Wow.

Just wow.

From Salon.com News :: The 13 people who made torture possible:

The Torture 13 exploited the federal bureaucracy to establish a torture regime in two ways. First, they based the enhanced interrogation techniques on techniques used in the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. The program -- which subjects volunteers from the armed services to simulated hostile capture situations -- trains servicemen and -women to withstand coercion well enough to avoid making false confessions if captured. Two retired SERE psychologists contracted with the government to "reverse-engineer" these techniques to use in detainee interrogations.

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Fascism in Italy got its ass kicked in WW II. In fact, unlike German fascism that took the combined efforts of the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union to defeat, Italian fascists were even fought to a standstill by the Greeks in WW II and had to have their sorry asses saved by the Germans.

But even today there are Italian losers who are so scared of anyone different from themselves that they follow the failed, stupid and loser ideology of Mussolini.

Their latest cause seems to have some resemblance to Bill O'Reilly having his panties in a bunch over an imaginged "war on Christmas." The Italian fascists have their collective panties in a bunch over...Christmas decorations. Yes, Italian fascists are such losers that they are terrified of Christmas decorations! From BBC news:

Right-wing politicians have protested at the inclusion of Islamic symbols in nativity scenes in northern Italy.

Elaborate cribs with figurines enacting the nativity decorate most Catholic churches in Italy at this time of year.

A priest at a Genoa church put a mosque and minaret in his crib, while a crib at a Venice school also had a mosque.

The Genoa branch of the anti-immigrant Northern League reacted with fury. But a senior church figure said there are no firm rules on what can be included.
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JANUARY 11, 2008, is the six-year anniversary of the first arrival of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

The ACLU is calling on everyone opposed to torture, secret prisons, the suspension of habeas corpus and the overall trampling of democracy and the United States Constitution, to wear orange to symbolize the national shame that is Guantánamo Bay.

From their website :

After hundreds of detentions and two Supreme Court decisions rejecting the administration's detention policies at Gitmo, the legal status of the detainees there remains unresolved and the fight continues to end unlawful detention and the denial of due process.

The ACLU is one of four organizations that have been granted status as human rights observers at the military commission proceedings. When the tribunals began in 2004, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero and two ACLU international human rights lawyers attended the proceedings and blogged about the experience so Americans could know the truth of Guantánamo.

The ACLU has continued to hold government leadership accountable by filing Freedom of Information Act requests for documents that reveal systemic torture to prisoners held in U.S. custody. So far, more than 100,000 pages of government documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees.
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Fascist ideals of masculinity had no real use for women other than as the vessels through which passed the next generation of fascist males. Its aesthetic was built upon a world where women were the conduits for sexual release and the pride that came from having reproduced a junior version of yourself who would carry on the ideals with which you yourself had been inculcated. Women, when they were not serving their purpose as mothers, or as virgins—potential mothers—were garbage, part of the larger population of undesirables and vermin who needed to be brought to heel, to be destroyed.

In Fascist Spain, in 1944, Franco's forces had been triumphant, but there was still opposition in the countryside. It is against this background that the splendid movie, Pan's Labyrinth takes place. Billed as a "fairy tale for grownups" it is just that. An old-fashioned, pre-Victorian fairy tale. A myth. As such, it is full of disturbing nightmarescapes and brutality that will sicken you. It is also one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen.
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