Crapaganda.com

A little-noticed blog post by a veteran intelligence reporter averred Tuesday that the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group weighed a plan prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion that sought to discredit Saddam Hussein by portraying him as gay.

According to Jeff Stein, a longtime intelligence reporter who first revealed that FBI officials had eavesdropped on a sitting Democratic congresswoman, the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group considered creating a video that would the then-Iraqi leader having intercourse with a teenage boy.

“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” a former CIA official purportedly told Stein. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”

The CIA would have then “flood[ed] Iraq with the videos,” the official added.

A third former CIA official said that the plan was shot down, in part, because others in the agency thought that claiming Saddam had sex with boys would do little to undermine him.

“Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East — nobody cares,” another purported CIA official is quoted as saying. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”

A current U.S. official told Stein he couldn’t confirm or deny the former CIA employees’ claims.

“While I can’t confirm these accounts, if these ideas were ever floated by anyone at any time, they clearly didn’t go anywhere,” the official told Stein.

Stein notes, however, that the CIA did make a video in which a fake Osama Bin Laden enjoys a campfire and the company of his associates while bragging about their juvenile paramours.

The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory. The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” he said.

Eventually, “things ground to a halt,” the other former officer said, because no one could come to agreement on the projects.

They also faced strong opposition from James Pavitt, then head of the agency’s Operations Division, and his deputy, Hugh Turner, who “kept throwing darts at it.”

Fundamentalists in Iraq have shown disdain for their gay compatriots since Saddam’s fall. In some cases, according to human rights activists, they’ve resorted to grotesque violence.

The television news agency Al Arabiya reported last year that a prominent Iraqi human rights activist asserted that some men have died after gruesome anal torture.

“A prominent Iraqi human rights activist says that Iraqi militia have deployed a painful form of torture against homosexuals by closing their anuses using “Iranian gum,” the network said. “Yanar Mohammad told Alarabiya.net that, “Iraqi militias have deployed an unprecedented form of torture against homosexuals by using a very strong glue that will close their anus.”

“According to her,” the report added, “the new substance ‘is known as the American hum, which is an Iranian-manufactured glue that if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile cellphones in Iraq.’”

Source: Raw Story

A bizarre form of political correctness is preventing us from an open discussion about what is, in fact, female subjugation.

It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.

Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of “dignity” and “equality of men and women” – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.

But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy. At one level this is understandable, given the issue has become a confusing tussle between feminists and well-meaning liberals; nervous libertarians and right-wing ideologues; and the usual smattering of racists and dog-whistling shock-jocks.

Unfortunately for Muslim women, the burqa is not just a garment. It has become a weapon in a war of ideology: a war in which women are the battleground and their rights and freedoms are at stake.

Here’s the problem. Those who are critical of calls to ban the burqa perceive it to be an attack on personal freedoms. They view the burqa as an individual choice – which is arguable – and a religious requirement, which it is not. They look straight past the woman hidden from public view under heavy cloth, and instead applaud our multicultural tolerance. This is a mistake. The burqa has nothing to do with ethnic diversity and everything to do with a war against women. Those who wear it, and those who insist it be worn, subscribe to an ideology in which women are inferior sexual temptresses, whose female form is a problem and must be covered. This is based on the contradictory proposition that men are both superior and yet unable to control their sexual urges if they see women in their natural human state. If this wasn’t deadly serious, it would be funny.

Award-winning Muslim journalist Mona Eltahawy says she is appalled to hear Europeans defend the burqa and niqab. “A bizarre political correctness has tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women’s rights,” she says. Yet, to argue directly with Islamic fundamentalists about gender equality is fruitless. According to Eltahawy, “the ideology that promotes the niqab and burqa does not believe in the concept of women’s rights to begin with”.

Let’s be clear. This is not about the hijab – or headscarf. Like any hat or cap, the hijab is a matter of individual right. Whether worn for reasons of devotion, modesty, conformity or fashion, it is personal and the state has no business banning it. The burqa is an entirely different issue.

The burqa and the niqab shroud the full body, covering every part of a woman except her feet. The niqab includes a slit for the eyes, whereas the burqa has mesh netting. Malalai Joya, an Afghan MP and a devout Muslim, hates wearing it. “It’s not only oppressive,” she says, “but it’s more difficult than you might think. You have no peripheral vision. And it’s hot and suffocating under there.”

When visiting Australia recently, Joya didn’t pack her burqa. She is one of the many millions of Muslim women around the world who choose not to wear it – when they don’t have to. Numerous Islamic scholars, men and women, argue that there is not a single reference in the Koran that mandates women must cover their face and bodies and hide themselves from public view. The Koran does call for modesty, which some interpret as an obligation to wear the headscarf. But even that is widely questioned by progressive Muslims scholars such as Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. Furious at Islamic extremists for their “gender apartheid”, Fatah insists that even the hijab is being used by fundamentalists as a “political tool” who have turned it into “the central pillar of Islam”.

Outside Australia, there are plenty of Muslim women who despise the burqa and niqab as much as I do, and are prepared to say so. British journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a Shiite Muslim who pulls no punches. “I abhor the burqa,” she wrote in The Independent, saying that she was “offended” by the presumption that women who wear it “are more pious and true” than her.

There is no doubt that women who don this ostentatious costume in the West are proud of their piety. One such woman told me, “the niqab is submission and servitude to my Almighty Creator” and that I had no right to question her choice to wear it. Well, I do. What God demands men roam free while women wear a sackcloth that restricts their movement and dehumanises them? What God wants to punish women in this way? What God hates women so much that he restricts her right to be man’s equal?

The answer is obvious. No God. This is the work of men – who claim a direct link to the divine – and wish to keep women subordinate and under their control. It’s that simple.

Source: The Age

Astronomer Copernicus reburied as hero

Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in what is now Poland, far from Europe’s centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

His revolutionary model was based on complex mathematical calculations and his naked-eye observations of the heavens because the telescope had not yet been invented.

After his death, his remains rested in an unmarked grave beneath the floor of the cathedral in Frombork, northern Poland, the exact location unknown.

On Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland’s highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried the coffin through the imposing red brick cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005.

A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory, but also a church canon, a cleric that ranks below a priest. The tombstone is decorated with a model of the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six of the planets.

At the urging of a local bishop, scientists began searching in 2004 for the astronomer’s remains and eventually turned up a skull and bones of a 70-year-old man — the age Copernicus was when he died. A reconstruction made by forensic police based on the skull showed a broken nose and other features that resemble a self-portrait of Copernicus.

In a later stage of the investigation, DNA taken from teeth and bones matched that from hairs found in one of his books, leading the scientists to conclude with great probability that they had finally found Copernicus.

In recent weeks, a wooden casket holding those remains has lain in state in the nearby city of Olsztyn, and on Friday they were toured around the region to towns linked to his life.

The pageantry comes 18 years after the Vatican rehabilitated the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was persecuted in the Inquisition for carrying the Copernican Revolution forward.

Wojciech Ziemba, the archbishop of the region surrounding Frombork, said the Catholic Church is proud that Copernicus left the region a legacy of “his hard work, devotion and above all of his scientific genius.”

Saturday’s Mass was led by Jozef Kowalczyk, the papal nuncio and newly named Primate of Poland, the highest church authority in this deeply Catholic country.

Poland also is the homeland of John Paul II, the late pope who said in 1992 that the church was wrong in condemning Galileo’s work.

Jacek Jezierski, a local bishop who encouraged the search for Copernicus, said that he considers Copernicus’ burial as part of the church’s broader embrace of science as being compatible with Biblical belief.

“Today’s funeral has symbolic value in that it is a gesture of reconciliation between science and faith,” Jezierski said. “Science and faith can be reconciled.”

Copernicus’ burial in an anonymous grave in the 16th century was not linked to suspicions of heresy. When he died, his ideas were just starting to be discussed by a small group of European astronomers, astrologers and mathematicians, and the church was not yet forcefully condemning the heliocentric world view as heresy, according to Jack Repcheck, author of “Copernicus’ Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began.”

The full attack on those ideas came decades later when the Vatican was waging a massive defense against Martin Luther’s Reformation.

“There is no indication that Copernicus was worried about being declared a heretic and being kicked out of the church for his astronomical views,” Repcheck said.

“Why was he just buried along with everyone else, like every other canon in Frombork? Because at the time of his death he was just any other canon in Frombork. He was not the iconic hero that he has become.”

Copernicus had, however, been at odds with his superiors in the church over other matters.

He was repeatedly reprimanded for keeping a mistress, which violated his vow of celibacy, and was eventually forced to give her up. He also was suspected of harboring sympathies for Lutheranism, which was spreading like wildfire in northern Europe at the time, Repcheck said.

Copernicus’ major treatise — “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” — was published at the very end of his life, and he only received a copy of the printed book on the day he died — May 21, 1543.

Source: AP

At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known. So well-known, in fact, that Ms. Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children — including infants and toddlers — suspected of being witches and warlocks. Her culpability is a central contention of “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” a documentary that will make its American debut Wednesday on HBO2. Those disturbed by the needless immiseration of innocent children should beware. “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” follows Gary Foxcroft, founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed. Their fellow villagers have often seen DVDs of “End of the Wicked,” Ms. Ukpabio’s bloody 1999 movie purporting to show how the devil captures children’s souls. And some have read her book “Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft,” where she confidently writes that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.” Visiting Houston last week to lead a four-night revival for a local church, Ms. Ukpabio, 41, had no idea that “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” which brought protesters out to greet her in London, was about to be shown in the United States. But she was eager to defend herself. “Do you think Harry Potter is real?” Ms. Ukpabio asked me angrily, in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express where she was staying. “It is only because I am African,” she said, that people who understand that J. K. Rowling writes fiction would take literally Ms. Ukpabio’s filmic depictions of possessed children, gathering by moonlight to devour human flesh. Still, “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” makes clear that many rural Nigerians do take her film seriously. And in her sermons, Ms. Ukpabio is emphatic that children can be possessed, and that with her God-given “powers of discernment,” she can spot such a child. Belief in possession is especially common among Pentecostals in Nigeria, where it reinforces native traditions that spirits are real and intervene in human affairs. In Nigeria, many preachers not only identify possessed children but charge dearly to perform exorcisms. To redeem their children’s souls — and to keep the child from being killed or banished by neighbors — parents scrimp or borrow to pay the preacher. Ms. Ukpabio argued that “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” exaggerates or invents the problem of child abandonment. Asked how she could be so sure, she said, “because I am an African!” In Africa, she said, “family ties are too strong to have a child on the street.” The Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network, a school for abandoned children run by Sam Itauma and featured in Mr. Foxcroft’s documentary, is “a 419 scam,” Ms. Ukpabio said, referring to the section in Nigeria’s criminal code that deals with fraud. She said the children’s gruesome scars and wounds, shown in the documentary, are not real — or perhaps they are real, “but there are many ways children can get maimed.” And if the injuries are the result of witchcraft accusations against the children, she said, those accusations could not have been made by Pentecostal Christian preachers, but by charlatans. Since “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” was first shown in Britain, in 2008, Mr. Itauma’s home state has adopted a law against accusing children of witchcraft. But Ms. Ukpabio went on the offensive by suing the state government, Mr. Foxcroft, Mr. Itauma and Leo Igwe, a Nigerian antisuperstition activist. In the lawsuit, Ms. Ukpabio alleges that the state law infringes on her freedom of religion. She seeks 2 billion naira (about $13 million) in damages, as well as “an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents” from interfering with or otherwise denouncing her church’s “right to practice their religion and the Christian religious belief in the existence of God, Jesus Christ, Satan, sin, witchcraft, heaven and hellfire.” In other words, in the name of religious freedom, Ms. Ukpabio seeks a gag order on anyone who disagrees with her. The lawsuit also reiterates Ms. Ukpabio’s contention that Stepping Stones Nigeria and Mr. Itauma’s school are not charities but extortionate front organizations. According to Ms. Ukpabio, Mr. Foxcroft and Mr. Itauma aim not to educate abandoned children but “to use the said funds to blackmail.” “We’re a registered charity in the U. K., so we publish our accounts,” said Mr. Foxcroft by phone in England. “She can come in and see how much money we raised and where we spend it.” In Houston, Ms. Ukpabio reiterated that the state should close Mr. Itauma’s school. To the children living there — who, according to her, may be actors or witches, but if witches, they were not abused, and if abused, then certainly not by Christians — Ms. Ukpabio offered the services of her own church. The school “does not understand demonic possession,” she said. “If they understood, they would take the children to Liberty Gospel. “We would deliver them!” Source: New York Post

A Transportation Security Administration agent has been arrested for allegedly stealing nearly $500 dollars from a wheelchair bound passenger as she passed through a security checkpoint at Newark Airport.

Leroy Ray allegedly went into the disabled woman’s bag as it passed through the X-ray machine.

Ray was caught on surveillance video on February 3, 2010, reaching into the woman’s bag to steal an envelope of cash, according to a criminal complaint.

The fiftyish year old woman, investigators said, was from North Jersey and was flying out of Newark to visit relatives overseas.

She apparently checked her purse several minutes after going through security, found the missing money, and went back to complain.

The victim reported $300 dollars in cash in a white envelope was missing as was $195 dollars that was in a zippered pocket of the bag.  When the woman returned to the C-1 checkpoint to complain, Ray allegedly left his post and quickly left the area.

When Ray returned to the checkpoint, he allegedly saw the woman there and then went to the Lost and Found office to turn in the envelope, the feds alleged.

TSA’s own Inspections Division helped uncover the alleged wrongdoing.

The TSA emailed NBC New York a statement “TSA will continue to move swiftly and decisively to end the federal career of any employee who engages in illegal activity on the job.”

In screening more than 2 million passengers a day nationwide, the TSA’s Ann Davis told us 23 security officers have been “removed/terminated for theft from the check point or checked baggage” since the beginning of 2007.

Ray, an eight-year veteran of the TSA who also appeared to hold a job with a private security firm, had no comment on leaving the federal courthouse.

But his attorney, Brian Hill, said “I’ve known him for a long time and everything about these allegations appear to be out of character for him.”

Ray, 45, was released on $1000 bail after an appearance in federal court in Newark.

Meanwhile, fliers at Newark Liberty Airport today were aghast at the charges.

“I watch it like a hawk,” said Lynne DeSherbinin of Norwalk, Conn. of her possessions, just before catching a flight out of Newark.

But another flier, Jose Ramirez, of Piscataway, N.J. admitted “They’re federal employees so you wouldn’t expect like that to happen to you.”

Source: NBC New York

Hundreds of members of the BMA have passed a motion denouncing the use of the alternative medicine, saying taxpayers should not foot the bill for remedies with no scientific basis to support them.

The BMA has previously expressed scepticism about homoeopathy, arguing that the rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence should examine the evidence base and make a definitive ruling about the use of the remedies in the NHS.

Now, the annual conference of junior doctors has gone further, with a vote overwhelmingly supporting a blanket ban, and an end to all placements for trainee doctors which teach them homeopathic principles.

Dr Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee in England told the conference: “Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street [in London] there is a National Hospital for Homeopathy which is paid for by the NHS”.

The alternative medicine, devised in the 18th century by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, is based on a theory that substances which cause symptoms in a healthy person can, when vastly diluted, cure the same problems in a sick person.

Proponents say the resulting remedy retains a “memory” of the original ingredient – a concept dismissed by scientists.

Latest figures show 54,000 patients are treated each year at four NHS homeopathic hospitals in London, Glasgow, Bristol and Liverpool, at an estimated cost of £4 million.

A fifth hospital in Tunbridge Wells in Kent was forced to close last year when local NHS funders stopped paying for treatments.

Gordon Lehany, chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee in Scotland said it was wrong that some junior doctors were spending part of their training rotations in homeopathic hospitals, learning principles which had no place in science.

He told the conference in London last weekend: “At a time when the NHS is struggling for cash we should be focusing on treatments that have proven benefit. If people wish to pay for homoeopathy that’s their choice but it shouldn’t be paid for on the NHS until there is evidence that it works.”

The motion was supported by BMA Chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum, though it will only become official policy of the whole organisation if it is agreed by their full conference next month.

In February a report by MPs said the alternative medicine should not receive state funding.

The Commons science and technology committee also said vials of the remedies should not be allowed to use phrases like “used to treat” in their marketing, as consumers might think there is clinical evidence that they work.

In evidence to the committee, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain said there was no possible reason why such treatments, marketed by an industry worth £40 million in this country, could be effective scientifically.

Advocates of homoeopathy say even if the effect of the remedies is to work as a placebo, they are chosen by thousands of people, and do not carry the risks and side effects of many mainstream medicines.

A survey carried out at England’s NHS homeopathic hospitals found 70 per cent of patients said they felt some improvement after undergoing treatment.

Crystal Sumner, chief executive of the British Homeopathic Association (BHA), said attempts to stop the NHS funding alternative medicines ignored the views of the public, especially patients with chronic conditions.

She said: ” Homeopathy helps thousands of people who are not helped by conventional care. We don’t want it to be a substitute for mainstream care, but when people are thinking about making cuts to funding, I think they need to consider public satisfaction, and see that homoeopathy has a place in medicine.”

She said junior doctors’ calls for an end to any training placements based in homeopathic hospitals ignored the lessons alternative medicine could provide, in terms of how to diagnose patients.

Estimates on how much the NHS spends on homoeopathy vary. The BHA says the NHS spends about £4 million a year on homeopathic services, although the Department of Health says spending on the medicines themselves is just £152,000 a year.

Two weeks ago, a charity founded by the Prince of Wales to promotes alternative medicines announced plans to shut down, days after a former senior official was arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.

The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health said its plans to close had been brought forward as a result of a fraud investigation at the charity.

George Gray, a former chief executive of the organisation, and his wife Gillian were arrested by Scotland Yard officers last month in an early-morning raid on their home in North London.

Source: Telegraph UK

Indian Homeopath Responds

The Bermuda Triangle (also, Devil’s Triangle) is a huge triangle formed by the islands of Bermuda and Puerto Rico, and the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is said to be an area of profound danger for anyone or anything venturing into it. It was first so designated by a writer for Argosy magazine.

The whole legend began in December 1944 when five Avenger bombers of the U.S. Navy were lost while on a routine training mission out of the Fort Lauderdale air base. A sensational 1974 book by Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle, brought this supposed mystery to the attention of the public.

The Berlitz book, written thirty years after the loss of the bombers, contained invented details, distorted and exaggerated figures and descriptions, and even fabricated radio conversations that were claimed to have taken place between the naval pilots and the Fort Lauderdale air base. The event was not that unusual, if the invented details are ignored, and as evidence for any sort of mystery in the triangle, the Avenger bombers matter is a very poor example, but it remains as the event most quoted by the believers.

Other ships that are said to have vanished in the area either did not exist, or sank or capsized in other areas——even in the Pacific or Mediterranean——or went down due to perfectly ordinary and well understood causes.

The Bermuda Triangle, an area subject to violent storms and rough seas, does produce problems, but no more than any other similar area anywhere in the world. There is no need to ascribe supernatural or even unusual causes to any losses that occur there. Unless, of course, you want to sell lots and lots of books.

The US Army has recalled 44,000 helmets that failed ballistic tests and federal authorities are investigating the firm that manufactured them, officers said on Monday.

The helmets, made by ArmorSource in Hebron, Ohio, were issued to American troops since 2007, including an unknown number of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brigadier General Pete Fuller told reporters.

“We don’t know where they (helmets) are. So they could be on some soldier’s head in either Iraq or Afghanistan. They could also be anywhere else in the world,” Fuller said.

The move came amid a probe by the Justice Department, which launched an investigation in January into ArmorSource’s helmet contract, and after a recent round of tests raised concerns, Fuller said.

The helmets were subjected to “worst case scenarios” at a Maryland shooting range and while they failed to meet the army’s standards, the test results gave no indication soldiers would be at risk of lethal injury, officers said.

“In ballistic tests, the helmets fell short of the Army standards, not by much, but the standards are absolute. And if you don’t meet them, you don’t meet them,” said Colonel William Cole.

The test results on the helmet came a day after the Justice Department officials provided “critical additional details” about their investigation, prompting the Pentagon to launch the recall, Fuller said.

Officials declined to offer details of the Justice Department investigation.

The military had an ample supply of the same helmets made by three other contractors that would allow troops to exchange the recalled helmets manufactured by ArmorSource, officers said.

Some soldiers in Afghanistan had already exchanged their helmets after commanders were notified last Thursday.

“We’re doing due diligence… (because) a vendor under investigation might not have done all they should have done, we wanted to ensure there’s no risk ever put to our soldiers,” Fuller said.

“So we’re recalling all the helmets associated with that vendor.”

The army first had concerns about the contractor’s work last year as paint on the helmet was peeling off, said Fuller, who oversees equipping army troops.

The Advanced Combat Helmet is standard issue for all Army troops and is also used by the Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard. The Marine Corps use a slightly lighter version that has also been recalled, but those helmets had not been distributed yet, officers said.

The 44,000 recalled helmets — which cost 250 dollars each — represent about four percent of the total number of Advanced Combat Helmets in the military’s inventory, Fuller said.

Under an August 2006 contract, ArmorSource manufactured 102,000 helmets. Of that number, 44,000 were distributed to troops and have been recalled, while 55,000 are still in storage and the military refused to accept the remaining 3,000, Fuller said.

As a result of the tests and ongoing investigation, all the helmets made by ArmorSource in the military’s inventory will be destroyed, he said.

The Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven’t killed anyone.

By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court says the Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release.

The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.

“The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. “This the Eighth Amendment does not permit.”

Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Kennedy and the court’s four liberal justices about Graham. But Roberts said he does not believe the ruling should extend to all young offenders who are locked up for crimes other than murder.

Source: Raw Story