Kyrgyzstan: Prisoners Sew Mouths Shut in Protest

“More than a thousand convicts have stitched their mouths closed to protest prison conditions, a prison official said Friday. The protest…escalates a two-week hunger strike involving most of the country’s 7,500 inmates. A prison service spokeswoman said that about 6,400 prisoners were on a hunger strike nationwide and 1,175 had sewn their mouths shut. . . “

…but their mouths are not as tightly shut as ours are about “The Caging of America.”

Please take the time to read this excellent survey piece of Adam Gopnik’s at the New Yorker.

I’ve read these horrendous facts about our prison system too many times, and they make me feel paralyzed with horror. Maybe the solution is to go on a diet?

Unfortunately, our millions of prison graduates are not in a position to represent themselves. For one thing, felons can’t vote, and for another, poor people, disproportionately don’t, on top of which many states are doing their best to disenfranchise those who do. Without a strong voting block in support of reform, it’s hard to make authorities understand that changing our law enforcement, judicial and correctional systems is in their interest. Besides, so many “innocent” people are hurting and in need of aid, legislative support, legal reform and media attention that the incarcerated is unlikely to be one of the majority’s priorities. I despair of finding a strategy to alter our penal system.

Maybe we can all pick a day to wear temporary “My mouth is stitched closed” tattoos. Ash Wednesday (February 22nd) would be good. A call for a system that distributes justice as well as law, and mercy as well as retribution. It’s also a good week to begin the bikini diet to get beach ready by June.

Wanting to clarify a past article written by Elena Kagan which called Supreme Court confirmation hearings “a hollow, vapid charade”, several senators went on the attack on the first day of her own hearings, gesticulating wildly, pulling on their ears, and pointing at their eyes as they desperately tried to convey their meaning.

Senator Orrin Hatch brought out a dusty old dictionary and laboriously gestured through the definitions of “hollow”, demanding to know which she meant: “having a cavity” (he cupped his hands)“having a depression” (looked very unhappy) “without worth” (pretended to have no job and inject drugs) “having an empty feeling” (pretended to disembowel himself – faint cheers from the gallery), or “a valley” (He never managed to convey this. Everyone agreed it was a very hard one)

Ms Kagan gestured back that she meant “without worth”, by mimicking the Senator’s shooting drugs move, which brought frowns to the faces of everyone in the room, both because she was saying the hearings were worthless, and because even faked drug use in the Capitol made people uneasy. When Ms. Kagan tried to convey that the comment had been taken out of context, no one quite got it despite her balletic contortions, though there were some who motioned that they thought people were being willfully ignorant.

Patrick Leahy then took the floor to demonstrate the meaning of “vapid” – “without liveliness or spirit” – and everyone got it before he made a move. Ms. Kagan signaled that this was indeed the meaning she meant to convey with the comment, bringing another round of exaggerated frowns to everyone in the room.

Joe Barton had considerable difficulty signaling the word “charade”, for which difficulty he mimed an expression of apology, but he was much helped by people already knowing the word charade was coming, though some made crazy, disdainful expressions that suggested that people were feigning not getting it for a while just to punish him for his excessive and somewhat gay affection for BP while everyone else wants to pointlessly vilify them.

Having confirmed what Ms Kagan meant by her comment – what she said – an intermission was called for by signaling eating chex mix and talking about their pets, their lawns, and their children who have handcuffed themselves to their beds to avoid looking for a job.

Scot Crawford

Senator Orrin Hatch has raised some controversy in Washington over his proposal to force people receiving unemployment to submit to drug tests, and if found positive, to withhold benefits and then put those people into treatment. Then, all that money saved from withholding money from those people could be used to pay the new people required to administer the tests. Mr. Hatch has gone himself one better and suggested that the states hire the people who fail the drug tests to administer the drug tests, adding an important element of job training to the formula, and tying the whole thing up in a neat bow, like a gift from the GOP.

The move is part of Mr. Hatch comprehensive plan to alleviate the unemployment problem the nation faces, which plan includes not extending benefits for those whose allotted time has run out, since they should have planned for the future and set some of those benefits aside for this moment. This will lower the unemployment rate because many of those people will simply kill themselves, and the rest can be hired to carry the corpses to a Potter’s ground. Some will sit down somewhere and get high until they’ve sold all they own, then recover with a bout of entreprenurial spirit arising from the power of soul shattering desperation.

He also has suggested reducing the amount of time people qualify for benefits to three days. Also, since the drug testing proposal does away with any search and seizure concerns, he has suggested subjecting them to waterboarding to determine if they have committed a crime, had thought about it, were a terrorist trying to finance an operation with the hard-earned money of American what-used-to-be workers, or if they had really spent every single day looking for a job for eight hours with a half hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks in an economy where there are no jobs.

When some question the wisdom of taking the only source of income away from people who in theory have a drug problem, Mr. Hatch said; “I have been to those drug treatment centers, and I will tell you, there are none who are more true to the American ethos of rugged individualism than those broke and broken people sitting there in a cloud of despair. They will pick themselves up, beat the odds with God at their side, and be back in the saddle rustlin’ doggies before you can pull your pistol. Anyway, they don’t have to pay to sit in an AA meeting, unless you count those donations, but I think those are voluntary.”

Mr. Hatch also offered to submit to drug testing himself, to show solidarity with the unemployed and under the notion that the economy crashed on his watch, but the pharmaceutical industry objected, saying Mr. Hatch and all three tablespoons of his blood was proprietary and testing him would bring up intellectual property issues.

Mr. Hatch also noted that is important to always have the citizenry terrified that the tiny but wildly efficient government is going to show up at the door with needles looking for blood.  “Keeps ‘em on their knees…I mean toes…”

Scot Crawford

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

From the Times:

C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones

The role of [Blackwater] in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater.

—Or we’ll resilient your fucking ass.

In interviews on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new details about Blackwater’s association with the assassination program, which began in 2004 not long after Porter J. Goss took over at the C.I.A. The officials said that the spy agency did not dispatch the Blackwater executives with a “license to kill.” Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.

“The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,” said one government official familiar with the canceled C.I.A. program. “It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue.”

—”I mean, we’re not gonna have the pathetic government drones with the great health care benefits and pension plans do the hard stuff. They’re not incentivized. They don’t have the fire in the belly. Anyway, the more the government gets involved with anything the worse it gets. You’ll have people waiting in lines, getting euthanized by beaurocrats sitting at computers… FREEEEEEDOOOOOM!”

A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.

—Except to say; “What if Blackwater provides information on my whereabouts to a Predator?”

A spokeswoman for Blackwater did not respond to a request for comment.

—Because she doesn’t work for Blackwater. She works for Xe.

Blackwater employees assigned to the Predator bases receive training at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to learn how to load Hellfire missiles and laser-guided smart bombs on the drones, according to current and former employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of upsetting the company.

—I’m running out of things to say myself.

The role of contractors in intelligence work expanded after the Sept. 11 attacks, as spy agencies were forced to fill gaps created when their work forces were reduced during the 1990s, after the end of the cold war.

—Fucking Clinton. That fucking guy’s legacy just seems to have no end. Ten years after he leaves office and we’re still suffering his sickening pacifism.

More than a quarter of the intelligence community’s current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently, interrogation of terrorist suspects.

“There are skills we don’t have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for,” Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who ran the C.I.A. from 2006 until early this year, said during a panel discussion on Thursday on the privatization of intelligence.

—”Pulling triggers, that’s what we do. We practice on our fingers.”

General Hayden, who succeeded Mr. Goss at the agency, acknowledged that the C.I.A. program continued under his watch, though it was not a priority. He said the program was never prominent during his time at the C.I.A., which was one reason he did not believe that he had to notify Congress.

—”I mean, c’mon people it’s no big deal. It’s not like we were hiring mercenaries we pay many times what we pay our own agents to torture people and provide us with the intelligence we need to drop bombs on people. Just because mercenaries work for whoever pays them best is no reason to get all worried. We’ll just always outbid everyone. Relax.”

Some background…or blackground…or backwash…

[Blackwater] announced on February 13, 2009, that it would operate under the new name “Xe”. In a memo sent to employees, President Gary Jackson wrote that the new name “reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security.” A spokesman for the company stated that it feels the Blackwater name is too closely associated with the company’s work in Iraq.[9] Spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said there was no meaning in the new name, which the company spent over a year to arrive at in an internal search.[10]

—They’re nihilists, and it took a year of internal searching to figure that out.

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

From the Times:

Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers

The Army plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency, military officials say.

—Well, you may want to go easy at first. Too much of the “Drop and give me twenty feelings, soldier!” might break ‘em.

Usually taught in weekly 90-minute classes, the methods seek to defuse or expose common habits of thinking and flawed beliefs that can lead to anger and frustration — for example, the tendency to assume the worst. (“My wife didn’t answer the phone; she must be with someone else.”)

—Oh boy. That dear John letter’s gonna leave a mark.

In one role-playing exercise, Sgt. First Class James Cole of Fort Riley, Kan., and a classmate acted out Sergeant Cole’s thinking in response to an order late in the day to have his exhausted men do one last difficult assignment.
“Why is he tasking us again for this job?” the classmate asked. “It’s not fair.”
“Well, maybe,” Sergeant Cole responded. “Or maybe he’s hitting us because he knows we’re more reliable.”

—Or maybe he’s doing the other Sgt. and doesn’t want to lose his boy. Or maybe he just doesn’t like your attitude and would rather see you get killed. Or maybe the other guys have their boots off already. Or maybe he’s trying to build character by pushing you. Or maybe he wants to test your emotional resiliency by making you hate him and seeing if you’ll frag him. Or maybe he’s just inept as shit and it hasn’t registered that you’re exhausted. Or maybe he just doesn’t give a shit because he’s drunk, or stoned, or going home in a month. Sounds like you might be replacing possibly accurate thinking with some fresh, steaming tripe. But, whatever, as long as they’re more resilient. Didn’t the Bible used to take care of this kind of shit?

Col. Darryl Williams, the program’s deputy director said: “For years, the military has been saying, ‘Oh, my God, a suicide, what do we do now?…

—…oh, oh, I’m gonna kill myself!’ Now we’ve really decided to suck it up and get control of ourselves.”

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

From the Times:

2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11’s Wake

Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.

They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.

…the two men wrote the first proposal to turn the enemy’s brutal techniques — slaps, stress positions, sleep deprivation, wall-slamming and waterboarding — into an American interrogation program.

With the backing of [the CIA] Dr. Mitchell ordered Mr. Zubaydah stripped, exposed to cold and blasted with rock music to prevent sleep.

Over about two weeks, Mr. Zubaydah was confined in a box, slammed into the wall and waterboarded 83 times. The brutal treatment stopped only after Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen themselves decided that Mr. Zubaydah had no more information to give up.

But top C.I.A. officials made no changes, and the methods would be used on at least 27 more prisoners, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.

—The same two psychologists are also credited with coming up with the diagnosis; ‘closure’.

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

From The Times:

Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security

WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

—Although…there’s this:

9 Dead After Copter and Plane Collide Over Hudson

—…and this:

Regional pilot’s life: Hardly glamorous
Investigation into N.Y. crash sheds light on problems

:

Alex Lapointe, a 25-year-old copilot for a regional airline, says he routinely lifts off knowing he has gotten less sleep than he needs. And once or twice a week, he says, he sees the captain next to him struggling to stay alert.

But many regional pilots, paid entry-level wages that are sometimes no better than a job at McDonald’s, can not afford even a crash pad.

“I know a guy who bought a car that barely ran and parked it in the employee lot at his base airport, and slept in his car six or seven times a month,” said Frank R. Graham Jr., a former regional pilot and airline safety director who runs a safety consulting firm in Charlotte, N.C.

—Seems more likely we’re all gonna die of pilot error.

—So let’s see…Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are in for a tough time…and just when things over there were really starting to settle down…

You know what I have to say to Climate Change? Bring it on!

This is fun
:

Iraqis Take the Lead, With U.S. Trailing

The Iraqi company’s sole armored Humvee, an American hand-me-down, had no spare tire, so they left it behind.
Marching up the canal under a scorching midday sun was hot work, and the Iraqis soon used up their water. The Americans replenished it for them.

“These guys are really competent, though.”

—They left the water behind because the bottle didn’t have a cap?

Now, he said, the challenge is for the Iraqis to take control after years of depending on the Americans. “We got to kick the crutch out from under them,” he said.

—Then you could tie a string across the doorway so a bucket of water falls on them. That’d be funny, too, since they forgot to bring some.

Judging from the weapons-hunting patrol, that kick is still a way off in reality, even if expectations on the Iraqi side have significantly changed.
At least Sergeant Jassim had already been trained on the metal detector.

—”I find Humvee!”

The goal was to sweep about two miles of canal bed; after a bit over one mile, the Iraqis stopped and insisted that it must have been about two miles by then. Then they complained that the saw grass was getting too thick to continue; one of the American sergeants urged them on, demonstrating how easy it was to break the brittle fronds and move them out of the way.
“We haven’t had our lunch yet,” one of the Iraqi soldiers said.

—Check the temperature on your wrist before you give them the bottle, Sarge.

Another Hurdle for the Jobless: Credit Inquiries :

Digging out of debt keeps getting harder for the unemployed as more companies use detailed credit checks to screen job prospects.

Business executives say that they have an obligation to be diligent and to protect themselves from employees who may be unreliable, unwise or too susceptible to temptation to steal, and that credit checks are a help.

“If I see too many negative things coming up on a credit check, it’s one of those things that raises a flag with me,” said Anita Orozco, director of human resources at Sonneborn, a petrochemical company based in Mahwah, N.J.

—If you look close, you’ll see the white flag raised by the applicant. And, uh, not to seem like too much of a pollyanna like I do so often, but isn’t it possible that someone who’s in dire financial straits might be a darn good hire, what with them needing money so bad? I mean, why aren’t you guys doing credit checks to see who’s so bad off they’ll work long hours for shit money just to get a paycheck? It’s just a version of what employers who hire immigrants do. Though, I guess that could set off a financial firestorm through the country where people renege on debts they could pay just to get a job. That wouldn’t be good. Also, hasn’t it been amply shown that financial wizards are anything but that, so somebody whose money life tanked isn’t necessarily someone with poor judgement? This sounds akin to the argument that we shouldn’t provide single-payer health care because all those damn gold-bricking poor folks will be running off to the doctor every time they get a boo-boo, and thus bankrupt the country. I know I’d enjoy being sick all the time if I knew it was free.

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, and — hoping you’ll forgive the “advertisements for myself” quality of this — it is a comedy, kind of in the Dr. Strangelove style but with a few more likable characters.

He agrees with Rich (see below) that the purpose of using techniques adapted from Chinese torturers seeking false confessions was not information discovery but rationales for pre-fab policy objectives (Iraq).
He doesn’t use the word treason.
He wants Obama to let investigations go forward without involving himself in them.
All very decent and moderate.
His post is neither in the Strangelove style, nor comedic, and it goes on and on and on.
Hopefully the play is tighter.
Its main characters are, he says, “a bit like Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.”

I’ll wait to see it on YouTube.

The four recently released White House torture memos were designed to sanction the torture of “mastermind” Abu Zubaydah, a man known by then to be mentally unstable, a hireling who had not produced any new intelligence in the many years of his confinement. As Rich says:

…there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.

In other words, the use of torture by the Bush White House was possibly not intended to produce intelligence — it was more likely designed to manufacture it. Pundits currently cogitating about “24,” ticking bombs and leaders “acting in good faith to protect our freedom” all know that this is what torture does best: it extracts from the victim whatever words the master wants or needs him to say, and the White House knew it.

When you look at the chronology of the recently released torture memos as Rich has done, and when you contemplate the obscenely inhumane treatment of Zubaydah (he was waterboarded at least 83 times in ’02, long after any information he might ever have had would remain relevant), it’s hard to imagine that the intentions and actions of the administration in this case were strategically designed to protect our country. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that the administration’s intentions were anything but criminal, and if this is wrong, the parties concerned should have a chance to clear their ames of suspicion.

Obama needs to find another way to get this hot potato off his plate than to announce he’s not hungry. He can’t dismiss US approval of torture techniques as “The Past.” As had been pointed out by people who give a damn, all criminal acts take place in the past. Politically motivated uses of torture are not “mistakes” made in the fog of war; they are threats to our freedoms as great as any the enemy has thrown at us. You could go so far as to call it treason, and I wish one of those pussies with a pulpit would.