Re: Healing

1

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.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:00 AM
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prisoners'.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:00 AM
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This report about the APA's refusal to distance itself from Guantanamo and torture is pretty chilling.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:39 AM
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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.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:42 AM
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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.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:44 AM
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4: It could be a sekrit code!1!!


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:46 AM
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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.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:46 AM
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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.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:49 AM
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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.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:49 AM
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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.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:53 AM
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Texas is also trying to deny benefits to the *descendants* of illegal immigrants, even when those descendants are themselves U.S. citizens.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:55 AM
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It would so serve Texas right if we just gave it back to Mexico.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:57 AM
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Here's a link about the concentration camps, and here's the story I mentioned.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:57 AM
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12 Yeah! Texas is the stupidest state ever. Which progressive, forward-thinking state do you live in again?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:59 AM
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Probably unfair to Mexico, though. They've got their own problems.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 11:59 AM
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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.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:00 PM
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8 - preponderatingly because / unless statistics lie he was / more brave than me:more blond than you.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:07 PM
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Be honest, that poetry is probably pretty bad.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:12 PM
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14: I understand your point, but we didn't belong to Mexico formerly.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:14 PM
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18: C-I-L-L my warden.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:18 PM
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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.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:20 PM
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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.)


Posted by: Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:20 PM
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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.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:20 PM
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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.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:22 PM
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You people! So serious!


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:22 PM
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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.


Posted by: Paul | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:23 PM
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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.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:24 PM
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25: Those of us who aren't Clement Greenberg are Harold Bloom.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:25 PM
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(s/b "personnel," of course. I can't write a friggin' paragraph without spell check.)


Posted by: Paul | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:26 PM
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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.


Posted by: Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:28 PM
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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.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:29 PM
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27: Agreed.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:29 PM
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The administration's missing a real public relations coup here: "Conditions at Guantanamo Optimal for Developing Poets."


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:31 PM
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time and memorial

Heh. (Though I shouldn't make fun, because I do this sort of thing all the time.)


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:32 PM
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20 - sent to jail, and unable to roll doubles
while others are given
a get-out-of-jail-free card


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:33 PM
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(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.)


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:34 PM
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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."


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:37 PM
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Bob smuggled out the poem written by Jose Padilla!


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:38 PM
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"There might be a danger that he would communicate via McManus"


Posted by: FLthouse | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:41 PM
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I wondered where all that "Fuck you, clown" poetry came from.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:50 PM
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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.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 12:57 PM
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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.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:00 PM
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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.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:24 PM
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43, see 18.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:28 PM
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I don't think these guys are writing poetry like Morrissey

Because if they were, I could totally get behind censoring it.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:30 PM
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If we could get al Qaeda hooked on emo, we'd all be safe.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:30 PM
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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.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:34 PM
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The thought of the Defense Department spokesman going home at night and crying while listening to The Smiths is making me laugh.


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:37 PM
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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!


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 1:39 PM
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Now they know how Joan of Arc felt.


Posted by: JP | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 2:10 PM
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Dudes like Dick and Bush are amoral hyenas. It's their enablers which makes me wish I believed in hell.


Posted by: Brian | Link to this comment | 02-28-07 7:31 PM
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