waiting for godot – or the guards… but the guards always come

On torture again: it seems that torture is THE news now. Here are the week’s happenings regarding torture:

1.  the release of the Israeli documentary To see if I’m smiling [as mentioned in the previous post]
2.  the sentencing of Islam Nabih, the Egyptian officer whose torture of an Egyptian citizen was caught on tape. [This is the ONLY good news here]
3. the mysterious suspension of Misr Digital’s YouTube channel – where blogger Wael Abbas uploaded all his videos exposing Egypt’s torture of civilians.
4. Amnesty International’s launching of its anti-torture campaign Unsubscribe-Me [I found that first on Sabbah's blog]. The powerful campaign exposes the different torture methods employed including stress positions. Please join their campaign and put your signature on anti-torture.

It is frightening to know that there is no difference between civilized and uncivilized – between First Worlds or Third Worlds – torture seems to be more prevalent and more widely accepted. And we are all like sheep taken to the slaughter. When caught, some torturers get their dues – but what lies beneath is ever more frightening and eerie. It is what we don’t see or know about that is our true nightmare.

We waited for Godot – but only the guards came. Don’t the guards always come?

to see if i’m smiling on our way to Annapolis

An Israeli documentary ‘To See if I’m Smiling’ has been released – it tells the story of traumatized Isareli women soldiers years after leaving the army – traumatized because of the torture they have witnessed and did nothing about:

One posed for a photo as she scrubbed a Palestinian corpse. Another stripped a man to his underwear and then beat him. A third helped cover up the abuse of a young boy. The six Israeli women who feature in the documentary “To See If I’m Smiling” each wrestle with memories of their compulsory military service that they would rather erase.But after years of trying to bury the past, they have spoken out in a film that explores the darker side of Israel’s 40-year-old occupation of the Palestinian territories and examines its impact on a generation of young men and women. [Reuters]

The release comes just a few weeks before the Annapolis conference. Tamar Yarom, the director said:

“This country is in a coma. With all the bombs and attacks, we are numb,” she said. “People feel we are in a war of survival and it’s better not to criticize soldiers, because they are the ones protecting us.”

Err… sound familiar?

Let’s see how much we all smile on our way to Annapolis – a conference that Olmert pre-empted by saying that he is not going there to make any deals.

No. Of course not. They are all going there to make sure where they stand on Iran.

pastrami sandwiches, dieting and ethnic cleansing

Just two quotes that I saw recently, one sent to me in an email by Angela Godfrey:

We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years, neither the United Nations, nor the U.S.A, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” Ariel Sharon to Winston S. Churchill III in 1973

The other a comment made by Dov Weisglass, Olmert’s policy advisor, following the Hamas elections:

Israel will “put Palestinians on a diet … [they] will get a lot thinner, but won’t die”.

But you say, they can say all they want because the ‘civilized’ world is supporting this ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ – even when genocidal comments of that nature are made.

Sickening.

misleading the country and brainwashing the people with the press and the ‘patriotism police’

In a dictatorship? in the Arab World? we are used to that I guess – brainwashing and misleading. We have become acclimated to that, capable of differentiating between truths and lies even if we do very little about them.

But in the US, while brainwashing is subtle, the misleading has been so open, so unabashed, that it is as though the administration decided to ‘test’ the degree of acceptance and obedience of the American people. Their lies exposed how utterly vulnerable the majority of main-stream America were.

Watch Bill Moyers’ excellent documentary on Buying the War. This is an almost step by step guide to creating the best propaganda ever put forth by a US admin under the duo Bush/Cheney.

The documentary is not only about how they did it, but rather about how they managed to co-opt mainstream press and made everyone get it so wrong:

How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? “What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored,” says Moyers. “How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from

propaganda?”

To view the video, click here

Thank you Bill Moyers. Nothing less is expected of you!

the digital jihadis and the digital outreach programs

What saddens me is how the real terrorists – as opposed to the made up terrorists of G.W. and his admin – are using th internet for their ‘digital jihad’. Instead of using the internet for beneficial stuff, they use it to network, communicate,, and post horrendous stuff on it.

Apparently alQaeda  [or God knows who!] is using Pixar technology to re-create their attacks and post their propaganda and ‘achievements’ videos, according to Wired Magazine. View this video hosted on LiveLeak   .

Morons!

On the other hand, we find the US government and its efforts to recruit bloggers though its digital outreach programs. The programs aim at responding to moderate Arab bloggers:

These bloggers speak the language and idiom of the region, know the cultural reference points and are often able to converse informally and frankly rather than adopt the usually more formal persona of a U.S. government spokesperson. This is a major departure from our previous ways of conducting public diplomacy. It requires both creativity and a new set of skills.  [testimony before Congress republished in Wired magazine]

Well.. they say it is ’successful’, and I wonder how success has been measured besides the fact that they have a site [link] that attracts 200,000 visitors:

Our Bureau of International Information Programs is fully engaged in dramatically expanding public diplomacy and countering extremist ideologies through the Internet. Our English language website and six foreign language sites – including Arabic and Persian – are being revamped to use more videos, blogging, podcast and webchats designed to reach younger audiences. The Arabic web site has the specific goal of countering violent extremism by offering a positive vision rooted in American values. It attracts more than 200,000 visitors per month, top users coming from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

Too little tool late? that’s for sure. This should have happened BEFORE the war, not after. Certainly not after the US losing total credibility about everything they do concerning the Middle East. Not after blunder after blunder by this administration.

This all could have worked… but we do have the example of al Hurra and others – targeted audiences, and targeted programs.

Well…

I do NOT want to know anything

I am done. I don’t want to read the news or know anything any more. I do not want to hear of world war three, or drafting or nuclear weapons or Middle East process or border issues or race issues or human rights. I don’t want to hear about fascism or democracy or martial laws. I don’t want to hear about suffering or hunger or poverty or fall of the market or rise of the tyrants. I don’t want to know of Palestinians or Egyptians, of Sarkozy of Chavez, Bush and of Cheney.

I want to live in a bubble – immune to news.

I want to watch comedy and laugh. I want to see beauty again. And trees and rivers and lakes and seas and oceans.

I want to close everything down: my blog, my sites, my internet presence.

I am just tired.