Archive for May, 2005
46 items.
Ezra (left) went to war and returned from Stalag IIB
I tend to be a day late on subject-of-the-day posts because i’m not a quick one, I have to ponder. And also the server this blog is on is iffy and sometimes I’ll write a post and punch publish and the post disappears, the blog going down for five seconds, as happened with this one. I was also thinking of a different kind of memorial this weekend. But would now like to try to reconstruct my memorial day post that is now a post memorial day post.
Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” fictionalizes some of the confusion of Europe uprooted and wandering as WWII came apart and the order and organization of Death Camps and POW camps turned into a chaos of those with no other nation than limbo, picking through trash for food, drinking bad water, brains too stunned to consider much beyond walking, resembling more the many homeless that every morning emerge out of the concrete gray and the shadows of parks and begin their trek to the food line of one of the city’s main church soup kitchens a couple of blocks from our apartment, many days the streets seeming to empty of all pedestrian traffic but those whose lives have been reduced to the portable. Like epileptic Bill who several years ago went out of work when a fancy restaurant, also a couple of blocks away, closed and its gate and stoop became a line for homeless drying their clothes on early sunny mornings. Epileptic Bill, who did get meds from the State and our landlord couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t take them until I explained to him that perhaps it’s because it takes a while to find a cocktail of meds that will work and how an epileptic friend of ours was almost killed by State meds carelessly prescribed, who spent years barely able to do much but have seizures and sit in a daze, until she met a State doctor who cared and said your meds are killing you and worked to find the right cocktail. Bill, who our landlord gave a perpetual loan to of four big plastic trash bins in the decaying narrow dirt and broken concrete courtyard in the back of our 80 or 90 year old building, and Bill would daily come at 7 am and climb the gate outside our bedroom window and tend his cache of Coke and Pepsi cans and sit in a chair outside our decaying kitchen window, shadow ghost having a few isolated smokes. As it is with most ghosts he was the kind you see out the corner of your eye, who as you turned to look straight on at him would disappear, poof. I’d open the kitchen blind and there he was. I’d turn and turn back and during that interval he would usually disappear.
At winter’s end Bill would leave out back the jacket given him by the landlord and the landlord would put it away then would pull it out with fall’s chill and put it in the back for Bill to pick up. For Easter last year the landlord bought Bill new clothes and put them out for him on the cyclone fence next to the trash bins, where he would put Bill’s clothes that he would take home to wash when Bill would have a seizure and soil himself. The clean clothes would hang on the fence with spic-and-span healthful goodness, so lively they were nearly wearing themselves, and Bill would come and go daily but not pick them up. The clothes would be rained on, air polluted upon and still he’d not touch them. When they were again stiff and the color of coffee and concrete then they’d disappear from the fence and appear on Bill. Bill treated his new Easter finery the same way. He has since apparently disappeared for good. Months have gone by and Bill hasn’t made an appearance, which is probably bad news for Bill. After three months the landlord emptied the trash bins of Bill’s cans.
Bill once found a wallet in the street still fat with credit cards and twenty dollars. Bill had the landlord get in touch with the owner. The owner came and got his wallet which was as plump as it was when he’d lost it and he gave Bill the twenty dollars. The next day the wallet’s owner returned and gave Bill a couple hundred dollars and if I remember correctly he rented for him a room for a night at the motel near here. The same motel from which, last year, went a husband and wife and some children who had been living there for several months, walked down the street, past our own, inexplicably nude, leaving behind in their motel room the dead body of another one of their children, exorcised of life which they had mistaken for a demon and tortured out of her.
Bill confused the landlord, showing off the couple of hundred dollars worth of cigarettes he’d purchased, which he stowed in the trash bins, used mainly for trading.
I once found online the account of a Concentration camp survivor, wrote at length what it was like with the approach of the US and USSR troops and the fleeing of the Nazis, who shed their uniforms and went a few miles back home, put the civilian life camouflage on over the military, hid in the wide open air and waited with the rest, all welcoming smiles. The survivor was wandering with other survivors, weakened by captivity and rare and bad food, confused by the sudden change, at their resurrection from the dead, survivors who were as disinterested in him as he was in them, and during their initial wandering they were invited for a farm house meal by a man and his wife. As he and the others sat eating he realized the host was one of the officials at the Death Camp, jovial now, serving them, piling food on them when a couple of days before he’d still been killing them. And the survivors, realizing who he was, instead of attacking the officer, eating the good food at his table, laughed at the jokes and said thanks for the potatoes and meat, not knowing what in the hell else to do. Shocked by a world going topsy-turvy. When the meal was done they shook the fake civilian’s hand and returned to the road. The survivor outlined his weeks of wandering, walking himself back to life, and I gained a better picture of the chaos, the people looking for an old home that no longer was, after a while remembered relatives and started to look for them, lost seeking the lost in a Europe that seemed less like nations than houses blasted and jumbled together by a several year long hurricane.
In school we were taught that the US troops rode in. There was liberation. We were shown pictures of townsfolk celebrating the arrival of US troops, of prisoners lined up behind fences waiting release, lying on bunks. One imagined an immediate translation of liberated prisoners to hospital wards with three meals a day, clean sheets, warm baths, the Andrews Sisters in nursing caps bouncing their curls off their shoulders, breaking into impromptu song while taking temps.
My husband had a great Uncle. One of the Black Sheep Uncles. Who my husband liked best. An alligator trapper in the bayou who was missing several fingers. Whispers of his being a morphine addict. There were the church-going, Assembly of God, in good stead with Christ members of the family. And there were the tubercular alcoholics who joked and told stories and purchased and gave candy to the nieces and nephews rather than church judgments. And then the whispers of the morphine addict Uncle.
I knew he had served in WWII. Had been a POW as well, but not much was said about this.
It bothered me that I knew Ezra was in the war and had been a POW but no one could tell me anything else about it.
I did a little research and found out that Ezra was in the 509th Parachute Infantry Batallion, which was the first American Unit to parachute into combat in November of 1942.
Ezra grew up in Louisiana. I could be wrong but I doubt he had traveled much before going off to war.
On Feb 29 1944 he was taken prisoner and was a POW at the infamous Stalag 2B, well known for being the worst of the German POW camps. Towards the end of the war the camp was evacuated and the POWs spent the next two months marching.
From http://darbysrangers.tripod.com/id64.htm
EVACUATION & LIBERATION: On 28 January 1945, POW received German instructions to be ready to evacuate camp at 0800 hours the following morning. Upon receipt of these instructions, the MOC set up a plan of organization based on 25-man groups and 200 man companies with NCOs in charge. On the day of the evacuation, however, POW were moved out of camp in such a manner that the original plan was (of) little assistance. German guards ordered POW to fall out of the barracks. When 1200 men had assembled on the road, the remaining 500 were allowed to stay in the barracks. A disorganized column of 1200 marched out into the cold and snow. The guards were considerate, and Red Cross food was available. After the first day, the column was broken down into three groups of 400 men each, with NCOs in charge of each group.
For the next three months, the column was on the move, marching an average of 22 kilometers a day 6 days a week. German rations were neither regular nor adequate. At almost every stop Sgt McMahan bartered coffee, cigarettes or chocolate for potatoes which he issued to the men. Bread the most important item, was not issued regularly. When it was needed most it was never available. The soup was, as a rule, typical, watery German soup, but several times POW got a good, thick dried-pea soup. Through the activity of some of the key NCO’s, Red Cross food was obtained from POW camps passed; by the column on the march. Without it, it is doubtful that the majority of men could have finished the march. The ability of the men to steal helped a lot. The weather was atrocious. It always seemed to be either bitter cold or raining or snowing. Quarters were usually unheated barns and stables. Sometimes they slept unsheltered o the ground; and sometimes they were fortunate enough to find a heated barn.
Except for one period when Red Cross food was exhausted and guards became surly, morale of the men remained at a high level. Practically all the men shaved at every opportunity and kept their appearance as neat as possible under the circumstances.
From time to time weak POW would drop out of the column and wait to be picked up by other columns which were on the move. Thus at Dahlen on 6 & 7 March, the column dwindled to some 900 American POW. On 19 March at Tramm, 800 men were sent to work on Kommandos, leaving only 133 POW who were joined a week later by the Large Kommando Company from Lauenberg. On 13 April the column was strafed by 4 Spitfires near Dannenberg. Ten POW were killed. The rest of the column proceeded to Marlag 10C, Westertimke, where they met the men they had left behind at Stalag IIB who had left on 18 February, reached Stalag 10B after an easy 3 day trip, and then moved adjacent Marlag 10C on 16 April. Westertimke was liberated by the British on 28 April 1945.
There is a report that July 11 1945 Ezra was reported as living. I don’t know what happened to him in the final days of the war, and in the couple of months between liberation and when he was reported as living. I have seen the report of another individual also part of the 98 North African Theater in Italy who was also in Stalag 2B who was reported as living over a month before Ezra was. Where Ezra was between liberation and when he was reported alive, I don’t know. Was he a Pynchon character journeying back from the underworld, walking until he found his name again. Was he lying in a hospital, unidentified. Where was he? I don’t know, only that the war left him in bad shape.
Ezra didn’t talk about his experiences. All my husband knew was that he’d been a POW and his mother mentioned he’d gotten a Purple Heart. I sent her what I’d found on Ezra and she wrote back this maybe explained his being in and out of the hospital for years following WWII. Psychiatric problems. Ezra was 31 when he was taken prisoner so he had gone into the war probably as a man who’d had some idea of a life he’d wanted to lead and had been pursuing. Or maybe not. He returned home and I get the idea he was viewed as kind of a puzzle, people not getting the connection between the ward and the war, it seems, Uncle Ezra just not able to get with the game. And then the morphine addiction thing. He had married one of the nurses he met. They had one son about a year or two after the war ended. “Pride and joy”. Y’know. And one can well imagine, I think. Ezra taking to the bayou to fish and trap alligators, spending his time out in the boat, away from people, married to a nurse who perhaps he found was able to listen, their having a child, and the cliched “pride and joy” of a son being not so cliched.
When he was 19, young son, on his job for the telephone company, was hit by a car and killed.
I don’t want to imagine.
Ezra’s wife died about 12 years later. Ezra lived a year and a half longer and died at age 65.
I don’t know if Ezra was brave. I don’t know what kind of soldier he was. I don’t know anything about him really, other than the fact he was my husband’s favorite uncle, that he and his wife were funny and nice, and that my husband enjoyed visiting him as a child, at their house “way way out” in the bayou.
Before I learned about Ezra and the war, my husband and I used to joke about Ezra, who I’d never met, having lost his fingers trapping alligators. We didn’t know if he’d lost his fingers while trapping alligators but had assumed it. Learning about the war, I’m not so sure now. I have two photos of Ezra just after he’d entered the military, in uniform, the image where he’s standing military straight for the memory book ruined with what looks like a light leak in the camera. I have also two photos taken in the early 70s. He was a skinny man at 60, tanned about as dark as the light brown polyester shirt he was wearing, looking less like his lighter-skinned siblings who were still living and more like his Cherokee-Chahta great-grandmother whose father never got with the program either, wanted to fish and hunt rather than farm and so his white relations called him “Lazy Ward” and for a time every descendant who took after him was nick-named after him.
In the photos, Ezra’s whole hand rests at his side, his left hand conspiculously jammed deep in his dark brown polyester pants pocket, hiding the missing fingers from view.
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Big Brass Alliance, After Downing Street blogswarm
May 31st, 2005 |Posted In: General, Social Studies (the big grab bag)
Idyllopus joined up on the Big Brass Alliance. What’s the Big Brass Alliance?–those who may happen upon this site from outside progressive blog world may ask? The Big Brass Alliance was formed in May 2005 as a collective of progressive bloggers who support After Downing Street, a coalition of veterans’ groups, peace groups, and political activist groups formed to urge that the U.S. Congress launch a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.
Interested in helping raise a ruckus?
Read the following succinctly put by Shakespeare’s Sister who posts on After Downing Street here:
1. After Downing Street is a Coalition of veterans’ groups, peace groups, and political activist groups, which launched on May 26, 2005, a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The campaign focuses on evidence that recently emerged in a British memo containing minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security officials.
2. The name is a reference to the Downing Street Memo, a British memo recently made public in the London Times, which contained the minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security officials.
3. After Downing Street reports: In response to the release of the memo, “John Bonifaz, a Boston attorney specializing in constitutional litigation, sent a memo to Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, urging him to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry directing the House Judiciary Committee to launch a formal investigation into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House to impeach President Bush. Bonifaz’s memo, made available today at www.AfterDowningStreet.org, begins: ‘The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution.’”
4. Congressman Conyers is now seeking 100,000 signatures to sign a letter on the Downing Street Inquiry. Information available at Raw
Story and dKos.
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Shakespeare’s Sister sends along also the following information from a Juan Cole, Salon articleThe lies that led to war. Seems immediately after 9/11 Bush wanted to go hit Iraq and that Blair had to remind him the priorities were al-Quida, Afghanistan and the Taliban.
“Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.
Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004 report, “The Path to War.” Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner at the White House, “attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice,” where “Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. ‘Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq,’ Meyer remembers.” When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq. Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an “Iraq first” policy in Washington.
Meyer told Vanity Fair, “Blair came with a very strong message — don’t get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban.” He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq. But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, “Bush said, ‘I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.’” Meyer also said, in spring 2004, that it was clear “that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn’t be to discuss smarter sanctions.” In short, Meyer strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.”
Iraq in exchange for Afghanistan.
Food for oil. Afghanistan for Iraq.
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Again. Please go sign Congressman John Conyers’ Downing Street Memo Inquiry letter here. 100,000 signatures are needed.
Set, “But it won’t make any difference,” aside for a moment and just do it.
Please.
Sometime I still write fiction. Sometimes I still write poems. Below is a piece I wrote that has been sitting in the computer for a couple years. A “song” I thought I’d go ahead and self publish now.
Emerald City Blues – A Bone Song
When they spoke of inland seas, ancient ferns, trilobites and dinosaurs, it was before the frozen multi-colored map of the then-Now, the political U.S., indivisible stars and bars representing the 48 plus Steward’s permafrost Folly and Ukulele-land , all ages of earth depicted in refrigerated geographies, so that Kansas in its sovereign statehood owned that mosasaur, and guess-who in its sovereign statehood produced this Araucarioxylon arizonicum. They forgot to talk about plate tectonics, of Rodinia preceding a place which was Pangaea, split itself, demented, misplaced where East meets West, then inadvertently rediscovered itself in a Spanish revival of Noah’s Columbine dove sent out to probe from where the trickster raven didn’t return.
“Oh beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain.
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.”
Them bones. Them stones. A highway under construction becomes an archeologist’s dig, so everywhere one looks in this vast desert, defying the apparent barren, are them bones, them stones. Where there once was water, the flood withdrawn, earth dry again, there are rocks, there are bones. Where bones were sometimes hidden, by others given a rest from all seasons, there lie exposed, uprooted, as a harvest planted in the dark of the moon, potatoes and carrots and turnips and bones. Bone to eat with, bone to drink with, bone which lived under all our houses, bone a pavement under my feet. From land’s end to land’s end, where salt oceans washed over wind-rustled shark-toothed buttes, and mammoth swamps exhaled birds, condensing coal forests, there are bones. Milk marina earth for oil, come up with bone; put on the tired, old dinosaur suit and clown around it’s all right children, nothing here but us bones, go back to your books regurgitating Chronus’ Old World gods onto the Formica wood of your new world school desks, back, way back, no, further back, back it out of the high octane myth of America, across the ocean, back it out of Europe, beyond the Christian plague, the Roman muscle-brain gymnasiums, back it right up to twilight myths of ancient Ophian leviathan twining about the Pelasgian cosmic egg, while we dig these old bones, a tooth out of a bad gum, replacing your New World American bones with Old World Classics wrapped in leather on a bookshelf out of which Pyrrha’s ancestors descend, springing to literary life once again with every cold stone turned over your educated shoulder. Keep those car engines idling, we’ll have these bones tamed into metaphor before your morning coffee cools, and the highway will proceed as planned.
“Oh beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress.
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.”
The Daughters of the American Revolution, progeny of dispossessed royalty one and all (“…taking refuge in America…”), produce the staff of Moses their ancestors bore. Dispossessed, yes, but by God, most certainly, for them to find peace-on-earth, good-will-to-all. Thus came to the priestly city of Salem, gave thanks for the divine dispensation of Smallpox which cleared the way before them of Adam-savage Redmen (“Who is the color of earth is closer to the Fallen, is the color of sin and childish intellect”), leaving whole villages and fields of Three Sisters ripened corn and squash and beans for the taking. Three cheers and a tithe for the colonial Angel of Death. Tame the wilderness, subdue the earth, make improvements, Moses leading, Westward ho, how to fit the map of Europe over the face of the New World so it’s familiar domesticated moo-cattle instead of giant free-ranging herds of bison, so it’s the cross of Christ’s shadow stretching over the plains replacing days of free-ranging herds of bison, and New Salem, New London and Paris in every county millimeter-measured to a surveyor’s satisfaction. What’s your name, is it Peggy or Sue? Amerigo Vespuciland? The Great American Sahara romances Abraham’s untold sands state-side. The Greek parthenon gives class to Tennessee. Rome moves to Georgia. And finally, when there is no more land to take, the Indians reserved, bison, condor and eagle slaughtered, where natural resources meet their end, and Kali does the hot dance with fornia, for the children of the great migration into new India, transplanted and ever disenfranchised, ever looking for a familiar neighborhood and the haven which never quite materialized, make a Main Street USA, miniature America, the perfected hometown, (Go to Shopping, Go to Dining, View your Wish List); visit friendly, nonthreatening woodland animals in Critter Country (Go to Shopping, Go to Dining, View your Wish List); experience the nostalgia of the last horizon in Frontierland, the nostalgia of adrenaline in Adventureland, the nostalgia of brave new lands to mow in Tomorrowland (Go to Shopping, Go to Dining, View your Wish List); and to watch over it all, Sleeping Beauty’s magic, sort-of-towering, faux-rock European castle where her story is told in a charming, miniature Corporate World diorama.
Where bigger is better, It’s a Small World. Getting smaller and smaller, cut down to size, nice and manageable-like, the mechanical puppets in ethnic attire hold hands and sing in Fantasyland. Fence up the savages and it’s a perfect family trip from sea to shining sea, the melting pot. Plunge in. Emerge transfigured by the great American dream.
“Oh beautiful for heroes proved
in liberating strife
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life
America! America! May god their gold refine
Till all success be nobleness, and ev’ry gain divine.”
“Gold,” was the whisper. Snaking its way down the north Georgia creeks. Damming the rivers. The beavers nick their teeth on it. Gold. Mountains of gold. Valleys of gold. Gold in them there hills. Black Hills. Sun’s rays spilled upon the earth become gold. Give me your tired your hungry your meek who will inherit the earth your Spanish investors conquistadors thirsty for god’s water, Coronado, Cortes, Juan Ponce de Leon, what’s-his-name who survived the Civil War, went from Missouri to California, wrote, “Struck it rich! I’m coming home!” what happened to him, no one knows, took a detour to Mexico they speculate and was killed for all that gold, gold, slain by Montezuma’s ghost no doubt. Gold which tells fortunes, forecasts a fountain of youth, eternity bubbling its yellow heart, one sip and it’s Midas frozen flesh for all time. Finding boxes of bones covered with deer skins, feather head dresses and whispers of gold, it was asked, “Where are these things obtained?” At “Apalachen.” Very far away. At Apalachen. At Apalachen where was maize and more maize. No gold. Just maize.
And probably bone.
Life for the living and death valley for the birds, where is mother is also the supposed barren grave. Such a wealth of desert articulates a contradiction of terms, except a speculator knew a deal when he saw one and seized even the horizon here.
“Oh beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years.
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brother hood
From sea to shining sea.”
Perhaps once a week, time now to read music. Pass out more schoolbooks, rarely used, raw with scent of ink and chemicals, crisp open, spine stiff, bleached white shine of paper upon which was music for reading, the strings of the staff soundless plunked by mute minds. Verses printed beneath. Hymns for schools. “Our country tis of thee” “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light” and other culturally relevant ditties: “This land is my land, this land is your land, from California to the New York Island…” “Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy? Billy Boy?” The teacher’s pitch pipe buzzes. Train of voice, staggered and weak, leaves the station. Teacher pilots a wavering melody. Map in hand she goes and sons and daughters of free men, stolen men and slave women, tears of treaty children question together can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, tasting no cherries, maybe the teacher grasps the significance of Billy, the pie. Can she make a feather bed, Billy Boy, Billy boy, Can she make a feather bed, charming Billy? Yes she can make a feather bed, while a-standing on her head, She’s a young thing, and cannot leave her mother. How old is she, Billy Boy? Twice six, twice seven, three times twenty an’ eleven. Pitch pipe buzz. Go Tell Aunt Rhody The old grey goose is dead. The one that she’s been savin’ To make a feather bed. She died in the millpond From standin’ on her head. Pitch pipe and read text guess melody in the train of teacher. She leads, impatient foot tapping a waxed linoleum heartbeat, irregular, senile, songs filled with bones, This land is my land this land is your land.
See the New World painted on the paper world of treaties tossed by righteous freedom. “So real you’ll think you’re there!” From Kansas buttes to Emerald City Missile Silo Blues beyond the wild prairie grass turned to poppy sleep and dream forever beneath yellow wheat roads, a personal history of the universe, the little I’ve observed, even less that I’ve critically absorbed with any success, which as far as you could be concerned has nothing to do with you, and you’re quite possibly right. But that’s where I grew up. And that’s where I grew up. That’s where I slept. My towns, my schools, all my teachers. Places and people which prepared me for my life, to live my life, life being that which happened to adults, orderly actions, contemplations, acknowledgements and reflections, whatever came beyond the magic threshold between legal adult and minor player. Given tools. The most important thing, to have the king’s English and good tools. The life one was supposed to make of them I no longer recollect. But I remember that sidewalk, remember that flower, remember that cloud. Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy?—remember that too.
There were trees then, which someone’s god began to mow down, clearing a path for the highway. Old growth trees in stands so thick if you held your hand before your face you couldn’t see it, only the densest black, unfathomable. Look out this ship’s screen door into the predawn dense ocean blue, into the blackest black of a remnant stand of oaks across the railroad track, sinking through the depths past sharks and great barnacled, moaning whales, time tsunami curves with the quake of the first felled tree so millions of years and life forms fleeing from the impact of that great concussion leave me at silent chasm’s edge, sound moving slower than the light which will always be striking right about now, which is how I can remember the cracks and groans of Thunderbird and Whale’s struggle, muffled, in bones and stones. A collision of worlds within worlds. That is how these universes began, what I’m talking about. Couldn’t see the forest for the leaves, as they say. Say too, some, that, as with the Cedars of Lebanon, one day all the trees will be gone and that’s when the universe will end, because the trees went on forever, which is why others say instead there are as many trees now as there ever were because there is no end to them. To find the forever green, primordial forests of the giants, what you must do is cross the great desert, and if you keep on going, one day you will find them, like a New World. New World of old growth. Like a legendary hero in search of the end of the world, over the great desert ocean, walk on, walk on, though if the trees continue being felled, as they have, then it will be impossible to reach the other side ever. And the ancients will live.
Everyone else can say, “What do I care about an old pancake house!” and move along. This is the pancake house on George Washington Highway, 1967, in Richland, Washington. I loved that pancake house. We took a picture of it when we were leaving Richland because it was one of the favored places where the family went out to eat (which is going to happen when there are four children). We usually sat at a large circular table to the far middle left of the restaurant (as you’re facing the picture) and I’d take my school books with me and while waiting read stories on things like the fjords of Norway. The brothers and sister were usually totally obnoxious with someone whining and fighting. As the eldest, I was above that.
But from what I hear, no one was worse in a restaurant than my husband’s middle brother.
One of the reasons the quality of the pic is so poor is that at the time ColorCraft (where’d they go) was having this special deal where you’d get not only your picture but a teensy-tiny little bonus wallet copy attached at the side. About one and a quarter by two inches. This is from that bonus pic.
There is no other picture online of the pancake house on George Washington Highway, 1967, Richland, Washington.
Here they are. Mid 20th century Kansans in Lawrence, believers in evolution. I’m the one with the recessive genes. (For some reason, my son has been begging to see pics of me when I was a baby. So I unearthed the few that I have.)
Listening to “The Essential…”
Hope you’re familiar with. Music to drive to. Music to cry to. I’m wanting a long road trip into the desert moon mountains.
The Human Rights record of the US.
I have met few people who don’t look upon the NDN Sacrifice as a necessary stepping stool to the great illustrious Free America with Equal Rights for All. Which makes no sense but that hardly matters. When pressed the reponse will eventually be a frank, “To the winner go the spoils.”
There are those who have an intimate acquaintance with America’s dismal record on human rights. And there are those who have a historical acquaintance and ethical interest. The minds of some go first to the grievous history here of African American slavery and subsequent fight for civil rights, others will think of the School of the Americas, others will remember the Phillipines, or the Japanese Interment Camps of WWII. Some minds will automatically trace all and include the war on “third world” nations by the global corporate so energetically championed by the U.S.
To the winner go the spoils. On my kitchen table sits “The Battle of the Washita”, a book that my landlord dropped by earlier this week because he knows for some reason I have an interest in NDN rights and history.
To the winner go the spoils. Below is something I wrote once, which I partly extracted from some fiction of mine, Little America, one of those things which will never see the light of day, and so I pulled from one chapter a few parts which I refigured and made into a slim and tidy essay that has been sitting in my computer files for a couple years because I don’t believe it quite works as an essay, but will publish it anyway. Will follow tomorrow with another something I wrote that is denser. Won’t make a habit it of it, I promise.
Anyway, I don’t think America’s going to get much of anything right until it faces its true record on human rights and theft. Today is nothing new. It’s the old dressed up in new faces and places.
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As for those who get all pumped up over Darwin’s Survival of the Fiscal Fittest and respective gene pools being an automatic feather in the cap, signal of success, make ourselves badges of honor just for breathing, each individual’s flesh and bone body bag declaring expressly the might of their lineage, it might do well to reflect on the means, that heritage’s sometime food, and whether the iconic patriarchal king on the hill deserves crown to be cracked, body rolled down and into the nearest hole in the ground. As in there were some how many million American Indians–residing in what are now the 48 contiguous states of America–when Columbus arrived (a conservative estimate) in 1472 and four centuries later but two hundred and thirty-seven thousand remained for the official count. Which means–what? What does it mean?
Columbus returns in 1493 with a force of 17 ships and within three years five million Caribbean Taino were dead.
200 remained after fifty years, victims of slavery and mass-extermination, gourmand sadistic cruelties such as chronicled by contemporaneous historian, Las Casas: mass hangings, spit roastings, children hacked up for dog food.
What does it mean?
Well, you know, it was the times, the way people thought back then, can’t compare them to modern society, no way.
Son of a soldier who accompanied Columbus, Las Casas was the first priest consecrated in the colonies and was on hand to offer, just prior to Chief Hatuey’s being burned to death, hope of salvation to the Chief who had, impertinent, led opposition against the Spanish. Would Hatuey embrace Christianity? Hatuey asked were there white men in the Christian’s heaven? Yes? Then no, he would not go again to a place where he would find men so cruel. Las Casas’ witness of those cruelties led him to begin a crusade against mistreatment of the Indians such as exemplified in encomienda and repartimiento, the institutions by which lands were commended to settlers and Indians forced to work those lands. Las Casas’ efforts eventually resulted in the promulgation of the Nuevas Leyes de 1542, but the new laws, too late for five million Taino, were flouted by greedy settlers. Hell, they were probably made to be flouted by greedy settlers. A smokescreen.
Could be a folk song.
A man of his time
A man of his time
Can’t blame a man for being a man of his time
If hindsight looks too cruel
Well you can always say
He was a man of his time
Can’t blame a man for living well in soulless times.A man of his time
A man of his time
Can’t blame a man for being a victim of his time
You know it weren’t his fault
You can always say
He was a victim of his time
Blame the time and not the laws he made.A man of our time
A man of our time
Can’t blame a man for living well in soulless times
It’s not against the law
That’s what the good men say
And if it was then don’t you know
We’d have some new laws right away.
Don’t hear anyone much talking about Hitler being a man of his time.
There are other less heralded events of Darwinian rightenousness, not so grand in scale, no less brutal, no less harrowing. Just for an instance, there was a children’s Christmas party in Calumet, Michigan, 1913, which may only be known by the few aware of it through Woody Guthrie’s song “1913 Massacre.” The children at the Christmas party were sons and daughters of striking copper miners. Now, how do you get those striking suckers back? Shout fire. Company thugs shouted “Fire!” and seventy-three children perished in the crush at the exits, which the company thugs blocked. Those particular gene packets Darwin would consider failures, couldn’t cut it, didn’t have the strength to brand a descendant legacy with the do what it takes oomph of the victors, such as the company thugs who barricaded the doors, one supposes.
Seventy-three dead children and not a single body charred beyond recognition. And it doesn’t have to not scream the imagination, the excavation of those stairwells, seventy-three dawn of life faces cold as the December air they’d never breathe again, for a person to be a willing, righteous agent of his times.
Hell, what can you do sometimes but write a song. Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote Now That The Buffalo’s Gone. Leadbelly did Bourgeois Blues. Aunt Molly Jackson sang Ragged Hungry Blues. Woody Guthrie did Ludlow Massacre. And Sarah Ogan Gunning came right out and said, I Hate the Capitalist System (retitled I Hate the Company Bosses).
Envy, envy, envy, says the gentleman in the front row. Says that just because a corporate giant has more doesn’t mean anyone else has less. Says, “Lazy.”
To which Sarah Ogan Gunning, from the grave, still says as to the death of her mother,
I had a darlin’ mother,
For her I often cry.
But with them rotten conditions
My mother had to die.Well, what killed your mother?
I hear those bosses say.
Dead of hard work an’ starvation,
My mother had to pay.Well, what killed your mother?
Oh tell us if you please.
Excuse me, it was pellagry,
That starvation disease.They call this the land of plenty,
To them I guess it’s true.
But that’s to the company bosses,
Not workers like me an’ you.“I Hate the Capitalist System” Sarah Ogan Gunning
Preceding verses deal with the death of Sarah Ogan’s first husband, a coal miner, and a blue-eyed baby of theirs. Yeah, yeah, suppose one could say it was ornery of Sarah lording it over people the way she did. In the wallet of the Big Gun’s is Christ their lord god’s son avowal that the poor shall always be with us. And television stars say money doesn’t make a person happy, you can be poor and happy too, you just need to make a gratitude journal.
“Dear God. I want to thank you for blessing me with lots of good stuff. I must be doing something right. Am glad you saw fit to recognize my righteousness and hard work.”
I guess what nearly twelve million American Indians didn’t do right is they didn’t get guns and gunpowder until it was too late.
Guess what seventy-three Calumet, Michigan children did wrong was go to a Christmas party. Or maybe it began instead with their being born into the wrong families. They chose it, some with a Direct Line to the Big Plan would say, chose that end. Before they were born they chose those families, chose that life, chose to have their young lives smothered in a stairwell. They didn’t know this, of course. Because you don’t remember having made those choices until after you die.
There were parents who didn’t scramble with their children for the exits. Who remained upstairs, in the hall. Said there is no fire. Listened to-what? What is the death sound of a suffocated, crushed child multiplied by seventy-three? What did the children who were held upstairs hear, safe in arms?
Guess what Sarah Ogan Gunning’s husband, and millions of others didn’t do right is they didn’t get the right line of work if they had to work themselves to death in a world which broadcasts itself as ripe with riches.
As I went walking down Peacock Street
No clothes on my back,
No shoes on my feet,
I was hungry and cold,
It was late in the fall,
I knocked down some old big shot,
Took all his clothes, money and all.
O tell me how long must I wait for a job?
I don’t like to steal,
I don’t like to rob…“Crossroad Skully” Molly Jackson
When it’s so stark, when spring is green and singing but it’s global winter, trees dark and barren not feeding the pantry shelves and icebox and spirits worn hard out and dry, body gravitating hard toward the ground from whence it came, what’s a soul to do for fuel? Convert music to muscle, to chocolate and butter, Aunt Molly Jackson singing, as Guthrie said, songs that she used to make sweethearts lose their bashfulness, the husband and the wife go back to their bed, the lonesome ones take up a new heart, and the older ones to be in body and action as quick, as funny, as limber and as wise as the younguns coming up. Pistol Packin’ Mamma, Aunt Molly Jackson.
Said John Steinbeck, “You can burn books, buy newspapers…guard against pamphlets, but you cannot prevent singing.”
A man of our time
A man of our time
Can’t blame a man for living well in soulless times
It’s not against the law
That’s what the good men say
And if it was then don’t you know
We’d have some new laws right away.
Indian massacre
Stone Bridge writes on another massacre here, The Massacre of the Washita
The following from Shakespeare’s Sister. Rather than paraphrase I give the message in its entirety:
Hello, fellow bloggers.
In response to the move by After Downing Street (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/), who are looking for additional groups to support their formal inquiry into the possibility that Bush committed impeachable offenses in making the case for the Iraq War, and as a follow-up discussion that took place in response to this post (http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2005/05/this-could-get-interestingfinally.html) at Shakespeare’s Sister, we’re forming the Big Brass Alliance of bloggers in association with Big Brass Blog (http://www.bigbrassblog.com).
There is a post here: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2005/05/big-brass-alliance.html listing the bloggers who have noted their interest in participation; I’m emailing you because I thought you might want to participate as well.
If you do, please leave a comment in the thread of that post, or email me a response. If you don’t, please forgive the email.
And if you can think of other bloggers who I didn’t include, of course, please feel free to pass on the email or link to the post. Any assistance in raising awareness would be very appreciated.
Best regards,
Melissa McEwan
Shakespeare’s Sister
This is just a posting of the statement of William Schulz. Am giving the statement in its entirety rather than a link simply ’cause I like it–though it could have been issued earlier–and I have embedded links to more information.
With the failure of the US government to conduct independent investigations on torture, when other governments are called upon to take on International Jurisdiction and do so then arrest US officials who come upon their territory, well, my heart warms, and I think at least an official distress call has been sent out to the world at large. Not that there haven’t been many voices or other organizations that haven’t been protested long and loud. But at times, in discourse and in blogs, one begins to feel the descent into gameland, when it is no strategical, virtual chess game that’s being waged. Even some of the lefty American public seems not to have completely absorbed that we’re dealing with murderers and torturers here who don’t play nice and tidy by the rules. They make up their own rules as they go along, which we should all be only too aware of by now. This is their game, not ours, and they’re dragging us along only because we provide the necessary man power for them to carry out their plans. Otherwise they would have ditched us all long ago in some obscure field off a remote highway.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Source: AmnestyUSA.org
Annual Report
Statement Of Dr. William F. Schulz Executive Director, Amnesty International USA
May 25, 2005
Good morning. I’m William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. Today, Amnesty International releases its annual report on the state of human rights around the world. What we have found brings shame to governments from Afghanistan to the United States. We have documented that the use of torture and ill treatment is widespread and that the US government is a leading purveyor and practitioner of this odious human rights violation.
The refusal of the US government to conduct a truly independent investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention centers is tantamount to a whitewash, if not a cover-up, of these disgraceful crimes. It is a failure of leadership to prosecute only enlisted soldiers and a few officers while protecting those who designed a deliberate government policy of torture and authorized interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The government’s investigation must climb all the way to the top of the military and civilian chain of command.
If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned in 2002 that a failure to apply international law to detainees in Afghanistan may “provoke some individual foreign prosecutors to investigate and prosecute our officials and troops.” It’s not too late for President Bush to heed those words today and apply international law to all who are responsible for torture at all US detention centers.
Secretary Powell also argued at the time that adhering to international law “preserves US credibility and moral authority by taking the high ground.”
How far from that moral high ground the US government has fallen: Its descent into torture and ill treatment includes beatings, prolonged restraint in painful positions, hooding and the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Base and “rendering” detainees to countries that practice torture.
Tolerance for torture and ill treatment, signaled by a failure to investigate and prosecute those responsible, is the most effective encouragement for it to expand and grow. Like a virus, the techniques used by the United States will multiply and spread unless those who plotted their use are held accountable. Those who conducted the abusive interrogations must be held to account, but so too must those who schemed to authorize those actions, sometimes from the comfort of government buildings. If the United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free, then other nations should step into the breach.
Foreign governments that are party to the Geneva Conventions and/or the Convention against Torture—and that is some 190 countries—and countries that have national legislation that authorizes prosecution—and that is at least 125 countries—have a legally binding obligation to exercise what is known as universal jurisdiction over people accused of grave breaches of the Conventions. Governments are required to investigate suspects and, if warranted, to prosecute them or to extradite them to a country that will. Crimes such as torture are so serious that they amount to an offense against all of humanity and require governments to investigate and prosecute people responsible for those crimes—no matter where the crime was committed.
Amnesty International’s list of those who may be considered high-level torture architects includes Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted such unlawful interrogation techniques as stress positions, prolonged isolation, stripping, and the use of dogs at Guantanamo Bay; William Haynes, the Defense Department General Counsel who wrote that memo, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is cited in the memo as concurring with its recommendations.
Our list includes Major General Geoffrey Miller, Commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, whose subordinates used some of the approved torture techniques and who was sent to Iraq where he recommended that prison guards “soften up” detainees for interrogations; former CIA Director George Tenet, whose agency kept so-called “ghost detainees” off registration logs and hidden during visits by the Red Cross and whose operatives reportedly used such techniques as water-boarding, feigning suffocation, stress positions, and incommunicado detention.
And it includes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete” in a January 2002 memo and who requested the memos that fueled the atrocities at Abu Ghraib; Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former Commander of US Forces in Iraq, and Sanchez’ deputy, Major General Walter Wojdakowsi, who failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations at Abu Ghraib, according to the military’s Fay-Jones report, and Captain Carolyn Wood, who oversaw interrogation operations at Bagram Air Base and who permitted the use of dogs, stress positions and sensory deprivation.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list of those who deserve investigation, we would be remiss if we ignored President George W. Bush’s role in the scandal. After all, his Administration has repeatedly justified its detention and interrogation policies as legitimate under the President’s powers as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. And President Bush signed a February 2002 memo stating that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Taliban or al Qaeda detainees and that their humane treatment should be contingent on “military necessity.” This set the stage for the tragic abuses of detainees.
Without full and impartial investigations of all key players, the torture scandal will come to be as indelibly associated with the Bush Presidency as Teapot Dome is with Warren Harding’s or Watergate with Richard Nixon’s.
What’s more, it is the height of hypocrisy for the US government itself to use the very torture techniques that it routinely condemns in other countries.
The Bush Administration, which saw fit in its most recent “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” to criticize Syria for administering electric shocks, appears to have used the same torture technique in the war on terror. Amnesty International took testimony, for example, from Mohammad al Dossari, who alleged that US soldiers subjected him to electric shocks, death threats, assault and humiliation in Kandahar.
The Bush Administration cited Egypt for beating victims with fists, whips and metal rods. And yet US Major Michael Smith testified at an administrative review hearing last year that an autopsy of a captured Iraqi general revealed he had suffered five broken ribs that were “consistent with blunt force trauma, that is, either punching, kicking or striking with an object or being thrown into an object.”
When the US government then calls upon foreign leaders to bring to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen? And if the US government does not abide by the same standards of justice, what shred of moral authority will we retain to pressure other governments to diminish abuses?
It is far past time for President Bush to prove that he is not covering up the misdeeds of senior officials and political cronies who designed and authorized these nefarious interrogation policies.
Congress must appoint an impartial and independent commission to investigate the masterminds of the atrocious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers, and President Bush should use the power of his office to press Congress to do so. Attorney General Gonzales must appoint an independent Special Counsel to conduct criminal investigations into administration officials, including himself, who are suspected of having committed, assisted, authorized, or condoned these abuses or had command responsibility for them. Such investigations must apply to both military and civilian officials who may be complicit in these crimes.
It is inexcusable that the few military higher-ups who have been held accountable have received the equivalent of a parental time out for their wrongdoing, among them Col. Thomas Pappas, the top military intelligence officer stationed at Abu Ghraib in 2003, who was given only a reprimand and a fine amounting to one month’s pay.
Even worse, for President Bush to promote and reward those who should be investigated makes a mockery of the principles of justice on which this nation was founded. Those who were rewarded include Gonzales, promoted from White House Counsel to the highest law enforcement position in the land; Timothy Flanigan, just nominated to serve as Gonzales’ second in command and who allegedly contributed to several key legal opinions that lead to torture; Haynes, the Defense counsel who was nominated to serve on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel whose August 2002 memo argued that only interrogation techniques that cause pain that would ordinarily be associated with death or organ failure constitute torture and who was later nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Furthermore, Amnesty International calls upon state bar authorities to investigate the Administration lawyers alleged to be involved in the torture scandal for failing to meet professional responsibility standards. The attorneys who wrote various legal opinions that may have provided cover for subsequent crimes and who should be investigated include Bybee and David Addington, General Counsel to Vice President Cheney; Robert Delahunty, former Special Counsel in the Office of Homeland Security, and three attorneys in the Office of Legal Counsel—John Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Patrick Philbin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and Jack Goldsmith, former Assistant Attorney General. We also call on the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to make public the findings of its investigation into the Bybee memo.
A wall of secrecy is protecting those who masterminded and developed the US torture policy. Unless those who drew the blueprint for torture, approved it and ordered it implemented are held accountable, the United States’ once proud reputation as an exemplar of human rights will remain in tatters. Its shattered image will continue to fuel anti-American sentiment around the globe and make the world a more dangerous place.
Amnesty International’s new report documents just how dangerous the world remains.
Nepal is on the brink of catastrophe. Each day, civilians face possible torture, “disappearances,” political executions, abduction, arbitrary detention, rape and other abuses at the hands of government security forces and insurgents from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). New cases of torture are reported almost daily, and hundreds of student activists, journalists, trade unionists and human rights defenders have been arrested.
Despite the Nepali government’s poor human rights record, since 2001 the US government has provided it with more than $29 million in security assistance to fight the insurgents. Amnesty International strongly condemns the human rights violations committed by those insurgents but urges the US government to immediately suspend all security assistance to the Nepalese military until fundamental human rights protections are restored. We call on the government of Nepal to immediately release all prisoners of conscience, reinstate fundamental freedoms, and bring to justice security forces who commit abuses.
As if the tsunami disaster in Indonesia weren’t devastating enough, the human rights situation in the province of Aceh remains grave. The armed forces commit political killings, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence. The Indonesian government must prosecute and punish all those who were involved in gross human rights violations or who aided or abetted militia groups. President Bush, when he meets today with Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono, should urge him to allow human rights investigators into Aceh and seek assurances that the armed forces stationed there will not interfere with the delivery of tsunami disaster relief.
In Colombia, women and girls are caught in the crossfire of the country’s decades-long armed conflict. For example, last July more than 10 soldiers from the Fourth Brigade apparently gang-raped two girls aged 16 and 17. Some of the soldiers reportedly threatened the girls and their families after they reported the rape to the Attorney General.
In October, armed groups allegedly killed four women, one of whom was pregnant, after accusing the women of having relations with security force members. The Colombian government must do more to publicly condemn such violence, aggressively investigate its security forces, and bring perpetrators to justice. With the US providing approximately $600 million a year in security assistance to Colombia, the Bush Administration must speak out about violence against women by Colombia’s armed actors and withhold its certification of Colombia’s human rights practices until they improve.
The Administration must be resolute in pressing for an end to the killing of civilians by all parties to the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly and deliberately targeted Israeli civilians in suicide bombings, shootings and other attacks, killing some 1,000 Israelis, including 110 children, in the last four and a half years. The Israeli army and security services have killed unarmed Palestinians in repeated reckless shootings, shellings and air strikes, killing some 3,200 individuals, including more than 600 children. While Amnesty International commends Israel’s planned withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, the US government should press Israel to evacuate settlers from scores of other settlements throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Darfur region of Sudan remains in crisis, with 1.9 million people forced from their homes. The world stands idly watching, as government-sponsored militias systematically target innocent civilians for ethnic cleansing. The state of emergency permits Sudanese authorities to detain people indefinitely without charge or trial, break up peaceful demonstrations, and violate human rights under the guise of counter-insurgency. Rape, kidnapping and attacks on civilians increased just last month.
We urge President Bush to make Darfur a top priority of US foreign policy. While we welcome the President’s decision to send Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick to Darfur, he would send a far stronger message by dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the country without delay. We also call on the US government and the international community to provide support to the International Criminal Court in its investigation into the crimes committed in Darfur and to insist that all parties to the conflict cooperate with the Court.
Not all our findings are grim. Amnesty International, which has campaigned with local women’s organizations to end violence against women in Turkey, is pleased that the new Turkish Penal Code removes many of the gender-discriminatory articles of past penal codes and that towns now must establish domestic violence shelters. But more remains to be done. Amnesty International calls on Turkish authorities to create guidelines for those shelters, fund them, and conduct domestic violence training for police.
Other positive developments include the growing debate on political change in the Middle East, the US Supreme Court ruling that granted detainees in Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge their detention in US courts, which provided a check on the Administration’s overreaching, and a ruling by the British House of Lords that indefinite detention of foreign nationals suspected of being “international terrorists” violated their human rights.
Today, as we focus on the torture scandal, Amnesty International USA announces its new grassroots campaign, “Denounce Torture: Stop It Now!” Public opinion surveys have shown that Americans oppose the use of torture, and Amnesty International will work to turn that opposition into action. We will educate and mobilize tens of thousands of people around the country to take action to end torture and ill treatment and pressure the government to hold individuals accountable at all levels of the chain of command.
Mr. President, last year you said, “Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country. We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and being.”
President Bush, it is time to find out whether what you said is true and, if you did not order torture, then who did. It is time to prove that your words were not an artful cover-up of illegal actions. It is time to stop sheltering the apparent architects of torture policy, or else you will be known not for your promotion of democracy but for your perpetuation of demagoguery, not for your high mindedness but for your hypocrisy. Mr. President, tear down this wall of secrecy and silence! Thank you.
Amnesty International calls for arrest of architects of torture
May 28th, 2005 |Posted In: General, Social Studies (the big grab bag)
From Information Clearing House comes this news and and the C SPAN 3 clip.
05/26/05 “Cox News” – - WASHINGTON – Amnesty International USA urged foreign governments Wednesday to use international law to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other alleged American “architects of torture” at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and other prisons where detainees suspected of ties to terrorist groups have been interrogated.
“If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,” said William Shulz, executive director of the U.S. branch of the international human rights agency.
In its annual report on “The State of the World’s Human Rights,” Amnesty International said the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “has become the gulag of our times” and accused U.S. officials of flaunting international law in their treatment of detainees.
There is no statute of limitations on crimes such as torture, Shulz said.
So for years to come, the director warned, “the apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.”
Gen. Pinochet, a former dictator of Chile, was arrested on an international warrant issued by a Spanish judge while Pinochet was in England receiving medical treatment.
Charged with torturing Spanish citizens in Chile, he was held under house arrest in England for more than a year but eventually returned to his homeland and escaped an international trial.
If the United States “continues to shirk its responsibility” of investigating allegations of abuse to the top of the chain of command, Shulz said, foreign governments should uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved.
Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, called the charges “unsupported by the facts.”
The well-publicized abuses of detainees have been a “stain on the image of the United States abroad,” he conceded, but the exposures only reinforced the administration’s commitment to human rights.
“We hold people accountable when there is abuse,” he said.
Amnesty International’s demand for international action came as a private activist group that spans the ideological spectrum called for President Bush and Congress to appoint an independent, bipartisan panel, modeled after the Sept. 11 commission, to investigate the “various allegations of abuse of terrorist suspects.”
The group calling for appointment of such a commission ranged from former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., American Conservative Union Chairman David Keene and former Rep. Mickey Edwards, R-Okla., on the right to Thomas Pickering, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and Morton Halperin of the Center for American Progress on the left.
Pickering said his conversations during recent international travels confirmed the damage that prisoner abuse charges have done to the nation, disheartening our allies and giving ammunition to our enemies.
But others on the panel said they were not as concerned about foreign reaction as with domestic values.
“We should be opposed to this (torture) because of who we are — not what they think,” said Keene.
In issuing the Amnesty International report, Shulz specifically named those he regarded as potential “high-level torture architects.”
In addition to Rumsfeld and Gonzales, they included former CIA Director George Tenet; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq; Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo; and Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.
Shulz said the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment legally bind the countries that have signed them to exercise “universal jurisdiction” on people suspected of violations.
Certain crimes, including torture, amount to offenses against all of humanity so all countries have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute people responsible for such crimes, he said.
I’ve not seen a transcript of William Schultz’s statement of 5/25 and would like to do one but I’ve not had a chance yet. Every time I start I end up being pulled away to do something else.
The response from the White House on the 5/26 press briefing was:
Q Scott, Amnesty International report today, saying the U.S. is a top offender of human rights. Does the White House dispute that assessment?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the allegations are ridiculous and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity. We have liberated 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have worked to advance freedom and democracy in the world so that people are governed under a rule of law and that there are protection — that there are protections in place for minority rights, that women’s rights are advanced so that women can fully participate in societies where now they cannot.
Translation: And yellow is blue, the sun is the moon and dogs are cats. Torture is liberation and murder is democracy. Shut up already and go buy the new Bush Dictionary, you moron.
We’re also leading the way when it comes to spreading compassion. The United States leads the way when it comes to providing resources to combat the scourge of AIDS. The President put forward his emergency plan for AIDS relief to fight the scourge in Africa and high — other highly afflicted areas of the world. So I just think it’s ridiculous and not supported by the facts when you look at all that we do to promote human rights and promote human dignity in the world.
Q On various reports of abuse, whether it’s at Guantanamo Bay or Afghanistan, you’ve often said that those are isolated incidents. Are there any U.S. policies, though, in place currently that have lead to those isolated incidences that should be reevaluated?
MR. McCLELLAN: We are a society based on laws and values — it’s not just laws, but also values that we hold dearly. And certainly, what you bring up has been a stain on the image of the United States abroad. But if you look at how we address these matters, it shows our commitment to human rights and human dignity. We hold people accountable when there is abuse. We take steps to prevent it from happening again, and we do so in a very public way for the world to see that we lead by example, and that we do have values that we hold very dearly and believe in.
Q So the current policies aren’t contributing to the problem?
MR. McCLELLAN: No. No.
General Craddock caused the condemnation shrill and uninformed:
The general responsible for the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said on Friday Amnesty International’s “shrill” criticism of the detention of foreign terrorism suspects was uninformed.
U.S. Army Gen. John Craddock, head of Miami-based Southern Command, added that he did not expect a military inquiry into whether U.S. personnel at the jail had mishandled the Koran would show more than the five cases acknowledged on Thursday.
In its annual report on human rights worldwide, Amnesty International said the detention facility had become “the gulag of our times,” equating it to the vast, brutal Soviet system of forced labor camps in which millions of prisoners died.
“I think that’s a shrill assessment. They probably exaggerated for emphasis. I don’t want to speak for them, but I do not share that at all. I think that’s an uninformed view,” Craddock said.
The United States holds about 520 detainees at Guantanamo, most caught in Afghanistan, and has classified them as “enemy combatants” not entitled to rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
Source: U.S. general assails ‘shrill’ Guantanamo criticism
Condoleeza Rice said the call for an independent investigation was absurd and that the investigation was unnecessary.
Independent investigation of detainee abuse unnecessary, Rice says
BY WARREN P. STROBEL
Knight Ridder Newspapers
SAN FRANCISCO – (KRT) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off growing calls for an independent investigation of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and in an interview labeled as “absurd” a new Amnesty International report equating the facility with Soviet-era gulags.
Asked in an interview with Knight Ridder about an outside probe, Rice responded that it isn’t necessary.
“The United States is as open a society as you will find,” she said, and the administration is being held accountable “by a free press, by a Congress that is a separate and co-equal branch of government, and by its own expectations of what is right.”
Don’t you love that. The administration is held accountable by its own expectations of what is right. Well, god damn, isn’t that uhmmm uh, hmmmm (excuse me while I rack my brain for an appropriate phrase) uhhhh, well, hmmmm, their own expectations of what is right? Ok. Guess you can’t get any more uhm whatever than that. I’m certain those standards are y’know well…
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a close Bush ally, this week demanded an investigation of allegations that U.S. interrogators abused the Quran, the Muslim holy book, at Guantanamo Bay.
The Pentagon is investigating five instances in which the Quran may have been mishandled, but officials say they’ve found no evidence to support the incendiary charge that U.S. personnel flushed the holy book down a toilet.
Another U.S. ally, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, expressed anger over new reports of how detainees died while American forces were interrogating them in Afghanistan.
Amnesty International’s report also said that despite “near-universal outrage” over treatment of detainees, “neither the U.S. administration nor the U.S. Congress has called for a full and independent investigation.”
Rice, a Soviet scholar by training, seemed particularly indignant at Amnesty International’s calling Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our times,” a reference to the prison camps under Josef Stalin.
While the human-rights group has done important work around the world, “this is unfortunate and sad,” she said. At another point in the interview, she said, “I think it’s absurd language.”
“The United States of America is one of the strongest defenders of human rights around the world. We’ve fought hard and worked hard even in the circumstances of a new kind of war (on terrorism) to treat people humanely,” Rice said.
The secretary of state, while acknowledging that “sometimes bad things happen,” argued that the charges of Quran abuse and other violations should be put in context.
American personnel at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba have shown great respect for detainees’ religion, for example providing them with prayer mats and arrows pointing to Mecca, the direction in which Muslims turn to pray, she said.
She also expressed concern that America’s forces will be tarred unfairly by the actions of a few.
“A lot of the men and women in uniform, who people sometimes by association look at in the context of (abuses at the Iraqi prison of ) Abu Ghraib, have liberated 50 million people by their own blood and sacrifice over the last three and a half years,” she said.
Rice spoke in an interview late Thursday as she flew across the country from Washington in a small Gulfstream 5 jet, much smaller than the aircraft she uses on foreign trips. It carried five aides, four members of her security detail, seven crew members and two reporters.
The secretary of state, taking a rare vacation break, seemed relaxed and happy to be heading back to California, her adopted home.
On Friday morning, Rice, a fitness junkie, worked out with members of Stanford University’s football team, a practice she said she’d adopted when she was the university’s provost because it allowed her to exercise uninterrupted by university staff with budget demands.
On Friday, Rice spoke to the Commonwealth Club of California, outlining Bush’s second-term campaign to expand democracy around the world.
She was interrupted when two audience members, clad in black hoods and capes reminiscent of the photographs of detainees at Abu Ghraib, stood up in silent protest. They and two others were ejected from San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, chanting, “Stop the torture. Stop the killing. U.S. out of Iraq.”
Rice attempted to turn the interruption to her advantage. Freedom is coming to Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and other Muslim societies, she said, and the audience applauded. “They too will be able to speak their minds. What a wonderful thing democracy is.”
They too will be able to speak their minds and then quite often be arrested for no cause other than protest, stripped naked and made to hop around like bunnies so that the contraband of free speech, pencils and notepads, will fall out their bodily orifices. They will be humiliated, degraded, and then released and all charges eventually dropped because they have committed no crime, but there is no recalling abuse is there. Which the government knows and is what it’s counting on to control dissent. “Hey, feel like speaking your mind? Sucker! You must fuckin’ eat abuse for dinner and desert. Go ahead.”
In the interview, Rice, who’d just come from Bush’s White House meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, indicated that she’s intensely focused on Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
The withdrawal is a huge opportunity for the Palestinians to begin building their own state, the secretary of state said. But she also expressed worry about how much Abbas and others have to accomplish before the scheduled beginning of Israel’s disengagement in August.
“When we talk about a successful withdrawal from Gaza we obviously mean that the Israelis are able to leave in conditions that are peaceful,” she said. “But we also mean that the Palestinians are left with governing structures that can govern in the Gaza that then become the foundation for a broader Palestinian state.
“It’s a lot to try and do in several months, but everybody seems very dedicated.”
The diplomatic Quartet, consisting of the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union, is likely to meet again “pretty soon” to coordinate international assistance to the Palestinians to prepare for the turnover, Rice said.
Bush announced Thursday that Rice will travel to the region to get a firsthand look at preparations for disengagement.
David Welch and Elliott Abrams, the top Middle East hands at the State Department and White House, also will make trips, Rice said.
There’s widespread concern that Abbas’ Palestinian Authority might not be able to exert control in Gaza, where the militant group Hamas is powerful.
There’s also concern that Israel will go no further than withdrawing from Gaza in ending its occupation of land claimed by the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Source: Independent investigation of detainee abuse unnecessary, Rice says
In the meanwhile:
Baghdad. Three civilian Iraqis travelling in a minibus were killed, reportedly shot dead by US forces, AFP reported, citing officials.
“American forces opened fire on a minibus in the Dura district, in southern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding four others,” said a defence ministry source.
US military spokesman Lieutenant Jamie Davis confirmed the incident but could not say at what time the bus shooting occurred.
“The details are sketchy and we don’t know who was involved,” Davis said.
Bus driver Abbas Abbas said US troops opened fire after he pulled over to get out of their way.
