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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
@ Kitt
no, that exact quote was only on that one site (that I could find) Evidently it's more of a line you tell your buddies than advertise with. Who'd a thunk it? :) If you bother to read the Salon article, the author does testify as to what he puts in his films and how they made her feel. I think it's worth slogging through, upsetting as it is.
-- hyblaean
That, my friend, is a point that you need to pound home time and time again. I think a blog post on just that one point would be wonderful.
We have many (not a few here) that can see the control freak nature of the opposition, but not the control freak impulses of their own. They need your help there ol' sage of the net. (no, that was not sarcasm)
If all people were adults and all agreed to do these acts then the constitution protects their right to do so as does any rational idea of liberty. It may be stupid; it may be sick; it may be repulsive: but it is legal in a free country.
I read the damned article. It does not change that you were wrong one damned bit. Period. Hearsay does not hold up. Not even in conversation. As I told you, I am not and have not been discussing anything else with you beyond the one issue about your wrong headed belief that a made up quote becomes a real quote only by wishing it so.
I'm certainly not a gourmand of porn. Neither am I a prude. But this guy, Max Hardcore, "reads" like a total scumbag. At least the few articles I read before having to stop and take a shower.
And I fully agree with Glenn's overall theme in this blog post. Which really has nothing to do with whether Max Hardcore is a piece of shit or not with how he treats his adult actresses.
Either way, I just think it takes a whole lot of balls to use this guy as a comparison, no matter how apt, for Glenn's overall point.
This IMHO is the kind of "stuff" that separates the true advocates of what freedom is really all about versus the pablum we "think" represents freedom. Further, the real shame of it all, as I see it, is that most people would probably go crazy with the desire to imprison this guy or just plain crucify him. Which says a whole lot about how much people understand about freedom of expression.
Glenn, my hat's off to you sir! If Salon.com had a "Fearless Freedom Warrior" award I'd nominate you.
You are your own best argument against the mentality you represent. I hope you increase your "contributions" here.-- DCLaw1
As long as Glenn puts up S&M porn as an American ideal of adult consensuality, I'll be happy to. Are you representative of that mentality?
How you folks can rationalize beatings for fun as OK, while hyperventilating about "humiliation" to get info saving American lives as uncivilized, is beyond me. But hey, you value Al Qaeda feelings more than American lives, yes? Tsk.
As for contributions, more will come as soon as I finish moving. Once Obama is installed everything that happens will be the Democrats fault, and I'm looking forward to giving you folks the same treatment accorded Republicans. Heh.
As long as Glenn puts up S&M porn as an American ideal of adult consensuality, I'll be happy to.-- shooter242
You can't get through one sentence of a post without telling some blatant, stupid lie.
You're the best!
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90002025
December 27, 2007
By Scott HortonDid Bush Watch the Torture Tapes?
[...] the sequence of statements out of the White House is extremely revealing. It started with firm denials, then went silent and then pulled back rather sharply to a “President Bush has no present recollection of having seen the tapes.” This is a formulation frequently used to avoid perjury charges [...]
[...] John Kiriakou clarified his statements about the purpose for which the tapes were made. It was to brief higher ups about the process of the interrogation. Reports persist that one “higher-up” in particular had a special strong interest in knowing the details of the Abu Zubaydah case. His name is George W. Bush.
Are Bush’s denials that he has seen the torture tapes really credible? I don’t think so. And having seen them, the interest in their destruction would be equally fierce, which helps account for the involvement of the White House’s four most senior lawyers in the process. [...]
- - Scott Horton at Harper's, December 2007
This report by Human Rights Watch details the kind of 'pampering' you are perhaps referring to?
http://hrw.org/reports/2008/us0608/us0608web.pdf
It's called "Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo".
When you're done, if you are still eating your meals well, and could take another, perhaps you want to expand your knowledge to what really has happened at Abu Ghraib and Bagram. This report, by the Physicians for Human Rights, should help:
http://brokenlives.info/?page_id=69
The pictures of the people that Glenn put up, at Abu Ghraib, are kind of a before and after of someone being threatened, and then having been bitten, by a police dog, while handcuffed and naked (it's two different people but that is what all the blood is about). The use of dogs was approved by Donald Rumsfeld when he signed the memo prepared for him by William J. Haynes II. It is well documented in Phillippe Sands' The Torture Team, and both Sands and Haynes testified about it in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
I have read all three in their entirety, Shooter, and I would warn you to be prepared, especially if you've never read medical (Istanbul Protocol) style descriptions of extremely abhorrent acts, like those detailed in the PHR document. Rush Limbaugh must not have read them, because this stuff never happens at frat hazings. The Skull and Bones club is not known for dislocating shoulders, having doctors reset them, and then dislocating them again. Neither is Max Hardcore.
Maybe you'd prefer poetry? You can try Marc Falkoff's Poems from Guantanamo. The author (I should say compiler) has trouble speaking about the book without tears welling up at points. I don't think he thought his client was being 'pampered', one doesn't normally attempt suicide after pampering.
Anyone who believes that what takes the government a great deal of difficulty to prosecute, and then only on grounds of local community taste, holds so much as a candle to the total destruction of psyches and lives recently perpetrated on prisoners under U.S. control, is woefully naive. Anyone who could call the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo "pampering" is either deluded, delusional, or must be referring to the 30 odd charges of torture leveled at the U.S. prison system itself (by the U.N.Committee Against Torture, 2006), outside of the treatment of so-called enemy combatants.
Shall I give you the benefit of the doubt that you meant pampering by comparison to Georgia prison guards who smash prisoners faces against concrete walls and supermax prisons the ruin the neural connections in brains with multiyear extreme solitary confinements? That you were comparing it to the seven prosecutions for sexual abuse in seven years at the Federal Pen for women in Fort Worth?
I thought so.
But even so, you're wrong.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
