May 13th, 2009 7:56 am
Circumventing Democracy
How easily the democratic process can be circumvented!
And no Deep Throat to leak "enhanced interrogation techniques" to the Washington Post of the NYT?
Time to cultivate those inside sources.
In fact our custodians of democracy in the three branches of government, are least likely to uphold it.
It takes All the People All the Time to safeguard Democracy.
May I also add that the US is least qualified to lecture any other sovereign nation-state on Democracy, or engage in any activity outside of its borders, to promote it.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
---------------------
NYT copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/opinion/13divoll.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1242216084-xXd8VKeMdCHKxpf43eO95w
Op-Ed Contributor
Congress’s Torture Bubble
By VICKI DIVOLL
Published: May 12, 2009
=================================================================================
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Horror Terror Torture: The American Way
My published comment #102.
May 03, 2009 10:27 am
Link
May 3rd, 2009 0:10 am
Horror Terror Torture: The American Way
Q. Is torture by waterboarding to be set apart and conveniently isolated from the "banality of evil" of US foreign policy?
Q. Was "shock and awe" mass torture?
Q. Are today's drone raids that routinely kill civilians in Swat fly-by torture?
Q. Shall we continue to make convenient comforting distinctions between horror, terror, torture in US nation-state relations?
Maureen Dowd focuses on waterboarding torture as one example of Republican leaders' character corrosion. But really, is it just about torture or more broadly about the aforesaid 'banality of evil' in the US national political character? Is this corrosiveness a Condi-tion found just in Republicans of the Bush-Cheney era or widely distributed throughout the Beltway and beyond? That banality of evil is represented by the US nation-state, in which horror, terror, torture at the existential level, are inseparable. Ask the bleached bones at Hiroshima, the napalm burned skin in Vietnam all the way to today.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/05/03/opinion/03dowd.html
Op-Ed Columnist: How Character Corrodes
By MAUREEN DOWD
The Republicans new-found concerns about checks and balances is touching, given what the Bush administration did to undermine the process.
===================================================================================
May 03, 2009 10:27 am
Link
May 3rd, 2009 0:10 am
Horror Terror Torture: The American Way
Q. Is torture by waterboarding to be set apart and conveniently isolated from the "banality of evil" of US foreign policy?
Q. Was "shock and awe" mass torture?
Q. Are today's drone raids that routinely kill civilians in Swat fly-by torture?
Q. Shall we continue to make convenient comforting distinctions between horror, terror, torture in US nation-state relations?
Maureen Dowd focuses on waterboarding torture as one example of Republican leaders' character corrosion. But really, is it just about torture or more broadly about the aforesaid 'banality of evil' in the US national political character? Is this corrosiveness a Condi-tion found just in Republicans of the Bush-Cheney era or widely distributed throughout the Beltway and beyond? That banality of evil is represented by the US nation-state, in which horror, terror, torture at the existential level, are inseparable. Ask the bleached bones at Hiroshima, the napalm burned skin in Vietnam all the way to today.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/05/03/opinion/03dowd.html
Op-Ed Columnist: How Character Corrodes
By MAUREEN DOWD
The Republicans new-found concerns about checks and balances is touching, given what the Bush administration did to undermine the process.
===================================================================================
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The Banality of 'Evil' in US Foreign Policy
My published NYTimes comment # 273.
April 26, 2009 11:43 am
Link
April 26th, 2009 9:58 am
The Banality of Bush & Obama White House Evil
"The Banality of Bush White House Evil" is being continued and it is cut from the same cloth, as Obama's daily drone raids in the western areas of the South Asia region. The plan to send tens of thousands more troops into South Asia will undoubtedly exacerbate that evil, make it more banal -- until we recoil from it, usually too late.
What makes Obama's drones banal is that they have become part of the everyday operations of the US in my region. The drones kill, maim, terrify innocents and they unleash the pathological anger, fear and violence of the Taliban who were, lest we forget, the Mujahideen of the Soviet-era 80's, trained and armed by the US with its allies:
1) Suadi Arabia, that pillar of Democracy,
2)a US-weakened Pakistan
3)warlord factions in Afghanistan.
Clearly, evil then, is socially constructed and cumulative, as we can see from two administrations touted as 'different' in style and substance. (I never voted for either of the Bush(es) and I did vote for Obama knowing I was voting for the lesser of the two evils). Obama is at least (still) open to persuasion and humane logical reasoning.
The sense that something or someone is Evil carries a complex, evolved set of emotions like horror and revulsion (even reflexes like gagging).We evolved to agree to define evil as pathological and antisocial, capable of crimes against our species. That sense that evil exists was essential, so that we could persevere in building social groups on the basis of cooperation and collaboration, rather than sadistic annihilation.
I get the sense from this article that torture behavior is somehow to be set apart. But it is part of the horror repertoire of military adventurism in the 50+ year context of White House evil from Nixon to Obama.
Of course a history of slavery and genocide as earlier banalities of evil helps us to understand the current context.
Can we persevere to move past evil? Yes we can.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http:EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26rich.html?em
Op-Ed Columnist: The Banality of Bush White House Evil
By FRANK RICH
Torture was a tool in the campaign to exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would support a war that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.
---------------
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/26/opinion/26rich.html?s=1&pg=11
------------------
==================================================================================
April 26, 2009 11:43 am
Link
April 26th, 2009 9:58 am
The Banality of Bush & Obama White House Evil
"The Banality of Bush White House Evil" is being continued and it is cut from the same cloth, as Obama's daily drone raids in the western areas of the South Asia region. The plan to send tens of thousands more troops into South Asia will undoubtedly exacerbate that evil, make it more banal -- until we recoil from it, usually too late.
What makes Obama's drones banal is that they have become part of the everyday operations of the US in my region. The drones kill, maim, terrify innocents and they unleash the pathological anger, fear and violence of the Taliban who were, lest we forget, the Mujahideen of the Soviet-era 80's, trained and armed by the US with its allies:
1) Suadi Arabia, that pillar of Democracy,
2)a US-weakened Pakistan
3)warlord factions in Afghanistan.
Clearly, evil then, is socially constructed and cumulative, as we can see from two administrations touted as 'different' in style and substance. (I never voted for either of the Bush(es) and I did vote for Obama knowing I was voting for the lesser of the two evils). Obama is at least (still) open to persuasion and humane logical reasoning.
The sense that something or someone is Evil carries a complex, evolved set of emotions like horror and revulsion (even reflexes like gagging).We evolved to agree to define evil as pathological and antisocial, capable of crimes against our species. That sense that evil exists was essential, so that we could persevere in building social groups on the basis of cooperation and collaboration, rather than sadistic annihilation.
I get the sense from this article that torture behavior is somehow to be set apart. But it is part of the horror repertoire of military adventurism in the 50+ year context of White House evil from Nixon to Obama.
Of course a history of slavery and genocide as earlier banalities of evil helps us to understand the current context.
Can we persevere to move past evil? Yes we can.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http:EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------
New York Times copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26rich.html?em
Op-Ed Columnist: The Banality of Bush White House Evil
By FRANK RICH
Torture was a tool in the campaign to exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would support a war that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.
---------------
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/26/opinion/26rich.html?s=1&pg=11
------------------
==================================================================================
Monday, April 20, 2009
Democracy and Torture
April 20th, 2009 8:40 am
Is torture compatible with Democracy? Apparently it is, in several democratic systems, US, India, South Africa for example, whenever perceived law and order issues and perceived national interest issues are at stake.
The operative word is "perceived."
Torture is incompatible with ETHICAL conceptions of DEMOCRACY. It violates the human body and spirit.
And it is approved and deployed by those in Power, whether they are state-sponsored as in the CIA or extra-state actors like the Taliban.
The expose of waterboarding as a torture technique teaches us that Democracy is always as much a destination as it is a journey.
Democracy's craft is a work in progress, democracy's work is never done. Only We the People can disarm govts. and overturn torture.
----------------
April 20th, 2009 8:55 am Comment #592
TORTURE & THE MEDIA
Why are these revelations about waterboarding coming so late in the deadly game that the US govt has played in Iraq?
Where was the US media? Embedded as well as bamboozled?
Wasn't "shock and awe" itself a form of mass terror and torture? So why this postmortem approach to waterboarding?
Q.Is the US MEDIA complicit (this is not conspiracy theory, it's about complicity) in this delayed reporting on torture? Where are the investigative journalists on the staff of the NYT or The Washington Post?
Besides, civil society publics, both in the US and elsewhere have always suspected that torture was being used in Iraq and Guantanamo.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21intel.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Obama Urges C.I.A. Not to Be Discouraged by Memos
President Obama spoke at C.I.A. headquarters as C.I.A. director Leon Panetta looked on.
By PETER BAKER and SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 20, 2009
------------------------------
-----------
Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 19, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html
Is torture compatible with Democracy? Apparently it is, in several democratic systems, US, India, South Africa for example, whenever perceived law and order issues and perceived national interest issues are at stake.
The operative word is "perceived."
Torture is incompatible with ETHICAL conceptions of DEMOCRACY. It violates the human body and spirit.
And it is approved and deployed by those in Power, whether they are state-sponsored as in the CIA or extra-state actors like the Taliban.
The expose of waterboarding as a torture technique teaches us that Democracy is always as much a destination as it is a journey.
Democracy's craft is a work in progress, democracy's work is never done. Only We the People can disarm govts. and overturn torture.
----------------
April 20th, 2009 8:55 am Comment #592
TORTURE & THE MEDIA
Why are these revelations about waterboarding coming so late in the deadly game that the US govt has played in Iraq?
Where was the US media? Embedded as well as bamboozled?
Wasn't "shock and awe" itself a form of mass terror and torture? So why this postmortem approach to waterboarding?
Q.Is the US MEDIA complicit (this is not conspiracy theory, it's about complicity) in this delayed reporting on torture? Where are the investigative journalists on the staff of the NYT or The Washington Post?
Besides, civil society publics, both in the US and elsewhere have always suspected that torture was being used in Iraq and Guantanamo.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21intel.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Obama Urges C.I.A. Not to Be Discouraged by Memos
President Obama spoke at C.I.A. headquarters as C.I.A. director Leon Panetta looked on.
By PETER BAKER and SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 20, 2009
------------------------------
-----------
Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 19, 2009
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html
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