Listening to: Dead airspace during transmitter maintenance
Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you.
- Pueblo Blessing
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Thursday, May. 06, 2004 - 1:40 a.m.
WARNING!!!! if you know me personally, you may read my diary, but if you do, you take the chance of hearing things you don't want to know, misunderstanding what I've written and being hurt by it. If you are unsure if it is ok to read, save yourself and me the grief and heartache, and ask first!!! Please note that this is a DIARY, ie my subjective feelings, hearsay, suppositions, and outpourings of ranting of the moment. It does not represent objective news, the whole of what I think of a topic or someone, or even a thought-out representation of any of the above. Keep that in mind. Thanks. * Here is a Diary Etiquette Read Me.
Bush tells us "You MUST understand"
What the hell is up with doing radio transmitter maintenance at 1:39 am anyways? Why the hell can't they do it at three pm or 8pm or whenever, so that there are a gazillion other things to listen to and do. Turn on the tv, listen to all the other radio stations. I dunno. At 1:39 am til 5am, we COUNT on listening to the radio over the long long night. hah.
Well that is my little rant of the moment.
Back to work. I'll actually have to pick out music to listen to instead of being informed and entertained by radio netherlands, radio poland and radio australia. How will I ever survive.
Maybe I can find a radio station giving Bush's speech to the Arab world about the abuses in the prison in Iraq. "You must understand" he says. Hmm. "You must understand that this is not representative of the America I know" he says. Hmm. Yes, well, I am sure the Aghanistan people felt that way too when they were bombing the heck out of it after terrorists did nasty things to the Americans.
That the few who did that were not representative of the Islam they know. Or the country they know. Or the people they know. But who the hell cares.
If the Arabs put photos of captured American soldiers (who as far as I remember did not die and were not tortured naked) on tv, they are horrid assholes. If the Americans put prisoners into humiliating positions, emotional and physical torture, and take snapshots, grinning madly all the while, they are "not representative" and people "must understand".
Not "I beg for your understanding and forgiveness". Not "I hope you can try to understand" but "you MUST understand". Yes, we all MUST understand why Americans torturing are gee, the exception, even if done in an institution, in front of cameras, grinning and goofing off, are not actually examples of torture, though Arabs doing the same thing are.
Not representative of the America he knows. Did he somehow miss the America that lynched its blacks for nothing more than smiling at a white woman or not averting their eyes. Did he somehow miss the America that beat to death civil rights workers, and stoned little children bussed to desegregated schools? Did he miss the America where policemen beat to death and shoot black suspects on the street? The America where American soldiers shot and killed protesters hundreds of feet away from them at Kent State? The America that has held and continues to hold countless prisoners at Guantanamo Bay with no lawyers, charges laid, no trials, with torture and horrid conditions, and won't even call them prisoners of war, though they picked them up as suspects in the War on Terrorism?
Not that we should reduce this to Americans. Soldiers are trained to fight to the death against the enemy. Both sides are. All sides are. They are taught to kill. What is a little torture when your normal job description is to shoot people? Who cares about a little humiliation when you are supposed to not care about bombing homes and hospitals, and killing a bunch of little kids when your bomb goes off in their compound instead of at the military target it was supposed to hit is just a regular job "oops, better aim next time".
Soldiers are not supposed to be compassionate. They may start out that way. They may feel that way sometimes. But if they really really cared about the "other side" they would go insane shooting real people, screaming and bloody, leaving them to die on battlefields. They have to shut off the caring or they'd be a bloody shitty soldier. And yeah they can be one and the same. A dog that will rip out another dog's throat will be a loving parent to its puppies. That is how life works.
So we should not be surprised that when instead of coming to a peacable solution, or a diplomatic solution, instead of capturing and arresting Saddam Hussein quietly like the CIA does ( I mean really, we manage to get rapists and killers, mafia leaders and drug lords here without bombing whole cities to get them eh?? Imagine if we justified bombing Chicago by saying we got Al Capone, hidden out in a hole a couple months later, eh! Isn`t that a good thing??? Ask the residents of Chicago how they would've felt towards a law enforcement agency that had done that.), instead of doing that, we wage a war of shock and awe, bombing and killing, we send in hundreds of thousands of normal young people, as soldiers, that we get soldiers.
That we get tough, shell-shocked people hardened to suffering. Psychopathic people who enjoy hurting and humiliating and want to do it for a living. That when you put a gun in the hand of someone and say "they are the enemy, fight them" that they actually treat them like "the enemy". Duh.
Canadian soldiers posed for photos with a Somalian boy caught looting that they beat to death as well. It is a wonderful thing for the rest of us that they are SO caught up in the callousness of war that they don't even see that when they are happy and proud to have fun torturing and take their happy proud snapshots, that they are providing the world with a document of how they have lost their humanity. They don't see it, or they would hide it. These people were not operating covertly and in shame. No, they have been twisted by war, and twisted by the job of being a soldier, and twisted by self-righteousness and power-over.
It is very sad. And the thing it brings to mind the most IS something that is America... like I mentioned earlier... it is the photos of the proud perpetrators of lynchings.
Sad very very sad.
Hmm, reading the text online of the interview Bush gave, I am struck by his "in our country there is presumption of innocence"... may I bring up Guantanamo Bay again??? They claim that those are trained hardened terrorists and yet have released many many without so much as a charge or a prison sentence. How can that be if they are so dangerous??And :
Again, it's very important for people, your listeners, to understand, in our country that when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act -- and we act in a way where leaders are willing to discuss it with the media.... am I wrong or is this the same George W Bush who refuses to answer in front of the media to questions about preknowledge of 9/11?? He had a "three hour conversation" with the investigating committee... and it was closed door with no recording made of the meeting. Gee, how is that for transparency.
Gee, I don't why I don't just look for a paying job writing diaries and putting in links. I've been here hours now. But here is a quite good just straight-talking entry from an anti-war protester about the hypocrisy of people who say they care about the Iraqis. Mr. Bush included. He writes of his experience of what people shout at him when he protested the war on Iraq. I DO think that is representative of a great many more Americans that we would like to think.
Here's a forum post about little children in a school running around saying "kill the iraqis" and making poems and pictures about bombing Iraq and killing Iraqis that their schoolteachers put up on walls.
Read this interview with a soldier in Iraq. It is not pretty. Some people have said this is made up supposedly, but it seems to be quite real. Who knows. But it is riveting reading, and it totally sounds like a soldier to me. Note that there is a hell of a lot of swearing and he is very angry at being in Iraq and he doesn't have a lot of very peaceful solutions either despite wanting to come home. I think it is worth reading, and to think about the mentality of someone after they have been stuck there with people dying all around them, in a bombed out devastated country with no law, supposedly to help a people who want to be left alone, a year after a war was declared "over". Go to it. Settle in and read it, or at least peruse it. You can scroll down past the interviewer's blah blah to the interview itself if you like, eh.
Maybe Bush should read some things like this before he starts talking about how the abuse is an isolated thing. These are some angry soldiers.
I am really gonna stop this entry now. Byebye!!
This quote is on the feminist of the day thingie today but in another day it won't be, so I'm gonna write it here for posterity:
"No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."I need to remember that. Yes.
--Alice Walker
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previous meanderings - future past
Goodbye Michael. May your next life be kinder to you. - Thursday, Jun. 25, 2009
Taking Care of Your Cows - Thursday, Jun. 25, 2009
Saint Joseph robs the cradle and eats spaghetti - Sunday, Jun. 14, 2009
sticky notes and broken irises - Friday, Jun. 12, 2009
The FOODCOMMANDER - Monday, Jun. 08, 2009
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