Oh motherfucking CHRIST

.
From the wires tonight:


Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.

The images are among photographs included in a 2004 report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison conducted by U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba.

Taguba included allegations of rape and sexual abuse in his report, and on Wednesday he confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that images supporting those allegations were also in the file.

"These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency," Taguba, who retired in January 2007, was quoted as saying in the paper.

He said he supported Obama's decision not to release them, even though Obama had previously pledged to disclose all images relating to abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one," Taguba said. "The sequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

"The mere depiction of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."

The newspaper said at least one picture showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Others are said to depict sexual assaults with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

The photographs relate to 400 alleged cases of abuse carried out at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons between 2001 and 2005.



GODFUCKINGDAMNIT. I mean, I knew those prisoners had been tortured, so I guess I knew this kind of thing must have gone on. BUT SHIT FUCKING GODDAMN it's one thing to suspect it and another to have it confirmed.

WHAT THE FUCK? I MEAN SERIOUSLY - WHAT THE EVERLOVIN' MOTHER FUCKIN' WHAT???


Fucking Cheney should be thrown up against a wall and SHOT for starting this shit. AFTER he gets plugged good and hard by a gang of Iraqi prison guards. With TRUNCHEONS. and RIFLE BUTTS. and a fucking PHOSPHORESCENT TUBE.

MOTHERFUCKER!!!

My encounter with Leonard Nimoy

.
I just posted this over at ontd_startrek, and realized I never did tell any of you on my friends list about this. So here it is:


Last year, Leonard Nimoy, he of the pointy ears and ROCKIN' Vulcan lute stylings, released a book of photographs titled The Full Body Project, in which were presented a collection of really beautiful black-and-white portraits of women who are, shall we say, NOT shaped like bicycles. This really appealed to me, as I've not only never been thin, but have been friends and lovers with more than one lovely zaftig lady.


"The average American woman," Nimoy writes, "weighs 25 percent more than the models selling the clothes. There is a huge industry built up around selling women ways to get their bodies closer to the fantasy ideal. Pills, diets, surgery, workout programs. . . . The message is 'You don't look right. If you buy our product, you can get there.'"


So when I heard he was doing a gallery show and signing, ( I just had to go... )

*snorfle*

.
Don't you love it when you post something that's a general comment, and somebody you never heard of runs up and starts going on about how OFFENDED they are, in that Clerks-customer tone of whiny fragility? And you're sitting there staring at the screen, thinking, "Uh, and you are who, exactly?"

I mean, what is it that compels people to take a comment that has nothing to do with them and turn it into a personal insult? And then feel the need to proclaim their woundedness? I may be many things, but I've always tried to avoid being that particular flavor of asshat, you know?

Because the only thing I get out of someone behaving like that, is the urge to say, "Yo, EVERYTHING ISN'T ABOUT YOU." Sometimes a quip is just a quip. Had I simply been asked why I said that, I'd have been happy to explain, because it's an interesting anecdote. But to wade in with arms waving, going on about how OFFENDED you are - I think all of you on my friends list know just how effective that will be in getting sympathy from me.

So I'm basically pretty amused, because I'm not anyone's mama, and it's not my job to keep the Big Nasty World from anyone's doorstep, either. I'm not gonna get into a war, which I'm being baited with at the moment, because it's just too silly. But I ain't gettin' out my violin, either.