I posted about Philip Gourevitch's and Erroll Morris's superb and disturbing recent piece on Abu Ghraib here. What it shows once again is how Abu Ghraib was never, ever an exception. It was permitted, enabled, authorized and pre-meditated by Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Miller, and Addington, among many others. The techniques testified to correspond with chilling accuracy to techniques authorized by the president, for which we now have overwhelming evidence. Scott Horton reminds us what exactly some of the techniques were:
Enforced nudity. This technique is adopted for purposes of degrading and humiliating the prisoner, heightening his senses of vulnerability, weakness and shame. Enforced nudity also enhances other techniques, particularly hypothermia.
Starvation. As Davis notes, when the prisoner is entitled to an MRE, he would be given one component only of the MRE. The entire MRE constitutes a reasonable food ration which is properly balanced. Giving only one part of it reflects a decision to starve the prisoner.
Stress Positions. Perhaps the oldest and best established torture technique, widely used by the Inquisition in Europe, was the strapado. Hands would be fastened behind the back and the victim would be hoisted, causing severe stress to joints, frequent dislocation, and severe and sustained pain. The strapado would invariably get its victim to confess to anything, very quickly. During World War II, this same technique was widely adopted and used by the Germans, who called it Pfahlbinden. In the English of the Bush Administration, this technique is called a “stress position,” and it was widely used at Abu Ghraib.
If only to dismiss veep rumors. Heh. Meanwhile, the resilience of the campaign of the first serious black presidential candidate in American history, a man dedicated to racial dialogue and integration is greeted by Victor Davis Hanson as a
Max Mathis, 6, rides on his father Blake's shoulders during the first day of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival March 29, 2008 in Washington, DC. The two came from Huntsville, AL for the weekend to see the flowers. The festival commemorates Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo giving 3000 cherry trees to the city of Washington in 1912. By Melissa Golden/Getty Images.
I was surprised that Obama's race speech garnered such an intense negative reaction among so many educated Republicans who are well left of Pat Buchanan. A lot of that concentrated on the appearance of weaseling out of his church connection, or obscuring the depth of his debt to Rev. Wright, I suppose. And many who slammed those qualities took a line or two to praise the general tenor of his rhetoric when it was purely about race in America. And partly, too, they may fear him as a candidate.
But a lot of my peers also went after his word-painting as enshrining victimhoood, or worse things.
So I wonder how they will take to this?
"Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding." As a result, "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that."
That's Condi Rice talking, in an interview with the Washington Times.
John Freeman questions if reading about books has replaced the real thing:
In a way, pre-judgement is a necessary evil of criticism: there are far more books published than anyone could possibly read, busloads of awarded writers who aren't actually worth reading. There's no way to approach this forest gingerly. You need a buzz saw to clear some breathing room, gain a sightline, and criticism has to have enough teeth and ubiquitous availability to be that instrument.
Stepping away from the computer for just a day, though, it's hard not to realise our habits create that crowded forest. In his book, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson talks about the way that nations are socially constructed imaginary worlds, in spite of all their inconsistencies. The growth of the internet has created, I think, a new imagined community of readers - a group who overlap and intersect and read about one another's cultures.
Zimbabwe is as broken as any country on the planet, it offers a testament not to some inherent African inability to govern but to a minority rule as oppressive and inconsiderate of the welfare of citizens as its ignominious white predecessor. The country's economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women.
How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe, now seventy-nine, who by his actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction. Although many of his methods have been applied elsewhere, taken as a whole his ten-step approach is more radical and more comprehensive than that of other despots. The Zimbabwe case offers some important insights. It illustrates the prime importance of accountability as an antidote to idiocy and excess. It highlights the lasting effects of decolonization—limited Western influence on the continent and a reluctance by African leaders to criticize their own. And it offers a warning about how much damage one man can do, very quickly.
I think that we experience thrill as a reward for the perseverance of human life. So, obviously, there’s an evolutionary driver - we evolved a sense of thrill because it helps us escape danger. But in modern life, things have become confused - we’re rarely in real danger, so we have to invent artificial situations in order to experience that reward. Extreme sports are quite obviously a replacement for running away from a lion, but it also becomes very psychologically complex with experiences such as bondage or other fetishes.
Not a single mention, so far as I can see, at the Corner of Bob Casey's endorsement of Barack Obama aof now. Casey is a darling of NRO and a key socially conservative senator in the next critical primary. In fact, by a brief look at memeorandum, almost the entire far right blogosphere is AWOL. Nothing on Hewitt or Reynolds either. If I missed something, let me know. You'd think at least they'd try to grapple with a second pro-lifer's endorsement of the hard-left stealth version of Louis Farrakhan, Senator Hussein from Illinois. Actually, you wouldn't. Stanley Kurtz is still trying to argue that
Pre-Wright, it looked like an Obama nomination would avoid the refighting of the sixties Hillary would inevitably bring. Post-Wright, post-Dreams, etc. it looks as though Hillary and Bill were only the warm-up act for the great culture clash of 2008.
He can dream, can't he? Either Kurtz is like one of those cliched Japanese soldiers who doesn't realize the boomer war is over or Bob Casey is a fool.
The church had social control. Whoever controlled the images had power. And they still do. Social control followed the lens and mirror for most of the 20th century. What's now known as the media exert social control, not the church, but we are moving into a new era, because the making and distribution of images is changing. Anyone can make and distribute images on a mobile phone. The equipment is everywhere.
We do not have debates about images. The world of art is separate from the world of images, but the power is with images, not art. An obvious problem is seen. The world of images claims a relationship to visual reality - television and cinema - but this claim cannot now be sustained. We will get more confused if we don't think about them.[...]
Parliament will discuss depiction, but not art. We are in a confusing time. The decline of religion in Europe is seen as part of the "scientific" revolution. I have begun to doubt this now; it is quite likely that it's to do with images. The decline of the church parallels the mass manufacture of cameras. They are deeply connected. I noticed on a recent tour of Italy that not many Italians went in the churches to see pictures. They see them at home, not made by Botticelli but by Berlusconi. Think about it.
Ross has drunk too deeply from the well of imperialism. His argument is simply a rehash of the oldest defense of imperial occupation known to mankind: protecting the wild, savage, occupied people from themselves. It was the excuse of Britain in India, of the Boers in South Africa, of the French in Algeria. That he has dressed it up in Colin Powell's "you break it you own it" formulation does not change a thing.
That's not to say I don't understand his point. I do, and it has some feel-good, noble appeal. But let's get to the point.
Pish-tosh, you say, and you're probably right. But let's play a little. Let's say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. Let's also assume—and this may be a real stretch—that such elders are strong and smart enough to act. All they'd have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their superdelegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What if they then approached Gore and asked him to be the nominee, for the good of the party—and suggested that he take Obama as his running mate? Of course, Obama would have to be a party to the deal and bring his 1,900 or so delegates along.
And I thought Clinton was presumptuous for offering Obama veep?
So happens this Methodist minister is leaving for Fort Smith, Ark. in a couple of hours for a "Praying the Hours with Thomas Merton" retreat at the St. Scholastica monastery there. What I love about Merton is that while progressives and peace activists and social activists have always loved and embraced him and found inspiration in him, he was always suspicious and often very critical of their motives and excesses. Consider this journal entry of his from July 3, 1968, not long before his bizarre death from electrocution in Asia:
"One thing is very clear: all that passes for aggiornamento is not necessarily good or healthy. One has to remain pretty critical and independent about all ideas ... Both the conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism; in either case the dread of being left out of their reference group."
That is the right approach of a man of faith to church politics - let alone the secular, partisan kind.
One word on his untimely death: he was electrocuted at the age of 53 when getting out of the bath. It seems awful, unseemly, almost humiliating at first. And yet what a merciful way to be brought back to God. No anxiety; no fear of death; no forewarning. Are there any moments you'd be less expecting to die than getting out of a bath? Merton was so close to God I doubt God needed any last confession or contrition from him. So He took him instantly. Yes, Hitch and Sam can now laugh out loud.
A Cartier Camel looks into the camera during the 3rd Cartier Dubai Polo Challenge at Desert Palm Polo Ground on March 28, 2008 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Challenge is the year's most celebrated polo tournament taking place in the desert under the patronage of HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, wife of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of Dubai. By Chris Jackson/Getty Images.
This shouldn’t be polarizing, but it is. Energy conservation has been suffused with a moral quality these days; instead of being a sensible reaction to higher prices and foreign dependence, it is a sign of virtue. It was thus in the 70s, and now it’s back. That’s why your choice of light bulb says what kind of a person you are. Fluorescent? Or evil?
Very recently, another American soldier was killed in Iraq:
Maj. Alan Rogers, 40, a gay intelligence officer who served on a military transition team that trained Iraqi soldiers, died Jan. 27 in Baghdad from wounds caused by an improvised explosive device that detonated near him while he was conducting a patrol on his Humvee. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on March 14.
For sacrificing his life in the line of duty, the Army posthumously awarded Rogers a Purple Heart and a second Bronze Star.
In the light of the US military's continuing discrimination against gay servicemembers, it seems very relevant to me that Rogers' sexual orientation - about which there is no doubt - be included in coverage of his death and obituaries. And yet the mainstream media decided to enforce that closet - and perpetuate the military's policy - even after Rogers's ultimate sacrifice:
The Washington Post, National Public Radio and the Gainesville Sun, the
local newspaper in his hometown of Hampton, Fla., made no mention of
his sexual orientation or his involvement with a group that works to
overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Lynn Medford, Metro editor for the Post, said the newspaper debated
whether or not to disclose Rogers’ sexual orientation and ultimately
decided not to include such information as a matter of ethics.
Amy Welborn rightly wants a deeper treatment of Benedict. Here's Paul Elie's 2006 article from the Atlantic:
Whereas John Paul seemed most at home when celebrating mass for 100,000 strangers, Benedict is most himself when among fellow churchmen in Rome. Whereas John Paul made all the world an altar, Benedict's sphere of action is the compound of churches and offices surrounding St. Peter's. As a symbol of the papacy John Paul's popemobile has been replaced by Benedict's personal theological library of several thousand books, which were photographed after his election so that they could be reshelved in the same order in the papal apartments.
In short, Mr. Outside has been succeeded by Mr. Inside; and the story of Ratzinger's emergence as the Church's leader reveals the ways in which his pontificate is likely to affect the Church as a whole. In many ways the central fact of the papacy in the modern age is the gap between the pope's growing power in the Church and his diminishing influence on the religious lives of individual believers. This gap is one that John Paul and his predecessors sought to close. Under Benedict the gap is open—wide open. He will govern more but matter less than John Paul—and will probably matter less to the lives of individual Catholics than any other pope of the past half century.
What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the
worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics.
She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination.
She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my
triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose.
Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she
can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this
nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every
day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)
In response to a question regarding bi-national same-sex couples who are separated by an international border, I used language that trivialized the seriousness of the issue and did not communicate respect for the essential dignity of every human being as a person created in the image of God. I apologize for speaking in a way that did not reflect the standards which the Family Research Council and I embrace
As I have said before, arguments over Vietnam, like arguments over Iraq, are not simply arguments over a military campaign overseas. If they were, cost-benefit analysis and simple pragmatism would offer the obvious course of action: get out and get out now. National polling shows that two-thirds of the country want us out within two years, but this obscures the fact that disapproving of the war does not mean that all the current opponents of the war embrace a thoroughgoing antiwar narrative; many of them certainly would not share my characterisations of the war as immoral and illegal. So, instead of being arguments about policy, they are arguments about “values” and American identity. Simply put, the party that has tended to be antiwar during the last 36 years has also been the party on the losing side of these other arguments, even when they have been right on the policy question, and so they have lost time after time in presidential elections where these arguments are most powerful. An Obama-McCain contest will be an almost perfect test of this proposition.
I've read Thomas Merton, of course, but I had never actually heard him till now. And then a friend sent me these rare and recently posted Youtubes where you actually hear his voice. His lectures on Aquinas's "Ways Of God" are quite remarkable but there is something about the tone, the matter-of-factness, the openness and humor and occasional gruffness - so human and yet so obviously full of the divine. I have often wondered what Jesus himself sounded like, although I have in times of great darkness almost heard his tone. I hear that tone in Merton.
I know you probably don't have time today but if you are curious about what an open, beautiful faith Christianity can be, do yourself a favor. Part One is here; follow the Youtubes from there.
A cold night in Venice. We found ourselves in an empty campo, and a warm restaurant. The staff welcomed us with humor and grace -- both important as we arrived with a sleeping four year old in a stroller. Our waiter, Salvatore, asked us where we were from, and the moment he learned we were from America, he asked, "So. Are you voting for Obama?" We told him we were, and he replied, "Good. I like a woman president, but not this one. Bush, Clinton, the president should not be a family business. It's time for something new."
We talked about this in the campo after, and how it confirmed our own hopes. That Obama's election will confer blessings on our country beyond the obvious.
It's a small thing, I know. But it was nice to be far from all the scorched earth and kitchen sinks and find ourselves able, if only for a moment, to consider the opportunity his candidacy affords us.
Obama's speech cast the Iraq War as a financial sinkhole, draining billions or even trillions of dollars from America's coffers. He rolled out a litany of domestic goals that could be pursued with the money the United States is spending trying to stabilize Iraq, and cast the debate over whether to withdraw as a choice between an ruinously expensive nation-building effort on the one hand, and universal health care, affordable college education, tax cuts for the middle class, and "protecting Social Security today, tomorrow, and forever." McCain, by contrast, spoke the language of honor, duty and obligation, and cast the question of whether to leave Iraq in starkly moral terms: "To walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to ... horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide," he argued, would represent "an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation."
To a war-weary nation, Obama's cool pragmatism has obvious appeal, but on a fundamental level McCain's calculus is the right one.
As the campaign goes on, we see that a segment of (but by no means all) older white Democrats has a persistent problem with Obama. This is Clinton's real base. Pew:
White Democrats who hold unfavorable views of
Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of
him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far;
they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are
more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American
values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold
a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.
There's been plenty of supposition, and some anecdotal evidence, to suggest that conservative views on race have hurt Obama among older whites. The Pew poll, though, is the first I've seen to establish this relationship empirically.
A certain residual core will never accept gays either. I've learned that the hard way. But the future is being forged in this election. It really is a generational battle in so many ways. It's beyond right and left; it's really about the future and the past. And the future is never born without struggle.
...the Wright controversy does not appear to have undermined support for Obama's candidacy. The latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted March 19-22 among 1,503 adults, finds that Obama maintains a 49% to 39% advantage over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, which is virtually unchanged from than the 49% to 40% lead he held among Democrats in late February. Obama and Clinton continue to enjoy slight advantages over John McCain in general election matchups among all registered voters.
The new polling suggests that the Wright affair has not hurt Obama's standing, in part because his response to the controversy has been viewed positively by voters who favor him over Clinton. Obama's handling of the Wright controversy also won a favorable response from a substantial proportion of Clinton supporters and even from a third of Republican voters.
Amy Welborn says the press needs to get better at covering Benedict XVI:
[A]n over-dependence on ... in the present context, the “God’s Rottweiler softens his image and preaches about Jesus and stuff” meme [is] tired, overused and not useful for exploring the complexities and realities of this papacy and the response to it.
It’s worth talking about those who disagree with Pope Benedict. But it’s also worth, in the reporting of those differences, pushing those who disagree to account for the specifics of their reasoning, in the context of an understanding of what the role of the papacy actually is vis-a-vis Catholic teaching.
It would be great to take it to the next elevel, which means re-opening and making more accessible the real debates about the Second Council, that are still unresolved.
Chris Crain questions Bob Barr's libertarian credentials:
When Bob Barr was a Republican congressman from Georgia, he authored and was the chief sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which blocks any federal recognition of gay couples married by the states, as well as allowing each state to refuse to recognizes marriage licenses issued to gay couples by other states.
Barr has always been a walking contradiction, defending the institution of marriage from gays even as he divorced his first two wives and is now on his third; he is also an ardent foe of abortion rights even though he supported a decision by his wife at the time to terminate a pregnancy. There are individual rights Barr does care about -- he's a longtime board member of the National Rifle Association.
It was hard to imagine a Burma worse off than it was in September 2007 but it has come about because all of the frustrations that drove the demonstrators on to the streets last year have redoubled. Food and transport prices are higher than ever, political oppression is greater and the violent treatment of the country's revered monks has increased popular contempt for the regime.
But, for all their bravery, opposition activists in Burma are in disarray.
March 23, 2008 - March 29, 2008
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