Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

No ethics: Report says military, CIA compelled medics to abuse detainees

restraint chair
© Getty imagesRestraint chair
Defense Department and CIA interrogation policies after 9/11 forced medical professionals to abandon their ethical obligations to "do no harm" to those in their care and some prohibited practices, including force-feeding of hunger strikers, continue today, a report issued Monday alleges.

The report, Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror, was carried out by a 19-member task force of Columbia University's Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the Open Society Foundations. The researchers spent two years examining public records of medical professionals' involvement in military and intelligence interrogations and treatment of detainees.

It accuses the counter-terrorism operations of having "improperly demanded that U.S. military and intelligence agency health professionals collaborate in intelligence gathering and security practices in a way that inflicted severe harm on detainees in U.S. custody."

The involvement of medical professionals in abuse and interrogation occurred at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for terrorism suspects as well as at Bagram air base near Kabul, Afghanistan, and at other CIA "black sites," the report claimed.

Doctors, nurses, psychologists and medics, in violation of their ethical commitments, were said to have been compelled to take part in "enhanced interrogation" methods, including the simulated drowning procedure called waterboarding that has been defined as torture and prohibited from practice by any U.S. agents.

Extinguisher

In Tehran, 'death to America' still rings 34 years later

Tehran protest image
© BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty ImagesAnti-US sentiment alive and strong in Iran
Despite recent signs of a thaw in relations between Washington and Tehran, Iran is going ahead with a 34-year-old November ritual: anti-U.S. demonstrations to commemorate the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

With each passing year, the impact of the annual protests has diminished. But the anniversary still symbolizes tensions and mistrust at the center of the U.S.-Iran relationship, and hard-line conservatives are calling for "death to America" chants to be a key part of Monday's event.

Now under the control of the hard-line Student Basij Organization, the old embassy grounds remain known here as the "Den of Espionage,'' and anti-American propaganda fills the walls inside and outside the compound.

Pistol

60 Minutes' Benghazi source, British mercenary Dylan Davies, admits lying

 US consulate compound in Benghazi
© AFP/Getty ImagesThis file photo taken on September 11, 2012 shows an armed man waving his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the US consulate compound in Benghazi.
In an explosive report on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday, the British supervisor of local security guards protecting the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, provided a harrowing account of the extremist attack that killed four Americans.

The man whom CBS called Morgan Jones, a pseudonym, described racing to the Benghazi compound while the attack was underway, scaling a 12-foot wall and downing an extremist with the butt end of a rifle as he tried in vain to rescue the besieged Americans.

The "60 Minutes" broadcast, in which Jones also recounted his clandestine visit that night to a Benghazi hospital to view the body of slain U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, helped propel a new round of partisan conflict this week over the attack.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and other Republican lawmakers referred to it repeatedly during a Wednesday news conference. Graham said he would block confirmation of all of President Obama's nominees, including Jeh Johnson as homeland security secretary and Janet L. Yellen as head of the Federal Reserve, until the administration allowed government witnesses to the attack to appear before Congress.

Comment: The very fact that Senator Graham is making an issue out of this tells us that 'the Benghazi affair' is a red herring.

Benghazi Attacks, Political Theatre and Wild Speculations


Cult

Cross country runner refuses to run after being assigned "666" number


A Whitley County student athlete says it would have gone against her religious beliefs to run with the race number '6-6-6'. She and her coach tried to get her a different number, and were told they could not.

Nerves over the race turned to frustration for Whitley County High School junior Codie Thacker because of a different number. It would have been her third time running this race. "I've trained since June for this race," she said.

And if she won the regional, it would have been her first time competing for the state championship. "I was so nervous I thought about it all week," said Thacker.

X

Former House Speaker Jim Wright denied voter ID under new Texas law

Former House Speaker Jim Wright
© UnknownFormer House Speaker Jim Wright
Former House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, was denied the identification he needs in order to vote under the state's strict new voter ID law.

Wright told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he was denied an ID on Saturday when he and his assistant, Norma Ritchson, went to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).

"Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn't give me an ID," he said.

The 90-year-old, who served as Speaker from 1987 to 1989, only has an expired driver's license and faculty ID card from the Texas Christian University, neither of which are valid to vote under the new law.

Wolf

"Why the dangerous "thigh gap" trend makes me mad", model Robyn Lawley

© Getty"Thigh Gap"
"Thinspiration" has always been a scary subject online -- when unhealty images and messages proliferated on social networks such as Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram are used to encourage users to be unhealthily thin.

There is now a disturbing breed of thinspiration that pressures women and girls to pursue a "thigh gap," which is defined as the space between one's thighs. Everywhere online, users are posting aspirational pictures of thigh gaps, used as inspiration for weight loss and dieting. "I want the thigh gap. Right now, I could start a fire b/t my thighs," one user laments on Pinterest. "No goal was ever achieved without thigh gap."

The sad reality is that I've known about the "thigh gap" since I was 12 - and there is nothing about this trend that's new to me. Watching countless fashion shows as a teenager, I was unfortunately inundated with images of women and girls who had pronounced space between their thighs. The models' legs would never come close to touching, even as they stomped down the runway. Staring down at my own thighs, I can safely say that has never been the case for me. I'm now classified as a "plus size" model in the fashion industry.

V

The "Dark Mail Alliance": Keeping the NSA out of your email

Edward J. Snowden
© Photo by AFPTV/AFP/Getty ImagesEdward Snowden inspired the "Dark Mail Alliance."
Email might be on the verge of a radical makeover. And the NSA is not going to like it.

On Wednesday, two American companies with a track record of offering encrypted private communications are set to join forces in an unprecedented bid to counter dragnet Internet spying. Some of the world's top cryptographers are behind the secure communications provider Silent Circle, and they've teamed up with the founder of Lavabit, the email provider used by Edward Snowden, which recently shut down in a bid to resist surveillance. They're calling it the "Dark Mail Alliance." For months, the team has been quietly working on rebuilding email as we know it - and they claim to have had a breakthrough.

The newly developed technology has been designed to look just like ordinary email, with an interface that includes all the usual folders - inbox, sent mail, and drafts. But where it differs is that it will automatically deploy peer-to-peer encryption, so that users of the Dark Mail technology will be able to communicate securely. The encryption, based on a Silent Circle instant messaging protocol called SCIMP, will apply to both content and metadata of the message and attachments. And the secret keys generated to encrypt the communications will be ephemeral, meaning they are deleted after each exchange of messages.

V

Remember, remember the 5th of November! Million Mask March in London

Jason N Parkinson was on the ground in central London to observe the Million Mask march. London was the biggest of the worldwide chain of protests. In Parliament Square protesters burned energy bills to oppose the rising cost of fuel and there were minor clashes with police in riot gear as demonstrators also gathered near Buckingham Palace, where a fire was started yards away from its gates. No arrests took place, according to the Metropolitan police.

Attention

Man plunges 500 feet from helicopter in shocking California 'suicide' over Pacific Ocean

  • Gregory McFadden, 61, jumped from a private helicopter above the Newport Beach shoreline around 1pm Tuesday
  • McFadden was given CPR after rescuers plucked him from the ocean
  • He was taken to an area hospital where he died of his critical injuries
Image
Scene: 61-year-old Gregory McFadden jumped from a helicopter near the end of Balboa Pier, here at Newport Beach, California
A man fell hundreds of feet to his death from a helicopter hovering above the shores of posh Newport Beach, California Tuesday and authorities believe it may have been a suicide.

Gregory McFadden, 61, was seen plummeting from the private aircraft into the chilly Pacific around 1pm near the beach town's Balboa Pier.

Authorities say the West Covina man simply opened the door and jumped out. He died at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian after rescuers plucked him from the ocean and began CPR.

McFadden splashed down near the pier and a busboy at a restaurant at the end of the pier watched him fall from the white Robinson R44 craft, according to Ruby's Diner general manager David Saighani.

Stormtrooper

Cops sodomize man for traffic stop, then it gets even more terrifying


David Eckert was shopping at Wal-mart and upon leaving he rolled through a stop sign. He could have never imagined the living nightmare that he was about to experience.

When Eckert got out of his vehicle the police thought that he appeared to be "clenching his buttocks." What followed was nothing short of torture and rape.

This poor man was driven to the first hospital which refused to do the bidding of the police on grounds of ethics. But the second hospital did not.

According to the report Eckert was x-rayed and nothing was found. Then, doctors anally penetrated Mr. Eckert, nothing was found. For a second time, Mr. Eckert's anus was penetrated, all the while he is refusing to consent, again nothing was found. After the x-ray and the two penetrations, doctors proceeded to insert an enema into Mr. Eckert's anus, and he watched in horror and disbelief as doctors searched through his stool.

However, for these sickos, it was still not enough, Eckert was given a second enema, and then a third!! Still, nothing was found. He was then given a second X-ray, nothing was found. He was then prepped for surgery, yes surgery! Mr. Eckert was given a colonoscopy and his intestines were searched. Still, no drugs were found.