The Brain Dump

Christina and I are heading off tomorrow morning. We'll be hitting Beijing, Dandong, Dalian, Yantai, and Qingdao. It should be suitably awesome. We'll probably be back around August 15th (depending on how the money lasts), so you can expect more sporadic posts and pictures then!

B'bye!

I got my Forbidden City pictures up on my Snapfish. That'll stand in for my Pic o' the Week. As always, you can see them here, room code:

chinaphotos

Hope that works. . . .

Fuck you.

Me: “[The Beast] makes me realize I’m a lot more radically liberal than I think I am.”
Christina: “You call yourself a socialist. . . .”
Me: “Good point . . . but I still think of myself as fairly moderate.”
Christina: “Weren’t you once an anarchist?”
Me: *giggles* “Briefly.”
Christina: “Good, because that’s what I told Robert and he laughed.”
Me: “Well, my anarchist days are long gone.”

We lose. Game over. Tip the king, we concede.

Forget waterboarding. I give you waterboarding; you can have it. Because this isn't about waterboarding. This is about everything else we do to our prisoners.

Let's assume that simulated drowning is as fun as the name "waterboarding" makes it sound. OK. How 'bout this one: anally raping an inmate with the muzzle of a rifle. Let me repeat that for the cheap seats: anally . . . raping . . . an inmate . . . with the muzzle . . . of a rifle. What do we call that? A muzzle nuzzle? Rifle ride? What name do we give that so it doesn't sound like what it is?!

Allan Uthman of The Beast was the one who enlightened me to this joyous bit of information, with his article, "Whores on Terror." We rape our inmates (who are occasionally held without charge or crime) in the ass with rifles. And broom handles. And fucking flashlights!

I wish we were still talking about waterboarding.

Instead, the United States of America is a sex offender. Understand this, really think about this: we force metal and wood and plastic into the anus of another human being--sans lube--until blood runs down their legs.

Jesus fucking Christ!

Is that enough for you? Good 'cause there's more.

How about the forced ingestion of urine? That's right. We make our prisoners drink our pee. Does that maybe, I don't know, kinda, let-me-think-about-it, sort of sound like torture? While they are vomiting it up, we pour urine down their throats. That's while they're shitting themselves with diarrhea. Yes: dur-ing.

Do you understand this yet? We're the perverts of the fucking world. While other countries pull off fingernails or break bones, we sexually assault. Which is worse? <---That's the wrong fucking question! We are sex offenders. We are scum.

How did we get here? Or have we always been here, and only now we've started looking around? This sickens me. I am physically ill, nauseous while I type this. There are tears in my eyes because now when I think about my homeland, my birthplace, land of my citizenship, I also think about men and women bound, naked, bleeding, molested, vomiting, and scared. Petrified that the United States will be back to degrade and brutalize them further. Assuming we haven't already beaten them to death.

Kiss our moral authority goodbye. What's that you say? They're chopping off heads in Saudi Arabia? But that's so quick. What was that? China's disregarding more human rights? Well we can teach 'em a thing or two about that. We could even share a few tips with the civil liberty cesspits that are Congo, Burundi, and Sierra Leone.

But President Obama doesn't want to look at that. He wants to look forward. He wants to move on. He wants to ignore the missteps (missteps?!) of the past eight years and turn our hearts and minds to our Hope^TM for the future.

Well, fuck you, Mr. President.

Please. Please, do this for me; do this for your country; do this for your self: Email the Attorney General. His address is: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov. I don't care if he never reads it. I don't care if anyone ever reads it. It'll take, what? a few minutes, tops? Plead for him to prosecute the war criminals who were in the Bush administration and any who might be lurking in Obama's. This is not a party thing. This is not political. This is human fucking decency. This is preserving the land that we love. This is sending the world a message--No man, woman, or child should have to endure this. And no man. woman, or child is above the law. I beg you as an American citizen, as a human being: do not let this slide.

Do not let this slide.

Me: I don't know what to read.
Christina: What are your options?
Me: Essays on feminist Surrealism . . . or Batman comics.
Christina: I feel there's a middle ground in there.

Hey, folks. Missed a week and a half . . . that's my bad, but I have been writing things, so I'll be making up for a little lost time. I've also discovered the joys of photo stitching and am finishing up going through all the pictures I took in Beijing. So. This Pic o' the Week is actually a double-Pic. I give you:

The city that is forbidden!