The American-born son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor has been ordered to pay more than £14m in compensation to five people tortured during the West African country's civil war.
A judge in the US made the order a year after the same Miami court sentenced Charles McArthur Emmanuel Taylor, known as Chuckie, to 97 years in prison for his role in one of Africa's bloodiest chapters; he was the first person to be convicted by a federal court of committing offences outside the US.
The 32-year-old led the notorious Anti-Terrorist Unit, a band of pro-government paramilitaries nicknamed the Demon Forces who carried out murder and torture during his father's presidency from 1997 to 2003.
Witnesses at his criminal trial in 2008 spoke of hearing him laugh as prisoners were abused and how the Anti-Terrorist Unit "did things like beating people to death, burying them alive, rape - the most horrible kind of war crimes".
A spokesman for United States immigration and customs enforcement said that it was a "clear message the US would not be a safe haven for human rights violators."
In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.
It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.
So forget about the "clear message the US would not be a safe haven for human rights violators."
The real message for the torturers of tomorrow is...
Get some whore of a lawyer (like John Yoo) in your local DOJ to opine that whatever you do is legal, and then you can chop up your victims with no more fear of prosecution than if you were chopping onions.
I see that another Bowers-instigated flame battle is going on over at Closed Left. I lurk the site from time to time to see just how much progressive issues are being censored in favor of the Chris Matthews-type drivel Bowers favors, and I saw this posted on the front page:
It turns out that if I delete content from a website that I--quite literally--own, then I am engaging in censorship. I don't remember the part of the first amendment that declares everyone is allowed to use everyone else's printing press.
The latest mess appears to have begun when someone posted a quick hit to call Obama an ass clown. Okay, nothing controversial about that since Obama is, in fact, an ass clown. But the site administrator didn't like it, so the QH was deleted. After the fact, the justification was fabricated that the term "ass clown" is somehow homophobic, even though there is no evidence to suggest that it has ever been used in such a derogatory manner. The comments are divided along the usual lines, with Bowers and his sniveling, lying little sycophants defending the action and others crying censorship.
This isn't surprising at all, seeing as how Bowers routinely violates his own site's rules only to turn around and chastise others for committing far lesser offenses. For example, a while back the owner of Closed Left posted a snarkfest taking others to task for using the Quick Hits feature to call other people out. Later, Bowers proceeded to use the quick hits section to call out another poster, whom he banned for voicing criticism against him.
When I posted about this glaring act of hypocrisy in both a diary and a quick hit, I was banned from posting. The rules that apply to everyone else at Closed Left do not apply to the site owner, who is free to act like a child while treating grown adults like children. The result? More of the same bullshit that goes on at the Mediocre Orange Hype: scolding lefties to sit down, shut up, and drink the Democratic party Kool-Aid while pretending to be outsiders crashing the gates. The left deserves better from its self-appointed "leaders."
I didn't advocate ignoring the people. (0.00 / 0)
It was handled all wrong, from slow levee building to bad politics leading to evacuation blunders. But since the levees are insanely expensive, and not even reliable, and politics will always be with us:
I advocate not rebuilding under sea level.
That might be too complicated for you to understand, since it involves physics and sociology, and you don't even feel you have to edit your own outpourings.
by: Ormond Otvos @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 00:29:32 AM EDT
Oh really, Ormond? That's quite a fucking sanitized version of what you posted several times over the past several months here, each of the comments you posted basically being a big fucking middle finger to the people of New Orleans, but we'll go with what you've posted here for your convenience, senior citizen bonus applied.
So answer some questions since the answer to people dying by the thouasnds in disaster prone areas like New Orleans is for the people to move to places that aren't disaster prone.
Do you advocate the federal government paying to relocate everyone in the city, find them new jobs, and new homes?...or do you just advocate not rebuilding and letting them wither as they will without assistance with every person being responsible for getting themselves out of a disaster-prone area or rebuilding very expensively in order to merely lower their odds of being killed?
Make sure you stay consistent, Sensei.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - 1989
NORTHRIDGE, CALIFORNIA - 1994
So tell us, Sensei, how you plan on the government paying to relocate San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the entire state of California, where they will be relocated to, and how they will be provided jobs in order to avert the economic crisis that would come about by that relocation. Alternatively, tell us how the government is going to pay for every person to have their home rebuilt to possibly lower the odds of massive damage and threat to life from the earthquakes that are sure to come.
Or is it every man for himself and you're just a selfish sanctimonious libertarian who pretends to be a liberal?
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