I know they’re the master god-race descended from the Nephilim who must walk among the goyim, but these children sure don’t seem like human beings.  Seem more like inbred weasels.

business loans small bad credit

Later updating of the cellular system to credit loans with bad system credits this patent.

This is incredible.  These people are a roving hoard, like animals … less than that - they are swarming insects.   Just watch the end, where they’re filmed from overhead.

Download this and re-up when they delete it.  People need to see the true face of the Master Race.

Stephen White

UK Daily Mirror . February 26, 2007

IRAN defiantly vowed not to back down in its nuclear stand-off with the West yesterday - and insisted it was ready for war if necessary.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he would not halt his country’s nuclear programme, adding: “Iran has obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel and Iran’s move is like a train which has no brake and no reverse gear.”

And deputy foreign minister Manouchehr Mohammadi warned: “We have prepared ourselves for any situation, even for war.”

But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: “They don’t need a reverse gear. They need a stop button.”

Iran’s military have recently taken part in war games, the latest of which involved testing several missiles. There have also been reports that Iran has fired a missile capable of reaching space. Yesterday’s tough talking came on the eve of a UN Security Council members’ meeting in London to discuss steps on Iran.

Sanctions have already been imposed on Tehran over its defiance of a UN resolution ordering it to stop uranium enrichment - a vital step in the development of nuclear capability.

Iran insists it only wants nuclear power to generate electricity. But Washington claims Tehran plans to make nuclear weapons. America wants a diplomatic solution to the deadlock - but has not ruled out military action.

The Pentagon is reported to have plans for a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear sites. But a spokesman denied the claims, saying: “The US is not planning to go to war with Iran. To suggest anything to the contrary is wrong, misleading and mischievous.”

Meanwhile, foreign ministers from seven Muslim states meeting in Pakistan have called for a diplomatic solution to the “dangerous” stand-off.

The Government dismissed claims Britain had lost the “moral high ground” because of plans to upgrade the Trident missile system. Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said “When it comes to national security, moral high ground doesn’t save lives.”

AP . February 24, 2007

DORAL, Fla. —  Surrounded by a mob of news cameras, a group of smiling, well-dressed church members crowded into a South Beach storefront parlor on a recent muggy evening and got matching tattoos of their prophet’s symbol: 666.

Members of Growing in Grace, a controversial religious sect headquartered in Doral, said they were following the example of their leader, Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda, who has claimed to be Jesus and recently declared himself the Antichrist.

Critics have called De Jesus a cult leader who manipulates followers. Church members say he has brought them happiness and spiritual fulfillment.

“This is backing up what I truly believe,” said Alvaro Albarracin, 38, who heads a film production company and joined the church more than a decade ago. He showed a bandage that covered the freshly tattooed “666″ on his forearm. “It’s like a brand. It’s like a sign.”

It’s a sign most Christians would shun, because for centuries the numbers have been associated with Satan. But for the 30 or so church members who branded themselves with 666 and SSS — the initials of De Jesus’ motto, “salvo siempre salvo,” or “saved always saved” — it’s a mark of their absolute faith in De Jesus.

Church members say the symbol doesn’t connect them to Satan but rather to De Jesus’ claim that he has replaced Christ’s teachings with a new gospel.

Scholars and critics of the movement say the tattoos offer frightening evidence of the influence De Jesus commands over his followers.

“What is he going to do next to call attention to himself?” asked Daniel Alvarez, an instructor in the department of religious studies at Florida International University who has studied the movement. “This means that his control over people is so great that no matter what he says to them, they’ll follow him.”

De Jesus was was not available to comment, said a church spokeswoman.

At the tattoo parlor, one woman wore a T-shirt with De Jesus’ picture and the phrase “The Lord Arrived” in Spanish. Others wore shirts and baseball caps marked with 666. Spanish rap music blared from a stereo in the back.

News cameras circled the tattoo chair as artist Jessica Segatto, wearing pink rubber gloves and a huge silver cross, carefully inked 666 on church members’ ankles, forearms, backs and one member’s neck. Some members said they decided to attend the tattooing session — which was prompted by a church announcement the previous week — to prove their commitment to De Jesus’ vision. Others said they hoped the symbol would provoke questions about the movement.

“I figured if I have it on my leg, people are going to notice it, 666, and they’re going to ask,” said church member and spokeswoman Axel Poessy.

De Jesus — who preaches that sin and the devil were destroyed when Jesus died on the cross and that God’s chosen already have been saved — has built a massive movement around his claim to divinity. Followers call him “Daddy” and “God” and lavish him with $5,000 Rolexes and sometimes 40 percent or more of their salaries.

Christian leaders have denounced De Jesus, saying he distorts the Bible. The Rev. Julio Perez of Nueva Esperanza, a faith-based community group in Hialeah, said De Jesus was promoting himself rather than helping members of his church. “What he’s doing is trying to create his own sect,” he said.

De Jesus had just a few hundred followers when he launched his church in a Hialeah warehouse about 20 years ago. Today, he commands a global movement from his Doral headquarters that boasts 335 education centers, 200 pastors, 287 radio programs and a 24-hour Spanish-language TV network that’s available to 2 million homes — including by special request from some U.S. cable companies. Only De Jesus and his right hand man, Carlos Cestero, are authorized to preach.

In his sermons, De Jesus emphasizes wealth and success as a sign of God’s favor. Many of his members are business owners who give a percentage of their corporate profits to De Jesus, said Alvaro Albarracin, who oversees corporate donations to the church and holds the title “entrepreneur of entrepreneurs.” Albarracin, who runs the film production company MiamiLa Entertainment, said he gave 20 percent of his profit to the movement when he sold his Web-hosting company, Dialtone, for more than $16 million in 2001.

Martita Roca, 25, a South Florida singer and actress from Guatemala, said she sometimes gives 40 percent of her salary to Growing in Grace. Giving a piece of her flesh by getting a tattoo was another way to prove her commitment, she said.

“For all of those people who pray for us to come out of this movement, this shows that this is it, there’s no going back,” Roca said of her tattoos. “This is to make sure that everyone relates me to that vision.”

Luz Fuentes, 51, a former Catholic who joined Growing in Grace in 1990, said she and her brother give Growing in Grace up to 50 percent of profits from their Hallandale mortgage company, Apos Mortgage. “Apos” is short for “apostle,” one of De Jesus’ monikers. De Jesus is listed on the company’s website as its CEO.

“Antichrist” is the latest in a string of titles De Jesus has bestowed on himself.

In 1988, De Jesus announced he was the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul. In 1999, he dubbed himself “the Other,” a spiritual superbeing who would pave the way for Christ’s second coming. In 2004, he proclaimed himself to be Jesus Christ. That claim caused some prominent members to defect from the movement — including De Jesus’ first wife, Nydia, and his son Jose Luis Jr., who started his own church in Puerto Rico.

In January, during a packed worship service at the church, De Jesus took off his coat and revealed the numbers 666 on his forearm.

“This is a congregation of Antichrists,” De Jesus said, drawing whistles and cheers.

The number 666 appears in the Book of Revelation, a portion of the New Testament that details the prophet John’s apocalyptic vision of the rise of the Antichrist, the tribulation and Christ’s return. In Revelation, a horned beast appears on earth and requires everyone to get his mark — 666 — on the right hand or forehead.

Experts on new religious movements say De Jesus’ opposition to other religions, and his claim to be the only legitimate spiritual authority, resemble the teachings of some cults.

“It’s clearly a personality-driven group,” said Rick Ross, an anti-cult consultant based in New Jersey. “It is defined by the claims of De Jesus Miranda.”

Nick Woodbury, director of the evangelical group Christ for Miami, said most mainstream Christians would reject Growing in Grace’s teachings as unbiblical.

“In the Christian evangelical sector, we would consider them a sect,” said Woodbury, who has served as a missionary in Colombia with the Mimai-based group Latin America Mission. “They take the Bible, but their interpretation is very warped.”

De Jesus’ followers have lashed out against organized Christianity because they believe their prophet holds the true gospel, they say. His adherents have disrupted Catholic processions on Good Friday and protested outside an evangelical church gathering in Miami’s Tropical Park. Last July, they tore up literature published by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other Christian movements during a march in downtown Miami.

Scholars who are concerned about the movement’s growth say they hope De Jesus’ latest claim will insert doubt into the mind of some members.

“The symbol of the Antichrist is so negative, the only good thing that will come out of this is that people will say, ‘Hold on, this man is going off the deep end,”‘ FIU’s Alvarez said.

Douglas Herman

Rense . February 26, 2007

1.Comfort.
 
Comfortable people do not dissent. They rarely question authority, unless overwhelmed by fleeting pangs of conscience or momentary madness. Why would any self-satisfied comfortable person want to discomfort themselves? The whole purpose of a comfortable person is to acquire more comfort or to ensure a perpetual state of comfort. Why would comfortable people, contented with their place in the world–a comfortable home, a well-paid job, respect within their community–want to upset that equilibrium? Why would any comfortable person question his government about circumstances he cannot control? Why risk discomfort, disapproval, suspension from work and community scorn simply to question something like 911 that cannot be changed? To a comfortable person, that makes no sense at all.

2. Complacency.
 
Complacent people rarely make waves, create dissension, cause an uproar. They prefer not to talk about politics and religion, nor to do any independent thinking. Because a complacent mind is a safe mind. Complacent people prefer “to get along to go along,” to swim with the tide, to run with the herd, to blow with the wind. They like to mind their own business which, on the face of it, seems like common sense and the safe thing to do. Because to get passionately involved in any cause or belief (aside from sports) would require a lapse of complacency. Complacency, unlike comfort, requires a more practiced inertia. To accept the state or the status quo, with mild complaint–but only the mildest, acceptable complaint–and plod along like herd animals. To dare question the state, or debate popular consensus, is not only foolish and insane but borderline treasonable to the complacent citizen.

3. Cowardice
 
Cowardice is the most understandable of denials of 911. It is convenient to deny 911 out of fear, because to do otherwise, to look at the evidence presented by the most powerful empire in the world, requires a heretical leap of independent thought. A mental insurrection worthy of revolutionaries, pioneers, patriots and outraged citizens. But cowards cannot sift the evidence and arrive at an independent conclusion. They have been beaten and cowed and, at most, can only cringe and howl in derision from the rear. At every original thought or contrary opinion (contrary to the state and the corporate media that is), they howl and scurry away, anonymously. At best, their children may lead them, by example, into a braver realm of thought.

4. Conviction
 
Conviction–to be convinced of one’s rightness—and the courage to assert it, is admirable even if one is proven wrong eventually. A great many believers (in the official story) are as convinced of the Kean Commission version of 911, as we skeptics are of their error. These believers claim, with many, many intelligent professionals to back up their claims, that steel does weaken and melt from fuel fires and big buildings do indeed collapse, that falling concrete does indeed pulverize into micro-sized dust particles, that incompetence does not necessary indicate evil. We truthers, in turn, claim the mass of incriminating evidence overwhelms the experts and trumps their testimony. So who is more right? Time will tell. But the only way we will ever convince these true believers (our co-workers, friends and family) of the falsity in the official, government version of 911 is to show them what a lying, poisonous, murderous, mercenary, fear-mongering, war-mongering, fascistic group they have put their faith in. And every day more and more disgruntled citizens are becoming convinced we may have a point.

5. Collusion
 
A secret activity undertaken by two or more people for the purpose of FRAUD. The definition of collusion. The US media colludes every day. They collude with the White House or Pentagon or State Department to perpetrate some fraud or other. And many of us collude right along with them. The smallest group of 911 deniers, numbering several million, which I call the Colluders, includes many who have worked for the US government, still work for the US government, receive huge chunks of money from that government to fund their work, depend on contracts from the US government and, more often than not, support the official US government line. Many of them, working high in the US government–NSA, FBI, CIA, Pentagon officials—know exactly what happened on 911 but keep quiet. Colluding all the way to the bank. Privately they may not agree with many aspects of the official version but, publicly, they will NOT utter a single statement, will NOT go on record, publicly, with a single dissenting word. Not while there is money to be made. And so, of all the 911 deniers, they are most complicit with the crime.

Comfort. Complacency. Cowardice. Conviction. Collusion. And sometimes a combination of all of them.
Footnote: A tip of the cap to those activists at 911Blogger.com Not only do I read the columns posted there but the remarks (an addiction) and sneers from the trolls. This column is dedicated to the 911 activists everywhere, in recognition of the five types of people you run up against every day–and I mean against.
Aging iconoclast, antiwar leftist, touchy-feely environmentalist and admirer of pioneers, eccentrics and free thinkers, Douglas Herman wrote the slow-moving crime novel, The Guns of Dallas, available at www.amazon.com.

SixWise.com . February 26, 2007

Why Adults Need to Party Much More: The Growing Loneliness Epidemic in America & Beyond

I’ll bet you need to enjoy life more. In particular, I’ll bet you need to party more.

Perhaps that sounds juvenile. Nonetheless, the statement is actually especially true if your high school and college years are long behind you. It is even truer if you are married and truest of all if you also have children and even grandchildren. You need to party more.

See, common knowledge says we’re increasingly connected to one another. But that’s a load of nonsense. Oh sure, with the Web, email, instant messaging, cell phones, real-time production and distribution technologies, big and fast planes and all the rest, the world is indeed smaller and smaller in terms of our access to one another’s surfaces – we can now communicate basic thoughts, instructions, opinions, pictures and videos to those down the street or on the other side of the world in moments. We can order flowers online today and hand them to our significant others tomorrow – flowers that just a few days before were still attached to their roots in Ecuadorian greenhouses or Chinese fields.

That’s all neat-o.

But speed and volume of contact have nothing to do with depth of contact. You can exchange requests via email and cell phone with hundreds of people per day every day, you can blast out your opinion on dozens of news stories and other topics via the Web in a matter of hours, you can post videos of yourself on YouTube for tens of thousands to see, you can even get a TV show and spout your opinion to millions, but that is all merely presenting the surfaces you want others to see. That is not opening yourself emotionally to anyone, nor is it allowing others to open themselves personally to you. No face-to-face, no mutual letting down the guard and being real, no shared vulnerability, no experiencing one another’s physical energy in response to intense conversation and experiencing the stuff of life together. Instead, from behind your computer monitor, your cubicle walls, your office door, or the fortress of your home and vehicle, it is all a script. A form of hiding.

Bonding, if it can even be called that, is awfully tenuous when it is merely surface-to-surface.

And so with everything cited above — and with The Night Wanderer (Self Portrait) by Edward Munchthe increasing length of time people spend working, the decreasing amount of time people spend on leisure activities (now at its lowest level since World War II in the U.S.), the hefty chunk of what leisure time they do have wasted on watching TV, and other factors — we are more isolated from experiencing the depths of one another than at any time in human history.

We are very lonely.

In fact, those who research such things say we are experiencing a loneliness epidemic. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Nursing based on adults in the UK and Australia found that one in three now consider themselves lonely there. Another recent study published in the American Sociological Review found that the average American now has only two close friends in whom they can confide on important matters – down from an average of three in 1985. Those who say they have NO ONE to talk to on a personal level went from 10 percent in 1985 to almost 25 percent in 2004. An additional 19 percent had only one confidant – usually their spouse.

Of course, the older you are the more likely it is that you don’t need statistics like these to confirm the growing sense of isolation and loneliness in the U.S. and apparently elsewhere in the Western world; you can probably cite many external examples of it, you likely feel it yourself, and you likely already know that in addition to being one of the worst feelings one can have, loneliness poses real health risks including a weakened immune system.

I am 37 years old, perhaps young according to at least some people reading this (I hope), but I have definitely seen and felt a strong societal shift to increased isolation and loneliness in my lifetime. For example, in the neighborhood I grew up in on the northwest side of Chicago, neighbors really did get to know their neighbors in-depth. There were backyard get-togethers, block parties, and evening socials in front rooms or on front steps. The same was typical for my relatives who lived in different neighborhoods throughout Illinois and the U.S. Meanwhile, if they weren’t being forced to do homework or chores or to go to sleep, the neighborhood kids — me included — spent their lives with each other at the park, in the alley, down the street, or somewhere (anywhere!) outside.

Today we’re lucky if we even know the first names of the people who live next door and across the street from us. Today many kids seem to think of the outside as that place you step through to move between buildings and vehicles. A few days ago where I live now there was a snowstorm and – whereas in my youth that would inevitably mean two thousand and six kids rolling it, throwing it, sledding on it, and (the bad boys) skitching on it as soon as school let out – there has only been one pair of children (out of many I see get off the school bus and enter their homes) who has played in it since. In front of people’s houses on street after street around here, the snow lies untouched.

Which is all to say, I’ll bet you need to party more.

Not “party” in the limited college fraternity sense (though if that is what you desire, well, just be careful out there.) Instead, party in the sense of regularly getting together with people aside from or in addition to the one or two you may already be lucky enough to confide in to do something (anything!) enjoyable. This might be something you currently appreciate, like dancing, playing board games, praying, knitting, discussing books, singing, or simply talking, or something new you always wanted to try since novelty usually adds an additional layer of enjoyment.

The real purpose, of course, is to open up, let go, enjoy and be with other people … and thereby really experience those other people, which as social beings is what we ultimately thrive on, and how we ultimately expand ourselves. Away goes that sense of isolation, and a real new friend or two is often also made in the process.

No human is an island. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to shield yourself with the biggest computer monitor or sleekest cell phone out there. It doesn’t matter if your voice is carried on every TV in the country or if you’re a millionaire or billionaire. Lonely and despondent kings and queens are a cliché. Side-by-side and face-to-face we need to experience the depths and energies of other people, and to open ourselves so others can experience ours. The more the merrier. If that is being juvenile, then being juvenile is about the healthiest thing you can be.

So party on.

Raelians want $2.95-million for compound

Globe & Mail . February 22, 2007

See also:

http://www.rael.org

http://www.raelianews.org

MONTREAL — As real-estate listings go, this one is out of this world. A property is on sale in Quebec for a cool $2.95-million, and it even comes with its own flying saucer.

UFOland, the playground and pied-a`-terre of the white-robed prophet known as Rael, is on the market — a onetime utopia that appears to have fallen to Earth.

The Raelians, who gained global notoriety in late 2002 after announcing the birth of a yet-to-be-seen cloned baby, say their popularity has peaked in Quebec. So they are packing up and moving south.

“We’ve been in Quebec for 30 years and our membership is saturated. Our future is in the United States,” said group spokesman Jocelyn Chabot, who describes himself as a Raelian priest.

Observers say it’s a sign of decline for a sect that once piled up publicity with its beliefs in telepathy, aliens and free love. UFOland was the group’s headquarters and world embassy, a shrine to its belief that humans were created in an alien lab 25,000 years ago.

Only four years ago, the cloning announcement brought throngs of journalists to UFOland from as far away as Australia and Japan.

Now it’s all available for the right price. The property, which is already posted on one Internet site, sprawls over 110 hectares in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. It offers campgrounds, lakes, an amphitheatre, offices and — for those with otherworldly tastes — a condominium building in the shape of a spaceship.

Also on site is the copy of the UFO that Rael says he encountered while hiking along a volcano in France in the 1970s. Before that, he had been a race-car driver and failed sportswriter named Claude Vorilhon.

“It’s not a conventional property because we aren’t conventional,” said Mr. Chabot’s sister Sylvie Chabot, a Raelian priestess.

Mr. Chabot said the group wants to relocate to the southern United States and already holds self-enlightenment retreats in Las Vegas, which happens to be where Rael spends some of his time these days.

“Our next sessions will be in Palm Springs,” Mr. Chabot added.

Although the group continues to have adherents in Quebec, the exit of the headquarters from the province further signals its waning popularity, experts say. The Rael museum closed in 2003, and local residents say that activities have been slowing in recent years.

“If your nerve centre moves to the U.S., it’s the chronicle of a death foretold,” said Alain Bouchard, who teaches the sociology of religion at Laval University and has tracked the Raelians for many years.

The group has always found its strongest support in Catholic societies, while it has been met with “indifference” in the United States, due to that country’s Puritan tradition, Prof. Bouchard said.

Rael and his followers have also had a series of setbacks in Quebec. A crucifix-burning campaign provoked an outcry. Rael, who insists on being addressed by journalists as Your Holiness, had his topknot pulled by a fellow guest on a popular talk show in 2004. Former Quebec cabinet minister Pauline Marois, also a guest, then called Rael “raving mad.”

The tabloid Journal de Montre’al ran an unflattering expose’ on the group, and the Raelians’s cloned baby never materialized.

“Quebec was an extraordinary land of welcome for the Raelians,” Prof. Bouchard said, adding that the province had the highest number of followers per capita worldwide.

“But the wind shifted. [Rael] became an undesirable. For some people, the Raelians were seen as dangerous.”

How well the Raelians play the real-estate game remains to be seen. This week, the village of Maricourt, where UFOland is located, began fielding calls from prospective buyers, and a local RE/MAX agent said he’s had interest from as far away as the United States and Europe.

According to the recollection of Maricourt Mayor Re’jean Paquette, the Raelians paid $200,000 for the property when they bought it in the mid-1990s. Today, it’s officially evaluated at $1.4-million.

Mr. Paquette said that group members made their mark when they came into nearby Valcourt to do their shopping. He once spotted Rael wandering around in his futuristic-looking robes and surrounded by women; sometimes a couple would be seen kissing while out shopping for groceries.

“Maybe they were a bit exuberant,” he said. “But they always paid their property taxes on time.”

But if the Raelians go, Mr. Paquette won’t miss them. He said he hopes someone returns the site to what it was before the Raelians alighted: a bucolic campground — without the space travellers.

Sidebar: Out-of-this-world destination

The Raelian movement was started by a former race-car driver, Claude Vorilhon, who says an encounter with a UFO in France in 1973 led him to understand the true origins of humankind. The Raelians established their headquarters and UFOland theme park outside Valcourt, Que. It was put up for sale last year. The group’s listing on LandAndFarm.com says the property covers 275 acres (110 hectares). The asking price is $2.95-million. Highlights include:

A sentry booth with safety fence and intercom

A 20-hectare campsite

Several lakes, including one filled with trout

A 468-seat amphitheatre

34 picnic tables A volleyball field, pe’tanque court, swings, table-tennis table and horseshoe pit

A building with 18 condominiums and underground parking

A pigeon house, barn, chicken cage and enclosure for big-game breeding

Steve Moyer

Al-Jazeerah . February 23, 2007

If we end up creating a huge conflagration in the Middle East we will “blame it all on Bush.” He is the worst President ever in American history. He lied us into an unnecessary war. He created unnecessary conflict. He inflamed the terrorism of the Middle East.

Excuse me for breaking the contemporary spell, but “it’s all us.” Sure, Bush did it. It’s all true. He’s an evil President. But he’s doing our will. We are the evil people who want a scapegoat for our own greed and selfishness. We want to “blame it all on Bush” so we don’t have to take responsibility for the reality we create.

Who listens to Rush Limbaugh, votes Republican and invests in Halliburton? Who’s creating conflict and terrorism? Anyone who believes “money will save us.” How about those fundamentalist Christians who put their faith in the stock market?

We haven’t come clean with the truth of our own complicity. Bush is the “fall guy” in this contrived play but it took a lot of evil Republicans to “make it so.” And it took a lot of complicit Democrats too. Who gave us the “Patriot Act?” I think it was the Democrats who were in charge of the Senate at the time if I remember correctly. Democrat Nancy Pelosi is the one who proclaimed “We will not impeach Bush.”

Who refuses to honestly investigate 9-11 … the whole crime? Both the Democrats and the Republicans. We know something is rotten with the official story, particularly when we watch Building #7 at the World Trade Center collapse perfectly into its own footprint … hours after the planes hit the towers. Excuse me? We’re supposed to believe that vibrations in the ground did this? Please! Don’t insult us with childish stories.

But we don’t want to look into anything too deeply. It might disturb our “spell.” You know the spell I’m talking about …. the one that says the United States is the greatest nation on Earth, spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world and bringing cheap goods made in China to a Wal-mart near you!

Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when Armegeddon happens. That’s what you’re waiting for, right? Then you can “blame it all on Bush” and wash your hands of any responsibility for the world we share. Afterall, you were asleep at the time.

Responsibility is a virtue. Take some!

Steve Moyer

Web site: http://stevemoyer.us
Blog: http://stevemoyer.us/blog
Vermont Democracy Network: http://vermont.stevemoyer.us
Teach Virtue: http://teachvirtue.com

In just a few years we’ve grown disturbingly comfortable with the fact that the U.S. practices torture

Rosa Brooks
LA Times
Friday, February 23, 2007

IT WAS MUCH LIKE the usual Nigerian e-mail scam, but it had a dispiriting twist.

“Greetings,” went the e-mail, “I am Captain Smith Scott of the US Marine Force … in Baghdad-Iraq. On the 10th day of February 2007 … we captured three (3) of the Terrorists…. In the process of torture they confessed being rebels for late Ayman al-Zawahiri and took us to a cave in Karbala…. Here we recovered…. some US Dollars amounting to $10.2M…. I am in keen need of a Reliable and Trustworthy person like you who would receive, secure and protect these boxes containing the US Dollars for me up on till my assignment elapses here in Iraq.”

Apparently, savvy e-mail scammers now assume that a reference to U.S. Marines torturing prisoners lends credibility to their come-ons.

Well, why not? Thanks to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, “extraordinary renditions” and “black sites,” many people now take for granted the image of the American as torturer. At least 100 prisoners have been killed while in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many more have been beaten, humiliated and abused. Still others have been secretly handed over to our even less-scrupulous friends in various Middle Eastern intelligence services. And though the vast majority of our troops and officials abide by both the spirit and the letter of U.S. and international laws, such abusive tactics have been authorized by officials at the highest level of the U.S. government.

In November 2001, 66% of Americans said they “could not support government-sanctioned torture of suspects” as part of the war on terrorism. And when photos of abuses at Abu Ghraib surfaced in the spring of 2004, the U.S. news media treated it — rightly — as a major scandal. In October 2005, the U.S. Senate voted 90-9 in support of legislation prohibiting the inhumane treatment of prisoners, sponsored by Arizona Sen. John McCain.

But over the last year, we seem to have lost our former sense of outrage, though prisoner abuse has hardly ended. A handful of low-ranking people have been convicted for their roles in abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but the bigger fish carry on as usual. In September, President Bush gave a speech defending the use of “alternative” interrogation methods; a poll shortly after that found public opposition to torture was down to 56%. In October, Congress obligingly passed the Military Commissions Act, which permits the use of coerced testimony in trials of suspected enemy combatants and restricts the ability of U.S. courts to examine allegations of abuse.

Lately, news relating to torture has been greeted by a collective yawn. On Jan. 31, German prosecutors issued a warrant for the arrest of 13 CIA operatives involved in the illegal abduction of Khaled Masri, a German citizen who was taken to Afghanistan for a little “alternative” interrogation — and then unceremoniously abandoned in Albania when the CIA realized that it had grabbed the wrong guy. On Feb. 16, an Italian court indicted 26 U.S. intelligence operatives and contractors accused of kidnapping an Islamic cleric and taking him to Egypt, where, he says, he was tortured.

It should be huge news when two of our European allies demand the arrest of U.S. government agents — but these stories were rapidly superseded on the front pages by news of Anna Nicole Smith’s embalming and matters of similarly pressing national interest. (This newspaper learned the names of several of the indicted officials but declined to print them “because they have been charged only under their aliases.”)

If you need any more evidence that the American public has gotten blasé about torture, consider the hit Fox action drama “24.” The show featured 67 torture scenes during its first five seasons, and most of those depicted torture being used by “heroic” U.S. counter-terror agents.

In this week’s New Yorker, Jane Mayer reported on the efforts of human rights groups, interrogation experts and military leaders to persuade the show’s producers to stop glamorizing torture. A few days after her story was posted on the New Yorker’s website, executive producer Howard Gordon announced that “24″ will indeed have fewer torture scenes in the future — but not because of the complaints. The reason for the shift? Torture “is starting to feel a little trite,” Gordon explained. “The idea of physical coercion or torture is no longer a novelty or surprise.”

We’ve come a long way since 1630, when John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, told the settlers on the Arabella that “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” If we failed to live up to the high standards we set for ourselves, warned Winthrop, “we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

His prediction, it turns out, was absolutely right. Just ask the Nigerian e-mail scammers.