Torture: Still Less Painful Than Watching Leo Dicaprio "Act"

Thank the Baby Jeebus for NPR.  I was afraid I was going to have trouble finding stuff to write about.  Turns out torture is still causing a pretty big fuss.  The wonks are once again debating what is and isn’t torture.  The idea on the Left seemingly, is that anything less than a brand new plush teddy bear with big brown eyes is too harsh.  Which might be an exaggeration, but only by a little.

What was really interesting about the latest piece about torture on NPR is that it discusses what was up until now apparently, relatively unknown by the both the general public and apparently a lot of people “in the know.”  To wit, the armed forces have for years and years, put our own people through some of the same procedures that are now being described as torture.  Waterboarding, stress positions, slaps to the face, that sort of thing.

Go ahead, reread that last part.

The government folks use this as proof that the techniques they used on guys like Khalid Shiek Mohammed are not torture.  The other team is arguing that the two situations are completely dissimilar because in the case of our guys, they are able to pull a Roberto Duran and say “no mas,” while the bad guys most likely don’t have the option to call time out.  This sense of helplessness the bad guys who can’t say “no” experience as a result of not being able to say “no”, can subsequently lead to the kind of long term psychological damage that would qualify those techniques as torture.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Logic Train has jumped the rails and is plummeting down the canyon towards the river.

Issue 1: Look, the bad guys do have the option of calling time out.  Tell the guys asking the questions, the answers to the questions they’re asking.  I’ll concede that it is quite likely that a large number of people have had these techniques applied to them in what might not be ideal circumstances were innocent, couldn’t tell anybody anything useful, and were put under duress for no justifiable, or forgivable, reason.  But like the death penalty, it doesn’t mean you quit using it, you just get more selective.

Issue 2: Opponents of these techniques have started arguing that it isn’t the techniques per se, rather the combination of the techniques and the circumstances of being forced against one’s will to endure them, that constitute torture. 

“In fact, dozens of studies have shown that when people are exposed to trauma and perceive that they have no control over events, they are at increased risk for prolonged psychological harm, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression”. 

Which brings us back to the teddy bear I mentioned earlier.

It’s tough to argue that the techniques we use to teach our armed forces how to resist torture, are now being called torture when we use them to interrogate people, particularly when, for the most part, are pretty dead set on making us dead.

Obviously the stuff at Abu Ghraib was unacceptable and completely out of line.  Speaking purely from a PR standpoint, it made a strong association between us and Saddam, it completely took domestic attention off message, and it gave the people who we say we aren’t oppressing, a pretty good reason to think we might be a little oppressive.

From an ethical and moral standpoint, it sucks because, while we are certainly not on the level of the kinds of people who chop off heads for kicks, and recruit retarded women to become suicide bombers, it takes us closer.

When Pirates Become Heroes and Idiots Have Pens

If you have a drug problem in your neighborhood, and you decide to solve that problem by kidnapping and ransoming the daughter of say, the owner of a local convenience store, and as a result are subsequently shot very dead, you could at the very least, take heart that someone at the Huffington Post would rise up to defend your course of action as reasonable, predictable, and utterly explicable as a really being someone else's fault. 

That at least, is what Johann Hari of the London Independent blogged over at Huffpo regarding the Somali pirates who were sent, as a sort of Easter offering I suppose, off to their great reward by three shots from those very competent men in black our government employs for things of that nature.  

To summarize:

• Pirates, the classical version, were the democratic sort, split their booty in an “egalitarian” manner, liked black people before it was cool, and were really fighting The Man. Hari does  shortchange the pirates, failing entirely to mention their accomplishments in murder, rape and maiming. 

• Europe is trading nuclear and toxic waste for fish off the Somali coastline, which is killing Somalis and preventing them from exploiting those marine resources themselves. 

• Somali pirates used to be ad-hoc coast guard units formed to prevent the above mentioned types of incidents, but are now…well, pirates. 

• The pirates, including the previously mentioned Easter Three, are hijacking ships, as well as ransoming oil, heavy armor, and at least 100 Filipinos, as a result, convoluted and tenuous as it may be, of Europe’s crimes. 

• Isn’t it really Europe’s fault, and isn’t Europe really the bad guy?

It’s a fairly common theme amongst what you and I might call the progressive set.  And here’s what kills:  there seems to be no disconnect whatsoever between those coast guard militias and the current pirate clans.   The fact, that these groups started as a way to fight injustice, does nothing to mitigate what they’re doing now.

Let’s put it another way.  Hitler started as a baby.  As the overwhelming majority if people will attest, babies are great.  That Hitler was once a baby too, does not mitigate the 6 million Jews, ‘Mos, Gypsies and other oddballs he had murdered.  Or anything else he did for that matter.

Hari, and other folks, have also made a big deal that no one was really paying attention when the problem was just a local crime issue, that it took them disrupting the world’s shipping lines for anybody to care about Somalia.

I would respectfully disagree.  The world, or at least the U.S. did pay attention for a while, one of those humanitarian missions no one gives us credit for pursuing, as they complain we don’t undertake enough humanitarian missions.  The end results were a number of dead U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets and at least one Hollywood blockbuster (Blackhawk Down, for those of you under a rock, or too young to remember).

When someone offers to help you and you shoot at them, they tend to shy away from offering to help again.  It’s a pretty clear cause and effect.  Which makes it hard to understand why anyone is surprised that the rest of the world left Somalia alone for the past decade or so, who wants to get shot at for trying to lend a hand?

I know, I know, it’s sexy to be a contrarian, it’s hip to like the bad guys, and it’s cool to fight The Man.  But when you’re picking a cause to rebel with, make sure you pick something righteous.  The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.

Rejoice Dear Souls!

While many of you, I’m sure, are all a-twitter with self righteous indignation at our beloved nation’s alleged plots to do harm, both physical and mental, to the great hero of the revolution El Presidente (for life if he has anything to say about it) Hugo Chavez, I just want you all to know: it’s ok, you can relax. Sean Penn has cast his wise, environmentally and socially conscious gaze upon your proletariat brothers to the south.

Yes, we know that his efforts to stop the Iraq invasion fell, well, slightly short. But do not let fear rule your heart! We know that the same wisdom that gave Brother Sean the courage to visit Iraq and meet with Saddam Hussein’s government in search of the truth, will help him find the truth in Venezuela.

We know that administration-seeded claims in the right-wing hatespeechnet, that Penn is being abused in the basest of ways as an attention whore with delusions of relevance, are completely unfounded. We can proudly report that our mother has told us she knows three, count them, three people who have personally said they think Sean Penn is well-informed and not the least bit creepy. She tells us she is sure there are many more, but she refuses to go outside her apartment until she’s convinced Nixon isn't just faking it so he jump out at here in the lobby of her building.

So just flat out dismiss anyone who says that Sean Penn couldn't find his ass with both hands, a Garmin GPS, and a bread trail. They don't understand that bravely allowing himself to photographed with El Presidente (for life if he has anything to say about it) Hugo Chavez, he’s merely seeking the heart of the matter. And you don’t find that by talking to the people Chavez has locked up in jail, or by talking to the enemies of the state Chavez has removed from positions of responsibility.

We also agree with our enlightened brethren at the Huffington Post, who despite being forced to admit that Chavez’s anti-protest tactics might be a little overboard, have found a way to hold the United States responsible for what happened to those poor misguided souls who were brainwashed into believing that the benevolent dictatorship of socialism is not the righteous path.

Thank goodness for Sean Penn.

Havana Daydreamin'

There was an interesting moment towards the end of PBS’ Independent Lens: Revolucíon: Five Visions, a short documentary dealing with 5 photographers from Cuba. Rene Pena was one of them, and he describes himself as having lived in San Francisco’s Mission District for a brief period (a couple years or so), because he said it was important for him to know, for certain, what kind of place the United States was.

He came away with this sense of crushing consumerism. The collection of photographs they showed in relation to this revelation were titled White Things, which one supposes is his attempt to somehow wrap race, politics, and economics into one nice trite title. Because as we know, white people are responsible for capitalism, Celine Dion and all of the other terrible stuff out there. Just my guess. To be fair, the photography itself is pretty sharp.

I’m relatively sure there’s some Chomsky-esque explanation of how all of the preceding proves with damnable conclusiveness my own sexism, racism, homophobia, cultural insensitivity, and any other of a host of isms and disorders. But I digress.

Shortly after going into the horrible pervasiveness of consumerism, Pena begins to describe how hard it is to be a photographer in Cuba: the lack of materials, film, water. He blames the embargo the U.S. has placed on trade with Cuba.

The first thing that pops into any rational person’s mind, rightly, is that moving to San Fran’s Mission District to find out what America is really like, what it represents, is kind of like hanging out with Lindsay Lohan to get an idea of what sobriety is truly about. You would learn more about honesty in five minutes with Bill Clinton, than ten years in Frisco could ever teach you about the essence of America.

And that’s not meant (necessarily) as an insult (at least not towards San Francisco). The city by the bay is a truly beautiful place, with a class of nutters unmatched and unparalleled anywhere else in America. We love everybody in our crazy-ass family, but San Fran is pretty much the one the rest of us talk about in hushed, bewildered, and flabbergasted tones.

The second point that comes to mind, is that it seems a bit contradictory to damn the culture and the system on one hand for being so intent on selling and consuming things, and then indict the system on the other hand because it chooses not to sell you the things you want to consume. It’s one of the more amusing hypocrisies of a delusional revolutionary class.

Another of the photographers, Raul Corrales, talked about the American Dream – a Buick, being a millionaire, having a beautiful blond wife. “Of course,” he said, “who wouldn’t want these things?” The sad part really, is that he thinks the American dream includes a Buick.

He paints these desires, or at least the idea that one isn’t required to live like a third world peasant, as dangerous propaganda, the kind which leads to millions attempting to reach America, and thousands dying en route. One can only assume that if Mr. Corrales were in the construction business, all of his buildings would be one story, no stairs one might fall down, no doors that might slam on someone’s fingers, no windows that might shatter and cut anybody. Hurricanes would simply be seen as another thing to blame on America.

The flipside (a somewhat novel concept in a PBS programming) was Rogelio Lopez Marin, who, with far more insight, honesty and understanding of what it means to be American than most Americans do, expressed a sentiment all too often forgotten: “I might have to work hard for it, but I know [the American Dream] is there.”

Endearing really, to see someone who actually gets it. Reminds one of the guillotine Ayn Rand dropped on one twit who had the audacity to ask: "Why should we care what a foreigner thinks?"

"I chose to be an American. What did you ever do, except for having been born?" she replied.

The hope is that in the ensuing years, rational society will be able to chip away the shiny veneer on the image of Cuba, Fidel, Che et al. and expose it for what them for what they really are – the ugly remnants of a ridiculously brutal social experiment which has done about as much for the poor working class it claims to love, as crack has done for them. Bravo.

I hope it happens because I’m tired of finding out artists, whose work I otherwise enjoy immensely, are complete utopian boobs, who have deluded themselves into thinking that somehow communist Cuba got it right. At Earth Day 2000 in Washington D.C., Chevy Chase claimed "socialism works" and said that "Cuba might prove that." This is, however, the funniest thing attributed to Chevy Chase since the late 80’s.

The odds are, things will stay the course for the foreseeable future. Hollywood and the pseudo-intellectuals of the world have built a cult of personality around Fidel and Che. If nothing else, Fidel has managed to stay alive long enough to witness the rebirth of the kind of anti-American sentiment that will help cement him as a martyr/minor deity if he kicks off in the midst of it. As for Che, I’ll leave all of you with this: if you read up and actually keep score, you’ll find he’s been way more successful at selling t-shirts than he ever was as a revolutionary.

A Hunting I Will Go....

There is a certain amount of inner peace that comes with ignoring the world around you. Truth be told, given the state of the world, it’s easy to allow one’s pessimism to override any desire to raise a ruckus.

We live in a country which while supposedly at war, doesn’t seem to understand that we are actually at war. Unless you count Paris Hilton’s latest skankery being bumped from the first five minutes of the newscast in favor of conflicting accounts of who is winning the war, the only people making sacrifices are the soldiers fighting the war and their families.

We’ve been spared, by our leadership most glaringly, and by ourselves most disappointingly, from having made any serious sacrifices. Sure, you might have decided to forego work for a day to protest, but it hardly compares to donating silk undergarments to be made into parachutes.

Mind you, we’ve also abdicated responsibility for the aftereffects of the war. The Republican leadership who sent our best and brightest in harm’s way has failed them miserably on their return to stateside, beaten and battered.

The Democrats and their ilk have used their supposed support for the troops as political leverage to stop the war, ignoring as they are like to do, any responsibility to fix the problem which their repeated claims of support have laid at their feet.

And most of you? Well, so far as I can tell, most of you, including me, have expressed a little outrage, then gone back to watching Simon Cowell rip on people who at least had the courage to follow some glimmer of hope.

As horribly disastrous as the preceding is, it only scratches the surface.

The country is in a slide towards the bloat of overfed and intrusive government, something we will pay for, dearly. Scary not just because we are abdicating our freedom and individuality to the machine (poorly built and self perpetuating as it is), but also because the federal government has proven itself incompetent, if not mildly retarded, in its handling of matters from healthcare, to taxes, to immigration.

New Orleans bears the scars of bureaucratic and federal incompetence, and even when the states have decided to assert a measure of constitutional independence, the federal govt. simply ignores it.

Meanwhile instead of focusing on the war on terror, domestic threats such as MS-13, Earth First, or transnational crime cartels, our Justice Department is devoting more and more resources to obscenity, because a few gang bangs are much more dangerous than a few gang bangers.

The victim-classes demand our system take intent into account when punishing people for crimes against said special interest groups, yet routinely ignores intent when someone says something deemed unacceptable.

There is also the War on Drugs. How is that war going, you ask? Well, in Seattle’s Pioneer Square anything you want is available from any of the numerous denizens of the city’s streets and alleyways. It’s easier to get an eightball in downtown Seattle than it is a decent parking spot on Friday night. I wouldn’t say we’re losing the war on drugs, lest Sean Hannity claim I’m a traitorous hippie who wants children to do drugs (just like Scott Pollard), but we are going to find some euphemism for “failing consistently and spectacularly over an extended period of time.”

All of which is not to say I would want to be anywhere else in the world right now, except perhaps Vanuatu, mai tai in hand, island girl in a grass skirt gently swaying in time with the gentle strains of a ukulele. No, the United States despite its problems, still beats pretty much everywhere else in the world.

The Venezuelans, under the direction of El Comandante, or some other appropriately douchebag-ish, pseudo-revolutionary title, are slowly backsliding into socialism. Way to go Hugo, I’m glad somebody has the nerve to remind the rest of the world what a miserable failure state-sponsored wealth redistribution is. Your peoples’ sacrifice is for a good cause.

The French are busy trying to avert more riots, the likes of which we saw last year when all the socialist tripe in the country proved to do not much else for the poor except piss them off.

Mexico still has the chance of becoming the world’s first wholly co-opted narco-state, where the drug gangs are at least as powerful as the people trying to stop them.

The middle east is, well, the Middle East. Millenia of ethnic, religious and otherwise unremarkable stupidity continue to drive everybody in the region to massive amounts of violence with little regard for the consequences.

What’s left of eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics are now half crook, half govt., if not entirely crook in some places. Mother Russia is now so dangerous, she doesn’t mind publicly and provocatively killing anybody who pisses her off as a warning to the rest.

Oh, and the Janjaweed are still murdering, raping and maiming thousands of people in Sudan.

And that’s just the stuff I came up with without trying.

Given all of that, it would be it would be perfectly understandable to mumble “F&%k it,” and go back to arguing about whether CSI: Paducah is one too many.

The world is a nasty place, and most of you seem to be making it worse. What follows in the months and years to come is my attempt to fix a little piece of it. Even if it makes my head hurt.