I've added 3 blogs to my blogroll, all friends and acquaintances:
http://hungryblues.net/tumblin (feed)
What's a tumblelog? People often cite kottke's early definition (early as in 2005), in which he says:
A tumblelog is a quick and dirty stream of consciousness ... with minimal commentary, little cross-blog chatter, the barest whiff of a finished published work, almost pure editing ... really just a way to quickly publish the "stuff" that you run across every day on the web.
With much less time to write on Hungry Blues but a lot of time still spent on the web, I've been really drawn to tumblelogging. For the last several weeks, I've hesitated to start, however, because I wanted my tumblelog to have a little more functionality than the most readily available tumblelog implentations—tumblr, a free, hosted tumbling platform, and gelato, which aspires to be the WordPress of tumblelogging software. Mainly I wanted tagging and search, so I can find stuff after I've posted it and collect stuff with particular projects or interests in mind.
So here's what's under the hood of my tumblelog:
Aside from a few very small tweaks to the header template, that's pretty much it.
Now that I've got it all up and running I'm totally digging it. I'd sort of like to do something with all that black space to the right of the sleek, narrow tumblelogging column, not sure what though, especially since I want to keep the thing light weight and minimal and not slow it down with a lot of extra blog features. One thing I'd like to see in a future release of Quick Post is the ability to add new tags on the fly, without having to navigate the WP back end.
In May 2006, my friend David got me to join him at the Regatta Bar in Harvard Square for an amazing show by Randy Weston and his African Rhythms Trio, with Weston on piano and Alex Blake on bass and Neil Clarke on percussion. Weston is one of the living masters of the Jazz piano tradition. His playing breathes the history of Jazz piano while sounding joltingly current, much belying his 81 years of age. Blake and Clarke are amazing, younger musicians (though both are probably old enough to be my father), and the trio was hot!
Flash photography was not allowed, but photos without flash were okay, so I was snappping photos, and then suddenly, Neil Clarke was standing up from his seat at the drums and was asking me if I was taking video, which was explicitly forbidden. I had to explain in front of everyone that my camera is a still camera. It has a flip out monitor that from across the room made it look like I was taking video.
After the set, I apologized to Neil Clarke for disrupting the show. He was totally nice about it, saying, "No, no, that's cool, as long as you weren't shooting video. You do your thing..."
After I posted the photos to flickr, I sent an email to Neil Clarke via his website. I don't know if he saw them, but many months passed and then last week his webmaster emailed me and asked if they could use one of the photos on Clarke's website. Not for pay, but in this case, the fame and glory are payment enough.
Things may look funky for a bit. We'll be back to normal soon.
UPDATE 7/26:
Things are pretty much back to normal. Deal was that I upgraded my WordPress theme from the original veryplaintxt install to the developer's latest version. I had put off upgrades for a long time because I had made a bunch of hacks to the original theme before I knew enough to document my changes to the style sheet and templates. I finally bit the bullet and made the upgrade and reverse engineered my previous hacks (with a little help from a friend with better coding skills than mine).
I can't say everything is exactly the way it was before, but it's close enough and I am quite pleased. The code and/or the css of the latest version of veryplaintxt is cleaner than it was before and plays much nicer with my plugins (Alex King's Share This finally works the way it was supposed to!). But, being a big time novice when it comes to CSS, I so preferred the style sheet on my original install of the theme, with the different types of styles divided out into commented sections. I was pretty much at sea when it came to figuring out some things that I had previously been able to accomplish with much less knowledge than I have now. Anyway, I may still make a few more tweaks, as well as some other external improvements (e.g., my shiny new RSS feeds top of the sidebar). Many thanks, P, for your help!
I know I must be boring some of my usual readers to pieces by now. I have long contemplated whether I should write about tech stuff since I've become increasingly pre-occupied with it and it is a major part of my paid work these days. Thanks for listening.
I made a bad decision when I used the phrase "Voodoo Scientists" in the title of my post on Katherine Eban's latest article. I was picking up on a quote from Michael Rolince, section chief of the F.B.I.’s International Terrorism Operations, who said that US torture tactics are based on "voodoo science."
Voodoo as an adjective evokes classic mischaracterizations of the many thousands of years old religion as a grotesque form of black magic involving dark skinned witch doctors who preside over zombies and dolls and stick pins.
He is always a sinister figure with supernatural powers operating on temporal margins of normal society. His supernatural powers come from ancient, suppressed, occult traditions often of a non-western origin.
Add to this the African origins of Vodou (or Vodoun), and its deep roots in Haiti, and the racist overtones are all too evident. Many of the persistent racist tropes projected onto Vodou were spelled out in 1929 in The Magic Island by William Buehler Seabrook:
And now the literary-traditional white stranger who spied from hiding in the forest, had such a one lurked nearby, would have seen all the wildest tales of Voodoo fiction justified: in the red light of torches which made the moon turn pale, leaping, screaming, writhing black bodies, blood-maddened, sex-maddened, god-maddened, drunken, whirled and danced their dark saturnalia, heads thrown weirdly back as if their necks were broken, white teeth and eyeballs gleaming, while couples seizing one another from time to time fled from the circle, as if pursued by furies, into the forest to share and slake their ecstasy.
I really should have known better and I apologize.
More information on Vodou:
Over at Physicians for Human Rights (where I work), we have issued a statement concerning the disturbing evidence disclosed today in Katherine Eban's Vanity Fair article, "Rorschach and Awe."
In today's statement, PHR Executive Director Len Rubenstein compares the current CIA torture program to the infamous US Public Health Service use of 400 Black men as human guinea pigs for experiments with syphilis and to the CIA's original human experiments, when it first began to develop psychological torture techniques in the 1950s.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) urgently reiterated its call today for the White House and Congress to prohibit the use of all SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) techniques in interrogations by US agencies, especially those conducted by the CIA at the agency's "Black Sites" and other secret facilities. SERE techniques include water-boarding, the use of stress positions, isolation, exploitation of phobias, and cultural and sexual humiliation, among other tactics. The group's statement follows Vanity Fair's shocking revelations about the alleged involvement of CIA and US military psychologists in torturing detainees in US custody, as well as its disclosure of a standard operating procedure for use of the SERE tactics that appears to have been employed at Guantanamo. PHR has been calling for the Administration to prohibit tactics used in these and other interrogations for nearly three years.
The report in Vanity Fair details the key role in detainee abuse played by psychologists, particularly CIA contractors Drs. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, from US military SERE schools-training programs designed to instruct service personnel in physical and psychological torture resistance. These psychologists were contracted by the CIA to use these SERE techniques on high value detainees-a practice that is unethical, ineffective and illegal. This new information about the alleged involvement of psychologists in the development and implementation of psychological torture techniques for the CIA was preceded on May 18th by similar revelations about Department of Defense (DoD) psychologists using these tactics at DoD sites, according to a recently declassified DoD Inspector General's report.
"The indisputable evidence disclosed today that the US government, with the assistance of psychologists, was engaged in psychological torture tactics for the CIA is as morally reprehensible as Tuskegee and the MK-Ultra program of the 1950's and 60's," stated Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of PHR. "It is imperative that both White House and Congress explicitly prohibit the use of these specific tactics once and for all. They have no place in lawful and honorable military and intelligence communities."
Senator Carl Levin, Chair of Senate Armed Services Committee, has announced publicly that he intends to call hearings on the use of the SERE tactics by the US. PHR called today for immediate Congressional investigative hearings to learn how these methods came to be used and who was responsible for approving them. "Extensive and exhaustive hearings are required to conclusively and fully understand whether the regime of psychological torture documented at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, CIA Black Sites and elsewhere was authorized at the highest levels of the government, as it appears, and if so, to hold those civilian officials accountable for these gross violations of human rights," stated Rubenstein.
Read Katherine Eban's article.
Take action: Ask Congress to Fully Investigate CIA and DoD Interrogation Methods.
It wasn't bad apples, folks. I've said it before, but the proof is in. Read Kathrine Eban's jaw dropping exposé in Vanity Fair.
Eban's article provides the first ever eye witness accounts of a CIA interrogation at a "black site"; it explains the role of two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, in devising the techniques that proliferated all combat operations of the War on Terror; it explains how those techniques were reverse engineered from the SERE military training program to condition soldiers to resist torture by enemies who do not follow the Geneva Conventions; and it provides documentation of Standard Operating Procedures that began at Gitmo, which include specific instructions for how to avoid leaving physical marks while torturing detainees.
Some key points:
Zubaydah was stabilized at the nearest hospital, and the F.B.I. continued its questioning using its typical rapport-building techniques. An agent showed him photographs of suspected al-Qaeda members until Zubaydah finally spoke up, blurting out that "Moktar," or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had planned 9/11. He then proceeded to lay out the details of the plot. America learned the truth of how 9/11 was organized because a detainee had come to trust his captors after they treated him humanely.
It was an extraordinary success story. But it was one that would evaporate with the arrival of the C.I.A's interrogation team. At the direction of an accompanying psychologist, the team planned to conduct a psychic demolition in which they'd get Zubaydah to reveal everything by severing his sense of personality and scaring him almost to death.
Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the C.I.A.Both [Mitchell and Jessen] worked in a classified military training program known as SERE—for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape—which trains soldiers to endure captivity in enemy hands. Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on SERE trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror, according to psychologists and others with direct knowledge of their activities. The C.I.A. put them in charge of training interrogators in the brutal techniques, including "waterboarding," at its network of "black sites." In a statement, Mitchell and Jessen said, "We are proud of the work we have done for our country."
The agency had famously little experience in conducting interrogations or in eliciting "ticking time bomb" information from detainees. Yet, remarkably, it turned to Mitchell and Jessen, who were equally inexperienced and had no proof of their tactics' effectiveness, say several of their former colleagues. Steve Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve colonel and expert in human-intelligence operations, says he finds it astonishing that the C.I.A. "chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation … to do something that had never been proven in the real world."
The tactics were a "voodoo science," says Michael Rolince, section chief of the F.B.I.'s International Terrorism Operations. According to a person familiar with the methods, the basic approach was to "break down [the detainees] through isolation, white noise, completely take away their ability to predict the future, create dependence on interrogators."
Just months after Zubaydah's interrogation, the myth of Mitchell and Jessen's success in breaking him had made its way from Thailand to Guantánamo to Washington, and the reversed sere tactics had become associated with recognition and inside knowledge.
In late spring, Mallow met with Major General Michael E. Dunlavey, who was about to take over as commander of the newly combined JTF-GTMO 170 (Joint Task Force Guantánamo). Mallow briefed Dunlavey on his bsct team's rapport-building efforts and offered him full access to the psychologists. About a month later, he claims, Dunlavey had appropriated the acronym but set up a separate bsct team, cobbled together in part from clinical psychologists already at Guantánamo. Before activating the new bsct team, Dunlavey sent its members to Fort Bragg for a four-day sere-school workshop. (Dunlavey, now a juvenile-court judge in Erie, Pennsylvania, did not respond to requests for comment.)
On December 2, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld granted JTF-GTMO 170's request to apply coercive tactics in interrogations. The only techniques he rejected were waterboarding and death threats. Within a week, the task force had drafted a five-page, typo-ridden document entitled "JTF GTMO 'SERE' Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure."
The document, which has never before been made public, states, "The premise behind this is that the interrogation tactics used at US military sere schools are appropriate for use in real-world interrogations" and "can be used to break real detainees."
The document is divided into four categories: "Degradation," "Physical Debilitation," "Isolation and Monopoliztion [sic] of Perception," and "Demonstrated Omnipotence." The tactics include "slaps," "forceful removal of detainees' clothing," "stress positions," "hooding," "manhandling," and "walling," which entails grabbing the detainee by his shirt and hoisting him against a specially constructed wall.
"Note that all tactics are strictly non-lethal," the memo states, adding, "it is critical that interrogators do 'cross the line' when utilizing the tactics." The word "not" was presumably omitted by accident.
UPDATE
I should not have used "Voodoo" as a pejorative term. Go here to read why.
A documentary by Ali Castellanos and Allie Molen
[youtube]xKXoXwYpzmU[/youtube]
From Bakersfield.com:
Fruitvale Jr. High seventh-graders Ali Castellanos and Allie Molen recently won first place for the state of California in the Free Expression in a Free Society competition sponsored by the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Castellanos and Molen produced a 10-minute video documentary on the voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, a little-known but critical figure in voting rights in Mississippi during the early 1960s....
The competition included junior (sixth, seventh, and eighth grades) and senior (high school) categories and was judged by documentary film makers, one of whom said, "This documentary was terrific. It was the best including the senior docs I saw. The research and footage were excellent. The story was superbly well told and the voiceover was excellent in terms of both content and delivery. I came away knowing a lot about a woman I previously knew nothing about, understanding the context of her life and work and had a feeling for her humanity and humor. Well done...."
Castellanos and Molen researched their project for over six months, watching video footage, reading books, and interviewing numerous people from the movement, including former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young. They incorporated their interviews into the documentary to help tell the story and produced an annotated bibliography detailing their research.
"I have learned and experienced a lot in the process of making our documentary on Fannie Lou Hamer," said Allie Molen. "My understanding of the Civil Rights Movement has expanded immeasurably, and I enjoyed meeting and interviewing so many people who actually were a part of the movement. I wouldn't trade my experience and knowledge of this project for a million dollars! I think more kids should participate in National History Day because they learn many important skills, like researching and interviewing that will prove useful in their future."
Despite the enormous time commitment, Castellanos said, "Doing the research for this project and making the video itself was such a great experience and accomplishment. I learned so much that will be beneficial to me throughout school and the rest of my life. Even if we hadn't won any awards, I wouldn't regret doing the project."
Photo caption: Fruitvale Jr. High students Allie Molen
and Ali Castellanos work on their video documentary in
the school tech lab.
Photo credit: Susan Reep
As members of the Presidential Scholars class of 2007, we have been told that we represent the best and brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions. We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.
[youtube]FAe_jrYBQ9w[/youtube]
h/t Stephen Soldz
Max Blumenthal has been reporting on Rudy's White Power problem: Giuliani has chosen Arthur Ravnel, Jr.---a hardcore, ideological neo-Confederate---to be the regional chair of his presidential campaign in South Carolina. Ed Sebesta, an authority on the neo-Confederate movement, has more on Ravnel here.
"By appointing Ravenel to his campaign," Blumenthal writes, "Giuliani has recognized the influence neo-Confederates have in the South Carolina GOP." Blumenthal concludes:
But Giuliani's alliance with neo-Confederates like Ravenel is not surprising, nor is it necessarily novel. Those who lived under his regime in New York City are familiar with his penchant for exploiting racial divisions for political gain. Now that Giuliani has introduced his Southern strategy in the GOP primaries, he is truly the Copperhead Candidate.
Indeed, everyone should be reminded that in 1993 Giuliani beat out New York's socialist Black Mayor, Dave Dinkins, by relying on Republican voter suppression tactics.
The 1993 New York City mayoral contest was a bitter rematch between incumbent Democrat David Dinkins, the city's first black mayor, and Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Four years earlier, Dinkins had edged out Giuliani 50-48%. Racial issues, and fears of racial division, loomed large in the 1993 campaign-as did fear of fraud and intimidation. A New York Times article summed up the latter worries shortly before the election:
The Dinkins campaign expressed concern that off-duty police officers supporting Giuliani might intimidate Democratic voters, while the Giuliani campaign demanded extra police officers to make sure no fraud occurred in polling places where the Mayor's supporters outnumber the challenger's.141
Giuliani representatives earlier had sent a letter to the New York City Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, asking for at least 2,700 police officers to be assigned to the polls, in addition to the "thousands" of volunteer poll watchers provided by the Republican Party.142 Kelly responded by assigning 3,500 officers and creating 52 "captains" to supervise the poll watching.143 This decision was a compromise designed to please both sides: the 3,500 poll-watchers were assigned to watch for voter fraud, and the 52 captains were assigned to ensure the poll-watchers did not intimidate voters. Mayor Dinkins warned that it was improper for poll-watchers (especially officers who supported Giuliani) to "exert their influence and intimidate people" and "to throw their weight around."144
Meanwhile, New York State Republican Party Chairman William Powers made it clear that his party's volunteer poll-watchers would be out in force in majority- Democratic precincts: "We will be manning polls that have never seen a Republican before," he announced.145 The Giuliani campaign had been worried for months by rumors that many Democratic voters registered more than once or were illegal immigrants.146
On Election Day morning, Mayor Dinkins held a news conference stating that "we appear to be seeing an outrageous campaign of voter intimidation and political dirty tricks afoot in today's election."147 This allegation was based on three initially unsubstantiated reports by Dinkins' poll-watchers, and Giuliani responded, "I can assure you this has nothing to do with my campaign and it is precisely what we expected of them."148 The reports were that off-duty police officers physically threatened a Dinkins volunteer and that intimidating posters had been placed in black and Latino neighborhoods.149 The second report was later confirmed. Posters had been placed at several polling places, and read: "Federal authorities and immigration officials will be at all election sites. . . . Immigration officials will be at locations to arrest and deport undocumented illegal voters."150 Dinkins called on the Department of Justice to investigate, and a statement issued by the department advised voters to disregard the posters and pledged "to protect the rights of minority voters." It also announced that "the Department of Justice and the FBI are conducting an investigation to determine who prepared and posted these notices."151
(Chandler Davidson, Tanya Dunlap, Gale Kenny, and Benjamin Wise. REPUBLICAN BALLOT SECURITY PROGRAMS: VOTE PROTECTION OR MINORITY VOTE SUPPRESSION—OR BOTH? (pdf 476kb) A REPORT TO THE CENTER FOR VOTING RIGHTS & PROTECTION, SEPTEMBER 2004. Footnotes are below the fold.)
The Republican Party's dirty secret is that winning federal elections with the so-called Southern Strategy also involves running racist campaigns throughout the country (remember Ohio?). If Giuliani gets the Republican nomination, the GOP will be stylin' with an old pro.
By John Gibson, Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center
Dear Friends,
It was a great weekend.
I apologize in advance for omissions in this report. There was so much good participation, I am afraid that I am bound to leave something out.
People from out of state began arriving in Meridian on Thursday to join with people from Mississippi to complete the work for the 43rd memorial service.
An operational headquarters was opened at 31st Baptist Church at 8:30 Friday morning, June 22. Dr. Thompson is the pastor of 31st and he could not have been more gracious and helpful. The headquarters operated until around 10 pm Friday night. Coordination of volunteers for various activities, information sharing, sign making, and accomplishing the many final details for the Caravan for Justice and the Memorial Service and Conference were handled at the church.
A press conference was held in front of the former COFO office in Meridian at 11 Friday morning. It was covered by the local tv station and newspaper. Ed Whitfield opened with a sweeping eloquent statement of why we were there: to honor the Mississippi civil rights martyrs and demand as full a measure of justice as is obtainable for each and every one. Compelling remarks were also provided by Richard Coleman, Meridian/Lauderdale Co. NAACP Branch President; John Steele, Chairman of 43rd Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service and Conference Planning Committee, Curtis Muhammad, Mississippi Civil Rights Movement veteran, and several others. One speaker issued a challenge to the media to challenge Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and Mississippi 8th District Attorney Mark Duncan on the grossly inadequate prosecution done by them thus far in the Neshoba murders case.
On Saturday morning, June 23, folks started arriving shortly after 8 at the First Union Missionary Baptist Church in Meridian for the Caravan for Justice that would depart at 10 am. First Union is where James Chaney's funeral service was held in 1964, and where his mother's service was held on June 9. Other vehicles arrived, including two full sized buses, and numerous cars, trucks, and SUVs. Many people enthusiastically placed signs on their vehicles. Additional signs had to be made on the spot. Some of the signs stated: JUSTICE FOR CHANEY GOODMAN SCHWERNER, WHY ONLY KILLEN?, KILLEN'S LONELY, JUSTICE FOR ALL MISSISSIPPI CIVIL RIGHTS MARTYRS, JUSTICE FOR EMMETT TILL, JUSTICE RIDERS, KILLEN NEEDS SOME COMPANY, and WHY IS MISSISSIPPI PROTECTING OLEN BURRAGE?
Diane Nash's statement for my American Prospect article was longer than I could include in the published piece. Her statement is worth reading in full:
The State of Mississippi is trying to change its image to appear to be a state that is no longer racist. If Mississippi would focus on truly eliminating and/or decreasing racism instead of on public relations programs and schemes, a substantive change actually could take place.
I refer to schemes such as prosecuting one person out of a lynch mob and protecting the rest of the mob, especially those who are now financially well off and politically connected.
Another scheme: Prosecuting a token few while neither investigating nor prosecuting murders of hundreds of black men who were lynched. For example, there were other bodies found in 1964, while the FBI was looking for the bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Those murders apparently have never been investigated nor has anyone been prosecuted for them. The same is true for bodies found in rivers, bayous, etc. throughout the state.
Prosecuting a token few and protecting the vast majority of murderers continues to send the message that one can murder black people and (most likely) get away with it. That is not acceptable. Mississippi should not be allowed to defraud the rest of the country into thinking that racist Mississippi is in the past. Make no mistake; racism is alive and well in Mississippi in 2007.
Justice demands the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If any one of those 3 elements is missing, justice is absent.
Someone on a computer at the Georgia Board of Regents/Dept. of Education spent about 15 minutes on this site and left a "white power" comment on this post, which I am holding in moderation. I hope the commenter does not actually work for the Georgia Board of Regents, since the agency probably does not want their employees leaving racist blog comments from BOR computers and on BOR time. The site visit occurred during between 12:07 and 12:22 PM. The IP number of the computer that was used to leave the comment is 168.9.35.14 and is running Windows XP. WHOIS info on my racist visitor is here.
Get Grandpa's FBI File is a great new website that makes easy the process of requesting FBI files under the Freedom of Information Act. You just fill out and submit a simple web form, and then you are practically done. The website generates the request letter(s) for you to print out, which you send to the appropriate FBI office, along with "proof of death." Don't know what "proof of death" is? GGFF will help you with that, too.
And just in case the site's title and catchy images lead you to think otherwise, I will add that you do not need to be related to the subject of your FOIA request. You can request FBI documents on anyone who is no longer living. You do not need to be related to or know the person.
There are, of course, all sorts of reasons why the FBI might have developed files on someone. To the four questions from the GGFF site, below, I would add, did Grandma Ella ever attend a meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or organize a fund raiser for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People? Politically active Black people have always been targets of the FBI.
Did Grandpa Joe run a gambling ring?
Did Aunt Mary ever lead an antiwar protest?
Did Cousin Gary smuggle booze during prohibition?
Was Great-Uncle Fred a communist organizer?
Folks I’ve got them hungry blues
And nothin’ in this to lose
People tellin’ me to choose
Between dyin’ and lyin’ and keep
on cryin’
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain’t you heard the news
There’s another thing to choose
A brand new world clean and fine
Where nobody’s hungry
And there’s no color line
A thing like that’s worth
anybody dyin’
I ain’t got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
James P. Johnson
Langston Hughes
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