As I write this, John Negroponte seems poised to become the United State's first "Intelligence Czar". (And how I loath that phrase, no matter how many times I fantasize about the CIA staging its own October Revolution.) Those interested in who Big John is and/or what he's done are invited to get off their lazy asses and do some damned research. After all, there is this wonderful thing called the Internet...
I'll come right out and say this to all of you who are in the know (the time for bush beating has passed): I fear the death squads. I fear Big John. I fear the very idea of one man pulling the financial strings of all fifteen civilian and military intelligences services. The very idea that our government requires fifteen spy houses just to keep its jaundiced eye on the world gives me a serious case of the heebees.
"Oh, but it can't happen here," you say. And that's a logical knee-jerk reaction (not to mention a great Sinclair Lewis book). But of course it can. This is America, after all. Right? Anything can happen here. Isn't that, like, a law?
Yes. Laws. We have plenty of laws. But no one sits in a better position to circumvent the law then those who make and are sworn to protect it. This is a historical truism from Sparta to Stalin--and the sooner we realize it the safer we'll be.
For example (one a little closer to home than Sparta or Stalin) let's talk about torture.
The New Yorker reports that our government has aquired the bad habit of arresting foreign nationals and shipping them overseas--to places like Syria, Jordan, and our old friend Egypt.
"This program had been devised as a means of extraditing terrorism suspects from one foreign state to another for interrogation and prosecution. Critics contend that the unstated purpose of such renditions is to subject the suspects to aggressive methods of persuasion that are illegal in America?including torture.
"What began" it continues "as a program aimed at a small, discrete set of suspects?people against whom there were outstanding foreign arrest warrants?came to include a wide and ill-defined population that the Administration terms ?illegal enemy combatants.? Many of them have never been publicly charged with any crime. Scott Horton, an expert on international law who helped prepare a report on renditions issued by N.Y.U. Law School and the New York City Bar Association, estimates that a hundred and fifty people have been rendered since 2001.
Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, said that a more precise number was impossible to obtain. ?I?ve asked people at the C.I.A. for numbers,?he said. ?They refuse to answer. All they will say is that they?re in compliance with the law.?
Read it. And weep.
This is the first, major revelation in the Torture story in a long time. Months at least. Oh, sure, they Alberto Gonzales is the new Attorney General. And they sent that jackass from Abu Ghraib up the river, but if he wasn't a sacrificial lamb I'll eat the next house pet I see.
Or maybe I won't. Maybe we don't care. Maybe we, as a nation, have so dehumanized the Arab (or "terrorist") that we honestly don't give a fuck if they are tortured.
I just can't help but be worried about things like this:
"Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the U.S., and which some critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site."
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Restate Assumptions
"In the future, everyone will wear clocks around they necks--so they know what time it is!"
#1: That the American public in general, and the intellectual culture in particular, live and labor under a set of simplistic, definite, arch-nationalist myths absorbed (from earliest childhood) through the most basic cultural interactions and reinforced (in large part) through the continued drilling of the American primary educational system.
#2: These nationalist myths feed and propagate off of each other, as only the best myths tend to do. Taken together, they create a paradigm through which the our collective history (past, present, and future) is viewed and through which any horror (even the most ardent and egregious one) can be blithely dismissed by those who wield power and subsequently ignored by their descendants. And ours.
#3: These myths work, in large part, to control what Alexander Hamilton called "the great beast of democracy." That is, the American public at large. Their current incarnations are recent entries into the discourse of civilization, having arisen, in large part, due to the social unrest of the 1960s, when the "great beast" dared to speak Truth to Power, as it sometimes does.
#4: As a concerned citizen, I feel it is my duty to challenging these myths, wherever I find them. I am under no grand illusions in this. I'm no one's Little Red Pill. These writings are not aimed at "converting" anyone. No "reaching across the isle." The time for such niceties is way more than past. It never existed in the first fucking place.
So, Happy Democracy, everyone. It's 12:50 p.m. in the Pacific Standard Time. The polls have close in Iraq. The counting begins.
So let me get this straight. They can't count in Ohio, they can count in the Ukraine, and come hell or high rivers of blood they're going to count every vote in Iraq, and make sure every vote is counted.
Wait. Where have I heard that one before?
Oh. Right.
***
I work the night shift in a 24 hour convenience store. So I spend a lot of time listening to NPR. Not that I really want to, but you can only hear the same 40 songs over and over again. Public radio is the ultimate variety station, even on the weekends when electronic news in the United States grinds to a screeching halt.
And I hear an interview with Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. Attorney General, who may or may not be set to defend Saddam Hussein as soon as the mad bastard comes to trial. In his time, Mr. Clark has given counsel to the likes of Slobadon Milosovic and David Koresh. They call him "the dictator's best friend." He had this (among other things) to say:
"If the theory is that one wrong justifies another then there'll be no end the wrong. Certainly it's harder for Americans--one of the greatest problems that we have is demonization. I think it's always been necessary to demonize an enemy for soldiers because you just don't have the heart to kill somebody unless you think they're a demon or bad or they're gonna hurt ya or somethin. But now, the demonization is relentless. So you can stop anybody on the street and they can tell you all these terrible things that these people are alleged to have done. But that don't stop you from the fact that the truth is hard to find in these matters and very often fault can be shared. Demonization likes to make it seem that all wrong, or 'evil,' as President Bush likes to say, is on one side. And I don't really believe in evil. I think we have people who do terrible things, butif you call people evil you're prepared to crush them. That's not good for peace."
The Iraqi insurgent on the street gets a bullet in the ass and nothing a second thought. Even if they're taken prisoner, wired with electrical cords, and photographed. But Saddam has access to Ramsey "Perry Mason" Clark. And yet, somehow, the world is better with him behind bars, though it seems his imprisonment has exposed a number of the world's myriad flaws.
Over the next few months I hope to explore some of those flaws. In public, such as this is. We don't do that often enough in this country.
#1: That the American public in general, and the intellectual culture in particular, live and labor under a set of simplistic, definite, arch-nationalist myths absorbed (from earliest childhood) through the most basic cultural interactions and reinforced (in large part) through the continued drilling of the American primary educational system.
#2: These nationalist myths feed and propagate off of each other, as only the best myths tend to do. Taken together, they create a paradigm through which the our collective history (past, present, and future) is viewed and through which any horror (even the most ardent and egregious one) can be blithely dismissed by those who wield power and subsequently ignored by their descendants. And ours.
#3: These myths work, in large part, to control what Alexander Hamilton called "the great beast of democracy." That is, the American public at large. Their current incarnations are recent entries into the discourse of civilization, having arisen, in large part, due to the social unrest of the 1960s, when the "great beast" dared to speak Truth to Power, as it sometimes does.
#4: As a concerned citizen, I feel it is my duty to challenging these myths, wherever I find them. I am under no grand illusions in this. I'm no one's Little Red Pill. These writings are not aimed at "converting" anyone. No "reaching across the isle." The time for such niceties is way more than past. It never existed in the first fucking place.
So, Happy Democracy, everyone. It's 12:50 p.m. in the Pacific Standard Time. The polls have close in Iraq. The counting begins.
So let me get this straight. They can't count in Ohio, they can count in the Ukraine, and come hell or high rivers of blood they're going to count every vote in Iraq, and make sure every vote is counted.
Wait. Where have I heard that one before?
Oh. Right.
***
I work the night shift in a 24 hour convenience store. So I spend a lot of time listening to NPR. Not that I really want to, but you can only hear the same 40 songs over and over again. Public radio is the ultimate variety station, even on the weekends when electronic news in the United States grinds to a screeching halt.
And I hear an interview with Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. Attorney General, who may or may not be set to defend Saddam Hussein as soon as the mad bastard comes to trial. In his time, Mr. Clark has given counsel to the likes of Slobadon Milosovic and David Koresh. They call him "the dictator's best friend." He had this (among other things) to say:
"If the theory is that one wrong justifies another then there'll be no end the wrong. Certainly it's harder for Americans--one of the greatest problems that we have is demonization. I think it's always been necessary to demonize an enemy for soldiers because you just don't have the heart to kill somebody unless you think they're a demon or bad or they're gonna hurt ya or somethin. But now, the demonization is relentless. So you can stop anybody on the street and they can tell you all these terrible things that these people are alleged to have done. But that don't stop you from the fact that the truth is hard to find in these matters and very often fault can be shared. Demonization likes to make it seem that all wrong, or 'evil,' as President Bush likes to say, is on one side. And I don't really believe in evil. I think we have people who do terrible things, butif you call people evil you're prepared to crush them. That's not good for peace."
The Iraqi insurgent on the street gets a bullet in the ass and nothing a second thought. Even if they're taken prisoner, wired with electrical cords, and photographed. But Saddam has access to Ramsey "Perry Mason" Clark. And yet, somehow, the world is better with him behind bars, though it seems his imprisonment has exposed a number of the world's myriad flaws.
Over the next few months I hope to explore some of those flaws. In public, such as this is. We don't do that often enough in this country.
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