Responsibility vs. Accountability at Abu Ghraib

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Re: Re: The Sad Sad Truth

So anything with a downside is out.

I can see your point, honey. Nobody who's read the chilling account of that day at Kent State when the National Guardsmen panicked and hurled insults at the protesters could blame you for wanting to avoid scorn and frustration. Some of those kids were so embarrassed and frustrated, they fell to the ground and played dead.

Luc, my less-than-satanic friend, if being "referred to as a wannabe hippie" is your idea of a good reason not to protest, and if you can't see a point in arguing your views because you'll face rejection and frustration, then you're absolutely right. Your generation of Americans mighta as well sit this one out.

If you had said you were afraid of being arrested, losing your job, being made to wear an armband or kicked out of the country, you'd have been in good company. Nobody should have to throw his life away for a lost cause; people do, and sometimes they beat the odds, but I can't pretend I'd be one of them. But Jesus, honey, if all it takes to make you give up is the thought that it won't be easy...I don't even believe that.

It's been a crappy four years for people who hate bullies and hypocrites, Luc. The worst four years I can remember since Vietnam and Watergate. We were lucky that things got easier for a while, after that. You grew up not knowing the worst about the nature of some people who seek and take power. Now you know, and you're right to be disgusted. But it isn't likely to get better on its own. And if you leave it to others, you're part of the problem. You can decide to fold up the tents and line up for your wrist tattoo, or you can at least be willing to take a little flack for what you believe.

You will. You have it in you. That's so obvious about you: the strength of your passion. It's just afraid to come out right now. It doesn't know its own power. It will. It has to.

We can't all be young again, Luc. You're all the hope we have.

You're missing my point, sher.

Back in the sixties you got respect. You got bullets and pain and insults, but you were listened to by those in power. You were considered a threat because you had the numbers. The press was sympathetic to your cause. All eyes were turned to you.

Here in the zeroes, protestors are given shit. They can march ten million strong and the country is so inudated that no one notes it, most importantly not the ones in power. A march by me and my fellow youth is considered by the press and the public at best an exercise in 60s nostalgia. The eyes are still on the people of the 60s who have the numbers. It is still on them as they protest and filmmake as adults. People still listen to the Boomers. My generation is too "apathetic" and "nostalgic" to be worth listening to. I watched when I protested, when I watched my friends go to Seattle to protest WTO. I saw how they were ignored, how the power elite laughed at their attempt. I saw the press devoted to how stupid the protestors were and how it was an "homage" to the "glorious protests of the 60s". I remembered that. I watched as parades in the millions to protest were compared on equal ground from mere hundreds who vouched for the status quo.

My voice in that din was nothing. The actions of my firends were nothing. All because we couldn't live up to the "novelty" of the 60s enough to win the media's hearts.

My protestations are nothing as a marcher. All I can do is protest in my tiny ways that are equally pointless. I'm not a rockstar who makes a wicked song about the injustice of the junta. I can't make the big displays (which seem to be ignored just as much as the protests). My screams of defiance are nothing to the Keseyian machine. They are mere bug bites to the steamroller of status quo. That's my point. Without a sympathetic press, I can't use protestation to influence the public to influence the people.


That's my impotent rage. Oh I still rage like the rabid beast in the noon-high sun. But to the world it matters naught. And that makes it all the worse.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: The Sad Sad Truth

You're missing my point, sher.

Back in the sixties you got respect. You got bullets and pain and insults, but you were listened to by those in power. You were considered a threat because you had the numbers. The press was sympathetic to your cause. All eyes were turned to you.

You're kidding, right? You think that just happened? "Dick, look at those lovely young people. They seem so passionate in their beliefs. Let's shoot some of them so they can get respect.

I was a kid and missed out on the sixties, other than hearing my dad rant about it. But I do know that before protesters were heard, they were teargassed and beaten and kicked out of school and home and left the country to avoid the draft, and some of them were killed, and they were labeled as the lowest life form. Jesus, look at how Kerry's protest of the war is damning him in the eyes of so many people, 30 years after the fact, despite his having fought in the damned thing.

Respect gets earned, Luc. You don't just march and say, "Look at me, I'm protesting."

Do you really believe Nixon respected those people? Is that what the billyclubs and handcuffs represented?

The one person I know who makes a huge difference in the world, politically, misses out on most of the joy of life to make that sacrifice. He doesn't want people close to him to share the threats and the lawsuits. He sleeps on the sofa in his office so nobody can come after a house - he doesn't have one. He's learned that politicians fear individual letter-writers and phone callers more than we think they do. He found that out by getting close to some of them and knowing them as people, and that took years. Once in a while, there's a conscience under the compromised shell, and your letters make a difference.

I asked him one time why he fights so hard for what is essentially, in Florida, a losing battle for the environment. He said, "Decisions are made by the people who show up. Nobody else shows up."

Here in the zeroes, protestors are given shit. They can march ten million strong and the country is so inudated that no one notes it, most importantly not the ones in power. A march by me and my fellow youth is considered by the press and the public at best an exercise in 60s nostalgia. The eyes are still on the people of the 60s who have the numbers. It is still on them as they protest and filmmake as adults. People still listen to the Boomers. My generation is too "apathetic" and "nostalgic" to be worth listening to. I watched when I protested, when I watched my friends go to Seattle to protest WTO. I saw how they were ignored, how the power elite laughed at their attempt. I saw the press devoted to how stupid the protestors were and how it was an "homage" to the "glorious protests of the 60s". I remembered that. I watched as parades in the millions to protest were compared on equal ground from mere hundreds who vouched for the status quo.

My voice in that din was nothing. The actions of my firends were nothing. All because we couldn't live up to the "novelty" of the 60s enough to win the media's hearts.

My protestations are nothing as a marcher. All I can do is protest in my tiny ways that are equally pointless. I'm not a rockstar who makes a wicked song about the injustice of the junta. I can't make the big displays (which seem to be ignored just as much as the protests). My screams of defiance are nothing to the Keseyian machine. They are mere bug bites to the steamroller of status quo. That's my point. Without a sympathetic press, I can't use protestation to influence the public to influence the people.


That's my impotent rage. Oh I still rage like the rabid beast in the noon-high sun. But to the world it matters naught. And that makes it all the worse.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Re: Re: Re: Re: The Sad Sad Truth

You're kidding, right? You think that just happened? "Dick, look at those lovely young people. They seem so passionate in their beliefs. Let's shoot some of them so they can get respect.

I was a kid and missed out on the sixties, other than hearing my dad rant about it. But I do know that before protesters were heard, they were teargassed and beaten and kicked out of school and home and left the country to avoid the draft, and some of them were killed, and they were labeled as the lowest life form. Jesus, look at how Kerry's protest of the war is damning him in the eyes of so many people, 30 years after the fact, despite his having fought in the damned thing.

Respect gets earned, Luc. You don't just march and say, "Look at me, I'm protesting."

Do you really believe Nixon respected those people? Is that what the billyclubs and handcuffs represented?

Fear and hate are a form of respect. The power structure felt threatened enough by the protestors that they became a household word, were teargassed, thrown out of homes, and beaten by the "coppahs".

The protestors of this day and age might not as well exist for all they raise in the structure. They don't need to be labelled the lowest form of life, the coppahs only bothered to tear gas the protestors at WTO.

By being hated, by threatening the status quo, things change. Without that counter-emotion, without bothering with that counteremotion, by patting us on the head and saying oh how cute, the power structure does far more to destroy us than a thousand hateful speaches by Spiro Agnew. I wish we were hated. Then I could believe we had the power to change things.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Sad Sad Truth

Fear and hate are a form of respect. The power structure felt threatened enough by the protestors that they became a household word, were teargassed, thrown out of homes, and beaten by the "coppahs".

The protestors of this day and age might not as well exist for all they raise in the structure. They don't need to be labelled the lowest form of life, the coppahs only bothered to tear gas the protestors at WTO.

By being hated, by threatening the status quo, things change. Without that counter-emotion, without bothering with that counteremotion, by patting us on the head and saying oh how cute, the power structure does far more to destroy us than a thousand hateful speaches by Spiro Agnew. I wish we were hated. Then I could believe we had the power to change things.

You've got this all figured out. Do nothing because nobody has asked for your opinion yet.

The protesters of your day and age get press when they demand it. I have a friend who's suing the city of Miami because he was lucky enough to capture his injury on camera when he was attacked by a police officer just for filming a protest during the NTA summit here last year. They took cameras and film from people in the crowd, but while this guy was half-conscious from the blow that splattered blood on the lens of his camera, a stranger in the crowd dragged him to safety and hid the camera for him and gave it back after my friend got out of the hospital. Now that the city and the state of Florida know this is on camera - and he's been interviewed by Bill Moyers - he's suddenly taken seriously. He's the one in a hundred thousand from that weekend who will be taken seriously, and only because of a fluke - the stranger who risked arrest and injury to help hide the film. The media's interest in him had nothing to do with it, Luc. They're interested now because the ACLU is involved, and because Bill Moyers is the respected journalist the local hacks dreamed of being when they went to journalism school, and and maybe his nvovement makes the spokesmodel/TV anchormen feel a little guilty for not having portrayed this story truthfully when it was happening.

I think my friend would prefer to not have a brain injury and not be the hero of the NTA summit. He wasn't even there to protest, just to make a documentary. But that's how news gets made, and how society is made to take note of what the media chose not to show.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Sad Sad Truth

You've got this all figured out. Do nothing because nobody has asked for your opinion yet.

The protesters of your day and age get press when they demand it. I have a friend who's suing the city of Miami because he was lucky enough to capture his injury on camera when he was attacked by a police officer just for filming a protest during the NTA summit here last year. They took cameras and film from people in the crowd, but while this guy was half-conscious from the blow that splattered blood on the lens of his camera, a stranger in the crowd dragged him to safety and hid the camera for him and gave it back after my friend got out of the hospital. Now that the city and the state of Florida know this is on camera - and he's been interviewed by Bill Moyers - he's suddenly taken seriously. He's the one in a hundred thousand from that weekend who will be taken seriously, and only because of a fluke - the stranger who risked arrest and injury to help hide the film. The media's interest in him had nothing to do with it, Luc. They're interested now because the ACLU is involved, and because Bill Moyers is the respected journalist the local hacks dreamed of being when they went to journalism school, and and maybe his nvovement makes the spokesmodel/TV anchormen feel a little guilty for not having portrayed this story truthfully when it was happening.

I think my friend would prefer to not have a brain injury and not be the hero of the NTA summit. He wasn't even there to protest, just to make a documentary. But that's how news gets made, and how society is made to take note of what the media chose not to show.

Yes, but the news is based on the novelty of the crime committed against him. Any similar crimes will be ignored for not being good enough for air time.


Besides, who said I don't do anything. I live for futility. My attempts to do what I know will fail are key parts of what's left of my battered romanticism. I just have no illusion that it will change things, that my rage means diddly to the suits in power. Perhaps if I became filthy rich in order to buy power, I could make a difference. Right now, the most I can say is that I made an appearance, perhaps sated the societally acceptable rebellion quota.

And if you want the one bit of activism I do that I feel may have a bee-like efect as compared to no effect is my attempt to break into the playwriting field. All my works of that category handle issues that matter to me and show some of my opinion on the matter as well as entertain. If I ever break through there, maybe I can pretend that I have a voice. Until then, I am merely the echo of a nostalgia craze, beaten up documentarian or not.


P.S. I know you are yelling at me for my futilism and I understand. It doesn't change the fact that my rage is much like that in the Smashing Pumpkins song: "Despite all my rage/ I am still just a rat in a cage". It is the main reason why political topics both lure me and make me regret. The youth struggle that I am part of is complicated. Everyone condemns us as apathetic when we sit out politics and condemns us as unoriginal and nostalgic when we don't. It's a no-win situation that leads to some of us coming up with bizarre tangents such as condemning attitudes about protestations or so-called "clever" protests that prey on the American appiteite for slogan and advertising worship.

P.P.S. Anyway, what I was saying before I rambled up above is that your views on protests don't change the reality from the point of view of the youth nor does it change my futilistic and ultra-cynically romantic nature.

 

[Pure]

Lucifer made some good points, though I agree with sher that his contrast is overdrawn:

Fear and hate are a form of respect. The power structure felt threatened enough by the protestors [of the 60s] that they became a household word, were teargassed, thrown out of homes, and beaten by the "coppahs".

The protestors of this day and age might not as well exist for all they raise in the structure. They don't need to be labelled the lowest form of life, the coppahs only bothered to tear gas the protestors at WTO.

This IS something to this last paragraph. Some of today's suppression is mind boggling and unnoted by the press, or by columnists: I.e., having 'free speech areas'-- barbed wire surrounded vacant lots--that are miles from the event being protested. they are places a 'protester' is compelled to go, under pain of arrest. any protest or picketing near the event being outlawed.

OTOH, *fear* is certainly there, in the power structure, esp. in the Justice Dept and the Defense Dept and Bonzo himself. The provisions for fighting 'terror', including for use against citizens show great fear.

I do agree there are few know 'cases' yet, with names. There is Padilla, not yet adjudged by the Supreme Ct.

There is a highly interesting one where a US Muslim technical fellow, helping with certain Islamist websites, has been charged as aiding 'terror.'

I think too, Michael Moore, esp. F 9-11 certainly got himself noticed, as a kind of peaceful liberal 'protester' with (what are perceived as) dangerous views.

As Lucifer says, however, no one now knows of leading campus protesters, as say, when Mario Savio hit the headlines. Fewer outspoken Black leaders get reported with any respect, e.g. Sharpton, Farakhan, and current NAACP head.

If I may support Luc, the utter servility of the press and TV seems of a different order than ever reigned in the 1960s. Only a few internet sites like antiwar.com and moveon.org keep up the good fight (as well as the mild liberal ones like Slate and Salon).

 

[oggbashan]

Protest Marches and Demonstrations

I am concerned about the hijacking of legitimate grievances by rent-a-mob.

The anti-capitalist demonstrations are an example. Most of those involved are unhappy about the lack of responsibility of large multi-nationals for their staff, their customers or their private shareholders. However that message is lost when TV news shows a violent minority attacking the police, or damaging property. That minority seems to turn out for every cause just to fight, break and destroy.

Demonstrations against the current government (of the UK or US) can be dismissed by those in power because of the TV reporting 'See - it is only the violent nutcases - not the real people'. The message from the majority of those protesting is not heard.

Animal rights in this country are passionately defended yet the few violent terrorists who claim to act for that cause alienate public opinion.

It is difficult to organise a protest without risking the presence of people who just want an excuse for a riot.

Og

 

[Pure]

Ogg said, //However that [protest]message is lost when TV news shows a violent minority attacking the police, or damaging property. That minority seems to turn out for every cause just to fight, break and destroy.//

What Ogg misses is the utter servility of the press. In the 60s--and in the 20s, for that matter-- the press highlighted, as it does now, the 'dangerous' or 'violent' nature of certain agitators and protesters. And in many cases there are a few violent persons-- though as Ogg also fails to note, they are sometimes working for the security apparatus!

Now, I think it's true in spades. I.e., in the US, the Secret Service just grabs you and shanghais you for a while (if you're lucky). the press don't report that, but now talk of "suspected terrorists" or "known al qaeda associates."

The US press ignores the greater restrictions--including to have to re-locate miles away--and provocations to violence or 'law breaking.' When you don't leave, and wont get pushed, you're going to be charged with 'assaulting an officer.'

In short 'violence' is the existing power's construction of certain acts, parroted by the press. It's well known that violence BY existing powers (states) never bears that name, rather it's 'police intervened to restore order.' or at abu ghraib "physical methods of interrogation were employed to increase the likelihood of cooperation in giving up information which would save American lives."

 

[Pure]

Hey Sanchez is taking some shit according to the classified portions of the Pentagon's report. He apparently endorsed the idea of treating Iraqi prisoners like the Guantanamo poor bastards being held and squeezed forever; i.e., that the Iraqis being held are outside of the Geneva conventions.

Maybe his 'consequence' will be that he's delayed in getting the fourth star of his generalship!

Also, I think Pappas is getting a little flak too. Will lose his chauffeur for a month or something....