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Introduction

  

The Mad Prophet is C Bryan Lavigne: writer, artist, musician and dedicated Anarcho-Syndicalist. He has written articles for YellowTimes.org and Open Source Politics, which can also be found in various other publications.

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C Bryan Lavigne

 
PaDDeD CeLL ProDucTioNs
and
The Mad Prophet
 

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The Autonomist
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Body and Soul
Confined Space
Demagogue
Factivism
Genfoods.Net
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Lying Media Bastards
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Today In Iraq
Veiled 4 Allah

  

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About-Face
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American Leftist
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ArtMachine
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Resources

 

AFL-CIO's BushWatch
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Sunday, June 20, 2004

 
Away And No Remorse.

I've decided to put this blog on permanent hiatus. Sorry. I haven't been able to give it my full attention this last couple of months and it looks like I won't be able to for some time to come. Maybe I'll be back in the future. You may still see me in other bloggers' comments though. Farewell.





Thursday, June 10, 2004

 
The Torture Memo.

For anyone who is interested, the full text of the Torture Memo is online here (PDF, via Talk Left.) It's quite disgusting.




 
Terrorism In 2003.

From the LA Times:
The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration.

When the most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report was issued April 29, senior Bush administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism. The report is considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world.

"Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against global terrorism, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a celebratory rollout of the report.

But on Tuesday, State Department officials said they underreported the number of terrorist attacks in the tally for 2003, and added that they expected to release an updated version soon.

Several U.S. officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision effort said the new report will show that the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years.

Buuuurn. There's more for anyone who's curious.

Here's the bogus report.





Tuesday, June 08, 2004

 
Coming Soon To A Theater Near You....

GOP pictures presents...

A film by Karl Rove...

Starring George W. Bush as....

Richard Nixon!

Okay, in all seriousness, this is just anecdotal evidence from several anonymous sources in the White House, but it doesn't sound far fetched considering Shrub-a-Dub's public statements. Here's an excerpt:
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."

--snip--

"We're at war, there's no doubt about it. What I don't know anymore is just who the enemy might be," says one troubled White House aide. "We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing."

--snip--

But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them "fucking assholes" in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him "unpatriotic" or "anti-American."

Nice.

Link via morons.org.





Sunday, June 06, 2004

 
"The Americans Have Let Me Join Their Fraternity!
Or: A [near] complete summary of the Prisoner Abuse Scandal

I am sick and tired of this shit. First it was The Vile Pill-Popping Pigboy comparing the Abu Ghraib (Grrr-eeb -- and a nice throaty "G" sound) pictures to a frat hazing. Nevermind that frat rushers volunteer for their treatment and prisoners have human rights garaunteed by international laws that prohibit such abuse. Nevermind that sexual abuse is a very serious matter, regardless of how harmless the pictures taken of a man with a hood on being forced to masturbate while a female guard stands by laughing seems at first.

Fuck all that. I can forgive that sort of ignorant fuckery. The Taguba Report hadn't been released when that shit started. The severity of it wasn't yet fully known. The jingoistic fuckheads in the Media and their chorus of ditto-monkeys in the blogdom of conservo-asshatvia had every reason to try to downplay the whole thing. I understand how politics work.

But it is still -- STILL -- fucking happening!

Like this dumb bitch who mere days ago summed up the whole thing by saying soldiers "[put] panties on a prisoner's head."

What?

I read the Taguba Report and I seem to remember some other stuff happening. Lets see:
6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;

f. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. (S) Writing "I am a Rapest" (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

And then there's this:
8. (U) In addition, several detainees also described the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses (ANNEX 26):

a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

And that's just at Abu Ghraib.

And lest a dumber than average ditto-monkey think this is still all just some guys having some harmless fun, 37 detainees have died. The deaths include one Afghan who was stripped naked, doused with water and left chained to a wall where he ultimately froze to death. Another who was shot in the chest for throwing rocks at a guard tower and another who was shot in an escape attempt prison authorities knew he was going to make the previous day. And several have died of "blunt force trauma" while being interrogated. They were interrogated to death, as I like to say. [Link]

And then there's the two guys who just pled guilty to using electricity to punish prisoners for throwing trash.

Have I forgotten anything? There's the growing accounts of rape, but I haven't found the source link. Oh, and there's the arbitrary detention of family members of suspects to use as hostages, but maybe that doesn't apply to this subject. I'm not even gonna go into how high up the chain of command this goes, (although the evidence suggests that it goes pretty high.)

The bottom line is that, when this all started with the Abu Ghraib sex abuse pictures, a stupid person could have simply written it off as harmless crap perpetrated by a few soldiers, but it has grown far beyond naked guys being forced to beat off and form human pyramids. It's grown beyond Abu Ghraib. It's grown beyond detainees. And it's grown beyond Iraq.

So could we please stop referring to this as "pranks" and "hazing" and "harmless sex-type abuse"?

Endnote -- It seems we're even exporting this "hazing" shite to Japan. Poor bastards.





Friday, June 04, 2004

 
More Anti-Terrorism Madness.

From Infoshop:
Four artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.

The subpoenas are the latest installment in a bizarre investigation in which members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force have mistaken an art project for a biological weapons laboratory (see background below). While most observers have assumed that the Task Force would realize the absurd error of its initial investigation of Steve Kurtz, the subpoenas indicate that the feds have instead chosen to press their "case" against the baffled professor.

--snip--

The artists involved are at a loss to explain the increasingly bizarre case. "I have no idea why they're continuing (to investigate)," said Beatriz da Costa, one of those subpoenaed. "It was shocking that this investigation was ever launched. That it is continuing is positively frightening, and shows how vulnerable the PATRIOT Act has made freedom of speech in this country." Da Costa is an art professor at the University of California at Irvine.

More Info.

Meanwhile, via Cursor, experts say it is only a matter of time before terrorists use a dirty bomb. Excerpt:
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) records point to "a dramatic rise" in the smuggling of radiological substances, the raw material for this bomb, the British science weekly says in next Saturday's issue.

"In 1996, there were just eight of these incidents, but last year there were 51," the report says. "Most cases are believed to have occurred in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. Smugglers target the radioactive materials used in factories, hospitals and research laboratories, which are not guarded as securely as those used by the nuclear industry."

It only gets scarier. Thanks to pResident McRetard and Co there "are still 1,000 radioactive sources that are unaccounted for in Iraq." Perhaps 9-11 wasn't their fault, but the next one sure the hell will be. (And the Dems aren't helping either. Spineless fucking sock monkeys.)





Wednesday, June 02, 2004

 
Bringing Troops Into Iraq Under The Table.

The Iraqi Colonial Government (err, sorry, "Coalition Provisional Authority,") has earmarked an additional $500 million of Iraq's oil revenue for private mercenaries in Iraq. Let's see, at a thousand bucks a month each, that's about 40,000 soldiers-of-fortune that will be kicking around Iraq for the next year. No, of course you don't get that many, you have to divide by two in order to account for Halliburton's price-gouging. Duh.

And, of course, private mercenaries don't get added to the Coalition War Dead Site. If it weren't for all the "civilian contractors" we'd have already topped 1,000 dead in Iraq. Why aren't they being counted anyway? They are the second biggest member of the "Coalition of the Willing" (20,000+ troops.) They are performing military jobs (security, distribution, etc.) They have taken more casualties than all the other coalition members combined (200+ dead.)

And in related news, the military announced today that the stop-loss program will be extended again, affecting anyone 90 days or less from gone. I guess that extra 20,000 troops last month wasn't enough. Nor, I assume, was the 4,000 troops taken outta S. Korea. Anyone else want to tell me about how military recruitment is just peachy lately? Not enough positions for all the volunteers, so I've heard again and again.

They just gotta limp by until they can bring back the draft next year though.





Tuesday, June 01, 2004

 
A Perfect Example Of Why Voting Is Meaningless.

This is fucking criminal:
"Florida's 2000 felon purge program resulted in over 50,000 legal voters being disenfranchised," said Leon County elections supervisor Ion Sancho in a written statement. "When asked for assurances that the [2004 felon list] was 90 percent accurate -- the minimum level local supervisors of elections requested for such a list -- we were told that it was better than the 2000 list, with no data to support its accuracy." [Link]

90-fucking-percent!?!?! I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to deny any eligible voter their right to vote. It's not my preferred form of governance though, so maybe I could be wrong. Anyone want to set me straight on this? It's your bloody "Democracy."

Ha. What fucking good is your precious Constitution anyway? Not worth the government it empowers, is it? I'm tellin' ya: Ya can't trust anybody with power. Can't. Proven every day. Why won't you listen? Do you think any of your "elections" are legitimate? Ha.