Tag Archives: Myth

Permissible degrees of torture

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Department of Information Retrieval.
In the film Brazil, the smallest typo, a brush with an unlicensed repairman, or a humanitarian impulse, can see you in the hotseat.

There are no permissible degrees of torture.

I’d like to try to make that point sometime. I’ll ask for a volunteer. I’ll explain to the volunteer and to those watching what I intend to do. “Put you arm behind your back where I can grab it and twist it slowly. Like this,” I’ll illustrate. “I’ll twist gently but steadily until it might begin to hurt.” It will be up to the people watching to decide at which point I’ve gone too far.

Then I’ll have to hope that there aren’t too many sadists in the crowd. Plan B might be to grab for something like a baseball bat, out of view of the volunteer, and appear prepared to hit him with an unsuspected blow. Much will depend on the onlookers rising to interfere.

In that manner we will all be able to explore what it means to accept a certain degree of torture, up to a point. And that point should lie somewhere between the anticipation of torture and the application of pain. If my subject wets himself or herself at just the thought, perhaps my audience will urge that even the anticipation is going too far.

I hope we can recognize that we want to tolerate not a single degree of torture.

Many experts have been coming out to say that torture is not effective. In this era of modern chemistry, we have all sorts of drugs and serums for overcoming a person’s mental resistance. Putting aside whether those methods are themselves ethical, if interrogators want to learn something from a detainee, there is no need to resort to torture.

Torture is not about interrogation. Torture is about terror. It is terrorism exercised upon a defenseless captive, and it is terrorism practiced against a population who are subjugated by the fear that they too may face torture.

We have declared war on terrorism. Terrorism such as our governement defines it does not exist. There are no idealogues whose chief pursuit in life is the spread of terrorism. This is a myth. Terrorism is not an ideology.

Terrorism is a practice, and we are its greatest perpetrators. In the main it’s called state-sponsored-terrorism. Extra-judicial assassinations, the sanction of indescriminate killing, the tolerance of disproportunate civilian casualties, the imposition of inhumane social structures, all constitute the terror we are imposing upon an occupied people.

Torture is another method by which we terrorise our subjects.

Are we united against terrorism? Why then are we not also aggreed that we are united against torture?

Tookie and the myth of non-violent protest

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A police beatingTonight the state of California is scheduled to execute Stanley Tookie Williams, co founder of the Crypts, after Governor Schwarzenegger made the determination that Williams was not sufficiently redeemed to merit clemency.
 
All sorts of state and local organizations were abuzz about the possibility of riots should Williams be executed. The consensus was to urge every riot minded person to remember that the reformed Williams stood for non-violence.

Now isn’t that just like an authoritarian state to honor Stanley Williams with non-violence in word, while perpetrating institutional violence in deed against his defenseless body?

I’m not sure what could be accomplished by public violence in this case, but the threat of violence from the masses has always played a significant role in holding off the authoritarian ambitions of greedy bastards.

These days of protest against the war have raised profound anti-violence issues, extending from transcending human nature to the more applied martyrdom for the purpose of igniting support. But the immediate result and absolute result seems to be that the bullies get to keep all the marbles.

We are told to respect Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and now Tookie Williams for their seasoned non-violent teachings.

No one is prepared to point to Castro, Mao or Chavez as examples of rebels who resorted to violence and who brought their people to greater prosperity as a result.

I saw a documentary about Tibet recently, in which the Dalai Lama was praised for leading his people in non-violent opposition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama can be respected for governing his people in exile, for maintaining in them a sense of hope that their kingdom will be regained. That sense of hope is perhaps the most important motivation they have for keeping their language and cultural heritage alive. The other alternative is to face that they will be a displaced people forever. Each then might better embrace assimilation into their host cultures and prosper.

The reality is that even should Tibet be regained, the westernized and worldly Tibetans would probably not return to their feudal heritage. And the other reality is that Tibet will never be regained.

Holding firm to a policy of non-violence has certainly saved lives, but it has lost principles. The real wisdom of the Dalai Lama might have been the assessment that the Chinese forces would have proven insurmountable and that too many more Tibetans would have perished with the kingdom lost none the less.

Will non-violence prevail over the Chinese occupation? There is no precedence to offer that hope.

We like to credit Gandhi for having proven the efficacy of non-violence, but that is sorely inaccurate. Gandhi sat on the back of the dying elephant of British colonialism, until it collapsed. And it may have collapsed by his sitting on it, but it had been weakened and battered by a century of violent rebellions. British colonial rule in India ended because the elephant had been driven to its knees by many countless uprisings and massacres which the British public could no longer countenance. It took over one hundred years of struggle against oppressive rule to drive the British out, and Gandhi was fortunate enough to deal the death blow by sitting down.

Nelson Mandela too is credited with leading a non-violent takeover of South Africa. Anyone who has read Mandela’s auto-biography knows that this is a misrepresentation. Mandela’s struggle began with violence and then he was incarcerated. Involuntary non-violence.

Martin Luther King provides an example of non-violent martyrdom affecting the conscience of a democratic population. King would be the best model for non-violent protest were we to inhabit a similar circumstance. It is doubtful today that our media possesses a conscience to report about oppression and inhumanity. Likewise it is doubtful that we have retained any meaningful democracy. It remains our horror to discover that public opinion or outrage will affect our governance not one bit.

Isn’t it just like a bully to admonish the rest of the schoolyard to uphold principles of pacifism? The only thing that will bring down a bully is a collective agreement to take him down. Pacifism works against the bully because he knows that if he makes a martyr of somebody, the others will rise up like a mob. Behind non-violent protest lies a looming urgency of violence.

Objectivity on local radio

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Dec 5 procession
This week some colleagues and I marched on our knees to the Colorado College president’s office to present signed petitions which asked that the college radio station carry a news program called DEMOCRACY NOW! (Exclamation theirs.) We’ve yet to receive a reply, but I wanted to explain our actions.

First of all, what is DEMOCRACY NOW? DN is a daily radio and television news show out of New York City that stands nearly alone in covering the stories which are being kept out of the corporate owned media. For example, every year the Colorado Springs Independent covers the year’s ten most censored stories. DN reports those and more, usually as they happen.

Do you know the story of Khaled al-Masri, the German Muslim who is currently being represented by the ACLU in a lawsuit against the CIA, for unlawful abduction, rendition, incarceration and torture? DN reported his story a year ago, after al-Masri found himself freshly drugged and dropped into a field in Macedonia. His story sounded so strange but had the ring of truth to it. Experts were planning to analyze strands of his hair to verify his account. It took more than a year before al-Masri was able to break national news. In between, how many extra-judicial abductions have been allowed to take place?

And the recent attention paid to the U.S. use of Napalm, and their use of White Phosphor as a chemical weapon? DN reported such incidences from the very first day the U.S. assault began.

Why KRCC? Because local community radio station is our great hope, and our first impediment.

By now it is widely accepted that FOX and the network media are mouthpieces for corporate moneyed interests. People of education turn to NPR and the NYT for example for what they believe is the balanced picture. But it’s not, and critical thinkers are beginning to see that the media has been playing a good cop bad cop psych-op routine. One side of the media plays the good cop, with its supposed liberal bias, but ultimately has the same agenda as its partner.

The local community looks to KRCC as a trusted advocate of objective news. But a growing number who supplement their news from the internet and from the Indy see that NPR really doesn’t cut it anymore. Have you heard NPR advancing the “Christmas” vs “holiday” war-on-Christmas canard? Elsewhere this story has been exposed as a concoction of the far right, but NPR is dutifully giving it legs.

Why go to the president of CC? Because KRCC station manager Mario Valdes has repeatedly rebuked everyone’s requests. Community members have been after him for years and his reply has been the same. Mr. Valdes has even slandered the effort by categorizing it as a small minority who want a political bias on KRCC. No one is asking for bias, just objectivity. And the number of people who’ve made this request has not been small. And it’s always been growing.

Plenty of public radio stations have adopted DN and can provide wonderful testimonies. They testify that DN beats out Morning Edition and All Things Considered in popularity. In some cases DN is their leading fund-raiser. While it might be hard right now to mount a large rally in front of the station to advocate for this change, it’s clear that if KRCC carried DN, and then threatened to take it away, crowds would protest en mass.

What next? Give station manager Mario Valdes the chance to argue for what values he stands when he opposes DEMOCRACY NOW. Let’s hear beyond the arguments which NPR advances to try to stem their eroding control over their affiliates. NPR has always fought the intrusion of a spoiler like DN in their line-up because it significantly hampers their editorial discretion.

Let’s schedule a townhall meeting, a public debate. To make it interesting public viewing, let’s make it a tag team debate. If Mr. Valdes is so concerned that Colorado Springs is such an uneducated community, too easily put off by issues of social justice and human rights, let’s cater to his mythical plebeian audience. The debate can be tag team, open to all, WWF rules!

Mr. Valdes will then get to see just how small is the group of DN advocates. As we’ll see how many people share Mr Valdes’ opinion against more objectivity on KRCC. Mr Valdes may bring the support and sympathy of many listeners, but how many will stand up next to him to argue against freedom of the press, Democracy Now’s many prestigious journalism awards, and the growing movement to reclaim the airwaves for the people?

Reprinted from MyKRCC.org

Black Friday and Paul Bunyan

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A false folk hero
Did you know that the first shopping day after Thanksgiving was known as “Black Friday?” Neither did I!
 
Apparently “Black Friday” is so named because it’s the first day of the year that retailers can recoup enough from their sales to put their balance sheets into the black. As opposed to “in the red” which is bookkeeping jargon for running at a loss, which is what retailers do for the rest of the year, apparently.
 
Boy did this sound like malarkey.

Certainly the term Black Friday sounded familiar, I thought it referred to the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. It turns out that there have been many other Black Fridays through history. But none of them refer to this retailer/accountant/insider lingo. The only early reference to a retail Black Friday had to do with the deluge which the day after Thanksgiving wrought upon the average retail clerk.

This new economic twist looks more like somebody’s Psych Op to revive retail sales.

This bit of Madison Avenue myth-making sure seems to cover the bases. First, if you’re a retailer you shouldn’t worry about having run at a loss (in the red) all year, apparently that’s normal. And if you’re a consumer, it looks like it’s your duty to bring that retailer’s figures up (and into the black!) Never mind that you’ll probably be putting his profit onto your credit card (into the red). For you we can call it red friday.

Paul Bunyan
I’m reminded of good ol’ Paul Bunyan, that American legend who heroically did more than his share to chop away our nation’s wooded overgrowths. Not a very PC hero to be sure, it never occurred to me to doubt his credentials.

One day I was looking through an older children’s book about American folk heroes. There was Johnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Pecos Bill, everyone was there except our giant friend Paul. Sure he was fictional, but he’s a historic legend, why was he not in the lineup? The book was dated 1920.

It turns out that Paul Bunyan was the creation of a magazine columnist hired in the 30s to create a positive PR figure for the timber industry. This was an industry still smarting from Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation programs.

If the Jolly Green Giant could sell you frozen foods over fresh, tales about a monumental lumberjack and Babe his blue ox could do more. A fictional reverence for a giant of folklore could sell America on admiration for westward expansion, manifest destiny and the obvious imperative of clearing our continent of its trees.

Outing the media

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Girlfriend

Tom Cruise is gay. John Travolta is gay. Vin Diesel is gay. I don’t care if you think they are too cute, or have that special tu-ne-sais-quoi that only a heterosexual could exude. They’re actors! And they’re gay!

(If you Google “Vin Diesel”, you’ll see that blog entries abound by guys who’ve hooked up with him at clubs.)

(John Travolta is always the not-easily-placated queen of whichever movie set he’s working on. Ask anyone who works in the entertainment industry.)

(Tom Cruise’s pecadilos stay just outside of the gossip columns. Since the 80s! And so what? It’s fine! He’s gay!)

They’re gay. Nothing wrong with being gay. Nothing wrong with jumping unto a couch proclaiming your love for Katie Holmes. Nothing wrong with staying in the closet…

Unless you are serving a corporate mouthpiece that is simultaneously denying gays equal benefits and human rights, or a corporate media that is advocating homogeneous marriage (pun rejected) and religious worship.

There is something wrong with a media which covers up the normalcy of homosexuality at the same time that it holds gay rights under full frontal attack.

This isn’t about whether Tom Cruise wants to come out or not, it’s whether the media machine which is Tom Cruise the bankable property wants to come out. Very plainly it doesn’t.

Do you care if the media doesn’t want to be outed?

The fight over gay marriage is not about parenting rights or hospital visitation rights, although those are no small things. It’s about benefits, primarily health insurance benefits. If roughly 10% of human males are gay, that’s the percentage of the significant other population which the insurance industry doesn’t want to cover. That’s a lot of money. And outside of the walls of the beancounters in the huge insurance buildings, sitting in Emergicare waiting rooms, or sitting at home because they don’t have a doctor, that’s a lot of people.

If we live in a time when it can be admitted that Alexander the Great was gay, then Tom Cruise can be gay. Perhaps a gay Tom Cruise would still be bankable. Probably not in Asia. Well tough titties.

He can go on boffing Indoneasian hotel stewards to his heart’s content. We just don’t need to see his proto-hetero hystrionics on national TV which the networks use to force-feed white bread religion and marriage down our throats.

When you see such glee on the face of an actress like Katie Holmes, you see her happiness at having signed a fixed term contract to be Tom Cruise’s beard in exchange for the visibility of being the chief accessory to the world’s most bankable star. Tom Cruise is introducing Katie Holmes to Scientology. Could be, he’s not screwing her. Tom Cruise and Co simply set up a contract with the next actress who wishes to take centerstage with him, with specific guidelines and for a specific time period. Nicole Kidman, Mimi Rogers, et al, chose not to renew their options, or vice versa. Nothing wrong with that.

But there is something wrong, Tom, with being used as a tool to oppress others like yourself who do not have the financial resources you have.

And there is something wrong with a media perpetuating myth.