The Dish

One of the remarkable features of this whole disgusting phenomenon is the anti-Muslim techniques. We now have the use of sexual humiliation, rape, the force-feeding of pork, forcible pouring of liquor down an inmate’s throat, wrapping someone in the Israeli flag, forcing inmates to kneel and pray and then kicking them in the head, and now placing duct tape over the mouth of someone reciting the Koran. Here’s a revealing piece of evidence – a first-hand sworn Red Cross deposition of an interrogation in Abu Ghraib:

They took me inside the building and started to scream at me. They stripped me naked, they asked me, “Do you pray to Allah?” I said, “Yes.” They said, “Fuck you” and “Fuck him.” … Someone else asked me, “Do you believe in anything?” I said to him, “I believe in Allah.” So he said, “But I believe in torture and I will torture you. When I go home to my country, I will ask whoever comes after me to torture you.” Then they handcuffed me and hung me to the bed. They ordered me to curse Islam and because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion. They ordered me to thank Jesus I am alive. And I did what they ordered me. This is against my belief. They left me hang from the bed and after a while I lost consciousness.”

And we wonder why we have all but lost this war.

“Has it occurred to anyone that Susan Sontag did not come out of the closet because she was 71 years old? People of a certain age — perhaps even people as enlightened as Sontag — are less comfortable talking about homosexuality or any kind of sex than younger generations. Baby boomer Camille Paglia was coy about the subject when she first came to public view in 1991 or so; I remember a long Washington Post article where she clearly hedged about what team she was playing on. In any case, it seems as if public figures & ordinary citizens have only been out en masse in the last 10-15 years, with a few courageous exceptions. If Susan Sontag had been born later, I bet you she would have been out along with everybody else.”

EMAIL OF THE DAY III: “I have no way to gauge Camille Paglia’s “courage,” but I am aware that Susan Sontag was never afraid to take an unpopular public position nor was she even unafraid to put her on life at risk as she attempted to learn and understand more about the world, as when she lived in besieged Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. It is disgusting that, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, you would insinuate she was a coward because she didn’t live up to your ideal of a public gay figure.

Perhaps the best explanation actually is the one she provided (and not–imagine that!–the fervid projections of someone with a political agenda)–that she didn’t think it was interesting or relevant to her job as a writer who she happened to be sleeping with at the moment (and, remember, this reticence applied to her male as well as female lovers). That her “identity” might not have been first and foremost “lesbian.” That perhaps she felt she was beyond being labeled as “gay” or “straight” and had no desire to be pigeonholed as such. Perhaps, as a public figure, she wanted to protect the privacy of some part of her life. Who really knows? Honestly–and maybe this is because I’m a straight man who admired her for her mind, as a human being, and not as a member of some sexual-political group, I don’t really care. I don’t really understand why, even though she never denied having relationships with woman and certainly did her part for the gay community, you consider her a coward–presumably because she didn’t discuss her sexual life in confessional detail?

But then, I never understood how you could name a vile “award” after her for saying something (that the terrorists were demonstrably not cowards; that they had motivations beyond being “evil” and that we, as a nation, deserved better than the baby-talk the Bush administration put out after the attacks) that, while tough for many people–including you–to hear at the time, had the virtue of being absolutely, clarifyingly right, and is now conventional wisdom (well, except to the people responsible for our disastrous policies). Which isn’t to say she was right all the time–or never mis-spoke. But then again, who is? Certainly–as I’m sure, as a relatively intellectually honest pundit would be forced to agree, not even you.”

Yep, iTunes is now selling many tracks containing nothing but silence:

Among the other silent tracks are “Silence,” by Ciccone Youth, off “The Whitey Album,” “Silence” by Bill Schaeffer, from the album “Grain of Sand,” and “One Minute of Silence” by Project Grudge, which is offered only as a single-song download. For those looking for the best value, Schaeffer offers nearly two minutes of silence, almost twice as much as any of the other tracks…

Art Garfunkel was ahead of his time.

My readers are better than Google. Here’s handy explanation:

The logic of Fitzgerald has sound basis in the American legal system. Despite the noble work journalists sometimes do, reporters, much like any other citizen/resident, do not have carte blanche to aid in the concealment of a criminal act simply on the basis of their profession. In a case based on federal law (such as the law at issue for Fitzgerald, Cooper and Miller, one making it a crime to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert agent of the United States), the Federal Rules of Evidence hold that the privileges against compulsory testimony that apply are the privileges that arise under the Common Law. Examples of these are the attorney-client privilege, the privilege against self-incrimination, the priest-penitent privilege, and the marital communications privilege. The courts have refused to recognize new privileges, such as an accountant-client or reporter-source privilege, which have never been recognized under the Common Law. For historical reasons, the ultimate value to society in ferreting out the truth in a case or controversy (here, a criminal case) through the obtainment of evidence has been ajudged paramount. Note that Judge Hogan’s ruling here is based on Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that “the First Amendment interest asserted by the newsperson was outweighed by the general obligation of a citizen to appear before a grand jury or at trial, pursuant to a subpoena, and give what information he or she possesses.” For more information on privileges, try the handy run-down here.

Thanks. Still, it seems to me that Fitzgerald’s bald statement that no one in America can rely on confidentiality is excessive.

“I remain opposed to torture, as I understand the term, and as I believe the common understanding of the term has been in Anglo-Saxon democracies this past 100 years or so.” – John Derbyshire, today.

“My mental state these past few days: 1. The Abu Ghraib “scandal”: Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let’s have a couple of courts martial for appearance’s sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB.” – John Derbyshire, May 9, rejoicing in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Up to 90 percent of the inmates at Abu Ghraib, who were by any definition protected by the Geneva Conventions, were innocent.

“What really bothers me right now is the political self-protection in place of moral values that happens on the right and left. The left demonstrated this with their rallying around Clinton during Monica-gate. While Clinton probably did not deserve to be impeached, he certainly did not act presidential and was not worthy of the support he received. With the Democrats out of power, the Republicans have been front and center with their political self-protection. Where is the outrage about torture? Honestly, they impeach Clinton over sex and lying, but actual incidents of human beings from around the world being treated with Nazi stye torture is responded to with circling of political wagons. At what point does humanity trump politics? Those who committed the horrors of 9/11 showed no humanity, and only looked to serve their political agenda of terror. We are better then that. Both parties need to be. I am not calling Republicans Nazis or saying they are the same as 9/11 terrorists, but I am saying the moral fiber of our nation is called into question with government sanctioned torture of people, incident or guilty. It is one thing to get into debates about what it means to be patriotic, a silly debate the right and left get into all the time, but it is another thing for our humanity to be at stake. Where is the outrage? Both parties have men and women of great moral conviction. May of those Democrats were missing during Clinton’s presidency, and it seems many Republicans are missing now.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

Here’s a very insightful essay by leftist gay writer, Michael Bronski, on the question of Susan Sontag’s closetedness. What he homes in on is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of her work, a contradiction betwen her public commmitment to elucidating the political implications of personal cowardice – and her own cowardice in refusing to deal honestly with a central fact of her own identity, a fact that had huge public consequences in her own time:

But if she could not have come out in 1969 after the Stonewall riots, couldn’t she have done so in the 1970s as feminism became mainstream? Couldn’t she have done so in the 1980s as AIDS ravaged a generation of gay men, something she wrote about so movingly in her short story “The Way We Live Now” and her book “AIDS and Its Metaphors?” Couldn’t she have done so in the 1990s as the secret nature of her relationships with other women evolved into an “open secret” (open to everyone, that is, except for the intrepid reporters at the Times)? Of course, she could have. But she didn’t. She obviously decided – this was a woman who took all of her decisions very seriously – not to.
This raises some complicated questions: What does it mean to set yourself up as an arbiter of moral issues who plumbs the intersections of public action and personal responsibility even as you avoid discussing vital, personal issues? In most of her political writings Sontag explicated how institutionalized power structures – racism, colonialism, state-sponsored violence – hurt individual people as well as nations. It is not as though she did not understand how homophobia works.

Coming out as a public intellectual who is also gay entails risk. I have dealt with this for years. A huge amount of criticism of my own work (on the right) is tinged with homophobia, and the ransacking of my private life (by the left) was imbued with homophobia and HIV-phobia as well. If I had not come out as gay at the beginning of my career, or as HIV-positive a decade ago, I would have had to deal with none of it. But so be it. If you are an honest public writer, you deal with the person you are, not the person it would be easier to be. You fight through the attempt to marginalize and belittle you and your work. Look, for example, at Camille Paglia, an openly gay woman whose eclectic and universal interests, whose plumbing of high and low, whose capacity for analysis of art and literature and candor and history easily rivals – and often surpasses – Sontag’s. The difference between Paglia and Sontag is courage and integrity. Just don’t expect many on the so-called left to point this out. Kudos to Bronski for going there.

He criticizes me for not explaining what I think is legitimate and illegitimate in the interrogation of prisoners. The reason I haven’t spelled it out is that I thought it was obvious. My position is that we should stick with the rules and regulations and procedures that have always been followed by the U.S. military – humane treatment, no physical coercion. These are all laid out in a series of treaties known as the Geneva Conventions. That position, by the way, is the president’s own official position. The burden of proof seems to me to lie with those who want to tear up the rules of humane treatment of prisoners of war, and erect new boundaries. That’s what the Bush administration did. And the boundaries for pain were about as extreme as you can imagine. In his own memo, Jay Bybee, assistant attorney general even found a way to justify the actions of some Serbian war criminals against Bosnian victims! And Glenn wonders why some talk about the “degeneracy” of the Bush administration. What amazes me is how so many supporters of the war would rather explain away or rationalize or ignore these evil and utterly self-defeating policies. They seem to care more about defending the administration than either winning the war or standing up to evil. I just don’t get it.

“The Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Russian Revolution but it ended badly for them. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian right is less easily understood. I can imagine a similarly disillusioning outcome … The radical right and the radical left see liberalism’s appeal to reason and tolerance as the denial of their uniform ideology. Every democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and spirit, for this alone gives democracy the chance for self-correction and reform. Without it, the survival of democracy is at risk. Every genuine conservative knows this.” – Fritz Stern, scholar of Nazism, in the New York Times.

Today will be an important opportunity to see what this administration has wrought with respect to the humane treatment of prisoners in U.S. military custody. Let’s retire at the start the notion that the only torture that has been used by the U.S. has been against known members of al Qaeda. This is not true. Many innocent men and boys were raped, brutally beaten, crucified for hours (a more accurate term than put in “stress positions”), left in their own excrement, sodomized, electrocuted, had chemicals from fluorescent lights poured on them, forced to lie down on burning metal till they were unrecognizable from burns – all this in Iraq alone, at several prisons as well as Abu Ghraib. I spent a week reading all the official reports over Christmas for a forthcoming review essay. Abu Ghraib is but one aspect of a pervasive pattern of torture and abuse that, in my view, is only beginning to sink in.

PERVASIVE AND EVIL: This brutal treatment occurred, according to various government reports, only at internment facilities which were also designed to get intelligence. Up to 80 percent of the inmates at Abu Ghraib – which was used to get better intelligence – were utterly innocent. The torture was done by hundreds of different U.S. military officers and soldiers from almost every branch of the military. There is no assurance that it has stopped. And there’s plenty of evidence that many senior officials knew exactly what was going on. When Alberto Gonzales says he now backs a recently instituted anti-torture policy, it necessarily implies that he once supported a pro-torture policy. (If he didn’t, why the reversal?) Orwell urged us against the kind of terms favored by torture-justifiers as “coercive interrogation.” That’s why I’ve cited just a few of the methods. These methods are evil, counter-productive to the war effort and deeply wounding to the integrity and reputation of the United States and the entire free world. After Abu Ghraib, you might expect some kind of reckoning. But what’s stunning about this president is his complete indifference to these facts. His nomination of Gonzales to attorney general is a de facto statement that he believes that someone who enabled these things needs rewarding, not censuring. This from a president elected in part on something called “moral values.” If “moral values” mean indifference to torture, they are literally meaningless.

MERITOCRACY IN TROUBLE? In America, the omens aren’t good. The Economist explains.