Constituents, friends react to Foley's resignation
September 29, 2006
The News-Press, Ft Myers, FL
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=20060929&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=309290004&Ref=AR
[…]
"It's never good when you lose a good congressman (mark foley r-FL)," said Lee County's GOP state committeewoman Jan Ganter. "I think the people lost a good servant. So, I regret it."
[…]
Ganter said she questions the timing of the reports, given the election is 39 days away. Ganter said it's suspicious that the e-mails have popped up shortly after Republican Virginia Sen. George Allen was painted as a racist.
"It's a big coincidence that all these things are happening to our fine conservative party," Ganter said. "It does make one wonder."
[…]
Well, jan, it DOES make one wonder. What do you say, kids? Let’s just check some of the ‘tools’ (no pun intended). [http://tmars.iwarp.com/guerrilla_campaign/document/Hi_kids.pdf]
Yep. He’s a pervert all right. He voted for the Torture and Tyranny Act of 2006. God only knows what he had planned for those young men. Oh, and while I was there, I checked out that guy allen that ganter mentions. Yep, he voted for it too. and hastert too, the guy who knew about this, and let it slide, for about a year. hey, jan, remember the company you keep. What you got in your hidden fantasies? How long should they have kept it quiet?
See how well it works out for them? Now they won’t have to seduce teenaged men and women to satisfy their sick perversions. Now they can just ooze on over to the nearest DDC (Dissident Detention Center) to get them some torture in (and maybe a quick pic with the bush) on the way to the country club for a round of golf with their corporate sponsors, thereby perserving the innocence of our fine american boys and girls. Now that’s a family value the republicans can run on. Might as well. It’s all they got. Is this a GREAT country, or what?
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
A Soul Defying, Tacit Approval Of Torture:
How Did We Come To This?
by Phil Rockstroh
9/28/06
"True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that False Self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality ... and through this death a rebirth, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer."
-R. D. Laing
The pathology of American culture is as ubiquitous as its strip-mall ugliness. It is abundantly evident, in almost every aspect of contemporary life. From the predatory (to the point of psychopathic) practices of its morally scurvy pirates at the helm of the corporate/governmental ship of state, down to the pandemic enervation and proliferate anomie of its galley slaves languishing in their soulless cubicles -- from the genitalia-devoid mascots at Disney World to the genitalia-obsessed torturers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo -- the soul-sickness spreads before us like George W. Bush's taunting, executioner's smirk.
Ronnie Laing's profound dictum leaves us confronting many poignant questions regarding the true nature of the psychic lives of us so-called ordinary citizens of The United States of America and our ability to function within this corrupt and crumbling empire. In short, is it sane to be able to adapt to an insane culture?
Moreover, it begs the following question. If an individual's conformity to group, cultural, and national pathology is rewarded -- thereby encouraging the formation of the "False Self" -- how might one, stranded within the dysfunctional dynamic, resist it all and begin to work towards an awareness of their own essential nature, then perhaps arriving at an individual reckoning involving how to live, flourish, and subvert the life defying demands of the present era.
First off, what engenders the formation of the False Self? Laing grasped: When we were children, authority, in the form of parents, educators, clergy, loomed before us. Alternatively menacing and comforting, these powerful figures could just as easily have crushed us as comforted us.
Tragically, all too often, they perpetrated the primary. Hence, to accommodate the overwhelming demands of authority, we learned how to curry favor from these baffling, seemingly implacable forces by the creation of a cipher persona, a False Self, a tricky and/or obsequious, tap-dancing, little apple polisher, who strives to garner approval and acceptance, thereby avoiding punishment, rejection and scorn, by means of the reflexive subjugation of his true nature.
The victims of False Self adaptation are the quintessence of the corporate/consumer citizen. Although, they're presence is far from benign: While they are compelled to show an agreeable face towards unyielding authority, this trope merely serves to mask a mind seething with misplaced resentments and shallow subterfuge. Doesn't this read like a personality profile of Condoleezza Rice or any other member of that present day Executive Office cast of Lord of the Flies known as the Bush administration?
This process of metaphysical identity theft begins in childhood. Then, as now, the presence of individuality-decimating authority can create irreconcilable anxieties within us, because the actions and activities of authority figures seem as overwhelming and unpredictable as nature itself.
Now add this to the already haunted landscape of childhood -- our present day government's campaigns of perpetual fear mongering, plus the dominate corporate culture's modus operandi of commercial exploitation -- and we're left with one freaked out populace - one comprised of both children and alleged adults.
Consequently, this fear-ridden existence has rendered us a society of grotesques: In the present day United States, children have grown as fat as steroid-fed, corporate-farmed livestock; this has transpired because we overfeed them a diet consisting of steroid-fed, corporate-farmed livestock -- as well as - myriad other variations of nutrient-devoid, calorie-laden faux food dispensed at a mall's food court, through a drive-thru window, or out of a cardboard box delivered by a franchised junk food chain.
Our motives for doing this shouldn't be a mystery to us: We habitually shovel high fat, high carbohydrate, high sugar-content junk into their grousing gobs, in a desperate, futile attempt to stuff down the boredom, the anxiety, the lassitude they suffer due to their confinement inside the commercially branded, repressed, empty, holographic facsimile of childhood we have created for them.
This is the reason why our children overeat like neurotic domestic pets. As is the case with housebound, bored, anxious domestic animals, what do they have to look forward to -- but dinner? Accordingly, the corporate food industry provides plenty (at a bloated profit, of course) of junk food -- the table scraps fallen from the table of the ruling elite of our fat-ass empire - in order to keep them (and all the rest of us) obese, obedient, and anxiously waiting by our master's table for more.
And these proto-fascist, behavioral control tricks are not just for kids. Corporate Capitalism has left us Americans psychologically arrested in a pathetic simulacrum of childhood where our inchoate fears of being preyed upon by our (so called) protectors (who we internally and accurately recognize as monsters) are displaced into compulsive consumerism (including overeating) and a reflexive fear of outsiders.
If we were to awaken to this subterfuge, we would apprehend: Our individual uniqueness is being robbed from us on a daily basis due to our enslavement to a mindless system that lives for no other reason than it lives -- a system that eats its fatted young (giving new meaning to the term consumer economy) -- and exists only to perpetuate itself -- a system that has become a soul-devouring monster -- the embodiment of Alan Ginsburg's Moloch.
Why do we accept this soul defying situation? For most of us, the price we would have to pay for confronting authority would be far too prohibitive; hence, we learn it is acceptable (as well as politically useful to our power mad leaders) to displace our anger and fear upon outsiders. Ergo, the so-called Clash of Civilizations is unloosed and slouches, by way of the Washington Beltway, to Iraq, Iran and beyond to be born.
This is the manner that we as a society came to believe we can "compromise" on acts of torture committed in our name and not fear the loss of our souls as a result of our complicity. Although, the loss of our national soul would only prove redundant: Years ago, we decided our souls, both individual and national, were somewhat less than useful to us - and not nearly as compelling as a new widescreen, plasma TV and the like -- hence they were discarded into the reeking landfills of this toxic country like an old appliance.
These actions are what the corporate/military/consumer empire demands of us: For it does not take long for us to learn which aspects of our personalities are accepted and rewarded, and, conversely, which ones will be punished and scorned. In essence, the roles we're expected to play in exchange for being loved, fed, clothed, and sheltered.
This exchange insures us that we're given a "safe" place within the community -- not cast out into the wilderness and fed to the wolves. This fear is not an outrageous fantasy: It is, in fact, a primal memory. Due to the fact, numerous forms of infanticide were once common practices in nearly all cultures, including the act of abandoning outcast children to die in the wilderness.
Moreover, this knowledge still lingers within our psyches, where the memories of such terrors still howl just beyond the tree line of our waking awareness, instilling within us the terror of ridicule, of failure, of being ostracized. Far too many of us succumb to these fears and begin playing the roles circumscribed by their families, communities, and cultures. Tragically, their true selves, for all practical purposes, were smothered in their cribs.
In itself, the False Self, as well as other varieties of habitual self-centeredness, is a variety of imprisonment. The world is spread before the cell of the self, yet we prisoners cannot leave the confines of our small, self-involved anxieties; therein, mind, heart and imagination become atrophied by a lack of experience, empathy and spontaneity. The bars of the cage might be invisible, yet the sense of confinement is palpable across our corporatized culture. Ergo, a collective numbness and apathy levels upon the land - and ultimately our desensitization to genocide and torture.
To begin to free oneself from the bondage of the False Self, one must become aware of one's own fraudulence. That being: the awareness of one's desperate machinations before exploitive authority.
Self-knowledge can provide us with a point of entry to the act of empathy. Yes, even extending it towards one as loathsome as George W. Bush. Years ago, the sorry ass son of a bitch put on a mask (its contours, both menacing and ridiculous) in a vain attempt to shield himself from being crushed by power. Imagine having his parents: that soulless cipher of a father and blood-freezing Medusa of a mother. Try to imagine the psychological carnage involved. It's the same trauma we experience daily due to our own powerlessness against the dictates of the corporate state and its threats, both implied and overt, to cast us into the howling wilderness of financial ruin, poverty, and homelessness.
(A caveat: The proffering empathy to Dick Cheney would be pushing the parameters of empathy to the breaking point: Upon being subjected to Cheney's glowering, reptilian aura, even Mahatma Ghandi would be reaching for a pair of brass knuckles.)
Even in this fear-ridden era, there are some among us -- types such as non-conformists, creative thinkers, and artists -- who welcome (rather than cower before) the metaphorical wolves (that are recognized, each to each, as fellow outcasts). Instead of being eaten by the wolves, they are suckled and raised by them.
Nourished by their outsider status, the creative spirit thrives when freed from the constraints of a mindless adherence to groupthink. The dark terrain of societal abandonment becomes their natural habitat: they howl at the moon; they reject the daylight world of bland consensus; they learn to see in the dark, apprehending their own interior darkness and, as a result, gain an understanding into the hearts of darkness beating within those in power.
The wilderness of political activism, of poetry, of art becomes their home: they don't clean-up nicely for polite company; they don't let themselves be bred down (as a few domesticated wolves did) to yapping Toy Poodles, in exchange for a few food scraps.
Yes, when you're looking at a Toy Poodle -- you're looking at a former wolf, as when your looking at the corporate press corps, you're looking at folks whose ancestors long ago were journalists.
One moment, you're loping through the woods, snout held high, smelling the scent of fresh game on the wind, then the next thing you know -- you're being led around on a leash and collar, encrusted with tacky rhinestones and you're salivating at the sound of an electric can-opener. One moment, you're a child, entranced in play, hardwired to eternity -- the next thing you know, you're sitting at work and your passions, hopes, and yearnings have been shrunk down to Toy Poodle-sized agendas ... You're truckling for your boss's approval; you're counting the minutes until break time, when you can devour some junk food. Like a domesticated pet, or an unfortunate animal incarcerated in a zoo, you are no longer a noble animal - you're a Thing That Waits For Lunch.
To resist, we must cast off the fear of being an outcast. I remain hopeful: There is yet a molecule or two of the wild wolf left within us cringing, cloying Toy Poodles.
One must always remember this: We human beings are of nature too. Accordingly, within us lies an indomitable self, encoded with the grace and fury of the natural world, and, if acknowledged and respected, it will awaken and arise. Then the real dogfight begins: The fur will fly, as we fight, fang and claw, to retake our own essential natures, and, by extension, begin the struggle to restore health, imagination and empathy to a nation of cage-accepting, torture-countenancing sick puppies.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.
by Phil Rockstroh
9/28/06
"True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that False Self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality ... and through this death a rebirth, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer."
-R. D. Laing
The pathology of American culture is as ubiquitous as its strip-mall ugliness. It is abundantly evident, in almost every aspect of contemporary life. From the predatory (to the point of psychopathic) practices of its morally scurvy pirates at the helm of the corporate/governmental ship of state, down to the pandemic enervation and proliferate anomie of its galley slaves languishing in their soulless cubicles -- from the genitalia-devoid mascots at Disney World to the genitalia-obsessed torturers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo -- the soul-sickness spreads before us like George W. Bush's taunting, executioner's smirk.
Ronnie Laing's profound dictum leaves us confronting many poignant questions regarding the true nature of the psychic lives of us so-called ordinary citizens of The United States of America and our ability to function within this corrupt and crumbling empire. In short, is it sane to be able to adapt to an insane culture?
Moreover, it begs the following question. If an individual's conformity to group, cultural, and national pathology is rewarded -- thereby encouraging the formation of the "False Self" -- how might one, stranded within the dysfunctional dynamic, resist it all and begin to work towards an awareness of their own essential nature, then perhaps arriving at an individual reckoning involving how to live, flourish, and subvert the life defying demands of the present era.
First off, what engenders the formation of the False Self? Laing grasped: When we were children, authority, in the form of parents, educators, clergy, loomed before us. Alternatively menacing and comforting, these powerful figures could just as easily have crushed us as comforted us.
Tragically, all too often, they perpetrated the primary. Hence, to accommodate the overwhelming demands of authority, we learned how to curry favor from these baffling, seemingly implacable forces by the creation of a cipher persona, a False Self, a tricky and/or obsequious, tap-dancing, little apple polisher, who strives to garner approval and acceptance, thereby avoiding punishment, rejection and scorn, by means of the reflexive subjugation of his true nature.
The victims of False Self adaptation are the quintessence of the corporate/consumer citizen. Although, they're presence is far from benign: While they are compelled to show an agreeable face towards unyielding authority, this trope merely serves to mask a mind seething with misplaced resentments and shallow subterfuge. Doesn't this read like a personality profile of Condoleezza Rice or any other member of that present day Executive Office cast of Lord of the Flies known as the Bush administration?
This process of metaphysical identity theft begins in childhood. Then, as now, the presence of individuality-decimating authority can create irreconcilable anxieties within us, because the actions and activities of authority figures seem as overwhelming and unpredictable as nature itself.
Now add this to the already haunted landscape of childhood -- our present day government's campaigns of perpetual fear mongering, plus the dominate corporate culture's modus operandi of commercial exploitation -- and we're left with one freaked out populace - one comprised of both children and alleged adults.
Consequently, this fear-ridden existence has rendered us a society of grotesques: In the present day United States, children have grown as fat as steroid-fed, corporate-farmed livestock; this has transpired because we overfeed them a diet consisting of steroid-fed, corporate-farmed livestock -- as well as - myriad other variations of nutrient-devoid, calorie-laden faux food dispensed at a mall's food court, through a drive-thru window, or out of a cardboard box delivered by a franchised junk food chain.
Our motives for doing this shouldn't be a mystery to us: We habitually shovel high fat, high carbohydrate, high sugar-content junk into their grousing gobs, in a desperate, futile attempt to stuff down the boredom, the anxiety, the lassitude they suffer due to their confinement inside the commercially branded, repressed, empty, holographic facsimile of childhood we have created for them.
This is the reason why our children overeat like neurotic domestic pets. As is the case with housebound, bored, anxious domestic animals, what do they have to look forward to -- but dinner? Accordingly, the corporate food industry provides plenty (at a bloated profit, of course) of junk food -- the table scraps fallen from the table of the ruling elite of our fat-ass empire - in order to keep them (and all the rest of us) obese, obedient, and anxiously waiting by our master's table for more.
And these proto-fascist, behavioral control tricks are not just for kids. Corporate Capitalism has left us Americans psychologically arrested in a pathetic simulacrum of childhood where our inchoate fears of being preyed upon by our (so called) protectors (who we internally and accurately recognize as monsters) are displaced into compulsive consumerism (including overeating) and a reflexive fear of outsiders.
If we were to awaken to this subterfuge, we would apprehend: Our individual uniqueness is being robbed from us on a daily basis due to our enslavement to a mindless system that lives for no other reason than it lives -- a system that eats its fatted young (giving new meaning to the term consumer economy) -- and exists only to perpetuate itself -- a system that has become a soul-devouring monster -- the embodiment of Alan Ginsburg's Moloch.
Why do we accept this soul defying situation? For most of us, the price we would have to pay for confronting authority would be far too prohibitive; hence, we learn it is acceptable (as well as politically useful to our power mad leaders) to displace our anger and fear upon outsiders. Ergo, the so-called Clash of Civilizations is unloosed and slouches, by way of the Washington Beltway, to Iraq, Iran and beyond to be born.
This is the manner that we as a society came to believe we can "compromise" on acts of torture committed in our name and not fear the loss of our souls as a result of our complicity. Although, the loss of our national soul would only prove redundant: Years ago, we decided our souls, both individual and national, were somewhat less than useful to us - and not nearly as compelling as a new widescreen, plasma TV and the like -- hence they were discarded into the reeking landfills of this toxic country like an old appliance.
These actions are what the corporate/military/consumer empire demands of us: For it does not take long for us to learn which aspects of our personalities are accepted and rewarded, and, conversely, which ones will be punished and scorned. In essence, the roles we're expected to play in exchange for being loved, fed, clothed, and sheltered.
This exchange insures us that we're given a "safe" place within the community -- not cast out into the wilderness and fed to the wolves. This fear is not an outrageous fantasy: It is, in fact, a primal memory. Due to the fact, numerous forms of infanticide were once common practices in nearly all cultures, including the act of abandoning outcast children to die in the wilderness.
Moreover, this knowledge still lingers within our psyches, where the memories of such terrors still howl just beyond the tree line of our waking awareness, instilling within us the terror of ridicule, of failure, of being ostracized. Far too many of us succumb to these fears and begin playing the roles circumscribed by their families, communities, and cultures. Tragically, their true selves, for all practical purposes, were smothered in their cribs.
In itself, the False Self, as well as other varieties of habitual self-centeredness, is a variety of imprisonment. The world is spread before the cell of the self, yet we prisoners cannot leave the confines of our small, self-involved anxieties; therein, mind, heart and imagination become atrophied by a lack of experience, empathy and spontaneity. The bars of the cage might be invisible, yet the sense of confinement is palpable across our corporatized culture. Ergo, a collective numbness and apathy levels upon the land - and ultimately our desensitization to genocide and torture.
To begin to free oneself from the bondage of the False Self, one must become aware of one's own fraudulence. That being: the awareness of one's desperate machinations before exploitive authority.
Self-knowledge can provide us with a point of entry to the act of empathy. Yes, even extending it towards one as loathsome as George W. Bush. Years ago, the sorry ass son of a bitch put on a mask (its contours, both menacing and ridiculous) in a vain attempt to shield himself from being crushed by power. Imagine having his parents: that soulless cipher of a father and blood-freezing Medusa of a mother. Try to imagine the psychological carnage involved. It's the same trauma we experience daily due to our own powerlessness against the dictates of the corporate state and its threats, both implied and overt, to cast us into the howling wilderness of financial ruin, poverty, and homelessness.
(A caveat: The proffering empathy to Dick Cheney would be pushing the parameters of empathy to the breaking point: Upon being subjected to Cheney's glowering, reptilian aura, even Mahatma Ghandi would be reaching for a pair of brass knuckles.)
Even in this fear-ridden era, there are some among us -- types such as non-conformists, creative thinkers, and artists -- who welcome (rather than cower before) the metaphorical wolves (that are recognized, each to each, as fellow outcasts). Instead of being eaten by the wolves, they are suckled and raised by them.
Nourished by their outsider status, the creative spirit thrives when freed from the constraints of a mindless adherence to groupthink. The dark terrain of societal abandonment becomes their natural habitat: they howl at the moon; they reject the daylight world of bland consensus; they learn to see in the dark, apprehending their own interior darkness and, as a result, gain an understanding into the hearts of darkness beating within those in power.
The wilderness of political activism, of poetry, of art becomes their home: they don't clean-up nicely for polite company; they don't let themselves be bred down (as a few domesticated wolves did) to yapping Toy Poodles, in exchange for a few food scraps.
Yes, when you're looking at a Toy Poodle -- you're looking at a former wolf, as when your looking at the corporate press corps, you're looking at folks whose ancestors long ago were journalists.
One moment, you're loping through the woods, snout held high, smelling the scent of fresh game on the wind, then the next thing you know -- you're being led around on a leash and collar, encrusted with tacky rhinestones and you're salivating at the sound of an electric can-opener. One moment, you're a child, entranced in play, hardwired to eternity -- the next thing you know, you're sitting at work and your passions, hopes, and yearnings have been shrunk down to Toy Poodle-sized agendas ... You're truckling for your boss's approval; you're counting the minutes until break time, when you can devour some junk food. Like a domesticated pet, or an unfortunate animal incarcerated in a zoo, you are no longer a noble animal - you're a Thing That Waits For Lunch.
To resist, we must cast off the fear of being an outcast. I remain hopeful: There is yet a molecule or two of the wild wolf left within us cringing, cloying Toy Poodles.
One must always remember this: We human beings are of nature too. Accordingly, within us lies an indomitable self, encoded with the grace and fury of the natural world, and, if acknowledged and respected, it will awaken and arise. Then the real dogfight begins: The fur will fly, as we fight, fang and claw, to retake our own essential natures, and, by extension, begin the struggle to restore health, imagination and empathy to a nation of cage-accepting, torture-countenancing sick puppies.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.
The Torture and Tyranny Act of 2006
9/28/06
Hi kids,
Here’s the perverts who like to torture. Don’t take any candy from them. And especially, don’t accept rides from them.
[http://tmars.iwarp.com/guerrilla_campaign/document/Hi_kids.pdf]
Senate approves terrorism interrogation bill
9/28/06 7:01pm EDT
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060928/pl_nm/security_guantanamo_dc_13
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a bill setting rules for interrogations and prosecutions of foreign terrorism suspects, sending it to President George W. Bush to sign into law.
Senate OKs bill for detainee trials, interrogations
POSTED: 7:30 p.m. EDT, September 28, 2006
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/28/congress.terrorism.ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush's plans to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that Republicans intend to use on the campaign trail to assert their toughness on terrorism.
The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end. The House passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and was expected to approve the Senate bill Friday, sending it to the White House.
The bill would create military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects. It also would prohibit blatant abuses of detainees but grant the president flexibility to decide what interrogation techniques are legally permissible.
The White House and its supporters have called the measure crucial in the anti-terror fight, However, some Democrats said it left the door open to abuse, violating the U.S. Constitution in the name of protecting Americans.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who helped draft the legislation during negotiations with the White House, said the measure would set up a system for treating detainees that the nation could be proud of. He said the goal "is to render justice to the terrorists, even though they will not render justice to us."
Democrats said the Republicans' rush to muscle the measure through Congress was aimed at giving them something to tout during the campaign, in which control of the House and Senate are at stake. Election Day is November 7.
"There is no question that the rush to pass this bill -- which is the product of secret negotiations with the White House -- is about serving a political agenda," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts.
Senate approval was the latest step in the remarkable journey that Bush has taken in shaping how the United States treats the terrorism suspects it has been holding, some for almost five years.
The Supreme Court nullified Bush's initial system for trying detainees in June, and earlier this month a handful of maverick GOP senators defied the president by forcing him to slightly tone down his next proposal. But they struck a deal last week, and the president and congressional Republicans are now claiming the episode as a victory.
While Democrats warned the bill could open the way for abuse, Republicans said defeating the bill would put the country at risk of another terrorist attack.
"We are not conducting a law enforcement operation against a check-writing scam or trying to foil a bank heist," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. "We are at war against extremists who want to kill our citizens."
Approving the bill before lawmakers leave for the elections has been a priority for Republicans. GOP leaders fought off attempts by Democrats and a lone Republican to change the bill, ensuring swift passage.
House passes terror detainee bill; Senate OK expected
POSTED: 8:28 a.m. EDT, September 28, 2006
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/28/congress.terrorism.ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House approved legislation Wednesday giving the Bush administration authority to interrogate and prosecute terrorism detainees, moving President Bush to the edge of a pre-election victory with a key piece of his anti-terror plan.
The mostly party-line 253-168 vote in the Republican-run House prompted bitter charges afterward by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, that opposition Democrats were coddling terrorists, perhaps foreshadowing campaign attack ads to come. Democrats responded that the GOP leader was trying to provoke fear.
Even as the House debated the bill, senators of the two parties agreed to limit debate on their own nearly identical measure, all but ensuring its passage on Thursday.
Republican leaders are hoping to work out differences and send Bush a final version before leaving Washington this weekend to campaign for the November 7 congressional elections.
The legislation would establish a military court system to prosecute terror suspects, a response to the Supreme Court ruling in June that Congress' blessing was necessary. While the bill would grant defendants more legal rights than they had under the administration's old system, it nevertheless would eliminate rights usually granted in civilian and military courts.
The measure also provides extensive definitions of war crimes such as torture, rape and biological experiments -- but gives Bush broad authority to decide which other techniques U.S. interrogators can legally use. The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes.
For nearly two weeks, the GOP has been embarrassed as the White House and rebellious Republican senators have fought publicly over whether Bush's plan would give him too much authority. But they struck a compromise last Thursday, and Republicans are hoping approval will bolster their effort to cast themselves as strong on national security, a marquee issue this election year.
In a statement issued after the vote, Bush, who will visit GOP senators Thursday morning, urged the Senate to approve the measure and congratulated the House for its "commitment to strengthening our national security."
Hastert's comments were biting. He said in a statement that Democrats opposing the measure "voted today in favor of MORE rights for terrorists."
He added, "So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan."
In response, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Democrats feared the House-passed measure could endanger U.S. soldiers by encouraging other countries to limit the rights of captured American troops. She said the bill would be vulnerable to being overturned by the Supreme Court.
"Speaker Hastert's false and inflammatory rhetoric is yet another desperate attempt to mislead the American people and provoke fear," said Pelosi, D-California, adding that Democrats "have an unshakable commitment to catching, convicting and punishing terrorists who attack Americans."
During the debate, House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, all but dared Democrats to vote against the legislation.
"Will my Democrat friends work with Republicans to give the president the tools he needs to continue to stop terrorist attacks before they happen, or will they vote to force him to fight the terrorists with one arm tied behind his back?" Boehner asked just before members cast their ballots.
Democrats said they wanted to tone down the powers the bill would give to Bush and the limits it would impose on terror-war suspects' abilities to defend themselves during trials.
Said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio: "This bill is everything we don't believe in."
Overall, 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats voted for the legislation while 160 Democrats, seven Republicans and one independent voted against it.
During the often partisan debate, some Democrats contended the bill would approve torture.
"All Americans want to hold terrorists accountable, but if we try to redefine the nature of torture, whisk people into secret detention facilities and use secret evidence to convict them in special courts, our actions do in fact embolden our enemies," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Virginia.
Others vehemently opposed language that would give the president wide latitude to interpret international standards of prisoner treatment and bar detainees from going to federal court to protest their treatment and detention under the right of habeas corpus. Supporters of the bill have said eliminating habeas corpus was intended to keep detainees from flooding federal courts with appeals.
The bill also gives the president the ability to interpret international standards for prisoner treatment when an act does not fall under the definition of a war crime, such as rape and torture.
Hi kids,
Here’s the perverts who like to torture. Don’t take any candy from them. And especially, don’t accept rides from them.
[http://tmars.iwarp.com/guerrilla_campaign/document/Hi_kids.pdf]
Senate approves terrorism interrogation bill
9/28/06 7:01pm EDT
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060928/pl_nm/security_guantanamo_dc_13
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a bill setting rules for interrogations and prosecutions of foreign terrorism suspects, sending it to President George W. Bush to sign into law.
Senate OKs bill for detainee trials, interrogations
POSTED: 7:30 p.m. EDT, September 28, 2006
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/28/congress.terrorism.ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush's plans to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that Republicans intend to use on the campaign trail to assert their toughness on terrorism.
The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end. The House passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and was expected to approve the Senate bill Friday, sending it to the White House.
The bill would create military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects. It also would prohibit blatant abuses of detainees but grant the president flexibility to decide what interrogation techniques are legally permissible.
The White House and its supporters have called the measure crucial in the anti-terror fight, However, some Democrats said it left the door open to abuse, violating the U.S. Constitution in the name of protecting Americans.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who helped draft the legislation during negotiations with the White House, said the measure would set up a system for treating detainees that the nation could be proud of. He said the goal "is to render justice to the terrorists, even though they will not render justice to us."
Democrats said the Republicans' rush to muscle the measure through Congress was aimed at giving them something to tout during the campaign, in which control of the House and Senate are at stake. Election Day is November 7.
"There is no question that the rush to pass this bill -- which is the product of secret negotiations with the White House -- is about serving a political agenda," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts.
Senate approval was the latest step in the remarkable journey that Bush has taken in shaping how the United States treats the terrorism suspects it has been holding, some for almost five years.
The Supreme Court nullified Bush's initial system for trying detainees in June, and earlier this month a handful of maverick GOP senators defied the president by forcing him to slightly tone down his next proposal. But they struck a deal last week, and the president and congressional Republicans are now claiming the episode as a victory.
While Democrats warned the bill could open the way for abuse, Republicans said defeating the bill would put the country at risk of another terrorist attack.
"We are not conducting a law enforcement operation against a check-writing scam or trying to foil a bank heist," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. "We are at war against extremists who want to kill our citizens."
Approving the bill before lawmakers leave for the elections has been a priority for Republicans. GOP leaders fought off attempts by Democrats and a lone Republican to change the bill, ensuring swift passage.
House passes terror detainee bill; Senate OK expected
POSTED: 8:28 a.m. EDT, September 28, 2006
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/28/congress.terrorism.ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House approved legislation Wednesday giving the Bush administration authority to interrogate and prosecute terrorism detainees, moving President Bush to the edge of a pre-election victory with a key piece of his anti-terror plan.
The mostly party-line 253-168 vote in the Republican-run House prompted bitter charges afterward by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, that opposition Democrats were coddling terrorists, perhaps foreshadowing campaign attack ads to come. Democrats responded that the GOP leader was trying to provoke fear.
Even as the House debated the bill, senators of the two parties agreed to limit debate on their own nearly identical measure, all but ensuring its passage on Thursday.
Republican leaders are hoping to work out differences and send Bush a final version before leaving Washington this weekend to campaign for the November 7 congressional elections.
The legislation would establish a military court system to prosecute terror suspects, a response to the Supreme Court ruling in June that Congress' blessing was necessary. While the bill would grant defendants more legal rights than they had under the administration's old system, it nevertheless would eliminate rights usually granted in civilian and military courts.
The measure also provides extensive definitions of war crimes such as torture, rape and biological experiments -- but gives Bush broad authority to decide which other techniques U.S. interrogators can legally use. The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes.
For nearly two weeks, the GOP has been embarrassed as the White House and rebellious Republican senators have fought publicly over whether Bush's plan would give him too much authority. But they struck a compromise last Thursday, and Republicans are hoping approval will bolster their effort to cast themselves as strong on national security, a marquee issue this election year.
In a statement issued after the vote, Bush, who will visit GOP senators Thursday morning, urged the Senate to approve the measure and congratulated the House for its "commitment to strengthening our national security."
Hastert's comments were biting. He said in a statement that Democrats opposing the measure "voted today in favor of MORE rights for terrorists."
He added, "So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan."
In response, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Democrats feared the House-passed measure could endanger U.S. soldiers by encouraging other countries to limit the rights of captured American troops. She said the bill would be vulnerable to being overturned by the Supreme Court.
"Speaker Hastert's false and inflammatory rhetoric is yet another desperate attempt to mislead the American people and provoke fear," said Pelosi, D-California, adding that Democrats "have an unshakable commitment to catching, convicting and punishing terrorists who attack Americans."
During the debate, House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, all but dared Democrats to vote against the legislation.
"Will my Democrat friends work with Republicans to give the president the tools he needs to continue to stop terrorist attacks before they happen, or will they vote to force him to fight the terrorists with one arm tied behind his back?" Boehner asked just before members cast their ballots.
Democrats said they wanted to tone down the powers the bill would give to Bush and the limits it would impose on terror-war suspects' abilities to defend themselves during trials.
Said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio: "This bill is everything we don't believe in."
Overall, 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats voted for the legislation while 160 Democrats, seven Republicans and one independent voted against it.
During the often partisan debate, some Democrats contended the bill would approve torture.
"All Americans want to hold terrorists accountable, but if we try to redefine the nature of torture, whisk people into secret detention facilities and use secret evidence to convict them in special courts, our actions do in fact embolden our enemies," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Virginia.
Others vehemently opposed language that would give the president wide latitude to interpret international standards of prisoner treatment and bar detainees from going to federal court to protest their treatment and detention under the right of habeas corpus. Supporters of the bill have said eliminating habeas corpus was intended to keep detainees from flooding federal courts with appeals.
The bill also gives the president the ability to interpret international standards for prisoner treatment when an act does not fall under the definition of a war crime, such as rape and torture.
This Day in History
September 28
1787 - Congress votes to send the Constitution to state legislatures for their approval.
2006 - Congress votes for torture and tyranny. Abandons Constitution.
1787 - Congress votes to send the Constitution to state legislatures for their approval.
2006 - Congress votes for torture and tyranny. Abandons Constitution.
Fool's Goal
By Sheila Samples
9/28/06
I will seize the opportunity to achieve big goals."
~~George W. Bush
My friend Bernie says a lot of folks have George Bush figured all wrong. "Sure he lies," Bernie said, "every time he opens his mouth. But -- think about it. Even when Bush is lying he ends up telling us what he's gonna do. He can't help himself -- he just blurts it out. But by the time we understand what he's saying -- he's already made a stinkin' mess and moved on to the next one."
Bernie says he's sick and tired of Bush running crazily through Americans' lives, shouting at the top of his lungs -- "September the 11th! The terrorists are coming!" while bragging insanely about his carnivorous game plan for the entire universe. "What's the matter with the people in this country?" Bernie asked in frustration, "why can't they figure out this bozo?"
"Look, Bernie," I said, "maybe we're reading too much into Bush's psyche. He's not really that complicated. Once the corporate giants, the evangelicals and the cowardly warmongering neoconservatives had everything in place to seize power in this country and to move onto the world stage and the killing it would take to get the world population down to a manageable size so they could control its resources, they needed a front man -- a dispensable fool -- one of their own from which there would be no blowback.
With Bush, they got a 'two-fer,' I told Bernie. "Bush was not only chillingly insensitive, morally vacant, mean-spirited and incapable of regret, but because of his grandoise visions, it was easy to convince him that he was called by God and history to save, or to rule, the world.
"Remember," I reminded Bernie, "as a kid, Bush was a stubborn, spoiled brat who got his jollies by ramming lighted firecrackers into frogs' mouths and watching them explode. In college, he showed his penchant for torture when he initiated guys into his fraternity by 'branding' them with red-hot irons made from metal clothes hangers. You take a mean-spirited bully who won't compromise, won't negotiate, has no experience, no curiousity, no ability to succeed at anything, and he suddenly discovers he's the most powerful man in the world -- what do you expect him to do?"
"Just what he's doing," Bernie said, "blow stuff up and torture folks. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of that bunch who like to call themselves the 'Vulcans' may be running things, but Bush is perched in the cat-bird seat, and he's where the buck stops. Just think of all the opportunities he's managed to seize in the last six years -- stole two elections, lost two catastrophic wars, created a virtual assembly line for terrorists throughout the world, and whipped up a violent civil war in Iraq. His lack of war planning and negligible troop support is directly responsible for the deaths of more than 2,700 American citizens and of untold thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians..."
Bernie paused, shaking with fury. "Do the people in this country even care about the thousands of injured soldiers and marines who return from this gang's illegal war, faced with learning to walk on metal stilts -- hug their families with metal hooks? Do they ever think of the thousands more infected with depleted uranium who will suffer the agony of long and painful deaths, the helpless anguish when, for generations, their babies are born without eyes, without limbs, and other ghastly deformations?
"Bush is drunk with power," Bernie said as he stood up and headed for the door. "He's destroyed the image and pride of our armed forces, destroyed our Constitution, destroyed three branches of government that have served us well for 230 years, destroyed the lives of countless Muslim-American citizens. He's rotted the soul of this nation, and given himself the power to rule as he pleases -- and nothing pleases him more than bloody, humiliating torture. He's not the dumb decider," Bernie added, "he's the mad destroyer."
Bernie's right. But even as everything Bush touches blows up in his face, he continues to say his will -- his resolve -- cannot be broken because history is calling, and God chose him to lead a global struggle to rid the entire civilized world of evil. Christians should remember that God does not suffer fools. Christians who can look out across the smoldering Iraqi landscape, see smoke rising from burning bodies of those who did nothing to deserve such an inhumane fate, and believe for one instant that God plays any part in Bush's greedy fantasy need to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness for such blasphemy.
Still, it's difficult to determine who's dumb and dumber here -- the American people or their foolish president. I cannot believe people don't realize that Bush gives the same damn speech over and over, word for word, and has for five years. He uses the singed flesh of the people slain on 9-11 to justify killing so many, many innocents throughout the world -- September the 11th...we're on the hunt...got the evildoers on the run...we're bringing them to justice...September the 11th...freedom's on the march...we don't kill 'em over there, they'll follow us home and we'll have to kill 'em over here...September the 11th...September the 11th...they kill without mercy because they hate our freedoms...September the 11th. Bush's speeches are replete with hate, and with horror, fear, death, suffering, plotters, planners, and hateful ideologies..
Bush is obsessed with "September the 11th" -- so much so that he cannot force himself to refer to it as a mere 9-11. He revels in the delightful horror of that dreadful day upon which he became The Decider, the commander-in-chief -- history's most important war president. That day swept all Americans up in a state of collective insanity from which no healing process is allowed to begin. This nation's current ills -- its shame and disgrace -- spring from 9-11, and even as Bush flees from it, he clutches it tightly to his bosom. It owns him. And it will ultimately devour him.
Bush reveals the truth of 9-11 in so many ways, from body language to bungled spoken words. As recently as his Sept. 15 press conference, while belligerently demanding the right to torture and kill whomever he pleases, like some perverse imp, Bush justified torture by blurting out...
"For example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed described the design of planned attacks of buildings inside the U.S. and how operatives were directed to carry them out. That is valuable information for those of us who have the responsibility to protect the American people. He told us the operatives had been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off at a high -- a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from escaping."
So we are left yet again to ponder the meaning of Bush's words while he eyes Iran and checks options on his table and paws through his tool box with the hallucinatory goal of killing his way to glory.
A fool. With a fool's goal.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.
9/28/06
I will seize the opportunity to achieve big goals."
~~George W. Bush
My friend Bernie says a lot of folks have George Bush figured all wrong. "Sure he lies," Bernie said, "every time he opens his mouth. But -- think about it. Even when Bush is lying he ends up telling us what he's gonna do. He can't help himself -- he just blurts it out. But by the time we understand what he's saying -- he's already made a stinkin' mess and moved on to the next one."
Bernie says he's sick and tired of Bush running crazily through Americans' lives, shouting at the top of his lungs -- "September the 11th! The terrorists are coming!" while bragging insanely about his carnivorous game plan for the entire universe. "What's the matter with the people in this country?" Bernie asked in frustration, "why can't they figure out this bozo?"
"Look, Bernie," I said, "maybe we're reading too much into Bush's psyche. He's not really that complicated. Once the corporate giants, the evangelicals and the cowardly warmongering neoconservatives had everything in place to seize power in this country and to move onto the world stage and the killing it would take to get the world population down to a manageable size so they could control its resources, they needed a front man -- a dispensable fool -- one of their own from which there would be no blowback.
With Bush, they got a 'two-fer,' I told Bernie. "Bush was not only chillingly insensitive, morally vacant, mean-spirited and incapable of regret, but because of his grandoise visions, it was easy to convince him that he was called by God and history to save, or to rule, the world.
"Remember," I reminded Bernie, "as a kid, Bush was a stubborn, spoiled brat who got his jollies by ramming lighted firecrackers into frogs' mouths and watching them explode. In college, he showed his penchant for torture when he initiated guys into his fraternity by 'branding' them with red-hot irons made from metal clothes hangers. You take a mean-spirited bully who won't compromise, won't negotiate, has no experience, no curiousity, no ability to succeed at anything, and he suddenly discovers he's the most powerful man in the world -- what do you expect him to do?"
"Just what he's doing," Bernie said, "blow stuff up and torture folks. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of that bunch who like to call themselves the 'Vulcans' may be running things, but Bush is perched in the cat-bird seat, and he's where the buck stops. Just think of all the opportunities he's managed to seize in the last six years -- stole two elections, lost two catastrophic wars, created a virtual assembly line for terrorists throughout the world, and whipped up a violent civil war in Iraq. His lack of war planning and negligible troop support is directly responsible for the deaths of more than 2,700 American citizens and of untold thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians..."
Bernie paused, shaking with fury. "Do the people in this country even care about the thousands of injured soldiers and marines who return from this gang's illegal war, faced with learning to walk on metal stilts -- hug their families with metal hooks? Do they ever think of the thousands more infected with depleted uranium who will suffer the agony of long and painful deaths, the helpless anguish when, for generations, their babies are born without eyes, without limbs, and other ghastly deformations?
"Bush is drunk with power," Bernie said as he stood up and headed for the door. "He's destroyed the image and pride of our armed forces, destroyed our Constitution, destroyed three branches of government that have served us well for 230 years, destroyed the lives of countless Muslim-American citizens. He's rotted the soul of this nation, and given himself the power to rule as he pleases -- and nothing pleases him more than bloody, humiliating torture. He's not the dumb decider," Bernie added, "he's the mad destroyer."
Bernie's right. But even as everything Bush touches blows up in his face, he continues to say his will -- his resolve -- cannot be broken because history is calling, and God chose him to lead a global struggle to rid the entire civilized world of evil. Christians should remember that God does not suffer fools. Christians who can look out across the smoldering Iraqi landscape, see smoke rising from burning bodies of those who did nothing to deserve such an inhumane fate, and believe for one instant that God plays any part in Bush's greedy fantasy need to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness for such blasphemy.
Still, it's difficult to determine who's dumb and dumber here -- the American people or their foolish president. I cannot believe people don't realize that Bush gives the same damn speech over and over, word for word, and has for five years. He uses the singed flesh of the people slain on 9-11 to justify killing so many, many innocents throughout the world -- September the 11th...we're on the hunt...got the evildoers on the run...we're bringing them to justice...September the 11th...freedom's on the march...we don't kill 'em over there, they'll follow us home and we'll have to kill 'em over here...September the 11th...September the 11th...they kill without mercy because they hate our freedoms...September the 11th. Bush's speeches are replete with hate, and with horror, fear, death, suffering, plotters, planners, and hateful ideologies..
Bush is obsessed with "September the 11th" -- so much so that he cannot force himself to refer to it as a mere 9-11. He revels in the delightful horror of that dreadful day upon which he became The Decider, the commander-in-chief -- history's most important war president. That day swept all Americans up in a state of collective insanity from which no healing process is allowed to begin. This nation's current ills -- its shame and disgrace -- spring from 9-11, and even as Bush flees from it, he clutches it tightly to his bosom. It owns him. And it will ultimately devour him.
Bush reveals the truth of 9-11 in so many ways, from body language to bungled spoken words. As recently as his Sept. 15 press conference, while belligerently demanding the right to torture and kill whomever he pleases, like some perverse imp, Bush justified torture by blurting out...
"For example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed described the design of planned attacks of buildings inside the U.S. and how operatives were directed to carry them out. That is valuable information for those of us who have the responsibility to protect the American people. He told us the operatives had been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off at a high -- a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from escaping."
So we are left yet again to ponder the meaning of Bush's words while he eyes Iran and checks options on his table and paws through his tool box with the hallucinatory goal of killing his way to glory.
A fool. With a fool's goal.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
What's the melting point of steel?
http://education.jlab.org/qa/meltingpoint_01.html
That depends on the alloy of steel you are talking about. The term alloy is almost always used incorrectly these days, especially amongst bicyclists. They use the term to mean aluminum. What the term alloy really means is a mixture of metals, any kind of metals. Almost all metal used today is a mixture and therefore an alloy.
Most steel has other metals added to tune its properties, like strength, corrosion resistance, or ease of fabrication. Steel is just the element iron that has been processed to control the amount of carbon. Iron, out of the ground, melts at around 1510 degrees C (2750°F). Steel often melts at around 1370 degrees C (2500°F).
- Brian Kross, Chief Detector Engineer
Jet fuel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel
The most common fuel worldwide is a kerosene/paraffin oil-based fuel classified as JET A-1, which is produced to an internationally standardized set of specifications. In the United States only, a version of JET A-1 known as JET A is also used. See the section for JET A below.
The only other jet fuel that is commonly used in civilian aviation is called JET B. JET B is a fuel in the naptha-kerosene region that is used for its enhanced cold-weather performance. However, JET B's lighter composition makes it more dangerous to handle, and it is thus restricted only to areas where its cold-weather characteristics are absolutely necessary.
Both JET A and JET B can contain a number of additives:
Antioxidants to prevent gumming, usually based on alkylated phenols, eg. AO-30, AO-31, or AO-37;
Antistatic agents, to dissipate static electricity and prevent sparking; Stadis 450, with dinonylnaphthylsulfonic acid (DINNSA) as the active ingredient, is an example
Corrosion inhibitors, eg. DCI-4A used for civilian and military fuels, and DCI-6A used for military fuels;
Fuel System Icing Inhibitor (FSII) agents, eg. Di-EGME; FSII is often mixed at the point-of-sale so that users with heated fuel lines do not have to pay the extra expense;
Militaries around the world use a different classification system of JP numbers. Some are almost identical to their civilian counterparts and differ only by the amounts of a few additives; JET A-1 is similar to JP-8, JET B is similar to JP-4. Other military fuels are highly specialized products and are developed for very specific applications. JP-5 fuel is fairly common, and was introduced to reduce the risk of fire on aircraft carriers. Other fuels were specific to one type of aircraft. JP-6 was developed specifically for the XB-70 Valkyrie and JP-7 for the SR-71 Blackbird. Both these fuels were engineered to have a high flash point to better cope with the heat and stresses of high speed supersonic flight. One aircraft-specific jet fuel still in use by the USAF is JPTS, which was developed in 1956 for the Lockheed U-2 spy plane.
Jet fuels are sometimes classified as kerosene or naphtha-type. Kerosene-type fuels include Jet A, Jet A1, JP-5 and JP-8. Naphtha-type jets fuels include Jet B and JP-4.
Jet A
Jet A is the standard jet fuel type in the U.S. since the 1950s and is only available there. JET A is similar to JET-A1, except for its higher freezing point of -40 °C. Like JET A-1, JET A has a fairly high flash point of min. 38 °C, with an autoignition temperature of 410 F (210 C). Jet A can be identified in trucks and storage facilities by the UN number, 1863, Hazardous Material placards. Jet A trucks, storage tanks and pipes that carry Jet A will be marked with a black sticker with a white "JET A" written over it, next to another black stripe. Jet A will have a clear to straw color if it is clean and free of contamination. Water is denser than Jet A, and will collect on the bottom of a tank. Jet A storage tanks must be sumped on a regular basis to check for water contamination. It is possible for water particles to become suspended in Jet A, which can be found by performing a "Clear and Bright" test. A hazy appearance can indicate water contamination beyond the acceptable limit of 30ppm (parts per million).
The U.S. commercial fuels are not required by law to contain antistatic additives, and generally do not contain them.
JET A-1
Flash point: 38 °C
Autoignition temperature: over 425 °C
Freezing point: -47 °C (-40 °C for JET A)
Open air burning temperatures: 260-315 °C
Maximum burning temperature: 980 °C (1795°F)
see also: http://www.chevron.com/products/prodserv/fuels/bulletin/aviationfuel/toc.shtm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RYA411A.html
The collapse of the WTC
by Kevin Ryan
Underwriters Laboratories
Thursday, Nov 11, 2004
http://www.physics911.net/thermite.htm
Calculations on the Possible Use of Thermite to Melt Sections of the WTC Core Columns
by D. P. Grimmer
That depends on the alloy of steel you are talking about. The term alloy is almost always used incorrectly these days, especially amongst bicyclists. They use the term to mean aluminum. What the term alloy really means is a mixture of metals, any kind of metals. Almost all metal used today is a mixture and therefore an alloy.
Most steel has other metals added to tune its properties, like strength, corrosion resistance, or ease of fabrication. Steel is just the element iron that has been processed to control the amount of carbon. Iron, out of the ground, melts at around 1510 degrees C (2750°F). Steel often melts at around 1370 degrees C (2500°F).
- Brian Kross, Chief Detector Engineer
Jet fuel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel
The most common fuel worldwide is a kerosene/paraffin oil-based fuel classified as JET A-1, which is produced to an internationally standardized set of specifications. In the United States only, a version of JET A-1 known as JET A is also used. See the section for JET A below.
The only other jet fuel that is commonly used in civilian aviation is called JET B. JET B is a fuel in the naptha-kerosene region that is used for its enhanced cold-weather performance. However, JET B's lighter composition makes it more dangerous to handle, and it is thus restricted only to areas where its cold-weather characteristics are absolutely necessary.
Both JET A and JET B can contain a number of additives:
Antioxidants to prevent gumming, usually based on alkylated phenols, eg. AO-30, AO-31, or AO-37;
Antistatic agents, to dissipate static electricity and prevent sparking; Stadis 450, with dinonylnaphthylsulfonic acid (DINNSA) as the active ingredient, is an example
Corrosion inhibitors, eg. DCI-4A used for civilian and military fuels, and DCI-6A used for military fuels;
Fuel System Icing Inhibitor (FSII) agents, eg. Di-EGME; FSII is often mixed at the point-of-sale so that users with heated fuel lines do not have to pay the extra expense;
Militaries around the world use a different classification system of JP numbers. Some are almost identical to their civilian counterparts and differ only by the amounts of a few additives; JET A-1 is similar to JP-8, JET B is similar to JP-4. Other military fuels are highly specialized products and are developed for very specific applications. JP-5 fuel is fairly common, and was introduced to reduce the risk of fire on aircraft carriers. Other fuels were specific to one type of aircraft. JP-6 was developed specifically for the XB-70 Valkyrie and JP-7 for the SR-71 Blackbird. Both these fuels were engineered to have a high flash point to better cope with the heat and stresses of high speed supersonic flight. One aircraft-specific jet fuel still in use by the USAF is JPTS, which was developed in 1956 for the Lockheed U-2 spy plane.
Jet fuels are sometimes classified as kerosene or naphtha-type. Kerosene-type fuels include Jet A, Jet A1, JP-5 and JP-8. Naphtha-type jets fuels include Jet B and JP-4.
Jet A
Jet A is the standard jet fuel type in the U.S. since the 1950s and is only available there. JET A is similar to JET-A1, except for its higher freezing point of -40 °C. Like JET A-1, JET A has a fairly high flash point of min. 38 °C, with an autoignition temperature of 410 F (210 C). Jet A can be identified in trucks and storage facilities by the UN number, 1863, Hazardous Material placards. Jet A trucks, storage tanks and pipes that carry Jet A will be marked with a black sticker with a white "JET A" written over it, next to another black stripe. Jet A will have a clear to straw color if it is clean and free of contamination. Water is denser than Jet A, and will collect on the bottom of a tank. Jet A storage tanks must be sumped on a regular basis to check for water contamination. It is possible for water particles to become suspended in Jet A, which can be found by performing a "Clear and Bright" test. A hazy appearance can indicate water contamination beyond the acceptable limit of 30ppm (parts per million).
The U.S. commercial fuels are not required by law to contain antistatic additives, and generally do not contain them.
JET A-1
Flash point: 38 °C
Autoignition temperature: over 425 °C
Freezing point: -47 °C (-40 °C for JET A)
Open air burning temperatures: 260-315 °C
Maximum burning temperature: 980 °C (1795°F)
see also: http://www.chevron.com/products/prodserv/fuels/bulletin/aviationfuel/toc.shtm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RYA411A.html
The collapse of the WTC
by Kevin Ryan
Underwriters Laboratories
Thursday, Nov 11, 2004
http://www.physics911.net/thermite.htm
Calculations on the Possible Use of Thermite to Melt Sections of the WTC Core Columns
by D. P. Grimmer
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Lt Ehren Watada Does His Duty
By David Howard
26 September, 2006
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-howard260906.htm
US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada is facing an eight-year term in military prison for just doing his duty: serving our country and protecting the Constitution.
The charges against Lieutenant Watada are conduct unbecoming an officer, missing movement, and contempt toward President Bush. But they boil down to the “crimes” of thinking, speaking and following his conscience.
In June 2006, Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that the Iraq War is illegal. The Army filed charges, held a hearing, and recommended a court martial.
This impending trial will be a test of our president’s authority to wage preemptive war. Lieutenant Watada argues, on our behalf, that President Bush has abused his authority; President Bush argues that Watada is contemptuous for saying so.
The architects of the Iraq War want to punish Ehren Watada for “unbecoming conduct,” but Lt. Watada has only done what any soldier is supposed to do upon receiving an order: exercise moral judgment, determine if the order is lawful, and only then obey it.
As we learned at the Nuremburg trials after the genocide of World War II, an officer is not merely permitted to disobey an illegal order; she or he has a solemn duty to do so, and must not take legality for granted.
How then is a soldier supposed to make the “moral choice” required by the Nuremburg Principles? What 28-year-old Ehren Watada did was educate himself about the conflict and turn to recognized experts in ethics and international law. His subsequent decision not to participate in the Iraq War was pro-Constitution, pro-international law, pro-human rights, and anti-abuse of authority.
Watada stated, “My participation would make me party to war crimes. The Iraq War is not legal according to domestic and international law.”
Many distinguished world leaders and international law experts agree that the war is illegal. They include Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, who in 2004 declared that the US invasion was "not in conformity with the UN Charter, and from our point of view, illegal."
Three experts testified for Ehren Watada at his Article 32 preliminary hearing: University of Illinois Law Professor Francis Boyle, former United Nations Undersecretary Denis Halliday, and retired Army Colonel Ann Wright. They all supported Watada’s claim that the Iraq War is illegal.
Marjorie Cohn, President-elect of the National Lawyer’s Guild and a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, made a similar case at the sentencing hearing in 2004 for Pablo Paredes, a sailor and conscientious objector who refused to board his Iraq-bound ship.
Professor Cohn noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice establishes that lawful orders must not be contrary to the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Furthermore, the Army Field Manual establishes an explicit duty to disobey unlawful orders: "Following superior orders" is not a defense to the commission of war crimes, unless the accused "did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful."
Cohn argued that the United States has not only endorsed the Nuremburg Principles, but also has ratified both the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, making them legally binding according to Article 6 of the Constitution: “All Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
As Ehren Watada puts it, “As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must, as an officer of honor and integrity, refuse that order."
As citizens of honor and integrity, we must support Ehren Watada.
David Howard is a member of the Board of Directors of Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. Email: DavidHoward@aol.com
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Devil in the Details:
Chavez, Limbaugh and Hypocrisy over Name-Calling
by Jeff Cohen
Published on Friday, September 22, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0922-35.htm
[…]
Let me be clear: Those of us who use facts instead of rant; reason and argument instead of name-calling and personal attacks; evidence instead of intimidation and accusations of disloyalty -- we have the moral authority to tell Hugo Chavez that his comments were out of line.
But the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Scarboroughs and O’Reillys are in no position to point any fingers. Nor are the executives at Disney, GE and News Corp who have made them the loudest voices in American media.
Nor, for that matter, is Team Bush -- whose strategy has been to demonize and intimidate critics and other members of the “reality-based community.”
[…]
And neither are we. Who are we to decide what someone should think, or say?
Do I need to remind you who the president is? and what he’s been doing?
We have allowed this little man to remain in office for over three years after he invaded Iraq. We have allowed this little man to remain in office for over a year after he displayed his indifference to the hundreds who were dying because of Hurricane Katrina. We have allowed this little man to remain in office, in spite of his public looting of the US Treasury, and his corrupt administration.
And we have allowed him to remain in office even after he has demanded the right to torture people, and to jail them indefinitely on his own, unappealable say so.
No, sir. We have lost “the moral authority” to tell anybody what is “out of line”. And, beside the point, Mr Chavez said what had to be said, and where it had to be said.
Until we have turned bush and his administration out of office, and prosecuted them for their crimes; until we have turned his congressional allies out of office, and prosecuted them for their crimes; and until we demand that our elected representatives repudiate the bush doctrines, the bush signing statements, the bush executive orders, in fact his entire ideology and administration, we have NO moral authority.
by Jeff Cohen
Published on Friday, September 22, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0922-35.htm
[…]
Let me be clear: Those of us who use facts instead of rant; reason and argument instead of name-calling and personal attacks; evidence instead of intimidation and accusations of disloyalty -- we have the moral authority to tell Hugo Chavez that his comments were out of line.
But the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Scarboroughs and O’Reillys are in no position to point any fingers. Nor are the executives at Disney, GE and News Corp who have made them the loudest voices in American media.
Nor, for that matter, is Team Bush -- whose strategy has been to demonize and intimidate critics and other members of the “reality-based community.”
[…]
And neither are we. Who are we to decide what someone should think, or say?
Do I need to remind you who the president is? and what he’s been doing?
We have allowed this little man to remain in office for over three years after he invaded Iraq. We have allowed this little man to remain in office for over a year after he displayed his indifference to the hundreds who were dying because of Hurricane Katrina. We have allowed this little man to remain in office, in spite of his public looting of the US Treasury, and his corrupt administration.
And we have allowed him to remain in office even after he has demanded the right to torture people, and to jail them indefinitely on his own, unappealable say so.
No, sir. We have lost “the moral authority” to tell anybody what is “out of line”. And, beside the point, Mr Chavez said what had to be said, and where it had to be said.
Until we have turned bush and his administration out of office, and prosecuted them for their crimes; until we have turned his congressional allies out of office, and prosecuted them for their crimes; and until we demand that our elected representatives repudiate the bush doctrines, the bush signing statements, the bush executive orders, in fact his entire ideology and administration, we have NO moral authority.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Compact with Evil:
The McCain "Compromise" on Bush's Torture Program
By Chris Floyd
Thursday, 21 September 2006
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=856&Itemid=135
After George Bush's Rose Garden hissy fit, in which he declared that he would simply stop interrogating suspected terrorists unless he could torture them, John "I Only Flip-Flop On Matters of Deep Principle" McCain and the other so-called "Senate rebels" have capitulated to the unpopular president's petulant demands.
In the universe of moral perversion in which we now live, White House National Security (sic) Adviser Stephen Hadley called the pro-torture, anti-due process agreement between these deeply cynical power-gamesters "a good day for the American people." Here's how the Gamester-in-Chief described it (from the NYT):
“I’m pleased to say this agreement preserves the most single, the most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks,” he said, adding, “The agreement clears the way to do what the American people expect us to do — to capture terrorists, to detain terrorists, to question terrorists, and then to try them.”
In other words, not until this very day was the American government able to capture, detain, question and try terrorists. I'll bet you didn't know that. I'll bet the men who were captured, detained, questioned, tried and convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing didn't know that either. Really, that's what Bush said; the agreement "clears the way" for the government to actually detain and interrogate terrorists -- as if they weren't able to do that before. What he means, of course, is that the ability to torture alleged terrorists -- snatched arbitrarily, anywhere in the world, simply on the say-so of the Leader or his designated minions -- will be preserved. Bush obviously has a deep psychological need to feel that someone is being tormented at his orders at all times.
But the demented psychology of this sad little shriveled-up nothing of a man is of slight import. What matters are the actions and policies that are being carried out by the junta operating in his name -- and the countenancing of this gang's crimes by the United States Congress. And that is what we have seen today: the countenancing of torture and kangaroo courts by some sad sacks of shinola lauded by the media as "men of principle." This is what we've come to, this is where are today: sick bastards and cynical bastards openly and eagerly gutting the very core of American law.
Let's have Bill Frist -- surely one of the most pathetic creatures ever inflicted on the U.S. Senate and the long-suffering people of Tennessee -- explain exactly what this great "agreement" means:
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said the agreement had two key points. “Classified information will not be shared with the terrorists” tried before the tribunals, he said. And “the very important program of interrogation continues.”
There you have it. People snatched off the street -- or sold to spies by snitches and scamsters -- can be tried, in military tribunals, without seeing the evidence against them; and Bush's "program of interrogation continues."
Let's be very clear on the latter point. What Bush has been talking about and protesting against were efforts to ensure that CIA interrogators could not torture suspects. Because of course they could continue to use ordinary methods of interrogation -- which experts uniformly agree produce better intelligence -- just as they have always been able to. When Bush and Tennessee cat-torturer talk about the "program of interrogation" continuing, they mean allowing the CIA to torture captives by various methods without being charged with war crimes and felony violations of American law. That is precisely what they are talking about, and nothing else. But you won't see it put that way on the pages of our most august journalist institutions nor on the broadcasts of our world-renowned network news shows.
And let us make one other point -- and in a most impolitic way, for the truth is often an impolitic commodity: John McCain is a goddamned liar. Yes, he himself suffered torture, yes he came through it, yes, we all admire his fortitude during that ordeal in his youth: but his record in later life, in politics, is that of a moral coward with good PR skills. (Not that it takes much skill to wow the poltroons who squat on the commanding heights of the corporate media world today.) And today, he has opened his mouth and emitted a damnable lie, to wit: "the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.”
This is an untrue statement, analogous to saying the moon is located in his rectum or that he can bite through pig iron with his bare teeth. Every step the Bush gang has taken in this pro-torture, don't-prosecute-us campaign is designed to weaken the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions, which have been adopted into American law by Congress -- in bills sponsored and championed by Republicans -- are crystal clear on torture. There is no need to "preserve" their integrity with new legislation; there is nothing wrong with the Conventions that need to be "fixed" -- unless, of course, you wish to use interrogation techniques that any sentient human being would recognize as torture. In that case, of course you have to "fix" the Conventions by gutting their integrity, letter and spirit.
John McCain might be a moral coward in his old age, but he's not stupid. He knows all this. He knows that the Bush Administration has been trying to wriggle out of the Conventions since the earliest days of the "War of Terror." He knows that gutting the Conventions is at the heart of Bush's "interrogation program" which McCain and his "rebels" have just saved with their grand "compromise."
Therefore, we will say it again clearly, so that even the nabobs on the Washington Post editorial page can hear it: John McCain is a goddamned liar, and his "agreement" today serves some of the most evil principles ever supported openly by the United States government since slavery.
And let's put this other point plainly one more time: the American government has always been able to capture, detain, question and try terrorists. Always. The American government has for 28 years had the power to eavesdrop on anyone in the world or in the country whom they suspected even slightly of terrorism or terrorist connections. And they could and can do that instantly, without waiting for a court order or jumping through any bureaucratic hoops, under the long-existing law. Everything that Bush says his clearly illegal surveillance programs do can already be done within the law. Therefore, it is clear that the whole raison d'etre behind the illegal programs is to establish the principle that the president is beyond the law. (And also, almost certainly, to perform illegal surveillance that has nothing to do with terrorism.)
What we have seen today is no "grand compromise," no "great debate," no "act of principle" and certainly no "preservation" of the Geneva Conventions. What we have seen instead is a small group of rich, cynical, power-hungry old bastards belch forth lies in the service of torture and tyranny. And if you're not angry about that, if you're not "shrill" about that, then by God you are one piss-poor American citizen. You shame every man and woman who have fought and died and marched and worked and dreamed for our freedoms.
Chris Floyd is an American journalist. He is the author of the book, Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime. Visit his website www.chris-floyd.com
By Chris Floyd
Thursday, 21 September 2006
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=856&Itemid=135
After George Bush's Rose Garden hissy fit, in which he declared that he would simply stop interrogating suspected terrorists unless he could torture them, John "I Only Flip-Flop On Matters of Deep Principle" McCain and the other so-called "Senate rebels" have capitulated to the unpopular president's petulant demands.
In the universe of moral perversion in which we now live, White House National Security (sic) Adviser Stephen Hadley called the pro-torture, anti-due process agreement between these deeply cynical power-gamesters "a good day for the American people." Here's how the Gamester-in-Chief described it (from the NYT):
“I’m pleased to say this agreement preserves the most single, the most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks,” he said, adding, “The agreement clears the way to do what the American people expect us to do — to capture terrorists, to detain terrorists, to question terrorists, and then to try them.”
In other words, not until this very day was the American government able to capture, detain, question and try terrorists. I'll bet you didn't know that. I'll bet the men who were captured, detained, questioned, tried and convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing didn't know that either. Really, that's what Bush said; the agreement "clears the way" for the government to actually detain and interrogate terrorists -- as if they weren't able to do that before. What he means, of course, is that the ability to torture alleged terrorists -- snatched arbitrarily, anywhere in the world, simply on the say-so of the Leader or his designated minions -- will be preserved. Bush obviously has a deep psychological need to feel that someone is being tormented at his orders at all times.
But the demented psychology of this sad little shriveled-up nothing of a man is of slight import. What matters are the actions and policies that are being carried out by the junta operating in his name -- and the countenancing of this gang's crimes by the United States Congress. And that is what we have seen today: the countenancing of torture and kangaroo courts by some sad sacks of shinola lauded by the media as "men of principle." This is what we've come to, this is where are today: sick bastards and cynical bastards openly and eagerly gutting the very core of American law.
Let's have Bill Frist -- surely one of the most pathetic creatures ever inflicted on the U.S. Senate and the long-suffering people of Tennessee -- explain exactly what this great "agreement" means:
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said the agreement had two key points. “Classified information will not be shared with the terrorists” tried before the tribunals, he said. And “the very important program of interrogation continues.”
There you have it. People snatched off the street -- or sold to spies by snitches and scamsters -- can be tried, in military tribunals, without seeing the evidence against them; and Bush's "program of interrogation continues."
Let's be very clear on the latter point. What Bush has been talking about and protesting against were efforts to ensure that CIA interrogators could not torture suspects. Because of course they could continue to use ordinary methods of interrogation -- which experts uniformly agree produce better intelligence -- just as they have always been able to. When Bush and Tennessee cat-torturer talk about the "program of interrogation" continuing, they mean allowing the CIA to torture captives by various methods without being charged with war crimes and felony violations of American law. That is precisely what they are talking about, and nothing else. But you won't see it put that way on the pages of our most august journalist institutions nor on the broadcasts of our world-renowned network news shows.
And let us make one other point -- and in a most impolitic way, for the truth is often an impolitic commodity: John McCain is a goddamned liar. Yes, he himself suffered torture, yes he came through it, yes, we all admire his fortitude during that ordeal in his youth: but his record in later life, in politics, is that of a moral coward with good PR skills. (Not that it takes much skill to wow the poltroons who squat on the commanding heights of the corporate media world today.) And today, he has opened his mouth and emitted a damnable lie, to wit: "the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.”
This is an untrue statement, analogous to saying the moon is located in his rectum or that he can bite through pig iron with his bare teeth. Every step the Bush gang has taken in this pro-torture, don't-prosecute-us campaign is designed to weaken the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions, which have been adopted into American law by Congress -- in bills sponsored and championed by Republicans -- are crystal clear on torture. There is no need to "preserve" their integrity with new legislation; there is nothing wrong with the Conventions that need to be "fixed" -- unless, of course, you wish to use interrogation techniques that any sentient human being would recognize as torture. In that case, of course you have to "fix" the Conventions by gutting their integrity, letter and spirit.
John McCain might be a moral coward in his old age, but he's not stupid. He knows all this. He knows that the Bush Administration has been trying to wriggle out of the Conventions since the earliest days of the "War of Terror." He knows that gutting the Conventions is at the heart of Bush's "interrogation program" which McCain and his "rebels" have just saved with their grand "compromise."
Therefore, we will say it again clearly, so that even the nabobs on the Washington Post editorial page can hear it: John McCain is a goddamned liar, and his "agreement" today serves some of the most evil principles ever supported openly by the United States government since slavery.
And let's put this other point plainly one more time: the American government has always been able to capture, detain, question and try terrorists. Always. The American government has for 28 years had the power to eavesdrop on anyone in the world or in the country whom they suspected even slightly of terrorism or terrorist connections. And they could and can do that instantly, without waiting for a court order or jumping through any bureaucratic hoops, under the long-existing law. Everything that Bush says his clearly illegal surveillance programs do can already be done within the law. Therefore, it is clear that the whole raison d'etre behind the illegal programs is to establish the principle that the president is beyond the law. (And also, almost certainly, to perform illegal surveillance that has nothing to do with terrorism.)
What we have seen today is no "grand compromise," no "great debate," no "act of principle" and certainly no "preservation" of the Geneva Conventions. What we have seen instead is a small group of rich, cynical, power-hungry old bastards belch forth lies in the service of torture and tyranny. And if you're not angry about that, if you're not "shrill" about that, then by God you are one piss-poor American citizen. You shame every man and woman who have fought and died and marched and worked and dreamed for our freedoms.
Chris Floyd is an American journalist. He is the author of the book, Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime. Visit his website www.chris-floyd.com
Torture's Long Shadow
By Vladimir Bukovsky
Sunday, December 18, 2005; B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121700018.html
CAMBRIDGE, England
One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin," stammered Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing it."
This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John McCain's amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.
This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject. Indeed, with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.
Apart from sheer frustration and other adrenaline-related emotions, investigators and detectives in hot pursuit have enormous temptation to use force to break the will of their prey because they believe that, metaphorically speaking, they have a "ticking bomb" case on their hands. But, much as a good hunter trains his hounds to bring the game to him rather than eating it, a good ruler has to restrain his henchmen from devouring the prey lest he be left empty-handed. Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.
So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the American leaders? I have no answer to these questions, but I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.
Even talking about the possibility of using CID treatment sends wrong signals and encourages base instincts in those who should be consistently delivered from temptation by their superiors. As someone who has been on the receiving end of the "treatment" under discussion, let me tell you that trying to make a distinction between torture and CID techniques is ridiculous. Long gone are the days when a torturer needed the nasty-looking tools displayed in the Tower of London. A simple prison bed is deadly if you remove the mattress and force a prisoner to sleep on the iron frame night after night after night. Or how about the "Chekist's handshake" so widely practiced under Stalin -- a firm squeeze of the victim's palm with a simple pencil inserted between his fingers? Very convenient, very simple. And how would you define leaving 2,000 inmates of a labor camp without dental service for months on end? Is it CID not to treat an excruciatingly painful toothache, or is it torture?
Now it appears that sleep deprivation is "only" CID and used on Guantanamo Bay captives. Well, congratulations, comrades! It was exactly this method that the NKVD used to produce those spectacular confessions in Stalin's "show trials" of the 1930s. The henchmen called it "conveyer," when a prisoner was interrogated nonstop for a week or 10 days without a wink of sleep. At the end, the victim would sign any confession without even understanding what he had signed.
I know from my own experience that interrogation is an intensely personal confrontation, a duel of wills. It is not about revealing some secrets or making confessions, it is about self-respect and human dignity. If I break, I will not be able to look into a mirror. But if I don't, my interrogator will suffer equally. Just try to control your emotions in the heat of that battle. This is precisely why torture occurs even when it is explicitly forbidden. Now, who is going to guarantee that even the most exact definition of CID is observed under such circumstances?
But if we cannot guarantee this, then how can you force your officers and your young people in the CIA to commit acts that will scar them forever? For scarred they will be, take my word for it.
In 1971, while in Lefortovo prison in Moscow (the central KGB interrogation jail), I went on a hunger strike demanding a defense lawyer of my choice (the KGB wanted its trusted lawyer to be assigned instead). The moment was most inconvenient for my captors because my case was due in court, and they had no time to spare. So, to break me down, they started force-feeding me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils. About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing the feeding tube into my nostril.
The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit. . . . Grrrr. There had just been time for everything to start healing during the night when they came back in the morning and did it all over again, for 10 days, when the guards could stand it no longer. As it happened, it was a Sunday and no bosses were around. They surrounded the doctor: "Hey, listen, let him drink it straight from the bowl, let him sip it. It'll be quicker for you, too, you silly old fool." The doctor was in tears: "Do you think I want to go to jail because of you lot? No, I can't do that. . . . " And so they stood over my body, cursing each other, with bloody bubbles coming out of my nose. On the 12th day, the authorities surrendered; they had run out of time. I had gotten my lawyer, but neither the doctor nor those guards could ever look me in the eye again.
Today, when the White House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in CID practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers.
If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?
Finally, think what effect your attitude has on the rest of the world, particularly in the countries where torture is still common, such as Russia, and where its citizens are still trying to combat it. Mr. Putin will be the first to say: "You see, even your vaunted American democracy cannot defend itself without resorting to torture. . . . "
Off we go, back to the caves.
Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for nonviolent human rights activities, is the author of several books, including "To Build a Castle" and "Judgment in Moscow." Now 63, he has lived primarily in Cambridge, England, since 1976.
calling bullshit on bush, again
W. House: Not US policy to threaten Pakistan
9/22/06
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060922/ts_nm/bush_pakistan_dc_1
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it was not U.S. policy to threaten Pakistan after the September 11 attacks despite Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's complaint that Washington warned it would bomb his country.
The statement came as Bush and Musharraf met at the White House to discuss cooperation in the war on terrorism and efforts to prevent a resurgence of the Taliban.
They were to hold a news conference at 10:10 a.m. EDT (1410 GMT).
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state at the time, had denied warning Musharraf that the United States would bomb his country if it did not cooperate with the U.S. campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Musharraf, in an interview with CBS News' magazine show "60 Minutes," to air on Sunday, said that after the September 11 attacks, Armitage had told Pakistan's intelligence director, "'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age."'
Snow said he did not know what Musharraf had been told but that U.S. policy was to seek Musharraf's cooperation.
"U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats. U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf: 'We need you to make a choice,"' Snow said.
As for what Armitage said to the Pakistanis: "I don't know," Snow said. "This could have been a classic failure to communicate. I just don't know."
Bush says knew of no threat to bomb Pakistan
9/22/06
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060922/ts_nm/bush_musharraf_threat_dc_1
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Friday he knew of no U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan following the September 11 attacks.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said this week a U.S. official warned his country in 2001 that America would bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate with the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"The first I've heard of this is when I read it in the newspaper today," Bush said as he stood next to Musharraf at a news conference. "I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words."
Musharraf sidestepped the issue, saying he could not comment because of a book deal.
The Pakistani leader had told the CBS program "60 Minutes" that the threat came from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage but Armitage has since denied making such a warning.
from
South Asia Analysis Group
United States’ Policy Predicaments In Pakistan
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
http://www.saag.org/papers9/paper812.html
07. 10. 2003
... General Musharraf was given an ultimatum to submit without delay to American demands, namely (1) Pakistan to provide bases for United States military forces in the war to liquidate the Taliban in Afghanistan (2) Dismantle all Pak terrorist training camps on Pak-Afghan border and (3) Launch military operations to seal Pak-Afghan border to prevent escape of Osama bin Laden and the hierarchy of Al Qaeda and Taliban.
Genral Musharraf, visibly shaken, complied with the American dictates to a degree, justifying it to his nation on two grounds: (1) Pakistan’s survival was at stake, and (2) The holy Koran sanctioned temporizing commitments under pressure but which could be reneged upon at the first opportune moment.
Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Predicaments Post 9/11: An Analysis
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
http://www.saag.org/papers6/paper564.html
12. 12. 2002
...Within hours of these despicable acts, Pakistan’s strategic delinquencies brought it face to face with a most traumatic imposition by the United States ultimatum...
...become an accomplice in the American military intervention in Afghanistan or else face the consequences...
...Pakistan’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, buckled under the United States ultimatum and agreed unconditionally to all American demands...
9/22/06
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060922/ts_nm/bush_pakistan_dc_1
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it was not U.S. policy to threaten Pakistan after the September 11 attacks despite Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's complaint that Washington warned it would bomb his country.
The statement came as Bush and Musharraf met at the White House to discuss cooperation in the war on terrorism and efforts to prevent a resurgence of the Taliban.
They were to hold a news conference at 10:10 a.m. EDT (1410 GMT).
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state at the time, had denied warning Musharraf that the United States would bomb his country if it did not cooperate with the U.S. campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Musharraf, in an interview with CBS News' magazine show "60 Minutes," to air on Sunday, said that after the September 11 attacks, Armitage had told Pakistan's intelligence director, "'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age."'
Snow said he did not know what Musharraf had been told but that U.S. policy was to seek Musharraf's cooperation.
"U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats. U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf: 'We need you to make a choice,"' Snow said.
As for what Armitage said to the Pakistanis: "I don't know," Snow said. "This could have been a classic failure to communicate. I just don't know."
Bush says knew of no threat to bomb Pakistan
9/22/06
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060922/ts_nm/bush_musharraf_threat_dc_1
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Friday he knew of no U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan following the September 11 attacks.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said this week a U.S. official warned his country in 2001 that America would bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate with the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"The first I've heard of this is when I read it in the newspaper today," Bush said as he stood next to Musharraf at a news conference. "I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words."
Musharraf sidestepped the issue, saying he could not comment because of a book deal.
The Pakistani leader had told the CBS program "60 Minutes" that the threat came from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage but Armitage has since denied making such a warning.
from
South Asia Analysis Group
United States’ Policy Predicaments In Pakistan
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
http://www.saag.org/papers9/paper812.html
07. 10. 2003
... General Musharraf was given an ultimatum to submit without delay to American demands, namely (1) Pakistan to provide bases for United States military forces in the war to liquidate the Taliban in Afghanistan (2) Dismantle all Pak terrorist training camps on Pak-Afghan border and (3) Launch military operations to seal Pak-Afghan border to prevent escape of Osama bin Laden and the hierarchy of Al Qaeda and Taliban.
Genral Musharraf, visibly shaken, complied with the American dictates to a degree, justifying it to his nation on two grounds: (1) Pakistan’s survival was at stake, and (2) The holy Koran sanctioned temporizing commitments under pressure but which could be reneged upon at the first opportune moment.
Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Predicaments Post 9/11: An Analysis
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
http://www.saag.org/papers6/paper564.html
12. 12. 2002
...Within hours of these despicable acts, Pakistan’s strategic delinquencies brought it face to face with a most traumatic imposition by the United States ultimatum...
...become an accomplice in the American military intervention in Afghanistan or else face the consequences...
...Pakistan’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, buckled under the United States ultimatum and agreed unconditionally to all American demands...
and some more…
9/23/06
9-11 AND THE SMOKING GUN
Part 2: A real smoking gun
By Pepe Escobar
Apr 8, 2004
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD08Aa01.html
[…]
Pakistani intelligence sources told Asia Times Online that on the afternoon of September 11 itself, as well as on September 12 and 13, Armitage met with Mahmoud with a stark choice: either Pakistan would help the US against al-Qaeda, or it would be bombed back to the Stone Age. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented an ultimatum in the form of seven US demands. Pakistan accepted all of them. One of the demands was for Musharraf to send Mahmoud to Kandahar again and force the Taliban to extradite bin Laden. Mahmoud knew in advance Mullah Omar would refuse. But when he went to Kandahar the Taliban leader said he would accept, as long as the Americans proved bin Laden was responsible for September 11. There was no proof, and Afghanistan was bombed anyway, a policy already decided well in advance.
[…]
So, armitage is lying, and so is bush. Which is really no surprise. The big surprise is that anyone believes either one of them ANY time they say anything. As of this morning, the media was still treating this flippantly, and as a he said-he said deal, which it’s not. The CCMA just will not call bullshit on bush.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Agreement Is Reached on Detainee Bill
By BRIAN KNOWLTON, International Herald Tribune
September 21, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/washington/21cnd-detain.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — President Bush and three Republican senators said this afternoon that they had reached an agreement on legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques can be used against terror suspects and to establish trial procedures for those in military custody.
“We did our duty,” said Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, one of the three. He noted that the legislation would still need close study by both houses of Congress.
Mr. Warner and the other two rebellious Republicans, Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, met at the White House with Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, who stood behind Mr. Warner’s shoulder as the senator announced the agreement.
“It is good news and a good day for the American people,” Mr. Hadley said.
Mr. McCain said the agreement means “that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.” The senator said the agreement “gives the president the tools that he needs to continue to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice.”
But Mr. Hadley added a note of conditionality, calling it a “framework for compromise,” and Mr. Warner said that only President Bush’s signature on the bill would complete the agreement.
Mr. Bush welcomed the accord, which he said met his key test of allowing the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogations of terror suspects to continue.
“I’m pleased to say this agreement preserves the most single, the most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks,” he said, adding, “The agreement clears the way to do what the American people expect us to do — to capture terrorists, to detain terrorists, to question terrorists, and then to try them.”
Mr. Bush urged the Congress to send him legislation before it goes into recess next week before the fall elections.
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said the agreement had two key points. “Classified information will not be shared with the terrorists” tried before the tribunals, he said. And “the very important program of interrogation continues.”
The three senators met today with Mr. Frist, who had been pressing them to find a quick end to an intra-party dispute that awkwardly fell in an election year and on an issue — national security — that the president’s party has sought to make its own.
It was not immediately clear how Democrats — who have largely stood aside while the Republicans feuded — would react to the compromise, a reality that Mr. Frist acknowledged. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and you’ll hear each and every one of us saying that,” he said, forecasting intensive discussions between the parties in the next 48 hours.
The breakthrough came a day after Republicans shepherding the Bush administration plan through the House of Representatives narrowly averted a setback for the proposal — a matter with national security and political ramifications in an election year.
The three senators have contended that the administration was undermining Geneva Convention protections in a way that could leave Americans vulnerable in the future, and that its plan for military tribunals of terror suspects would allow evidence obtained coercively, and information they were not allowed to see to be used against them.
The three had received a high-profile vote of support when Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush’s first secretary of state, said that the changes backed by the administration could lead the world to “doubt the moral basis” of the American-led fight against terrorism.
Mr. Bush had threatened last week to end C.I.A. interrogations of terror suspects if his proposals were not approved. “Time’s running out,” he said last Friday in emphatic tones.
But over the weekend, in the face of the senators’ unexpectedly stout resistance, administration officials suddenly opened the door to compromise. Intricate negotiations ensued, and the White House reportedly dropped its insistence on redefining American obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
The White House has said that if interrogations are to go forward against suspects it says may possess information that could prevent planned attacks, it needs to clarify the Geneva limits on interrogation techniques.
But its opponents said that the clarification — the administration never said exactly which interrogation procedures it favored — would open the way for other countries with less respect for human rights to interpret the Geneva rules as they see fit.
Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said House Republican leaders continued to oppose providing classified evidence to terror suspects. He said that on at least two occasions, which he did not describe, Osama bin Laden was known to have received classified information that had been presented in American courts.
Earlier, Mr. Hunter predicted that the House would “be able to get a bill very soon,” after it had time to study the new agreement. He said he and fellow Republican representatives would “have some recommendations with respect to classified information.”
The Bush administration has said that it essentially halted C.I.A. interrogations after the Supreme Court ruled in June that an administration plan to try terror suspects before military tribunals fell afoul both of the Geneva Conventions and American law.
The proposed legislation is meant to address the court’s concerns.
David Stout of The New York Times contributed reporting.
September 21, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/washington/21cnd-detain.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — President Bush and three Republican senators said this afternoon that they had reached an agreement on legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques can be used against terror suspects and to establish trial procedures for those in military custody.
“We did our duty,” said Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, one of the three. He noted that the legislation would still need close study by both houses of Congress.
Mr. Warner and the other two rebellious Republicans, Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, met at the White House with Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, who stood behind Mr. Warner’s shoulder as the senator announced the agreement.
“It is good news and a good day for the American people,” Mr. Hadley said.
Mr. McCain said the agreement means “that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.” The senator said the agreement “gives the president the tools that he needs to continue to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice.”
But Mr. Hadley added a note of conditionality, calling it a “framework for compromise,” and Mr. Warner said that only President Bush’s signature on the bill would complete the agreement.
Mr. Bush welcomed the accord, which he said met his key test of allowing the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogations of terror suspects to continue.
“I’m pleased to say this agreement preserves the most single, the most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks,” he said, adding, “The agreement clears the way to do what the American people expect us to do — to capture terrorists, to detain terrorists, to question terrorists, and then to try them.”
Mr. Bush urged the Congress to send him legislation before it goes into recess next week before the fall elections.
Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said the agreement had two key points. “Classified information will not be shared with the terrorists” tried before the tribunals, he said. And “the very important program of interrogation continues.”
The three senators met today with Mr. Frist, who had been pressing them to find a quick end to an intra-party dispute that awkwardly fell in an election year and on an issue — national security — that the president’s party has sought to make its own.
It was not immediately clear how Democrats — who have largely stood aside while the Republicans feuded — would react to the compromise, a reality that Mr. Frist acknowledged. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and you’ll hear each and every one of us saying that,” he said, forecasting intensive discussions between the parties in the next 48 hours.
The breakthrough came a day after Republicans shepherding the Bush administration plan through the House of Representatives narrowly averted a setback for the proposal — a matter with national security and political ramifications in an election year.
The three senators have contended that the administration was undermining Geneva Convention protections in a way that could leave Americans vulnerable in the future, and that its plan for military tribunals of terror suspects would allow evidence obtained coercively, and information they were not allowed to see to be used against them.
The three had received a high-profile vote of support when Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush’s first secretary of state, said that the changes backed by the administration could lead the world to “doubt the moral basis” of the American-led fight against terrorism.
Mr. Bush had threatened last week to end C.I.A. interrogations of terror suspects if his proposals were not approved. “Time’s running out,” he said last Friday in emphatic tones.
But over the weekend, in the face of the senators’ unexpectedly stout resistance, administration officials suddenly opened the door to compromise. Intricate negotiations ensued, and the White House reportedly dropped its insistence on redefining American obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
The White House has said that if interrogations are to go forward against suspects it says may possess information that could prevent planned attacks, it needs to clarify the Geneva limits on interrogation techniques.
But its opponents said that the clarification — the administration never said exactly which interrogation procedures it favored — would open the way for other countries with less respect for human rights to interpret the Geneva rules as they see fit.
Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said House Republican leaders continued to oppose providing classified evidence to terror suspects. He said that on at least two occasions, which he did not describe, Osama bin Laden was known to have received classified information that had been presented in American courts.
Earlier, Mr. Hunter predicted that the House would “be able to get a bill very soon,” after it had time to study the new agreement. He said he and fellow Republican representatives would “have some recommendations with respect to classified information.”
The Bush administration has said that it essentially halted C.I.A. interrogations after the Supreme Court ruled in June that an administration plan to try terror suspects before military tribunals fell afoul both of the Geneva Conventions and American law.
The proposed legislation is meant to address the court’s concerns.
David Stout of The New York Times contributed reporting.
Torturers
Ga. Republican says he supports "methods necessary" for detainees
Sep. 20, 2006
Republican, of course.
[…]
Pressed on whether that means he supports torture, he said, "What's torture? Torture is many things to many people ... people have different breaking points."
Asked whether he would support using electric shocks, he said, "Electric shocks are given to people during initiations to different clubs ... Is that torture? I don't know."
[…]
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/15566134.htm
Georgia congressman lynn westmoreland. He’s really some piece of work, ain’t he? He didn’t take me up on my offer to demonstrate a few of these techniques to him in the shed out back. I’m thinking he’s just another one of them tough talking little chicken shits that seem to populate our national political and media scene these days. I don’t really know how to put this, I’ll try to be tactful. To pass ANY legislation allowing for any sort of torture is a war crime. Period.
Let me try to explain something for them. Getting smacked, shocked, humiliated, roughed up, etc. is all well and good for your fucking fraternity initiation, if you get off on that sort of stuff. OK? Are we on the same page still?
Now then, have you forgotten that these people are locked up? Forever? And this shit ain’t gonna stop. Try it yourselves you bastards. The shed’s still out back. More than enough space.
Where are your brains? Where is your conscience? How about thinking about someone doing that to your father and mother, because we are. If you never liked your parents anyway, imagine your children in that situation, cause we’re doing the deed on children.
You know, it takes a deeply disturbed mind, twisted into a soul-deadening darkness, to want to torture someone. And it takes REAL men and REAL women to stand up and oppose something like this simply because it is wrong, foully, psychotically wrong.
An update
Bush, GOP rebels reach accord on tribunal laws
President urges Congress to pass bill on interrogating terror suspects
6:45 pm 9/21/06
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14941594/
Updated: 6:49 p.m. ET Sept 21, 2006
WASHINGTON - The White House and rebellious Senate Republicans announced agreement Thursday on rules for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror. President Bush urged Congress to put it into law before adjourning for the midterm elections.
“I’m pleased to say that this agreement preserves the single most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks,” the president said, shortly after administration officials and key lawmakers announced agreement following a week of high-profile intraparty disagreement….
Well, we’re all torturers now.
McCain sold his balls.
Do we have enough senators who haven’t yet sold their balls that can filibuster this foul stain on America? Do we have enough Americans left who have retained theirs to support those that oppose this?
You can sit and rationalize all you want, but remember this. When we let our government torture anyone, for whatever reason, we’ve given that same government permission to do that to us.
So, what did you do in the war, daddy?
Reflections On Our Inner Bush:
Corporate Monkeys In Our National House Of Mirrors
By Phil Rockstroh
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.''
-- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun, 1920
As Americans waddled into the new century, overweight, overworked, and as self aware as a cloister of sea slugs -- so too arrived, affecting his bandy-legged, fake cowboy swagger, George W. Bush, to usher in this era of unquenchable, consumer craving and perpetual, martial emergency.
Currently, we watch as Bush vacillates between chest-puffing belligerence and jaw-gyrating fecklessness. Due to his hapless response to overwhelming events, some commentators have made comparisons to Jimmy Carter. Not true: Carter, as beset by tumult and contretemps as his administration was during the late 1970s, never resembled, as Bush does, a tweaked-out methhead in the throes of a full-blown Methamphetamine-induced psychosis.
There is little mystery as to why Bush is now beating a war drum, in time to that all-too-familiar election time, Rovian rag. Bush’s handlers are desperate: Recent polls have revealed that suburban males, Republican women, southerners, and even Christian fundamentalists are starting to have misgivings about Bush. Why? One would guess: Since Bush has proven himself incapable of changing Iraqi blood into cheap, ever-available oil, this has caused, for a portion of his base, the sheen of beatitude to come off Jesus' earthly emissary.
The aura of despair leveling upon the country is undeniable ... Not that there was a great deal of peace of mind previously here in The United States of Distractions. The act of being in perpetual flight from reality requires a great amount of energy; it's quite a workout pushing down dread. We’ve been faking it for a while now. Over the years, our relentless selling of ourselves to the world became about as genuine as Bush's forced smile when he's in the presence of cameras or African Americans.
Baffled, mortified, by what we’ve witnessed during these Bush-afflicted years, we ask ourselves: How did this come to be?
We may be unable to answer this question -- because we cannot lay all the blame upon Bush. Our nation’s aura of insularity and hysteria was present long before Bush. Bush is merely emblematic of the depth of our collective denial regarding how cheaply we have sold ourselves to the exploitive corporate order and the concomitant unease engendered by this Faustian bargain.
Although many of his former supporters may be growing weary of him, one is cautioned not to mistake these developments for any sort of vast, societal awakening. Bush’s steady decline in popular support is merely the result of Americans, on a personal level, beginning to feel the effects of his administration’s mixture of ruthlessness and incompetence.
But this fact alone will not effect change. One does not exactly have to be graced with extraordinary powers of perception to notice that Bush is a fraud. What is more difficult to apprehend is this: The emergence of Bush is not an anomaly. Bush is merely a symptom of the pathologies of corporate capitalism. He is not the disease.
Bush was packaged like any other corporate icon; accordingly, the war in Iraq was sold in the manner of any other corporate PR campaign. Bush is simply a product, designed by and marketed for the benefit of the elites of the corporate state.
Bush’s manufactured image is a hack's construct of mythic American manhood: He was sold as an uncomplicated man of action -- a Christian cowboy redeemer -- a man who could kill evil-doers at fifty paces … Just from a single whiff of his manly phenomenal musk -- our enemies would flee back to their caves and cower in abject terror ... Although events have shown, to appropriate an overheated metaphor from the Christian fundie, End Time lexicon, Bush is, in fact, closer to an Angel of Idiocy come with a Sword of Stupidity to reveal the rot of our corporate dystopia.
The sad and tragic circumstances of our time are much larger than Bush. Bush's grandiosity mirrors us, a people who have lost all sense of proportion. Look around: notice how huge and grotesque the objects and accoutrements of our age have become: colossal motor vehicles; the portions of food we crave; gaudy, land-devouring mcmansions; American consumer's enormous, sea-to-shining-sea asses. These things are manic compensations antecedent to the crash to come. Apropos, our SUVs, oversized pickup trucks, and hummers are no longer large enough to compensate for our feelings of powerlessness; our epic servings of food no longer serve to push down the sense of dread; we cannot find enough room in our mcmansions to hide away all of our anger, sorrow, and regret.
Mojo Nixon sang, “Everybody has a little Elvis in them.” Nowadays, regrettably, we must sing: Everybody has far too much Bush in them. Internally, to one degree or another, we’re all George W. Bush. Bush is the corporate state's dancing monkey -- as, to one degree or another, we all are. The corporate state necessitates that we become, like Bush, all puffed up phonies, in order to face a daily life ruled by its mandates -- as well as -- to compensate for our inner emptiness, borne of our internalization of it.
If we choose to face our inner Bush, our habitual verities and sacred beliefs risk being shattered and scattered asunder. Because the situation is larger than us and it’s larger than Bush: Bush is merely a reflection of it all. Ergo: to listen to the mangled syntax of Bush’s speech patterns is to hear the sound of the national infrastructure crack and buckle; his booze and cocaine decimated brain cells mirror the earth's diminishing bio-diversity; his snits of entitlement and his ruthlessness echo the entropic forces of global capitalism that are driving the engines of extinction.
There is a feeling of flimsiness and haphazardness present in our daily lives here in the empire. Even the landscape before us has been inflicted with an ugly, ad hoc quality. The structures of our age evince a lack of substance. The shoddy, quick buck-snatching stripmall/big box store/fast food outlet, prefab nowhereland of the present day United States is reflective of our shoddy, quick buck-snatching leaders, who are, in turn, a reflection of us. We have come to dwell within this Architecture of Denial; we have come to call this House of Distorted Mirrors, our way of life.
As, all the while, the parallel narratives of compulsive consumerism and Christian End Time Mythology surround us.
Contemporary Christian fundamentalism is a religion of consumer instant gratification. It is a religious cosmology resonating from a junk food paradigm: a Gospel of The Drive Thru Jesus; when The Rapture comes, our corporeal bodies will be cast aside like fast food wrappers.
But be warned, by your eating of all that high caloric food, all of you Jesus-hungry Lard Asses of The Lord: If your clothes were to fall from you (as your prophecies claim they will) as you rise skyward, the sight of all your fat, sagging bodies, floating in the air, will resemble anything but the dawning of eternal paradise -- instead the event will more likely resemble an endless tape loop of a porno video for fat fetishists shot in a zero gravity chamber.
On the secular side of our sickness: Big Pharma factories and rural crystal meth labs can't manufacture enough product to prevent this sinking spell. Soon, even the ruling elites will begin to buckle beneath the weight of their self-deception. We the laboring classes already know the feeling, due to the fact, we’ve been carrying those bloated bastards, plus their delusions of infinite entitlement, on our backs for quite some time now. We strain beneath the load, because the plutocrats have grown very fat gorging themselves on the nation's seed crop.
Bush is nothing more than the effluvia, rising from the landfills of the Corporate State. He's the abiding stench of what we buried and tried to pretend never existed.
Corporate culture is based on mendacity made palatable for mass consumption: Public relation and advertising firms exist to create cute, cartoon animal icons to mask the realities of the slaughterhouse. In corporate life, there is scant reward for depth and authenticity; conversely, an amicable ruthlessness pays off well indeed.
Corporate “reality” is all about “perception management". Hence, a corporate, utterly commodified, life usurps, exploits and diminishes not only the outer environment -- but our internal ones as well. How could one not play off the other and visa versa? How can one spend all day in a so-called "work environment," spending a large percentage of one's life beneath florescent lights, with sweatshop-cobbled shoes touching industrial carpeting, and bodies supported by bland, utilitarian office furniture -- then return, by way of a hideous, dangerous freeway, home to some ugly suburb or exurb -- all the while having one's senses incessantly inundated with commercial imagery calculated to manipulate -- hypnotize one, actually -- into a particular way of viewing the world, and not become subject to the sort of psychic pathology that is pandemic among the populace of the empire.
Living such criteria, day by day, how could we not have conjured Bush and company? Bush is only a byproduct of the present corporate order; he is but a reflection of the everyday hubris, denial, mendacity, and exploitation of daily life in the corporatist state. He is emblematic of the House of Mirrors that our nation’s collective psyche has become -- a mass of distorted perceptions sustained by professional liars and ignorant killers.
Bush is our hidden intentions made manifest before us: We live in an empire bent on murder/suicide; our nation has become a global-wide spree killer ... unrepentant ... seemly devoid of conscience.
Then what hope remains for us, here, in this age, where self-serving lies promulgated by public relations hacks have hijacked the verities of the human mind, heart, and imagination, as all the while, so many genuine voices of humanity have been lost amid this seemly endless bacchanal of bullshit and blown blood?
That is up to us: Personally and collectively, our fate might well be determined by how honest we’re willing to be with ourselves. After all, by way of our passivity, we’re at least partially responsible for letting a million Rovian Turd Blossoms bloom. We have summoned Bush by the incantation of our hidden intentions; perhaps, if we were to awaken to the George W. Bush concealed within, we might understand our own collaboration in creating him – and then, at long last, we can begin the process of dismissing him and all he represents.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com
By Phil Rockstroh
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.''
-- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Sun, 1920
As Americans waddled into the new century, overweight, overworked, and as self aware as a cloister of sea slugs -- so too arrived, affecting his bandy-legged, fake cowboy swagger, George W. Bush, to usher in this era of unquenchable, consumer craving and perpetual, martial emergency.
Currently, we watch as Bush vacillates between chest-puffing belligerence and jaw-gyrating fecklessness. Due to his hapless response to overwhelming events, some commentators have made comparisons to Jimmy Carter. Not true: Carter, as beset by tumult and contretemps as his administration was during the late 1970s, never resembled, as Bush does, a tweaked-out methhead in the throes of a full-blown Methamphetamine-induced psychosis.
There is little mystery as to why Bush is now beating a war drum, in time to that all-too-familiar election time, Rovian rag. Bush’s handlers are desperate: Recent polls have revealed that suburban males, Republican women, southerners, and even Christian fundamentalists are starting to have misgivings about Bush. Why? One would guess: Since Bush has proven himself incapable of changing Iraqi blood into cheap, ever-available oil, this has caused, for a portion of his base, the sheen of beatitude to come off Jesus' earthly emissary.
The aura of despair leveling upon the country is undeniable ... Not that there was a great deal of peace of mind previously here in The United States of Distractions. The act of being in perpetual flight from reality requires a great amount of energy; it's quite a workout pushing down dread. We’ve been faking it for a while now. Over the years, our relentless selling of ourselves to the world became about as genuine as Bush's forced smile when he's in the presence of cameras or African Americans.
Baffled, mortified, by what we’ve witnessed during these Bush-afflicted years, we ask ourselves: How did this come to be?
We may be unable to answer this question -- because we cannot lay all the blame upon Bush. Our nation’s aura of insularity and hysteria was present long before Bush. Bush is merely emblematic of the depth of our collective denial regarding how cheaply we have sold ourselves to the exploitive corporate order and the concomitant unease engendered by this Faustian bargain.
Although many of his former supporters may be growing weary of him, one is cautioned not to mistake these developments for any sort of vast, societal awakening. Bush’s steady decline in popular support is merely the result of Americans, on a personal level, beginning to feel the effects of his administration’s mixture of ruthlessness and incompetence.
But this fact alone will not effect change. One does not exactly have to be graced with extraordinary powers of perception to notice that Bush is a fraud. What is more difficult to apprehend is this: The emergence of Bush is not an anomaly. Bush is merely a symptom of the pathologies of corporate capitalism. He is not the disease.
Bush was packaged like any other corporate icon; accordingly, the war in Iraq was sold in the manner of any other corporate PR campaign. Bush is simply a product, designed by and marketed for the benefit of the elites of the corporate state.
Bush’s manufactured image is a hack's construct of mythic American manhood: He was sold as an uncomplicated man of action -- a Christian cowboy redeemer -- a man who could kill evil-doers at fifty paces … Just from a single whiff of his manly phenomenal musk -- our enemies would flee back to their caves and cower in abject terror ... Although events have shown, to appropriate an overheated metaphor from the Christian fundie, End Time lexicon, Bush is, in fact, closer to an Angel of Idiocy come with a Sword of Stupidity to reveal the rot of our corporate dystopia.
The sad and tragic circumstances of our time are much larger than Bush. Bush's grandiosity mirrors us, a people who have lost all sense of proportion. Look around: notice how huge and grotesque the objects and accoutrements of our age have become: colossal motor vehicles; the portions of food we crave; gaudy, land-devouring mcmansions; American consumer's enormous, sea-to-shining-sea asses. These things are manic compensations antecedent to the crash to come. Apropos, our SUVs, oversized pickup trucks, and hummers are no longer large enough to compensate for our feelings of powerlessness; our epic servings of food no longer serve to push down the sense of dread; we cannot find enough room in our mcmansions to hide away all of our anger, sorrow, and regret.
Mojo Nixon sang, “Everybody has a little Elvis in them.” Nowadays, regrettably, we must sing: Everybody has far too much Bush in them. Internally, to one degree or another, we’re all George W. Bush. Bush is the corporate state's dancing monkey -- as, to one degree or another, we all are. The corporate state necessitates that we become, like Bush, all puffed up phonies, in order to face a daily life ruled by its mandates -- as well as -- to compensate for our inner emptiness, borne of our internalization of it.
If we choose to face our inner Bush, our habitual verities and sacred beliefs risk being shattered and scattered asunder. Because the situation is larger than us and it’s larger than Bush: Bush is merely a reflection of it all. Ergo: to listen to the mangled syntax of Bush’s speech patterns is to hear the sound of the national infrastructure crack and buckle; his booze and cocaine decimated brain cells mirror the earth's diminishing bio-diversity; his snits of entitlement and his ruthlessness echo the entropic forces of global capitalism that are driving the engines of extinction.
There is a feeling of flimsiness and haphazardness present in our daily lives here in the empire. Even the landscape before us has been inflicted with an ugly, ad hoc quality. The structures of our age evince a lack of substance. The shoddy, quick buck-snatching stripmall/big box store/fast food outlet, prefab nowhereland of the present day United States is reflective of our shoddy, quick buck-snatching leaders, who are, in turn, a reflection of us. We have come to dwell within this Architecture of Denial; we have come to call this House of Distorted Mirrors, our way of life.
As, all the while, the parallel narratives of compulsive consumerism and Christian End Time Mythology surround us.
Contemporary Christian fundamentalism is a religion of consumer instant gratification. It is a religious cosmology resonating from a junk food paradigm: a Gospel of The Drive Thru Jesus; when The Rapture comes, our corporeal bodies will be cast aside like fast food wrappers.
But be warned, by your eating of all that high caloric food, all of you Jesus-hungry Lard Asses of The Lord: If your clothes were to fall from you (as your prophecies claim they will) as you rise skyward, the sight of all your fat, sagging bodies, floating in the air, will resemble anything but the dawning of eternal paradise -- instead the event will more likely resemble an endless tape loop of a porno video for fat fetishists shot in a zero gravity chamber.
On the secular side of our sickness: Big Pharma factories and rural crystal meth labs can't manufacture enough product to prevent this sinking spell. Soon, even the ruling elites will begin to buckle beneath the weight of their self-deception. We the laboring classes already know the feeling, due to the fact, we’ve been carrying those bloated bastards, plus their delusions of infinite entitlement, on our backs for quite some time now. We strain beneath the load, because the plutocrats have grown very fat gorging themselves on the nation's seed crop.
Bush is nothing more than the effluvia, rising from the landfills of the Corporate State. He's the abiding stench of what we buried and tried to pretend never existed.
Corporate culture is based on mendacity made palatable for mass consumption: Public relation and advertising firms exist to create cute, cartoon animal icons to mask the realities of the slaughterhouse. In corporate life, there is scant reward for depth and authenticity; conversely, an amicable ruthlessness pays off well indeed.
Corporate “reality” is all about “perception management". Hence, a corporate, utterly commodified, life usurps, exploits and diminishes not only the outer environment -- but our internal ones as well. How could one not play off the other and visa versa? How can one spend all day in a so-called "work environment," spending a large percentage of one's life beneath florescent lights, with sweatshop-cobbled shoes touching industrial carpeting, and bodies supported by bland, utilitarian office furniture -- then return, by way of a hideous, dangerous freeway, home to some ugly suburb or exurb -- all the while having one's senses incessantly inundated with commercial imagery calculated to manipulate -- hypnotize one, actually -- into a particular way of viewing the world, and not become subject to the sort of psychic pathology that is pandemic among the populace of the empire.
Living such criteria, day by day, how could we not have conjured Bush and company? Bush is only a byproduct of the present corporate order; he is but a reflection of the everyday hubris, denial, mendacity, and exploitation of daily life in the corporatist state. He is emblematic of the House of Mirrors that our nation’s collective psyche has become -- a mass of distorted perceptions sustained by professional liars and ignorant killers.
Bush is our hidden intentions made manifest before us: We live in an empire bent on murder/suicide; our nation has become a global-wide spree killer ... unrepentant ... seemly devoid of conscience.
Then what hope remains for us, here, in this age, where self-serving lies promulgated by public relations hacks have hijacked the verities of the human mind, heart, and imagination, as all the while, so many genuine voices of humanity have been lost amid this seemly endless bacchanal of bullshit and blown blood?
That is up to us: Personally and collectively, our fate might well be determined by how honest we’re willing to be with ourselves. After all, by way of our passivity, we’re at least partially responsible for letting a million Rovian Turd Blossoms bloom. We have summoned Bush by the incantation of our hidden intentions; perhaps, if we were to awaken to the George W. Bush concealed within, we might understand our own collaboration in creating him – and then, at long last, we can begin the process of dismissing him and all he represents.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
What debate?
The bush says the Geneva Conventions on degrading and humiliating treatment are vague. So apparently does congress. And so now we have the spectacle for the world to see, the president and the congress of the United States of America, debating what degree of torture is acceptable. Well. Let me give all you fuckers a clue.
If you are in control of another person, and what you are about to do to them you would not want done to you, then that's your answer. What the fuck is the problem?
If you don't mind being locked up forever, no communication with a lawyer or family, no charges, no evidence, while being slapped around and forced into stress positions, with no sleep for days at a time in a little cell that's too cold because you're naked with people making comments about your sexuality, and being raped, then, by all means, go for it. I got a shed out back.
One last message to bush, his administration, congress, the media, and anybody else who thinks its necessary. THERE IS NO DEBATE OR COMPROMISE POSSIBLE ON TORTURE.
And by the way, indefinite detention without recourse, or appeal, is also torture.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm trying to shame a bunch of sicko pervert war criminals, but I gotta try. I have two grandchildren, and I DO NOT want them growing up in a world where torture is considered just another tool in the toolbox.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Within The Gated Subdivision Of The American Mind
A Monument To My Comfort Zone
by Phil Rockstroh
September 17, 2006
"Mrs. O'Kelly, do you believe in fairies?" "No, I don't -- but they're there."
-- Irish aphorism
There is something missing in The Oakdale Estates subdivision. Oak Trees. Years ago, they were cut down to clear the property for development.
Is it possible the gated walls of Oakdale Estates are fitted with impenetrable irony shields?
There is something missing, as well, here in The United States of America -- Land of The Free. Freedom.
Where are our much-vaunted freedoms in the present day United States? Are they, perhaps, hidden among the phantom oaks of Oakdale Estates?
Sadly, it appears, for a depressingly large percent of our citizenry, the loss of our rights and liberties are missed and remembered to the same extent as the felled trees of Oakdale Estates.
At morning, during their commute to work, the residents of Oakdale Estates sit, stranded in traffic, on ever more congested "freeways"; they, as is the case with most of us, remain steadfast in our fantasy that automobiles provide us with freedom. Rarely do we consider the fact that, in all likelihood, a bank or finance company owns the vehicles, while, in order to meet our loan payments, we must continue to work ever-longer hours and spend ever more time stuck in those self-same vehicles, in order to reach the jobs that devour ever more of our "free time," so that we can afford to pay the exorbitant price the "freedom" to "own" an automobile allegedly bestows upon us.
If this is our standard of freedom: Is it any wonder far too many Americans still believe that our soldiers are dying daily in Iraq to "keep us free?"
Perhaps, if we look closely, we can catch a glimpse of the freed souls of the war dead...now lounging in the cool shade of paradise beneath the trees of Oakdale Estates.
For we Americans will think of our war dead, often. Yes, of course, we will...about as often as the residents of Oakdale Estates think of the dispatched oaks.
And we Americans will mourn the dead of the war in Iraq...to the same degree we mourn the loss of our right to dissent. But rejoice: We're free to continue working for the freedom to be owned by the corporate class.
Moreover, our soldiers are free to continue to kill and be killed for our right to be oblivious to their deaths.
This is the best of all possible worlds, in the best of all possible lands -- why would anyone ever raise a harsh voice in protest against it in the first place? If you lament our losses, then the terrorist will have won. Can't you see: Unlike the terrorist, we have the freedom to choose to lose our freedoms and not give a damn. And that is why they hate us.
It's the reason we must hate them, in turn. It's why our soldiers must find them, face them, and then kill them, without question, doubt nor equivocation. It's why George W. Bush, when it was his time to serve, went, with unwavering resolve, and faced down (make that: went face down into) blizzards of Columbian babble powder. It's why we must never cease to mindlessly labor for the benefit of the corporate classes and never question the sanity of why we believe the act of living far beyond our means is a meaningful way of life. It's why it's our patriotic duty to seek perpetual distraction within the media hologram.
In the end, it's because: If we were to feel the sorrow of the world, then our soldiers will have died in vain. They must die so that our comfort level can be maintained. In turn, we must do our part and strive to remain comfortable.
They should erect war memorials in honor of us Americans here on the home front: a statue depicting us...sprawled on our sofas, TV remote fixed in our hands, steely in our resolve to remain distracted.
But, for the present, we must not waiver from our mission. Our foes are legion. Vast armies of awareness must be ignored into oblivion.
The treachery of this enemy, also known as Awareness, is not to be underestimated; for it exists to destroy our way of life and it must be met with resolute ignorance and unflagging indifference.
After the long commute home from work, the residents of Oakdale Estates might, like many of us, sit at the dinner table in exhausted silence or, have their minds further churned to spittle, staring stupefied at the television.
If I was seated, among them, I'd be tempted to ask an intemperate question, addressing it to the whole miserable family of the present day United States - to all of us - to my collective family - we - suburban somnambulants, urban careerist cretins, Fundamentalist Christian fantasists, neo-con pendants, polite liberal ninnies, vapid trendies, hipster ironists (I plead guilty and offer this piece of writing as evidence against myself), right-wing bullyboys and girls, and all those laboring class masses of wage slaves who've been rendered mindless, by way of exhaustion from long work hours and endless bombardment by the mass media. I wish to ask this: Who is missing from our dinner table? Who hasn't been extended an invitation? Who has been disinherited? Where are the black sheep of the family -- those members neither invited nor spoken about (in a similar manner as those aforementioned dead soldiers, Iraqis, and oak trees) when our clan gathers? What of the inspired misfits, indomitable freaks, defiant outcasts, and magnificent failures -- the sorts who might broach uncomfortable topics, reveal family secrets, or too vividly display our flaws? Where are those who have been cast out, orphaned from our family, and therefore, who, like a tragic hero from myth, are free to blunder upon unbearable truths. Where are the scorned and forsaken ones? All those banished from our thoughts, because they see our family for what it is, not what it strives to appear to be.
We need these wayward members of our family now, more than ever. For this reason: As is the case with nature herself, a nation needs its mutant strains of innovative freaks, because, by introducing variation, they have the ability to transform the closed, negative entropy-generating genetic systems on this inbred planet. Thus, they enable life to diversify and flourish.
In this manner, we might avoid the fate of becoming a global clan of thin-blooded, wall-eyed trailer court imbeciles. Perish the thought of: Planet Alabama. Though it might already be too late. How else can we explain the Bush presidency?
This is why we must perpetrate acts of everyday antagonism; why we must not supplicate ourselves before the bloodless gods of false propriety; why it's imperative we rage and weep at the memory of squandered oak trees, dead soldiers, and forsaken freedoms.
Now is not the time for paeans to the polite and appropriate. Systems (including empires) don't collapse in a polite and decorous manner. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is one rude bastard. Negative entropy did not attend the finest finishing schools and will not be presented to genteel society in an elegant debutante ball.
There are harrowing reasons for our fear-engendered obduracy and compulsive complicity. For deep within the gated communities of our minds, we Americans know this: That if we continue to ignore the storm gathering outside the insular subdivisions of our cultural awareness, then those who survive us on this abiding earth will remember us and grieve our passing to the same extent the residents of Oakdale Estates mourned the memory of its namesake oak trees.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.
by Phil Rockstroh
September 17, 2006
"Mrs. O'Kelly, do you believe in fairies?" "No, I don't -- but they're there."
-- Irish aphorism
There is something missing in The Oakdale Estates subdivision. Oak Trees. Years ago, they were cut down to clear the property for development.
Is it possible the gated walls of Oakdale Estates are fitted with impenetrable irony shields?
There is something missing, as well, here in The United States of America -- Land of The Free. Freedom.
Where are our much-vaunted freedoms in the present day United States? Are they, perhaps, hidden among the phantom oaks of Oakdale Estates?
Sadly, it appears, for a depressingly large percent of our citizenry, the loss of our rights and liberties are missed and remembered to the same extent as the felled trees of Oakdale Estates.
At morning, during their commute to work, the residents of Oakdale Estates sit, stranded in traffic, on ever more congested "freeways"; they, as is the case with most of us, remain steadfast in our fantasy that automobiles provide us with freedom. Rarely do we consider the fact that, in all likelihood, a bank or finance company owns the vehicles, while, in order to meet our loan payments, we must continue to work ever-longer hours and spend ever more time stuck in those self-same vehicles, in order to reach the jobs that devour ever more of our "free time," so that we can afford to pay the exorbitant price the "freedom" to "own" an automobile allegedly bestows upon us.
If this is our standard of freedom: Is it any wonder far too many Americans still believe that our soldiers are dying daily in Iraq to "keep us free?"
Perhaps, if we look closely, we can catch a glimpse of the freed souls of the war dead...now lounging in the cool shade of paradise beneath the trees of Oakdale Estates.
For we Americans will think of our war dead, often. Yes, of course, we will...about as often as the residents of Oakdale Estates think of the dispatched oaks.
And we Americans will mourn the dead of the war in Iraq...to the same degree we mourn the loss of our right to dissent. But rejoice: We're free to continue working for the freedom to be owned by the corporate class.
Moreover, our soldiers are free to continue to kill and be killed for our right to be oblivious to their deaths.
This is the best of all possible worlds, in the best of all possible lands -- why would anyone ever raise a harsh voice in protest against it in the first place? If you lament our losses, then the terrorist will have won. Can't you see: Unlike the terrorist, we have the freedom to choose to lose our freedoms and not give a damn. And that is why they hate us.
It's the reason we must hate them, in turn. It's why our soldiers must find them, face them, and then kill them, without question, doubt nor equivocation. It's why George W. Bush, when it was his time to serve, went, with unwavering resolve, and faced down (make that: went face down into) blizzards of Columbian babble powder. It's why we must never cease to mindlessly labor for the benefit of the corporate classes and never question the sanity of why we believe the act of living far beyond our means is a meaningful way of life. It's why it's our patriotic duty to seek perpetual distraction within the media hologram.
In the end, it's because: If we were to feel the sorrow of the world, then our soldiers will have died in vain. They must die so that our comfort level can be maintained. In turn, we must do our part and strive to remain comfortable.
They should erect war memorials in honor of us Americans here on the home front: a statue depicting us...sprawled on our sofas, TV remote fixed in our hands, steely in our resolve to remain distracted.
But, for the present, we must not waiver from our mission. Our foes are legion. Vast armies of awareness must be ignored into oblivion.
The treachery of this enemy, also known as Awareness, is not to be underestimated; for it exists to destroy our way of life and it must be met with resolute ignorance and unflagging indifference.
After the long commute home from work, the residents of Oakdale Estates might, like many of us, sit at the dinner table in exhausted silence or, have their minds further churned to spittle, staring stupefied at the television.
If I was seated, among them, I'd be tempted to ask an intemperate question, addressing it to the whole miserable family of the present day United States - to all of us - to my collective family - we - suburban somnambulants, urban careerist cretins, Fundamentalist Christian fantasists, neo-con pendants, polite liberal ninnies, vapid trendies, hipster ironists (I plead guilty and offer this piece of writing as evidence against myself), right-wing bullyboys and girls, and all those laboring class masses of wage slaves who've been rendered mindless, by way of exhaustion from long work hours and endless bombardment by the mass media. I wish to ask this: Who is missing from our dinner table? Who hasn't been extended an invitation? Who has been disinherited? Where are the black sheep of the family -- those members neither invited nor spoken about (in a similar manner as those aforementioned dead soldiers, Iraqis, and oak trees) when our clan gathers? What of the inspired misfits, indomitable freaks, defiant outcasts, and magnificent failures -- the sorts who might broach uncomfortable topics, reveal family secrets, or too vividly display our flaws? Where are those who have been cast out, orphaned from our family, and therefore, who, like a tragic hero from myth, are free to blunder upon unbearable truths. Where are the scorned and forsaken ones? All those banished from our thoughts, because they see our family for what it is, not what it strives to appear to be.
We need these wayward members of our family now, more than ever. For this reason: As is the case with nature herself, a nation needs its mutant strains of innovative freaks, because, by introducing variation, they have the ability to transform the closed, negative entropy-generating genetic systems on this inbred planet. Thus, they enable life to diversify and flourish.
In this manner, we might avoid the fate of becoming a global clan of thin-blooded, wall-eyed trailer court imbeciles. Perish the thought of: Planet Alabama. Though it might already be too late. How else can we explain the Bush presidency?
This is why we must perpetrate acts of everyday antagonism; why we must not supplicate ourselves before the bloodless gods of false propriety; why it's imperative we rage and weep at the memory of squandered oak trees, dead soldiers, and forsaken freedoms.
Now is not the time for paeans to the polite and appropriate. Systems (including empires) don't collapse in a polite and decorous manner. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is one rude bastard. Negative entropy did not attend the finest finishing schools and will not be presented to genteel society in an elegant debutante ball.
There are harrowing reasons for our fear-engendered obduracy and compulsive complicity. For deep within the gated communities of our minds, we Americans know this: That if we continue to ignore the storm gathering outside the insular subdivisions of our cultural awareness, then those who survive us on this abiding earth will remember us and grieve our passing to the same extent the residents of Oakdale Estates mourned the memory of its namesake oak trees.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.
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