Stolen Blue Box

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

(Source: fuckyeahsubversivekawaii)

kateordie:

New Comic Day! Not everyone will react well to this approach. Some people don’t want to talk. I guess it’s about judging the situation accordingly.

nontransparent:

honeybeekhairy:

scatteredthoughtsandmusings:

cyborgmemoirs:

The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates.

Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “[C]hildren being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems,” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution.

In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.

The highest rates are in the city of Fallujah, which underwent two massive US bombing campaigns in 2004. Though the U.S. initially denied it, officials later admitted using white phosphorous. In addition, U.S. and British forces unleashed an estimated 2,000 tons of depleted uranium ammunitions in populated Iraqi cities in 2003.

DU, a chemically toxic heavy metal produced in nuclear waste, is used in weapons due to its ability to pierce through armor. That’s why the US and UK were among a handful of nations (France and Israel) who in December refused to sign an international agreement to limit its use, insisting DU is not harmful, science be damned. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s refusal to release details about where DU munitions were fired has made it difficult to clean up.

[more……..]

This breaks my heart :(

:’(

 this what liberating the Iraquis from a tyrannical ruler entails and then have the nerve to ask ”why do they hate us” all those who ”support the troops” this is part of what the troops do,surely you must be proud of them for fighting to preserve your ”freedoms”

This is a case of evil vs. evil. I mean, Saddam Hussein gassed the kurds. In one day he killed thousands out of spite. So it’s hard to say Saddam should still be in power.

But then you have to ask: “OK, fair point. So why didn’t we go into Darfur, Cambodia, Riwanda, why did we just watch SA Apartheid on the news? Why did we support CONTRA? Where are the troops in Tibet, protecting a country we supposedly support? Where’s your moral superiority when you have no tactical reason to be there?

And what about the shit we did to Iraq? Does that just go unanswered? The insane rate of Green-on-Civ rape? The use of irradiated - no, seriously, fucking irradiated ammunition - and not bothering to clean it up? The use of land mines around military bases that have killed children and are against the Geneva convention?”

I still struggle with the Iraq invasion because Saddam Hussein was an evil sadistic bastard. And some of what’s been done by the US can be seen as positive - roads are being built, an infrastructure is going up that has definitely improved some lives and, compared with the old systems, has some semblance of function (especially In terms of medical response). But you don’t get to claim to be the world’s police force and then both ignore the slaughter of innocents and fuck up your few good moments with disturbing atrocities.

The US is a dirty cop who thinks he’s doing just enough good to not be the bad guy. And it’s wrong.

(Source: dirtroaddancincountrygirl)

angryyoungandnative:

sicklycryptic:

assholeofday:

Asshole of the Day for June 10, 2013: Allen West

There’s lots of talk in Washington about the 26,000 cases of military rape. In fact Sen. Saxby Chambliss said that it’s due to hormones, and so there’s nothing we can do, for which he won Asshole Of The Day for June 5. Today, former soldier and congressmen Allen West took a crack at explaining it:

I understand civilian oversight of the military. We all understand that as all officers who served in uniform. But when you start to have this interjection of, you know, political, you know, will against, you know, the military, good order and discipline, where you start to try to usurp the commanders’ authority and I guess replace it with some type of political, legal officers, and things of that nature. Then the next thing you know, it goes from just dealing with this, you know, sexual assault thing to, you know, making decisions on the battlefield.

Read the rest

Women in the military => women in combat => usurp commanders’ authority => “this sexual assault thing”.

Any time you start blaming women for rape, you are an asshole, Allen West.

Full story: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/10/2127821/allen-west-military-sexual-assault/

Another reason why the military is fucking stupid. Why would anyone sign up for all that bullshit?

That conditioning must be working.

Jesus fuckin’ Christ. Is this a real thing?

Yeah. And that’s the tip of the asshole iceberg.

thepeoplesrecord:

TW: Violence - Brooklyn police beat gay man, use homophobic slurs, victim & friends say
June 10, 2013

A 26-year-old gay man was beaten eight days ago just outside Brooklyn’s 79th Police Precinct by police officers who made homosexual slurs, the victim and two of his roommates who witnessed the incident tell the Voice.

The encounter, which took place around 4 a.m. on Sunday, June 2, and is under investigation by NYPD Internal Affairs, erupted after an officer standing in the precinct parking lot mistakenly accused one of the men of urinating on the side of the stationhouse, and then called in as many as 5 other cops to join in the assault.

Williamsburg waiter Josh Williams [pictured above], 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, suffered a laceration on his face that required four stitches, bruised ribs, a black eye, and scrape on his torso. Williams and his roommates—Tony Maenza and Ben Collins, both 24—were then arrested on specious charges in what they call an effort to cover-up the attack. Maenza made an iPhone video of a portion of the incident.

The Voice has also learned that NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau started investigating after someone apparently associated with the precinct filed a complaint.

“This case is so extreme in how the encounter escalated so fast over something so silly and turned so violent,” says Williams’ lawyer, Cynthia Conti-Cook. “Based on how the incident started, there’s very little to justify such extreme action other than homophobia.”

Williams moved to New York from San Francisco fairly recently. He told the Voice in an interview Friday, “Thinking about it right now, I’m feeling very shaky. I’m a wreck—confused, angry—over the fact that people who are supposed to protect me did this to me for absolutely no reason.”

Williams’ ordeal began as the three men walked past the 79th Precinct stationhouse at 263 Tompkins Avenue. Williams told his roommates he needed to take a piss, but they told him to wait as they were almost home. An officer standing in the precinct parking lot shouted at them, asking if he had just urinated on the building. Williams said, “no.”

“The officer shouted, ‘Did you really just piss on the precinct?’” Collins says. “Josh says no. The officer didn’t go over and check whether the building had actually been peed on.”

The officer called them over. Williams and Collins complied, and the officer asked for their ID cards. Collins asked whether they were being detained. “He rolled his eyes and sort of snapped, twisting an arm behind my back and slamming me against a car,” Williams says. “I was able to ask him what was going on, and he slammed me against the car and pepper-sprayed me. I was blinded and disoriented.”

Collins: “He put his hand on Josh’s neck and pushed his face into the hood of the car twice and pepper-sprayed him. Josh never tried to resist or run away.”

Williams says he remembers then being tossed against a fence and then a number of officers putting their hands on him. “I get slammed to the ground and cuffed and then pepper-sprayed again. I remember yelling, ‘Why are you so angry?’ From there I don’t remember much.”

Other officers shoved Collins backward several feet and called him a “fucking asshole.” “Josh was picked up and slammed on his face into the sidewalk and maced again,” Collins says.

Maenza was watching the incident from the sidewalk and videotaping with his phone. “Josh is on the ground, he’s surrounded by officers, he’s been maced, and they pick him up and take him into the precinct,” he says. “At that point, one of the officers called us ‘faggots.’”

Collins recalled that the officer called them, “fucking faggots.”

Handcuffed, temporarily blinded, and bleeding, Williams was dragged into the stationhouse, and left in a holding cell. He was given a charge of resisting arrest. It took several hours for a paramedic to arrive to treat his injuries and by then, his wrists had swelled alarmingly.

While he was finally in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, he says an officer remarked, “We better not tell him where the soap is.” After he was treated, he was taken back to the precinct, where he was fingerprinted and sent to central booking. He was arraigned at some point the following day, Monday, June 3, more than 24 hours after the initial encounter.

Rewind to the moment just after Williams was taken, handcuffed, into the precinct. Maenza says cops told him and Collins to go home. He mentioned to one officer that he had recorded the incident on his phone. “We don’t get halfway down the block when six or seven cops surround us,” he says. “I’m asking, ‘Are we being detained?’ They handcuff us, and take us into the station, and one of the cops says, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find something to charge you with.’”

“I believe they arrested us because when the last officer who called us faggots, Tony told him that we had the incident on video, and I’m sure he relayed that information inside and they then decided to follow us outside and arrest us.”Collins says he was slammed against a parked van and handcuffed. “I asked repeatedly what we were being charged with, and I wasn’t able to get an answer.

Full article (including video)