IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

Several times last week I had an almost, not-quite exchange with laizzes-faire “well, this is unacceptable so certainly it will be taken care of blitheness”, variation of a too nonchalant “this too shall pass” which left me disoriented, sapped of strength, as if the words were an invisible red-and-white striped straw that had unexpectedly found vein, tapped, then breezed along. My outrage over the murderous sadism of naked bodies suspended from and dying on Terror War chains, or the routine stripping of stateside prisoners for purposes of police state humiliation and dehumanization distanced with words of a tourist casual aloofness. I was in horror of the routine humiliation of real people with names and lives, easily imagining my flesh and person in their place, when around the corner strolls a mind that touches my own and I find myself in a place where velvet crowd-control ropes direct the traffic through medieval death dungeons, the victims are historical artifacts that make the price of the ticket, the chained a perpetual fact of life, the essential oddity that makes the attraction, but quickly and ultimately a prison cell is small and boring so move along. The lack of interest embraces and seems to want to win me over to its view and carry me with it. I become detached and disoriented. So this then has no meaning? Belongs to a world of shadowy “other” that has no relation to the tourist basking in the sun. They go to find something to eat and I am left in a state of slight, mute shock. Hollowed.

It’s been a long time since I read “Catch 22″. Just thinking of it now I realize that we probably no longer have the novel. A disintegrating paperback I’ve not seen around in a long time, which means it must have fallen apart and turned landfill sometime between then and now. Had the paperback already when I was 18 or 19, but I’d not read it before I went to see the movie, “Catch 22″.

The movie was one of those special college shows. The sound was muffled. About all that I remember is the cinemotography and lighting. It seemed I’d climbed into someone else’s mind and was living their world.

And I remember two scenes from that once and only viewing of the film. The old Italian man. Did he say something about the sun being different in the Mediterranean? I’ve read this so many times elsewhere, witnessed it in photos, I don’t recollect if the old man had said this or I’ve come to attach this knowledge to this scene (though the quality of sun is different everywhere). But I recollect him talking about time, about what lasts and what doesn’t. In the book, he questions what is a country, pointing out the artificial nature of national boundaries. I don’t remember all that he said in the movie, but he shocked the soldier with whom he was speaking, telling him that America would one die, which hadn’t occurred to the GI. I’m going purely on memory here, and the movie is different from the book. He spoke against nationalism and yet something about parts of his reasoning seemed steeped through with nationalism (to me) and I felt off kilter. Perhaps “all is vanity” was the primary theme. The memory isn’t clear, only that I felt a great hostile vacuum expanding as he spoke. There is a way of approaching the vanity of the human which is hostile and a way which is compassionate. The vacuum overwhelmed and I began to drown. At least that is what I remember feeling, the sun on the movie screen weakening the thin and watery images, muffled voices disintegrating, the ragged film stock chopping up words, breaking thoughts. I started to feel physically ill.

The light. Something about the light was too much.

Then the beach scene. The screen was full with Hollywood, familiar faces, but the film was breaking them up too, splintering them, making them into a lifetime of someone else’s real memories piled up over the years, experienced in the piecemeal hash of dream review. I felt like I was in a trance. I don’t know if this is how it happens but I remember a pier, a man standing on the end, Paula Prentiss and Arkin and others wandering away, perhaps down the beach. The plane with McWatt flying it and he’s coming in to buzz the others, which he gets a kick out of doing. The man on the end of the pier is waving (Kid Sampson in the book). The plane comes in too low and off in the distance the propeller strikes the man on the pier and slices him in half. Paula screams. McWatt’s plane (we are not shown McWatt flying it I don’t believe) turns, flies high, plunges down into the ocean, McWatt killing himself. At least that is how I remember it.

And the light. The light. Which was now terrifying.

I didn’t know if I was sick already and had just begun to feel it while watching the film. But I was overcome and unable to tolerate the film anymore, had to get out of there. I felt as if I’d received a terrible shock and the world had split apart at the seams with screaming hell pouring out of its core. I wasn’t the only one leaving as my husband was with me, and I felt terribly out of place as I made my way up the aisle, which was difficult. I was struggling not to pass out. The faces in the auditorium were bright with the light reflected off the screen, all caught up in the movie, and it felt odd having to turn my back on the film. I wanted to forget. The cheapness of life. Alienation. A person as hunk of flesh that when ruptured revealed only meat, was already only meat animated by futile sense of self in which no one else participated, all selves orbiting their own heart-suns until the heart stops and the sun simultaneously darkens and all the worlds that were in one perish in the freezing cold. I wondered why I was the only one who had to leave. And the film followed. The old Italian. The sun. The watery images. Kid Sampson waving one second and sawn in two the next.

I felt weak, as if I was missing something that should have been able to keep me in my seat with the others. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t stomach it. None of the ideas explored in the black comedy were new to me, but for some reason I’d not been able to confine this particular film to fiction, to movie magic. I was thinking the movie wasn’t even that good. Disjointed. But the disjointedness, the light had amplified the alienation.

As it turned out, I was physically ill. Quite sick. But that night and the following days I had a difficult time sorting out the physical from the emotional and mental shock I’d gotten in the theater. There is illness that can make one more susceptible, marrow deep.

It was a number of years before I could bring myself to read the book. I’d pick it up and examine it. Joseph Heller. Catch 22. A slim book with yellowed pages brown at the edges and the paper brittling. The glue of the binding brittled and no longer holding.

Books don’t remain static for me, changing sometimes as I change. I might pick it up today and reading it would be a new experience.

So, last week, feeling somewhat disjointed from lots of Benadryl fighting a particularly bad week of allergies, I was thinking of the devastating weaponry of humiliation and dehumanization and of the brand of “this too shall pass” that casually distances and makes all meaningless and I thought of “Catch 22″ and the old man and the futile vacuum and of the hell of Kid Sampson evaporating into no meaning whatsoever. It’s the kind of hell I taste singeing the edges when I collide with commodity culture.

Not that my life is bursting at the seams with meaning. But commodity culture is pretty remote from it.

Considering my intense reaction to the light, I find it interesting to read that the DVD release has Nichols talking about the cinematographer, how Watkins insistence on the perfect natural light meant sometimes there was only shooting for two hours a day.

On Monday Son went to see the new Grossology exhibit at the Natural History Museum. He loves the Natural History Museum. When he was five he liked the Science Museum though confused by the stuffed animals on exhibit. I knew the question would come sooner or later as he stood and stared. Why did they do that to the animal? At the Natural History Museum the exhibit before this one was on Frogs. He loves frogs. They had as part of the exhibit a display to do with a dissected frog. Son came home and said he was not going back to the museum until the dissected frog was gone. “Why did they do that to the frog?” So he went back after the Frog exhibit was gone and before the new exhibit opened. And then was all eager for the new exhibit to open. As soon as his dad was up Monday morning, Son was sayng, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” The exhibit is billed as a gross delight for kids dealing with the human body. Son got there and saw giant steroided-out Mad Magazine constructions of intestines and stuff and said it was gross and promptly wanted to leave and said he wasn’t going back until that exhibit was gone. He wasn’t amused.

Maybe because everything is already big to my son. Amplified. And the whole world is alive and talking. He’s like me when I was his age. Like I still am, actually. Other children can look at water coming out the faucet into the sink and wonder where it comes from, what’s the conduit. My son looks and sees water alive and talks to it and think it’s talking. He used to ask what is the water feeling.

Intestines on steroids were too much.

I later thought of Yossarian and the soldier with the intestines spilling out of his body.

I ought to read the book again. Perhaps I should see the film again. But I should read the book again. I wonder if any kids in high school now are reading “Catch 22″ for class, are thinking about the war being fought by the military professionals and hawks as different from the war fought by Yossarian, who pragmatically is simply interested in living, the legalized insanity of war driving him into a state of paranoia where Nately’s “whore” suddenly appears everywhere trying to kill him after he delivers the message to her of Nately’s death.

What are they teaching kids in school today about war?

I’m just handing out links today, probably available a million other places, on Downing Street Memo news. But that’s what happens when I attempt to write something and am interrupted 12 million times.

Awaken the Mainstream Media will be posting daily different news links to swarm and request the covering of the memo. Check each day for the links. When I’m done here I will go write.

We all know by now that Fox News (what the…?) covered the Downing Street Memo. Shakespeare’s Sister posts on it.

It’s another half hour later and I’ve been interrupted 13 million times. So one last link on this as my train of thought could never coalesce on this today. But it doesn’t matter because of everyone who does have something to write.

Anyway, http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ posts a transcript of Thom Hartmann interviewing George Galloway. An excerpt:

[Thom Hartmann] OK. I’m wondering, what is your opinion on the legality of Guantanamo Bay and what do you think of the construction of a death chamber there, which was reported by the BBC yesterday?

[George Galloway] Well, it’s an utterly illegal process which is being followed. People are being taken, in some cases from third countries. One of the British citizens, for example, was taken from the Gambia. Others have been taken from Pakistan. Others still from, from Afghanistan. They’re taken by force, drugs forcibly injected into them, hooded, chained, and taken to a cage in the tropics where by all accounts they’re being kept in conditions that you wouldn’t keep a dog in in your country or mine. And if you did, you’d be, you’d be had up for cruelty by the authorities.

And then there’s very clear evidence of systematic torture. There’s the desecration of the Koran which may or may not have happened, depending on which edition of Newsweek you are prepared to believe. This is a big scar on the face of the United States. And it seems to me that too few citizens of the United States have fastened on to the fact that the protestations by your president and your government of being interested in human rights and democracy and freedom are quite negated by the very existence of Guantanamo Bay.

But of course, that’s not the end of it. Bagram Air Base is exactly the same kind of place. Abu Ghraib prison, well we perhaps, on a family show, shouldn’t probe too deeply into the disgusting obscenities that were going on there. And, it turns out, that where the United States itself is not prepared to physically torture people, it merely subcontracts out the task; sending people to the likes of Uzbekistan and Egypt and other prison states where less squeamish governments will torture people for the United States and give the U.S. the testimony they get as a result. Which, of course, it goes without saying, is almost never of any use because anyone will say anything under torture.

[Thom Hartmann] Yeah.

[George Galloway] And all sorts of wild goose chases are no doubt embarked upon as a result of all this. So I’m afraid Guantanamo is a blot on the landscape and the fact that the United States occupies it in Cuba without Cuba’s agreement is just the icing on the cake.

[Thom Hartmann] Yeah. George Galloway, Member of Parliament in the, in Great Britain, of the House of Commons. Why do you believe that Tony Blair decided to join president Bush in waging war when, as has recently emerged with this Downing Street memo, he knew that the case was flimsy, and do you think that either Blair or Bush or people in their administration should be prosecuted on any, on any level for this activity?

[George Galloway] Well, first of all I am sure that they will not be prosecuted, because it is only losers that are prosecuted. In the international system that we have there’s no chance of the likes of Henry Kissinger, for example, the greatest living war criminal in the world today with the blood of millions of people in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and Chile and East Timor or in many other places on his hands. He will never appear in a court or be behind bars. That’s for the tin pot tyrants, the tiny tyrants like Milosevic; they get sent there. The big tyrants never face justice.

The protests of our government that they’re all for Human Rights (”We’re all for Human Rights! You bet we are!”) are negated by a lot of things. And the master minds and their instruments may never be prosecuted but we can hound, hound, hound. We can keep interrupting by hounding. The way my son has been in here hounding me all morning. As a result of that hounding we have carried on personal conversations with the tree outside his window, and the rain, and a car, and a bird and the mothers of Mothra and Godzilla (who were out there as well) and I have investigated a bookcase headboard that was left outside in the rain next to the trash bin and we’ve discussed off and on for an hour whether or not to think of bringing it inside and painting it and using it for more books or leaving it outside as it is probably going to proceed to fall apart because of the rain, and we have talked about gravity and water and outer space and space labs and have talked about the just plain importance of water, and Aku has had his arm glued back on. All as a result of constant interruptions. And more than that.

Whatever. Coordinated hounding is good. Please hound. Plan to do some hounding daily.

We have no assurity that hounding will produce positive result.

We can, however, rest assured what no hounding will mean.

Am deleting the Googlebomb post as it was written in such a way as to cause keyword padding problems.

And today’s Awaken the Mainstream Media, Downing Street Memo contact recommendations are here!.
Follow the link for email, phone and fax information.

86,000 sigs so far on the John Conyers petition for demanding answers on the Downing Street Memo. 14,000 to go.

Ok. No one is going to be interested in this post except for a very small group of people who attended Jason Lee school in Richland, Washington in 4th grade in 1966-1967. And chances are perhaps not even they would be interested.

And chances are zero that any of that small group of people who might be interested in this picture would come upon this blog . For which reason, made aware–from when I did my Growing up in the shadow of Mt. Fuji post–that a website was seeking class pics from Jason Lee, I touched it up and sent it along to the website that was doing the seeking. Someone from the class may go there one day looking for the photo and there it will be. The photo was in bad shape with cracks and torn places that had destroyed several of the faces. Counting on symmetry I was able to do a tolerable job of reconstructing but I didn’t spend a lot of time on it, an evening, so it’s not the best work.

As the chances are zero that any from that small group of people who would be interested in the picture would come upon this blog, this means I can finally bare my soul as to the two crushes I had that year, which I was reminded of when son this week begged to see old pics of mom.

Guess we were room 111. I forget the name of the teacher and I only remember the names of a few of my classmates.

Top back row at far left is Mary Rodreiguez, the third girl from the left may be a Kathy? and at the far right is me. I remember Mary Rodreiguez’s name because from those early years I only remember the full names of my “best” friends at school or in the neighborhood, and she was my best friend at school in fourth grade. When the photo was taken I was pleased that we ended up bookending the row because of our being about the same height. The photographer did his seeming utmost to arrange it so at least in the middle and back rows the shortest kids bookended, graduating to the tallest in the center, the photo revealing that he didn’t quite succeed despite his eyeballing our heights several times over, arrannging and rearranging and ruminating aloud on who was the shortest which would have everything to do with positioning.

I have seen some class pictures from other Richland schools that year and they were perhaps still using the same photography studio as Jason Lee must have been using in earlier years, the class photo instead a compilation of the single, posed shots of the students. I feel rather fortunate we had the group photo.

The middle row, the second boy from the left, the one with the shirt that ties…was his name David? I ought to remember because he sat behind me in class. Then the 4th boy from the left may be a Carl. The girl on the far right may be a Debbie or Debra and I remember her dress was blue, and to the nine-year-old me she seemed to be growing into the kind of personality that is framed with an easy-going, attractive popularity. Or maybe it was the dress. I remember marveling at the dress, which in 1966-1967 seemed to stand out as a straight-forward, clean-lined, not ostentatious, accomodating yet bold kind of winning kind of dress. The sailor styling back then was common and didn’t quirk the eye.

In the front row, kneeling, the boy on the far left is Guy, the second boy is perhaps a Kevin? and again I should remember him as he sat in front of me.

And that’s all the names I maybe perhaps remember.

These are all people I imagine forgot me long ago, the way one tends to forget the people who disappear.

As said, the blond boy with the tie shirt, who might be named David and perhaps not, sat behind me in class and the boy in front of him, who might be a Kevin, sat in front of me in class.

I had a crush on Maybe-David. I was one among several to whom he paid attention and was exercising his fledgling lady-killer moves already, would sit with his shirt undone one button more than the other boys, and I mean sit to planned advantage, slumping back in his seat when we talked so that his shirt pulled to the side showing his chest–he’d glance up to see if I’d noticed, and I’d try to be coy but a little bit of nine-year-old manly chest made me dizzy, so I was disappointed when the teacher noticed and told him to button up. And he knew how to button up, not too fast to oblige, a lazy “but I was having fun flashing my pectoral at the girl” kind of defiance.

I remember the day Maybe-David wore his older brothers’ cologne to class. In a few years I would have gagged but when I was in 4th grade my heart fluttered and swooned as he fanned it my way. I forget whether he flat-out announced to me that he was wearing his older brother’s cologne or if the teacher noticed and said, “What’s that smell?” I think maybe both, because I remember being surprised he’d tell me he was wearing his brother’s cologne, that seemed to me over eager and mindless of subtle. But we’re talking about a boy steeped in what was likely Old Spice. I remember that he never wore it again and believe the teacher did yes lay down the law on what was appropriate for grade school and what wasn’t.

Maybe-David’s declaration that he was wearing his brother’s cologne only succeeded in knocking him down a couple of points and squandering the esssense of romance.

He was tan, blond (as one can see) and vaguely resembled a child television star of the day who I already had a crush on though I couldn’t figure out why because I didn’t think him very good looking and didn’t like his voice. Maybe-David wore clothes that were Beach Boy cool for the time–as you can see he is the one boy wearing a shirt that ties rather than buttons. Maybe-Kathy had a crush on him too. When you’re in fourth grade there is a bit of security in sharing confidences with a ggirlfriend who has a crush on the same boy you do. Maybe-Kathy and I one day snuck into the janitor’s closet after school and, too giggly and breathless to speak coherently, called Maybe-David. I don’t even recollect if his mother called him to the phone or not. I do remember the call was anticlimatic to the stealth and effort, which would have gotten us in trouble had we been caught. Either his mother didn’t call him to the phone and scolded us or his phone demeanor was uninspiring.

The boy in front of me, Maybe-Kevin, I believe had a crush on me and I did on him as well and vacillated painfully, delightfully between Maybe-David and Maybe-Kevin’s attentions. It got distracting with Maybe-David jabbing me in the back with a pencil while Maybe-Kevin was talking to me and vice-versa. I found Maybe-Kevin, after a while, to be nicer than Maybe-David, nicer had its attractions over flash, and he had a better voice I realized, and I decided he was deeper, sincerer, less a flirt, funnier, maybe even intense (I forget what nine-year-old Maybe-Kevin did to make nine-year-old me decide he was maybe-intense) and my affections began to shift toward him. The last game of dodge ball I ever played (I was good at dodge ball) was one organized by the teacher where, throughout, Maybe-David and Maybe-Kevin were both trying to hit me with the ball, I was the last one in the ring finally, no one could get me, it was the best day of my life to that point with both Maybe-David and Maybe Kevin vying to hit me with that ball, “I’ll get her out!”, and I was not to be out-maneuvered, in some kind of zen dodge ball state, a nine-year-old in the Dodge Ball Matrix, unbeatable, until finally the teacher announced me unbeatable and called the gave over.

It was as if the future was laid out around me, the imminent unveiled, now could be several moves beyond upcoming and I was dancing my way around the mundane what-will-be. The coolest magic trick in the world.

I figure it’s okay to confess these crushes publicly after nearly 40 years. And if Maybe-David or Maybe-Kevin ever find this blog and remember it differently then I can always say, hell, it’s been nearly forty years, maybe you can’t rely on your memory.

Or I can’t rely on mine.

Which is evident, recollecting so few names.

The boy fourth from left in the front row also eventually caught my eye, but he didn’t sit near me and if I remember correctly it took me until the end of the year to notice him.

Several of these guys, including Maybe-Kevin, lived in my approximate neighborhood, though not on the same street (despite the radiation, Richland was a kid-friendly town with, it seemed, one or five to nearly every house). One sunny morning when I was walking to school, several of the boys surprised me as I was passing by (including Maybe-Kevin) by pushing out of a house, onto the stoop, Guy, who was wearing only a shirt and underwear. They were laughing, except for Guy, who was yelling and leaping to get back through the door, which he did quickly enough, and was grinning so I don’t think his psyche took too much of a bruising. And of course I grinned all the way to school, thinking, “Yes, Maybe-Kevin likes me, Maybe-Kevin likes me, Maybe-Kevin likes me.”

It is good that we left Richland, because that way my heart was never broken by Maybe-Kevin or Maybe-David.

Like Daniel Boyd (or was his name David?) broke my heart in the third grade.

Maybe-Daniel Boyd was in my second grade class and at one point he asked if he could walk me home from school. So Daniel Boyd walked me home from school several times and I drew a picture of him as a green elf in the school play that I was the only child in class not permitted to be in because I was dyslexic. Why they couldn’t just let me dress up and stand on stage with the others who had only one speaking line, I don’t know. So I sat in my desk, alone, while everyone else rehearsed and I drew my picture of Maybe-Daniel Boyd. Later, he asked me to come over to his house to see his rabbits and I saw his mother had put up on the refrigerator the picture I’d drawn of him.

She said the drawing looked just like him. It didn’t, but I was a little ahead of the others when it came to drawing. Which is why, in fourth grade, when the teacher separated us into groups for an assignment where we had to draw a life-size human body with veins and entrails and stomach and heart and lungs, and report on it, it fell upon me to do the drawing.

One day walking me home Maybe-Daniel Boyd gave me a kiss.

On the last day of school he asked me to come over to his house a last time before the summer break but my mother had gone and impertinently given birth to my sister and we were going right then to pick them both up at the hospital so I had to say no.

The first week in school in third grade I saw Maybe-Daniel Boyd walking a new girl home from school and I resolved not to speak to him again. So much for the kiss from Maybe-Daniel Boyd.

I had already shown son my 4th grade class picture and pointed myself out. I showed him my sixth grade class picture. Who’s mom? He looked at it a bit then pointed out my best friend, who had black hair and looked nothing like me.

“Her?”

I showed him my seventh grade class picture, expecting him to easily pick me out as I had the same hair style in the seventh grade as I did in the sixth.

Son stared at the picture a while then pointed to my other best friend in that class, who I looked nothing like and who looked nothing like the other best friend he’d pointed out.

“Her?”

Via Talkleft the Pentagon has admitted, “Well, hmmm, yeah, we disrespected the Quran.”

Pentagon Confirms Soldier Mistreated Prisoner’s Quran
Other Incidents Also Confirmed

PENTAGON — The Pentagon has confirmed for the first time that a U.S. soldier deliberately kicked a Guantanamo Bay prisoner’s Quran in violation of the military’s rules for handling the Muslim holy book.

In other confirmed incidents, water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; a guard’s urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; and a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Quran.

The findings are among the results of an investigation last month by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center in southeastern Cuba. The probe was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report — later retracted — that a U.S. soldier had flushed one Guantanamo detainee’s Quran down a toilet.

Source: Denverchannel

New questions abound, don’t they? Water balloons thrown by guards. Someone no doubt will say, “Child play!” The picture they’re perhaps shooting for is har-har water balloons tossed, “Got cha!”

I doubt it ran like that.

And the urine of the guard just happening to “splash” a detainee and his Quran. The guard didn’t do it. His urine somehow did. The urine escaped his bladder and undid his fly, snuck out, and oops there it went all over the detainee and the Quran, well we never thought it would cause such a fuss since it was purely an accident on the part of the urine so we thought there was no point mentioning it.

I’m wondering now what was in the water balloons.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune adds that the urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran. The guard is written to have gone outside to urinate and the wind blew his urine through the air vent into the cell block.

Are you buying this? No? Well, I have a little Oxytocin, trust hormone spray I’d like you to take a whiff of.

There are about 540 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantanamo Bay in hope of extracting useful intelligence about the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Both President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have denounced an Amnesty International report that called the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time.”

The president told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday that the report by the human-rights group was “absurd.”

On Wednesday, Rumsfeld called the characterization “reprehensible” and said the U.S. military had taken care to ensure that detainees were free to practice their religion. However, he also acknowledged that some detainees had been mistreated, even “grievously” at times.

But why should they want to go home? Partying with the guards, frolicking about the cell blocks. “Let’s do a surprise water balloon raid!” say the guards. “Oh,” laugh the detainees, “you got us good that time!”

Three years charged without a crime, sitting in Guantanamo Bay.

Not an Otis Redding song.

So, when IS the government going to start regularly dosing us with Oxytocin so we’ll get happy and buy the lies and stop pestering them. I know if I was Bush, I’d be yelling at someone, “Why haven’t you figured out how to dose the water yet? I want them all singing, Happy talk!“.

John Conyers’ website was slammed by visitors and has had some problems so Conyers is asking that for the time being this link be usedas entrance to the petition page.

110,000 petition signatures! The initial target was 100,000. Wednesday it stood at 86,000. Conyers is now shooting for 250,000 and believes that can be reached quickly.

The ACLU has prevailed and a judge has ordered the government to release more Abu Ghraib photos and videos showing abuse of prisoners.

But get a load of the brilliant argument Bush Co. used against releasing them.

Government lawyer Sean Lane had argued that releasing pictures, even in redacted form, would violate Geneva Convention rules by subjecting the detainees to additional humiliation.

That’s right. The same “obsolete”, “quaint”, “irrelevant” Geneva Convention that has been systematically circumvented so Bush Co. would be protected from future prosecution for war crimes.

A.) Seems the right and left hands have gone totally loco and are flapping all over the place without a clue of actions relative to the other.

B.) Or they just don’t care. Which has been the modus operandi.

C.) Or they’re counting on the static engendered by the daily barage of contradictions to cause us all to give up and lie down in bleak, tired confusion, like the puppy at the training class shuts down when overwrought by the mixed signals from its clueless owner.

Right now I have a feeling that A may have at least as much to do with matters as B and C.

I don’t know how long this will continue but go to Google image search, put in the keywords “rising man” and the first pic that should come up is an image of a Rising Man (or Rising Woman really, seems) sculpture installation at Burning Man 2004. If you click on the image it takes you to the site where it’s housed but as you’ll see the main link has been redirected somehow to this blog.

Several months ago, forget how, I happened upon Paul Hughs’ Burning Man website and was going through the pics. From across the room, Youngson glimpsed one of the images I was looking at and came running over to ask about it and was eager to see more. (I’ll never get to Burning Man but the way Son is developing I figured and figure that he will likely one day make a pilgrimage if it’s still going on when he’s a teen/young adult. ) Youngson has a private blog and he wanted me to put links to several of the images in it and I did. He was most interested in the neon burning man standing atop the pyramid and had me put in links to several different images of that. He didn’t have me put a link to “Rising Man” though. The woman emerging from the desert floor. In fact, it was probably one of the initial images I came upon, I’d not looked at the name, and I remember searching through to look at it again.

I didn’t write Paul Hughes to say “We liked the images”. Just viewed and linked a few of Youngson’s favorites.

A few weeks ago I realized I was starting to get search hits for “Rising Man”. Which was disorienting because I have no “Rising Man” images here. It seems some kind of redirect function going on. The only thing I can figure is that Hughes may have noticed in his site stats some hits from Son’s blog and he found a link from there to here as well and set up the redirect??

Don’t know how long it will continue but it has been kind of cool. Whenever I see another hit here from “Rising Man”, it always gives me pause to meditate a bit on the image and emergence and possibilities.

Check out this video of a cop tasering a woman via Stone Bridge.

Stone Bridge notes that the cop remarks, likely for benefit of the camera (a) that it didn’t hurt, and (b) that she took a swing at the second officer and thus the taser.

She didn’t take a swing. Stone Bridge didn’t observe a swing and neither did I.

And those were shrieks from pain, and pain moans. No faking there. No performance. It hurt like hell. Did more than hurt like hell. It rendered her unable to do anything but be pain for a while there. As the shrieks begin to subside and the cop tells her to put her arms behind her back and she says she can’t, she means it. Pain will do that. She is unable to control her body at that point.

As I observed for Stone Bridge, I don’t think the cop remarked on the (a) it didn’t hurt, and (b) you took a swing, just for benefit of the camera. I think he also did it trying to convince the woman. The pain/shock brainwashing version of ecstatic experience leaving a person open to reordering of perception. I think he was trying to reorder her perception of the experience so that she would believe it must not hurt and that she is thus over-reacting and at fault, and I imagine he’s trying to reorder her experience so that her flailing about on the ground in pain is rewritten to be her taking a swing.

At least those are my thoughts on it.

Both officers, it appears, are white? The woman is black. Commentary on the page defending the action is from a black cop.

People have died from tasering.

The cops don’t appear to flinch at all when the woman is lying on the ground screaming. All in a days work.

AfterDowningStreet.org gets one million hits! That’s news. Read more at the Heretik.

Downing Street link for watching:

Crooks and Liars Downing Street Memo on C-Span link in which Steve Cobble of After Downing Street debates with Kevin Aylward of Wizbang on the memo’s merits.

The Awaken the Media news targets for June 6

…can be found at this link. 60 Minutes, Chicago Tribune and Newsweek.

Downing Street links for signing and writing:

The link to sign John Conyers’ petition is this (if you haven’t already signed it).

Sign here with Democrats.com, a petition urging congress to investigate Bush’s Iraq war lies.

Go to usalone.com to sign a petition sending your position on the Downing Street Memo and whether it should be investigated to your representatives. The privacy policy section notes signing will opt you in for emails from usalone.com but one can later opt out of these.

Send press releases to local media outlets here at capwix.

Downing Street Blogswarm for today:

…is a focus on this June 4 article Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing, Shakespeare’s Sister writes on it here.

Link to other action:

My mother sends this link to World Tribunal on Iraq.

Taking its cue from the Russell Tribunal of the late 1960s, the World Tribunal on Iraq is aimed at challenging the silence around the aggression against Iraq and seeking the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq. This will be a record of wrongs, violations and crimes as well as suffering, resistance and silenced voices. This will be a process of listening, reflection, evaluation and informed judgement based on concrete evidence. This will be a call to conscience and a call to act to preserve our futures.

The Tribunal begins the 23 of June at Istanbul. Its panel of advocates will include Dennis Halliday, former Assistant to the UN Secretary General and Director of the UN Humanitarian Aid Programme, Prof. Richard Falk, UNESCO peace prize holder and Professor of International Law, and Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq.

There have already been meetings in Rome, Brussels, London, Mumbai, New York, Hiroshima-Tokyo, Copenhagen, Stockhol and Lisbon. The Rome meeting covered media deception on the war.

On Tuesday May 17, in Brussels, the World Tribunal on Iraq “delivered a law summon and invitation letter” addressed to Bush at the US Embassy in Brussels.

The WTI representatives invited George Bush to the final hearing of the World Tribunal on Iraq that will take place in Istanbul between 23-27 of June 2005. It is part of a global action day, as similar actions took place in Lisbon, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Istanbul, Tokyo and New York.

In Brussels a number of activists arrived at the US Embassy with a huge banner reading “President Bush, the World holds you accountable”. The activists also presented a letter to the US officials at the Embassy.

In front of the US Embassy today, Prof. Lieven De Cauter, initiator of the BRussells Tribunal, and spokesperson for the WTI in Belgium, said: “Since the US administration does not recognize the International Criminal Court (ICC), the citizens of the world have

The list of endorsers thus far:

11.11.11 / Belgium
Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD) / India
Act together: Women’s action for Iraq / UK
Action Indict Bush-Blair / Japan
Acts-of-resistance.org / Belgium
AEPGN (Association des étudiants pour la prévention de la guerre nucléaire) / Belgium
Al-Awda NY/NJ / US
Al-Qalam Institute, Berkeley / US
AlternaTees / US
AMBDH (Association des Marocains de Belgique pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme) / Belgium
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee - NY Chapter / US
AnaTolyan Frame Collective / US
Antroposofische Bibliotheek Brugge / Belgium
APIS Group / Serbia
Arab Cause Solidarity Committee / Spain
Arab Lawyers Association / UK
Asian People’s Alliance / Japan
Asian Women’s Human Rights Council
Association Belgo-Palestinienne
ATTAC
Authors for Peace / Denmark
Bains Connectives
Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation
Bastaguerra / Italy
Bergen County Green Party
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation / UK
Beursschouwburg / Belgium
Black Radical Congress / US
BRAL vzw (Brusselse Raad voor het Leefmilieu)
Brecht Forum / US
Brooklyn Greens / US
BushMustGo! , Ithaca
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campus Antiwar Network / US
Capitalism Nature Socialism / US
Center for Constitutional Rights / US
Center for Development Studies / India
Center for Economic and Social Rights / US
Centro de Documentacion en Derechos Humanos “Segundo Montes Mozo S.J.” (CSMM) / Ecuador
Christenen voor het Socialisme
CNAPD
COCAB (Composantes des Communautés Arabes de Belgique)
Comité de Surveillance Otan
Comité pour l’Annulation de la Dette du Tiers-Monde (COCAD)
Communauté La Poudrière
Coney Island Avenue Project / US
Conscience International
Coordination des ONG pour la Palestine
Coordination of European NGOs networking on Trade (CENNT)
Council on International and Public Affairs
De Groene Waterman (boekhandel / librairie)
Direct Action Palestine / US
El Taller International / Tunis
EPO (uitgeverij / maison d’éditions)
ESKUBIDEAK, Basque Lawyers Association / The Basque Country
European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights
Federacion de Asociaciones de Defensa y Promocion Derechos Humanos (FDDHH) / Spain
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Focus on the Global South
Geneeskunde Voor de Derde Wereld
Global Action to Prevent War
Global Peace and Justice Coalition / Turkey
Green Party of New Jersey
Greenpeace
GSARA (Groupe Socialiste d’Action et de Réflexion sur l’Audiovisuel)
Het Beschrijf literaire vereniging (literary organisation)
Humanistisch Verbond
Humanistische Jongeren
IDIC (Islamitisch Documentatie en Informatiecentrum)
Imavo
Indymedia Belgium
INLAP / UK
INTAL (International Action For Liberation)
Internationaal Kunstcentrum DE SINGEL Antwerpen (International Arts Centre - Antwerp )
International A.N.S.W.E.R
International Action Center / USA
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms
International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq - Japan
IPB (Interdiocesaan Pastoraal Beraad)
Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation (IDAO) / UK
Iraqi Network for Human Rights Culture and Development
Izmir Barre Association / Turkey
Jews Against the Occupation
Just Act (Support the United Nations!)
Korea Truth Commission / USA
Kunsten Festival Des Arts ( Brussels )
Kunstencentrum VOORUIT (Arts Centre - Ghent )
KVS (Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg Brussel - Royal Flemish Theatre Brussels )
Labour Committee for Peace and Justice - Bay Area / US
Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy / US
Les Brigittines
Les Halles (Theatre)
Liga Voor Mensenrechten
LOKOJ / Bangladesh
Louis Paul Boon Kring
Manneken Peace Not War
Masereelfonds
MCP (Mouvement Chrétien pour la Paix)
Media International / Egypt
Middle East Children’s Alliance - California / US
MO (Mondiaal Magazine)
Mouvement Chr é tien pour la Paix / Belgium
Mouths Wide Open
MPDL (Movimiento por la Paz el Désarme y la Libertad)
MRAX (Mouvement contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et la xenophobie)
National Lawyers Guild - NYC chapter
Nederlandse Humanistisch Vredesberaad (HVB - Netherlands )
New Jersey Solidarity
New York City Labor Against the War
New York Committee to Defend Palestine
Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York
No to War in Iraq Coalition / Turkey
NO WAR on USA
Not in Our Name Project / US
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation / US
NY Greens / Green Party of New York State
NYU Students for Justice in Palestine
Occupation Watch Center / Iraq
Orange County Peace and Justice Coalition
Östersund Network for Global Peace and Democracy
OXFAM-Wereldwinkels
Papa Giovanni 23 / Italy
Pax Christi
Peace Initiative / Turkey
Peace Initiative Turkey (PIT) /USA
Polish Anti-War Committee / Poland
Project Censored
Protect All Children’s Environment
Radio Free Maine (Roger Leisner / USA)
Red Europea de Comités Oscar Romero (Europees Netwerk Oscar Romero Comités)
RITS Hogeschool Brussel
ROSAS Dance Company (Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker)
Sacred Roots
SALAAM Theatre
Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights (SAF) / Yemen
Society Culture of Peace / Germany
Solidarity / U.S.
Solutions for Humanity, Inc.
SOS Iraq / Belgium - Netherlands
SOS Kinderen Irak Netherlands
Steungroep Rechtvaardigheid en Vrede in Guatemala
StopUSA / Belgium
Support Network for an Armed Forces Union
Swedish Network Against War / Sweden
Tabula Rasa Film productions ( Brussels )
The Greens/Green Party USA
The International Critical Geography Group
Theater Groep Stan (actors company)
Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory / US
Théâtre 140 (Theatre - Brussels )
Transnational Institute
Transquinquennal (collectif théâtral bruxellois)
Traprock Peace Center / US
Tunceli Barr Association / Turkey
Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique
United for Peace and Justice / US
Uruknet.info / Italy
US Peace Council
UVV (Unie van Vrijzinnige Verenigingen)
Veterans for Peace - NYC Chapter
Victoria (productiehuis voor de podiumkunsten in Gent ) en Victoria Deluxe
Violence Against Women in War - Net (VAWW-Net) / Japan
Vlaams Guatemala Comité
VOOR MOEDER AARDE ( For Mother Earth is the Flemish section of Friends of the Earth International)
VREDE
Western States Legal Foundation
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF-London)
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom / NY Metro Branch
Women’s Security Council / Germany
World Order Models Project
World Prout Assembly / US

UPDATE NOTE: Oops! Original graphic had 1,000,000 hits in a day. (Thought that was amazing.) Realized through a later interview it was 1,000,000 hits to date and have changed the graphic t0 fit. 1,000,000 hits to date is still phenomenal.

Reading Heretik’s reference to the 57-year-old “grandmother” who was put on a terrorist suspect list when found at the airport to be packing a butter knife, it occurs to me this will be how it ends.

First, don’t you love it how the press always pulls the “She’s a grandmother!” shtick. Would they have the description of a male be “the 57-year-old grandfather”? No, think not. And it has always puzzled me. Why the incorporation of grandma.

But moving along. It occurred to me, reading on how Cecilia Beaman became considered a terrorist via a bread knife in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler, that this may just how the blocks of Castle Crusade come tumbling down one day.

“You’ve committed a felony,” Beaman says a security screener announced. “And you’re considered a terrorist.”

Beaman says she was told her name would go on a terrorist watch-list and that she would have to pay a $500 fine.

“I’m a 57-year-old woman who is taking care of 37 kids,” she told them. “I’m not gonna commit a terrorist act.” Beaman says they took information from her Washington drivers license and confiscated and photographed the knife according to standard operating procedure.

She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.

“They said ‘no’ and they said it’s a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’.”

Ms. Beaman will not be the one who brings down Castle Crusade because she knew enough to be pissed she wasn’t given documentation of her violation or the pending fine etc.

But it will be perhaps a woman who yells Grandma!

What would do it is if it had been a grandma carrying great-grandma’s butter knife.

Grandma porting great-grandma’s treasured silver. She will likely be a grandma afraid that if she doesn’t tote great-grandma’s siver with her onto the plane then it will be stolen out of ransacked suitcases.

The grandma will be a white Xtian conservative who couldn’t give a damn about Real ID or Rapiscan. She won’t even care that she’s been labled a terrorist. All she will know is great grandma’s butter knives have been seized.

She will give a damn about great-grandma’s butter knives. She will scream bloody murder at the airport over great-grandma’s butter knives. She will pitch herself upon the ground and go apoplectic over the seizure of great-grandma’s butter knives. She will refuse to budge until they give her back great-grandma’s butter knives. she will raise hell as only a white Xtian conservative who’s lost great-grandma’s butter knives will know how to do. The authorities will cart her off screaming, her cheeks pomegranate purple by now, limbs flailing. The top button of her demure white blouse will burst under the power of her chest heaving, yelling for the god-given right to great-grandma’s butter knives, and a nearby camera will care. A grandmotherly, white low-heeled sandal will leave her foot, and a nearby camera will care. Civil rights? Grandma will care nothing about Civil Rights, but she will know about the privilege of heirlooms. She may have the luck to faint while shrieking shrill, enraged, hoarse, “They’re killing me! Help! I’m having a heart attack!” And a nearby camera will care. It will care when she goes limp and security is left to deal with a hundred and sixty pounds or so of unwieldy grandma.

The nearby camera will care as no camera has cared for any other outrage because the media will be unable to resist broadcasting white Xtian Conservative grandma passing out in the claws of airport security, blouse dissheveled and revealing heaving buxom boxom and bra straps, white shoe parting foot, sedate a-line skirt hiking up a plump grandmotherly thigh. The nearby camera will care as no camera has cared for any other outrage because its images will strike terror in the heart of every white Xtian conservative grandma in Amerika.

Video will be released.

Church women’s groups, garden and genealogy clubs will fly into seething, hissing rages.

All because of great-grandma’s butter knives.

One cannot hire such a grandma. She must occur naturally.

Such grandmas are virulent as Yellowstone geysers. An honest, pathological, crazy kind of rage that only a privileged, white, Xtian Conservative of vague blue blood heritage (imaginatively contrived by great-grandma, no doubt) and delusions of grandeur can raise out of her grandmotherly gut.

She will be a card-carrying member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Which will clinch it.

Medusa’s snakes finally unsprung, Homeland Security will be frozen in its tracks.

The DAR will scream, “Impeach!” and Bush will tumble from his throne. In two weeks’ time we will be turning on the tvs in the afternoon to watch impeachment hearings.

You think I’m joking.

June 7’s Awaken the Mainstream Media media outlet contact suggestions for the day are Washington Post Ombudsman, Michael Getler, USA Today and Toledo Blade Ombudsman, Jack Lessenberry.

More at the Awaken the Mainstream Media diary.

Arvin Hill blogs Downing St. Memo Interrupts D.C. Wurlitzer .

I have been tagged by Blaghdaddy.

Number of books I own: I’d say around 1100. But that would be cheating as I’d be padding with children’s books. We did a huge purge when we moved into this apartment a couple years ago. Boxes and boxes and boxes unloaded.

Last book I bought: Got a list of books I’ve been formulating for purchase. How about the last book that was purchased for me. Haruki Murakami’s latest. “Kafka on the beach”.

Last book I read: I finally started the Murakami book on Sunday and am in the middle of it.

5 Books that mean a lot to me (dunno, gives me a headache tonight trying to consider this one):
The wind-up bird chronicles, Haruki Murakami
The crying of lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick : Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings
God is Red, Vine Deloria