Yes, that’s a live cow being rolled by a forklift.

Video captured during the investigation of a leading California slaughterhouse shows “downed” cattle (animals too sick or injured to stand) being shocked repeatedly in their rectums, rolled by forklifts, jabbed in the eyes, and shot in the nose with high-intensity water sprays in an attempt to make them stand for inspection.

“These were not rogue employees secretly doing these things,” the investigator said in a telephone interview on the condition of anonymity because he hopes to infiltrate other slaughterhouses. “This is the pen manager and his assistant doing this right in the open.”

In addition to the blatant cruelty of using torture to try to make the animals stand, these efforts pose a serious public health crisis. At least 12 of the 15 documented cases of Mad Cow Disease in North America were reportedly in downed cattle. They have also often been laying in feces, which contributes to the risk of E. coli and salmonella contamination.

And where is this meat going? Why, to the school lunch program, of course:

Over the past five years, Westland has sold about 100 million pounds of frozen beef, valued at $146 million, to the Agriculture Department’s commodities program, which supplies food for school lunches and programs for the needy, according to federal documents.

A little more regulation of the meat industry may be in order, no?

Amnesty International is reaffirming its stand in favor of abortion access for victims of rape, sexual assault, and incest, and in cases when pregnancy poses a risk to their lives or a “grave risk” to their health. The policy change (Amnesty previously called itself “neutral” on abortion - it opposed forced abortions, but neither attacked nor supported voluntary abortion) was inspired by regions like Darfur, where rape is being used as a weapon of war.

“Amnesty International stands alongside the victims and survivors of human rights violations. Our policy reflects our obligation of solidarity as a human rights movement with, for example, the rape survivor in Darfur who, because she is left pregnant as a result of the enemy, is further ostracised [sic] by her community,” said Kate Gilmore (Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International).

Amnesty International is still far from acknowledging the right to abortion as fundamental in defending each individual’s bodily integrity, but it’s taken a huge step in the right direction. Countless victims will finally have all of their options open to them. Amnesty is also calling for an end to the criminalization of abortion “to ensure women have access to heath care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women’s access to abortion … when their health or human rights are in danger.”

Ratzinger is not a happy Pope:

The church, which considers abortion to be murder and never justified, has urged Catholic organizations to withdraw their support for
Amnesty over the policy. The Vatican says Amnesty has “betrayed its mission.”

If forcing pregnancy on battered, assaulted women so they cannot return to their communities is “the mission,” then it’s about time it was betrayed. If sentencing innocent women to death by keeping abortion out of reach for those in risk is “the mission,” then we need to drop the damn mission. It’s just tragic that religious leaders are so desperate to keep victims of human rights violations in the dark.

“You can be charged with a hate crime if you make a statement or take an action that inflicts injury or incites a breach of the peace based on a person’s race, creed, gender or perceived sexual orientation.”

- First Assistant McHenry County State’s Attorney Thomas Carroll (Daily Herald)

Two 16-year-old girls have been charged with committing a hate crime after they printed and distributed fliers with a photo of two boys kissing (one of whom was a student at their school) and the statement, “God hates fags.”

Lifesite.net calls it a “nasty prank.” At FreeRepublic.com, rightwingers are ranting about free speech. But somewhere in Illinois, a gay teenager is dealing with the fact that inflammatory fliers featuring an intimate picture of himself are circulating his high school.

The target wasn’t homosexuality itself - this was about one SPECIFIC student (who the girls had been feuding with) and using his sexual orientation to bring as much harm to him as possible. Is there anyone naive enough to think that this little stunt hasn’t comprimised his safety at school?

To many, this is all about free speech and its imminent end. But if this had occured based on the race of a student, would anyone be defending the girls?

And what sort of penalties are the girls facing? (CBS2)

Tom Carroll, first assistant state’s attorney for McHenry County, said penalties for the girls could range from probation to a 30-day sentence in the Kane County Juvenile Detention Facility. If they were convicted, Carroll said, the girls’ records would be cleared at age 18 but those records would remain available to law-enforcement agencies.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Virginia Tech massacre victims and their families. I can’t imagine how difficult a time this is to so many people.

Some people just have no hearts (from pandagon):

WBC to Preach at Funerals of Virginia Tech Dead
WBC will preach at the funerals of the Virginia Tech students killed on campus during a shooting rampage April 16, 2007. You describe this as monumental horror, but you know nothing of horror — yet. Your bloody tyrant Bush says he is ‘horrified’ by it all. You know nothing of horror — yet. Your true horror is coming. “They shall also gird themselves with sackloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads” (Eze. 7:18).

Why did this happen, you ask? It’s simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants.

It is a crime to have sex with someone who does not consent to it. Simple, right?

Not so much.

Over the years - hell, over the past few months - nuts have tried to argue that everything but agreeing to have sex is agreeing to have sex.

Among them: she was dressing slutty, she worked a dirty job, she thought she had rights, she dared to leave her home at night.

Real rape victims are beaten to a bloody pulp. They were virgins. There were religious and oh-so-pure. The real crime is that they were tainted by sex, not that it was against their will.

And they certainly aren’t married, says Phyllis Schlafly:

By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.

People - rape is rape. There isn’t one kind of victim, and there isn’t one kind of rapist.

A new Abu Ghraib investigation has allegedly begun to examine the validity of a Youtube video in which an unidentified man claiming to have been a guard at Abu Ghraib boasts about abusing and torturing inmates and the rape and suicide of a young girl. It’s just about the most disgusting, evil thing I’ve ever witnessed. The video was removed from Youtube for violating the terms of use.
From the transcript:

Know any of those guys who got busted, you know, for torturing those inmates?

They got fucked, man. You know, just cuz someone let the pictures get out.

I don’t get that.

Yeah, why’d they….

No one expected…

****

I mean, compared to what we were doing every day? Teasing a couple of hajjis? Give me a fucking break. You know, what’s the big deal about making a haji walk around like a dog and bark?

****

….expected anyone to get all upset…

****

What else would you guys do?

What would we do?

****

Or we would take plastic and wrap it around their heads until they started choking….

****

CIA showed us a lot of shit….

****

…..crank generator, where we’d hook it up to their nipples or their nuts, fucking crank it and shock the shit out of them.

***

What was the most fun things?

The most fun thing, umm….definitely the women.

Yeah? They had chick insurgents, man?

No, they didn’t have chick insurgents.

***

Something goes down, they just grab everyone around, you know, fuck em. I mean, you gonna have 35 trials? No, you know. People are like, “Oh they’re innocent.” You know what, I don’t give a fuck. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all guilty. You know what? They should have kicked Saddam out themselves. Instead, we’re there doing the fucking job. We’re losing guys…..

***

Were those people in the World Trade Center guilty? No. Fuck them. They fucked us, so now we’re fucking them. Fuck them, dude, anyone with a fucking rag on their head is fair game.

***

….girl, she was probably like 15 years old. Yeah, she was hot dude. The body on that girl, yeah, really tight. You know, hadn’t been touched yet. She was fucking prime. So….

***

One of the guys started pimping her out for 50 bucks a shot. I think at the end of the day, you know, he’d made like 500 bucks before she hung herself.

Really?

Yeah.

She hung herself? How’s come she hung herself?

I don’t know. She wasn’t happy.

***

In their culture, it’s really shunned upon if you get raped. I guess she would have been stoned to death anyways by her people, you know. It’s fucked up.

She was fucked anyway, I guess. In more ways than one.

Last saturday, a 21-year-old woman was raped in Tampa, Florida. She managed to escape and called 911. The police took her to a hospital and began a rape investigation, and the young woman was given the first dose of the “morning-after pill” and a prescription for the remaining pills. She had no way of knowing that she would be hauled off to jail and denied access to the remainder of the medication.

When the police ran a background check on the young woman, they found that there was a warrant out for her arrest.

It was from an arrest when the woman was a juvenile and she was accused of not paying restitution. The woman says she was not aware there was a warrant out for her, and her attorney says it appears to be a paperwork error.

“They were more interested in prosecuting her for something that’s a paperwork snafu from four years ago, that was juvenile. They were more interested in working on that than finding an experienced rapist,” stated the victim’s mother.

Still, the woman was put in handcuffs and taken to jail. She was not allowed bond, and the medical staff at the jail refused to give her the Morning After Pill even though it had been prescribed at the hospital.

“The system as a whole, that is so broken, it needs to be completely fixed, so broken, so broken that something like this could happen, something like this should never have happened,” said the victim’s mother.

The victim did manage to finally bond out of jail Monday afternoon. She was too emotionally distraught to speak with the media.

If this disturbed you as much as it disturbed me, please take action!

A Las Vegas Catholic Priest is facing charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, and battery with the intent to commit sexual assault. 52-year-old George Chaanine allegedly beat a female Church employee. The woman was not sexually assaulted, but police working with the Sex Crimes Unit found that the encounter “had sexual connotations.”

Chaanine was put on “administrative leave.” Another one bites the dust.

As a whole, Catholic Priests are dropping like flies. Pam at Pandagon notes:

BTW, the numbers are staggering, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. In 2005 there were about 42,000 priests nationwide, which is a 29% decline since 1965. Back at that time there were 549 parishes without a resident priest. Today there are 3,200 with a vacancy. That’s a dying church, and Benedict’s hard-headedness will ensure its rapid decline here in the States.