Random News Stories

[McGrupp]

Just got riled up over a news article only to realize it was over a year old.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/03/the_anti_protest_bill_signed_by_barack_obama_is_a_quiet_attack_on_free_speech_.html

I made an MSpaint thing and everything....

[Junkenstein]

This looks like an unusual level of fucked up. That may just be the Canada aspect though:
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-canadian-government-is-withholding-documents-concerning-the-torture-of-native-children

In the early 1990s an affiliation of Cochrane, Kapuskasing, and James Bay's OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) detectives were assigned to investigate one of the largest claims of sexual and physical abuse against children in Canadian history. The testimony they amassed by talking to hundreds of survivors of St. Anne's Residential School in Fort Albany Ontario was horrifying. The investigation provided 7,000 pages of stories that wouldn't be out of place in memoirs of concentration camp survivors, or of individuals trapped in a country where ethnic cleansing is a government policy.

The accounts of physical and sexual abuse are brutal and numerous – hetero and homosexual child rape, children being beaten with strops and rudimentary whips, forced ingestion of noxious substances (rotten porridge that children would throw up and then be forced to eat), sexual fondling, forced masturbation... the list goes on and on. But one of the most appalling and debasing examples of the indignity and the abuse suffered by children at St. Anne's is that of being strapped down and tortured in a homemade electric chair – sometimes as a form of punishment – but other times just as a form of amusement for the missionaries, who, while committing these acts, were supposedly the ones "civilising" the "Indians."

Edmund Metatawabin was the chief of the Fort Albany First Nation in the 1990s, and the man who first brought these allegations to the attention of the OPP. Both he and his peers had been strapped down in the electric chair and he recalled the experiences as such: "Small boys used to have their legs flying in front of them... the sight of a child being electrocuted and their legs flying out in front was a funny sight for the missionaries and they'd all be laughing... the cranking of the machine would be longer and harder. Now you're inflicted with real pain. Some of them passed out."

In 1997, the OPP concluded its investigation and seven former employees of St. Anne's were charged and convicted of a variety of assaults. The victims were never compensated, and the 7,000 pages of investigative evidence collected by the OPP was locked away somewhere in Orillia. Now, the victims are seeking compensation, and the federal government – who has subsequently become the defendant in a case involving the sexual abuse and torture of children by an electric chair – is attempting to keep those 7,000 documents from ever seeing the light of day, thus preventing the possibility of any recompense. The government is citing "privacy reasons" for their lack of transparency.

[Cain]

Unfortunately, not all that fucked up for Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplessis_Orphans

The Duplessis Orphans (French: les Orphelins de Duplessis) were the victims of a scheme in which several thousand orphaned children were falsely certified as mentally ill by the government of the province of Quebec, Canada, and confined to psychiatric institutions.

Beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1960s, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis, in cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church which ran the orphanages, developed a scheme to obtain federal funding for thousands of children, most of whom had been "orphaned" through forced separation from their unwed mothers. In some cases the Catholic orphanages were re-labelled as health-care facilities and in other cases the children were shipped from orphanages to existing insane asylums. Years later, long after these institutions were closed, the children who had survived them and become adults began to speak out about the harsh treatment and sexual abuse they endured at the hands of the psychiatrists, Roman Catholic priests, nuns, and administrators.

Canada has very fucked up history where children and the Catholic Church are concerned. 

You wont be surprised to learn that St. Anne's is a Catholic run school.

[Junkenstein]

The more you know, Thanks Cain.

I bet this will have a few ramifications for the region:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23417029

Al-Qaeda has said it carried out two mass jailbreaks in Iraq, which freed hundreds of prisoners including senior leaders of the Islamist militant group.

In an online statement, al-Qaeda said Sunday's attack was the final one in a campaign aimed at freeing inmates and targeting justice system officials.

At least 20 security guards died when gunmen stormed the Abu Ghraib and Taji jails near Baghdad.

Abu Ghraib was used to torture regime opponents during Saddam Hussein's rule.

The prison's infamy increased in 2004 when photographs were published showing detainees being abused by US guards.

On Tuesday, an al-Qaeda affiliate calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said it carried out the attacks on the prisons.

Seems pretty bold, unless they had very good intel and a few plants in strategic places.

The target is pretty perfect too. The west can't condemn this completely as they pretty much ensured this would happen. I doubt any locals will be upset to see these places raided either.

Claims of 500 prisoners freed. This is how you do PR.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Unfortunately, not all that fucked up for Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplessis_Orphans

The Duplessis Orphans (French: les Orphelins de Duplessis) were the victims of a scheme in which several thousand orphaned children were falsely certified as mentally ill by the government of the province of Quebec, Canada, and confined to psychiatric institutions.

Beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1960s, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis, in cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church which ran the orphanages, developed a scheme to obtain federal funding for thousands of children, most of whom had been "orphaned" through forced separation from their unwed mothers. In some cases the Catholic orphanages were re-labelled as health-care facilities and in other cases the children were shipped from orphanages to existing insane asylums. Years later, long after these institutions were closed, the children who had survived them and become adults began to speak out about the harsh treatment and sexual abuse they endured at the hands of the psychiatrists, Roman Catholic priests, nuns, and administrators.

Canada has very fucked up history where children and the Catholic Church are concerned. 

You wont be surprised to learn that St. Anne's is a Catholic run school.

Automatically assumed as soon as I heard "missionary" and "paedophile "

Something about the catholic sect that goes hand in hand with kiddie fiddling. When I say "something" what I mean is "celibacy"

[Doktor Howl]

Relearning Vietnam's lesson, ITT.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/25/19658987-i-risked-my-life-for-what-iraq-war-veterans-chilled-by-countrys-slide-into-civil-war?lite

Our new Gods provide.

[Doktor Howl]

DAMMIT!  Stop muddying up my view on things!

http://www.today.com/news/george-h-w-bush-shaving-head-was-right-thing-do-6C10760866

[Doktor Howl]

AGAIN!

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/26/19663755-canyousurvive-politicians-try-living-on-minimum-wage-but-then-what?lite

[McGrupp]

DAMMIT!  Stop muddying up my view on things!

http://www.today.com/news/george-h-w-bush-shaving-head-was-right-thing-do-6C10760866

That is a cool thing to do.

All I can think about is that now is the time to crazy glue the rainbow wig on his head.

[Pergamos]

DAMMIT!  Stop muddying up my view on things!

http://www.today.com/news/george-h-w-bush-shaving-head-was-right-thing-do-6C10760866

Oh no, George Bush was a human being, flawed in some ways, good in others, much like the flawed but not actually sociopathic CEO's of the companies that are making a mess of the world...

[Doktor Howl]

Very nice, Permagos.  Very nice.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

DAMMIT!  Stop muddying up my view on things!

http://www.today.com/news/george-h-w-bush-shaving-head-was-right-thing-do-6C10760866

Herbert Walker was definitely a less shitty President than his son, too. Downright reasonable, by today's standards.

[Telarus]

India's army reportedly spent six months watching "Chinese spy drones" violating its air space, only to find out they were actually Jupiter and Venus.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-23455128

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

DAMMIT!  Stop muddying up my view on things!

http://www.today.com/news/george-h-w-bush-shaving-head-was-right-thing-do-6C10760866

Oh no, George Bush was a human being, flawed in some ways, good in others, much like the flawed but not actually sociopathic CEO's of the companies that are making a mess of the world...

Except that a relatively high proportion of those CEOs actually ARE sociopaths. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/

[Cain]

Whenever I see George HW Bush and a child mentioned in the same sentence, I can't help but think of Craig J. Spence and be subsequently creeped out.

There's no evidence Bush knew...but there were always rumours and innuendo as to his involvement.