If there is empathy for anyone in evidence here, it's for the overworked and overzealous district attorneys.

It's left to Ginsburg to acknowledge that the costs of immunizing Connick from any wrongdoing is as high as the cost of opening him to it: "The prosecutorial concealment Thompson encountered … is bound to be repeated unless municipal agencies bear responsibility­made tangible by §1983 liability­for adequately conveying what Brady requires and for monitoring staff compliance." As Scott Lemieux points out, by all-but-immunizing Connick for the conduct of his subordinates, the court has created a perfect Catch-22, since the courts already give prosecutors absolute immunity for their actions as prosecutors (though they may still be liable for their conduct as administrators or investigators). By immunizing their bosses as well, the court has guaranteed that nobody can be held responsible for even the most shocking civil rights violations.

I don't think that the failure at the court is one of empathy. I don't ask that Thomas or Scalia shed a tear for an innocent man who almost went to his death because of deceptive prosecutors. And, frankly, Ginsburg's dissent­while powerful­is no less Vulcan in tone than their opinions. But this case is of a piece with prior decisions in which Thomas and Scalia have staked out positions that revel in the hyper-technical and deliberately callous. It was, after all, Scalia who wrote in 2009 that "this court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent." It was Thomas who wrote that a prisoner who was slammed to a concrete floor and punched and kicked by a guard after asking for a grievance form had no constitutional claim.

The law awards no extra points for being pitiless and scornful. There is rarely a reason to be pitiless and scornful, certainly in a case of an innocent man who was nearly executed. It leads one to wonder whether Thomas and Scalia sometimes are just because they can be.


http://www.slate.com/id/2290036/

A Car that Runs 200 Miles on Compressed Air

This 2-year-old video has me wondering, Why we are still fighting wars over oil?


A Car that Runs 200 Miles on Compressed Air (3:24 video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztFDqcu8oJ4




The biggest obstacle to freedom and liberty is not knowing what freedom and liberty are.

Man Invents Machine To Convert Plastic Into Oil

Man Invents Machine To Convert Plastic Into Oil (5:09 video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8




The biggest obstacle to freedom and liberty is not knowing what freedom and liberty are.

Re: 2,200 Marines Go To Libya,~ NO Boots on the Ground my rear end !

Bruce,

I saw a picture somewhere of those troops leaving..... they were
wearing bath hose slippers that said "Mans' Country" on them......
see... NO BOOTS.

On Apr 3, 9:58 am, Bruce Majors <majors.br...@gmail.com> wrote:
> im..........
> **
> *
> *
> **
> "UPDATE"*
> *Before anyone tells me i'm posting crap.*
> *Tell me why we are sending 2000+*
> *troops over there in the 1st place *
> **
> *We already got some on the ground*
> *so dont believe Obama when he said *
> *No Boots on the ground!*
> * TxForce*
> ****************
>   2,200 Marines Go To Libya,  'What Happened to No Boots on the Ground'?
> Obama's supposedly steadfast claim that there will be
>  "no boots on the ground" in Libya?
>  Warner Todd Huston  Wednesday, March 23, 2011
>
> In all the reporting on the involvement of US Forces in Libya a report by
> WCTI Channel 12 News in New Bern, North Carolina seems to have gone by
> almost unnoticed. The News channel reports that 2,200 U.S. Marines have been
> shipped off the Libya. But doesn't this deployment clash with Obama's
> supposedly steadfast
> claim<http://www.deccanherald.com/content/147746/no-us-boots-libyan-ground....>that
> there will be "no boots on the ground" in Libya?
>
> On March 20 WCTI reported
> <http://www.wcti12.com/news/27257042/detail.html>that the Marines were
> shipping out.
>
>   About 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, or 26th MEU
> will take part. Their mission is to help end the violence directed at the
> Libyan people.
>
>   "In Libya right now they are doing exactly what we need them to do. They
> are doing what they are told and right now that's protecting Libyan people
> against Qadhafi forces," said Captain Timothy Patrick, a Marine with the
> 26th MEU.
>
> So, what is it? Are there Marines in Libya or will there be "no boots on the
> ground"? If there are Marines there, what are they there for?
>
> Just what is Obama's plan? What is his strategy? Is there one?
>
> One suspects that US ground forces will have to become engaged if anything
> solid is to happen in NATO's engagement in Libya. And it seems like Obama is
> warming us up for that yet.
>
> In a recent interview<http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/23/obama-abdicates-commander-i...>Obama
> used some artful spin on our involvement there.
>
>  He said that the US is being "volunteered to carry out missions" in Libya.
> Volunteered? By whom?
>
>   And we will continue to support the efforts to protect the Libyan people,
> but we will not be in the lead. That's what the transition that I discussed
> has always been designed to do. We have unique capabilities. We came in, up
> front, fairly readily, fairly substantially, and at considerable risk to our
> military personnel. And when this transition takes place, it is not going to
> be our planes that are maintaining the no-fly zone. It is not going to be
> our ships that are necessarily involved in enforcing the arms embargo.
> That's precisely what the other coalition partners are going to do.
>
>   And that's why building this international coalition has been so important
> because it means that the United States is not bearing all the cost. It
> means that we have confidence that we are not going in alone, *and it is our
> military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are
> important not only to us, but are important internationally*. And we will
> accomplish that in a relatively short period of time. (emphasis added)
>
> With the fact that one NATO ally has already pulled its troops from
> Libya<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368693/Libya-war-Germans-pul...>,
> one has to wonder where this is headed for US forces?
>
> **UPDATED**
>
> Dan Riehl reports that an additional 400 Marines are headed to
> Libya<http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2011/03/400-ma...>,
> too.
> Wednesday, March 23, 2011
> 400 More Marines Head Toward Libya
>
> If we take Gates at his word, it would appear Marines landing in Libya would
> come under "contingency
> planning<http://militarytimes.com/news/2011/03/military-marines-north-africa-0...>."
> They've been deployed to the Keersarge, which would already have the 26th
> MEU. Amphibious assault? So much for only no flight zones, I guess.
>
> The Pentagon is sending an additional 400 Marines to join the amphibious
> assault ship Kearsarge near North Africa in response to the unrest in Libya,
> Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
>
> Defense *Secretary* Robert Gates ordered the Kearsarge and the amphibious
> transport dock Ponce to move from the U.S. Central Command region into the
> Mediterranean Sea to provide the capability for evacuation or *humanitarian*aid.
>
> "We are obviously looking at a lot of *options* and contingencies," Gates
> said Tuesday at a Pentagon briefing.
>
> U.S. military officials are closely tracking the events in Libya, where
> armed rebels are clashing with military forces loyal to the Arab nation's
> longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.
>
> Gates downplayed the prospect of military action in Libya, noting that there
> is no clear support from the United Nations or a consensus among U.S.
> allies.
>
> The Kearsarge deployed in August with an amphibious readiness group with the
> 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, but most of those Marines have deployed to
> Afghanistan. The 400 Marines will be coming from 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines,
> Camp Lejeune, N.C.
>
> B
>
>  mag-glass_10x101.gif
> < 1KViewDownload

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"This was a surprise,".....................

Gen. Petraeus said. The Quran burning in Florida, he added, was
"hateful, extremely disrespectful and enormously intolerant."

Since when does an active duty General shoot down the very first and
most important amendment to the US Constitution that he has sworn to
defend ? Regardless of his "worth" as a commander (which has yet to
rear its head in Afghanistan) he should say nothing regarding the
legal exercise of rights other than to fully support them.

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2,200 Marines Go To Libya,~ NO Boots on the Ground my rear end !


im..........
*
*
*
**
"UPDATE"
Before anyone tells me i'm posting crap.
Tell me why we are sending 2000+
troops over there in the 1st place
 
We already got some on the ground
so dont believe Obama when he said
No Boots on the ground!
 TxForce
**************

 

2,200 Marines Go To Libya,

 'What Happened to No Boots on the Ground'?

Obama's supposedly steadfast claim that there will be
 "no boots on the ground" in Libya?
 Warner Todd Huston  Wednesday, March 23, 2011
 

In all the reporting on the involvement of US Forces in Libya a report by WCTI Channel 12 News in New Bern, North Carolina seems to have gone by almost unnoticed. The News channel reports that 2,200 U.S. Marines have been shipped off the Libya. But doesn't this deployment clash with Obama's supposedly steadfast claim that there will be "no boots on the ground" in Libya?


On March 20 WCTI reported that the Marines were shipping out.

  About 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, or 26th MEU will take part. Their mission is to help end the violence directed at the Libyan people.

  "In Libya right now they are doing exactly what we need them to do. They are doing what they are told and right now that's protecting Libyan people against Qadhafi forces," said Captain Timothy Patrick, a Marine with the 26th MEU.

So, what is it? Are there Marines in Libya or will there be "no boots on the ground"? If there are Marines there, what are they there for?

Just what is Obama's plan? What is his strategy? Is there one?

One suspects that US ground forces will have to become engaged if anything solid is to happen in NATO's engagement in Libya. And it seems like Obama is warming us up for that yet.

In a recent interview Obama used some artful spin on our involvement there.

 He said that the US is being "volunteered to carry out missions" in Libya. Volunteered? By whom?

  And we will continue to support the efforts to protect the Libyan people, but we will not be in the lead. That's what the transition that I discussed has always been designed to do. We have unique capabilities. We came in, up front, fairly readily, fairly substantially, and at considerable risk to our military personnel. And when this transition takes place, it is not going to be our planes that are maintaining the no-fly zone. It is not going to be our ships that are necessarily involved in enforcing the arms embargo. That's precisely what the other coalition partners are going to do.

  And that's why building this international coalition has been so important because it means that the United States is not bearing all the cost. It means that we have confidence that we are not going in alone, and it is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally. And we will accomplish that in a relatively short period of time. (emphasis added)

With the fact that one NATO ally has already pulled its troops from Libya, one has to wonder where this is headed for US forces?

 

**UPDATED**

Dan Riehl reports that an additional 400 Marines are headed to Libya, too.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

400 More Marines Head Toward Libya

If we take Gates at his word, it would appear Marines landing in Libya would come under "contingency planning." They've been deployed to the Keersarge, which would already have the 26th MEU. Amphibious assault? So much for only no flight zones, I guess.

The Pentagon is sending an additional 400 Marines to join the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge near North Africa in response to the unrest in Libya, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the Kearsarge and the amphibious transport dock Ponce to move from the U.S. Central Command region into the Mediterranean Sea to provide the capability for evacuation or humanitarian aid.

"We are obviously looking at a lot of options and contingencies," Gates said Tuesday at a Pentagon briefing.

U.S. military officials are closely tracking the events in Libya, where armed rebels are clashing with military forces loyal to the Arab nation's longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Gates downplayed the prospect of military action in Libya, noting that there is no clear support from the United Nations or a consensus among U.S. allies.

The Kearsarge deployed in August with an amphibious readiness group with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, but most of those Marines have deployed to Afghanistan. The 400 Marines will be coming from 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

 
 

B



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Danish Psychologist: Inbreeding Reduces Muslim Intelligence.......endemic mental retardation, violence, and low social skills


Obviously!

B

March 31, 2011

Danish Psychologist: Inbreeding Reduces Muslim Intelligence

Cousin marriages blamed for endemic mental retardation, violence, and low social skills


by Bill Levinson

We have said repeatedly that a behavioral choice is not a race, but Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels contends that militant "Islamic" behavioral choices may in fact be related to genetics and vice versa: specifically the kind of genetics that come from inbreeding. What we may have here is a situation in which a behavioral choice (marrying first cousins) may in fact have created a genetically inferior group, and said group's defective genes return defective behavioral choices in a vicious downward cycle.

Inbreeding is of course not limited to certain groups of people that call themselves Muslims. There are plenty of jokes about white supremacists who look for prospective brides at family reunions. ("Their family trees don't branch very much.") Inbreeding among European royal families–the King of England, Tsar of Russia, and Kaiser of Germany were first cousins–resulted in a famous case study on the transmission of hemophilia. Egyptian Pharaohs often married their sisters (with devastating results) long before Islam was invented. Tay-Sachs Disease is endemic to Jews because, even though Jews do not marry close relatives, the overall population is sufficiently small to keep the recessive genes from dying out.

In contrast, the children of biracial marriages tend to NOT carry any recessive genes. This makes biracial people such as Barack Obama and Halle Berry genetically superior to inbred white supremacists who denounce "race mixing." Nobody contends that Barack Obama lacks intelligence despite his character and judgment flaws. One does not have to marry a person of another race to produce superior children but, on the other hand, an "all in the family" relationship is a good way to produce defective ones. Dr. Sennels contends that this is what many "Muslim" cultures have been doing for centuries, to the point where culture and race may in fact be interrelated. Mohammad himself set the example:

Zaynab bint Jahsh (Arabic: ???? ??? ????, born c. 593) was a wife of Muhammad and therefore a Mother of the Believers.[1] Prior to this, she was briefly married to Muhammad's adopted son, Zayd ibn Harithah. She was also Muhammad's first cousin.

Muslim Inbreeding: Impacts on intelligence, sanity, health and society

Massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during the last 1.400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool. The consequences of intermarriage between first cousins often have serious impact on the offspring's intelligence, sanity, health and on their surroundings

…The Muslim culture still practices inbreeding and has been doing so for longer than any Egyptian dynasty. This practice also predates the world's oldest monarchy (the Danish) by 300 years.

A rough estimate shows that close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred: In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins (so-called "consanguinity") and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 More stillbirths among immigrants"

Several studies show that children of consanguineous marriages have lower intelligence than children of non-related parents. Research shows that the IQ is 10-16 points lower in children born from related parents and that abilities related to social behavior develops slower in inbred babies …Another study shows that the risk of having an IQ lower than 70 goes up 400 percent from 1.2 percent in children from normal parents to 6.2 percent in inbred children.

…The limited ability to understand, appreciate and produce knowledge following a limited IQ is probably also partly the reason why Muslim countries produce 1/10 of the World average when it comes to scientific research: "In 2003, the world average for production of articles per million inhabitants was 137, whereas none of the 47 OIC countries for which there were data achieved production above 107 per million inhabitants. The OIC average was just 13." (Nature 444, p. 26-27, 1. November 2006 "Islam and science: The data gap".

…"The Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of the number that Greece translates. The cumulative total of translated books since the Caliph Maa'moun's [sic] time (the ninth century) is about 100,000, almost the average that Spain translates in one year." (Eugene Rogan "Arab Books and human development". Index of Censorship, vol. 33, issue 2 April 2004, p. 152-157). "70 percent of the Turkish citizens never read books."(APA, 23 February 2009 ")

This may in fact be why it is possible for mullahs to get young Arab men to believe that they will really get a one-on-one meeting with Allah and the sexual services of 72 virgins if they blow themselves up to kill infidels. This could be the reason why Palestinian society has turned itself into a dystopia suitable for science fiction, e.g. an Edgar Rice Burroughs story in which social status is achieved through murder or Robert Sheckley's "The Victim from Space" in which everybody's ambition was to die as violently and painfully as possible.

Sennels adds that inbreeding is much lower in Western countries such as the United States, and our understanding is that our Muslim population tends to have a slightly higher than average socioeconomic status. On the other hand, the above article does not speak too well for Turkey (and the Ottoman Empire was once the most advanced part of the Islamic world).


http://www.rightsidenews.com/
 has some excellent columns by Phyllis Chesler.


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