Kangaroo court justice for sexual predator Jeffrey Sinclair

The US Army is just about the best gig serial killers & rapists can get. Those inclined by criminal pathology to such barbarisms will find the army a hospitable venue with complementary impunity from criminal prosecution. That’s due to the court-martial system where the Pentagon tries its own criminals & can rig the system any way it likes. It pretends it’s adversary & defendant at the same time & makes a kangaroo court look like a model of jurisprudence by comparison.

The most recent case in point is the court-martial verdict on hotshot general Jeffrey Sinclair. A female officer & subordinate on his staff in Iraq & Afghanistan accused him of sexual assault (oral sodomy) & of threatening to kill her & her family if she reported him. After two years of proceedings, the felonious charges were dropped when Sinclair pleaded guilty to adultery & sexting with two other subordinates. He walks away from any prison time with a $20,000 fine, a tsk tsk from the military, & can retire early (he’s 51 years-old) with his pension intact.

An unidentified women’s group, legal experts, & members of the US Congress expressed shock at the verdict allowing him to walk away scot-free. What’s to be shocked about in a verdict that was a done deal when the trial began!? One marvels the case even got to a courtroom. Out of the estimated 20,000 sexual assaults in the military per year (that’s a Pentagon statistic so likely massively underestimated), only 575 cases were processed, & only 96 of those went to court-martial. Ninety percent of the assault victims are involuntarily discharged.

Even if the court had sentenced Sinclair to jail time, the Pentagon would find a way to dodge it. When Lt. William Calley was found guilty on March 29, 1971, of the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, he was sentenced to life imprisonment & hard labor at Fort Leavenworth, a maximum security prison. It was a show trial, because a couple days later president Nixon ordered him transferred from Leavenworth to house arrest at a cushy base. He only spent 3-1/2 years of house arrest before being released.

US Army staff sergeant Robert Bales pleaded guilty to murdering 16 Afghan civilians & 6 counts of assault & attempted murder in a March 2012 massacre; he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. You can be certain, it’s only a matter of time before he walks free even if they have to drum up a technicality in the trial. The system is rigged & somewhere in those proceedings, someone intentionally screwed up to assure him impunity.

The reason for all these legal intrigues is clear: the US Army fosters psycho-pathology; wars of colonial domination require racism, violence & social hatred of every kind. Charging Sinclair with adultery is mockery since prostitution is an adjunct of the military, often administered by the Pentagon. If soldiers are punished for such conduct, they are less likely to enlist or to follow orders.

Integrating the US military was a major civil rights battle for Blacks, Latinos, & Native Americans during WWII; it became an issue for women in the 1970s. That doesn’t mean antiwar activists should not do everything in our powers to persuade young men & women to turn their backs on military service & instead find something useful to do with their lives.

(Photo of Sinclair leaving courthouse smirking, knowing he & the Pentagon pulled a scam on justice by James Robinson/AP)

Extinct predators end up in US Congress

This is an artist’s sketch of Anzu wyliei, a bird-like dinosaur nicknamed “the chicken from hell” that roamed the US area of North & South Dakota, 68 to 66 million years ago. Anzu was over 11 feet (3.5 metres) head to tail & weighed 500 to 660 pounds. A freaky cross between a chicken & a lizard, it looked like it could stomp you to death, rip you to shreds, or simply peck you to death. It had a beak, no teeth, murderous claws, spindly legs, a skinny, long tail, & feathers going every which way. Beauty & intelligence were not its strong points.

It’s not certain why scientists claim Anzu has gone extinct; it’s more likely they just downsized because you can find them all over the US Congress & they’ll be coming out of the woodwork during the next presidential elections. Their brains remain just as teeny weeny as they were 68 million years ago & they’re still pecking us to death. We should all remain wary since we’re not safe until they do indeed go extinct.

(Photo from Mark Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History/PA)

Zoos & cruelty toward animals

Genome scientists report that orangutans share 97% of their DNA sequence with humans. That doesn’t really mean very much but a misanthrope could say they got all the brains & we got all the power. They’re reportedly quite solitary animals while humans are social creatures–but social creatures who tolerate the most antisocial behaviors.

This is Kirno, a 14-year-old orangutan smoking a cigarette inside his enclosure at Jurug Zoo in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia. Zoo officials claim he smokes dozens a day because visitors ignore warning signs prohibiting throwing food or cigarettes to the apes & throw pre-lit cigarettes at him, laughing while he imitates one of the unhealthiest human habits.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the Jurug zoo has made news for cigarette smoking orangutans. In 2012, they moved a 13-year-old named Tori from a cage to a small island inside the zoo to stop her from smoking. In two years they haven’t figured out how to stop visitors from hurting the animals!? Or is cruelty toward animals the very nature of zoos?

It turns out Kirno was “rescued” by the zoo about four years ago from a knucklehead who kept him caged as a pet. In October of last year (we’re talking not even six months), zoo officials boasted he was freed from cage-living & had a healthy life on the same island as Tori. They claim the island is designed as natural a habitat as possible with trees, bushes, & dens, similar to the rain forests of Borneo. (As if that could fool the orangutans!) Jurug zoo is engaged in breeding orangutans (since they’re being driven extinct by Indonesian palm oil plantations) & hope Kirno can produce offspring.

The problem with this touching narrative is that it’s mostly horse manure & nothing gives that away more clearly than the fact that zoo officials are unable to put a stop to the abuse of the animals by visitors throwing things at them. In 2009, the Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) in Indonesia conducted a study of five zoos in Java & concluded Jurug zoo was the worst in the physical & mental treatment of orangutans. At that time, they were still kept in cramped, concrete cages which had no roofs to protect them from scorching sun, rain, or wind. They were provided with one small plastic bag of water per day & paper-wrapped plain rice. Orangutans eat leaves, fruits, & insects, not rice. Deprived of all life-purpose, they were not only bored but began to exhibit signs of extreme mental disorder, including repeatedly beating their heads against the wall. Moving them from cement boxes to an island was a step in the right direction but by no means a solution.

These unspeakable cruelties are not just the result of poor managerial systems at Jurug but the very nature of zoos. There is no progressive perspective in zoo management because zoos are nothing but the incarceration of wild animals, turning them into spectacles, & depriving them of all purpose & possibility for happy lives.

We can denounce the knuckleheads throwing cigarettes at orangutans but it’s far more important to denounce zoos as barbaric throwbacks to a time when people believed in the Great Chain of Being. If we want to merit some glory from sharing 97% of orangutan genetics, we ought to do something to put an end to zoos. In the meantime, let’s get it straight: if Jurug officials wanted to protect Kirno & the other orangutans from abuse, they would post guards, they would fine offenders, they would run forums to educate on animal welfare, or they would put the island off-limits to visitors.

(Photo by Sijori Images/Barcroft India)