I can hardly stand hearing about the Padilla case. Honestly, I wish the poor man would just die already. I hate thinking like that, but there it is.
In other you-didn't-think-it-could-get-worse news, apparently we're now also censoring and destroying Gitmo prisoner's attempts to retain some shred of human dignity.
Sometimes I really do hate America.
This report about the APA's refusal to distance itself from Guantanamo and torture is pretty chilling.
Bitch, the story about the poetry from Gitmo is amazing. I was particularly impressed with this line:
"Not content with imprisoning the authors, the Pentagon has refused to declassify many of their words, arguing that poetry 'presents a special risk' to national security because of its 'content and format'"
I am *so* happy that poetry is still considered an especially threatening format.
The American Psychological Association are a bunch of whores. They still haven't repudiated recovered memory techniques, even after they were used to get children to testify that their teacher had molested them in a spaceship under the sea.
Jesus, people. I spend my days trying to convince myself that my country isn't completely evil and rotten to the core, and then you go posting links like these? Thanks a lot.
Oh, I know that's how the pentagon meant it. I just prefer to believe that they were recognizing the true power of condensed language.
Recovered memory is some of the sickest stuff I've ever seen in court. It's not distinguishable from the Salem witch trials evidence. In one case I heard of a schizophrenic was supposedly interviewed in each of her multiple personalities.
Did any of you hear the piece on NPR about what amounts to concentration camps for Mexican immigrants here in Texas? On the order of detaining an entire family when one member is picked up for some violation?
I didn't hear it, but it came up in conversation.
Texas is also trying to deny benefits to the *descendants* of illegal immigrants, even when those descendants are themselves U.S. citizens.
It would so serve Texas right if we just gave it back to Mexico.
Here's a link about the concentration camps, and here's the story I mentioned.
12 Yeah! Texas is the stupidest state ever. Which progressive, forward-thinking state do you live in again?
Probably unfair to Mexico, though. They've got their own problems.
Frederick Crews has had some pretty harsh things about the American Psychological Association in the NYRB.
You know, a professional organization typically exists in order to assure the public that their trust in professionals is well placed, because they are able to police their own ethical standards and quality control. Apparently psychologists are incapable of this.
8 - preponderatingly because / unless statistics lie he was / more brave than me:more blond than you.
Be honest, that poetry is probably pretty bad.
14: I understand your point, but we didn't belong to Mexico formerly.
18: Sure, by applying the standards you would use in other circumstances, say academic ones. But those aren't appropriate here. I can imagine myself being moved by many of these poems because of the story and feeling behind them, and I don't think that response is somehow shallow, or in artistic.
Enough of this Romantic poet as genius high art crap.
18: Even if it all begins "roses are red, violets are blue" it gets a pass because of context. (Besides, to the extent that its authors are potentially from cultures that actually pay attention to poetry, they may be less awful than one might fear.)
18: I thought the same thing, but even bad poetry probably serves as a way of trying to retain some last vestiges of humanity.
Maybe *especially* bad poetry.
19 - good point. We can't take comfort in the fact that our land belonged to us since time and memorial, the way you guys can.
Steven Miles, in The American Journal of Bioethics, writes on the medical personel at Guantanamo who oversaw such interrogation techniques as "dogs, prolonged sleep deprivation, humiliation, restraint, hypothermia and compulsory intravenous infusions." It's grimly amusing that it was a complaint by the FBI, not the clinicians, that instigated the investigation.
At the very least, everyone of those clinicians should lose their licences to practice.
22: One of the prisoners is an Islamic scholar who wrote poetry before he was jailed.
Also interesting: Some of the people in Guantanamo actually are violent Islamists. Many who weren't violent Islamic extremists when they were arrested are now. The perspective in the poetry might not one a secularist pacifist like me would disapprove of. I still really want to read it.
25: Those of us who aren't Clement Greenberg are Harold Bloom.
(s/b "personnel," of course. I can't write a friggin' paragraph without spell check.)
The most disagreeable surprise of the current era in American politics has been the widespread culture of cowed complicity it's exposed. Reading this book (by Josh Key, an American soldier who has essentially defected to Canada) illustrated vividly how that happens inside the military, but I'm waiting for the story of what all the various civilian enablers thought they were doing.
I. Want. Revenge.
I want many people hurt for what has been done to my country, in my fucking name. I want to watch them being hurt so I may laugh with glee. I loathe the conciliators.
I have been consumed by rage and hate, so that some things good inside me have been lost forever.
That is not even primarily my fault, unless it is a fault to care. I take this personally.
Was it here, in another thread, that discussed how unhappy the German people are? Or the Russians?
I hate, and am ugly. I have cause.
The administration's missing a real public relations coup here: "Conditions at Guantanamo Optimal for Developing Poets."
time and memorial
Heh. (Though I shouldn't make fun, because I do this sort of thing all the time.)
20 - sent to jail, and unable to roll doubles
while others are given
a get-out-of-jail-free card
(Not that this isn't horrible. I was just thinking that, should I get sent to Guantanamo, I already have some really bad jailhouse poetry in my back pocket.)
Bob, I like your poem, but I think it would read better if you put in more line breaks:
"I have been consumed by rage and hate,
So that some things good inside me
Have been lost
Forever.
That is not even primarily my fault,
Unless it is a fault to care.
I take this personally."
Bob smuggled out the poem written by Jose Padilla!
"There might be a danger that he would communicate via McManus"
I wondered where all that "Fuck you, clown" poetry came from.
our land belonged to us since time and memorial
We aren't trying to deny benefits to the Cherokees (NB: Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature). But the point isn't that one state is more progressive than the other, however easily that point can be made. It was a *joke* about the Texas legislature's panic over Mexicans, given Texas' history. Don't take it personally, heebie.
CharleyCarp dropped me this short video report about a visit to Guantamano. One of the guards repeats the line about the prisoners waging "asymetrical warfare" by misbehaving and acting out.
I'm convinced 1) that this sort of concerted action by the prisoners is their only psychological defence they have against their conditions, 2) that it appears deeply threatening to the prison guards, and 3) that it has probably radicalised at least some of the prisoners who were not radical to begin with (cf: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's prisons).
It's all so stupid and sad. If, as seems likely, Gitmo is still running in 2009, t's going to be so awful to disentangle.
Nobody appears to have noted that in the story Bitch links to at #1, a defense department spokesman justifies the censorship by noting "I don't think these guys are writing poetry like Morrissey," whatever that means.
I don't think these guys are writing poetry like Morrissey
Because if they were, I could totally get behind censoring it.
If we could get al Qaeda hooked on emo, we'd all be safe.
Though I don't know, if the defense dept. is all listening to Morissey, mybe we **won't** be safe. Maybe the 9/11 hijackers were all listening to Morrisey while they waited for their personal singularity.
The thought of the Defense Department spokesman going home at night and crying while listening to The Smiths is making me laugh.
I'd be willing to support throwing Mary Oliver into Gitmo to see if they'd censor her poetry too. Then you'd be interfering with big business, boy!
Dudes like Dick and Bush are amoral hyenas. It's their enablers which makes me wish I believed in hell.