Trafficking Charges for Adviser to Jailed Americans in Haiti

NYTimes

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As the 10 Americans imprisoned in Haiti for trying to remove children from the country awaited a decision on their fate Monday, the legal woes of the man who falsely portrayed himself as the group’s lawyer mounted.

The one-time legal adviser, who calls himself Jorge Puello, now acknowledges that he faces sex trafficking charges in El Salvador under the name Jorge Anibal Torres Puello. He remained at large on Monday, as Dominican, Salvadoran and American law enforcement officials worked with Interpol to interview his relatives and search border and immigration records to find him.

Mr. Puello is wanted by the police in at least four countries in connection with charges including sex trafficking of girls and women, and making counterfeit documents and violating parole.

On Monday, Bernard Saint-Vil, the Haitian judge who is handling the case of the detained Americans, said he intended to further question Laura Silsby, the group’s leader, about any connection she might have with Mr. Puello.

Much more, including details about how the authorities tumbled to all this.

I still have no idea what the Silsby woman was really up to but she was either up to no good or not. Either way, she was stupid enough to get all her friends locked up in a Haitian jail which is no picnic.

Quote of the Day

Creature on the capture of the Big Tali:

Not bad for a dithering president who does not believe we are at war. Huh, Dick?

Not that I'm fond of that stinking war but Barry's had more success in a few months than the Chimp had in 8 years. It boggles the mind that this latest is the biggest operation since the war began.

Where da popcorn at?

What Fez said:

...

This may be the most enjoyable primary of the election cycle -- plus I don't live there, and that's a real bonus.

It's gonna be fun to see how low the Arizona senate race will go.

More snow, more shoveling ...

Henry Fukuhara 1913 - 2010

Click to embiggen

Painting by Henry Fukuhara, "View of Manzanar near Mt. Whitney." When he painted scenes from the camp, Fukuhara focused on symbols such as the guard tower, the entrance gate and the Sierras in the background to create vibrant, not downbeat, images.

I've visited Manzanar and did a few posts about it here, here, and here.

LATimes

Henry Fukuhara, a California watercolorist and teacher who attracted many of the field's most accomplished artists to annual painting workshops at the Manzanar relocation camp in Owens Valley, where he and thousands of other Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, died of natural causes Jan. 31 at a nursing home in Yorba Linda, according to his grandson, Paul Niwa. He was 96.

Fukuhara started the Manzanar workshops in 1998, taking participants -- many of whom had been interned at Manzanar -- on painting excursions to various outdoor sites around the camp, including the Alabama Hills and the nearby town of Lone Pine.

In 1941, his family, which owned a retail nursery in Los Angeles, was just beginning to regain its financial footing when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor launched the United States into World War II. They managed to sell the nursery and store some personal belongings before arriving at Manzanar in April 1942.

By then a husband and father, Fukuhara worked in the camp's drafting department, surveying plots for graves. "Seemed like a joke," he told The Times in 1992, "but that's what we did." He lived in one room with his wife, daughter, parents, brother and sister-in-law.

In 1943, when internees who agreed to move away from the West Coast were permitted to leave the camp, Fukuhara and his family departed for Long Island, N.Y. With his father and brother he started a flower business that prospered over the next four decades.

Fukuhara was not bitter about his Manzanar experience, shrugging it off, he said, "because it's part of war" and "so many young men didn't return." When he painted scenes from the camp, he focused on symbols such as the guard tower, the entrance gate and the Sierras in the background, creating vibrant images.

His Manzanar paintings and workshops were an attempt at reconciliation, his grandson said, "a way to bring others to experience Manzanar . . . and help us find our own significance in the event."

You're a kinder and wiser man than I am, Mr. Fukuhara. Sayonara to another fine representative of the Greatest Generation.

Anti-O-lympics

Thanks to Slate

Wall Streetwalkers

Thanks to YubaNet.

Neo-Nazis rally on Dresden bombing anniversary

AP via Yahoo!News

DRESDEN, Germany – Thousands of protesters formed a human chain in Dresden on Saturday, determined to stop neo-Nazis from exploiting the German city's painful history on the 65th anniversary of its deadly Allied bombing in World War II.

Across the Elbe River, some 10,000 people joined hands to create a human chain symbolically protecting the restored city center from neo-Nazis, after the city mounted an unsuccessful legal challenge to block the far-right march.

"Dresden doesn't want them, and this gang doesn't belong here," Mayor Helma Orosz said.

The human chain helps to "make Dresden a fortress against intolerance and stupidity," and the anniversary provided a reminder of who started the war, she said.

Three successive waves of British and U.S. bombers on Feb. 13-14, 1945, set off firestorms and destroyed Dresden's centuries-old baroque city center.
...

Dresden has been rebuilt painstakingly over the years. Its landmark domed Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady — for decades no more than a mound of rubble — reopened in 2005.

Karolin Hanebuth, 20, came from Hannover in western Germany to counter the far-right protest.

"Fascism is not an opinion, it is a crime," she said.

The far right is marginal in Germany and has no seats in the national parliament. However, Saxony, where Dresden is located, is one of two eastern German states where the far-right National Democratic Party has seats in the regional legislature.

Go read about the Bombing Of Dresden. Arguments persist to this day, both for and against about whether the attack was militarily necessary and justified or a terror attack on civilians, immoral or a war crime, coming as it did toward the end of the war when Germany was just about whipped.

My personal thought is that, necessary or not, it was payback time and payback's a motherfucker.

Bottom line: WWII was Total War and the Nazis started it in the name of all Germans and Germans suffered for the crimes of their leaders. For the neo-Nazis to bring up this attack in an attempt to justify their own existence and deny the crimes of their forebears is a perfect example of the perfidy of right wings everywhere.

Cheney Exposes Torture Conspiracy

Robert Parry

If the United States had a functioning criminal justice system for the powerful – not just for run-of-the-mill offenders – former Vice President Dick Cheney would have convicted himself and some of his Bush administration colleagues with his comments on ABC’s “This Week.”

Cheney’s frank comments on “This Week” – corroborating that Yoo and Bybee “had done what we asked them to do” – suggest that former Bush administration officials are confident that they will face no accountability from the Obama administration for war crimes.

Though the ABC News interviewer Jonathan Karl deserves some credit for posing the waterboarding question to Cheney, it was notable that Karl didn’t react with any shock or even a follow-up when Cheney pronounced himself a fan of the torture practice. Cheney’s waterboarding endorsement was only a footnote in ABC’s online account of the interview.

So Jon, what does the inside of The Dick's lower colon taste like? Chicken, I bet.

That Cheney feels he can operate with such impunity is a damning commentary on the rule of law in the United States, at least when it comes to the nation’s elites.

It's the Golden Rule - them what has the Gold make the Rules.

I simply will not drop this subject until every last one of the Bush administration war criminals are dead or in jail, even as unlikely as the latter seems as of now. I vow to outlive every one of them and make pilgrimages to piss on their graves like they pissed on us.

Headline of the Day

From BuzzFlash. Got a '404 Not Found' when I hit the link, but this is plenty:

The Dick Wad Watch: Lieberman Now Against Saying White House Critics Help Al-Qaeda (After He Was For It, During Bush Years)

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

D.C. Snow Shutdown Hurts Local Businesses
Graft, bribery off 40%.

Report: Blackwater Billed Pentagon for Prostitute
Charge hidden under “Hammer: $500.”

New Theory: Universe a Giant Hologram
Cosmos nothing more than special effect at some humongous trade show.

POLL
71% Say Palin Unqualified to Be President
But qualified to be GOP nominee.

To which I add, from Ann Davidow:

Would the American people really be willing to settle for the cardboard box instead of the pizza?

Us v. Them

Civil rights are "quaint" and the Constitution is just "a piece of paper" until it's white Christian guys who are being denied.

... The very same people who have been demanding for years that Muslims be imprisoned for life, tortured and killed with no trials or charges of any kind suddenly become extremely sensitive to the nuances of due process and humane detention conditions -- they start sounding like Amnesty International civil liberties extremists -- the minute it's a Christian, rather than a Muslim, who is subjected to such treatment ...

It's amazing how quickly the conservatives grasp the concept of "nuance" when they have to.

Thank god ...

Joe Biden has a set.

...

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Let me choose my words carefully here. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinion. He's not entitled to rewrite history. He's not entitled to his own facts. The Christmas Day Bomber was treated the exact way that he suggested that the Shoe Bomber was treated. Absolutely the same way. Under the Bush Administration there were three trials in military courts. Two of those people are now walking the streets. They are free.

There were 300 trials of so-called terrorists and those who engage in terror against the United States of America who are in federal prison and have not seen the light of day. Prosecuted under the last Administration. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow, but he is not entitled to rewrite history without it being challenged. I don't know where he has been. Where was he the last four years of the last Administration?

...

I was hoping he'd be a little less tactful but he got the point across. It would have been nice if he told Cheney to STFU and go back to his undisclosed location.

Thanks to Watertiger for the link.

Dogs Rule!

Big doings in the Fixer house. Westminster begins tonight!

A little Sunday afternoon Kraut dobro pickin'

A subject some of us are all too familiar with:



And something most of us are no longer, mostly because there aren't very many maidens our age that do much prayin' except nuns, and the ones who do are prayin' for someone a lot younger:



Thanks to MartinGross, Germany. He's got lots of these.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Being as hopelessly romantic as the Mrs. and I are, Valentine's is one of our favorite holidays. All the best to you and those you love. We wish you what we have.

Celebrating Valentine's Day at Le Bistrot du 7eme in Paris 2000. My cousin Birgit and her husband Peter made the trip from Germany to join us. God, we looked so young.

Be careful what you wish for...

While I was lookin' up the link to my reunion photo for the post below, I ran across this Quote of the Day from May 30, 2007:

PNAC got its new Pearl Harbor. What we need now is a new Boston Tea Party.

Oy.

Wild Women Of Song

I had never heard of Pamela Rose or any of these gal songwriters of the Jazz Age until I read this article. I liked what I read so I went looking and found this vid.

"Pamela Rose takes jazz to historic heights with her show Wild Women of Song. And I mean that literally. Like some sort of younger and way more glam Doris Kearns Goodwin, she introduces nearly every one of her chosen female-written tunes with fact-filled vignettes about the composers, bringing her heroines to poignant, funny life with her stories of travail and triumph. (We knew Ms. Rose could sing, but she also tells a mean tale.) Then the prefaced melody begins, the band starts to swing, and you feel the tides of time sweeping along. It goes beyond a jazz show. It's a swinging honors course in womankind." - BRUCE KELLEY, EDITOR, SAN FRANCISCO MAGAZINE

WHAT? More glam than Doris Kearns Goodwin? No way...

On a personal note, Ms. Rose does a little of Peggy Lee's "Fever". I rode the school bus for years with Peggy Lee's daughter (photo, seated center). Didn't see her for 45 years until my H.S. reunion in '07 and now we keep in touch on Facebook.

Pamela Rose - Wild Women of Song: Great Gal Composers of the Jazz Era

Thanks to DealMattersENT.

TSA in Philly Must Stand for Truly Stupid Assholes

Dave Lindorff at The Smirking Chimp. Last ¶:

So there you have it. Cut your hair in Philadelphia and to the alert agents of the TSA and the equally alert Philadelphia Police you are a potentially radicalized terrorist. (Geez, and I already went through that garbage back in the '60s, when my long hair used to routinely get me harassed by police. So I guess it's "long hair and beard = Commie" and "short hair and beard = Jihadi"). Carry language flash cards, or perhaps a book with an incendiary title, and you're a potential terrorist. Get the wrong TSA agent, and you may even end up having some terribly incriminating substance planted in your bag. And try to prove misbehavior or worse by the TSA and they'll casually destroy the evidence.

I'm really glad I hardly ever have to fly, and I feel for those of you who do.

Poison alert! A rose by any other name...

...won't kill ya near as dead as this shit will. See 'safety controversy'. If you drink diet sodas or use 'Equal' (the blue packets at restaurants), read this. Via BuzzFlash.

Aspartame has been renamed and is now being marketed as a natural sweetener

In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world's most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called "AminoSweet" (my em).

Emphasis added so you'll know what to look for in the 'ingredients' panel.

I use Splenda which, though it has chlorine in it, has not had the kind of controversy about it that aspartame has. It has had some, a good deal of which I suspect is from other artificial sweetener manufacturers and the sugar lobby.

None of this shit is very good for you, but we like sweet.

Saturday Crazy Redneck Music Blogging

Funny! Unless you're in it. I am soooooo glad that not everybody carried around a camera during my drinkin' days like they do now.

And yes, I will admit to actually liking this song.

Zac Brown Band ~ Sic 'Em On A Chicken

Thanks to CheetoVonDeez.