Apr

21

Doubts Dispelled

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I went to be after posting on the release of the torture memos feeling clear about things. I have been thinking about this for a long time. I have always been clear that abandoning legal protections for prisoners and breaking from established international norms like the Geneva Convention was a mistake of biblical proportions, but I never fully resolved myself with the idea that our interrogation practices since 2002 amounted to a regime of systemic torture. I am now fully resolved with this idea.

If I had any doubts lingering, they were swept away when I went to the NY Times and was greeted with this headline:

Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

Emptywheel has a great post breaking this down.

Despite all the legal justifications and euphimisms, what we have is a carefully crafted program of torture. Waterboarding is a war crime and the United States has prosecuted it as such. The architects of this program must be denounced and held to account.

Apr

21

Got To Go

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If the rule of law is to mean anything, then those that twist and contort it to the detriment of other must be removed from positions of power.

Apr

20

New Read

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I read the Political Animal daily and through that I have become acquainted with Hilzoy, who posts at Political Animal frequently. But I had not read her own blog, Obsidian Wings. I highly recommend it if you follow current events at all.

Apr

19

Torture Memos

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The Obama administration released the torture memos yesterday to considerable criticism. The administration also announced that it did not intend to pursue prosecutions against operatives who engaged the practices detailed in the memos. In my opinion they made exactly the right choices.

Releasing the memos continues to put distance between the Obama administration and the criminal actions of the Bush administration. Opting against prosecuting operatives who were acting within legally sanctioned guidelines makes it possible to keep moving forward without abandoning the possibility of legal accountability for those who authorized the torture of detainees.

There can be no mistake that we are talking about torture here. Despite all the euphemisms and qualifications, the interrogation methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration were clearly beyond the bounds of accepted practice; otherwise it would not be necessary to justify them so exhaustively.

The clearest indication of our imminent decent down the slippery slope came when the it was announced the United States government held that enemy combatants captured in the so-called War on Terror were not subject the protections of the Geneva Convention. It would not be necessary to justify removing those protections if those captives weren’t in danger of needing them.

They in fact did need those protections as it turned out and the United States will be paying a large price for it choice to abandon the rule of law in favor of a specious need for expediency. There isn’t anything to be done about that now. We can only make real and honest attempts to correct our mistakes and to acknowledge the tragic consequences that been visited upon some genuinely innocent people.

Obviously there are some genuinely evil people who are in our custody and these people are to be held to account for their activities. This is not in question. But how we go about that and how we treat these people while we impose justice upon says a great deal about ourselves and nothing about them.

There was no decision this administration would make regarding these memos that would be entirely satisfying, but their release and the decision not to pursue prosecutions allows the United States to continue rehabilitating its reputation without engaging in the sort of scapegoating that accompanied the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Apr

13

Green Bands

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green-bands

I have a small number of new paintings that are finished and I am in the process of photographing. It’s hard to say when exactly I will get them all up, but here is one I am particularly pleased with.

Apr

7

Buy the ticket take the Ride

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Buy the ticket take the Ride
Hunter S. Thompson

Two days ago, I stumbled across a blog post on the New York Times online that posed a very interesting question, one that I had never considered in this particular vein before. What situation or experience would be worth relapsing for?

Sacha Z. Scoblic is a Hunter Thompson fan and in recovery. In the post she relates a chance encounter a friend of hers had with Hunter Thompson. Her friend wound up at the Owl Ranch and spent a few hours indulging in various substances while Thompson read his work to the group. That definitely makes my list of cool-ass things to have happen to you.

Presented with her friend’s story, Scoblic concludes “obviously, in that situation, I would have to relapse.”

She goes on to ponder other persons or situations where she might consider what I call a relapse of choice. Simply put, a relapse of choice is a situation where if all things are equal, the experience of using or drinking again outweighs the risks. I have been abstinent from alcohol for 25 years now and the situations where I might choose to relapse to fully enjoy a certain experience have grown smaller with each year. Recently, I haven’t thought of a situation where I would take a relapse of choice.

However, Scoblic raises an angle I had not previously considered. I had always thought in terms of scenarios like the end of the world (which Scoblic also considers). I decided long ago I would prefer to face doomsday clear-headed and in the company of people I care about. For Scoblic, there are people with whom she might decide to drink, most of them being dead writers. This got me thinking about whom I might want to break my drought with. I abandoned any illusions that might minimize the gravity of the choice. The choice had to be made with the very real possibility that a quick and tidy recovery would be neither possible nor likely. No, the choice had to be made knowing that it might mean lifelong addiction or a tragic outcome.

With that happy consideration factored in, the list grew short. Scoblic considered and rejected Amy Winehouse as did I, but probably for different reasons. If I am to abandon sobriety altogether, then the person I am going to hang with has got to have some skill and a long record of survivability. Winehouse is like a young pitcher with an amazing arm; the potential is there for everyone to see but it will be years before we know if the potential is realized. My guess is that Winehouse will be a burnout and hitting the talk shows with her recovery story before she sees 30.

The criteria quickly became quite clear. The person must be clearly addicted to at least one substance for at least two decades. They must be nationally known. They must be unrepentant.

I figure it like this. This person needs to know what the hell they are doing, there should some cool factor for potentially flushing my life down the drain and I really don’t want to listen to a bunch of whining and sniveling that might kill my buzz. Nutt up and crack the bottle.

At this point, there are only a few names on the list. Jackson Pollock, Hunter Thompson, Bela Lugosi, and William S. Burroughs all would be easy choices but they are deceased and so could not be considered.

So that leaves two names; Bob Dylan and Keith Richards. As much as I wanted to keep him on the list, I had to ultimately discard Dylan. His conversion experience in the eighties leaves open the possibility, however unlikely, that he might have some hallucinatory religious vision while we are running the table in Las Vegas and I don’t want to have to make those kinds of explanations to what would be a hostile mob. Degenerate gamblers may be looking for salvation, but not of that sort.

Keith Richards becomes the only person I would seriously consider picking up the bottle with. His credentials as a junkie are impeccable, his tolerance is legendary, there is an extremely high cool factor, and I can’t think of anyone who better exemplifies unrepentant.

The sad part is that if I am completely honest, I would ultimately pass at the chance. I might well enjoy a fascinating few hours or maybe even days in the midst of a full-court binge with one of the most notorious addicts that ever lived. But just as easily as I can imagine the amazing stories I would have to tell of my adventures with Keith Richards, I can see myself at a bar in some hell hole telling those stories to no one in particular, those two or three days long past. Unlike my dream relapse with Keith Richards, that seems a likely possibility.

Update: While doing a search for quotes of Keith Richards, I came across this brief piece where Keith Richards warns Amy Winehouse of the danger of drug abuse and its impact on her career. Good advice from the man who said ““It’s an addiction, … and addiction is something I should know something about.”