This anti-waterboarding ad campaign, put out by Amnesty International is absolutely brilliant. Supposedly it will be running in movie theater previews, starting next month. Awesomely deceptive.

[Link to campaign site]

Vikings were some twisted motherfuckers. According to some of their poems and sagas they used a totally tweaked form of execution they liked to call the “Blood Eagle“. The shape of an eagle would be carved into the back of the condemned and his ribs would be severed close to the spine and pulled back so they resembled wings or feathers. Salt would be rubbed into the wound and finally, the lungs would be pulled out through the opening.

From the Orkneyinga saga:

“There they found Halfdan Long-leg, and Einar made them carve an eagle on his back with a sword, and cut the ribs all from the backbone, and draw the lungs there out, and gave him to Odin for the victory he had won…”

Whether the Blood Eagle was real or not or whether the method described above was the de facto way to do it is not really known for sure. I’d like to think it was real. Vikings rule!

The method of execution known as scaphism is some sincerely funky and evil shit. Practiced in ancient Persia, the name is a combination of the Greek word skaphe and the Latin word for boats.

A man who had sufficiently fucked the rule of law enough to rate a dispatch by scaphism was stripped of clothing and bound up tightly; secured within a trough or small canoe-like boat. He was then force-fed milk and honey until a situation of extreme diarrhea had been reached. The condemned was then rubbed down with more honey and then set afloat in stagnant water, exposed to the sun.

Insects would be attracted to the honey covering the body, biting and stinging him and as feces accumulated in the boat, the bugs would begin laying eggs and starting a happy little community amongst the shit as well as in the man’s flesh.

Death, from a combination of dehydration, starvation and septic shock probably came a very long time after the prisoner went completely fucking insane (as I know I would).

I kill a lot of time on Wikipedia. Ancient and Medieval history is usually my thing. I just love how one one quick search can just spider into a multi-hour smorgasborg of topics.

I was reading about the Catholic church’s Medieval inquisitions a few days ago and found myself kind of slack-jawed at the correlations between the process back then and what is happening now.

According to the wiki entry:
(more…)

I was just reading this article about improper treatment of Gitmo prisoners and a little factoid jumped out at me:

“In a previously unreported allegation, one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to ‘Satanic black metal music for hours,’ then dressed as a Catholic priest before ‘baptizing’ him.“

I’d be very interested in knowing what music was used. What bands would be considered abusive to a Muslim inmate? I would have thought Christian Country/Western a better choice. It sure as shit would make me spill the beans after a couple hours of high volume exposure.

I love Black Metal to a near retarded degree. I like the music, the imagery and the ideals behind it. It’s depressing to hear that people are being abused with it. It’s wrong and it angers me. But, on a disassociated and aesthetic level—it kind of makes sense. I mean, it is Black Fucking Metal. Aural and psychic abuse is usually the general aim. Honestly the whole thing reads like a Black Metal video, the prison, the priest, everything.

Would this constitute good Black Metal media coverage?