(with apologies to Salvador Dali)

I am bothered by movies, such as “Saw” and “Hostel”, that, to me, serve no purpose other than to depict the extremes of human pain and cruelty. I confess to having never watched a film from either of those series, nor have I watched a Hannibal Lector movie, or a Chucky, Freddy Krueger or Jason movie (which, I imagine, at this point seem almost quaint in their depictions of cruelty), so it is not only what is depicted on the screen, which I haven’t even seen, that disturbs me. It is the very fact that such movies exist, and that they pull in audiences. To me, they are a depraved sub-genre of moviemaking that elevates torture to their prime, even sole, raison d’etre (indeed, they have been dubbed “torture porn” and “gorno” by critics), and that bothers me. Are people really entertained by all that blood and gore? And if that is not the right word, what IS the experience that they crave, as they settle their butts into aisle seats? As to the people who make such films, why on earth do they spend precious hours of their lives depicting demoralizing, black spectacles of the last things that any of us would wish to experience, or even wish upon our worst enemies? Oh, believe me, I know the obvious answer to my question (they DO make money after all, and frankly, how hard can they be to make? We all know what we don’t wish to experience; all one has to do is pick up a camera and film that!), but is even money worth the de-humanizing that I feel must go on in the process of creating such films?

 I am not arguing against the presence of violence in films. Indeed, some of my personal favorites, such as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas”, contain numerous scenes that are not for the squeamish. If push came to shove, I could probably even be called upon to defend Wes Craven’s notorious, ultra-violent 70’s sleeper, “Last House on the Left” ( which took its plot from Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring” and borrowed heavily from Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”). One might well ask, what’s the difference? Well, in the case of LHOTL, this was an amateurish film by a freshman director, depicting amateurish villains who epitomize the dumb, self absorbed, amoral, societal outcasts we can easily imagine committing the atrocious crimes we see onscreen (and read about in the papers). They are not the incarnations of sadism one finds in slick gorno movies, creatures right out of our nightmares who are intelligent and irredeemably evil, sparing no expense to devise the most ingenious and horrific methods by which to dispense with their victims, for no other purpose than the pleasure that they get from doing so. To arrive at an understanding of the villains of the gorno movies, to place them in any sort of context, we need to go back to a French nobleman from the Age of Enlightenment whose writing was so over the top that he provides the very name for the “ism” that is out and out cruelty toward another living being.

 Sade’s “libertines” (one should not refer to them as  “villains”, when to him they were heroes) were precisely the kind of monsters we see in todays horror movies. Smarter and more powerful than their victims, they operated without restraint, and with no other purpose than to inflict pain. In Sade’s stories, the only way to escape victimhood was to allow yourself to become corrupted by your torturers, to become just as merciless and sadistic as them. These were the only triumphs he would allow in his nightmarish fables, that some would “liberate” themselves from any moral or empathetic impulses, which he insisted came from society, the real “villain” he himself was at war with. One can read Sade’s stories and accept them as he intended, as all-out assaults on society and civilization, on anything that limited individuals from behaving exactly as they themselves chose to. But that would naturally lead one to ask, if people could do anything they wanted to, why would they do that? Looking deeper, I believe that one can find a more pathological motivation, one which is readily on display in today’s torture porn movies as well; a deep seated hatred of the human body.

 Oh, Sade loathed bodies!  He wanted them sliced, diced, beaten, pulled apart, you name it. The one thing he didn’t want was for them to keep their original, native form, to be allowed to go on about their ways in peace. To him, an intact body was a challenge, perhaps even an affront, to his aesthetic. He treated them with nothing but the utmost disdain. And yet, it is telling that for all the descriptions of cruelty he filled page after feverish page with, he was particularly vicious toward the parts of the body that give birth to and nurture other bodies. Although there is no question that his writings and ideas have spiced up the sex lives of numerous couples throughout the years (and hey, whatever gets you through the night…), in the works themselves sex was anything but a life affirming, life celebrating activity. Genitalia, breasts, pregnant women, and fetuses are mercilessly tortured and destroyed by Sade’s libertines. The family itself is attacked viciously. In his stories, fathers rape their daughters, and corrupted daughters do unspeakable things to their mothers. The very reality of biological life seems to infuriate him.

 What’s going on here? In the face of such depravity, one naturally searches for answers. Even if the knowledge goes nowhere toward ending man’s inhumanity to man, we strive to somehow make sense of things so dark and twisted they seem to defy explanation, for the sake of our own sanity if nothing else. My belief is that we see in Sade’s writing a psychological phenomenon that has its roots in the very nature of our sentience. It is the mind’s hatred of the body, because it can suffer, and take the mind along with it as it does so. 

 It is hard to imagine anything more painful than being eaten alive from the hind legs forward, and yet this is a fate that befalls thousands of our fellow creatures, in forests and savannas, every day. The vast majority of human beings will come to far more benign ends, but the important distinction is that we are well aware of what could happen to us, if we are not careful, or just plain unlucky. The fact is that, unlike animals, we can think about things happening to us that are every bit as frightening and unwelcome as the things that are shown in the torture movies. It is with our minds that we think about them, but it is our bodies that we imagine experiencing the suffering. We are the only species that has a distinct separation, a schism even, between mind and body. We can actually live lives, of a kind, outside our bodies. No other creature can. We can daydream, create stories, make songs, paint pictures, have sexual fantasies, relive memories vividly, conceptualize, invent, etc. We can easily imagine a life involving no body at all! Indeed, we have created science fiction stories where our minds are placed inside computers, thereby living eternal, pain-free lives. People who are stricken with cancer or other long term, debilitating and painful illnesses frequently describe themselves as “prisoners” in their bodies. What I am positing is that there is an element of human consciousness that chronically feels this way. Sade was expressing this, first and foremost, I believe, though he himself was perhaps unaware of it and presumedly would have denied it. It is ironic that he, due to his atrocious behavior as well as his writing (which outraged the Emperor Napolean), spent much of his life as a prisoner, in jails and mental asylums, creating through his mind an outward experience of the very thoughts that drove his writing. 

 The mind is frightened by the amount of pain, seemingly limitless, that the body it is merged with can experience. Although our central nervous system has evolved the sensation of pain to keep us from burning or bleeding or freezing to death, this impeccable biological system renders us horrendously vulnerable. So averse to its demise is our body that it keeps pain sensations active even as we lie helpless, and crushed, under the rubble of an earthquake, or trapped inside a burning room, on the off chance that we will somehow manage to get ourselves out of our predicament. Isn’t it plausible that our minds, aware of the stubbornness of the body, and its survival-at-any-cost imperative, would develop resentment against it? Why can’t we shut the pain mechanism down when we want to (apparently some yogis have developed this very ability, but it takes years of rigorous training)? When there is no hope of escape? Every king, dictator, Grand Inquisitor and mafioso throughout history has exploited this “flaw” in the body’s design. In fact, it is impossible to imagine the worst forms of government even existing without it, as such regimes are propped up by the fear they induce in the common folk. All of that suffering, down through the ages; no wonder the mind is pissed!

 And so, the mind acts this out, through the mediums that it has developed, the “art” that is Sade’s writing and today’s gorno movies. Each time the mind, represented by Sade’s libertines or Hannibal Lector, or any of the demonic, merciless,ingenious psychopaths who fill our screens as well as our nightmares, gleefully tortures to death somebody else’s body, it has its revenge, momentarily. That’s the experience viewers are after, I feel. Though I am disturbed by such movies, and by the large following they have, I ultimately see them as merely symptomatic, and don’t expect them to go away. They, or some similar manifestation, will be with us so long as we have the ability to contemplate, and fear, our fate.

CNN Poll: Americans want KSM tried in military court

Washington (CNN) – Two-thirds of Americans disagree with the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court rather than a military court, according to a new national poll.

“The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in front of a civilian court is universally unpopular – even a majority of Democrats and liberals say that he should be tried by military authorities,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Despite that, most Americans say that he will get a fair trial in the U.S.”

Even Gov. Paterson does not want to the trials to happen in his state.

Amazing!  The American people still show themselves to be fearful little rodents that would rather disregard our Constitution and rule of law than follow them.  I am really starting to believe that the American people are just so ignorant and cynical that we get what we deserve, no progress, no law, no universal healthcare reform, no nothing.

Like Rachel always says, “I need to be talked down”.

In an interesting development relating to the story I published yesterday, three leading conservative figures:  Bob Barr, Grover Norquist and David Keene; support trying and holding terror suspects in US. When I read this I truly thought “did hell just freeze over”.

Following is the open letter they published.

Now maybe Democrats can get behind the president and AG Holder so we can finally close the stain of Gitmo.

The right wing has launched an all out deluge of criticism on AG Holder and President Obama because they have decided to try KSM and top Gitmo detainees in American civil courts.  While I’ve read over half a dozen articles about how much the right wing, victims and even Senator Webb .  This is the problem with the purist progressive mindset that has engulfed the progressive and liberal base.  Many of us can no longer support the president because we do not support him on every issue so when he and his administration does offer real change he is a man on an island. Progressives and liberals need to stop worrying about President Obama being a pure progress, he never was or pretended to be.  If we let the right wing take over this debate in particularly with their expected torrent of lies and vial we only have ourselves to blame if these trials are halted and Gitmo is not closed in time.

Senator Webb’s statement

“I have never disputed the constitutional authority of the President to convene Article III courts in cases of international terrorism. However, I remain very concerned about the wisdom of doing so. Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor. It will be disruptive, costly, and potentially counterproductive to try them as criminals in our civilian courts.

Judges could free detainees moved to U.S.

Huffy is pimping this NYP story Daniel Pearl’s dad is sickened by Obama’s 9/11 trial decision.

Palin on 9/11 Defendants: ‘Hang ‘Em High’

Giuliani On 9/11 Trials: Obama Giving Favor To ‘Terrorists’ And Endangering New York

This trial’s an error on New York Post

To his credit Glenn Greenwald is calling out the right wing for them using the fear card to fight the upcoming trials, though he is still tempering his support.

And of course the right wing echo chamber is attacking the president bowing and pushing the apology meme about his trip to Asia.

Obama Gives Japan’s Emperor a Wow Bow – Andrew Malcolm, LA Times

Why is the U.S. President Bowing? – Scott Johnson, Power Line

Will Obama Apologize for Hiroshima & Nagazaki? – Richard Halloran, RCP

Well Dick your lawless administration offended anyone in this nation that believes in the rule of law.

Fucquis Chenem Diquat^TM

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, claimed president Obama was allowing Attorney General Holder to investigate allegations of torture for partisan political reasons and restating that the president’s policies are making us less safe.

Fist let’s make one thing perfectly clear: DICK CHENEY YOU DID NOT KEEP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SAFE FOR EIGHT YEARS!

In fact Dick Cheney and his administration gave up the largest terrorist attack in world history and started a criminal war that led to the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.  Furthermore Dick Cheney created an environment of torture tactics that did not keep us safe.  These torture tactics only spurred on the enemy which used pictures and knowledge of Dick Cheney’s torture squads as their major recruiting weapon.

Dick you do no know your Constitution either.  The President of the United States in not the chief law enforcement officer in the land.  The president’s job is to act withing the law and uphold the law, however the president upholds the law by appointing an INDEPENDENT Attorney General as the chief law enforcer in the land.  This assures the president is not ABOVE the law like emperor Dick Cheney was as Vice President when his administration was in power.  If we lived in Dick Cheney Land and not the USA we would be living in a quasi-dictatorship where the exalted emperor Dick Cheney was above the law.

No president Obama did not want these investigations even though most of his base wanted him to lead these investigations.  Unlike Dick Cheney’s tenure in office when he did not do anything the base of his party did not applaud whether it was legal or not.  President Obama did the right thing by appointing an independent AG, Eric Holder, who went beyond his president’s and the CIA’s wishes to enforce the law which is his charter.  Again unlike Dick Cheney’s administration who politicized the Department of Justice and enabled for the first time in our history a unitarian Vice Presidency to rule the executive branch.  Another extra-Constitutional mockery of justice perpetrated by Dick Cheney.

America is safer now because the world hates us less since we no longer torture and hold the rule of law as something to aspire to and not work around.  However, we all know what your game is by now Dick.   Like most right wing Republicans you only care about this country when you feel like you have control of this country.  Dick Cheney does not really care about the safety of this nation.   Instead he is making a political calculation that if we are attacked when Obama is president he can say “I told you so” in order for his party to regain power.  The faux patriot who got at least five differentials to avoid fighting in the war of his generation that he suppository believed in is hoping for more American blood to be spilled just to be proven “right”.

“Cheney Accuses Obama Of Launching “Intensely Partisan” Torture Investigation

Dick Cheney left little on the table during a taped interview Fox News Sunday, accusing the Obama White House pursuing an “intensely partisan” investigation into the use of torture under the Bush administration.

Calling the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on terrorist suspects “absolutely essential,” the former vice president deemed any decision to launch an probe into the possible illegal use of these EITs an “outrageous political act” and a “direct slap at the CIA.”

“We had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, ‘How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?’” Cheney said.

“Instead, they’re out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions — threatening contrary to what the president originally said. They’re going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations.”

Saying the move to launch an investigation “offends the hell out of me,” Cheney accused Obama of succumbing to the political pressure of his progressive base.

“We had a president of the United States, President Obama, tell us a few months ago there wouldn’t be an investigation,” said Cheney. “Now, they get a little heat from the left wing of the Democratic Party and they are reversing course on that.”

Asked to respond to this charge in the past, the Obama White House has noted that, unlike the Bush administration, it does not put political pressure on the Department of Justice. The decision to pursue an investigation into the authorization of torture — which will be preliminary in nature and narrow in scope — was made by Attorney General Eric Holder alone.

“The president is the chief law enforcement officer in the administration,” Cheney said. “He is now saying, well, this isn’t anything he’s got to do with. He’s up vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard and his attorney general is going back and doing something the president said some months ago he wouldn’t do.”"

In a rare instance Senator McCain and I agree on this issue.

“McCain Whacks Cheney: Torture Violated Law And Helped The Terrorists

In a strong pushback against claims made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. John McCain insisted on Sunday that the use of torture on terrorism suspects violated international law, didn’t work, and actually helped al Qaeda recruit additional members.

“I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan,” said the Arizona Republican. “I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq… I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members.”"

The GAO released a long awaited report on CIA abuse of prisoners during the Bush years. It documents many things we know and many things we did not.

“CIA report: ‘Inhumane’ tactics used on detainees

WASHINGTON – CIA interrogators threatened to kill the children of one detainee at the height of the Bush administration’s war on terror and implied that another’s mother would be sexually assaulted, newly declassified documents revealed Monday as the government launched a criminal investigation into the spy agency’s “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane” practices.”

From the same article the Obama administration announces the creating of a specialized terrorist interrogation team. The best part of this development is the team will be operated using FBI interrogation experts which is a huge improvement over using CIA operatives and independent contractors that were used during the Bush administration.

“At the same time, the Obama administration announced a new policy for future interrogations — under White House supervision.”

In the third and biggest development today it has been reported that AG Holder will announce that he has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate CIA abuse of detainees.

“Holder to Appoint Prosecutor to Investigate CIA Terror Interrogations

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.

Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.”

Yes the investigations will be  limited to the worst torture violations and will not go after the legality of the Bush terror memos.  That is disappointing but these torture investigations should be fully supported by progressives and liberal nonetheless.  Glenn Greenwald is already downplaying these investigations saying they will be like the “Abu Ghraib model” of investigations but he is surprisingly naive if he thinks that a civil investigation can be controlled like the military investigation at Abu Ghraib.   Civil investigations tend to take on a whole life of their own and cannot be contained like military investigations.  History shows us from Watergate, to Iran-Contra, to Whitewater and even the Plame investigation that much more always comes out than originally expected.

Moreover anyone who puts any trust in the Bush administration following even it’s own guidelines obviously had not observed the Bush administration for eight years.   I guarantee you people like Cheney authorized torture way beyond any Yoo memo.  In addition we already know most of these torturous acts occurred before the memos were written.

The other huge development here is that these upcoming investigations show that the DOJ and white house are independent of one another like they should be.  In the grand scheme of things that is the best development here in terms of restoring our rule of law.  President Obama does not want to have these prosecutions, at least not now and CIA Director Leon Panetta in a tirade at the white house threatened to quit heading up the CIA if these investigations were initiated.

The bottom line will these investigations be all progressives and liberals want?  No, I doubt we will see Bush and Cheney in orange jumpsuits and shackles like they should be serving long sentences in a Federal Penitentiary.  However I think these investigations will go a long way to expose the worst of the war crimes and unmask the perpetrators behind these crimes so hopefully this time history does not repeat itself.

K7 waiting for your rebuttal argument.