Archive for February 14th, 2014
We are all Olympic Champions Jackie Chamoun, Chirine, Rasha Kahil… and Lebanon
Posted on: February 14, 2014
We are all Olympic Champions: Jackie Chamoun, Chirine, Rasha Kahil… Lebanon
The Lebanese government has just ordered an inquiry into Olympian Jackie Chamoun for posing in semi-nude photographs 3 years ago, claiming her actions have shamed Lebanon.
Their outrage proves one thing: our government believes that the bodies of women are public property — despite not doing anything to protect them.
Drop this stupid “investigation”: Photo shoot of sky champion Jackie Chamoun
“Some women are beaten or killed, others are raped, and the media shifts their attention to a confident talented beautiful woman who represents her country at the Olympic games.
This is about telling our “peers” to set their priorities straight.
This is to fight censorship. This is for freedom.”
Redirect government resources to bring justice to the families of domestic violence victims.
It’s unbelievable that a minister was able to mobilise resources and react on the very same day to this non-event when the lives of thousands of other Lebanese women are at risk thanks to the lack of movement on violence against women legislation.
Just last week a teacher was beaten to death by her husband right in front of her two children and in a crowded building, and the internal security officers (darak) declined to show up on the ground that they don’t meddle in family affairs.
Avaaz.org has also prepared a petition to sign.
Many Lebanese are very upset, and Gino has promised to leave Lebanon.
GINO posted this Feb. 11, 2014
Disgusting: Horribly Backwards Reactions to Olympian’s Photos
I don’t even know where to start with this.
It’s too similar to the Rasha Kahil incident a few weeks ago, and I still cannot comprehend the horribly degrading reaction of people to something so natural, so normal as a pair of bare breasts shot tastefully for a calendar.
To Everyone Upset at Jackie and Chirine
Who the fuck are you to get upset? Is it the first pair of boobs you see?
The horribly backwards reaction to the surfacing of these old photos, makes you all look like savage brutes living in some theocracy in the mountains between Pakistan or Afghanistan, or in Iran, or Saudi.
You are in fucking Beirut, the city that placed ads in Playboy Magazine in the 60s, and had its own red light district back in the day.
In 2014, you want to turn it into some religious theocracy that’s afraid of sex and hates women unless they’re 72 virgins you get for blowing your stupid self up?
Or a savage tribe that still believes women are property and carry “the honor” of the family or whatever it is you call what you congregate yourself in?
Are you such a sexually frustrated bunch of hypocrites with nothing better to talk about as you wait on the doorways of your politicians to ask for a favor you’ve already paid for with your taxes.
Or waiting at the doors of the churches and the mosques that ban you from getting married under civil laws, and sanctify a man’s right to kill and rape his wife, as God intended it in their twisted, old, wretched minds.
To Feminists Worried About “Objectifying a Woman’s Body”
Oh, because bashing two young women for posing whichever way they want, for whatever reason they want, fits in perfectly with the feminist rhetoric, right?
If you really are for gender equality, and no differentiation between men and women, then you shouldn’t go out guns blazing against a woman who showed some skin.
Just like no one ever bashes a male model or athlete that poses topless or in provocative poses. This is hypocrisy, and whether you like it or not, sex sells and drawing attention to causes, brands, charitable causes, etc. using a bare human body, will always happen, and you should celebrate the fact people have a choice to do that, and honor their choices.
To the Minister of Sports and Government
How Dare you “investigate” Jackie?
After the horrible support our Olympians always get from the government, who didn’t even bother telling Chirine she isn’t participating this year?
The same corrupt, rotten, filthy government that sent only 2 athletes, with 7 “organizers”, just like our mysteriously large UN General Assembly “organizers” who are in the several dozen, when China’s entire delegation was a fraction of ours.
Amidst this massive corruption scandal, and laughable handling of your ministry to the Olympics case, how do you have the nerves to investigate one of our Olympians?
It’s no thanks to you that Jackie is there, and we can live with that, but suggesting actions might be taken against her for disobeying some Lebanese’s conservative absurdities, is plain rude and unacceptable.
To Jackie and Chirine
We love you, don’t let people’s trash talk faze you.
We are proud for representing Lebanon, in Sochi and in Vancouver, and I’m proud of you for having the guts to be topless on camera, on the slopes of Faraya in public.
Takes a lot of courage and self-esteem to be so secure with your body image.
Thank you for standing up for the liberals in this country, the ones living in 2014, not 1200s.
Also, don’t ever apologize for participating in that calendar, we’re proud two Lebanese skiers were featured, and might I say favorites on that calendar that grouped female skiers from around the world.
To Lebanese Liberals
Don’t shy away from defending these two brave women.
Don’t sit idly by when your supposed “patriotic” fellow citizens joke about bombings and parts of Lebanon becoming a theocracy.
Lebanon is liberal, it always was.
We can’t let the recent trend in extremism change that.
They call on us to “subdue” our women when they do this, when just the other week a savage brute beat his beautiful wife to death, and they thought it was ok…
Those very same people and authorities outraged at showing Jackie’s boobs, have no problem with a man beating his wife to a bloody pulp, but GOD FORBID BOOBS!
Glad I’m Leaving
I need a break from this disgusting place festering with corruption, extreme religious bigotry and hypocrisy that is at The Onion levels.
Tfeh (the sound of disgust) on each and every low-life who insulted these two fine young women, representing Lebanon in one the most prestigious of sporting events.
Tfeh for making us look like stupid, backwards baboons who go ape-shit if our gorgeous athletes show off what they got. I am proud of Jackie, immensely proud, and for once, I like someone representing Lebanon.
And I’d much rather have her representing my country, someone comfortable in their skin and open-minded, not tied down by the crippling cultural and religious norms that teach us to hate women, to subdue them, to oppress them. Shame on all of you.
I have no words to describe how disgusted I am by the backwardness, childishness and lack of patriotism you have shown. Oh, and t3eesho w tfoo2o you dumbasses, we’ve known about this calendar since December. Sub-par journalists, with sub-par IQed viewers. Tfeh.
Final Advice
Always, before judging and bashing and “investigating” someone for something they did willingly, always, always, always repeat to yourself: “Who. The. Fuck. Am. I?”
Trust me, you’ll be all set!
List of Tortures Approved and used by CIA: 30 kinds of torture techniques
Posted this Feb. 10, 2014 in (How to) Revolution for Dummies, Arrest the President, Corrupt Congress and Corrupt Senate, Corrupt Military and Corrupt Military Commanders, Corrupt NSA and the Surveillance State, Corrupt Police State, Corrupt Prison System, Corrupt Supreme Court, Corrupt U.S. Presidents, Corrupt White House, Fellow man, Know Your Rights, Liberty and Freedom, North America, One Corrupt Party or the Other, Sexually Abused, Taxes, The Mafia C.I.A. and F.B.I., Torture American Style
Bush administration’s program of kidnapping “suspects,” a covert operation also known as “rendition,” continues under the Obama administration according to Reprieve Founding Director, Attorney Clive Stafford Smith.
The following is a partial list of C.I.A. forms of torture:
1. Sexual abuse and sexual torture. 
2. Confinement in boxes, cages, coffins, etc, or burial (often with an opening or air-tube for oxygen).
3. Restraint; with ropes, chains, cuffs, etc. ”We use electricity or hang them upside down, pull out their nails, and beat them on sensitive parts.” said Colonel James Steele
4. Near-drowning. (waterboarding)
5. Extremes of heat and cold, including submersion in ice water, and burning chemicals.
6. Skinning (only top layers of the skin are removed in victims intended to survive).
7. Spinning.
8. Blinding light.
9. Electric shock.
10. Forced ingestion of offensive body fluids and matter, such as blood, urine, feces, flesh, etc.
11. Hung in painful positions or upside down.
12. Hunger and thirst.
13. Sleep deprivation.
14 Compression with weights and devices.
15. Sensory deprivation.
16. Drugs to create illusion, confusion, and amnesia, often given by injection or intravenously.
17. Ingestion or intravenous toxic chemicals to create pain or illness, including chemotherapy agents.
18. Limbs pulled or dislocated. 
19. Application of dogs, ants, snakes, spiders, maggots, rats, and other animals to induce fear and disgust. 
20. Near-death experiences; commonly asphyxiation by choking or drowning, with immediate resuscitation.
22. Forced to perform or witness abuse, torture of family.
23. Forced to wear women’s clothes, forced participation in pornography. 
24. Raped.
25. Spiritual abuse to cause victim to feel possessed, harassed, and controlled internally by spirits or demons.
26. Desecration of Muslim/religious beliefs. 
27. Abuse and illusion to convince victims that God is evil.
28. Surgery to torture, experiment, or implant RFID devices. 
29. Harm or threats of harm to family, friends, loved ones, pets, and other victims, to force compliance.
30. Psyops: Kept awake for four days by loud music.
http://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/psyops-kept-awake-for-four-days-by-loud-music/
Bush Administration memos released by the White House provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture young children.
In the memos, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalize on detainees’ fears.
The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
Ali Khan, the father of detainee Majid Khan, “The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs and were denied food and water by other guards,” the statement read. “They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” (A pdf transcript is available here)
Khan’s statement is second-hand. But the picture he paints of his son’s interrogation at the hands of American interrogators is strikingly similar to the accounts given by numerous other detainees to the International Red Cross. The timing of the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s son — then aged seven and nine — also meshes with a report by Human Rights Watch, which says that the children were captured in September 2002 and held for four months at the hands of American guards.
“What I can tell you is that Majid was kidnapped from my son Mohammed’s [not related Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] house in Karachi, along with Mohammed, his wife, and my infant granddaughter,” Khan said in his military tribunal statement. “They were captured by Pakistani police and soldiers and taken to a detention center fifteen minutes from Mohammed’s house. The center had walls that seemed to be eighty feet high. My sons were hooded, handcuffed, and interrogated. After eight days of interrogation by US and Pakistani agents, including FBI agents, Mohammed was allowed to see Majid.
“Majhid looked terrible and very, very tired,” Khan continued. “According to Mohammed, Majid said that the Americans tortured him for eight hours at a time, tying him tightly in stressful positions in a small chair until his hands, feet and mind went numb. They re-tied him in the chair every hour, tightening the bonds on his hands and feet each time so that it was more painful.
He was often hooded and had difficulty breathing. They also beat him repeatedly, slapping him in the face, and deprived him of sleep. When he was not being interrogated, the Americans put Majid in a small cell that was totally dark and too small for him to lie down in or sit in with his legs stretched out. He had to crouch. The room was also infested with mosquitoes. The torture only stopped when Majid agreed to sign a statement that he was not even allowed to read.”
“The Americans also once stripped and beat two Arab boys, ages fourteen and sixteen, who were turned over by the Pakistani guards at the detention center,” he said. “These guards told my son that they were very upset at this and said the boys were thrown like garbage onto a plane to Guantanamo.
Women prisoners were also held there, apart from their husbands, and some were pregnant and forced to give birth in their cells. According to Mohammed, one woman also died in her cell because the guards could not get her to a hospital quickly enough. This was most upsetting to the Pakistani guards.”
“When KSM was being held at a secret CIA facility in Thailand, apparently the revamped Vietnam War-era base at Udorn, according to Suskind, a message was passed to interrogators: ‘do whatever’s necessary,’” Kevin Fenton writes at History Commons. “The interrogators then told KSM ‘his children would be hurt if he didn’t cooperate. However, his response was, ’so, fine, they’ll join Allah in a better place.’”
Bush administration’s program of kidnapping “suspects,” a covert operation also known as “rendition,” continues under the Obama administration according to Reprieve Founding Director, Attorney Clive Stafford Smith.
Most people kidnapped and tortured are people of color, innocent of terrorism. They are used for non-consensual human experimentation according to recent reports. (See AFP, Doctors had central role in CIA abuse: rights group, Spet. 1, 2009 and CIA doctors face human experimentation claims, Sept. 3, 2009)
Human experimentation without consent has been prohibited in any setting since 1947, when the Nuremberg Code resultant of Nazi doctor prosecution.
“Every day, the U.S. picks up 40 – 60 people considered ‘suspects’ from around the world and imprisons them,” stated Smith.
Non-consensual human experimentation conducted on Middle Eastern detainees has consisted of applying torture including “physical threats, mock executions, choking to the point where detainees lost consciousness and even using a stiff brush to scrub a detainees skin raw” while health officials and psychologists monitored reactions. (AFP)
The U.S.-based group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) medical advisor Scott Allen states on the PHR website that “medical doctors and psychologists colluded with the CIA to keep observational records about waterboarding, which approaches unethical and unlawful human experimentation.” (Press release: PHR Analysis: CIA Health Professionals’ Role in Torture Worse Than Previously Known, August 31, 2009)
In 2013, Smith estimated that 60,000 people went through the American “system.” This system is now internationally known to be a U.S. sponsored kidnap-torture-experiment program.
Shortly after coming into office President Obama ordered the closing of the CIA’s “black” detention sites. At these secret sites the CIA aggressively interrogated people while also denying them access to legal representation. However, despite ordering the closing of these sites, what the Obama administration has been doing instead since 2011 leaves much to be desired.
Instead of having foreigners interrogated in foreign prisons the Obama administration has taken to questioning suspected terrorists aboard U.S. Navy ships. As the Associated Press explains, this allows Obama to not use the CIA’s secret prisons while also allowing for suspects to be interrogated indefinitely under the laws of war. (It is worth remembering that in 2009 the Obama administration said that it would continue the Bush policy of sending terrorist suspects abroad to be interrogated, but with more oversight).
The most recent example of this tactic was reported, when U.S. Delta Force and Libyan authorities captured Abu Anas al-Libi, who is accused of masterminding the attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998. Al-Libi is currently being interrogated aboard the USS San Antonio. The Associated Press reports that al-Libi has not been read his Miranda rights.
Questioning suspected terrorists aboard U.S. warships in international waters is President Barack Obama’s answer to the Bush administration detention policies that candidate Obama promised to end.
Clive Stafford Smith dedicated humanitarian spent 25 years working on behalf of defendants facing U.S. death penalty. As Reprieve Director, Smith oversees Reprieve’s Casework Programme plus the direct representation of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay and on death row as a Louisiana licensed attorney-at-law.
Sources: CIA, Reprieve, ACLU, Colonel James Steele, AP, van der Kolk, B.A., McFarlane, A.C., & Weisaeth, L. (Eds.) (1996). Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society. New York: Guilford.
Adonis Diaries 