The Senate torture report executive summary released yesterday has revealed some new and horrifying details of what was done to the people taken into custody by the US. Just look at some examples of the incredible sadism on display and the callousness of everyone from George W. Bush downwards to these actions.
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Jon Stewart made an error in one of the examples he gave of police killings of black people and of course Fox News seized on it as if it discredited his entire thesis, which it did not. This illustrates a popular diversionary tactic of the right and especially Fox News and that is to try and find an error, however slight, in anything that reflects badly on them, their heroes, or the positions they take (whether be race, rape, the NSA, torture, etc.) and then try make the discussion all about that error.
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Catholic and other conservatives are not happy with pope Francis’s moves to put a kinder, gentler face on the church’s policies, even while preserving its essential doctrines. But the dissatisfaction has extended to the point where we now have truthers who are challenging his very legitimacy as pope, using some statements in a new book about him and his election.
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Should we be surprised that countries who have been subjected to endless moralizing by the US about their human rights abuses have, in the wake of the senate report describing the incredibly brutal torture practices of the US, taken the chance to highlight US hypocrisy?
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When we think of the most misogynistic societies where the freedoms of women are severely curtailed, one tends to think of Islamic countries. But it turns out that any society that takes the religious beliefs of its holy books seriously tends to repress the rights of women, and this includes Christianity and Judaism as well. If anyone needs a single reason as to why religion should have no role in public life, it is because religious doctrines are incompatible with democratic values. Once you let religion get a foothold in setting government policy, it will steadily encroach, demanding more and more concessions to its beliefs
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Trevor Noah, the newest correspondent to join The Daily Show, hails from South Africa and he used his introductory appearance to highlight one thing that really bugs me and that is the way that Africa is often portrayed in the west, as a continent that consists of wilderness or villages that have none of the features of modern society. People in the US need to be reminded of how rapidly the rest of the world is changing while the US shows all the signs of a decaying empire.
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The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence finally released the Executive Summary of its report on torture practices by the US government. You can read the ‘most gruesome moments’ of the report here and they are disgusting.
The Guardian has a summary of the main conclusions
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Some time ago, I linked to a video of an utterly inept driver trying to get out of a tight parking spot. It was excruciating to watch. But that driver was an expert compared to the person in the video below.
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On NPR’s Weekend Edition on Sunday, December 7, 2014, host Rachel Martin interviewed three veteran police officers (two white, one black) from Columbus, Ohio, a city in which the department had been accused in the past of police officers routinely conducting illegal searches and using excessive force. She also spoke with Malik Aziz who is chairman of the National Black Police Association.
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I have long been a contributor to Partners in Health, the group founded by Paul Farmer that takes high quality health care to areas of great need around the world. It began when I read the book Mountains Beyond Mountains: The quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world by Tracy Kidder that I wrote about here back in 2005, and listened to a talk by Farmer around the same time when he visited my university.
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