Tag Archives: torture

Religion, Politics and the End of the World – Part 1

Author: truthdig Added: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:10:09 -0800 Duration: 1290 Sam Harris and Chris Hedges debate one another at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles. Truthdig editor Robert Scheer moderates.

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Religion, Politics and the End of the World – Part 1

REVIEW: Survival of the Dead Devoured by Too Many Unanswered Questions

During the torture-porn heyday, zombie maestro George A. Romero issued a curt but cutting assessment of the trend: “I don’t get [them]. They’re lacking metaphor.” Coming from the father of a micro-genre he has successfully tweaked to suit the times for more than 40 years, that had to hurt. The cyclical resurgence of zombie films — of which Romero’s 2008 Diary of the Dead and now Survival of the Dead are only a part — suggests that the metaphor is key to its endurance; the market for graphic internal anatomy lessons seems more finite. But while Survival of the Dead does its best to work up a decent allegorical bent — this time involving territorial pissing matches within a country under siege — its power is diffused (and frankly, confused) by its execution. Instead of closing in for the metaphorical kill, the film frequently wanders off in a new, noncommital direction.

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REVIEW: Survival of the Dead Devoured by Too Many Unanswered Questions

Man Stabs Wife 250 times, Eats her Liver and Lungs: Gets 15 Years in jail

Insane? An Abuse Victim? A Muslim Husband? Late last week, Google directed me to a newspaper in Australia (!) where I read about a man who stabbed his wife 250 times; needless to say, he killed her. The report went on to allege that this killer also ate his wife’s liver and lungs while their four year-old daughter watched from the next room. The article also said that this fiend was sentenced to only 15 years to life. It also noted that although this man stabbed his wife 250 times, he hotly denies being a cannibal. That bad he’s not. Even monstrous killers have pride. What the hell is wrong there Down Under, I wondered. And then—I read the most amazing bit of information. This heinous murder had not taken place in Australia but in my own backyard, in Queens, New York, three years ago, in 2007. And, while the crime and 2010 sentencing were viewed as newsworthy in Australia and India, the sentencing was not covered at all in the (hardcopy) liberal mainstream media. Well, it does sound more like a National Enquirer story, doesn’t it? Now, who would commit such a savage murder? Was the murderer a domestic version of Jeffrey Dahmer who raped, murdered, then ate children and young men? But Dahmer and his ilk are not often married to women and do not have children. Well, a serial killer might do this to a girl or woman whom he does not know, someone whom he believes is a prostitute. Again, these psychopaths do not prey upon their wives. And then, of course, I knew, “racist” that I presumably am, that the murder had probably been committed by a Third World immigrant, let’s say, someone from South Asia, for these are all the pseudonyms for…Muslims and for Muslim terrorists. Sure enough, the murderer’s name is Mohammed Solaiman; his victim’s name was Shahida Sultanna. The New York Post and the Daily News covered the sentencing. The New York Times did not. Ironically, the Paper of Record did cover this murder, briefly, in 2007, when it happened—but in an article that also covered another Queens-based murder—as if to say that the borough of “Queens” was the true subject. Needless to say, no reporter dared note the murderer’s ethnicity, culture, or religion. It’s anybody’s guess. Clearly, journalists might not view this information as relevant or they may already know that their editors will simply take it out as “racist” profiling. In court, Solaiman’s lawyer claimed that Solaiman, who was 49 years old at the time of the crime, was an “abused” husband whose 32-year-old wife had verbally and physically “abused” him for six years. While May-December marriages certainly exist in the West, they more closely characterize marriages in the developing and Muslim world. Of course, the other Mo (Hassan), the husband who beheaded his wife in Buffalo, is also claiming that he was an “abused” husband too. Just like Major Nidal Hasan, Buffalo “Mo” is claiming that he’s the victim and/or that he suffers from some diminished capacity or emotional disturbance brought about by “abuse.” This is a consistent strategy. A number of Muslim wife-killers and daughter-killers honestly feel that they are the true victims, that their wives abused them and their daughters “dishonored” them—and that, in turn, these adult men felt “attacked,” and were forced to “defend” themselves. In 1989, Palestina Isa’s father, a St Louis, Missouri-based Abu Nidal terrorist, described how “attacked” he and his family felt by his too-Americanized daughter. Thus, after a lifetime of physical and verbal abuse had failed to tame his daughter, he and his wife stabbed the 16 year-old thirteen times. As I’ve discovered in my most recent study about honor killings, while there are Hindus and Sikhs who perpetrate honor killings, this is primarily a Muslim-on-Muslim crime. And, these deaths are often very torturous. Worldwide, the torture rate that accompanies a female honor killing is 54%; North America has the lowest torture rate (35%); the Muslim world rate is 51%; Europe has the highest torture rate (68%). Ellen Sheeley, the author of a study on honor killings in Jordan, wrote to me privately and congratulated me on the study. However, she said that every single honor killing she’d investigated in Jordan was a torture-killing (read it all) added by: crystalman

Eli Roth Tattles to Peaches Pornographer Big Ben’s Mother [Telling Mom]

Torture porn provocateur and Peaches boyfriend Eli Roth wrote a letter chastising Meredith Bluett-Mills , “mother of ‘thatcoolguyben’.” He calls Peaches a “bright, intelligent, incredibly creative young writer” and vows to use the “instantaneous connectivity of the internet” against the Bluett-Millses. More

Eli Roth Tattles on Peaches’ Pornographer Big Ben to His Mother [Telling Mom]

Torture porn provocateur and Peaches boyfriend Eli Roth wrote a letter chastising Meredith Bluett-Mills , “mother of ‘thatcoolguyben’.” He calls Peaches a “bright, intelligent, incredibly creative young writer” and vows to use the “instantaneous connectivity of the internet” against the Bluett-Millses. More

Andrew Garcia, Crystal Bowersox Round Out "American Idol" Top 24

Seventeen more finalists join the top 24 as confusion reigns over final male slot. By Gil Kaufman Andrew Garcia on “American Idol” Wednesday Photo: Fox With a wait almost as painful as the one the contestants went through, “American Idol” fans finally got the rest of this year’s top 24 on Wednesday night (February 17), with a number of early favorites making the semifinals, including Andrew Garcia, Crystal Bowersox, Katie Stevens, Ashley Rodriguez and Haeley Vaughn. After seven singers made the cut on Tuesday, the first woman through the gate on night two was Orlando’s Janell Wheeler, 24, whose Hollywood Week was filled with ups and downs, swinging between a strong acoustic performance of Estelle’s “American Boy” to a blown take of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.” New judge Ellen DeGeneres kept up her rope-a-dope style, seemingly setting the blond wine-sales rep up for disappointment only to wave Wheeler through. With the pace much quicker than Tuesday night’s pedantic two-hour torture session, deep voiced, shaggy-haired ’70s rocker Tyler Grady quickly got his ticket punched. “I think we wanna see those moves again,” Kara DioGuardi told the drummer about his Roger Daltrey-inspired stage acrobatics. He was swiftly followed by second-timer Lacey Brown, who made the top 50 last season and was back in the hot seat. Despite Simon Cowell telling her the female competition was even tougher this year, Brown got in thanks to a haunting rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” Diva-in-training Ashley Rodriguez was next, followed by ukulele-strumming Alex Lambert, little seen Joe Mu

Project Runway: Someone’s in the Kitchen with Designers

Project Runway is all about vision and delusion. The vision to send a chic New Yorker to rural locations. The delusion to put him in an apron.

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Project Runway: Someone’s in the Kitchen with Designers

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/ambassador-cia-people-tortured/ The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country. Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

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Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

Bill Gates says Sri Lanka poised for greater growth

Sri Lanka is poised for greater economic growth and development, said world’s richest entrepreneurs, Bill Gates to President Mahinda Rajapakse via a special audio visual message at a ceremony to handover a… read more

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Bill Gates says Sri Lanka poised for greater growth

Al Qaeda Misreads Pakistan

“FROM KABUL