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Political theatre harms us all. Issues that are important to public are marginalized while supposedly “important” issues take the spotlight. (Yes, you women, under the bus, stat!)
Noam Chomsky summarizes what elections have become in the US –
“Elections are run by the public relations industry. Its primary task is commercial advertising, which is designed to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices – the exact opposite of how markets are supposed to work, but certainly familiar to anyone who has watched television.It’s only natural that when enlisted to run elections, the industry would adopt the same procedures in the interests of the paymasters, who certainly don’t want to see informed citizens making rational choices. The victims, however, do not have to obey, in either case. Passivity may be the easy course, but it is hardly the honorable one.”
Call to arms or maybe just maybe a little of Mr.Jackson’s “wake the F**k up”, whatever it takes but for goodness sake cut through the noise and get people thinking for themselves again.
We have not written on America’s imperial adventures for awhile here at DWR. Constant examination of the antithesis of our civilization lays bare the soul, to touch the carefully crafted web we ensconce ourselves in and shake it till the dirty bitter truths rupture forth, wearies the heart and mind. To see things as they are, as Buchan does, empties the carefully nurtured vessels of hope and replaces it with despair and bitterness:
“You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.”
- John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir Ch. 3 “Tells of a Midsummer Night”, The Power-House (1916)
There is only so much anger and rage to go around, and after awhile, the grave injustices of the imperial wars led by the US forces us to indulge (well mostly me as I primarily wrote about it) in the luxury of “anger fatigue” where we have the privilege of simply not responding anymore to the toxic stimulus the entire war/torture/inhumanity scenario Guantanamo so perfectly engenders.
Doesn’t work so well if you happen to be residing in the Guantanamo black hole; as a Canadian citizen well knows – thank goodness they have finally released Omar Khadr. But there is another less happy tidbit of news, this week marks the 10 year anniversary of “Gitmo” and the international embarrassment it causes and continues to cause for the USA.
“This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the first prisoner arriving at Guantanamo Bay, making it the longest-standing war prison in US history. Guantanamo has been a catastrophic failure on every front. It has long been past the time for this shameful episode in American history to be brought to a close.
President Obama has failed to shutter Guantanamo, even though on his second day in office he signed an executive order to close the prison and restore “core constitutional values”. In fact, the 2012 National Defence Authorization Act that Obama signed on New Year’s Eve contains a sweeping provision that makes indefinite military detention, including of people captured far from any battlefield, a permanent part of American law for the first time in this country’s history. This is not just unconstitutional – it’s just plain wrong.”
I sure Hope he Changes that particular law, stat. Indefinite detention is a precious handmaiden that portends the malevolent abuse of power. Unfortunately until important (read the 1%) start getting detained it will remain out of the consciousness of the American public.
“As documents secured by the ACLU demonstrate, Guantanamo became a perverse laboratory for brutal interrogation methods. Prisoners were subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, extreme temperatures and prolonged isolation. It started with two false premises: Those who were sent there were all terrorists picked up on the battlefield and that, as “unlawful enemy combatants”, they had no legal rights. In reality, a tiny percentage was captured by US forces; most were seized by Pakistani and Afghan militias, tribesmen, and officials, and then sold to the US for large bounties.”
Ah yes, back to the unreality of the GWBII’s rule. The whole we are empire, we make our own story and you plebes conduct yourselves accordingly to our narrative. This particular break with reality is not going away quietly. The whole shining beacon of freedom and democratic rule narrative the US likes to trumpet to world is much less believable with the spectre of Guantanamo Bay lurking conspicuously in the foreground.
“Our nation continues to pay the price for those egregious errors. Torture is the principal reason for the astonishing fact that, more than 10 years after 9/11, the alleged perpetrators of those attacks – though in US custody for as long as nine years – have not been brought to justice.
The reputation of the US as a defender of human rights has been profoundly diminished because of Guantanamo’s continued existence. Our allies have refused to share intelligence out of concern that it will be used in unfair military commissions, and will not extradite terrorism suspects if they will end up in military detention. Perhaps most critically, military officials acknowledge Guantanamo has been used for years as a recruiting tool by our enemies – creating far more terrorists than it has ever held – thereby undermining rather than enhancing our security. And torture is also why federal courts were rejected in favour of military commissions with looser evidentiary standards. Even under this imbalanced system, only six Guantanamo prisoners have been sentenced for crimes before a military commission”
The farther we fall from truth the more our lies become the reality of our consciousness. Orwell, in 1984, describes the process, the thinking unthinking – the conscious denial of reality in pursuit of the ever dimming goal of security and “peace”. We strive for security yet continue with actions and policy that directly undermine our stated goals. There is official truth and then there is the reality of the situation. Torture is never permissible in civilized society, but enhanced interrogation techniques are? The dissonance is frightful, but goes on as a acceptable truth, a foul monument to media an its sterling misinformation campaign. The media helps us forget our empathy – we overlook our role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, innocents except for possessing the wrong ideology and skin colour.
Is starving to death not considered torture? We should be asking the survivors who languished and suffered but managed not to die under the UN sanctions in Iraq during the 1990’s, about civilized behaviour. We talk of rights, but extend them unevenly depending on ethnicity and skin colour. We have the audacity to wonder why they still hate us after all we’ve done for them…
“Each branch of government shares responsibility for the perpetuation of Guantanamo’s legacy. Congress has chosen to score political points rather than do what’s right. It has repeatedly used its power of the purse to prevent the release or resettlement of Guantanamo prisoners cleared for release, and to bar criminal trials of those against whom there is evidence for prosecution in federal court.
Guantanamo was not a problem of President Obama’s making, but it is now one of his choosing. After his pledge to close Guantanamo within a year, the president failed to show the commitment necessary to build Congressional support, provide a logistical plan to release Guantánamo prisoners or bring them to trial. Like President Bush before him, Obama has also claimed the authority to detain without charge or trial terrorism suspects captured far from any theatre of war.
Finally, the courts have refused to articulate and enforce clear limits on the executive’s detention authority. To be sure, the Supreme Court has on three occasions heard challenges to the Guantanamo regime, and every time has repudiated the excesses of the political branches. Those decisions held that Guantanamo prisoners could challenge their detention under habeas corpus, that the Geneva Conventions applied to the fight with Al Qaeda, and that the Executive Branch could not unilaterally create a military commission system with limited rights for the accused.”
Let’s bust out a little Dostoevsky, from his “The House of the Dead”: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” How do we fare now that we embrace the concepts of infinite detention and enhanced interrogate techniques?
“All branches of government must rise to the task. The Supreme Court must define the scope of war-time detention. It must ensure the right to habeas corpus is a meaningful one that tests, and does not rubber stamp, the government’s case. Congress must lift the unnecessary restrictions on transfer and release from Guantanamo, particularly for the 89 men whom our security services and military have unanimously determined should be released.
President Obama must also show the courage of his previously stated convictions and either prosecute the other 82 men in federal court or set them free.
Then Guantanamo must close.”
Guantanamo must close indeed.
It is the first step in the necessary self examination regarding our claim to be civilized and protectors of liberty and justice. Does one treat gangrene by ignoring the symptoms? A little perfume for the rotting stench? A fresh white bandage to mask the fetid pustules on our corpulent ideals? (smacks about the head for mixing metaphors?) Guantanamo is but a symptom of what is wrong with our society and democracy; it is at our own peril that we continue ignore the root causes the Gitmo’s, the Patriot acts, and challenges to our basic liberties.
I’m not a fan of all of Jessie Ventura’s politics, but he makes a strong case against the use of torture while explaining to the designated right-wing nut on the View how and why its wrong.
Let’s open up the discussion. When, if ever, is torture permissible? Leave your opinion in the comments. :)
A substantial portion of the view DWR gets is from the United States. Consider this a NSFW PSA from your friendly Canadian neighbours.
*ed – I do dearly love my early morning spelling shenanigans…*
Liberal Viewer (and everyone else) has decided that Romney should show a little more love to the moochers and freeloaders of American society.
Just sayn’.
Edmonton taxpayers are going to be fleeced without affection or mercy by the Katz Group. This has been in the cards since this atrocious deal was pre-approved last year. Having done some reading though, we can still pull out of this money trap and it looks as if Katz is giving us the golden ticket out. Tony Caterina said in today’s Edmonton Journal:
“The company’s new demands aren’t just for more capital dollars and an ongoing $6-million subsidy for the proposed arena, Coun. Tony Caterina said.
“They don’t want to pay taxes,” he said. “They want help now in operating the arena. They want a guaranteed subsidy. They want the city to be their tenant in a major office building. They want the casino licence.” These were the requests presented behind closed doors last week in a meeting Caterina said should have been public.
“If everybody knew exactly what these new positions were, I think everyone would have seen it as council saw it, which is very unreasonable.”
You don’t say.
This entire arena process has been about trying to get the best possible terms for the legalized blackmail of the the city of Edmonton from Day 1. Otherwise Katz and company are going to move the team. Good. Go. There are myriad of other city projects that actually help the city that need funding, the LRT, Low Income housing, road repair are all in need of more cash. If Katz wants to have a new arena, he can pay for it himself.
The other option is that the city of Edmonton builds and OWNS the arena and gets ALL of the revenue benefits from the complex, plus rent from Oilers.
I’m not hearing a lot from the usual right-wing suspects about the arena because, of course, socialism for the rich is just fine. If this was funding a school or a woman’s shelter I’m sure the hemming and hawing would already be loud and clear, building toward the usual “fiscal crisis” Armageddon they manufacturer when tax dollars are spent on the disadvantaged.
Meaningful discourse requires a mutually accepted set of shared definitions to start. Otherwise the parties involved will unerringly talk past each other and misconstrue what the other is saying. George Lakoff, a cognitive scientist, has mapped this procedure brilliantly in several books ( The Political Mind being the most concise).
I digress.
The excerpt that I’m sharing with you today is from an Alter.net article entitled “The Political Awakening of a Republican: ‘I Had Viewed Whole Swaths of the Country and the World as Second-Class People’.” When you go there and read the rest watch carefully as the author of the piece first has to question his cognitive framework, struggle with it and eventually reject it for being at odds with reality. His epiphany reminds me of the saying, “reality has a liberal bias,” more than a saying because it is a factual statement and one that resonates with me. You can go with god if you’d like, enjoy the trip; I’ll be here in reality waiting once you get back.
We’ll pick up the article as the author has his first breakthrough in discovering that his reality is not everyone’s reality.
“Then something tiny happened that pried open my eyes to the less obvious forms of racism and the hurdles the poor face when they try to climb the economic ladder. It happened on an official visit to a school in a suburb of New Orleans that served kids who had gotten kicked out of every other school around. I was investigating what types of services were available to the young people who were showing up in juvenile hall and seemed to be headed toward the proverbial life of crime.
My tour guide mentioned that parents were required to participate in some school programs. One of these was a field trip to a sit-down restaurant.
This stopped me in my tracks. I thought: What kind of a lame field trip is that?
It turned out that none of the families had ever been to a sit-down restaurant before. The teachers had to instruct parents and students alike how to order off a menu, how to calculate the tip.
I was stunned.
Starting To See
That night, I told my roommates about the crazy thing I had heard that day. Apparently there were people out there who had never been to something as basic as a real restaurant. Who knew?
One of my roommates wasn’t surprised. He worked at a local bank branch that required two forms of ID to open an account. Lots of people came in who had only one or none at all.
I was flooded with questions: There are adults who have no ID? And no bank accounts? Who are these people? How do they vote? How do they live? Is there an entire off-the-grid alternate universe out there?
From then on, I started to notice a lot more reality. I noticed that the criminal justice system treats minorities differently in subtle as well as not-so-subtle ways, and that many of the people who were getting swept up by the system came from this underclass that I knew so little about. Lingering for months in lock-up for misdemeanors, getting pressed against the hood and frisked during routine traffic stops, being pulled over in white neighborhoods for “driving while black”: these are things that never happen to people in my world. Not having experienced it, I had always assumed that government force was only used against guilty people. (Maybe that’s why we middle-class white people collectively freak out at TSA airport pat-downs.)
I dove into the research literature to try to figure out what was going on. It turned out that everything I was “discovering” had been hiding in plain sight and had been named: aversive racism, institutional racism, disparate impact and disparate treatment, structural poverty, neighborhood redlining, the “trial tax,” the “poverty tax,” and on and on. Having grown up obsessed with race (welfare and affirmative action were our bêtes noirs), I wondered why I had never heard of any of these concepts.
Was it to protect our Republican version of “individual responsibility”? That notion is fundamental to the liberal Republican worldview. “Bootstrapping” and “equality of opportunity, not outcomes” make perfect sense if you assume, as I did, that people who hadn’t risen into my world simply hadn’t worked hard enough, or wanted it badly enough, or had simply failed. But I had assumed that bootstrapping required about as much as it took to get yourself promoted from junior varsity to varsity. It turns out that it’s more like pulling yourself up from tee-ball to the World Series. Sure, some people do it, but they’re the exceptions, the outliers, the Olympians.
The enormity of the advantages I had always enjoyed started to truly sink in. Everyone begins life thinking that his or her normal is the normal. For the first time, I found myself paying attention to broken eggs rather than making omelets. Up until then, I hadn’t really seen most Americans as living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hoping, loving, dreaming, hurting people. My values shifted — from an individualistic celebration of success (that involved dividing the world into the morally deserving and the undeserving) to an interest in people as people.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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