Shouts from Liberal Street Fighter
Jeralyn Merritt blogs a chilling quote from this piece in the Denver Post, written by civil rights lawyers John Holland and Anna Cayton-Holland:
Four years later, many just want to die. They starve themselves for long periods of time and attempt bloody suicides. The government responds by forcing tubes down their throats. People are trying to kill themselves to get out of custody, because they have no legal recourse. “They won’t let us live, but they won’t let us die,” one of our clients explained.
It’s increasingly unnerving how many aspects of dystopic stories and novels of decades past are coming true, and this passage reminded me immediately of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It opens:
Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.
When Gorrister joined our group and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize that, once again, AM had duped us, had had its fun; it had been a diversion on the part of the machine. Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it.
Gorrister went white. It was almost as though he had seen a voodoo icon, and was afraid of the future. “Oh, God,” he mumbled, and walked away. The three of us followed him after a time, and found him sitting with his back to one of the smaller chittering banks, his head in his hands. Ellen knelt down beside him and stroked his hair. He didn’t move, but his voice came out of his covered face quite clearly. “Why doesn’t it just do us in and get it over with? Christ, I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”
America has gone mad, like the sentient computer AM in the story, driven mad by fear or greed or racism or self-loathing or most likely by some ugly witches brew of all those. Insane and acting out these terrible pathologies born from the fears of the Cold War, the techniques developed by the SERE program to survive torture under Communist captivity back-engineered to teach us to DO torture. Digby points out the problem with this sick and scary development:
Can you believe it? It’s not just that torture doesn’t work generally, which it doesn’t. And it’s not just that torture is morally repugnant and stains all who are involved with it. It does. The most amazingly thing about this (Commie) torture regime is that it’s specifically designed to extract false confessions for propaganda purposes. Dear gawd, can they really be so incompetent that they didn’t understand the difference between creating propaganda and gaining intelligence?
Who speaks for these souls? This isn’t a question of whether the detainees are criminals or terrorists or any of that, this is a question of what WE are. As we rush to toss aside the right to habeas corpus, as we shred a legal framework that this nation spent centuries helping build, it is left to the oft-maligned Bar to shout for these human beings. Back to the Denver Post piece:
In representing these prisoners, we have joined a growing volunteer force of outraged attorneys who come from small and large firms across America. The group includes death penalty and amnesty lawyers, plaintiff and defense lawyers, bankruptcy and corporate lawyers. It even includes advocates for retired generals and admirals, all working for free.
Coordinating this effort is the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. The goal of all involved is to preserve the most basic components of our Constitution, including the right to be charged with a crime as a condition of being held; the right to have those charges speedily determined; the right to hearings before impartial judges; the right to counsel; the right to confront one’s accusers; the right to have access to all case evidence; the right not to have evidence extracted under torture used against you; and the right to be free from torture under the Geneva Conventions..
This isn’t just a question of what kind of civilization we will be, but rather we will be anything remotely deserving to be called a “civilization”.
They have no mouths, so WE must all scream. For ALL of those held without hope, without justice, trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare without hope of freedom, redemption or rehabilitation. This isn’t true just of these foreign detainees, but increasingly those held in our growing and increasingly brutal Prison/Industrial complex here in America. We have merely made more brutal what we were already practicing here.
Raise your voice.
I speak for them even though it probably directs the unwanted laser sight right-thefuck-my way. I’ve been spreading the word of their presumed innocence in the consideration the international government entities don’t have sufficient evidence to charge them.
To be held indefinitely without charge, representation or communication is unworthy of consideration. I’ve railed against the shadows that obscure their faces from the light of truth that hides behind state secrets.
The scars they bear are permanent and branded into them by a group of extremists with a plan to scar each of us eventually.
Pull back the curtain to see global dominance in grand fashion and madness in the most perverted sense an otherwise innocent malady as insanity can be.
Make no mistake their plans are patented to endure the global competition. Original thought is all gone from our accomplishments as they own the concepts inspired by millions and pursued by few.
When the truth is so bizarre no other would consider it, the silence screams the truth’s futility.
Each of us bears the scars and limps that never heal in those who have endure the injustice of our inability to stop it.
link to the Center for Constitutional Rights website; some great stuff there. Might just slip a few bucks under their Christmas tree/Chanukah bush…
That’s a great site. Thanks for the link.
Imagine the outrage and frustration to believe there are far more illicit motives behind the possible cowardly protection of state secrets. It’s plausable to consider some of the powers in charge to be exploiting the opportunity to gain an edge in the finances of the global market.
To these power barons, the lives of others are expendable and it appears their only concern is of themselves.
oh, thank you.
shoulda’ thought of that.
Because you are part of “The Left Blogosphere Think Tank” YOU did just think of it! (You just needed a little help from your friend up^ ^ ^there…)
I thought it was sarcasm,…no?
oh, no, I have enormous respect for that organization, and I’m glad a link is part of the discussion.
I’m pretty snarky, but not THAT snarky.
No, I didn’t think it was intended to deride the organization or the one who posted the link. It was just one of those comments that if I’m not exactly sure how it’s intended I don’t think too long about it.
Good snark is healthy and appreciated.
Very powerful.
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Can we stop calling them “conservatives” now? If they were, they’d be screaming with us.
However, I do not think there is much chance of there being many American voices – or anything else – among them.
As you point out, the US is what it is, and many millions of Americans, regardless of how they may define themselves politically, are eternally cleaved to the doctrine of exceptionalism, which means kidnapping, torture, mass murder by various methods, including melting the flesh of children, are if not desirable, necessary in order to impose America’s will and ensure that Americans and non-Americans alike, keep head down and mouth closed in the hope that their child’s name will not be the next one called by the “interrogator.”
… or reverted back to Middle Passage tendencies?
Another must-read diary, MITM, and of course, recommended.
They challenged the world in doing this and they bullshitted the story about how dangerous these people were…….and the world backed off and went to its respective corners and has been watching and waiting since. Nobody pushed it because perhaps it was true, we all wanted to believe it was true and we want to know in our hearts that nobody would do this to anybody or anything just because they could….that doesn’t happen in America or on a plot of soil that flies the American flag or is run by fine Americans. But it has. What is going to happen when we find out that a large part of these people are innocent of any wrong doing and have been held and treated like this and we hear it from their own mouths? What will happen to Bush and Company then?
It’s already happening but it’s not just GWB, it’s global
Maher Arar: Timeline
That brings back memories. No comment though, it’s still classified. Nevertheless, these last few years of reports had me thinking to myself, Duh! Where have I seen this before, but not so brutal. Just ask that Kentucky Guardsman who was brain damaged in a GITMO training exercise where they didn’t tell the response team that he was an American. Oh, the shame!
Some SERE materials have been declassified & are available on the web. I went looking a few years ago, after hearing an ex-Seal talking about it.
Here.
And the shell game continues.
Like Topsy…it jes’ sorta grew.
AG
Go check Arthur Silber’s analysis, particularly on the justifications inherent in the SERE training….
(emphasis in original)
The late Col. Nick Rowe was responsible for setting up the course at Camp McKall, NC. He was a 5-year POW in Vietnam and he realized that our soldiers, sailors, and airmen were just not prepared for certain techniques. For more info, I highly suggest his book “Five Years to Freedom” and let you put any pieces together.
An excellent article from the
Washington Post by P. Sabin Willett alerted me to the senate vote yesterday suspending habeas corpus for prisoners at Guantanamo.
oh, that is wonderful. Thank you. I’d missed it.