burn in hell, NPR

[solarbird]

So the Bush administration torture memos that the ACLU sued to have released finally came out yesterday, and to the Obama administration's credit, they were not heavily redacted. To their shame, they promised no prosecutions of anyone involved.

Last night, after the memo reports broke, NPR referred directly and bluntly to the torture described within, and actually, directly used the word "torture," as do the memos themselves. I hoped, briefly, that this indicated that one particular lie - the lie of "harsh" or "enhanced" interrogation techniques - had been put aside.

I was wrong; this morning, as I was getting ready for the day, NPR was exclusively - and it seemed to me, pointedly - using the term "harsh interrogation techniques" again, and not using the word torture except in the usual "some describe it as" sort of way. Someone clearly got a memo, and that memo is that they, as the New York Times, as the Washington Post, and all the rest of that dying, wretched lot, will continue the pretence that torture is not torture if Americans do it. And their language will reflect that.

I don't know how you can do this and call yourself a journalist. I don't know how you can do that when one of the torture techniques is copied-and-pasted from the climatic white-room sequence in George Orwell's 1984 and not call it torture. (Substitute "rat" for "stinging insect" and it's exactly the same scene.) I don't know how you can have direct, positive, unassailable proof of the Bush administration and the United States Government stealing from the all-powerful supergovernment of Orwell and continue that lie.

I really don't.

Not to mention the whole waterboarding thing, the Nazi SS-perfected stress positions, the techniques borrowed from the Stalinists directly, and everything else described therein. And yet the sheep chorus brays on.

That last link is to the torture memos themselves. Greenwald's initial analysis here. Commentary on the slavish role of the political media in continuing the lie, here. Sullivan on the banality of bureaucratic evil, here.

eta: I had missed this - genuinely, I hadn't seen it - but I'm not the only one to catch the 1984 identity.

Comments

[frobzwiththingz.livejournal.com]

I really have to question just what the heck *is* the purpose of having the vast majority of our junior high school and high school populace read and analyze such works as _1984_, _Animal Farm_, _Lord of the Flies_, _Brave New World_, etc, because it sure as hell seems that we don't ever *act* on the lessons contained therein.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

I'm as disgusted with these word games as anyone, and our mass media (including NPR) has been complicit in the torture of innocent people. To say anything other than; Our government tortured people, including many innocent people, and our media has been complicit in that torture; is to deny what our country has done.

But until we answer the question; Are those responsible going to be held truly accountable (in a world court) for their actions? very little matters. That the answer seems to be "No" is disappointing but not surprising.

Unless we hold our so-called "leaders" accountable, all of this is just verbal (and written) masturbation. I grow weary of meaningless talk.

(looks wry)

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

Revolution does not happen because of systematic inequity and abuses in the justice system; the concentration of the vast majority of the wealth in the hands of the tiniest fraction of the people; harsh, repressive police tactics; high poverty and low social mobility rates and fear of the government's secret police. If this were the case, America would have a revolution. Revolution occurs when a critical number of people lose confidence in the government's ability to govern. Until this happens, terrorism, agitation, propaganda and demonstrations are useless because the people behind those acts will be seen as misguided troublemakers at best or enemies of the common man at worst. --> paraphrase of Joseph Miranda, PSYOPS school graduate, author of the simulation "Nicaragua"

"What you have to remember Kendra, is that for most people, a threat in the future is always weighed far, far more lightly than threats in the present, no matter how much information goes into making that forecast. It's the same with threats that are diffuse and difficult to describe in terms of "so and so did this and that". So for most people, the gamble in pulling any single pillar of public order (much less multiple pillars) in order to replace it with a better support is a mad wager. No matter how much you wish otherwise, they will not do anything like that until they feel the near certain cost of not acting outweighs their fears of changing the way things work. They less they have, the more they feel that they have too much to lose in any extreme changes". Dwayne, my mentor one of the wiser humans I've met...

Try to look for the moment when you can hopefully hurry along the "...cost of not acting outweighs the cost of acting". Its the best any of us can do in this mad Gotterdammerung

Re: (looks wry)

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

"Until this happens, terrorism, agitation, propaganda and demonstrations are useless because the people behind those acts will be seen as misguided troublemakers at best or enemies of the common man at worst.."

I agree that demonstrations and all the blog entries in the world will do nothing. The American people should be rioting in the streets and forcing a radical change in government.

But they won't. Americans have become sheep, and they will sit on their collective asses watching Oprah and doing nothing as everything they "own" is taken from them.

By the time they are ready to stand up, they'll be broke and homeless, and what little power they had will be gone.

clarification

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

I mean in the last bit that the best we can hope for is to quicken the tipping point once it starts to tip. By spreading information and persuasion and networking. Trying to hurry up the tipping point...very difficult, very dangerous, very likely to backfire, and not something I have the skills to do and nor do many folks, I suspect.

Re: clarification

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

You mean the financial meltdown was not a major tipping point?

Alas no....

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

I meant the tipping point in _awareness_. Too many people still have it too good, too many people are still trapped in the zero sum game of one party versus the other. Except for the 10% or so of people who are homeless or in precarious shelter right now, the world seems kinda normal.

Worse yet, both major political parties are colluding on key measures to rob and exploit anyone not in the ultra-elite. And most people instead are happily getting into a froth about how the party they hate is causing all the problems...and thus not seeing how their own party is contributing. So people have an illusion that the system is working: their party is defending them, the enemy party is being attacked. They believe elections still matter and can fool themselves that normalcy is attainable.

I'm not sure if it will take homelessness, food shortages, unemployment more than 50% to cause a revolt...but revolts from purely economic causes...well, the disaster has to be _extreme_. Look at Zimbabwe. They have a PUNY secret police apparatus compared to America and they STILL haven't revolted even though the country is in ruins. Now, true, Americans come from a far more individualist/rights-oriented historical and cultural perspective. So maybe it won't take QUITE that much to cause an upheaval.

I would try to keep my ears open for any themes of discontent that seem to motivate the ignorant, muddled mass of people. Fan anything that gets a powerful reaction by gossip, blogging, and other networking. Look at the infamous flap at Amazon lately. Its pathetic that such a response came from a non issue. But it shows that people are not totally passive. Just need the right spark. Better to pay attention to current events and hope you can be the originator of the #amazonfail that matters.

The problem is that so much "garden variety" suffering is now accepted as normal in the USA.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

I heard their reporting on it today, too, and I will be writing them a pissed-off email.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

During the 2004 election a bumper sticker read, "1984 is not a how-to manual!"

It would seem it is, in much the same way that dictators today have been know to read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.