Odds and Sods - merry month of May edition

Obviously, my highfalutin plans to blog more often have only haphazardly come into being. (sigh) Old habits die hard, and shorter posts still look weird to me, but I am trying!

As for me, I am such a flake, I routinely can't find files I have just downloaded. Where the hell do they GO? How does that HAPPEN? At such times, I am acutely aware that I most assuredly did not grow up with computers, and was 40 before I owned one myself. (You can bet the 20-year-olds know how to find their downloads!)

(((insert deep old-lady sigh here)))

And while I look for my files, I present you with some excellent Saturday springtime reading:

Redneck Mother is raising chickens! They are SO CUTE! All power to free-range chickens and their tasty eggs (sorry bout that, vegan readers)... Another small step away from factory farming, and Redneck Mother has my deepest respect for going this route.

Wear Clean Draws discusses bell hooks' The Politics of Accountability, and quotes her at length:

When you feel like somebody else is to blame, what do you become? Like if I’m hurt. Like when things go wrong in my life sometimes, I notice lately, I’m always looking for who I can blame. You know like who can I blame. It’s a way for me to move away from my own sense of agency. When looking around for somebody else to put all the responsibility on, then I can be the victim. So what I’m saying is: the more black people were told to see everything as being about white people and the man and what the man is doing to you, the more many of us began to lose our own agency. And think about that versus a culture where my grandfather who was a share cropper, and definitely the white man was on his back, but what I remember about that, when this man would walk through his fields and see his vegetables that he grew, he’d say, “See these vegetables. White men cannot make the sun shine. They cannot control..”

I mean here’s a black man who did not go to school, who did not have an education. But he found a sense of self that transcended the idea of him as a victim. Because he could say “yes white men have power over my life. They exploit and terrorize me, but at the end of the day, there’s a power higher than white men that I can lend my imagination to.”

And I would add, this is one reason why belief in god(s) has such a hold on people. To some, it is a synonym for a higher justice, a higher truth, a higher law--above and beyond unjust earthly authorities that dominate us on a daily basis.

When the atheists sneer at that, it can be experienced by non-privileged believers as endorsing the material world as it is (with oppressive powers intact) and negating the self-preservationist experiences of the oppressed. In practice, this type of atheism is simply Social Darwinism by another name.

It's no accident the "leading atheists" these days are hyper-educated, elitist snobs like Richard Dawkins and (ex-Trotskyist) Christopher Hitchens, while folksy, down-home rationalist-atheism (Mark Twain, Will Rogers) is mostly in the past.

~*~

Fascinating discussion about torture at My Private Casbah, highly recommended! Bint writes:

As for those who have loved ones fighting in these wars, if you don't want them to die over there, then it is illogical for you to defend torture, because as long as we are engaging in torture, there will be people who are willing to attack and kill us in return for what we've done. American torture can only lead to tortured Americans.

YES!

~*~

Your flaky New Age reading for today is The Ancient Future of Servant-Leadership over at Reality Sandwich:

One of the first exercises you do as Buddhist practitioner is to perform generosity. This can manifest in different ways, but when you give something to somebody you begin erasing the boundary between you and the “other.” I recall once gifting an extra guitar that I didn’t need to a stranger, and how I felt a little tear in my eye as the exchange created a true heart connection. The disconnection we normally experience with other people and nature is at the root of all our major problems -- environmental, financial, political, etc. If the universe wants you to serve life, than life will respond in kind once you surrender to it. Thus, the core ethic of any servant-leader is the same as a healer: we are to serve life above all other. Naturally, then, servant-leaders ultimately also support the cause of sustainability, which is the opposite of the culture of death that manifests as our current economic system.

It's long, but well worth taking in!

~*~

And finally, my favorite kitty-blog (with whom I share a name!) has a SPY! (Warning, you could die from the cute!)

I once had a cat named Zeppo, a Marxist cat (haha) whom I just adored, and who looked a great deal like Harley the spy (see link). Since cats have nine lives, of course, it is entirely possible Harley IS Zeppo... right?

Well, I like to think so. :)

Standard Operating Procedure

...just ripped my guts out.








(Caution: the photo-links in this post are extremely disturbing. Click at your own risk.)



Errol Morris' incredible documentary about Abu Ghraib seared my consciousness. After viewing it, I dreamed about a dead body on ice, which is what soldiers did to one prisoner who died during interrogation. They knew if they took him out of the prison in a body bag, this might result in a riot, or a bombing of the prison (which was already a common occurrence). So, they packed the body in a cell, on ice. The ice melted, and the body began to smell and rot.

In my dream, I could see and smell the dead prisoner. Open the door, let him out, I kept repeating. In my dream, I started plotting a way to open the door and let him out, so that he could run away. It was as if he would come to life, if I could just get that door open.

The subject of my dream had a name. His name was Manadel al-Jamadi. He was beaten to death during interrogation. And they finally opened the cell door, but he remained dead.

They put a fake IV in the corpse's arm, and took the dead prisoner out of the prison. Where to? Soldiers didn't know. In fact, they didn't know who interrogated the prisoner in the first place. These guys would come in, unregistered. "This prisoner isn't here, he doesn't officially exist," they would tell the soldiers. These strange fellas with the unnamed prisoners were entered into the log as OGAs, Other Government Agencies. CIA, et. al. Nobody knew what that was about, and knew better than to ask.

Spc. Sabrina Harmon gives the thumbs-up over the body of al-Jamadi. Photo from Antiwar.com.

Mark Rothschild of Antiwar. com writes:

Seymour M. Hersh reported in The New Yorker that in November, a prisoner was beaten to death while undergoing interrogation. His body was packed in ice overnight. The next day Army medics placed an IV on one arm, and the body was walked out of the interrogation area on a stretcher.

The man on the stretcher was a "ghost prisoner"; he had no prisoner number. So-called ghost prisoners are not entered into the prison’s inmate tracking system -- they are non-persons whose disappearance or burial is not to be recorded.

We don't know anything about this person. He haunts me, since his blood is on the hands of every citizen of the United States of America, which does include me.

~*~

It's a helluva movie. I highly recommend it for everyone, and particularly every American.

It seems very weird, at first, all the photos. What in the hell were they doing, partying? Well, yes, in a sense, they were. We all try to make our work more fun, don't we? They were doing the same.

US soldiers were given various orders regarding certain prisoners, including some who were children, thought to be the offspring of terrorists. Soldiers were instructed to keep prisoners awake, one hour of sleep, one hour awake (for days at a time) and while prisoners were awake, soldiers were ordered to "fuck with them": put women's panties on their heads; rearrange their bodies in what they called "stress positions"; play deafening music to keep them awake (one of the songs blasted over and over was Metallica's "Enter Sandman"--irony, anyone?) and on and on. Eventually, they brought in the dogs. (Yes, the dogs attacked, but the aforementioned Sabrina Harmon was good enough to stitch up the guys' leg, offering another of her trademark thumbs-up grins.)

Although Lynndie England has been cast as the main villainess of the piece (mostly for her appearance in these now-famous photos), for my money, Sabrina Harmon has her beat hands down for sheer sociopathic detachment. England is obviously angry, cynical, misanthropic, feels set-up, etc. and in short, acts just like someone who took the fall for many other people. Sabrina just quietly abdicates responsibility, sounds almost dreamlike and even reflexively smiles while cataloging the horrors. (Why didn't somebody tell her NOT TO SMILE? Or does anyone care about her enough to counsel her about the filmed interview with Morris?) Sabrina Harmon is the one who will give you the nightmares. Her letters to her wife Kelly (the term Sabrina uses in the film, also signing her letters this way), provide much of the film's narration. Sometimes she is upset by what she sees, but often, it's just (yep) standard operating procedure.

She is the one taking many of the most famous photos.

~*~

On a feminist note, watching white American women, one lesbian, torture and sexually humiliate non-American men of color... was disorienting. For those radical lesbian-feminists who insist that uniquely-patriarchal oppression automatically and always trumps all others, have a good long look at this movie, and get back to me.

Liberal Second-wave feminists have always demanded that women have a societal role equal to men in all things, without allowing any accompanying radical critiques of said institutions. In the US and many other nations, this meant active participation in the military and domestic police forces, which radical feminism tacitly approved by disdaining any radical analysis of these institutions as "focusing on men." The only sustained feminist-based critiques of the military that endured were by peaceniks like Barbara Deming and non-Americans such as Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp.

And so, we see that feminism did not prevent what we see on the sceen--women stripping men and sexually abusing them FOR A CAMERA. The proof is right in front of us: Women can do it, too.

And I don't want to hear they were "put up to it by guys." Because the guys, in fact, were put up to it by STILL OTHER guys, and that doesn't abdicate them, either, now does it?

I am haunted by the movie, but even more, by these women who come from my class, who could have been in my own family. They come from Kentucky and Virginia. Well, of course they do. They are hard-bitten and unafraid; they have learned to take responsibility for what they have done.

I hope certain radical feminists, the ones who claim sexism is the root of all evil, will observe these women, these photos, and understand that their ideology, alone, is simply not enough.

PS: Don't forget to vote.

Racist state trooper videos lead to SC law enforcement shake-up

In local news:

Schweitzer, Rourk out after Sanford views trooper video

Saturday, March 1, 2008
By Tim Smith
CAPITAL BUREAU, Greenville News

COLUMBIA - The director of the state Department of Public Safety and the commander of the Highway Patrol resigned Friday after Gov. Mark Sanford watched a 2004 videotape in which a white trooper yells a racial slur and threatens to kill a black man he is chasing.

"You better run, n-----, because I'm fixing to kill you," the trooper says on the tape released this morning by the state Department of Public Safety after a Freedom of Information request by GreenvilleOnline.

The video is of a traffic stop in or near Greenwood County in December 2004. The man chased by the trooper was one of two black male passengers in the car. The man ran after the trooper asked him to put his hands on the car after the trooper conducted a search of the stopped vehicle.

The trooper, off camera but whose voice is recorded, is later heard bringing the man back to his patrol car and he yells at him to get down. There is the sound of a struggle.

"Why are you beating me?" the man repeatedly asks the trooper, who replies that he was "resisting arrest."

That video and another were of incidents cited recently by the Legislative Black Caucus in complaints about racism at the agency, which houses the Highway Patrol. The caucus has asked Senate leaders to delay confirmation of the agency's director, Jim Schweitzer, for a second term until there is some sign of change at the agency or he addresses their concerns. Schweitzer has said the troopers in both cases were punished but members of the caucus say the troopers received 12-hour suspensions which they feel are too lenient.

The agency also released a video of an October 2007 traffic stop in Clarendon County in which a white trooper handcuffed an African-American woman to the bumper of his car. The video shows that he handcuffed her after he stopped her and then handcuffed her to his bumper for several minutes.

The trooper had earlier stopped the car with another, unlicensed driver, for speeding who fled from the scene, according to the video. By the time the trooper chased the driver, the woman, who was unaware the man had been driving her car, found her car and drove off.

The trooper later had her car towed after explaining to the driver that he wanted to compensate the tow driver who had been called earlier to the scene. He gave her the choice of bringing $150 quickly to pay the tow operator or get her car out of storage later, but changed his mind later when he said she cursed at the tow operator.

Video of SC State trooper using racial slur

Video of SC State trooper handcuffing African-American woman to car

Video of Legislative Black caucus response

Taxi to the Dark Side

Sunday evening, Alex Gibney won an Academy Award for his documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. Amy Goodman, at Common Dreams, writes:

The film traces the final days of a young Afghan man, Dilawar (many Afghans use just one name), who was arrested in 2001 by the U.S. military and brought to the hellish prison at Bagram Air Base. Five days later, Dilawar was dead, beaten and tortured to death by the United States military. Gibney obtained remarkable eyewitness accounts of Dilawar’s demise from the very low-level soldiers who beat him to death. We see the simple village that was his lifelong home and hear from people there how Dilawar had volunteered to drive the taxi, which was an important source of income for the village.

Dilawar had never spent the night away from home. His first sleepover was spent with arms shackled overhead, subjected to sleep and water deprivation, receiving regular beatings, including harsh knee kicks to the legs that would render his legs “pulpified.” He had been fingered as a participant in a rocket attack on the Americans, by some Afghans who were later proved to be the attackers themselves. Gibney uses the tragic story of Dilawar to open up a searing and compelling indictment of U.S. torture policy from Bush and Cheney, through Donald Rumsfeld and the author of the infamous “torture memo,” now-University of California Berkeley law professor John Yoo.

The Oscar ceremony was bereft of serious mention of the war, until Gibney rose to accept his award. He said: “Thank you very much, Academy. Here’s to all doc filmmakers. And, truth is, I think my dear wife Anne was kind of hoping I’d make a romantic comedy, but honestly, after Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, that simply wasn’t possible. This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us: Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father, a Navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury about what was being done to the rule of law. Let’s hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and back to the light. Thank you very much.”

“Taxi to the Dark Side” can be seen in movie theaters, and the Oscar will surely help open it up to more audiences.

Will we get a chance to see it in these parts? Hopefully. HBO has purchased the movie and plans to show it in September. If it hadn't been for the Oscar, we probably wouldn't have had the opportunity, so let's hear it for lefty Hollywood:

“Taxi to the Dark Side” and Phil Donahue’s excellent Iraq war documentary, “Body of War,” have to fight for distribution. Let’s hope that Gibney’s Oscar will help open the theaters and the TV airwaves to these truly consciousness-raising films to turn this country away from the dark side and back to the light.

~*~

Trailer: