Legacy MattersThree months passed before the stolen body of the former President of Cyprus, Tassos Papadoplous, was discovered in a shallow grave.
Thieves had stolen the body to hold it for ransom said the government in Cyprus even as the family denied a ransom request was made.
The report Ex-president's body stolen for ransom explains that the police received a tip-off that he had been buried in the grave of another person. DNA evidence confirmed the proper identification.
Grotesque beyond belief.
Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat'
Peruvian police arrest suspects who allegedly drained their victims and sold liquid as an anti-wrinkle treatment.
The jailed men have confessed to killing five people, but police suspect the number of victims is far higher, with 60 people reported missing in Huánuco this year alone. Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat which they claimed were worth up to £36,000 a gallon.
At a news conference police displayed two bottles of fat, which laboratory tests confirmed were human. "The fat was extracted from the thorax and thighs," said Eusebio Felix Murga, chief of police of Dirincri district. Police also showed a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim discovered last month in a coca-growing valley.
Police said they received a tip four months ago about a trade in human fat, which exported the amber liquid to Europe as anti-wrinkle cream.
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The gang have been nicknamed the Pishtacos after the ruthless assassins of indigenous Quechua legend who ambushed solitary victims and drained their fat as an offering to gods to make the land fertile. Another version depicts them as cannibal bandits who ate the skin and sold the fat. The stories date back to before the European conquest.
The suspects allegedly would sever victims' heads, arms and legs, remove organs and suspend torsos from hooks above candles, which warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below. Members claimed other gangs were engaged in similar killings.
UPDATED
Last month, top organised crime investigator Felix Murga said police had arrested four suspects who confessed to murdering up to 60 people. He said they were selling their fat for thousands of dollars a litre.
But the macabre tale now appears to be nothing more than a tall story - or a big fat lie.
Inside a Creepy Global Body Parts Business
The German company Tutogen's business in body parts is as secretive as it is lucrative. It extracts bones from corpses in Ukraine to manufacture medical products, as part of a global market worth billions that is centered in the United States.
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In doing so, they reuse almost everything the human body has to offer: bones, cartilage, tendons, muscle fascia, skin, corneas, pericardial sacs and heart valves. In the jargon of the profession, all of this is referred to as tissue.
Bones and tendons, the parts that interest Tutogen the most, are subjected to complex processing. The company degreases and cleans bones, cuts, saws or mills them into the desired shapes, then sterilizes, packages and sells the finished product in more than 40 countries around the world. With a prescription, it is even possible to order Tutogen's products through online pharmacies.
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It's a completely different story in the United States. According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, more than a million bone parts are used in transplants every year. In no other country is it possible to make so much money with body parts. If a body were disassembled into its individual parts, then processed and sold, the total proceeds could amount to $250,000 (€176,000). For a single corpse! The US tissue industry generates total revenues of about $1 billion a year, says journalist Martina Keller, a co-author of this article and the author of the German book, "Cannibalized: The Human Corpse as a Resource."
China admits that 65% of Organ "Donations" Come from Death Row Prisoners
In a rare admission of the extent to which this takes place, China Daily - citing unnamed experts - said on Wednesday that more than 65% of organ donations come from death row prisoners.
China executes more people than any other country. Amnesty International said at least 1,718 people were given the death penalty in 2008.
Many of the executed are Falun Gong, a new religion in China that uses physical exercise much like qigong to cultivate the qualities if truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. In the materialistic culture of China, Falun Gong may have attracted as many as 70 million adherents. When several thousand appeared on day in 1999 in a silent protest , they terrified with government who arrested them all and began an all-out persecution of the sect.
The China Daily quoted Vice-Health Minister Huang Jiefu as saying that condemned prisoners were "definitely not a proper source for organ transplants".
The new scheme is therefore designed to reduce the reliance on death row inmates, as well as regulating the industry by combating the illegal trafficking of organs.
China admits to organ tourism
Whose organ do you want?
Death vans
Some of the corpses are sold to be skinned and then displayed in the Bodies exhibition touring the country
More on skinned cadavers for profit
Xeni Jarden from Boing Boing is just back from Guatemala where some 20 murders a day take place and 98% of all violent crime goes is not investigated and not prosecuted.
Prensa Libre today, caption: "Today, the principle roads of the city appeared painted with white crosses, an action of the Civic National Movement to remember the victims of violence and impunity."
(Photo: Prensa Libre: Óscar Estrada)
From the Body Farm to mystery writer to celebrity, Bill Blass will give you facts you'll never forget like: “It takes longer to burn a 90-pound individual than a 300-pound individual,. The increased amount of fat on the larger individual accelerates the cremation process.”
The Cult of Forensic Expert Dr. Bill Blass
Such is the extraordinary, sometimes disconcerting, appeal of forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass. His straight talk about pulverizing bones and rotting cadavers has found a dedicated audience that cuts across age, gender, socioeconomic, education, and even international boundaries. He’s always been popular with students at UT, where he founded the Forensic Anthropology Center, also known as the Body Farm, and retired 14 years ago. He’s long been deeply appreciated by academician colleagues, scientists, and the law enforcement agencies that benefit from his detective work.
But now Bass has another fan base: mystery readers. Since 2006, he’s collaborated with Jon Jefferson to produce four Body Farm forensic detective novels as “Jefferson Bass.” Half a million Jefferson Bass books have been printed as of 2008, the first in 14 languages, and two have already become New York Times bestsellers. The main character in all is one Dr. Bill Brockton, who works as a forensic anthropologist at UT’s Body Farm and consultant to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
The latest addition, Bones of Betrayal, came out Feb. 3, a couple weeks after the packed house speech at the UT Center. The sign in front of Hargreaves Booksellers for two weeks before said simply, “Dr. Bass book signing,” and the date.
At an age—81—when most are quietly contemplating a round of golf or what’s for lunch, Bass is once again half of a book tour celebrity team.
How does he deal with dead bodies?
Both of Bass’ first two wives died of cancer. “My first wife and I met in the service,” he says. “I was in the infantry, and then transferred to the Medical Corps. When we first came to University of Tennessee in 1971, she taught Home Ec, and I taught anthropology. She died of colon cancer in 1993. My second wife, Annette, and I were married less than three years when she died of lung cancer—she never smoked a day in her life, but her first husband did.
“I hate funerals. I hate death. I hate mourning. I don’t like that scene at all.
“I never see a forensic case as a dead body. I see it as a challenge to see if I can figure out who that individual was and what happened to them. It is interesting what your mind can do. I think that you will find quite a few people in the forensic area who are like that, who shift that thing to something that is science and not emotion.”
Well, this is one way to increase city revenues.
Japanese cities raiding remains of dead for precious metals
Tokyo collected some 700 grams of gold, 500 grams of palladium and 1.9 kg of silver from cremated bodies in 2007, adding Y3.2 million (£24,600) to the city's bank account. The city also banked around Y90,000 (£690) in coins left as offering inside the coffins.
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Very few of the families know what happens and what happens in the crematoriums is kept very quiet," said a Buddhist priest from Kanagawa Prefecture who often oversees traditional funerals.
"The crematorium will usually return the ashes of the whole body but as they assume the families can't use the gold then they're not doing anything wrong," he said. "And anyway, the families are usually too upset to ask about the details of their loved ones."
My apologies for not posing over the holidays and my best wishes to all my readers for a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
Now catching up on grave matters, the North East Lincolnshire Council bans mourners from laying artificial flowers on graves because of the health and safety risk.
While the $10M lottery ticket Donald Peters bought just hours before he suffered a fatal heart attack and died stunned his widow who only found she won when she took tickets that had been pinned to a calendar for two months after his death to the local convenience store before throwing them out.
"It's just such a shock," Peters, who has three children and two grandchildren, said. "I still don't believe it. In 20 years, we've won two, maybe three dollars - but never more than that."
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"There's nothing that I really and truly want," Peters said, adding that she already saved up enough to replace her car. "I have a mobile [home] that I love, so I doubt I'll be moving."
Instead of dwelling on what to buy, Charlotte Peters said her thoughts have been on her husband and how grateful she is she decided not to toss his final gift to her. "I had just never handled the lottery tickets," she said. "I'm still surprised that I bothered to have them checked."
The 2008 Darwin awards are out and so far The Balloon Priest is the people's choice, a double Darwin.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas operated rocket launchers from a cemetery to shoot missles into Israel were destroyed by the IDF. The small bodies of the children of a Hamas leader, a mentor of suicide bombers, one of the top five decision makers in Hamas were paraded around the streets of Gaza to incite 'painful' revenge, in a ghoulish display far worse than waving the bloody shirt.
Nizar Rayan, his four wives and 10 of his children were all killed by in an Israeli air strike on his home after he ignored warnings they should go into hiding.
In grisly scenes, mourners held up the bloodied bodies of the children to the cameras in a clear attempt to blacken Israel's name and highlight its brutality.
There's more Hamas propaganda using obviously fake photos as documented in The Breath of the Beast that appears to have gulled PBS and 3 year old videos dupe many in the liberal blogosphere.
Cash-for-corpses murders probed
Chinese police have arrested members of a gang suspected of murdering more than 100 disabled or elderly people and selling their corpses in a bizarre scheme to avoid cremations, a newspaper said on Tuesday.
Burials have traditionally been seen as the most respectful way to handle the dead in China, but were discouraged after the Communists came to power in 1949 to conserve farmland and eradicate superstition.
The bodies were bought by wealthy families and sent for cremation in lieu of deceased relatives who were then secretly buried, the South China Morning Post reported.
The killers would trail their victims, usually mentally disabled or elderly people, "drag them into vehicles in remote areas and either strangle or poison them", the newspaper said.
To see how low Wrangler has gone with a new ad campaign, "We Are Animals", you have to click over to Wizbang to see corpses being used to sell jeans.
I'm on record as being creeped out by the Bodies exhibition that has traveled across the country.
Skinned cadaver exhibit
Gruesome Profiting from the Dead
Now I find that There are a few things you ought to know about those 'Bodies'.
Peter Bronson answers the objections of those who say "only uptight Cincinnati" would object to the display of skinned corpses.
Last year the company that leases bodies from China had 11 touring shows of 'Bodies' and made some $30 million in profits.
Fiona Ma, a California lawmaker who passed San Francisco's ban on displaying corpses without consent, says the "grave-robbing" plastination industry in China dissects thousands of bodies for exhibits.
Human rights groups say some of those could be political or religious prisoners who were executed by the same Chinese government that harvests black-market organs.
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"When I see pictures of the exhibit, I feel something," said Morris Tsai, a Chinese-American of Mount Auburn, who protested at the Museum Center. "Maybe it's in the eyes or facial structure, but I can totally see that they're Chinese and I feel sorry for them. For we have taken advantage of the fact that since they died poor and alone, that somehow consent isn't necessary to turn a human being into a museum piece."
He wonders how Americans would feel if the bodies were unclaimed victims of Katrina. The answer is obvious: There would be hell to pay.
"Allowing Chinese to be put on display diminishes me and others like me," Tsai said.
I'd say parading dead bodies for profit diminishes everybody.
After you report that 11 of your family members have been slaughtered in Iraq, you become an international sensation giving press conferences and winning great sympathy, particularly among the anti-war media ensconced in Jordan where you now live.
Imagine the embarrassment when your supposedly dead family members back in Baghdad show up and wave for the cameras and an arrest warrant has been issued against you by the new Iraqi government.
Gateway Pundit has lots more as well as photos of your supposedly dead relatives.
How Embarrassing!.. "Dead" Iraqis Show Up at Press Conference to Smile and Wave for Cameras.
Al Qaeda's "Working Paper for a Media Invasion of America" - from a recently translated document originally published on a jihaddist web site brought to you not by the mainstream media but from the Mudville Gazette, a blog by an American soldier.
Osama Bin Ladin, the document's author Najd al-Rawi says wants his fellow mujahadeen to pay more attention to the opportunities presented by the American media. The author wants more videos, especially of attacks on US soldiers and more English translations of videos that can "throw fear into the American people's hearts."
Lastly, the paper points out what the author considers the best locations for providing this material, and suggests dissemination via the world wide web, following efforts to ensure the origin can't be traced.
Targets listed:
- US discussion forums
- US chat rooms
- Well known newspapers and magazines
- American TV channels with web sites
- Famous US authors with email addresses such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington, and others
- Famous US web sites like MEMRI, or those of the Zionist lobby (AIPAC), or research institutes like Rand
CNN has already aired one video showing American soldiers being killed by snipers with film supplied by a terrorist organization.
Many of these snuff videos have been uploaded to YouTube where they are traded by Islamic jihaadists. The New York Times published a piece in its travel section, Anti-US Attack Videos Spread on the Web, especially on YouTube.
At the same time, American videos that protest the Islamic violence or are anti-jihad have been banned, I presume because the jihaadists are quick to protest. Michelle Malkin is leading an effort of many bloggers to protest the snuff films and other violent videos. Fighting jihad at YouTube
YouTube and the cyber jihad.
The war on terror is not just being fought on battlefields or within intelligence agencies. With the Internet, terrorists are able to attack us by cowing nervous Web site owners into submitting to their demands. When they can't scare Internet operators, they simply try to hack into a site and shut it down. As Mrs. Malkin rightly notes, in the case of YouTube, "instead of boycotting the site, we need to stay and fight." She has urged her readers to keep posting anti-Islamist videos to combat the terrorists' cyber-jihad.
Civil-liberties advocates are constantly warning about the dangers of censorship enacted by the government. What they have just as constantly overlooked is the very real danger of censorship enacted by private businesses fearful of Islamist rage. The only way to fight this assault on our freedoms is by not giving in as YouTube has.
CNN is the network that refuses to air beheading videos or the Mohammed cartoons yet defends its showing of an American soldier being shot by terrorists in Iraq as the "unvarnished truth", no matter how disturbing it might be for millions of viewers and especially the soldier's family.
For some reason, the airing of clips of snipers targeting American soldiers, killing at least one, is deemed "newsworthy" in a way beheading videos and the Mohammed cartoons are not.
Now, this footage was not filmed by CNN but came into its hands "unexpectedly through contact with an insurgent leader" and is part of an insurgent group's propaganda video.
I would expect a news organization to be familiar with the many Al Qaeda documents seized in Afghanistan in 2001 and translated far too slowly into English, and only some of which have reached the mainstream press.
The New Yorker published The Master Plan of Al Qaeda in its Annals of Terrorism in September. The Mudville Gazette posted Al Qaeda's "Working Plan for a Media Invasion of America" in October.
Najd al-Rawi, the document's author, begins by noting that although they've been successful in many ways, the jihaddists haven't fully exploited the opportunities presented by the US media. .. He points out that videos from the "Shayks of jihad" are in great demand in the western media.
Such videos are readily available - but for the most part translation to English is left to the media outlets that elect to broadcast them. The plan suggests a remedy for this oversight, and the paper calls for talented professionals to join the jihad - specifically, translators, and people with journalistic or literary talent who can provide a "ringing and powerful style that will have impact on the American people."
So what we have is an American cable network airing terrorist propaganda showing the death of an American soldier as news.
For shame.
You will recognize the photographs below.
To really understand how fake photos of the dead are used as propaganda, you must read Camera Obscura by Richard Landes in The New Republic. It documents how French TV fudged the death of Mohammed Al Durah and sparked the intifada in Israel and the beginning cycle of suicide bombers.
Or you can read the full report with links on Landes's blog The Augean Stables.
In 2000, anyone told of Muslim plans to Islamicize the West laughed with scorn. It was the least of Western worries. Today, [22] some have already given up Europe for lost, others see it [23] in the balance, even as others [24] awaken with shock to the radical shift in the balance of forces. And every aspect of l’affaire Al Durah is emblematic of why: from the Palestinian forces that staged it… to the Western [25] mainstream media and [26] NGOs which presented it as news without asking hard questions, which believed any subsequent Palestinian claims of Israelis killing children, and resisted all efforts at correction… to the Muslim world that turned it into an icon of hatred and a call to genocidal holy war… to the “leftist” revolutionaries who jumped on the jihad bandwagon and via Durban, led the [27] “peace” movement of Spring 2003 into the lair of Jihad… to a public distressingly eager for “dirt” on Israel and unaware of the forces empowered by diffusing such poisons into the global information stream.
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These [28] court trials, then–in which France2 seeks to bury any serious assessment of so critical and poisonous a tale–are also trials of France’s ability to defend her republican values against an Islamist onslaught that it seems ill-equipped to resist. It is Dreyfus redux: the path to modernity for the Army and Church lay in preferring honesty to honor; this time the challenge is to French Mainstream Media and French Muslims.
And, as France goes, so goes Europe. (Would France have it any other way?)
Three journalists have been charged under a French law designed to protect individuals from the mass media with libeling France2 producer Charles Enderlin and France2 simply for questioning the truth of the staged photos.
Richard Landes, a professor at Boston University, was called as a witness at two of the trials held this fall.
Nidre Poller, an American married to a French man, reported from France on the trial.
"Not since the days of Alfred Dreyfus and Emile Zola has the French legal system been put to such a test on basic issues of racism and freedom of expression."
Technorati Tags: Al Durah
Photojournalist Brian Denton whose work has appeared in the New York Times, alleges that some wire photographers were directing the unearthing of bodies in graves in order to compose more powerful and compelling photographs in what he later called "not an isolated incident".
i have been working in lebanon since all this started, and seeing the behavior of many of the lebanese wire service photographers has been a bit unsettling. while hajj has garnered a lot of attention for his doctoring of images digitally, whether guilty or not, i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem.
The link to the original Denton posting no longer works as the Lightstalkers forum has removed the page. Charles Johnson has captured the original post and has many updates here.
More on what's come to be known as fauxtography and the gruesome use of dead bodies to seek personal or political advantage, a tactic beneath contempt professionally and morally.
Photographer Alleges Unearthing of bodies Brian Denton writes
--- i have been witness to the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms. these photographers have come away with powerful shots, that required no manipulation digitally, but instead, manipulation on a human level, and this itself is a bigger ethical problem.
A very young girl, either 3 or 5 depending on the news reports, thought to have been killed by an Israeli military strike was taken to a hospital in Gaza.
Photographs of her grieving father carrying her to the hospital surrounded by armed guards wer sent around the world by the AP and Reuters.
At the hospital doctors, found no shrapnel and said the young girl apparently died after sustaining head injuries after a fall from a swing.
'Waving the Bloody Shirt' was a tactic used by Republicans in the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War to gain political advantage by implying that southern Democrats were responsible for much of the bloodshed. Wikipedia entry
The shirt was often that of a black man, freed by the Civil War, whipped to death by southern Democrats, with the bloody evidence being waved by Republicans to win black votes says Michael Gaynor.
Today's equivalent of the bloody shirt are staged photos of dead children and young men being used by Hezbollah to inflame anti-israeli sentiment. Gerard van de Leun calls it The Weaponization of Children. Videos and photographs have become as potent as machine guns and bombs in the War against Terror.
Who does not feel sick at seeing a photo of a dead baby. But who parades the same dead body back and forth, sometimes raising the body high above his head. He's called "Green Helmet." The EU Referendum explores here and here., a rebuttal here, update here and here and here with a summary at Qana Director's Cut.
On YouTube, you can watch Green Helmet acting as a cynical movie director, ghoulishly positioning a dead body of a child over and over again for the cameras.
Sadly, many of the mainstream media haven have becoming victims or complicit in spreading such propaganda. Emotion, they feel, is vital to telling the story. Few asked whether the photos were genuine. Reuters, the AP, the Washington Post, Time and U.S. News and World Report have all been implicated.
A blogger, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs first exposed the Reuters photo fraud, scoring a direct hit according to the Washington Post and shining when the news media get it wrong in US Today.
Reuters was forced to retract 920 photos by freelance Lebanese, undoubtedly Hezbollah, photographer Adnan Hajj.
Zombie has a taxonomy of Reuters' photo fraud
1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were authentic spontaneous news events.
3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects and presenting the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.
So how are the mainstream media taken in? Laziness in most cases, in some parts, bias, in other cases, anti-Semitism. I would also guess because the photos are so dramatic, like the Pieta below.
This beautifully posed photograph by Taylor Hicks of a young man supposedly killed by Israeli bombs, yet remarkably dust-free and still sweating with his hat tucked under his arm was published by the New York Times on July 27, 2006 until forced to make a correction.
Said the NYT
The man pictured, who had been seen in previous images appearing to assist with the rescue effort, was injured during that rescue effort, not during the initial attack, and was not killed.
Gateway Pundit reports on Dead Man Walking
Technorati Tags: puppy, Reuters photo fraud, unusual death