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September 29, 2005
WB: Coming Soon to a Nightmare Near You
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The article notes:
“The judge gave the government 20 days to appeal before releasing the pictures, which are edited so the faces of prisoners are not shown.”
Hard to believe it won’t go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Posted by: DonPedro | Sep 29 2005 22:18 utc | 1
Ah well hopefully soon I’m going to have to peek at new websites outta the corner of my eye and quickly hit the back button or the corner X before all is revealed.
I say hopefully because although graphic images of man’s callous disregard for others gives me sleepless nights in a way that they never used to, it is vital that those people who have been silent acquiesers to the Iraqi horror are made to confront the result of their silence.
Yes those who have allowed themselves to become so twisted by our double standard deviant behaviour that they enjoy ‘war porn’ or whatever the current cliche for acknowledging that which we would rather ignore, will get their rocks off.
But as we have seen recently those images are already available for them.
The most important issue about the release of the record of cowardice and torture is within each of us’s reaction to it to control.
That is will the free availability of these images serve to normalise abberant behaviour or not?
When the images are released (as they will be everything else is just a classic judicial delaying tactic) the way that the average human being on this planet reacts to them will determine the ‘acceptability’ of this stuff.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 29 2005 22:26 utc | 2
Karen Hughes:
“I feel the pain that you are feeling,” Hughes said, but she added: “It is impossible to say that the plight of women was better under Saddam Hussein. Women were tortured, they had their children tortured in front of them.”
Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 29 2005 23:35 utc | 3
The pictures should be released asap so US citizens can see their commander in cheifs type of justice. He thinks we’re back in the old west. Let get them dead or alive.
Moon of Alabamers should venture to Kos and read Hunters rant. It pretty damn good.
Posted by: jdp | Sep 30 2005 0:25 utc | 4
Ya know what I remember — the outrage, the frothing outrage, when an angry mob strung up a few of our mercs from a bridge in Baghdad, mutilating the bodies. The outrage at the alleged “live beheading of Nick Berg” video. How this proved that Those People were barbarians, uncivilised, vicious, etc. That they had no respect even for the dead. That they made a spectacle, a public entertainment, of mutilated bodies.
Well…?
I also note that a previous poster on Open Thread listed violent media forms in our (US) culture: how ubiquitous violence in our society is (movies, television, video games, et cetera), while discussing “War Porn” … and yet managed to leave unmentioned an elephant in the living room, a major corporate media sector, increasingly normalised, with increasingly violent content: actual, commercial porn.
There is something eerily R D Laingesque in the rules of left/liberal discourse, that we can recognise War Porn as material that some people like to look at because they enjoy contemplating the humiliation and/or pain of another person, yet we cannot bear to recognise how much of “regular” porn appeals to exactly the same itch in the human psyche. The Left has tied itself into a particularly Gordian knot on this topic, as Gail Dines and Bob Jensen point out in a recent article, “Porn and Capitalism”…
So the rules are still in place. Rule 1: Don’t [admit that corporn is the original template for mass-market humilitainment]. Rule 1A: there is no rule 1…
Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 30 2005 1:15 utc | 5
deanander
capitalism, is revealed today for what it always was – an abbatoir. something wm blake sung to us as clear as a bell in an empty city
& yr right there is no difference – no difference at all – reducing the decency & sense of humanity has alway been the project – the ultimate project of capital – from the dark mills to this even darker realities
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 30 2005 1:27 utc | 6
Leftists have always challenged the contention of the powerful that freedom comes in accepting one’s place in a hierarchy. Feminists have highlighted that one of the systems of power that constrains us is gender.
Please consider that society’s that have the highest degree of woman’s rights are coincidentally the most powerful on earth.
It is your own sisterhood selling you out. They have influence over all of the powerful men making decisions and they sell the rest out. It is rare that a powerful man achieves greatness without A FEMALE as an integeral part of the equation.
America does not go to war unless women approve it.
Man has always been stronger and women have always been smarter.
Women control the game, please get your own kind in line.
Posted by: Greg Hunter | Sep 30 2005 1:35 utc | 7
I don’t know if it was always doomed to be the dark mills or whether we made a wrong turn and entered a photo play of deja vu all over again. That drawing that Mr Billmon posted nearby from Fear and Loathing in L V always had a Becht light to it. The honorable men who took the loyalty/employment oath early so they could rise in the ranks. That’s what that Steadman drawing always seemed to picture to me. For a few decades those guys were out of sight, now they mutated, gestated and rose from the swamps to be leading all things. Isn’t there a movie out there that can show us how to get them back into the laboratory bottles?
Posted by: christofay | Sep 30 2005 1:42 utc | 8
yes, i think the film you are looking for is – night of the hunter
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 30 2005 1:46 utc | 9
I Would second that advice, Night of the Hunter, which I watched again recently. It operates on many levels beyond the obvious main themes, not the least of which is the absolutly ahorrent manner in which children are treated — as an accepted norm of behavior.
Posted by: anna missed | Sep 30 2005 2:07 utc | 10
The real culture of ‘armed struggle’ in the U.S. military
Posted by: John Rambo | Sep 30 2005 2:20 utc | 11
My most memorable impression is of Robert Mitchum crooning that hymn while he’s tracking tbe children — “Leaning, leaning. Leaning on the ever-lastin’ arm.” Truly creepy.
Posted by: Billmon | Sep 30 2005 2:23 utc | 12
“Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq.”—Bush, remarks at “Ask President Bush” event, Michigan, May 3, 2004
– rape rooms: a chronology – what bush said
Posted by: b real | Sep 30 2005 4:10 utc | 13
American Expressway to Legal Lynching…innocent poor folks & dissenters will be frying daily if they pass this…and johnny rotten roberts has already announced his support for it in principle.
TODAY, THE SENATE Judiciary Committee takes up the so-called Streamlined Procedures Act, a bill that radically scales back federal review of state convictions and death sentences. Calling what this bill does “streamlining” is a little like calling a scalping a haircut. A better name would have been the Eliminating Essential Legal Protections Act. What it does, in effect, is curtail the federal role in policing constitutional violations in state criminal justice systems using the venerable mechanism of habeas corpus..
Even after Mr. Specter’s efforts, the bill creates onerous procedural hurdles for convicts. It tries to speed up habeas corpus proceedings by making it easier for convicts to lose their right to appeal to federal courts. For example, if a convict fails to raise an argument in state court, federal courts will have no jurisdiction over the claim even if there was a good reason for the failure. If he filed a claim in federal court before going to state court, that claim would be thrown out and lost forever. Supposed exceptions for cases of actual innocence are so narrow as to be useless. And the bill would allow states to race petitions through the courts if they can convince the attorney general that they have an adequate system for providing lawyers in post-conviction proceedings.
Kill Bill
Better get on the phone to Congress Quickly, even though $cam doesn’t like to think it matters!!
Posted by: jj | Sep 30 2005 4:45 utc | 14
Davis Grubb (Night of the Hunter) is worth reading – Heart of Dimness, American Lite.
Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 30 2005 4:46 utc | 15
Whar Billmon senses, and what I’ve known/come to believe for the last 2 years, and that theere is absolutely NOTHING that will stop the “steamroller” until the machine explodes.
Posted by: Lupin | Sep 30 2005 5:03 utc | 17
@jj
Better get on the phone to Congress Quickly, even though $cam doesn’t like to think it matters!!
It seems my dystopia approach tweaks your belief in the hope that we have weight on things. Sorry about that. The fact of the matter is, they’re going to get it anyway, by hook or crook. I say, let em have it. Let em have everything they want, save your energy for the fall. It’s all we have left. New Orleans was merely a snapshot of what is to come when the bottom drops out.
Of course I hope I’m wrong, but every fiber of my being tells me I’m not. I’d prepare if I were you.
Trust in God, but tie your
camel. – Proverb, (Arabian)
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 30 2005 5:35 utc | 18
$cam, you saying you think bottom will fall out this Fall?
The reason I said that is ‘cuz you criticized me when I asked people to call Congress to keep them from destroying Organic Foods. And it worked. 10,000 calls came in from all over & they didn’t stick that bit in the bill. A bit here, a bit there.
Posted by: jj | Sep 30 2005 5:39 utc | 20
jj, in Krugman’s book he says, the GOP think of themselves as a “revolutionary power “, further, he says they want to overturn the “long-established” New Deal and Great Societal programs. Likewise, Richard Perle, outlined that road to greatness in 2002. “This is total war,” he declared. ” Our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”
This war is BOTH foreign and domestic jj, and they are doing it. Even if it means bringing the whole house (read government)down with them. And the most abominable thing is there is no one to stop them, you think the DeLay indictment or the frist sandal is going to end the culture of corruption? IOKIYAR! Just like a self-healing/self-replicating typical network — in this case,of neo-nixon gangsters/criminals– i.e the Rise of Rove’s Republic will carry on the Just as the ‘net tends to interpret corruption as damage, and routs around it so too does the doctrine.
Finally, on a personal note, I never criticized you as a person, I denigrated the method.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 30 2005 7:06 utc | 21
Army faces worst recruiting slump in years
Posted by: Rumsfeld’s Slimline Tonic | Sep 30 2005 8:28 utc | 22