Category: 09 Justice

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Journal: Right on the Left and Left on the Right

09 Justice, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process
Incoherence Left and Right
Obama, Palin, and Paul

Phi Beta Iota: The incoherent insanity of BOTH the left and the right, of both those in power and those without power, is cresting.  While the Obama Administration does everything it can to emulate and extend the Constitutional violations of the Cheney-Bush regime, the far right is losing its mind completely.  Below are two items, just a taste of what happens when gerbils learn to read and write.

What Is Sarah Palin?

It seems that Palin– the attractive, outdoors-loving “hockey mom”-is popular solely because of her personality, not any specific policy positions. Notes columnist Steve Chapman “Who needs policy? In her world – and the world of legions of conservatives who revere her – the persona is the policy. Palin is beloved because she’s (supposedly) just like ordinary people, which (supposedly) gives her a profound understanding of their needs.” When dissecting political cults of personality, it would seem that Palin has become the Republicans’ Obama–handsome, charming and a human comfort blanket for partisans.

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Journal: UK Complicity in torture of its own citizens

09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics
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Editorial, Wednesday 25 November 2009

Allegations about Britain's role in the torture of its own citizens in Pakistan are not new. They have been made persuasively by our own investigative reporting. What is new in the report published yesterday by Human Rights Watch is the corroboration it obtained from the torturers themselves. Ali Dayan Hasan, HRW's senior south Asia researcher, found sources in Inter-Services Intelligence, the military-controlled spy agency in Pakistan, and the Intelligence Bureau, a civilian-controlled one, to admit they tortured five British citizens at the behest, and with the full knowledge, of British intelligence.

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Reference: Corruption Perceptions Map

09 Justice, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, White Papers
Full Source Online
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Phi Beta Iota: Kudos to Australia, Canada, the Nordics and the Netherlands, and probably Singapore too small to shine here.  The USA has less to be proud of, between corporate corruption of Congress and what one author calls The Cheating Culture.  Other books on corruption in the USA can be seen at Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth (31); Capitalism (Good & Bad) (117;  Censorship & Denial of Access (23; Corruption (71);Crime (Corporate) (26); Misinformation & Propaganda (85); andPower (Pathologies & Utilization) (80).

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Journal: Out of Touch with Reality II

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Immigration, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process

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The Elephant in the Room: A war of ideas within Islam

Backward views hold sway in much of the Muslim world. And yet there is hope.

By Rick Santorum    Thu, Nov. 5, 2009

The students, one man and two women, wore Western-style clothes and spoke English with little or no accent. They disputed my description of Islam as it's practiced in the Middle East, maintaining that al-Qaeda's version of Islam in no way reflects the Islam that is practiced around the world.

So I asked them a question: Should apostates – Muslims who convert to another religion – be subject to execution?

One of the women quickly said no. She insisted that she was free to leave Islam if she wanted to, and that she knew other people who had done so without a problem – in the United States.

I said I wasn't talking about her and others' freedom of religion in this country. What if they lived in a Muslim-majority country?

Silence. Eventually, the young man blurted out, “That's different.”

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Journal: True Cost of War–Insanity & Murder at Home

07 Health, 08 Proliferation, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Reform, True Cost

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A Groundbreaking PTSD Court Decision

Week of November 02, 2009

A groundbreaking verdict for accused veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was decided recently in Canyon City, Ore. when former Soldier Jesse Bratcher, on trial for murder, was found guilty by reason of insanity.  It appears to be the first trial in the U.S. where a veteran's post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was successfully considered to mitigate the circumstances of a crime.  For more information on the case, visit the National Veterans Foundation website.
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Journal: Marijuana, Common Sense, and Prisons

07 Health, 09 Justice

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Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

By Marc Kaufman,Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, May 26, 2006

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

. . . . . . .

While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

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Journal: Fighting against ourselves in Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Ethics, Military
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The U.S. trains forces in Afghanistan that then go to work for the Taliban

Ann Jones

Key Points:

1.  Washington and U.S. military out of touch with ground truth and historical-cultural reality in Afghanistan.

2.  We are training individuals in US techniques who desert and join the Taliban–we are literally training the Taliban to beat us.

3.  Many individuals are re-enrolling under multiple names in order to get the training and the good food, while many others take the training and the food and never come back after their first period of leave (vacation after training).

4.  Pashtuns are not joining police and so the Americans are sending non-Pashtuns back into Pashtun territory to act as police–this is so stupid as to be insanely criminal and irresponsible.

Phi Beta Iota: This article was linked to in an earlier post on connecting the dots, but it reads better in Salon and we recommend a careful review–this is journalism at its very best, informing the public about FACTS that the Administration desires to ignore.