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.

Korea 1964-65 Part 3: the otherside of the fence

Korea, Psychological Musings

Back in Korea, at The Compound, at the aforementioned Enlistedmen’s Club, we had a PX. One of the few benefits of being in the Army are the PX’s. The military didn’t pay much – it probably still doesn’t – and one of the ways they make up for that is by giving us a place to buy stuff cheap. In our case, in Korea at The Compound, the big items were cheap beer and booze (I never saw any wine, but in those days I wasn’t looking for it). On a nice afternoon – maybe Sunday before our traditional steak barbecue – a nice way to pass the day was with an alfresco gathering. The dress rules in The Compound were pretty casual: on duty, we had to wear “appropriate ” uniforms – always fatigues for us  – when off base we had to wear Olive Drab wool uniforms or khaki uniforms. Officially, we were never allowed to wear civilian clothing in Korea but, in The Compound,  sometimes guys did and nobody seemed to care. 

My home – my bunk – in The Compound, was next to the back door of  the Radar and Fire Control Quonset Hut and, outside “my door”, just beyond the perimeter fence,  was a Magpie – Pica pica I found out about 15 minutes ago – nest and its chattering seemed to be mocking me. It seemed to be saying You think the world is inside your fence; the world is really outside, here. And it was. A world that was very different from any I had seen before. While we weren’t – exactly – forbidden to go out into Korea, we certainly were not encouraged and it took me awhile to get there.

My first views were from the inside of the Courier truck on a trip to the Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul. As an aside, one of my favorite stories is shown in the picture, below. Where we were , in rural Korea, there was no refrigeration and very few trucks (no private ones). Almost every family raised a pig or two and getting the pigs to market was a problem. If the pig was killed before being taken to market, it would start to go bad, in the heat, on the long trip, if it was put on the back of a bicycle, it would squirm too much. So the family would have a tearful going away party for the pig – who was almost a pet and part of the family – and then the drunk farmer would load the passed out pig on the back of his bicycle on take him – or her – to market. Seeing a drunk farmer weaving down the road with a passed out pig strapped to the back of a bike was a fairly common sight. End aside.

Finally, I started walking into – for me – this new World. Often talking somebody else into joining me, but sometimes going alone.

Korea, where we were, was poor. It was the first time I had left California, except for a day trip to Tijuana, and I pretty much thought poor was taking the bus (although I had done alot of hitchhiking during Highschool). This was real poor, dirt roads poor, garbage in the streets and shitting by the side of the road poor. I don’t remember what I expected except it wasn’t downtown Nam Yang above. For a long time my shock hid the reality that everybody was working, that all the kids were in school, that this was a country on the make.

Over time, I began to see the beauty of Korea, and the hard work.

 

At some point – and I don’t remember the circumstances at all – Terry Upman and I volunteered to guest teach a couple of English classes at the local school. I don’t remember being very good at it – although I do remember making the kids laugh – but it opened another gate and I was invited to dinner  in Suwon with a couple of teachers.

I was starting to become an Asiaophile, but I never expected the change that Korea made. From impoverished, war-torn, country to one of the Four Asian Tigers with an average UN Human Development Index – a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, standards of living, and quality of life – that is higher than France or Italy. I didn’t expect this

or this

to turn into this (not my pictures).

I didn’t expect Seoul’s South Gate to go from this

to this (not my picture).

But, maybe, my picture of South Gate in 1964 foreshadows the South Gate of today. In my picture are two buses that look sort of like a VW Micro-bus except that they are four wheel drive for the – then – dirt, and often very muddy, roads and they acted like communal taxis. The buses would hang around at a large parking lot, each bus going to a different, specific, place, when the bus was full of people going to the same place, it would take off. Because the buses were marked in Korean, it was hard to find the bus to Nam Yang, and they were not as comfortable as the Courier truck, I only took them once or twice. But I do remember thinking that they would be great in the US. Imagine how handy it would be to catch a direct bus from San Francisco to – say – Telegraph and University in Berkeley, or Portola Valley, or downtown Fairfield.

Looking at the buses in Seoul, was the first time I saw that the weak sauce of American superiority – in everything – often covers an inability to learn from others. Korea didn’t have that alleged advantage. The next time I saw it was in Japan, when I walked from a train platform directly onto the train without climbing stairs. I see it in subways in Hong Kong and high speed trains in Shanghai; all transportation solutions that would help the Bay Area and California. And it is not just in the public sector, I saw it the last time I got into a General Motors car and noticed the goofy power seat controls so much less intuitive than the seat controls in a Mercedes Benz that almost every European and Asian car has adopted.

Reviewing my slides from Korea has been quietly cathartic (to quote Malcolm Pearson). I am surprised at how much one year has informed my life.

Korea 64-65 Part 2: the Tac Site

Korea

I was in Korea for about a year, serving in C Battery of the 38th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, first as a Fire Control Operator and then, when I became a Sergeant, as a Target Selector in a HAWK – Homing All the Way Killer – SAM ( Surface to Air Missile) system. We were in the business of providing an air defense umbrella for the Republic of Korea and the United States troops stationed there. Everything in C Battery revolved around the Tac Site which was the home of all the radars and missiles in our system and sat on the highest hill around. The Tac Site overlooked the Yellow Sea and had the best view of any place I have ever worked. By far.

To the northwest and west were  islands and inlets off of the port of Inchon, which opened into the aforementioned Yellow Sea. To the north and east were rice paddies and the village of Nam Yang.

To the immediate north, in a small valley just below the Tac Site was a compound with a Buddhist temple (I went there several times but it always seemed deserted except for the laundry and I now have the feeling they were ghosting us).

To the southeast and south was an almost endless view of hills and valleys. For awhile, when the Air Force took the troublesome F-105 offline, we ran practice missions against the Marines who were flying A-4 Skyhawks and they used to sneak up these southern valleys at about 350 miles per hour. They were much harder to “kill” than the Air force planes.

In the winter, on top of that hill, it was sometimes bitter cold with the wind coming off the Yellow Sea. Most of the snow was blown off the hill by the wind, but the cold remained, and we were often stuck out in it.

The Quonset hut, in the middle right in the picture above, was called the Ready Room or something equally pretentious. Our basic work schedule, if that is the right term, was that our Battery would be On Status or Hot for about half the time (I don’t remember the time frame, maybe 24 hours out of 48, 48 out of 96, something like that).  On the Tac Site, when we were not On  Status, it was a regular work day and we would be working on the equipment or running drills. When we were On Status, in theory, we were ready to launch missiles at airplanes if we were attacked. Well, semi-ready, we had to be ready to launch  in fifteen minutes and meant hanging out, waiting for an alarm from Battalion with somebody, in the Battery Control Central – BCC – wearing an headset listening to the Battalion comm-line all the time. Passing time when we were awake and sleeping in our clothes when it got late or we got bored (when pulling duty in the BCC, I discovered that the headset connection cable was long enough to allow me to sleep on the floor, a tactic based on my theory that Battalion talking to me over the comm-line would be loud enough to wake me). On one day, off one day, for a year, in theory. In practice we were on much more than we were off, the longest run being almost full time from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve. It got tiresome.

This was the early 60’s, and the HAWK system was based on vacuum tubes. The BCC had a wall of racks and racks of tubes that required a huge air-conditioning system to keep the inside temperature reasonable.  It was so noisy inside that even though we were within touching distance, we couldn’t hear each other, relying on headsets and microphones. This was 60’s state of the art meaning that everything was unreliable and required daily, hourly, minute by minute maintenance. The missiles, especially demanded constant tinkering and replacement which required taking them to the assembly building on little crawlers and constantly running operation checks while they were on their launchers.

Our most distinctive radars were continuous wave radars, called illuminators, which lit the target with a radio frequency beam that the missile then homed in on. The radar frequency was controlled by a gizmo called a klystron that was encased in its own glycerol cooling system which was very unreliable and had to be replaced way more than seemed reasonable.  We had different crawlers to help move them around.

Keeping the HAWK system running required almost constant activity but it was activity to no end. It was practice and maintenance – and changing klystrons – over and over again ad nauseam . It was sitting in the dark, watching small dots – bogies or blips – move across a radar display. It was running system checks and then re-running them. It was lugging heavy machine guns into bunkers in a snow storm but not being issued any ammunition.

Except for August 2, 1964, when the destroyer  USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin thought it was being attacked by the North Vietnamese and everybody went amok. We were off status but came up, as fast as we could, accompanied by klaxons blaring, and orders to change code books.  Ammo was issued to us without anyone keeping track, the missiles were armed, and our battery commander went sort of bonkers issuing orders nobody could follow. It was an interesting couple of days, followed by another half year of pointless drill.

And another half year of great sunsets.