We finally have the first, concrete step in the direction of closing the now infamous Guantanamo Bay prison.

The news reports say, “President Barack Obama has ordered the federal government to acquire an underused state prison”, the Thomson Correctional Center in rural Illinois.

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections’ website, Thomson is not so much “underused”, as empty.

According to a letter to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair Thomson will be upgraded and transformed into a facility that exceeds “supermax standards.”

The real question is whether the Guantanamo inmates will actually be charged with crimes and whether they will be properly tried, according to our law, or will Thomson simply become an extension of Gitmo, this time on U.S. territory?

U.S. officials said military tribunals for potential detainees would be held at Thomson. They also said that the facility could house detainees whom the president determines must be held indefinitely but can’t be tried.

Thomson will not solve all the administration’s Guantanamo-related problems. There still will be dozens of detainees not relocated to Thomson, myriad legal issues and potential resistance from Congress.

Technorati Tags: congress, guantanamo, military tribunals, obama, Prison, Thompson

FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter in South Africa's Robben Island prison, 03 Dec 2009

Preparations for the first football (soccer) World Cup to be held on the African continent are in full swing in South Africa.

Billions of dollars have been invested, several new stadiums have been built and the pride and excitement seem to be overflowing.

At first sight, this would seem to be a very positive development, but there are some nasty, dark secrets, not generally reported by the South African media and government that cast a doubt whether the country truly deserves to be awarded the event.

FIFA has just held what was termed on its website as “… a very special meeting in Robben Island, Cape Town, the place where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison during the apartheid era in South Africa and where the inmates founded the Makana Football Association, recognised by FIFA as its first honorary member association in 2007. The meeting was opened with an emotive speech from Tokyo Sexwale, former prisoner in Robben Island and currently a member of FIFA’s Committee for Fair Play and Social Responsibility.”

One issue that hasn’t been addressed is the racially motivated black on white crime details and statistics, or the issue of security in South Africa, which has been described by Nick Buckles, the CEO of the world’s biggest security firm, Securicor, in this manner: “South Africa was the most dangerous country in the world to work in – ahead of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Pat Symcox, former South African cricketer has been quoted as saying: ”The government should deal with our crime situation. If they cannot, they should cancel the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Countries worldwide should call for the event to be taken away…”

For every 1,000 crimes reported in South Africa, only 430 criminals are arrested. Of these, only 77 are convicted and barely 8 of these are sentenced to two or more years of imprisonment.

There are no official figures but, since the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, farmers’ organizations say 3,000 whites in rural areas have been killed. The independent South African Human Rights Commission, set up by Mandela’s government, says the number is 2,500.

A child bludgeoned to death, his parents murdered

What is even less known is the particular viciousness of such attacks, the hate, torture, rape disembowelments, multiple stabbings and the like.

Attackers seem to be so filled with hate that there have been documented cases of them finding only dogs in empty, white-owned farmhouses. The dogs have first been tortured with boiling water, before being soaked in gasoline and set on fire.

Men, women and children are often accorded a similar “treatment”, with a frequent and widespread addition of brutal rape, usually before death,  sometimes even afterward.

This after all is a country where President Jacob Zuma, used as his election campaign song an old war chant from his days in the ANC’s military wing, Mshini wami -Bring me my machine-gun and where YouTube posts include footage of Nelson Mandela singing another song, Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer.

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe may be a pariah across the world but in South Africa he has long been given standing ovations and rapturous applause at ANC events. He can after all boast of long-standing “success” in ousting the white farmers, having them murdered and turning Zimbabwe into a basket case.

We wonder if FIFA has studied these issues sufficiently, before giving South Africa the 2010 World Cup, or whether political correctness has once again taken precedence over reality…

FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter states in his blog article entitled “Football has a socio-cultural dimension” that among other things:”… Another crucial area is the fight against racism. To my mind, fining the clubs ‘responsible’ does not work. They need to be docked points in the league and in European competitions and kicked out altogether if need be. Such punishment is actually envisaged in our Disciplinary Code and without it we cannot hope to eradicate this problem.

Additionally, the FIFA Confederations Cup in Africa has allowed us to identify the areas in which we need to make improvements, particularly in transport and accommodation…”

Mr. Blatter, there seems to be other issues at stake here, besides transport and accommodations.

Technorati Tags: Crime, fifa, murders, south africa, white farmers, world cup

The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones. It consumes about 70 percent of the water in the American West – water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound.

In addition, livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally – more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals – most of them healthy – consume (not by their choice, mind you) about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems, impairing the sex organs of fish. The antibiotic use in animals has also contributed to the growing antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which infect humans.

It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals fed people instead, you could feed China and India.

Meat that’s produced according to “alternative” standards (accounting for about one percent of meat in the United States) might be a better choice but not nearly so much better as some would have us believe. “Free-range chickens” would theoretically have access to the outdoors. But many of the so-called “free-range” chickens never see the light of day because they cannot make it through the crowded shed to the opening, which leads usually to a patch of concrete, anyway.

“Grass-fed” cows produce four times the methane – a greenhouse gas 21 times as powerful as carbon dioxide – and many grass-fed cows are raised on heavily fertilized and irrigated grass. Pastured pigs are still typically mutilated, fed commercial feed and prevented from rooting – their most basic instinct besides sex.

Deforestation is the single largest contributor to climate change – far larger that all the transportation-related pollution, power generation and livestock flatulence. As it stands, huge tracts of forests are cut down for a variety of reasons – for wood, farming, industry, human habitation and yes: the factory farming of livestock.

Issues of animal welfare are also related to all forms of meat production. Domestic animals suffer immensely, feel pain and may even realize the fate that awaits them. In an egg factory, male chicks (economically worthless) are summarily run through a grinder. Pigs are castrated without anesthesia, crated, tail-docked and nose-ringed. Milk cows are repeatedly impregnated through artificial insemination, confined to milking stalls and milked to yield 15 times the amount of milk they would produce under normal circumstances. When calves are removed from their mothers at birth, the mothers mourn their loss with heart-rending moans.

Then comes the slaughterhouse, an operation that’s left with millions of pounds of carcasses – called deadstock – that are incinerated or dumped in landfills.

If someone told you that a particular corporation was trashing the air, water and soil, causing more global warming than the transportation industry, consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels; unleashing the cruelest sort of suffering on innocent and defenseless beings; failing to recycle its waste, and clogging our arteries in the process, how would you react?

We are looking forward to hearing from all of you out there. This isn’t an attempt to turn everybody into vegetarians, or vegans, but for a variety of reasons we believe that meat consumption and large-scale livestock farming should be reduced by a noticeable margin.

There are horror stories and horrific videos being leaked out of factory farms everywhere. This PETA video is just one example, featuring a factory pig farm in North Carolina. It is patently obvious the the “people” involved in this sadistic acts are the real animals. To put it politely – scum of the earth. And to think that our jails are full of people sentenced for writing a bad check, or for possessing a small amount of marijuana…

Technorati Tags: climate change, cruelty, Environment, factory, farming, global warming, Health, Livestock, meat, pollution, production

We still have a whole lot of totally unresolved issues in our country.

Small issues for some, such as torture, invading and destroying other countries, killing hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent people, destroying the U.S. and the world economies and so forth.

At the same time, those with a bit more decency, brains and no criminal streaks in their makeup, might consider these issues not to be so small after all. We certainly hope that you belong to the second category.

Along with out friends at BadGalsRadio we have been creating and collecting all kinds of materials on these subjects and placing them on the Neocons on Parade website.

Technorati Tags: bush, Cheney, neocons on parade, Rumsfeld, torture, war crimes, Wolfowitz

We are re-posting this story – along with a few edits – after our friends at BadGalsRadio.

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Has America finally turned into the Land of the Evil and the Home of the Bullies?

Whatever happened to the hearts and mind approach?

America needs to rebuild the country instead of spending money hand and fist to allow baby killers and rapists to run roughshod over people in foreign lands; in the name of the American people.

I am not thinking that President Obama is incorrect in his assessment that there needs to be some sort of troop involvement in Afghanistan; just not American forces. Let the UN handle it’s business.  Do we remember when the Russians left? They said clearly that Afghanistan as a war is unwinnable for any outside force. And before them were the British and all kinds of other invaders, including Alexander of Macedonia. None of these people, or countries has ever managed to win a war in Afghanistan. Why?  The reasons are many, but probably the main one is that this is a holy war.

In addition, why is it that about the only thing that the conservatives seem to agree with the president on is the continued troop presence in Afghanistan?

Since it was clearly the British who have messed up entire regions of the world, by drawing arbitrary maps  and borders in the Middle East, Africa and Asia – including of course the borders between India and Pakistan and Pakistan and Afghanistan, shouldn’t they be forced to fix the mess that they have made? But of course Britain is a mere shadow of itself nowadays… Is that how America become the Keeper of The Worlds’ Rights ? If that’s the case – America should start at home first.

Immediately Approve the Health Care Bill, fix our crumbling infrastructure and send the ones who so strongly believe in “winning” the war in Afghanistan over there, as mercenaries, but not in my name, or yours, but strictly in their own. Let’s see how these “patriots” fare over there.  Getting rid of some of those people might help America once again become the worlds’ leader in Democracy and Civil Rights, while at the same time providing some jollies to the ones who are willing to so freely waste the blood of our troops and of anyone else, who they don’t agree with.

Is That Too Much To Ask For ?

America Fix Your Own House First before you start trying to clean up anybody else’s yard.  until Americans stop avoiding the depth of social ills in America; America will continue to be handicapped – and dissolute.

Many believe that America is on the road to recovery – yet we still see unprecedented disrespect for the highest office in the land; as well as a continuous climate of hatred, from sea to bloody sea.

America – Why so much anger in no particular direction ?

Has America finally turned into the Land of the Evil and the Home of the Bullies?

Charity Group: U.S. Troops Stormed Afghan Hospital

(bet.com)

A Swedish charity accused American troops Monday of storming through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants, The Associated Press reports.

The U.S. military said it was investigating the allegation. The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan accused the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division of entering the hospital without permission to look for insurgents in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, according to the charity’s country director, Anders Fange.

Fange said Monday that the troops’ actions were a violation of the sanctity of medical facilities in combat zones. “This is simply not acceptable,” he told AP. The U.S. troops entered the hospital looking for Taliban insurgents late at night last Wednesday, Fange said. He said they kicked in doors, tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients, and forced patients out of beds during their search.

When they left two hours later, the unit ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded militants were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated, Fange said. Navy public affairs officer Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker confirmed that the hospital was searched last week but had no other details. She said the military is looking into the incident. “We are investigating and we take allegations like this seriously,” she told AP. “Complaints like this are rare.”

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The bottom line is:  Can we really expect to achieve anything even close to “success”, or “victory” in Afghanistan? Probably not. As a matter of fact despite additional U.S. troops and a new commander things appear to be deteriorating all around.

Maybe it is time to dust off the presidential crystal ball and see what the future holds, before sending any more troops to Afghanistan?

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, America, iraq, land of the bully, war