Guantanamo: What's the underlying condition?

Statue of Liberty - January 11, 2018
V @nat_riverascott

Since practically the day I started this blog, I have tried to contribute to reversing the injustices represented by the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

I have organized and participated in many events educating about and protesting against Guantanamo. (See website for The Response film and blog posts on Guantanamo and work with the Chicago Coalition to Shut Down Guantanamo.)

I am coming to realize that what Guantanamo says about the US goes very deep.


What's the underlying condition?

In the past year, I've dealt with a cancer diagnosis, and it's changed the way I look at things.

In June I went to the emergency room with a breathing problem that had been getting worse and worse for over a month. An X-ray quickly showed that I had a "pleural effusion" -- fluid accumulated in the lining of my lung. My left lung, itself, was like a deflated balloon, bunched up in the upper corner of the lung cavity, unable to expand because of the way the cavity wall was pressing up from below with all the fluid.

The quick fix was to drain the fluid. The doctor inserted a needle between the ribs in my back and drained away 3 liters of milky white stuff.

Voila! I could breathe again!

(Problem solved, right?)

And then they started taking more scans . . . .

Within a day, the ER doc dropped by to tell me: "It looks like you have lymphoma. It's a kind of cancer. It's treatable . . . but you've got to get on it."

It turned out the lymphoma I had, though low grade, had generated a troublesome mass in my abdomen. I had heavy-duty chemotherapy for the next few months. Things seem to be getting better, and I'm now on a course of lower-impact drugs.


Looking the other way

Now that I'm past the immediate shock of the cancer diagnosis, I have time to think. One of the things I wonder about is, "What if my cancer hadn't exhibited that lung problem? Maybe I would still be in the dark about the underlying condition . . . . "

I should mention that one of the things that was special about my case is that I had avoided all contact with a doctor for the past decade or so. Because, you know, I'm healthy!

In other words, I was not terribly interested in knowing what might be going on inside me.

Picking up on this detail, my doctors were perceptive enough to understand that they needed to start my treatment immediately, and not let me have a chance to slip out the door with the promise to deal with my condition "soon."


An unpleasant truth about US society

In the case of my cancer, I think my body helped with the process: it figured out a way to send me a message, one that I couldn't ignore.

For those willing to listen, Guantanamo is sending us a message. There is an underlying condition in this country, one that we are trying very hard to ignore.

It is up to each of us to search our hearts to see if we can figure out what it is that we really think is going on in this country.

For my part, I plan to dig deep . . . with a special eye for that which I feel afraid to admit.  I suspect that the underlying condition is going to turn out to be pretty scary.

To be continued . . . .


Please share this post . . . .

The US Embrace of Torture: Can It Be Broken?

Many people in the US accept the use of torture. Does this represent a confused attempt to lash out against broad swaths of the rest of the world for what they say and think?

Waterboarding:
Uncle Sam and Statue of Liberty
(Latuff)

It is very frustrating to see data showing that 46% of US people think torture is okay. (See "Torture Can Be Useful, Nearly Half of Americans in Poll Say" by Somini Sengupta in The New York Times, December 5, 2016.)

Many of us have worked to change the practices of the US government with respect to indefinite detention and torture. In large part, we have been guided by the idea that the general public didn't have the facts and/or were not thinking clearly about what was really going on. We have believed that if people in the US looked hard at the practices of their government, there would be a hue and cry for change that could not be ignored.

January 11, 2017, will mark the end of 15 years of lawless detention and torture at Guantanamo. Over the coming weeks, there will be many attempts to call up the entire recent (and not-so-recent) history of US abuse, and to call for change.

I am beginning to wonder if we will continue to fail to accomplish change until we better understand why so many US people like the idea of torture.

*   *   *   *   *

I look at the image above and think: is it really about getting information? or is it about something else?

There is abundant expert opinion that torture is not an effective way to get information. (In recent weeks, Donald Trump's nominee to head the Defense Department, Gen. James Mattis, has said as much.)

Thirty years ago, my sister published a fundamental work on the topic, The Body in Pain, which "analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare."

People allude the ticking time bomb scenario as a pretext for torture and other forms of abuse -- à la the TV drama 24 -- but that is fiction.

No, it's not about getting information. (Though that's a story people tell themselves to make themselves more comfortable.)

So what is it about?

*   *   *   *   *

The picture above looks to me not like getting someone to talk, but like getting someone to stop talking.

Is it possible that the support among US people for torturing people -- particularly when the people tortured have come to be people from the Muslim world -- has something to do with silencing them and people like them? In particular, is it a way of symbolically "gagging" the Muslim world, effectively gagging its members from offering a critique of the US that is difficult to hear?

*   *   *   *   *

The Muslim world is not a monolithic entity, and there is certainly no "authorized" critique of the US coming from it. And yet . . . .

Characteristics Associated with Westerners and Muslims
Traits associated with Westerners among Muslims in predominantly Muslim countries, and
Traits associated with Muslims among non-Muslims in the US, Russia, and W. Europe
(Pew Research Center)

I was fascinated to see data from a Pew poll comparing perceptions of people in the West about the Muslim world to perceptions of people in the Muslim world about the west.

I guess I wasn't surprised to see that 50% or more of the people in the West perceive people in the Muslim world as "fanatical" and "violent." (Hey, at least they also perceived them as "honest.")

I found it ironic that people in the Muslim world returned the favor, and then some. They perceived people in the West to be fanatical, too, and to a larger extent (58% vs. 53%). And they perceived people in the West to be violent to a much greater extent (66% vs. 50%).

I think I'll return to violence and fanaticism in a subsequent blog post, but for the moment let's set them aside.

The really interesting thing to me is the other traits that people in the Muslim world strongly associated with people in the West: selfishness, greed, immorality, and arrogance.

Selfish?

Greedy?

Immoral?

Arrogant?

Well, that may resonate with some of us, but it is possible that the great majority of US people have no idea that this is how people in the Muslim world (and elsewhere) tend to view them . . . .

Or . . . even if some people know, they may just brush aside those perceptions.

But is it possible that a lot of people in the US do know that this is how they are viewed in the Muslim world?

Moreover, is it possible that deep down it agrees with their own critique of US society?

Come to think of it, socially conservative people in the US are certainly troubled by what they perceive as immorality in the US. And to some extent, at least some of them worry that we have problems with selfishness, greed, and arrogance in our society.

So maybe there is a critique to be made . . . .

But coming from those other people?

That's a tough pill to swallow.

*   *   *   *   *

The foregoing is written in recognition that we really are stuck in our confrontation with torture.

On all rational and objective factors, it should be possible to stop torture in its tracks.

We are achieving some "wins," but there is a troubling remnant of support for torture in US society.

Maybe we need to explore new avenues for change.

In that spirit . . .

Assume it is true, at least to some degree, that there is an embrace of torture by a large part of the US populace, and that embrace, at least to some degree, stems from a deep-seated conflict they are experiencing over the critique they perceive from the Muslim world. Might that not suggest that a much different approach than those we are currently using will need to be taken to break the grip of that embrace?


Related posts

Now would be a good time for people in the US to learn some facts about Islam, and about its followers (Muslims), and to reflect on the adversarial position the new president has promised to adopt toward it and them.

(See REFLECTION: When people say "the Muslim faith itself is the source of the problem")












Chicago was the site of major protests against U.S. detention practices in Guantanamo, as well as in Bagram, other prisons throughout Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the world, on and around January 11, 2012. We called for an end to indefinite detention, unfair trials, and torture.

(See Chicago Protests Guantanamo Detention)







Thinking about the Holocaust Museum's depiction of the reliance on brutality and intimidation during the Holocaust, all I could think of was the repeated use of similar tactics by the U.S. military against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.

(See Holocaust Museum: "Those Nazi Bastards!" ) 

Selected Scarry Thoughts

I'm currently living in Berkeley, CA. Below are some of the issues I'm working on.

Anyone who has had to write a speech knows that the hardest part is to land on the main idea. Once you've got that right, the rest practically writes itself.

(See "The way to respond to ISIS is not through violence." )

What I'm feeling particularly energized about is the potential for thousands of people who have decided that we can really say no to ALL war to become active participants in spreading this good news.

(See News Worth Spreading: "There IS An Alternative to War!" )





There is an eerie similarity between events in the book Paul Revere's Ride and events in our world today. I'm thinking particularly of how a network of mass resistance springs into action.

(See American Rebellion: Just Think What They Would've Done with Twitter!)












One thing that is clear to me is that the way community forms on Twitter bears the closest resemblance to the characteristics of community formation that we, as activists, need to work with from now on.

(See Twitter Community for Activism: What Do We Understand?)



"Could it possibly be that we're not supposed to try to hang onto people? Is is possible that we're supposed to prepare people, and then let them go?" 

(See What I Learned in Church (7 Habits) )













The panopticon was a prison design that reversed the old paradigm, in which prisoners were stored away, "out of sight, out of mind," and instead arrayed them in a way in which they could be observed as efficiently as possible by the fewest number of managers.

(See Drones, 1984, and Foucault's Panopticon)

The biggest idea coming out of the 2013 Drone Summit? We will only deal successfully with the crimes being committed using drones when we understand them as part of the much larger war against communities of color . . . .

(See Drone Gaze, Drone Injury: The War on Communities of Color )

I believe Easter is God's gift to humanity of victory over death, hopelessness and frailty, and I believe that God is alive and in our midst. The witness of the Guantanamo lawyers has confirmed me in those beliefs.

(See Easter Victory: The Guantanamo Lawyers )






So as I watched Ziggy for the first time last night, I asked myself, "What is it? What is it? What is the frisson that one feels? It's part charisma, part sexuality, partly the thrill of gender-bending, partly adolescent rebellion . . . . But what is it that Ziggy did (and does) for so many people?" (It can't be a single thing, can it?)

(See "You're NOT alone!" (Ziggy the Subversive) )

Faced with chorus of voices saying, "Isn't it time for you to tone it down? Can't you be more reasonable? What is it you want, anyway?" Jesus kept right on doing what he was doing. And that was a sign to us about how to live our lives . . . .

(See WWJD? Occupy! )







This past fall, a friend said to me, "It's good that you came to the demonstration; it would be even better if you brought a sign!" That was the start of something I've enjoyed a lot. And a lot of those signs have found their way into my blog posts.

(See Scarry Signs )






How might an uprising against inequality and dismantling the military-industrial complex dovetail?

(See WHERE'S MINE? Inequality in the US and the Military-Industrial Complex )

More than anyone else, the beneficiaries of permawar are the politicians who thrive on the power to make and control wars. The number one prime beneficiary is the President, as well as presidential aspirants. But it doesn't end there . . . .

(See J'ACCUSE: The Beneficiaries of Permawar )




 

I don't think Alanna and I ever talked about what it must be like to be trying to escape a shower of sparks and hot ash. But she seemed to know that the sparks and hot ash are too important a part of the picture to be left out.


(See The Children Are Waiting )

I'm marveling at the adjacency of a piece of public art -- one with a very clear message about the risk of human ambition and self-absorption and heedlessness -- to the center of political power in the city of Chicago.

(See NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Who will bring us down to earth? )

Hibakusha is a word that has traditionally been used to refer to people affected by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagaski.  It is now being broadened to recognize the many additional victims of acute affects of nuclear radiation (including fallout from tests and radioactivity from mining and processing). In fact, we are all subject to the impact and threat of nuclear radiation spread indiscriminately by nations and corporations.

(See HIROSHIMA: What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'hibakusha'?")






Before there was the NATO5 -- or the NATO3 -- there was NATOin5. People tweeted their summaries of NATO in just 5 words (hashtag: #NATOin5). It all started with an interview between Eric Zorn and Andy Thayer about NATO ....

(See #NATOin5)

At the end of the first day of the 2012 CODEPINK drone conference, I came to a realization: the fundamental problem that we had all gathered to address is that drones render killing 100% invisible. And as long as the killing is invisible, we lose the most powerful tool we have for fighting the killing: the disgust and outrage of the general public.

(See Make Drone Killing 100% VISIBLE!)

Cook County Jail is the perfect example of the nationwide injustice that Michelle Alexander described in her groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow: mass incarceration, focused principally one people of color, in which "crimes" (often related to drug possession or other low-level offenses) become the mechanism for entrapping people in a cycle of incarceration that is brutalizing and often begins a downward spiral of lifetime discrimination.

(See Free Them All )

 Years later, during the time I was busily traveling to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and many other places, I had occasion one day to flip open my (real) passport, and all the extension pages, filled with visa stamps, cascaded out. The memory of Expo 67 and my "globetrotting" came rushing back to me . . .

(See O Canada! (We'll always have "Expo" . . . . ))

Ever since I went there to study Chinese as a junior in college, I've considered Taiwan my "second home."


(See Taipei c. 1979 )





 


What people in Asia (and others) have seen for the past century is that something is happening in the Pacific, and it's being driven in part by advances in naval (and, subsequently, aviation and electronics) technology, and in part by powerful nations (principally, but not limited to, the U.S.) proximate to the area.

(See The Imperialized Pacific: What We Need to Understand)

Oil companies are valued by the market based on their reserves. The problem with this approach is that the total reserves claimed by the oil companies is FIVE TIMES what can possibly be burned without driving up the temperature of the atmosphere up by a catastrophic amount and, as McKibben puts it, "breaking the planet." How can the value of oil companies be a function of reserves that can never be used?

(See The REALLY Big Short: The Jig is Up with Oil Companies)





 

Eventually, in large part due to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the United States was converted from a country in which a small number of people thought slavery needed to be ended into a country determined to act to end slavery. This literary work took the movement wide, and it took it deep.

Why is a novel an important tool for creative resistance?


(See Creative Resistance 101: Uncle Tom's Cabin )


 


A campaign exists to bring about a democratically-elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) in Chicago. The campaign would involve the people in electing the watchers of the police, and put the ultimate control of (and responsibility for) the police in the hands of the citizens of Chicago.

(See Does a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) need to be part of a "new plan of Chicago"? )
 

When Chicagoans fully succeed in fully connecting the dots -- especially to the crimes being committed in their name with their tax dollars and the weapons produced by their favored corporate citizen, Boeing -- I think there will be some new and different phone calls taking place . . .

(See What's New in Chicago: Connecting the Dots - US Aid, Boeing Weapons, Gaza Massacre, Chicago Complicity )








Steven Salaita has forced us to speak quite openly about three rather distinct things that get treated (incorrectly) as if they were the same thing: the state of Israel (and whether you criticize it or support it); the ideology of Zionism (and whether you criticize it or support it); and the religion of Judaism (and whether or not you share in its values and beliefs).

(See "What good is a tweet?" (The Packing and Unpacking of Meaning and the Steven Salaita Case) )

For the members of this congregation,

who will continue gathering as a people of God in a new place,
that today will mark not only the end of an era
but also the beginning of new opportunities for worship and service.

(See A Prayer for St. Luke's (Annotated and Illustrated) )

Detention USA: EVERYBODY is Starting to Ask Questions!

The weather's turning cold. I'm thinking back on some of the activism we engaged in here in Chicago in the spring . . . . and in the summer . . .  and I'm looking ahead to what has -- sadly -- become a winter tradition: the protests on the Guantanamo anniversary on January 11.

And I'm wondering how -- this winter -- we might bring some heat and light to the issues surrounding indefinite detention and the persecution of Muslims.


Guantanamo: unending detention

CHICAGO: Protesting Guantanamo detention
More info at Chicago Coalition to Shut Down Guantanamo

Every year for the past dozen years, activists against U.S. government indefinite detention at Guantanamo, and other violations of due process, have engaged in protests around the country on January 11. (January 11 is marked as the anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay Detention Center.) See, for instance, the events related to our 2012 J11 protest in Chicago.

Nearly a year ago at this time, I was reacting to proclamations by Obama administration officials, saying that they were in the process of working out repatriation or other placement for the 70 or so Guantanamo detainees who had been cleared for release. For a brief moment, I wondered if it might really happen. The result, however, has been that no more than a handful of detainees were sent home.

Instead, the U.S. government continued to force-feed detainees, and to fight tooth-and-nail to resist any attempt to get the truth about those force-feedings to the public.


Korematsu Day

January is a time when people remember another story of U.S. detention: January 30 is recognized as Korematsu Day, after Fred Korematsu, who fought the illegitimate U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

In 2013, I attended a Korematsu Day forum in Chicago at Loyola University School of Law -- one of dozens of Korematsu day events held around the country.  It was excellent, and it included a presentation by a representative from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Chicago on the issue of detention of Muslims in the U.S. since 2001.

George Takei - childhood photo during his family's
internment in Rohwer, AK (Source: Arkansas.com)

I was reminded recently of the importance of Korematsu Day when I saw the wonderful documentary about actor and activist George Takei -- who was himself interned as a young boy.

"As I write this, once again the national dialogue turns to defining our enemies, the impulse to smear whole communities or people with the actions of others still too familiar and raw. Places like the museum and Rohwer camp exist to remind us of the dangers and fallibility of our democracy, which is only as strong as the adherence to our constitutional principles renders it. People like myself and those veterans lived through that failure, and we understand how quickly cherished liberties and freedom may slip away or disappear utterly." (George Takei, "Why We Must Remember Rohwer," The Huffington Post, 4/22/2013)

(Takei has joined with a creative team to bring to the stage a musical about the issue: Allegiance.)

Korematsu Day is a day when we should both look at the persecution of Japanese-Americans in the U.S. in the past, but also look at the persecution of Muslims in the U.S. today.  The question, "What needs to be done to make sure this never happens again?" is not just academic.


The Holder Legacy

Attorney General Eric Holder stepped down last week. Mainstream media commentaries on his legacy are all over the map.  Perhaps it would be fruitful for one or more law school to avail itself of this stock-taking moment. What happened? Why?

The Holder Justice Department: What happened?
(Source: FoxCT.com)

There is a broad range of areas where the behavior of the Holder (i.e. Obama (i.e. Democratic)) Justice Department needs to be scrutinized. Four Five seem particularly closely related:

* indefinite detention at Guantanamo
* prosecutions in the court system stemming from terrorism charges
* provisions to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely under the N.D.A.A. (National Defense Authorization Act)
* suppression of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on U.S. torture
* legal justification for extrajudicial execution of U.S. enemies (drone killings)

Remember when we ushered out the Bush administration and ushered in the Obama administration? Did anyone imagine the past six years would be more of the same (and worse)?


Legal protection for people?

Eric L. Lewis
"Lawyer Eric Lewis shows a copy of a statement
by his clients, Britons captured in Afghanistan
and held at Guantanamo Bay."
(Source: Manuel Balce Ceneta in USA Today)

About a month ago, attorney Eric L. Lewis made a very interesting connection between developments in U.S. law by focusing on recent Supreme Court decisions. In "Who Are ‘We the People’?" in The New York Times (October 4, 2014), Lewis pointed out that, on the one hand the acceptance of indefinite detention of people in the U.S. legal system means that the country is no longer serious about treating people as people; and on the other hand the Citizens United decision allows corporations to insist that corporations DO get the full set of rights we have defined for people. Lewis -- who has acted as counsel for individual Guantanamo detainees -- says it is time for people who claim to care about the rule of law in the U.S. to look at the systemic disintegration. "Who is a person? How do you qualify for basic human rights? What is required for you to be able to speak or worship freely or to be free from torture?" he asks.


How might we get all these questions on the table in a meaningful forum in January? In particular, I am wondering how aspiring lawyers feel about what they are getting themselves into today: isn't it time to inquire into a law school education that prepares you to participate in a legal system that isn't working? I like to see a conversation that includes activists, legal experts, soon-to-be lawyers, as well as lots of members of the lay public. I think everybody is starting to have questions.


Related posts

Eric Holder addressed a group of Northwestern Law students and others. Afterward one audience member summed up the speech as he left: "He pretty much said he can kill anyone he wants." The details of that speech will turn you more topsy-turvy than anything Alice experienced when she ventured through the looking glass.

(See Eric Through the Looking Glass)

Even if the current Obama administration approach of releases were to succeed in bringing about the release of everyone at Guantanamo, it would not have begun to address the wrong that has been committed.

(See US to its Humans Rights Violations Victims: "Shut up and take what you're given!" )







The story of the past decade-plus has been the story of the assertion by some that the conception of law that our society has is not sufficient.  Simply put, there are those who say that there is a third, "in-between" category of behavior -- and legal status -- that is not civilian (subject to criminal law) and not military (subject to military law and the laws of war). And since there are no rules about how to deal with that third category . . . .

(See Using the Good, Old Criminal Justice System: Worth a Try?)




Other related links

Law schools are interested in the concept of "rule of law." (See for instance What We Know & Don’t Know About the Rule of Law, October 31-November 1, 2014 -- the inaugural conference of Rule of Law Research Consortium (RLRC), held in conjunction with the University of Chicago Law School. ) Most of the time, however, they proceed from the assumption that "rule of law" exists in the U.S., and that the only question is why it doesn't happen in other places!

Guantanamo Echoes: Ai Weiwei Depicts State Repression in (China? USA?)

Ai Weiwei

I was at the screening of the film about the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago several nights ago: Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case. Ai Weiwei is a fascinating character, and particularly interesting to me because of my years of involvement with China. But at some point I started to wonder if the situation of Ai Weiwei and other dissidents in China isn't just too remote to be relevant to most Americans.

Strangely, even though the whole story was about Ai Weiwei being detained illegally because of his politics, I didn't make the connection to the work we are doing here in Chicago and elsewhere in the U.S. on exactly the same issues until late in the film when a completed art exhibition was depicted.

S.A.C.R.E.D. - detention by State Security officers

S.A.C.R.E.D. is a work of six life-size dioramas, executed in ceramics and mixed media, depicting Ai Weiwei's detention by State Security officers.

S.A.C.R.E.D. - sleeping

(You can read more about the S.A.C.R.E.D. project in WIRED: "Ai Weiwei’s Shockingly Detailed Remake of His Life in a Chinese Prison" by Kate Stinson)

Somehow it was only when I saw these re-creations of the detention experience that I saw how directly connected the experience of Ai Weiwei is to that of people the U.S. persecutes, and that I work on behalf of week in, week out.  In fact, that's what I had been working on earlier that day:

Chicago, June 26, 2014: On the International Day in Support of Victims and
Survivors of Torture, protesters call for reparations for victims of Chicago
police torture. The rally was supported by members of the Chicago Coalition
to Shut Down Guantanamo and others. (Photo by Mark Clements)

Seeing the physical body -- and power relations in real space -- brings the reality of this home in a way that can be easy to lose if we are just conceptualizing it or talking about it.


Related posts

It may be difficult to see today that the success of our movement in the future will depend on Chinese activists having the same freedoms that activists in the West enjoy. But, I predict, that is precisely what will make all the difference.

(See What is the US Peace and Justice Movement Doing for Dissidents in China?)




My most prominent memory of my first viewing of the Guantanamo film, The Response, is of one of the stars of the film -- Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek fame -- participating in a panel after the screening. I was blown away when she said, "I did this because our civil liberties in our country have been gravely damaged and we all need to contribute to repairing them."

(See Understanding What Guantanamo Means)

More than any other part of the day, I was moved by the assurance with which Alderman Joe Moore, the resolution's sponsor, stated, "I expect this resolution will pass UNANIMOUSLY."

(See summary of testimony offered in Why Chicago Must Become a Torture-Free Zone )












The term yin quan or "power patronage," comes from the idea of a tree that grows in the shelter of others. Cronyism and power patronage are a constant problem in Chinese politics.

(See I {heart} HK )