After Christie Blatchford got smacked-down again and again and again and again and again and again and again for being the propaganda mouthpiece for war criminal Peter MacKay, her friend Rosie DiManno seems to have had today’s column dictated by Jason Kenney. Bad timing for Rosie, because also today, Independent Jewish Voices issued a press release,

Jewish group slams Minister Kenny’s attack on Kairos
OTTAWA, Dec. 21 /CNW Telbec/ – Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) condemns Immigration Minister Kenny’s politicized move to defund social-justice church-group Kairos, which received government funding for 35 years. Kenny said this occurred because, in 2007, Kairos offered a grant to Sabeel, a Palestinian NGO that doesn’t mirror Conservative policy.

“This is the new McCarthyism. If you don’t tow the government line, you get your funding cut. From this week’s conference in Israel to the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to ‘Combat Anti-Semitism’, Kenny strives to stifle all criticism of Israel, falsely labelling it anti-Semitic,” says IJV spokesperson Sid Shniad.

Having worked with Sabeel, IJV was surprised by the accusation. “Sabeel doesn’t tolerate racism, especially, anti-Semitism,” Shniad said.

Explaining why the funding was cut, Kenny’s office referred to a report of NGO Monitor, a right-wing Israel-based activist group, which had erroneously stated that Sabeel supported sanctions against Israel.

NGO Monitor is headed by Gerald Steinberg, a professor at Bar Ilan, known as Israel’s most right wing university. Sabeel has made no statement on sanctions or divestment.

IJV is appalled.

It’s early yet, so only one smackdown of this one so far.

This was predictable, Bill Donohue coming to the defense of the Catholic Church over the Irish report on systemic abuse in Catholic institutions. Here’s the full text of his release [emphasis added]:

HYSTERIA OVER IRISH CLERGY ABUSE

May 20, 2009

After nine years of investigation, Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has published its findings. More than 30,000 children, most of them delinquents, passed through one or more of Ireland’s Catholic-run institutions from the 1920s through the 1980s.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the report today:

Reuters is reporting that “Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children,” yet the report does not justify this wild and irresponsible claim. Four types of abuse are noted: physical, sexual, neglect and emotional. Physical abuse includes “being kicked”; neglect includes “inadequate heating”; and emotional abuse includes “lack of attachment and affection.” Not nice, to be sure, but hardly draconian, especially given the time line: fully 82 percent of the incidents took place before 1970. As the New York Times noted, “many of them [are] now more than 70 years old.” And quite frankly, corporal punishment was not exactly unknown in many homes during these times, and this is doubly true when dealing with miscreants.

Regarding sexual abuse, “kissing,” and “non-contact including voyeurism” (e.g., what it labels as “inappropriate sexual talk”) make the grade as constituting sexual abuse. Moreover, one-third of the cases involved “inappropriate fondling and contact.” None of this is defensible, but none of it qualifies as rape. Rape, on the other hand, constituted 12 percent of the cases. As for the charge that “Irish Priests” were responsible, some of the abuse was carried out by lay persons, much of it was done by Brothers, and about 12 percent of the abusers were priests (most of whom were not rapists).

The Irish report suffers from conflating minor instances of abuse with serious ones, thus demeaning the latter. When most people hear of the term abuse, they do not think about being slapped, being chilly, being ignored or, for that matter, having someone stare at you in the shower. They think about rape.

By cheapening rape, the report demeans the big victims. But, of course, there is a huge market for such distortions, especially when the accused is the Catholic Church.

Is there no crime so heinous that these people will not stand up for each other over?

[Edit: Here are just a couple articles that go into further detail, from vjack and PZ.]

The funny thing is, up until a few years ago, I was always a small-c conservative, and I’m still generally a fiscal conservative. But the current crop of conservatives in North America have me so enraged with both the Republican Fascist Party (that’s my new name for them) and Canada’s Neo-Con Party (led by George Bush’s lap dog, Stephen Harper) that I hope for the permanent demise of both parties.

It seems inevitable that, at least in some way, my dream is going to come true south of the border. The Republican Party is (probably) smart enough to realize that they’ll never win another election until they distance themselves from the extremist American Taliban and KKKhristian factions. I really do hope the racist, ignorant, homophobic anti-science, apocalyptic theocrats spend the next 40 years “wandering in the desert” without a political voice (or secede and become the Mexican State of “Tay-has”). The “moderate” Republicans will just pin the whole global warming denial thing on the Jesus Freaks, and move on.

Canada’s a completely different story. We have a Conservative government, who seem to have learned all their tricks from Dubya, Darth Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Phil Gramm and friends. They don’t believe in evolution, and they don’t believe in global warming. Their only reading material seems to come from Republican think tanks and they’ve already started their “elitist” attack ads and we aren’t even in an election campaign. Unfortunately, there’s no internal rift to hope will explode.

It’s the climate change issue that I think has the best potential to destroy the party and end neo-conservatism in North America forever. Recently, Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, passed first reading, since we have a minority government and the majority of our MPs actually have principles. Every single Conservative MP voted against the bill.

But things have changed quickly, I think. The public support for action on global warming has recently become overwhelming. The Conservatives will have to do the biggest flip-flop in history or risk losing support everywhere but our oil-producing areas. It is a given to me that most people in the oil business will continue to deny global warming as long as it is in their narrow short-term self-interest, regardless of future consequences. But the rest of Canada has caught on, and I hope they punish the Conservatives severely for putting short-term financial gain against the future of humanity.

BTW, a word on “flip-flopping”, before I finish. Everyone, including the media, seems to treat changing your mind as one of the worst things a politician can do, even worse than lying. Personally, I respect when someone looks at the situation in depth and says, “I was wrong.” Breaking campaign “promises” is not much different, we all know that party platforms are based on what the party thinks has the best chance of getting them elected. Once they get in power, a good politician will do what he has to do, regardless of his ideology. That’s the problem with the Conservatives, they will never let evidence get in the way of their ideology, and that’s what makes them bad for the country.

Conservatism: Where the rich get a free ride; where programs that I don’t need are wasteful; where regulations that get in the way of me making more money are evil; where liberty means I get to do the torturing to justify illegal wars and where freedom of speech means I get to push my religion in your face but everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi, a socialist, a fascist, a communist or just plain unpatriotic. In other words, it’s all about me.

… or “values voters” or the “moral majority” or whatever they call themselves nowadays.

First, all the most outspoken gay-bashing Republicans and pastors turn out to be gay themselves. For an ongoing chronicle of pastors’ betrayals, see Mojoey’s blog. On family values, Republicans are no better than Democrats, but the hypocrisy makes them worse.

A while ago I learned that the whole global warming denial thing is a Republican strategy by people like Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer and organizations such as the George C. Marshall Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose “About CEI” page says

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government.

Doesn’t sound very scientific, does it? Sounds more like the Republican mantra that John McCain has been parroting since his involvement in the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s, until this year’s subprime meltdown, “deregulate, deregulate, deregulate”. The whole goal of global warming denial was to sow doubt about the science and delay regulation. They were such fierce believers in “free enterprise” that they created false, misleading “evidence” and succeeded in delaying meaningful action by 30 years, causing our current environmental situation to be much worse than it would have been if Reagan had acted.

I read that people in 34 countries were polled about their belief in evolution and only Turkey had a higher percentage of people who reject evolution. Maybe you’re even one of them, and you think you have all this brilliant “evidence”, but trust me, you’re wrong. 100% wrong. You’ve been deliberately kept ignorant by your church and the Republican Party. It’s part of their war on science and “elitism”. Or call it the assault on reason.

Why do you think Bill O’Reilly hates Daily Kos so much? He doesn’t want you to read it, because you might begin to comprehend the magnitude of the lie that’s been perpetrated on you.

Then, I find out that the Republicons were just using racist white voters, and that the Republican Party

promotes not the general welfare but the commercial interests of corporate enterprise.

How many times did you hear John McCain talk about the middle class? He just talks about tax cuts for business, it’s Reaganomics, you take care of big business and hopefully wealth will “trickle down”. We all know how well that’s worked – the gap between rich and poor has never been as big as it is now.

Then I learned that the whole idea of repealing Roe v. Wade is just red meat (a much more powerful analogy than a carrot) dangled in front of evangelicals to keep them on issue. For over 35 years since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has been dominated by Republicans – they could have overturned it at any time, but they never have and never will because then they’d lose their precious carrot.

Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and their type turned negative campaigning into an art form, hitting new lows this year. They knowingly use your racism, intolerance and ignorance to instill fear in you. They’ve succeeded so well this time that I’m afraid it will be hard to get the hatred back under control. Seriously, so what if his middle name is “Hussein”? It’s a name, he was named well before Saddam became a household name. And do you not remember the stuff about his pastor, how can he be a Muslim at the same time? They hit a new low with their smear against Rashid Khalidi. But you don’t care – he has a Muslim name, he must be a terrorist. People, your ignorance is appalling. Here’s even an article by Bill Ayers, who’s not an enemy of America as he was portrayed.

After McCain picked Palin, most reasonable Republicans were severely disappointed. But not “the base”, you guys love her, and already want her to run in 2012. In fact, many of you were secretly hoping that McCain would die so she would become President. McCain chose her in a cynical move calculated to appease “the base”, hoping it might attract some Hillary supporters, but Palin’s whacked-out ideas just drove them away.

I learned about American eliminationism, which helped me decode the veiled racism in statements such as

“You know, people are poor in America, Steve, not because they lack money; they’re poor because they lack values, morals, and ethics.” (Same guy also said they’re “fat and flatulent.”)

or

Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value. Let me tell you that right now. I know this sounds offensive to half of my fellow Americans, because they have been Europeanized in their values. The French Revolution is not the American Revolution. The French Revolution said Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. The American Revolution said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have lost touch with what our distinctive American values are. We have distinctive American values. … We have a better value system, and this is being protected by one of the two parties: the Republican party.

Except that the Declaration of Independence starts with the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” And Abraham Lincoln made it clear in the Gettysburg Address that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness doesn’t apply just to whites.

And of course there’s the obsession with being “tough on crime”, which is code for “put the blacks in jail where they belong” because you’d rather just lock ‘em all up than create programs to help them help themselves. “If you work hard in America, you can succeed” just means that you think blacks are lazy and don’t deserve any help.

When McCain said that famous day, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong”, the deregulation theme he’d been repeating for so long was shown to only benefit the rich.

And of course he couldn’t separate himself from his good friend, George W. Bush, the most-disliked president in history. But many of you still support him because your pastors have been telling you to for eight years.

So between Bush, Palin, the economy and negative campaigning without any viable ideas of his own, he lost the election, and the Republican Party became a “white, rural, regional party”, who mostly voted for Palin not for McCain.

Now, the party has been taken over by the base, and Palin is your first choice for 2012. Problem is, the guys in charge know Palin will never attract the independents and democrats needed to win an election so now they’re throwing her under the bus.

Too bad, so sad.

(Yes, from an Anglo-North American point of view…)

Centuries ago, it was perfectly acceptable to “own” slaves, women had no right to vote and marriage was permanent (“What God has put together, let no man put asunder”). There was no divorce in the Catholic church; widows and widowers could remarry, but otherwise, marriage was permanent. To this day, the Catholic church does not recognize divorce, but they accommodate by granting an annulment, i.e. pretending the marriage never existed.

During the 1500s, King Henry VIII wanted a divorce, but the Pope wouldn’t give him one, so he established, and became the head of, the Church of England. Being king has its benefits, you get to write the rules.

It was still frowned upon even for a Catholic to marry a Protestant – a Christian marrying a Jew would have been almost unthinkable. Gradually, it became more acceptable for Catholics and Protestants to marry, and today, even marrying completely outside your religion doesn’t have the stigma it once did.

In 1776, the preamble to the Declaration of Independence began,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And of course, there was the struggle to end slavery. The American Civil War was literally fought over slavery. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address stressed that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness did not apply exclusively to the white race. But black people still did not have the right to vote, and “Jim Crow” laws would enforce segregation until 1965.

Similarly, women did not win the right to vote easily – it took until 1918 for women in Canada to achieve the right to vote in federal elections. In the US, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, while women in Switzerland had to wait until 1973. Even today, some countries do not allow women to vote, including Saudi Arabia and Vatican City. Saudi Arabia also doesn’t allow women to drive.

In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The civil rights movement in America gave finally black people full rights, but didn’t end the racism. It took over 40 years for Martin Luther King’s dream to be fulfilled by Barack Obama being elected President of the United States of America.

“Miscegenation laws” banning interracial marriage existed in America from colonial times until 1967. Similar laws were also enforced in Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa.

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, by the way, here’s an interesting quote I just found,

A 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, legalized abortion by a 7-2 vote. Six of the seven justices in the majority were Republican appointees. The only Democratic appointee, Byron White, voted against Roe v. Wade.

In fact, in every year since 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court has been controlled by a majority of Republican-appointed judges. There has not been a Democrat-appointed chief justice since 1953.

Currently, there are seven Republican appointees and two nominated by Democrats.

Obviously, if the Republican majority had wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade at any time since 1973, they had the votes to do so. Why haven’t they?

Or another, wondering if Roe v. Wade is the Republican Party’s carrot on a stick.

In 1978, Californians rejected Proposition 6, better known as the “Briggs Initiative”, which would have banned homosexuals form working as teachers.

Canada adopted its Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.

“Civil union”, essentially gay marriage, was recognized in Denmark in 1989.

Apartheid ended in 1990.

In 2003, Ontario became the first jurisdiction in North America to recognize same-sex marriage. Today same-sex marriage is recognized in many countries.

In May 2008, the Supreme Court of California ruled that same-sex marriage was legal.

On November 5 2008, Proposition 8 passed in California (along with similar initiatives in other states), modifying the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. Let me repeat, an existing right, that people want to remove. It is hateful, bigoted fearmongering to claim that gay marriage will destroy civilization and to use “that’s how it’s always been” as justification.

The struggle for human rights has been going on for centuries. This is just the next step we have to get over. Soon, places that don’t allow same sex marriage will be considered just as backwards as Saudi Arabia is today. And always remember who was the most vocal in supporting Proposition 8 – the “religious right”, the same people who resisted every advancement in human rights in history.

As a straight male, I think people even wonder why I’m so passionate about this. I’ve had all the same objections myself: “That’s how it’s always been”, to “Ok, but let’s not call it marriage”, to “Ok, fine, I guess”, to “Anything less is discrimination and is unacceptable”. I actually found it liberating to be free of that last vestige of bigotry, I now look at everyone as equal and I want all the same rights and privileges for everyone.

I know exactly one guy who’s in a gay relationship, and he’s such a great person that I can’t imagine denying him the same rights at everyone else. If he’s crazy enough to actually want to get married he should be allowed to (I live in Ontario, so technically, he is).

Good news (in my opinion):

- Obama won in a landslide (349 electoral votes to 163)

- Senate: 56 Democrats, 40 Republicans

- Congress: 254 Democrats, 173 Republicans

- Kay Hagan beat Elizabeth Dole

- one new Democratic governor (MIssouri)

Bad news:

- Proposition 8 passed in California

- Al Franken lost

- Michele Bachmann won

- James Inhofe won

Just this week, we’ve seen the “collapse” of American and global markets, widely attributed to a failure of deregulation.

Also this week, I’ve launched my own very insignificant attack on systemic conservative lying.

And just today, I saw this video, “American Denial of Global Warming”, where science historian Naomi Oreskes outlines the parts of a few players, including Fred Seitz and Fred Singer of the George Marshall Institute. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, I’ll give you my best summary:

The George Marshall Institute is a conservative think tank established to counter scientific resistance to the Strategic Defense Initiative (Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense plan). Their strategy was simple, confuse the issue by claiming that not all scientists are united in opposition to SDI. They subsequently used the same tactic with the second-hand smoke and global warming issues.

Don’t take my word for it, do your own research, google “marshall seitz singer jastrow nierenberg” and note that Singer’s Science & Environmental Policy Project website is alive and well as of Sept 20, 2008.

Oreskes makes it clear that Seitz, Singer et al were fiercely anti-communist, anti-regulation conservatives, and that there’s nothing inherently wrong with that political view (although this week is a bad week for that point of view). The problem is that they’ve used fake science to promote their political views. And they used the media to do it. This has confused Americans, eroded their faith in science & media, and has delayed meaningful action on global warming.

I say again, reasonable Republicans have a responsibility to reject this type of strategy, which is leading America down the path, not just away from global leadership, but actually to irrelevance.

I know this is supposed to be a blog about atheism, but global warming is (obviously!) another of my main concerns. It actually all fits together perfectly: Christians, Republicans, liars, deniers.

Here’s another reference about skeptics being paid to disagree with global warming…

More about Lawrence Solomon, apologizing for falsely calling scientists deniers. His book, “The Deniers”, is promoted as a “must’read” on freedominion.com, with no disclaimers. And he even admits that his subjects aren’t really deniers, from DeSmogBlog,

Solomon even says so. He says that while reflecting on his own research, “I … noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers.”

Nigel Weiss, among others, objected to being used, Solomon and the National Post eventually had to apologize to him. But the series has been publicized on at least one right-wing site, freerepublic.com.

Let’s be clear, many of the deniers are status quo, small-government, right wingers with their own agenda. Many call themselves “Christians”, although there’s nothing Christian about their beliefs. They use the same techniques that Big Tobacco used (Fred Singer attacked a 1993 EPA  report on the dangers of smoking, calling it ‘junk science’) and they have successfully stalled action for over 25 years (if you’re skeptical of this story, here’s a reference to the 1979 report, JSR-78-07). They still have lots of believers, for example, Sarah Palin and junkscience.com. It all goes to reinforce the right’s war on science and the “elite”. They even shamelessly promote “Carbon Belch Day”, while Exxon and Peabody are committing crimes against humanity.

Here’s an excellent series, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.

On the point of lying, conservatives even have their own version of Wikipedia (with charming entries on homosexuality, Creation Science and lots more), here’s just one nice example of right wing hatred. The hard right is in a major battle all over the country to have creationism taught in schools (no reference needed, look it up if you don’t believe me).

I do still think there are reasonable people with legitimate reasons for voting Republican, however, I also think until the lying, hating, ignorant, largely “Christian” extreme right is marginalized to the point of irrelevance, voting Republican is voting to continue America’s loss of international credibility. Hatred and war are not the solution to terrorism, especially when America is mortgaging its future to the Middle East for oil. The US should take a good look at itself, and realize that they have a serious problem with the way they treat their poor and sick, the small-government model of capitalism is in tatters (dragging the rest of the world down with it) and the world needs the US to take a strong position on the environment. Four more years of right-wing hatred and ignorance

We all know America is extremely polarized, I believe that until reasonable Republicans disavow the tactics of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Phil Gramm, Dick Cheney and so many others, they are not acting in the interest of promoting an America that is a leader on the world stage. John McCain is no “maverick” to me and Sarah Palin is part of the scary right wing that should never get close to power.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s what Republicans do, and they do it very well.

They lie about the environment. Look at this story, The Deniers are winning, but only with the GOP. Conservatives have a long, glorious tradition of not only denying the global warming problem, but virulently attacking it, here’s just one example, from newsbusters.org, where the writer repeatedly uses emotionally-charged words like ‘disgraceful’, ‘disgusting’, and ‘despicable’ (I hesitate to even link to it, but I hope rational people will see through the lies and distortions).

Or how ’bout this one, where Fred Singer, a prominent denier, is shot down for claims he never worked for Big Tobacco or Big Oil, with plenty of irrefutable evidence that he did. There’s one document on tobaccodocuments.org that I found particularly fascinating.

Of course, we can’t forget James Inhofe’s 400 deniers, thoroughly debunked.

Here’s a scientific study, “The Organization of Denial”, of 141 “environmentally sceptical” books published between 1972 and 2005, finding that over 92% were published in the US by conservative think tanks. And scientists have been offered cash to dissent.

Sometimes they make it too easy to see through, like when the Conservative Book Club features Lawrence Solomon’s The Deniers, or our friend Fred Singer’s Unstoppable Global Warming. I can’t resist quoting from the opening paragraph of each,

Al Gore and the mainstream media tell us constantly that it’s all settled: global warming is an established fact…

and,

To Al Gore and his disciples, global warming is man-made and dangerous…

This is actually one of the problems, part of the reason these people can’t accept the truth is because Al Gore is so visible in the issue. It remains to be seen if Republicans can change their minds, as one did in this story, Generational Test for Republicans.

(The Conservative Book Club doesn’t stop there, it has entire sections on Global Warming, Radical Islam and The Clintons, appealing directly to the haters.)

Here’s a cleverly-disguised one from globalwarming.org, discussing Lawrence Solomon’s above-mentioned book. By the way, it turns out globalwarming.org is sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose website actually reveals a lot,

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.

Translation: they’re a conservative group working for old-fashioned, hands-off government. This week, we all know how well that has worked out!

Here’s a question, Climate change deniers – stupid or just dishonest? DeSmogBlog has a searchable database on global warming deniers, check it out (of course Fred Singer is there). Or see Exxon Secrets, for info on the individuals and organizations working to keep America ignorant, such as CEI and the Heartland Institute. At least the Rockefeller family tried to stand up to Exxon.

They lie about evolution, which is not up for debate. For example, Ben Stein’s “Expelled” (see “Flunked, not expelled, what Ben Stein isn’t telling you about ID”).  Scientists spend so much time and effort fighting back. At least my favourite Young Earth Creationist felon, Kent Hovind, who lied about his taxes is doing time for his crime (Not Safe For Work, but there’s a hilarious video on YouTube). Oh, speaking of YouTube, in 2007, his goons used fraud to remove critical YouTube videos.

We all know they lie about the economy, which McCain says is fundamentally strong. Maybe it is for these 3 Merrill Lynch officials who may get up to $200,000,000, but meanwhile the World Bank is shovelling up to $250,000,000,000 (!!!) into global money markets.

The US is clearly headed in the wrong way, consider these:

The Republican War on Science, Fascist America (where she forgot one, destroy the integrity of the electoral system), Idiot America, The Assault on Reason by Al Gore, a poll of Americans themselves, a poll outside the US, Making America Stupid,

Don’t forget the famous right-wing lying hypocrites Troy King, Mark Foley, Ed Schrock, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard or the haters Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Check out these blogs which largely feature Christians who get caught in their crimes and Republicons.

They even lie to their evangelical Christian base, as evidenced by this 2006 article, Christian Evangelicals: Enablers of the Wayward Republicans, even as the Religious Right is taking over the GOP.

They lie because it’s the only way they think they can beat Obama.

I can’t summarize it any better that the hard-hitting opening line from the “Exact Opposite” by Baron Dave Romm series,

A standard conservative Big Brother technique is to make wild random claims, sling mud and repeat lies until some of the mud sticks or one of the wild claims has a small germ of truth.

So I appeal to all reasonable Americans who are considering voting Republican – If you continue to elect these people, they’ll never learn. I can understand wanting fiscally-responsible spending, but I’m not convinced they’re the ones to do it.

The family & friends of PFC LaVena Johnson deserve justice for this heinous crime… From the June 4 2008 St. Louis American,

Who killed PFC. LaVena L. Johnson?

The Army claims the 5’1” African-American soldier from North County died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound with a rifle on July 19, 2005.

Her father, John H. Johnson, Ph.D. of Florissant, said color photos and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the military suggest otherwise.

“Our worst fears were substantiated when we started going through information from the Army,” Johnson said.

Since his daughter’s death, Johnson has been searching for answers that align with the evidence in the case. Johnson hopes a congressional body can push for answers beyond the official report.

“The House Armed Services Committee is looking into Private Johnson’s case, but no decisions have been made regarding a formal investigation,” said Lara Battles, press secretary for the committee.

There must be justice. My thoughts are with her friends & family.

Crooks & Liars

The St. Louis American

The Young Turks video