"Torture R US" - What do you think?

I’d like your opinion on what I plan to do.

I’ve decided I need to do more than blog* about our country’s use of torture

The plan:
1. To show up an evening or two a week on a busy street corner in my hometown, Healdsburg, waving a “Torture R US” sign.

2. If people express interest, I’ll hand them a one-page summary of why I’m doing this.

3. Encourage others to become visible in their communities on the torture issue, using any message that feels right to them.

Two reasons why I’m doing this:
1. In the introduction to the 37 articles in the Washington Monthly, "No Torture. No Exceptions," this paragraph stood out: “Over the past decade, voters have had many legitimate worries: stagnant wages, corruption in Washington, terrorism, and a botched war in Iraq. But we believe that when Americans look back years from now, what will shame us most is that our country abandoned a bedrock principle of civilized nations: that torture is without exception wrong” [emphasis mine]. I want to be able to say that I did everything I could to stop our country's use of torture.

2. How our country is treating terrorism suspects is affecting how other countries, groups and individuals treat “the enemy.” For example, in the April issue of Harper's Magazine, John Leonard reviews The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari. The review starts with a chilling description from the book of a Janjaweed man who tied a parent to a tree, then forced him/her to watch while he skewered his/her daughter on a bayonet and danced around with her in the air. Leonard describes the book as a “…..geography of an African tragedy….a Darfur the size of Texas, where ….’torture was the popular new thing because Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were everywhere in the news at that time, and crazy men …were now getting permission to be crazy'’’ [emphasis mine].

I want to take action locally because I can walk to the street corner and won’t be contributing to climate change.

Please e-mail me at gejonas@sonic.net or post a comment to let me know what you think about my plan or to propose a different plan.

* Previous posts here, here, here, and here.

(stick figure with sign: thanks to Pat Denino)

Patterson's EXILE perpetuates the belief that Iran is Israel's biggest enemy

Last night I started reading Richard North Patterson's EXILE and at 1:30 a.m., had covered 300 pages. I picked up the book, lent to me by a friend months ago, because Charles Peters of the Washington Monthly recommended it in his Tilting at Windmills column in the December issue. Peters describes EXILE as “factual fiction.”

Set in San Francisco, the Prime Minister of Israel, Ben-Aron, has come to the U.S. to talk about his peace plan. He is assassinated. The plot is about finding who killed him and the personal courage of the Jewish defense attorney for the Palestinian woman (his lover from college days) who has been arrested as the perpetrator of the killing.

All well and good. An exciting read. However, having recently read Dr. Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance - The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S., which I posted about on October 11th, I was dismayed at how Iran was portrayed.

Following is an excerpt from the fictional Ben-Aron’s speech, at page 113, in response to a question about the extremist regimes such as Syria and Iran: “And the most dangerous are the mullahs in Iran. They are extremist and they are fundamentalists….They help Hamas recruit Palestinians, and enlist Israeli Arabs against us. They wish to change the balance of power in the Middle East. That is why – and do not doubt this – they are building a nuclear bomb until they become a dominant force.

“As an ideological matter, Iran wishes to eradicate the State of Israel. As a practical matter, Iran needs violence between Jews and Palestinians to divert the world from its nuclear ambitions. Which, once realized, are a mortal threat to Israel….We must deal with Iran, our greatest threat…”

Anyone who reads Treacherous Alliance, carefully researched and copiously footnoted (1,289 of them!), will understand that Iran is not the inflatable bogey as described in EXILE.

Why am I so exercised about what a work of fiction says about Iran?

1. It’s being presented as “factual fiction” by someone of Peters's stature.
2. As a best-selling thriller, EXILE is being read by lots of people and presenting Iran as the biggest threat to Israel will influence these readers’ opinion of it.

I suspect very few people who read best selling fiction will take time to read:
1. Treacherous Alliance
2. Jim Lobe’s January 3rd post, "More Signs of Iran Detente...From Petraeus", which opens: “In a new blow to the neo-conservative hard-liners at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), their hero, Gen. David Petraeus, has apparently concluded that Iran is indeed following through on its reported pledge earlier this fall to the Iraqi government to cut its alleged supply of weapons to Shi’a militias in Iraq. That assessment comes from none other than the far-right Washington Times which featured a front-page article by Sara Carter Thursday, entitled “Iran No Longer Aids Iraq Militants.”

I hope readers of this post will take time to learn the truth about the shifting relations between Iran and Israel from 1948 to the present, including the complicated triangular relations of these countries and the U.S.

(book cover: Liberty Associates)

Joan Brunwasser of OpEdNews.com helps uncover Giuliani

In the spring of 2006, when I was leafing through my Yes! Magazine, I found a review of the documentary, "Invisible Ballots" by Joan Brunwasser, whom I had never heard of before. I e-mailed her, and we’ve been in touch ever since because I, too, am very interested in election integrity. Since December of 2005, Joan has been the Voting Integrity Editor for OpEdNews.com.

As Rudy Giuliani has scrambled to the top of the Republican presidential contenders, I have become very interested in this man. See my posts: September 23rd, Giuliani - A worse president than Bush? and October 13th, Neocons flock to Giuliani's foreign policy team.

Do the citizens of this country know who this man is? Will they learn in time to avoid his becoming our next president? Thank goodness, Joan Brunwasser is using her platform at OpEdNews.com, a popular online source of the news, to expose Giuliani.

On October 23rd, Joan posted her film review, Issues of Accountability and Brave New Films' "The Real Rudy: Radios", linking to this seven minute video by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films.

Joan opens her article by telling us that she saw the drama/thriller/suspense movie, Michael Clayton, about a fixer for a powerful law firm. Joan writes, “The subtitle at the Michael Clayton website is 'The truth can be adjusted.' This sentiment rings true with New York's fire fighters, who feel that is exactly what Rudy Giuliani has done with 9/11. They are sickened by the spin machine that has skillfully transformed him into a larger-than-life, national hero….Rudy wants to be your president. He's the one who's constantly touting his role on September 11 as proof of his fitness for the job. Let's not take his word for it; let's evaluate his case for ourselves.”

Joan describes the back-story about Motorola, whose radios were defective and Giuliani’s inaction when he received a damning report well in advance of 9/11 about the malfunctioning radios.

Joan reports, “This literally became an issue of life or death on 9/11. 10-15 minutes before the collapse of either of the WTC buildings, police helicopters saw them listing and issued a vacate order, correctly predicting at least a partial collapse of both structures. This order was picked up by police radios, and as a result, not a single member of the NYPD died in the North Tower. The same could not be said for the 121 firefighters who perished there, the message fatally unheard.”

Watch the video. Read Joan’s review. She ends with this P.S. “Since 2001, we have witnessed both Rudy and W co-opt the events of 9/11. For another link between the two, read Ari Berman’s "Rudy Giuliani's Dirty Campaign Money," which appeared in the October issue of The Nation.

My recommendation: Washington Monthly’s "Rudy Awakening," in this November's issue.

(OpEdNews logo: OpEdNews.com)