A War by Any Other Name Would Be as Horrific

Sitting in Barbara Lee's Town Hall Meeting in the Grand Lake Theater, next to me is an older gentleman. He did not know who Sean Penn was. But later on he shared with me that another speaker, Daniel Ellsberg, was someone he had shared a cell with for seven days, twenty years ago, protesting other political injustices.

All of us were showing our ages.

As I walked in, I wondered: where are the youth? They are the ones most affected by this awful situation (I feel it is unjust to call it a war...the "war" ended years ago, this is just an awful situation that has trapped our soldiers and all the iraqi civilians in an unending nightmare loop of killing and maiming and destruction.)

There were the youth working as volunteers in the lobby, clearly high school students. Where were the college students? So many grey heads have been fighting against this malicious, illegal occupation. They understand the history we are creating. We, we must take responsibility. We cannot blame a corrupt administration. We are the people of WE THE PEOPLE; we are responsible.

Then a young woman takes the stage. Ms. Martinez, from the Martin Luther King Freedom Center in Oakland, brought the house down, in my humble opinion. Mr. and Mrs. Martinez should be proud of their daughter and her ability to clearly breakdown what war and war mongering has wrought in all of our lives and the world it has created for our youth.

The price we pay for this action/inaction, for this war, for this "peace by any price," cannot be measured in gallons or barrels of oil.

It is the emotional toll we will spend a lifetime trying to heal.

When we say it's like Vietnam, that is what we mean.

Knight of the Living Dead

I am not taking any chances that you won't be able to read this from a link. Here is the entire text of Mr. Zizek's guest column regarding the reality we create by allowing torture for whatever reason we think is acceptable.

I wish I had the text of Ms. Martinez's eloquent speech at Barbara Lee's town hall meeting yesterday. She would definitely agree with Mr. Zizek's conclusions.

Knight of the Living Dead
By SLAVOJ ZIZEK, Op-Ed
Contributor, London
Published: March 24, 2007

SINCE the release of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s dramatic confessions, moral outrage at the extent of his crimes has been mixed with doubts. Can his claims be trusted? What if he confessed to more than he really did, either because of a vain desire to be remembered as the big terrorist mastermind, or because he was ready to confess anything in order to stop the water boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques”?

If there was one surprising aspect to this situation it has less to do with the confessions themselves than with the fact that for the first time in a great many years, torture was normalized — presented as something acceptable. The ethical consequences of it should worry us all.

While the scope of Mr. Mohammed’s crimes is clear and horrifying, it is worth noting that the United States seems incapable of treating him even as it would the hardest criminal — in the civilized Western world, even the most depraved child murderer gets judged and punished. But any legal trial and punishment of Mr. Mohammed is now impossible — no court that operates within the frames of Western legal systems can deal with illegal detentions, confessions obtained by torture and the like. (And this conforms, perversely, to Mr. Mohammed’s desire to be treated as an enemy rather than a criminal.)

It is as if not only the terrorists themselves, but also the fight against them, now has to proceed in a gray zone of legality. We thus have de facto “legal” and “illegal” criminals: those who are to be treated with legal procedures (using lawyers and the like), and those who are outside legality, subject to military tribunals or seemingly endless incarceration.

Mr. Mohammed has become what the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls “homo sacer”: a creature legally dead while biologically still alive. And he’s not the only one living in an in-between world. The American authorities who deal with detainees have become a sort of counterpart to homo sacer: acting as a legal power, they operate in an empty space that is sustained by the law and yet not regulated by the rule of law.

Some don’t find this troubling. The realistic counterargument goes: The war on terrorism is dirty, one is put in situations where the lives of thousands may depend on information we can get from our prisoners, and one must take extreme steps. As Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School puts it: “I’m not in favor of torture, but if you’re going to have it, it should damn well have court approval.” Well, if this is “honesty,” I think I’ll stick with hypocrisy.

Yes, most of us can imagine a singular situation in which we might resort to torture — to save a loved one from immediate, unspeakable harm perhaps. I can. In such a case, however, it is crucial that I do not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle. In the unavoidable brutal urgency of the moment, I should simply do it. But it cannot become an acceptable standard; I must retain the proper sense of the horror of what I did. And when torture becomes just another in the list of counterterrorism techniques, all sense of horror is lost.

When, in the fifth season of the TV show “24,” it became clear that the mastermind behind the terrorist plot was none other than the president himself, many of us were eagerly waiting to see whether Jack Bauer would apply to the “leader of the free world” his standard technique in dealing with terrorists who do not want to divulge a secret that may save thousands. Will he torture the president?

Reality has now surpassed TV. What “24” still had the decency to present as Jack Bauer’s disturbing and desperate choice is now rendered business as usual.

In a way, those who refuse to advocate torture outright but still accept it as a legitimate topic of debate are more dangerous than those who explicitly endorse it. Morality is never just a matter of individual conscience. It thrives only if it is sustained by what Hegel called “objective spirit,” the set of unwritten rules that form the background of every individual’s activity, telling us what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.

For example, a clear sign of progress in Western society is that one does not need to argue against rape: it is “dogmatically” clear to everyone that rape is wrong. If someone were to advocate the legitimacy of rape, he would appear so ridiculous as to disqualify himself from any further consideration. And the same should hold for torture.

Are we aware what lies at the end of the road opened up by the normalization of torture? A significant detail of Mr. Mohammed’s confession gives a hint. It was reported that the interrogators submitted to waterboarding and were able to endure it for less than 15 seconds on average before being ready to confess anything and everything. Mr. Mohammed, however, gained their grudging admiration by enduring it for two and a half minutes.

Are we aware that the last time such things were part of public discourse was back in the late Middle Ages, when torture was still a public spectacle, an honorable way to test a captured enemy who might gain the admiration of the crowd if he bore the pain with dignity? Do we really want to return to this kind of primitive warrior ethics?

This is why, in the end, the greatest victims of torture-as-usual are the rest of us, the informed public. A precious part of our collective identity has been irretrievably lost. We are in the middle of a process of moral corruption: those in power are literally trying to break a part of our ethical backbone, to dampen and undo what is arguably our civilization’s greatest achievement, the growth of our spontaneous moral sensitivity.

Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, is the author, most recently, of “The Parallax View.”

It takes all kinds...

Read the story very carefully.

For all of us who think we know how to take care of ourselves ...
and that most people are generally good, this is a cautionary tale.

It's disheartening to imagine a world in which we have to spend all of our time monitoring those around us for bad behavior and/or being convinced that the world is full of basically bad (rather than generally good) people. But, that might just be the world we live in.

Thank goodness that there are people like these two bartenders who are willing to act when they see something wrong going on.

This is a lesson for all of us, I am sure of that, I am just not sure what the lesson is.

White Lies?

I seem to recall a few years back when Republicans were asserting that it was of UTMOST importance to pursue a perjury case against Bill Clinton, or, at the very least, impeach him otherwise we Americans would never be able to teach our children the importance of telling the truth.

Hmm...

So, when the Vice President continues to assert that we are waging a war in Iraq as a way of avenging those who died in the Trade Center, he isn't damaging our image of the truth? He is in no way making it more difficult for parents around the country to hold their children to that high standard of truth telling?

Oh, and, if you happen to work for the Vice President, say, it would be a travesty of justice for anyone to hold you responsible for breaking that all important rule of not telling a lie?

I can see how if it's the President lying that is really WRONG, but if it's the Vice President, well, he is just doing what's best for the country.

He sold those stocks in Halliburton, right?

Just saying...

Rethink "GUEST WORKER"

I have long been against any kind of GUEST WORKER program. This is not because I don't believe that folks should be allowed to enter our country to work as guests; but rather because we have a shameful history of dealing with these guests.

Others may have a short memory or even just believe some revised history, but I remember quite clearly how the brazeros were treated both while they were working and after they went back to Mexico. There is no reason to believe that we are more enlightened now. In an era of union busting in our own country, just how do you think we are planning to treat non-citizens in the guest-workplace?

Bob Herbert's column today lets us in on the latest from the Southern Poverty Law Center: “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States.” I am glad to see that there are others in the country with some integrity when it comes to this issue. Take the time to read at least the press release or summary if you can't get through the 48 pages.

the wearing of the black

Funeral duty...
As a teenager I was devoted to the idea of suffering and delighted in reading dark literature: anything fraught with angst. I wasn't exactly goth, not sure any of us knew what that was, but death lived in my mind as a romantic ideal. I found a ring in my mother's jewelry box that looked like a coffin. I found out that it had been her high school ring, and immediately felt it expressed my high school experience perfectly and didn't take it off for several years!

At that time, I fantasized about my twilight years, when I would don a black hat, with a veil, of course, and attend funerals. I envisioned myself picking out funerals of people who seemed to have died with few friends and/or relations. I would be the intriguing yet familiar figure in black who grieved the lonely.

Reading obituaries is something of a refined habit of many of my family members. So it was not my twisted teenage sense of the world that led me to read them daily. Over the years, learning to read between the lines of the sometimes sparse death notices, I found I could discern much about the life of the departed. At least, I could make up any circumstance I desired and put to use my creative imagination.

I am not sure if it is a natural part of the aging process, but I don't derive the same pleasure I used to from reading angst-riddled literature, though I do still find myself more often than not watching dark movies. And, unfortunately, I don't enjoy attending funerals nearly as much as I imagined I would when I was a teenager.

In the past few years it has fallen to me to represent my family at funerals for people who might as well be strangers. Usually I am tangentially related to these folks, but I have been to several funerals where I had never met the dearly departed while he/she was still alive. Perhaps more unsettling, I was meeting the rest of this person's family at the funeral. I don't have a fabulous hat with a veil though I do own a fair amount of black.

Last week turned into another funeral week for me, so I dutifully found suitable black clothing and tried to steel myself for the experience.

The first one laid me low and it took several days to recover... I don't have time to discuss it here now, but perhaps, one day, I will have the emotional energy to capture the experience in words.

For now, let me say that I am looking forward to coming up with more cheerful ways to celebrate my retirement, someday, if I ever do get to retire!

the girls

Gilmore girls, that is. This is a malenting rant, so take it for what it is worth.

I have been guilty of persuading quite a few friends into watching GG. It used to be my favorite, must-see show. You know the kind, watch it live while taping it and then watch it a couple more times before next week's show. Ok, you may not be of the obsessive type that does this, but you get the gist.

One friend who I got hooked on GG said the other day, a Tuesday: "we get all excited for the next show, just to watch it and realize that it SUCKS again."

Maybe I am losing perspective or my standards, but I loved Lorelai this week... this is the kind of maturing I like to see in her...getting Mrs. Kim not to make mistakes Lorelai made in the past, much better than watching her fold up over whether or not she'll be alone or partnered.

Though, this morning on the bus I was thinking about how many of my women friends who are 35+ are musing about just that thing. I am busy still reveling in the notion that I don't have to live with that anymore or forever (that being my exhusband).

Alas...slightly off the subject, but back toGG -- I also had a small ever so slight flicker of hope that the gang-busting ever independent pishawing, needy goofy girl, Rory Gilmore, might be making a comeback...but then she just said, ok, to the latest jerk boyfriend.

No pluck left in her it would seem...what a shame because I really started watching the show because of the strength that she and her mother exhibited...very take no prisoners...

This little rant was prompted by this email from another GG fan who is weekly disappointed and frequently disgusted with the plotlines for the past two or three seasons:

EW cracked on Gilmore Girls. On the weekly TV-to-watch round up, they started describing the plot, per usual, the cut it off and said "What's the point? you're only watching out of habit anyway." Heeheehee

What War Has Wrought

It doesn't really matter whether or not you supported the war when it was proposed. It doesn't really matter if you realized it was a poor choice when we learned the truth about the wmd. It doesn't really matter if you can come up with a million reasons to justify unprovoked aggression you call pre-emptive strikes or war in general.

There isn't any way that war cannot adversely affect you.

If killing were a natural state of affairs, we would still be living as animals.

Beings who think and feel will necessarily be changed by killing, provoked, unprovoked, justified or not.

How many more lives will have to be ruined before we stop our involvement in this war?
It's too late to stop the war. The civil war we caused will wage on perhaps for many, many years. We, however, do not need to continue to expose our children, our future, to this reckless disregard for human life.

Where are the pro-lifers now? When will their righteous indignation join in the demand for the return of our troops so that we may begin to heal their tortured souls?

I suggest this book for those who disbelieve: Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. This look at the emotional ravages of war is perhaps so compelling because it is not about a "contested" war.

Tea Bag Wisdom

My ideal job would be picking the quotes to put on the tea bag tabs. If little tabs are not available, I could choose the quotes for the wrapper or the box, though that would be limiting as it would n0t be cost effective to choose different quotes for the same box.

As I wander through this process called job hunting, I keep returning to one of my childhood dreams, to be a stuffed animal namer. I wanted to name each one individually before it was sent out into the world... way before beaning babies cashed in on my idea and added birthdays, brilliant idea, really!

I am not sure if the desire to name is telling in any way of what path I should follow now, but it does keep coming up in different ways.

back posting

I have ideas for blog posts every day but I don't always have time...

just saying

Just Right

I am catching up on my DailyOM. I am not always in the perfect frame of mind to receive these little gems when they arrive, so I save them for when I have unhurried moments to savor. This usually works out best as some are more shiny than others, and this way, I can keep reading til I hit just the right one.

It turns out, for my birthday, they posted just what I needed:

February 2, 2007

Like No One Is Watching
Shake Your Tail Feathers

Most of us express our distinctiveness in many ways throughout our lives. Although, as we proudly share our offbeat traits and preferences with the world, we take great pains to downplay those eccentricities we ourselves deem odd. Instead of living lives colored by these quirky impulses, we seek out socially acceptable outlets for our peculiarities. We may not realize that we are editing ourselves in this way because our individual societal awareness is unintentionally attuned to the attitudes of the people we encounter each day. Over time, we have learned to suppress some of the most fun aspects of individuality. To rediscover and embrace these buried traits, we need only ask ourselves what we would do if we knew for certain that no one would judge our choices.

Visualizing this day without judgment can help you better understand the idiosyncrasies that are an important part of who you are but seldom manifest themselves in your existence. Perhaps you secretly dream of replacing grown-up, conservative clothing in favor of a changing array of costumes. You may envision yourself painting your car electric-green, hugging the trees in a crowded local park, singing joyous songs as you skip through your community, or taking up an exciting hobby like fire spinning. Try not to be surprised, however, if your imagination takes you in unexpectedly simple directions. In your musings, you may see yourself doing things such as breaking out in dance or dying your hair a fun color. Regardless of the nature of your suppressed peculiarities, ask yourself what is really stopping you from making them a part of your life, and then resolve to incorporate at least one into your everyday existence.

Life as we know it is so short. Making the most of years we are granted is a matter of being ourselves even though we know that we will inevitably encounter people who disapprove of our choices. When you shake your tail feathers like no one is watching, you will discover that there are many others who appreciate you because you are willing to let go of any inhibition. By doing this you help others know it is okay. No one else in the world is precisely like you and, each time you revel in this simple fact, you rededicate yourself to the celebration of individuality.

love

Lest you think that my hardened heart only believes in un-love, rest assured that I am more than moved by expression of enduring love.

The story of Jo Ann and Bob Chew is just one of what I am convinced are many relationships built on the kind of love that lives in our imaginations as TRUE love.

Listen to it with a hankee handy.

Un-love stories

Valentine's Day brings out the best and the worst in people when it comes to love, or un-love, as the case may be.

Watching the tragedy of the astronaut and the "tawdry love triangle" (yet to be proved) unfold in front of the world reminds me of one too many missteps in the name of love, but thankful that my pseudo-stalking has never landed me in jail.

[Check out the meaning of this tattoo.]

It's a long and tangled story and not worth re-telling, but it's my blog and you don't have to read it if it bothers you.

February is a magical time in the long story of our un-love. My birthday, his birthday and Valentine's Day are, of course, all in the first fourteen days of February. Many of the past fifteen years, we have a long history, I have spent the last fourteen (or fifteen) days recovering from the first two weeks.

From the beginning there were always more than two in our relationship, sometimes it got as high as four or five, he was a busy guy. In the early years, I managed to be away for my own birthday, so there was no pressure for him to celebrate it. He was always curiously away for his birthday and Valentine's Day. Somewhere I have the first Valentine's and birthday cards he gave me, they were hand made. Sweet? I would love to say that it was sweet ingenuity that led him to make the cards, but probably it was just that he was broke. Starving college students and all that. Though, now, I do wonder if the others got Hallmark while I got handmade, and if it matters at all.

When we took up again, a full ten or eleven years later, the cards were no longer hand made but carefully un-romantic. We might be spending time together and, later, even sleeping together, but I wasn't to get the wrong idea. He cared for me, but love, like being in love, was reserved for his wife, or the other other-woman. I can't tell for sure how many of us there were at that time; I will probably never know. I can only say for sure that I knew my place: at the back of the line.

Every year, February would burst on the scene with a flurry of calls and meetings except for on my birthday. By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, well, I might have seen him for his birthday, and he might have wished me a belated birthday, but it was clear that there were no obligations.

ranting

I prefer the blog as it is fairly unobtrusive.

You can read it or not read it at your whim.

This guy's approach is far more in your face and less apologetic.

But to each his own, no?

Malenting

A friend of mine says malenting whenever she means lamenting.

She had probably said it a dozen times and I hadn't noticed until one day she mentioned it.

I can't imagine thinking anything of it if I had heard it because in my crazy mind words, numbers, entire thoughts get jumbled, particularly at the end of a long or emotionally taxing day.

In fact, I am known to get whole parts of sentences reversed.

Ever since she told me, though, I think my ear has been pricked to try to catch it live.

The other night we went to the movies and had to wait in line to enter the theater.

There were several patrons for whom the concept of waiting was an unexpected and not happy surprise.

One woman paced in front trying to coax her mate into not joining in the line. She seemed to think they could charge the box office and the ticket taker would realize his folly and invite them in.

After quizzing those of us actually standing in line obediently and then forcing her mate ot ask someone who really mattered, like the ticket taker or the ticket seller, she came back to the line not really resigned to actually having to join in at the end.

My friend looked at me and she said about the woman: "She's malenting having to stand in line."

EXACTLY.

I played the sentence in my mind over a few times. There was something so perfect about that statement.

Several days later, I find myself noticing the people malenting.

It's not that my friend meant anything other than lamenting -- except in this case it did have a sarcastic overtone.

In my mind, though, malenting has taken on a shade of meaning: it is reserved for those lamenting something that requires no such dramatic emotion.

You know like someone malenting not having won three million dollars instead of two million dollars.

Or someone malenting having burned his finger after sticking it into fire.

I like words and I know they are supposed to have fixed, precise meanings, but I often see them in grayscale.

Malenting comes across to me as a kin to malevolent or malingering while retaining much of its original meaning.

Perhaps that's why I love BALDERDASH and why I can't focus real words on BOGGLE!

I want this job

and a gym membership.

I haven't heard of most of these chocolates...but I would gladly try them; if they were free, you wouldn't even have to pay me.

But, I am serious about the gym membership.

Here is the chocolate that most intrigued me:

For Heating Up the Love Life: Milk chocolate is mellow. Dark chocolate is bitter. And dark chocolate with bits of chili and cherries is bitter still — but with a zesty kick. (And a love poem on the wrapper.) If your love likes things hot and spicy, try Chocolove's Chili's and Cherries in Dark Chocolate bar, which one taster describes as "the perfect chocolate, until the burning sensation hit the back of my throat." Another called the sensation "like an illicit kiss." The bars are hot, but perfect, we discovered, when broken up and sprinkled in cups of hot chocolate — adding even more heat to a decidedly delicious treat. (bar, $2.95, Chocolove)

I have to admit that I am a sucker for secret notes. I tried a no flour chocolate cake that had some kind of chile in it, and it was awesome. So, I am sold on the idea of spice. Even if it didn't spice up my love life, I would be thrilled with the taste. Not that I would seriously turn down any of these chocolates.

What's yours??

confession

I have been hording drafts.

It was not intentional, this time.

I just haven't had time to get a full night's sleep let alone finish a thought for the blog.

Not sure if there are any loyal readers left, but, you have been duly warned to dig for buried treasure, today and in the coming days.

Most of the back-logged posts will be for January and February (yikes, it's only the 6th and there are already drafts languishing in the depths).

Read, comment, enjoy, or take a nap.

Mutual Self Interest

Read this article. Long, but well worth the read.

I am not saying it will change your life, but it might inform it; just a little bit.
Here's something to convince you:

Back then, his goal was not to be a high-minded social entrepreneur or even an old-fashioned do-gooder. He just wanted to reduce employee turnover — the rates could hit 300 percent a year — by easing some of the problems that led so many of his workers to miss shifts or to quit.

Harnessing Grief

Blow.

[The air moves swiftly through and then out of my puckered lips.]

Sometimes the thoughts cascading through my head are so overwhelming I need to let off steam, so I blow.

This is how I felt as I reached the end of this article.

Mr. Williams captures the intensity of the grief and compassion of these women so clearly.

"Their group, formed in 2005, is ... working to eliminate the source of their sadness, starting with getting illegal guns off Harlem streets. ... The mothers are also trying to organize a series of forums at schools and community centers to try to convince children that shooting someone does not make a boy a man."

He doesn't hold back any of the emotions, but he doesn't prey on their vulnerability in a voyeuristic way. This is how it is and this is what it feels like.

"What the mothers tend to have in come are afflictions that include episodes of anxiety so intense that their bodies stiffen as tight as a shell, while inside, their hearts pound so fast they fear they are having a heart attack; anger so raw that they conjure up detailed revenge fantasies in which they, or intermediaries, kill those who took their children away; and sadness so complete they isolate themselves and are unable to smile for months at a time."

It's powerful enough.

"After her son's death, Ms. Royster-Hills said, people unfairly questioned the way she had raised him. Tears covered her face; she paused as she was handed a tissue. 'The worst mother in the world should not have to go to the morgue and identify her child with a bullet in his head,' she said softly."

It doesn't need any sugar coating to make it more palatable.

"Either I was going to hate teenagers, or I was going to do something," she said.

Read the article. It will be time well spent.

Addendum: SF Gate is chronicling the loss of life in Oakland. It is a much less satisfying way to honor the lives and hope lost with those lives, but it's something, I guess.

Is this really the way to get more cops on the streets?

I was drawn to this article because I had an intense conversation about how to improve the quality of life in Oakland with a couple of friends for whom I have the utmost respect.

I understand, to a point, the desire to have more cops on the street. Especially if there is a special program designed to get more beat cops in the neighborhood. But the sad fact is that when most police departments ask for more dollars for cops, it rarely gets spent on getting police officers on the street with the common folk.

Imagine my dismay at reading that just finding qualified police is difficult, not even factoring into it QUALITY police officers. In Oakland, it's important to put it all in perspective, afterall two or is it three trials later, we still haven't sorted out the fiasco of the rough riders. In cities where crime is either more visible or just more prominently displayed, in truly urban settings, you know the kind, where white folks have moved away yet are still holding positions of power, like police and fire chief. Quantity and quality sometimes get confused.

I wonder if the police chief who hired this loser would have hired him to patrol the his own city.

Addendum:
SF Gate is chronicling the loss of life in Oakland.