Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.
Consequences of participating in the brutal abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison: one year in prison, a reduction in rank, and a bad conduct discharge.
Consequences of failing to return from military leave after being disturbed by witnessing the brutal abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners: one year in prison, a 2/3 pay reduction, and a bad conduct discharge.
At least the military is consistent.
I’d rather be shot than vote for Bush at gunpoint. After all, I can recover from a gunshot wound in, say, a couple months. Voting for Bush, well, that takes four years.
— Phil, via IM tonight
It may not be much longer before the draft is back in action — inactive Army reservists are getting notified that they’re next on deck to be called back to service.
A friend of mine who is currently an inactive Army reservist forwarded me some memos he received regarding future mobilizations — memos that indicate that we are not far from some kind of conscription in the next few years. According to my friend, recruiters are telling inactive reservists that they’re going to be called up one way or another eventually, so they might as well sign up now and get into non-Iraq-deploying units while they still can. There’s also a “warning order” — i.e., a heads-up — from the Army’s personnel command that talks about the involuntary transfer of inactive reservists to the active reserves, and thus into units that are on deck for the next few Iraq rotations.
(via Atrios)
iTunes: “I Must Increase My Bust (The Lords Like ’em Large)” by Lords of Acid from the album I Must Increase My Bust (1992, 6:46).
This Village Voice article is enough to have me seeing red: Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move.
It was an e-mail we weren’t meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that “the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level”—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we’re not supposed to know the National Security Council’s top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.
But now we know.
[…]
The Apostolic Congress dates its origins to 1981, when, according to its website, “Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open the door to Apostolic Christians into the White House.” Apostolics, a sect of Pentecostals, claim legitimacy as the heirs of the original church because they, as the 12 apostles supposedly did, baptize converts in the name of Jesus, not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ronald Reagan bore theological affinities with such Christians because of his belief that the world would end in a fiery Armageddon. Reagan himself referenced this belief explicitly a half-dozen times during his presidency.
While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent from George W. Bush’s speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics—a point of pride for Upton. “We’re in constant contact with the White House,” he boasts. “I’m briefed at least once a week via telephone briefings. . . . I was there about two weeks ago . . . At that time we met with the president.”
[…]
When Pastor Upton was asked to explain why the group’s website describes the Apostolic Congress as “the Christian Voice in the nation’s capital,” instead of simply a Christian voice in the nation’s capital, he responded, “There has been a real lack of leadership in having someone emerge as a Christian voice, someone who doesn’t speak for the right, someone who doesn’t speak for the left, but someone who speaks for the people, and someone who speaks from a theocratical perspective.”
When his words were repeated back to him to make sure he had said a “theocratical” perspective, not a “theological” perspective, he said, “Exactly. Exactly. We want to know what God would have us say or what God would have us do in every issue.”
(via Atrios)
One of the best discoveries I made when visiting England during the mid-80’s (sometime around 1985 or ’86, I think) was Spitting Image, a BBC political satire show using latex puppet caricatures of political figures. Hilarious stuff, and something that never really caught on in the states — for most people in the US, their only exposure to the Spitting Image puppets was in the video for Genesis’ “Land of Confusion“.
The BBC Comedy Guide has a good summary of the show:
In Spitting Image, famous characters in British and international life were re-created in the form of latex puppets, which – in the manner of newspaper political cartoons – grossly exaggerated that person’s most obvious facial or personality characteristic. Given voices by top-line impressionists and vocal caricaturists, the puppets were manipulated by a team of skilled handlers to act out the quantity of wickedly witty sketches that comprised each edition of the show. Essentially, then, viewing Spitting Image was not only like watching your favourite or most despised public figures taking part in topical comedy skits but also seeing and hearing them in a dialogue free of the omnipresent facade of PR gloss and occasional deceit – revealing, perhaps, the true personality underneath, or at the very least, a wicked, exaggerated guess at same. In this fashion, many hundreds – perhaps even a thousand – of people in the news, or faces just plain familiar to TV viewers, spanning the years 1984-96, were lampooned by Spitting Image. (To have been a Spitting Image target was deemed an honour by many.)
Now it looks like Spitting Image may be coming back!
Spitting Image producer John Lloyd is in talks with ITV in a bid to bring the satirical series back to the channel.
Mr Lloyd was an original producer of the show, which lampooned politicians and celebrities using latex puppets.
ITV confirmed having “early stage talks” with Mr Lloyd over the show, which originally ran from 1984 to 1996.
The article doesn’t mention whether the original puppetmakers Fluck and Law will be overseeing the puppet construction process or not, though as many of the original puppets were auctioned off in 2000 when Roger Law moved to Australia, that may be doubtful.
Another interesting tidbit I learned while reading about this: one of the voice actors for Spitting Image was Chris Barrie, known primarily to me as Rimmer in Red Dwarf.
iTunes: “Maestro, The” by Beastie Boys, The from the album Check Your Head (1992, 2:52).
Here’s something you don’t see in today’s political arena very often these days. Colin Powell was on Meet the Press Sunday night, when one of his staffers attempted to cut off the interview in the midst of one of Tim Russert’s questions. Powell was not pleased, going so far as to rebuke the staffer on-air, and had the camera brought back in order to finish the interview.
As Tim Russert, the program’s host, began to ask his final question, the camera unexpectedly panned away from Mr. Powell, who was being interviewed in Jordan via a satellite link from Washington. In the confusion, Mr. Powell could be heard saying, “He’s still asking me questions,” to which a woman’s voice answered, “No, he’s not.”
Mr. Powell, still off camera, said, “Tim, I’m sorry, I lost you,” and added, “Emily, get out of the way.” Mr. Russert, slightly irate, responded: “I think that was one of your staff, Mr. Secretary. I don’t think that’s appropriate.” After a few seconds the camera returned to Mr. Powell and he finished the interview.
Video of the interview can be found on Lisa Rein’s Radar.
(via Boing Boing and Dave Winer)
iTunes: “Trouble In Mind” by Joplin, Janis from the album Janis (1965, 3:03).
Great news for politically-minded webloggers: the 2004 Democratic National Convention has opened up their press credential process to webloggers.
The Democratic National Convention Committee is pleased to announce that for the first time ever, bloggers will be offered Convention access through the official media credentialing process.
Because the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston is less than 90 days away and space is extremely limited, we encourage those interested in this first-ever opportunity to act now. To apply to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention as a blogger, you will need to submit applications to both the Senate Periodical Press Gallery AND the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) Press Gallery before the May 28th deadline.
TTLB has gone on to clarify some of the details of just how to apply for press credentials, and has also made an overture towards the RNC to see if the same thing can be done for their convention.
Not being in the Boston area, I obviously won’t be applying, but hopefully this goes a long way to opening the political process to even more people.
iTunes: “Soylent Grün” by :Wumpscut: from the album Music for a German Tribe + New Tracks/Remixes (2000, 5:46).
There’s an analogy that Shelley uses every so often that for one reason or another, started rumblings in my brain this morning: kicking the baby squirrels. This came up most recently in the continuing discussion of the Movable Type 3 licensing brouhaha.
Mistakes in licenses are serious things. Folks are right to question these. People who plan on using Movable Type in the future should continue to question confusing language in the licenses.
What’s sad about this though, is that the ‘baby squirrel’ phenomena is still in effect for Movable Type and the Trotts and Six Apart, when I thought we’d grown beyond that.
What do I mean by the ‘kicking the baby squirrel’ phenomena? When we address technical issues or question pricing, and you perceive it as an attack on the people, that’s accusing us of kicking the baby squirrels. If you perceive any criticism of a company or a technology or a person’s writing or opinions, as an act of overt hostility, and respond with personal insults in return, that’s playing the kicking the baby squirrel card.
Obviously, there’s been a lot of this going on recently. For all the people who looked at the restrictions of the licenses and raised holy hell, there were also quite a few who lambasted all of us who were upset as simply being whiny, spoiled children, complaining because we weren’t getting what we wanted for free, throwing tempertantrums, and refusing to pay.
Of course, that’s patently ridiculous. Few if any of the posts I’ve read (or written) about this have been from people unwilling to pay for MovableType — just from people unwilling to pay what they saw as unreasonable prices with draconian restrictions, which, coming from a company that’s historically been seen as one of the “good guys”, took us all by surprise. Yesterday’s clarifications should do a lot to help that and calm things down, but if there are still questions to be asked, there’s no reason to stop asking them.
What this really reminded me of, though, was what has been passing for political discourse in the US lately. Over the past few years, we’ve seen more and more of the “us versus them” mentality, where “us” seems to be defined as those who slavishly follow Bush and his cronies, and “them” being absolutely everyone else, foreign or domestic. Agree with Bush and his policies, and you’re fine, but question any of them, and suddenly you’re unpatriotic and a traitor.
It doesn’t matter that those of us who question generally do so because we’re concerned, because we want to see this country do well for itself, do well for others, and be respected in the international community and by itself. It doesn’t matter how serious the questions are, how serious the concerns behind them are, or how they are presented. The mere act of questioning is enough to condemn us.
Sound familiar?
I haven’t bothered to look into whether the political baby squirrel protectors overlap with the technological baby squirrel protectors much or at all, and just off the top of my head, I’d assume that any overlap would be entirely coincidental, and not have any real relevance. It’s the attitude that disturbs me, though, and I really wish it was one that we (collectively) could get over.
iTunes: “Fuck It Up (Did You Ever Get the Feeling?)” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (1995, 3:42).
Don’t understand how conditions in Abu Ghraib could have gotten as bad as they did? Maybe it’s time to take a closer look at our own prison systems.
Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.
In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women’s pink underwear as a form of humiliation.
At Virginia’s Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.
The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.
And just in case it wasn’t clear that there was a direct connection between US prison techniques and those being used in Iraq, just keep reading…
The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.
The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country’s criminal justice system.
Mr. McCotter, 63, is director of business development for Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that says it is the third-largest private prison company, operating 13 prisons. In 2003, the company’s operation of the Santa Fe jail was criticized by the Justice Department and the New Mexico Department of Corrections for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates. No further action was taken.
When we don’t even take care of our own prisoners humanely, what’s the chance that we’ll take care of prisoners of war in a humane manner?
(via MeFi)
