Category Archives: Americana

The power of My Team

Americana, Politics

president-barack-obama-lady-michelle-obama

Just look at this couple. Look at the guy, with that charming smile. How can anybody not trust him to always do what is right.

And that is the rub, a big part of me thinks it must be right if Obama did it instead of looking at it objectively.  For the first time, I am starting to understand why otherwise sane Republicans overlook Bush’s many flaws. Like I look – or, maybe, overlook is more accurate – at Obama’s ordering of Drone Strikes backwards, they must do the same with Bush’s overspending.

I read where one of the mothers of the children killed at Newtown wanted her son shown in an open casket at his funeral service. She wanted people to actually see the damage that a modern assault rifle causes: the child’s face half missing, his left hand almost gone (the weapon used is designed to cause as much damage as possible, the damage is not collateral, it is the point). I think we should do the same with drone strikes.

radda-yemen-drone-civilians

The strike above killed 12 civilians – three were children – on their way back from the market. According to Yemeni paper that printed this picture, The villagers who rushed to the road, cutting through rocky fields in central Yemen, found the dead strewn around a burning sport utility vehicle. The bodies were dusted with white powder — flour and sugar, the witnesses said — that the victims were bringing home from market when the aircraft attacked. A torched woman clutched her daughter in a lifeless embrace. Four severed heads littered the pavement. I think that this should be in The New York Times, I think that it should be on television.

Obama ran on transparency, or – at least – that is what I most resonated with. I didn’t think that he was going to be a wild eyed liberal but I thought that he would be more transparent than the Bush Administration. I did think we would get away from the Under Siege mentality that justified The Patriot Act – what a hypocritical name! – that justified torture: I did not think we would get an administration that would deny – for a year – even the existence of a paper authorizing the killing of Americans.  It never occurred to me that we would get an administration that says it has the right to kill Americans without a trial, or even a hearing, or even a judicial second opinion. An administration that issues a white paper that says: Were the target of a lethal operation a U.S citizen who may have rights under the Due Process Clause and the Fourth Amendment, that individual’s citizenship would not immunize from a lethal operation. An administration that uses that kind of Orwellian language to hide what is really going on. That wants to keep the lid on the casket.

The Obama Administration is saying We have the power – the legal right – to kill anybody we want without a trial. Trust us we won’t abuse that power. I do trust them, but I didn’t trust Chaney and that is a problem. We are supposed to be a nation ruled bu Law not the decision, no matter how well considered, of one man. Even if if that one man is Barrak Obama.  

Zero Dark Thirty

Americana, Film, War

Michele and I saw Zero Dark Thirty Sunday night and we liked it alot. I was prepared to not like it, because of the torture controversy, and my general lack of enthusiasm for Hurt Locker (which won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, so what do I know). The best way I can describe the picture is that it is gritty and dense. I have never been to Pakistan – and, apparently, the picture hasn’t either having been filmed in  Jordan and India, which pissed off both the Pakistanis and Indians – but the movie fit my imagined picture of Pakistan exactly.

Driving through the streets of Lahore, it seemed like they were either using thousands of extras or they really were there. I loved Django Unchained  and Argo but, compared to Zero Dark Thirty, they seemed like cartoons shot on a set. Zero Dark Thirty seemed like the real deal. It was thrilling and, at the end, the audience cheered the winning team. Our Team! And I think that may be a problem.

The movie, sort of, presents itself as a documentary or fictionized documentary like Truman Capote’s True Blood. But it is not the real deal. It is not an objective look at what happened and today I am a little hung over from feeling so good while I watched the movie. There are several people who say it better than me, Jane Mayer and Matt Taibbi for example, and I think that I can best serve my point by giving a couple of quotes.

From Jane Mayer: In addition to providing false advertising for waterboarding, “Zero Dark Thirty” endorses torture in several other subtle ways. At one point, the film’s chief C.I.A. interrogator claims, without being challenged, that “everyone breaks in the end,” adding, “it’s biology.” Maybe that’s what they think in Hollywood, but experts on the history of torture disagree. Indeed, many prisoners have been tortured to death without ever revealing secrets, while many others—including some of those who were brutalized during the Bush years—have fabricated disinformation while being tortured. Some of the disinformation provided under duress during those years, in fact, helped to lead the U.S. into the war in Iraq under false premises.

From Matt Taibbi: Mohammed Al-Qatani, the so-called “20th hijacker,” who may have been some part of the inspiration for the “Ammar” character who was tortured in the opening scene, might have been the first detainee to mention the name of bin Laden’s courier. But as Gibney points out, al-Qatani gave that information up to the FBI, in legit, torture-free interrogations, before he was whisked away to Gitmo for 49 days of torture that included such insanities as forcing him to urinate on himself (by force-feeding him liquids while in restraints), making him watch a puppet show of him and bin Laden having sex, making him take dance lessons, making him wear panties on his head, and making him wear a “smiley-face” mask, along with the usual sleep and sensory deprivation, arm-hanging, etc. In other words, the key info may have come before they chucked our supposed standards for human decency.

In the end, nursing my post movie hangover, the, movie makes me a little sad.

and one quote…From Jane Mayer: Knowing the real facts—the ones that led the European Court of Human Rights to condemn America for torture this week—I had trouble enjoying the movie. I’ve interviewed Khaled El-Masri, the German citizen whose suit the E.C.H.R. adjudicated. He turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, an innocent car salesman whom the C.I.A. kidnapped and held in a black-site prison for four months, and who was “severely beaten, sodomized, shackled, and hooded.” What Masri lived through was so harrowing that, when I had a cup of coffee with him, a few years ago, he couldn’t describe it to me without crying. Maybe I care too much about all of this to enjoy it with popcorn. But maybe the creators of “Zero Dark Thirty” should care a little bit more.

 

Tavi Gevinson was on Stephen Colbert!

Americana, Television

I think that Tavi Gevinson and Stephen Colbert are two of the most interesting people in the world. Colbert sets himself up as a ranting right-wing idealog but I have seen him, over and over again, set up lefties to tell their point of view better than they usually can do. And he can sing and he is friends – and tumbling-mates – with Amy Sedaris. Gavinson is a savant without the serious mental disabilities. She would be very accomplished for a 35 year old woman, but she is only 16. And I mean, really an only 16 year old kid. She looks like a kid and talks like a kid and takes English and History in Highschool and has an accomplished staff of 50 on a magazine she founded and, apparently, runs. Check it out.