Sleepycatz

Panties for Peace

Despondent over the lack of of action against the Burmese dictators recent murder and repression, an activist group in Thailand has organized women to send their underwear to the Burmese government offices and embassies. The Panties for Peace protest is designed to first keep the ever saddening plight of Burma in the minds of the media and policy makers, and secondly to play upon the masculine superstitions of the Burmese depots:

Superstitious junta members believe that any contact with female undergarments - clean or dirty - will sap them of their power, said Jackie Pollack, a member of the Lanna Action for Burma Committee.

“Not only are they brutal, but they are also very superstitious. They believe that touching a woman’s pants or sarong will make them lose their strength,” Ms Pollack told Guardian Unlimited.

It never ceases to amaze how common the fear of women’s naughty bits is among despotic authoritarians. During a visit from the Pope last year the Polish authorities banned the sales of lingerie and tampons. The sale of tampons, by unlicensed medical professionals has also been banned in Taiwan. Authoritarians seem to have some innate fear of the female body. Nearly all the anti-homosexual rhetoric, here in the states, focuses on the feminizing of the male body by emphasizing stereotypical female characteristics such as physical weakness, passivity, and of course an obsession on the penetration of the sexual body.

The despots of Burma seem to believe that simply touching a pair of panties, which may have been in the proximity of a vagina, imparts femitons which attack the precious masculine bodily fluids. It is no coincidence that this fear of women’s bodies has created a policy of using rape as a political and military weapon. Their fear and hatred of women’s bodies allows these men to justify performing the most unspeakable acts against them.

Next week on October 24th, the US Campaign for Burma will be holding a grass roots media awareness day. They hope to bring more pressure on the UN — and particularly China — to take action against the brutal leaders of Burma. There is still some hope for the Burmese people that the world can force the government to recognize the duly elected leaders of Burma and provide some relief to the brutalized citizens of this small country.

Freekin Sad

It is often a sad fact of life that people who shine with brilliant insight at one moment remain imprisoned by their dark prejudices throughout their lives. Such is the fate of Dr. James Watson. In 1962 Dr. Watson won the Nobel Prize for his work on the discovery of the DNA double helix, this week Dr. Watson made the claim thats dark skinned people are less intelligent then lighter skinned ones:

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.”. He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

Of course Dr. Watson’s opinions have no basis in scientific reasoning or fact. But the mere notion that a Nobel accredited scientist should utter such nonsense gives credence to racist theories and policies throughout the world. Dr. Watson has never been a good spokesman for the common humanity of man. In the past, he has suggested a link between skin-tone and libido, and has suggested that a woman may wish to abort her child if it can be shown the child would be a homosexual.

It’s not clear if Dr. Watson is simply so egomaniacle that he believes his discovery of fifty years ago is the golden key to understanding all of societies problems — and that we can ignore historical and economic movements like colonialism, slavery, and genocide to explain social/economic problems among people. Or if he is simply, like so many, a prisoner to the prejudices and racism of the culture of his youth. In either case, it is sad and disturbing to see a man who pioneered our understanding of the common biology of humanity to espouse discredited and divisive 19th century views. It all seems to suggest that no matter how far we extend our intelligence we must continue to fight the ignorance of our personal prejudices.

Why We Torture

Press Secretary Perino: “But the legal opinion of the United States is that we do not torture. The statutes have been interpreted, the committees have been briefed. And I believe that the members that have been briefed are satisfied that the policy of the United States, and the practices, do not constitute torture.”

That the American government has been involved in torture for the last fifty years should come as no surprise to scholars and observers of its foreign policy. America’s techniques were honed in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, and El Salvador. But what was once done as consultations with foreign security services in the past, has now become overtly practiced by the American government.

When President Bush insists that “We do not torture” it is always with a wink and a nudge to foreign interests and the American people. Historically, governments never admit that that torture prisoners. They will couch their language in professional euphemisms: “enhanced interrogations”, “harsh questioning,” “psychological treatment,” “re-education” are all terms used in the past by governments which tortured prisoners, but denied that they tortured. Even the classification of ‘prisoner’ becomes euphemised: in the Soviet Union prisoners became “patients,” or “dissidents,” in Latin America they were “suspects” or “rebels,” in China “counter-revolutionaries,” and here, in America, they are “detainees” or “enemy combatants”. But this re-defining of language, this euphemization, was never intended to completely hide the fact that all of these governments engaged in in torture. Rather, the language is designed to provide both the highest levels of deniability and justification of tortures use.

As former CIA officer Robert Baer has stated, torture is not an effective or accurate means of acquiring intelligence information. In fact there are well known methods of interrogation which have proven accurate, and which do not involve physical or psychological violence. Around the world, torture is is publicly denounced and decried as inhuman, barbarous, and cruel. So why is torture employed? Partially because it is so publicly reviled. Employing torture signifies a state’s determination and its willingness to protect its interests. For those people who strongly support the state, the act of torture tends embolden their support. For this group, torture — through a state proxy — signifies strength, resolve, and feeds a cathartic need for violent retribution against those they perceive as enemies of the state they support. Torture allows the state transmits the message that it has the ultimate authority over life, death, pain, and comfort. Because of this torture can never be completely hidden. The state must make sure that its ‘enemies’ are aware of its actions. But the state must also maintain the ability to plausibly deny that it utilizes torture. Historically, states have found it nearly impossible to achieve this balance. For years, it was considered monstrously humorous that the Soviets or the Cubans would deny that they tortured prisoners. Today that same sarcastic view is held of America.

Governments which employ torture always claim they need to do so to save the nation from its enemies. But there is no evidence to support this. There is no record of a nation falling because it failed to torture its prisoners. But there is ample evidence to suggest that torture generates fear, which engenders hatred, and which leads to violence against the nation and its people. As President Bush and his supporters have decided that America is to be a torturing nation, they should consider that the terror they try to engender today may be visited upon them tomorrow. They should reflect on the fact that by taking up the banner of torture they have equated America with those nations whose citizens fled to America to escape the horrors of their own torturers. They should remember that history and law always condemns the brutality and horror of torture and those who supported and employed it.

The harlequin speech of suicide

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. . .

So begins, arguably, one of the greatest American poems written in the last 100 years. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark ruling in People v. Ferlinghetti allowing the sale of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. In 1957 the local authorities in San Fransisco had charged poet, publisher, and bookseller, Laurence Ferlinghetti with obscenity over his publication and sale of Howl. On October 3rd, Judge Clayton Horn, who was a Sunday School teacher and had recently sentenced five shoplifters to read and write essays on the Ten Commandments, wrote:

Would there be any freedom of the press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid and innocuous euphemism? An author should be real in treating his subject and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words. . . . If the material has the slightest redeeming social importance it is not obscene. . .

Fifty years after Judge Horn’s opinion New York Public Radio changed it’s mind and decided not to air the poem on the grounds that it might be deemed obscene by the FCC. With their new found power to fine stations hundreds of thousands of dollars under obscenity rulings, the FCC has created a climate of censorship which would make any authoritarian proud. How, exactly, the FCC can deem something obscene which the courts have explicitly held is not, is a leap of legal logic which boggles the mind. The great irony, of course, is that the society Ginsberg railed against in Howl is stronger today then when he wrote the poem — and that society which was able to tolerate his words fifty years ago seems unable to do so today. So what are we to say to the FCC and the puritans who would gladly sacrifice poetry, literature and art on the pyres of purity? Are we to acquiesce and accept their fatherly admonishments of what’s proper and decent, or are we to fight and cry, as William Carlos Williams did in his introduction to Howl: “Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.”

Sadness for Burma

The Daily Mail is reporting today that thousands have been massacred in Burma over the weekend, and that there is little hope left for the Burmese people. The repressive regime has deployed over 20,000 troops in Rangoon and has been performing mass arrests and killings, dumping the bodies in the jungle. Ko Htike has been blogging about he detention camps set up in the Yangon Institute of Technology and General Institute of Technology and the appalling brutality met out to the peaceful Buddhist monks.

A Swedish diplomat who visited Burma during the protests said last night that in her opinion the revolution has failed.

Liselotte Agerlid, who is now in Thailand, said that the Burmese people now face possibly decades of repression. “The Burma revolt is over,” she added.

“The military regime won and a new generation has been violently repressed and violently denied democracy. The people in the street were young people, monks and civilians who were not participating during the 1988 revolt.

“Now the military has cracked down the revolt, and the result may very well be that the regime will enjoy another 20 years of silence, ruling by fear.”

I hope that this is not the case; that the Burmese people still have some hope of removing their despotic government. But I am also saddened by my knowledge of political realities. With the unfettered support of China, the Burmese government will continue to exercise its reign of rape, brutality, and executions.

In reading the coverage today, I was struck by how many European readers commented on the lack of American intervention. The frustrations in their comments pointed again to American hypocrisy: “Americans call for Democratic reforms, but won’t do anything about it.” In some sense they are correct, but America is a paper tiger in Asia. We have no military left — it has been squandered in Iraq. We have no economic leverage left –it has been purchased by the Chinese. We have no diplomatic force remaining — it was abandoned in the case for WMDs and broken on the shores of Guantanamo.

There are times which i wish I did believe in God. At least then I could prey for the people of Burma, and hope some divine power would intervene and stop their suffering. Sadly, I know this will not happen.

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

I have written several times in the past about AT&T’s questionable treatment of content in order to further their own business agenda. Now comes word that AT&T is officially enshrining their policies in their Terms of Service agreement with AT&T users. As Slashdot reported a few days ago, the updated ToS includes the following terms:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

The breadth of this statement is amazing. As AT&T partners with the Chinese government, would it now be a violation of an AT&T service agreement to criticize the Chinese government? Could one have their DSL connection terminated for publicly questioning their telephone bill?

The AT&T apologists and defenders immediately jumped on this change of the ToS, claiming, once again, that this is obviously an over-reaching mistake by some middle manager, and that, under common-carrier laws, the ToS is unenforceable and would be struck down in court. My response to these people, the same one’s who claimed the Pearl Jam incident was simply an over-reaction by a middle manager, is to ask: how many of these anti-consumer actions does it take constitute evidence of a subtle or general anti-consumer corporate policy? one?, three?, twelve?, twenty? Let me know an I will assemble the requisite documentation. As to the issue of common-carrier regulations, commentators are correct that under those regulations AT&T must remain neutral to general content. However, it is most likely that should push come to shove that AT&T will claim itself to be a Media Organization not held to common-carrier standards. After all, no one would expect Viacom to carry content which damaged their brands, why should AT&T?

There are a number of people whom I respect who disagree with me on the issue of Net Neutrality. Most of them believe that market forces will respond and correct any anti-consumer moves by Internet providers. I believe this would be true, if there existed diverse competition in the marketplace. The problem remains that a very few number of large carriers control last mile access to the Internet. Among these carriers there is little geographic competition, except in major urban centers. Opponents of neutrality site RF distribution as a way to alleviate this problem. However, given the FCC’s recent rulings on the spectrum auctions it seems most likely that the same large companies which control hardline distribution will end up in control of the RF spectrum as well. As congress has done very little to mitigate media and telecommunications consolidation, and will certainly not address this issue in the near future, the only solution left is to impose a Network Neutrality law upon Internet carriers. It is the only solution left for an industry which appearing more and more monopolistic every day is not afraid to flex it muscles on content control.

Badges? We Don’t Have No Stinking Badges

The Iraqi government said today that it would revoke the license of the private security firm BlackwaterUSA, due to the reckless actions of its employees. Blackwater is is best known for supplying the contractors who were killed in Fallujah — an event which sparked a major siege of the city costing thousands of lives. Lesser known, of course, is their construction of private military bases in California and Illinois for training, and their deployment to New Orleans shortly after Katrina. The problem with the Iraqi government announcement is that Blackwater does not currently have a license to operate in Iraq to revoke. According PSCAI, Blackwater started the certification process, but hasn’t completed it. Blackwater operates in Iraq under contracts provided by the State Department and CIA, and it can be guaranteed that neither one of those organization is going to take its queues from the government of Iraq. So what’s all the hubbub about then? The news may suggest that the Iraqi government is getting tired of the wild west antics of private security contractors, or it may suggest that the Iraqi government is trying to show they are not the obedient puppies of American corporate interests. Nonetheless, very little, if anything will change with the Iraqi government’s announcement. If nothing else it is simply a diversion to suggest a more just reality where none really exists; for — you would imagine — in a just world a government would be able to expel a private foreign army from its soil. But not in Iraq.