Those Who Cannot Look in the Mirror

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to write about population and demographics from time to time. I am not alone, of course; there are a number of Conservative and Moderate people discussing birth rates and such out there. There is also a strain of commentary on Liberal blogs - especially Feminist blogs, mainly mocking Conservatives that want kids.

I have noted again and again that these Feminists seem to think that Conservatives are racists. I have covered many of the ways that the facts of racial violence show that these stereotypes are wrong, but this lumping of “Conservatives are racist” and “wanting large families is about racial supremacy” stuff is getting so ludicrous that I figured I’d take a look.

First, we find that our erstwhile source of all things Feminist - as long as they are radical things - Amanda at Pandagon points out that not only are people who want large families racist… they are genocidal (actually, see ascribes a genocidal motive to all those who oppose abortion, but we‘ll help her out by focusing on just proponents of large families). Reading the comments on Amanda’s post will reveal an echo-chamber of people more than willing to proclaim that all who want large families are racist, genocidal, and (by strong implication) fascist. They also refer to a commenter who posted that he was interested in ‘preserving his own culture’ as a ‘racist misogynist’ whom the moderator called on the others to ignore. Now, far be it from me to claim that Liberals/Feminists must act a certain way, but - isn’t this commenter right to value his own culture?

I visited a number of quiver full sites online. You can see many of them for yourself and a search can find you more. I searched pretty carefully and I found that these sites have quite a bit in common; they tend to advocate large families (no surprise), they love kids (no surprise), and they don’t talk about race. At all. The only reference I found at all related to race was one mention of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt when Teddy, not the author, spoke of declining fertility in White women in the early 1900’s. That’s it. I do admit, if you google ‘+quiver full +supremacy’ and look at the religious/quiver full sites that result, there is a discussion of supremacy. But it is the Supremacy of Christ, not a race.

Some of the “Progressive” sites you find, though, do speak of race. An article in The Nation(not the most Right-leaning of papers, of course) speaks of the quiver full movement and, as it does so, mentions race twice; first by claiming that “race suicide” is a subtext to the quiver full movement (with no citation, naturally); and, once again, a reference to a quote by Teddy Roosevelt about White birth rates over a century ago. From this article you get the Pandagon bit, mentioned above, and a few related posts from the Left side of the blogs, all claiming having many children for religious reasons is racist, almost all pointing to the Nation article or to Amanda’s post. Some even claim being pro-large families at all is evil. There is also a Newsweek article on the quiver full movement, but it makes no leaps as far as racial motivations.

The quiver full movement almost completely dismisses the Leftist claims that they are racist, only pausing occasionally to point out that Christianity has a lot of non-White members and that the quiver full movement calls on all Christians to have children as a blessing of God.

While we have some fairly prominent Feminist bloggers making the charge that wanting a large family is racist, even genocidal, the movement they point to this time is pretty obviously race-blind. Pandagon and the other Feminist blogs like to paint the Catholic Church as racist, but of course, the Church is very multi-ethnic and always has been. So where is this hateful accusation coming from? Well, I have a theory.

It is, in short, projection. The Left, always quick to dodge reality when it suits them, is projecting their own biases onto their ideological opponents. I’ve already gone into detail about how people in the North and West deride Southerners as racist bigots when, in fact, the North and West have much higher rates of race-motivated crime. I have also discussed how Liberals denounce Conservatives as racist and discriminatory despite the fact that studies show Conservatives to be race-blind while Liberals favor Whites over minorities. In both cases, Liberals accuse others of the actions that Liberals, themselves, exhibit. They cling to these notions of how ‘the other’ acts despite the evidence to the contrary. So why is Amanda of Pandagon and her comrades so eager to point to the Right and claim that people who refuse to use contraception are genocidal? That’s a rather simple one, really.

Its because the origins of modern contraception use, especially the founding of Planned Parenthood and the development of the birth control pill, were covertly and overtly racist and genocidal, with a strong underpinning of elitism thrown in. The founder of Planned Parenthood and primary source of funds for the research that culminated in the birth control pill was Margaret Sanger. Ms. Sanger’s support of eugenics is widely known, as are the many statements she made disparaging the mentally ill, the retarded, and the ‘unfit’, Of course, she also said the same things about Blacks and the poor, too. While some try to distance Ms. Sanger from the horrors of Nazi Germany, they have great trouble doing so since her support of Fascists was fairly evident. Her defenders are in the rather uncomfortable position of admitting that she worked closely with, supported, and was supported by racists and fascists, she made a lot of comments that might seem racist or fascist, but you can’t pin her down to a definitively racist or fascist quote. That’s pretty shaky. She hoped that incentives would work to reduce the population of ‘undesirables’, but advocated coercion and force if incentives failed. Showing that she certainly believed that she and other experts knew what was best for everyone and was willing to use force to impose it.

“OK,” you say, “Sanger was a eugenicists and, possibly, a racist and, maybe, a support of fascism. So what? That was years ago!”

Really? Who is the primary focus of Planned Parenthood today? The same groups Sanger targeted - minorities and the poor. Analysts noted in the 1980’s that Planned Parenthood focused its efforts on poor urban minority areas, resulting in 33% of abortions being performed on minority women who made up less than 20% of the total population. Contemporary advocates of contraception and abortion continue to see these two things as means of eliminating the poor, the ignorant and the unhealthy - and these same advocates are intimately involved in groups that advocate policies of government-promoted and funded contraception and abortion. A list of proponents of eugenics reveals a broad group, to be sure, but a group with a bias toward the Left with some rather prominent names as large boosters of contraception and family planning

The end result is that we see that the birth of the ‘family planning’ movement was in the midst of Liberal eugenicists. Planned Parenthood and related groups flourished under the umbrella of eugenics and ‘racial improvement’. Abortion was as much a part of the eugenicists’ arsenal as forced sterilization (and, often, more prominent). To this day groups that advocate ‘family planning’ specifically target the poor and minorities, resulting in a much higher incidence of abortions in those same groups. Call it what you will, but the end result of contemporary family planning is virtually identical to the planned results of the eugenics movements of the pre-WWII era.

Access to abortion and contraception combined with the attitude that children are a financial burden has resulted in plummeting birthrates in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and North Africa with indicators that the rest of Africa will rapidly join in. In a number of countries abortion is being used to eliminate women before they are even born. All these facts reveal why Feminists must denigrate women who want large families. For if they were to admit the possibility of merit in large families, they must examine the consequences of their own attitudes and actions. Such an examination would reveal that, regardless of their stated motives, the end results of Feminists’ advocacy for ‘family planning’ are indistinguishable from the hopes and dreams of the ‘racial hygienists’ of the late 1800’s.

Still Moving In

Again, sorry for the light posting, but Deeper Thought, the Airborne Philosophy Squad and I are still moving into the new Casa de Pensamientos Profundos. In the meantime, here are a few more interesting facts about Red vs. Blue/Southern vs. Northern states.

I received another hostile email recently, this time with a northern writer (well, so he claimed, at least) going on and on about Southerners, and not in a good way. Since he used the word 'inbred' four times I figured, what the heck - I'll check out the laws. Some states permit marriage between first cousins, some do not. Here are a few of the states that forbid marriage between first cousins:
Arkansas
Kentucky
Louisiana (unless one or both are adopted)
Mississippi (unless one or both are adopted)
Texas
West Virginia (again, unless one or both are adopted)

For a little balance, here are a few states that permit first cousins to marry, without restrictions:
California
Connecticut
Maryland
Massachusetts
New Jersey
New York
Rhode Island
Vermont

Once again we have a situation where the facts on the ground don't seem to match the stereotype.

More on Hate Crimes in the US

My post titled Rednecks, White Power, and Blue States has generated quite a bit of a stir (well, not as much as if I’d put a puppy in a blender, but pretty good for me) and a bit of a backlash. There are two main pushbacks that I have detected. The first is “Well, see, Southern racist cops don’t *report* hate crimes, ‘cuz they’re, you know, Southern racist cops. Like in Gator. Or White Lightning.” The other one is, in short “go to Hell, you mouth-breather!”

Thankfully, the first is much more common than the second.

Let’s take a look at that first claim, then, and see if it might be true. Personally, I suspect that the FBI pays a bit more attention to racism and hate crimes in the South (after all, they also went to public schools where they learned that the words to “Southern Man” were as true as the gospel), but they might be getting fooled by all those cracker sheriffs, might’nt they?

I spoke with the Public Affairs Office of the FBI in Atlanta concerning the compilation of hate crime statistics for their own annual reports (which are my main source of information). They were very open in explaining how their statistics are gathered – in the same way that rape, murder, and other crime statistics are gathered, through the Criminal Justice Information System. They were very clear that they have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the statistics and that years of use have found no holes or discrepancies. Remember, the police anywhere hiding racially-motivated crimes would be a violation of the Civil Rights Act and would result in an FBI investigation for denial of civil rights.

But, again, what if they are being lied to? Or, horrors! What if they are in on “it”? How would we know? Well, in 2000 the reporting of hate crimes became very visible/politicized with a series of reports and outside scrutiny. The result has been a strengthening of federal hate crime laws and an increased scrutiny on the reporting of hate crimes at all levels.

How do others view the reports? Beginning in 2001 CAIR focused upon anti-Arab hate crimes and has been pretty relentless ever since. They have had few complaints, especially since 2002. And the Southern Poverty Law Center has been attacking the FBI for years, saying that hate crimes are terribly under-reported. But when I spoke with the PAO for the SPLC he admitted that the SPLC does no investigations of its own, has no researchers looking into hate crimes in any direct way, and bases its assumptions on what they ‘feel to be true’ (not a direct quote).

The ADL and ACLU declined to comment on the FBI’s hate crime statistics (in both cases the Georgia chapters declined and the national offices did not call back). I could find no references to either group complaining about the recent reporting, however, so we will put them in the ‘neutral’ column.

We will now cast out eyes further afield, all the way to Israel and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism. While not nearly as detailed in its analysis of American anti-Semitism as the FBI report, the Stephen Roth Institute report for America in 2004 seems to be a very close match to what other groups are reporting. While the Stephen Roth Institute does its own, independent, research, I was unable to confirm that they don’t just get their hate crime data from the FBI, so this is (at least right now) only evidence that independent organizations investigating hate crimes trust the FBI data. Considering the fact, though, that they are specifically looking for hate crimes and have experience in discovering these crimes for themselves in nations that don’t have central reporting, this is certainly a tick mark in favor of the statistics.

In short, high-profile groups that oppose hate crimes either have no problem with the numbers, no way to refute the numbers in a credible manner, or actively use them. These groups, plus the NAACP, the Southern Leadership Council, and many others all look for hate crimes in the South and have literally billions of dollars for locating, identifying, and exposing ‘hidden’ hate crimes. Combined with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that have everything to lose by covering up hate crimes, and I think the numbers are pretty trustworthy.

What about all those racist cracker cops in the South, anyway? I mean, they just might be able to pull off hiding all sorts of things, just like in Mississippi Burning, right?

Let us look now on Atlanta, the city closest to my own home. With a population that is over 60% Black, Atlanta is the only large city in America with an uninterrupted string of Black mayors for over 30 years. Atlanta is over 61% Black, about 33% White, about 4.5% Hispanic, and the rest divided amongst Asians, Native Americans, and other races. The Atlanta Metro also has a rather large Gay community, especially in the suburban enclaves in De Kalb and Fulton counties. The Atlanta Police Department is headed by a a Black man; indeed, 4 of the last five police chiefs have been Black, including a Black woman chief. The force is about 60% Black, a close reflection of the population. Do you expect me to believe that a Black cop in a majority Black town with a Black lieutenant that reports to a Black police chief that works for a Black mayor… is going to hush up a hate crime against a Black citizen? If you do, you will be disappointed.

The city of St. Paul, capitol of Minnesota, is (according to the census) about 11.7% Black. In contrast, the St. Paul Police Department is only about 5.7% Black (according to the St. Paul PD Public Affairs Office, a polite group of people). The St. Paul PD is further 3% Asian (the city is 12.3% Asian), 4.3% Hispanic (the city is 7.9% Hispanic), and 0.9% American Indian (the city is 1.1% American Indian). The rest of the sworn officers are White, making the police force for a city that is about 67% White a full about 86% White. The PAO that I spoke to, however, assured me that although he had never run the numbers (he gave me raw numbers, not percentages) he was sure that the PD was a close reflection of the city's ethnic distribution. When I asked him what percentage of St. Paul was White, he said "about 85%, I suppose", a guess reflecting the police force, not the city. As can be seen, Hispanics are under-represented by about 40%, Blacks are under-represented by about 50% and Asians are under-represented by about 75% on the SPPD.

Which town do you think is more likely to hide a hate crime?

Note: on 8/10/06 this post was edited for grammar, clarity, and to add an approved quote. No numbers or links were changed.

Rednecks, White Power, and Blue States

I'd like to welcome readers of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler and Hugh Hewitt.

I’ve run into it again. A “progressive” site (which I will not name, let alone link) has gone off on an extended rant about Southern racism, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness – while, of course, using terms like ‘toothless”, “inbred”, “ignorant”, “stupid”, and “redneck” to describe these benighted people. Woe, woe is the South, perpetual home of hate, racism, and crimes against the marginalized.

If you have read anything here, you can probably guess where I am going with this. Let me add a little personal background to give you some perspective.

I am from a “middle state”, a Mid-West bastion of farming where I was raised amidst the tall corn. Being in a sort of border area along the Mason-Dixon line, I heard the stereotypes of Southern yokels, but never really understood it. After joining the Army, which has many a Southern man in its ranks, I was even more nonplussed by the stereotypes I routinely saw. I lived for many years in North Carolina and loved the land, the weather, and the people.

Then I moved to Michigan for college. The reaction of born-and-bred Northerners to the fact that I had lived in the South was jaw-dropping to me. I was asked if I (as a non-Southerner by birth) was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan; if I could understand “those people” and their accents; if I had any trouble with how dirty it was in the South; and a million more. Even better were the assumptions made by people who mistakenly thought I was born in the South, including a PoliSci TA from Oregon who assumed I learned to drive on a tractor and the Brooklynite who asked me, in all seriousness, how long it took me to get used to wearing shoes when I joined the Army.

I later moved to Minnesota where the misconceptions were, if possible, even worse. After a decade of living in the frozen tundra, I escaped back to the South, this time to Atlanta. Deeper Thought, my wife, is a Michigan native and her parents want to move nearer to the Airborne Philosophy Squad (Aristotlean). Even they, though, are plagued with the doubts and fears of someone who only ventures to the sunny side of the Mason-Dixon for rare visits to Disney World. They worry about the Klan, they worry about ignorant people, they worry about no jobs. In short, they reflect the constant Northern worry about the South.

As I mentioned above, these attitudes are very visible in many “progressives” from the coasts, the Mid-West, and the Northern plains. Indeed, the entire idea that Republicans are inherently racist seems to stem from the fact that Southerners routinely vote Republican (well, now). This has taken on a life of its own in the last few years, so that a simple perusal of liberal bloggers will quickly reveal the following prejudices; Southerners are ignorant/stupid, inbred, weak-willed, violent, and racist; Republicans are the same, and hate the poor, too! This myth (for it is, indeed, a myth) is so commonly accepted by the Left and the media that when Howard Dean openly accuses Republicans of being racist the press does not ask him to prove it, but simply wonders how Conservatives will try to 'deflect' this issue.

Let’s look at some history. The fact that the South was overwhelmingly a bastion of the Democratic Party after the Civil War is so well documented as to be common knowledge. Even today, over 140 year after the end of the Civil War there are many political positions that have never been held by anyone but Democrats since the end of Reconstruction. If having Southern votes is indicative of being a ‘racist’ party, does this indict the Democrats?

Certainly not, we are told. The myth is that the Republican Party pulled Southerners into the conservative fold by using the 1964 Civil Rights Act and “code words” to become the party of White Segregation, yanking the deeply-racist South into their orbit. Of course, this ignores the fact that the Democratic Party was very supportive of Jim Crow laws until the mid-1960’s, showing themselves as openly racist. It also ignores the fact that a much higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than did Democrats. In other words, the Republican Party had stronger support for the Civil Rights Act and, until about 1970 the Democratic Party was the one supporting Jim Crow laws in the South. This makes the myth that racism was the motivation for Southerners to start voting Republican very hard to support.

The concept that Southern voters became Republicans because of race is, indeed, a myth. In actuality, the Democratic Party drifted further and further to the Left, forcing many of the people who supported the New Deal (and the children of these supporters) to vote Republican. When the 1972 Democratic Party was called the party of “Acid, Abortion, and Amnesty” it was a fairly accurate portrayal of the direction they had taken. The Democratic Party had embraced the radicals that came with the anti-war demonstrators, often tacitly including the domestic terrorists that were on the fringes of such groups, and were advocating socialist policies that the average American found distasteful. The surge in violent crime around the nation was perceived (correctly) as being caused by the drug culture, driving more voters to the ‘law and order’ focused Republicans and away from the Democrats, who were visibly supported by the members of the drug culture.

In the 1970’s the serious disruptions of the economy were seen as an outgrowth of the New Deal and the Great Society, both very intrusive redistribution schemes with an emphasis on central control by the government. The Democratic approach of raising taxes and enlarging such programs (seen as a cause of the problems to begin with) contrasted poorly with the Republican position that tax cuts and smaller government would lead to prosperity. Another heavy blow was the Carter presidency. Although Carter created a Department of Energy and formulated a national energy policy, the oil shocks and steep price increases in fuel were seen as concrete failures of Democratic policies. Combined with Carter’s ineffectual response to this energy crisis, economic factors drove more voters to the Republican Party.

So the migration of voters from the Democratic party (with its support for Jim Crow laws) to the Republican Party (and its support of the Civil Rights Act) has very little, if anything at all, to do with race and is more about crime, taxes, and (oddly) politics. This trend was believed to be so obvious by Conservatives that they expressed it openly, including in the Seminal 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority, where the argument was that if Republicans simply didn’t change Southerners would be forced to vote for them in reaction to the radicalization of the Democrats. But the question remains….

Are Southerners racist, or not?

Let’s start with the South. For some time now the FBI has been tracking hate crimes. These are broken down by state and type of offense. If we look at racially-motivated hate crimes, we see something, well, that goes against the conventional wisdom. According to the 2004 statistics, the top four states for race-based hate crimes are;

New Jersey
Michigan
Montana
Minnesota

That is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? Let’s look at the bottom four states for race-based hate crimes. They are;

Louisiana
Georgia
Mississippi
Alabama

I must admit, I expected the results to be counter to the commonly held ideas, but this was a shock to me. Especially when I looked at the breakdown of numbers and realized that when you compare state to state, per capita, hate crimes are FIFTY TIMES more likely in Minnesota than in Alabama! Texas has 1/6th the race-based hate crime rate of Michigan, racial hate crimes are more than twice as likely in Massachusetts as opposed to West Virginia, and North Carolina has 1/3rd the incidence of racially-motivated hate crime of California.

When you look beyond race-based hate crimes and look at general hate crime statistics (which include sexual orientation and religion as categories of crime) these surprising trends remain; Minnesota has nine times the per capita incidence of hate crimes of the state of Alabama, Massachusetts has three times the race-baiting, gay-basing, and anti-Semitism of Georgia, and California has twice the hate crimes (again, per capita) of Kentucky. In short, the “Red States” are, in general, home to fewer race-baiters, Jew-haters, and gay-bashers than the “Blue States”; in particular, crime statistics show that there is much less race-based crime in the South than in other regions of the country, especially the Northeast and the upper Mid-West.

What about Republicans as a whole? Are they racist? Or, at least, aren’t they ‘more racist’ than Democrats?

I learned about this study recently whilst listening to that bulwark of Conservative punditry, NPR. In a political contest where the Republican candidate is Black, 25% of Republican voters will ‘switch loyalties’ and vote for a White Democrat. This seems pretty damning, perhaps a clear indicator that Republicans are racist. The study goes on, however, to show that when the Democratic candidate is Black 38% of Democrat voters will vote, instead, for a White Republican. In other words, 50% more Democrat voters will change party if their ‘own’ candidate is Black than will Republicans in the same instance. This seems to show that if Republicans are racist, Democrats are more racist.

Another study showed that Republicans would give less money to victims of the Katrina disaster than would Democrats. No surprise there. Also, the study showed that while Republicans were most likely to make aid even, regardless of circumstances. The Democrats, on the other hand, varied the amount of aid they would award based on race, but not the way you think; in general, Democrats would give Whites more money, up to twice the average relief, while giving Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics less. In other words, while Republicans were ‘color-blind’, Democrats tended to give more, maybe much more, to Whites. This echoes another study done by the same group that showed that Republicans have stricter prison sentences across the board while Democrats gave much longer prison terms and steeper fines to Blacks while reducing the penalties paid by Whites.

What does the evidence show? Northern states have a higher instance of race-based hate crimes than Southern states (indeed, “Blue states” have a higher instance of hate crimes overall than do “Red states”). Democrats are more likely to change their votes to ‘avoid’ a Black candidate than Republicans. And Democrats tend to give greater rewards to White disaster victims and greater punishments to Black criminals, while Republicans are ‘color-blind’ in both cases.

So much for the “reality based community”.

UPDATE: Look what a prominent Lefty blogger was kind enough to put up today.

UPDATE to the update: The HuffPo entry has been edited, but a screenshot of the original is at Michelle's.

ANOTHER Update: I have some followup information on this topic here.

A LATE ADDITION of another article on a related subject is here.

Shame

I often drop by Coturnix/Bora’s site Science and Politics to look around. Bora is a one-note political commentator, and a bit shrill at times, but he has some of the best links around. Yesterday he linked to an article on Pharyngula, a blog dedicated to evolution and anti-Christian rants (more the former than the latter, but the emotional investment seems about equal). The specific article has very little, if anything, to offer anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Christianity (I’ll save the puzzle of why so many people who declaim that ‘religious nuts’ have no authority to speak about science without an advanced degree, but feel perfectly fine in discussing theology without even minimal study for another time). Reading it out of a sense of duty, to see if there was perhaps some insight I might miss, I came across this little gem;

“…our nation tortures to the death… … brown-skinned Middle Eastern people right now. How can we look at the Passion spectacles now and not feel a deep shame?”

There are so many errors and assumption in this one quote that I feel compelled to respond.

First of all, PZ Myers, the author, is so very quick to refer to Middle Easterners as “brown people” that I am stunned. I travel in diverse circles and I find that many more Liberals are willing to describe a population as “brown people” than Conservatives. From this author to George Carlin, the description of Semitic people as “brown” is all too common. Not only are Arabs of a variety of skin tones, just like, say, Caucasian Americans, but not all Middle Easterners are even Semitic. The Iranians, for example, are Aryan; in Tehran blue eyes and blonde hair are not uncommon. Most of the soldiers I know are aware of this; a great many of the conservatives I know are as shocked by the Liberal use of the term as I am, so I suspect they either know these things, or would simply never utter the phrase.

Second, PZ Myers is comparing current day Middle Easterners to Jesus, implying He was also a “brown person”. Well, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. While I don’t think he was a blonde with blue eyes, modern genetic research indicates that Jews of the 1st Century almost certainly looked much like Jews of today – in other words, what modern minds would call “White”. While intermarriage has always occurred, the people of the Middle East are largely what you and I would call “White” and , essentially, always have been. Seriously, look at Tariq Azziz, or Ayatollah Khomeini – my black Irish father-in-law is much darker than either of them. So PZ Myers’ knowledge of the people of the Middle East seems a bit sparse.

Of course, he could have put it that way to imply that the American military had racist motives for going into Iraq, but that makes less sense. After all, the military is a very integrated group and, most critically, the military is told where to go – it doesn’t get to decide. Maybe he meant the administration had racist motives for sending the army? Well, one would hope that the Black Secretary of State, Black National Security Advisor, or one of the other minority members of the most diverse administration in history would have mentioned any racist overtones to policy, but maybe they are all race traitors. After all, so many Liberals seem to think that any minority that isn’t Liberal is automatically a traitor to their own people.

But Conservatives are the ones obsessed by race. Go figure.

Even more egregious is his statement that ‘our nation tortures people’. It does? When? Where? Who?

Let’s assume he is referring to Abu Ghraib. If so, he seems confused about the facts of that terrible incident. As is well documented, the abuse was by soldiers acting outside of the rules. The proof that such actions were not condoned is not just the many army regulations in dozens of manuals and training programs, but the prompt response of army investigators when they were approached by a witness. The military criminal investigation division promptly removed almost 20 enlisted and officers from duty and began an in-depth investigation. The evidence was not classified, but was instead largely made public. Two more investigations followed, with the report of one being briefly classified before being released.

The results were criminal charges against the soldiers where evidence could prove their criminal activities (six in total). The remainder were removed from duty, a serious blow to their careers (especially considering that there was too little evidence to go to courts-martial in those cases). Included in this was Brigadier General Janis Karpinsky, who was removed from command and demoted.

So it sounds to me like a group of soldiers violated orders, acted outside the law, were caught, investigated, charged, and found guilty. The people who allowed an environment where such things happened were removed from their positions and put places where they couldn’t be that lax again. These actions – investigation, trial, punishment – were conducted by my government and punished people who broke the law. So PZ Myers must not have been referring to Abu Ghraib.

Maybe he meant the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp? Well, I do have serious issues with the legality of how people held there are classified under the law – but despite the release of dozens of detainees, the only person injured thus far where the injuries could be proven is an American soldier. Despite many allegations, no one has been able to prove anything. And some of the accusations are, frankly, ludicrous. One prisoner claimed he was forced to walk on glass shards and then had his face ground into glass while cigarettes were put out on his body – without a mark left on him. Are the prisoners in a stressful situation? Certainly. Are they sometimes made uncomfortable? Absolutely. Are the conditions as extreme as a standard French prison? No, they are much better than the usual French prison. In other words, while the French decry the ‘terrible conditions’ of the prisoners at Gitmo, those self-same prisoners are in much better condition than check-forgers in Paris jails.

Maybe Prof. Myers is referring to the secret prisons America maintains in Europe? You know, the ones that no one can seem to find, that no one can report being held in, and with all the nations putatively involved denying it. Heck, even the EU commission says there weren’t any secret American prisons in Europe.

So – Middle Easterners aren’t “brown people”, they are just people. The U.S. has investigated and punished people who tortured prisoners and made the evidence and related proceedings public. Despite outrageous claims of secret prisons, none have been found. Despite the fact that virtually everyone in the world knows exactly where the Guantanamo facility is and each person leaving it is an instant media target, no one can prove anything concerning actual torture.

I may be mistaken, but I can’t Google anytime the Pharyngula blog has condemned beheadings, or terror. It seems innocent reporters, aid workers, etc. snatched off the streets, tortured with actual, you know, blood drawn, and then beheaded on camera is No Big Deal ™ compared to non-existent secret prisons, Gitmo prisoners forced to listen to the Go-Go’s and, of course, a half-dozen criminals rotting in American prisons for breaking American laws.