Tag Archives: torture

Our Fascist Overlords (So Far…)

There’s an old Arab quote that roughly translates to “Don’t tell me about a man, tell me about his friends.” i.e, you are the company you keep. In spite of the present efforts for a recount in certain key states, we are still very much bracing for a Trump presidency, and perhaps worse yet, a Trump cabinet. Let’s get to meet our new fascist overlords:

2Ambassador to the United Nations: Nikki Haley

Born to Sikh Indian parents, Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley earned acclaim for her decision to remove the Confederate flag from state grounds. While maintaining a number of hardline positions- especially in terms of immigration- Haley again made headlines with her early criticism of then-candidate Trump. Criticism that earned her calls to be deported.

Deported to exactly where remains a mystery, as Haley was born in America. But as plenty of Trump supporters imagine America to be an inherently white country, they showed no qualms about reminding Haley (and people of color) that their presence in this nation is merely tolerated

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Image retrieved via Policy.Mic

Which makes Trump’s decision to offer her UN ambassadorship surprising, and Haley’s acceptance even more so. But perhaps that’s just to show how much the Republican party has chugged the Kool-Aid. A woman who, simply because of her first name and her skin tone, received calls for her “deportation” is now the international face of the same “siren call of the angriest voices.” Certainly it’s a chilling picture of what’s to come, and enough to silence anyone claiming that the house and senate will somehow act as a counterbalance to Trump’s Fourth Reich. Continue reading

What Wouldn’t Jesus Do?

“Would Jesus have carried a gun?”

That was the question Christian activist Shane Claiborne posed in an article this Saturday.

The Jesus I worship did not carry a gun. He carried a cross.  Jesus did not tell us to kill our enemies. He told us to love them.”

These words come as a response to the shocking and repulsive comments by Liberty University’s president Jerry Falwell Jr. who, in a speech to his institution’s students, sneering declared that “if more good people had concealed-carry permits […] we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them.”

I shouldn’t have to explain how despicable those words are. And readers- I’m not going to.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m going to assume (to hope) that you have an iota of humanity in you. A speck of morality. A single shred of basic decency. I don’t think I need to describe what vile, bigoted, demonic filth that statement is. I don’t think I could even begin to. The heinous, cancerous insanity that Falwell spouts doesn’t merit a response.

Shane Claiborne, on the other hand, does.

shane-claiborne-believes-the-gospel-is-about-being-close-to-those-who Continue reading

Unofficial Fame Day: Shep Smith

We make an effort here at Culture War Reporters to not only decry travesties but to celebrate advances in art, politics, music, and media. And in this day and age, the presence of an honest journalist isn’t so much an advancement as it is a flippin’ miracle. That such a journalist should emerge from the McCarthyite dystopia that is FOX News is more baffling still.

But lo and behold-

Shep ****ing Smith.

Now granted- Smith’s been around for a while. His career as a journalist started clear back in 1985, and Shep’s been a top-rated newsman since the mid-90s. Still, it would be a decade later, during the “war on terror” that a change seemed to occur.

What (if anything) prompted it, I do not know. When exactly it happened- who can say? Perhaps it had been building for a while, but whatever it was, Shep Smith frickin’ lost it.

In the best possible way.


Now that clip was from 2009, by which time the debate on America’s use of torture (“enhanced interrogation”, to use the official term for it) had already been going on for some time. Again, the exact causes of Shep’s outburst are a mystery to me, but it really doesn’t matter.

This, people. This is the kind of stuff we need more of. Continue reading

Jurassic World Hates Women One Woman In Particular

When I was much younger my mother taught me that “hate” is a strong word and should be used as sparingly as possible. It’s for that reason that, while it’s pretty apparent that Bryce Dallas Howard’s character was portrayed in a decidedly sexist fashion, I cannot agree that Jurassic World hates her. It doesn’t think particularly highly of her as a woman or of mothers in general, but it does not hate her.

No, if there is any one woman that Jurassic World holds in the lowest regard it is the character of Zara Young, played by Katie McGrath. While the video below is only the last twenty seconds of a trailer do be warned, the full video spoils huge chunks of the film. That said, read everything below the clip at your own risk if you have not seen it or any others in the series.

Continue reading

Killing the Death Penalty

In the final hours of September 21, 2011, the State of Georgia executed an innocent man. Troy Davis, born 1968, had been wrongfully convicted and subsequently murdered after spending nearly two decades in prison. In spite of cries of protest from former presidents, the director of the FBI, the pope and countless activists, Davis was killed for a crime he did not commit.

Such is our thirst for blood- and it is blood that we’re after.

Mel Gibson’s a racist lunatic, but this was a pretty dang cool movie…

We might dress it up as “justice” or a “deterrent” or any number of grotesque charades, but make no mistake, it is an emotional drive for vengeance that is overwhelmingly behind this. Christopher Hitchens, complicated man that he was, got it right when he called the death penalty “Human Sacrifice” in his 1997 debate on the subject.


We seem to have, as a society, a twisted sense of justice. We’re happy to serve up a person- any person- for slaughter to convince ourselves that justice as been done. Someone‘s got to pay when a crime is committed, whether or not that person actually did it seems of little consequence to us, as evidenced by the long and still-growing list of innocent men, women, and yes, even children who we’ve sacrificed for our appetites.

For this reason, today we’re going to be addressing the foundations of the arguments in favor of the death penalty. Continue reading

Shame Day: Piers Morgan

Speaking on the subject of cornered enemies, the brilliant tactician Sun Tzu warns us to always leave the enemy a way out, lest they rally and defeat you out of desperation. Far be it from me to disagree with the general, but I think the single exception to the rule may be the culture wars. It’s so rare to get a major figure so utterly on the ropes that I don’t think anyone could blame you from moving up and laying into ’em, and readers, Piers Morgan is on the ropes.

The ape isn’t on the ropes, but you get the idea…

American readers might know Piers solely as an obnoxious CNN commentator, and while that’s true, Morgan’s condescending coverage of gun control (his favored dead horse over the past few months) is really only the tip of the iceberg. Continue reading