Just in case anyone was missing me. I’ve had some serious personal issues to deal with and they’re not yet fully resolved but when they are I’ll be back.
Thank you for your patience. (and especially to those who’ve been asking)
Back soon
Today we received our health insurance renewals:-
Me - Age 55, Worldwide cover (excl. USA), excess £100.00 - Cost £599.02 p/a
Wife - Age 58, Worldwide cover (excl. USA), excess £100.00 - Cost £648.15 p/a
(Todays X-rate = $1.64 / £1.00)
Because we choose to be ex-pats and live in Cyprus rather than the UK we need private insurance as we no longer have NHS cover. However, this is hardly exorbitant.
I think a “Holy Shit” would be very appropriate for this one.
A renovated church turned into home.
It’s nice…but I would be uncomfortable at night, I suspect it to be eerie then..
Beautiful - want
[the nasty nasty shit in the IG report on torturing detainees] this is not my america. i want my america back. (via abbyjean)oh but this is our “america” and has been since massacres on the indigenous of this continent slicked up and set in motion by lies and greed and european “explorers” looking for more resources and gold and land. it is the same “america” that carries on this tradition with her modern wars, and as we know, these types of horrific behaviors go hand in hand with war and have with all our wars.
so for me, at least, while i agree with the revulsion and horror (i read four pages of the pdf and it spun me into a land where i was envisioning poems and paintings and my personal ways to speak about the wrongness) and the impulse to say “not my america.” but to me, that very line continues the ignorance and fable-telling (not to put this personally, i am speaking to the practice and principle) that led our “america” to where it is today with this torture.
so it becomes (again, for me at least), a way of saying “ugh, still this america and getting worse. how do we change course? what can i do today to change course and help us become an “america” i want to belong to and be part of?”
or “how do i move the hell out of this nation?”
depends on the day.
no, you’re right. and it’s an important point. i meant “not the part of america of which i’m proud,” but that part of america has not always been at the forefront. or may have been at the forefront for white male landowners, but i’m sure the experience of america for native americans, slaves, chinese railroad laborers, mexican migrant workers, etc, etc, etc has been much more similar to us-as-torturer instead of us-as-benevolent-progressive-influence.
so, let me rephrase. this part of america, that threatens naked hooded prisoners with power drills, does fake executions, threatens rapes of family members - that is the part of america of which i’m both terrified and ashamed. the part that makes me feel like a visitor here rather than a citizen and participant. the part that makes me feel like we’re so off course and so invested in viewing ourselves as without flaws that true change will either be so incremental as to be meaningless within my lifetime or the result of some great catastrophe or revolution that will totally remake us.
anyway, i think this is a great way of phrasing a mission: “how do we change course? what can i do today to change course and help us become an “america” i want to belong to and be part of?”
From the Washington Post, excerpt:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move…
Word of Holder’s decision comes on the same day that the Obama administration will issue a 2004 report by the then-CIA Inspector General. Among other things, the IG questioned the effectiveness of harsh interrogation tactics that included simulated drowning and wall slamming. A federal judge in New York forced the administration to release the secret report after a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union.
A separate internal Justice Department ethics report on the professionalism of lawyers who blessed the questioning techniques continues to undergo declassification review and is not likely to be released imminently. The New York Times reported Monday that the ethics report recommended that Holder take another look at several episodes of alleged detainee abuse that previously had been declined for prosecution during the Bush years, bolstering his decision to appoint a prosecutor…
Any criminal investigation into the CIA conduct faces serious hurdles, according to current and former government lawyers, including such challenges as missing evidence, nonexistent or unreliable witnesses, no access to some bodies of detainees who died, and the passage of up to seven years since the questionable activity occurred far from American soil.
During the Bush years, a team of more than a half-dozen career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, which is renown for its expertise in probing clandestine operations, reviewed about 20 cases of alleged prisoner abuse after receiving referrals from the military and then-CIA Inspector General John Helgerson. Among the assistant U.S. attorneys involved in the review was Robert Spencer, who successfully prosecuted al-Qaeda operative Zacharias Moussaoui and who later won one of the highest awards the Justice Department bestows.
In only one of the cases did the lawyers recommend seeking a grand jury indictment. A federal appeals court earlier this month affirmed the assault conviction of David A. Passaro, a CIA contractor who wielded a metal flashlight against a detainee at a military base in Afghanistan. Passaro was not charged with murder. Abdul Wali, the detainee he questioned, died shortly after the beating but investigators could not conclusively link his death to the flashlight attack.
A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Read my previous posts about the DRC.
