Cryin'

I need to stop seeing these things. It's only building the guilt and only creating the very doubt I've been trying to escape from all along.

I mean, I've realized that the real reason I'm here right now is unknown to me. I can't explain it, I don't understand it. I just know I have to be here. No matter how hard life is here, no matter what I'm sacrificing for it. I'm really sacrificing a lot just to follow this feeling. Just to follow instinct.

A lot of times I'm just miserable here. Alone. And feeling guilty for everyone I've let down, or left behind, or hurt...all of these people that I feel responsibility for making their lives better, easier, happier......But for once, I am just trying to do something for myself. I know it doesn't seem like I'm treating myself to anything, but really truly I am...because for once, I'm taking the steps I should have been taking all along. I'm finally teaching myself how to have faith. How to trust. Not trust just anyone, I have a bit of a problem in trusting too easily....but the one person I've not been able to all this time is myself. I'm learning to trust myself. So no matter how hard it is, I'm not going to go back. No matter how ridiculous it seems...me leaving so much for something I can't see yet...I'm not going back. Not giving up.

"Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active." --Edith Hamilton

"I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference." --Jimmy Carter

"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them." --Mohandas K. Ghandi

Let's Hold the Sun

Don't you ever feel like...you just want to go out and do everything they say is 'impossible'...?

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." --Nelson Mandella (46664!! something new I learned)

"All things change; nothing perishes." --Ovid

"If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them." --Mohandas K. Ghandi

سُورَة الفَاتِحَه

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ

الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّح ِيمِ

مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ

إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ

اهْدِنَا الصِّرَا طَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ

صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْ رِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلاَ ضَّالِّينَ

Where's the camera?

Reading what my mother wrote about our little week together... I began really thinking, changing. Her words nearly brought me to tears. It's everything I've meant to say, but haven't gotten as far as learning the words to express it with. She's just so talented. And she says she wants to be me when she grows up??

But she's right...about everything... The streams, the lights, the trees...the hills, the river, the narrow, winding roads..the memories. We kept saying... "Let's take more pictures!" "More pictures!" "Get the camera!" "Where's the camera?" "Just tell me to stop the car when you see something good.." And yet... we managed to get distracted in one way or another causing us to end up with only goofy pictures of us eating, or unexpecting...and videos of us singing to songs we don't know, and pretending like we know how to dance....But above all, left us with the bittersweet knowledge that it's our secret memories, no photograph could capture.

Her writing that...was just the little push I needed to get out of my own "withdrawl"...

" 'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that' -- says my pride, and remains adamant. At last -- memory yields." --Nietzsche

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.....

......There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom...." --Anais Nin

"Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong." --Anne Frank

"If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them." --Mohandas K. Ghandi

Reminds me..

I'm writing you to catch you up on places/ I've been You held this letter/ probably got excited, but there's nothing else inside it

didn't have a camera/ by my side this time/ hoping I would see the world with both my eyes/ maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm/ in the mood to lose my way/ with words

Today skies are painted colors of a cowboy's cliche'/ And strange how clouds that look like mountains in the sky/ are next to mountains anyway

Didn't have a camera by my side this time/ Hoping I would see the world with both my eyes/ Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm/ in the mood to lose my way/ but let me say

You should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes/ it brought me back to life/ You'll be with me next time I go outside/ just no more 3x5's

Guess you had to be there/ Guess you had to be with me

Today I finally overcame/ tryin' to fit the world inside a picture frame/ Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm in the mood to/ lose my way but let me say

You should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes/ it brought me back to life/ You'll be with me next time I go outside/ just no more 3x5's/ no more 3x5's

--song by John Mayer

"Why am I telling you this?"

"Last night I was uploading the photos from my trip to Tennessee and there are some giant gaps in what is portrayed versus those things I will remember. Mostly, my daughter and I took turns taking shots of each other, probably because neither of us likes our picture taken, and the only way to prevent that is to be the one with the camera :-P

But what about that tumbling mill stream on the way up to Astrid's place? And the way the light hit the trees, and the rolling hills, and the river. And the Tennessee fencelines, and the barns and the narrow twisty roads. The light is different there, softer, diffuse, warmer.

And the incongruity of Christmas lights when the lawns are still green, and the time we got lost in Loudon county, and how near the trashy trailer folk live to my friends' gorgeous new lakefront home. I don't really have a photo of me and Paul together, and only one of Astrid. None of Judi, or James or Tracey or Diane or Virginia. Just lots of silly ones of Juliana eating and Paul's daughter playing dress-up. None of the sunsets or the kooky old buildings tucked away between the commercial areas, none of Diane's hand-dyed silk scarves or the lush colors in her home.

I know why, though. Awhile ago someone here said something to me about standing in the middle of my life and truly feeling it. Experiencing every nuance, the smells and the energy of the moment, immersing myself rather than observing it. And that's what I've been doing. I don't really need photographs for those moments, because I'll never forget them. It means it's harder to share with others, but really, how do you share that joy? I hope that each of my dear friends has a multitude of moments like that every day, experiences that are so precious and vivid you will never forget them.

I felt so washed by the millions of tiny instants of pure light this last week that I sort of crashed yesterday in withdrawal from them. Everything hurt more without them there, and I know I overreacted to Emily's rejection of me when I got home. And the duality of having pieces of my mother heart scattered across such a long distance, I can scarcely bear it, especially realizing it's going to be much longer in duration than I had hoped. But even in that dissonance, there is joy. I'm kind of odd about pain; it's so very close to ecstasy for me. And in this way, I know it means that my emotions are running very deep, and that is in truth a measure of how I've managed to open up and let things flow I'd always held contained before.

On New Year's Eve, I sat with three other women and chose words to write on flash paper. I chose really hard words to burn; it took a bit of time to work my courage up to form the letters. But I did it, and lit it, and it flashed so bright and brief, not so much as an ash left to fall in the bowl. As if it's so easy to let go of doubt, and uncertainty, and hesitation. There's a really giant empty space inside me where they resided; I hadn't realized they took up so much room. And just like I did after burning man, I feel fragile but strong in holding open that space for something important, in not filling it with anything unintended, in not allowing others to fill it for me. So maybe that's it, this insecure hollowness inside. I need to feel braver about what I choose. I have some ideas, but I'm ---- oh god, I burned that, didn't I?"

--Written by...Melissa Cameron...my mother.

Ohne Dich

Ich werde in die Tannen gehen/
Dahin wo ich sie zuletzt gesehen/
Doch der Abend wirft ein Tuch aufs Land/
und auf die Wege hinterm Waldesrand/
Und der Wald er steht so schwarz und leer/
Weh mir, oh weh/
Und die Vögel singen nicht mehr/

Ohne dich kann ich nicht sein/
Ohne dich/
Mit dir bin ich auch allein/
Ohne dich/
Ohne dich zähl ich die Stunden ohne dich/
Mit dir stehen die Sekunden/
Lohnen nicht/

Auf den Ästen in den Gräben/
ist es nun still und ohne Leben/
Und das Atmen fällt mir ach so schwer/
Weh mir, oh weh/
Und die Vögel singen nicht mehr/

Ohne dich kann ich nicht sein/
Ohne dich/
Mit dir bin ich auch allein/
Ohne dich/
Ohne dich zähl ich die Stunden ohne dich/
Mit dir stehen die Sekunden/
Lohnen nicht ohne dich/

--Rammstein

How Sad... :) but true

So Many Lessons

Okay...why haven't I......Juliana, why hasn't she written anything on the new year...? Does it even exist? Is it just another day....?

No...It is the fact that these couple days have been so hard for me. Emotional-wise....and in a good way. There is so much feeling in me...so much sacred feeling inme that I cannot even begin to write it. I have decided to keep it precious and keep it in me.

But I will say this...Thinking back on the the year, I weep. I weep for the world, the people, myself. Weep because of all the magnificence, the beauty, the incredible and perfect unvierse we live in. It is so amazing to me the way things come together. The way lives come together. The way we can count on the sun always rising, the moon always shining. We can always count on everything coming together as it should.

Of all times to be at a loss for words, it is now. And I honestly would rather not say even if I could muster the words. But I truely can't describe how I feel, all the memories...all the good and bad. Mistakes... or were they? Such large decisions to make.

At least I can say this... it was indeed the most important, memorable, challenging, fantastic, horror-filled, sentimental and above all wonderful year of my life yet.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." -- Albert Einstein

But the comforting smell...

Waking up this morning... to an empty bed, a clean room...silence...cold. No sign left. No ruffled sheets, no suitcases, no car, no trace, no goodbye...nothing. I didn't think it would hit me so hard. I didn't realize I had been living in a mirage for the passed week. Just a dream?

How perfect it had felt.

But I wasnt left with nothing... of course not, and that's a wonderful feeling.

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change." --Buddha

"Before you were conceived/ I wanted you/Before you were born/ I loved you/Before you were here an hour/ I would die for you/This is the miracle of life." --Maureen Hawkins

"The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there." --Monica Baldwin

Made in the first few days...

कालचक्र

Kalachakra-The Wheel of Time

Saddam Hussein executed for war crimes

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writers

BAGHDAD, Iraq -

Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached, he grew calm. He clutched a Quran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment of defiance, refused to have a hood pulled over his head before facing the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power.

A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."

"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

Iraqi television showed what it said was Saddam's body, his head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

The footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.

In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 108.......

(Photo--artist Swapan Kumar Das)

Heaven? or Hell?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DCSJdhy3-0

Hah?? :P

hmmmm.....

What are the theological implications of Dr. Ramachandran's split-brain patients...?

So glad I'm not one of them.... ;)

a silly thought at night...

I was thinking about fear again.

Remember how I talked so informed, and determined about it...and yet hypocritical about it at the same time. It's one thing I've yet to overcome.

I have to say, I am getting better at it...getting better at controlling fright in myself. It's just something that was forced into me all at once ever since I was very young and now, I am really pushing for a new start. A new start in all aspects of my life. And it all began with my decision to come here. Now.. I am forced to be brave....not only by nature, unknown sources...but by myself. I'm talking to myself now. Telling myself what only I know I need to hear.

I think at this point, I've realized...temporary or not, that is where my comfort is...as well as my enemy. You know.. they say the most formidable enemy lies within oneself.

Have I begun answering my own questions?

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."--Alan Cohen

"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."--Charles Dubois

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." -- Dorothy Thompson

"If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream." --'The Trumpet of Conscience'- Martin Luther King Jr.

P-p-p-possibilities

Even though I can honestly say that I have gone through quite a bit so far in the last 15 years..blissful, hard, good, bad...Everything that I've experienced has come from just a tiny corner in the universe of the possibilities, my posibilities. I just imagine growing my awareness, my thinking, and my actions beyond that little corner of life I've seen. How much more could there possibly be? How could there possibly be more....?

I'm just thinking..... that what if the reason something seems impossible at times, is because you're looking at it from a limited perspective. You're not looking at it the right way, you're not considering each and every particle of it. I guess over all you've just got to remind yourself over and over... To consider that there is so very much more to life than what you have so far encountered. So much more possibility.

"A useless life is and early death" --Goethe

"One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world." -- Hannah Senesh

"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom." --Albert Einstein

Turn around.

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets
And ask me your questions
Oh let's go back to the start
Running in circles
Coming in tales
Heads are a science apart
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start
I was just guessing
At numbers and figures
Pulling your puzzles apart
Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
Tell me you love me
Come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles
Chasing tails
And coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.

My mother...

"I never really put much thought to my role models. Whenever asked that question; Who is your role model(s)? I always ignored it, dismissed it...as just being another one of 'those' questions that I'm known to answer with an "I don't know", like...What do you want to be when you grow up? " Remember this? Let me just add...

Really, I think about my role model...my hero... every day...without ever acknowledging that that is what she is. I think...if I had to choose one person in the entire universe as a model for me, I think I'd have to say it's my mother. Maybe she doesn't realize it, but she's absolutely AMAZING...really, truly, no lie. :) There's just simply not enough adjectives to describe her greatness. I could go on and on and on about her. Yea, she has made mistakes, but who doesn't? That's what makes her even better. That there's proof that she can be so awesome and yet still be human.

The most breath-takingly beautiful people I know are the ones who have suffered incredible pain and somehow managed to let the bitterness of it drop away and only carry the beauty of their agonies forward.

She's my hope for the end of the road!

The Last Cloves

U.S. Air Strikes - (Poets Against War)

In the four minutes/ it took me to mince the cloves,/ dump the tea leaves/ in the rose bush,/and soap the carafe,/ a whole city was lost./

There were feet still in school shoes,/ limp flesh singing into satchels,/ clinging to a post, a shattered clock.

The children, if not orphaned,/ were purpled beyond recognition./ Orders had been carried down,/one signal igniting another./ And a man had let a deafening rhapsody/ guide his young hand to/ drop a five hundred pound bombon a mosque.

Just when I finished rinsing the carafe,/ a whole city was under cement dust and smoke,/ and I thought I heard screaming/ behind walls of fire/ in the kettle’s sharp whistle,/ just when I added the cloves,/ the last green lime./

--Shadab Zeest Hashmi: (She is the editor of the annual Magee Park Poets Anthology.)

Fahrenheit 451: The Hearth and the Salamander

"....It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history...."

"......The last few nights he had had the most uncertain feelings about the sidewalk just around the corner here, moving in the starlight toward his house. He had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn, someone had been there. Ther air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned into a shadow and let him through. ..."

"...How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you? And that awful flower the other day, dandelion! It had summed up everything, hadn't it? "What a shame! You're not in love with anyone!"...And, why not? ...."

"...One drop of rain. Clarisse. Another drop. Mildred. A third. The uncle. A fourth. The fire tonight. One. Clarisse. Two. Mildred. Three, uncle. Four, fire. One, Mildred, two, Clarisse. One, two, three, four, five, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, sleeping tablets, men disposable tissue, cottails, blow, wad, flush, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, tablets, tissues, blow, wad, flush. One, two, three, one, two, three! Rain. The storm. The uncle laughing. Thunder falling downstairs. The whole world pouring down. The fire gushing up in a volcano. All rushing on down around in a spouting roar and rivering stream toward morning. "I don't know anything anymore," He said, and let a sleep lozenge dissolve on his tongue...."

--Ray Bradbury

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." --Albert Camus

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink/ Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces/ That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." --Lord Byron

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie." --Stephan King

I AM PROUD

You know... I have been unusually happy lately. It's kind of strange. But I'm loving it. And guess what?! The reason isn't a mystery to me for once, either! Although, I'm not going to mention it here.

But this is just great. A dramatic change from how I've been living for the past few years. I know I always say "Oh things are much better now"...well...hel-lo? They never were. That was me trying to convince you to convince me that it is. And I know.... I've just got to tell myself to be happy and I will (who was it they interviewed on mancow about this? Chopra?...or was it that other guy...AKA "David").. but it hasn't worked until I finally got off my lazy bum and did something. I just needed that extra action. And thank goodness I did, because it's changed my life in more ways than one.

See... I know it's going to be fine this time because this time I can't feel any bit of doubt/regret/fear that it wont and I'm on a role! It's been almost a week! Score! Nothing incredibly depressing for almost a week.. at least nothing strong enough to pull me down again. Can I say this? I AM PROUD of myself. :)

Anyway, change of subject. I've got so many things I want to post about here, but haven't gotten the chance lately simply because of lack of time. I'm studying too much for these finals! But thank goodness only one more day of them. I can come home at noon tomorrow and just relax. Maybe take a bubble bath and a nap...eat some CAKE. :P I think I've lost too much weight...really, too much.

hmmmmm anyway, I went to lunch today with my dad. He took me all the way out to Ali Baba's upon my request! I offered to pay, mostly for the 'waste of gas' :P but he declined. Anyway, came home and..... Studied!

Did you?

Did you know....

Not all dogs are colorblind, and birds were given wings to fly? Did you know the grass has dew in the morning and four-leaf clovers are lucky? Did you know the sky is really blue and the clouds are really made out of whipped cream and marshmallows no matter what they say? Did you know if you look at the sky when it rains, and open your mouth wide...the rain tastes better than wine? Did you know there's a man in the moon? And catepillars turn into butterflies? Did you know the wind can whistle, and birds can sing, and leaves can dance? Did you know that if you rub a dandelion under your chin and your chin turns out yellow... it means you're in love? And if you can blow all the seeds off a dying dandelion you get to make a wish? Did you know tying your shoes with two bunny ears works just as well as one? Did you know if you spin around in circles too long you'll fall over out of dizzyness? Did you know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? And you get good luck if you can hold your breath through a tunnel or cross your fingers on a window when you go over railroad tracks? And you can make wishes on shooting stars and a 1000 oragami cranes? Did you know, you can do anything if you want to enough? And you can be happy if you choose to?

Did you know??

Suddenly I see

Her face is a map of the world/ Is a map of the world/ You can see she's a beautiful girl/ She's a beautiful girl/ Everything around her is a silver pool of light/ People who surround her feel the benefit of it/ It makes you calm/ She holds you captivated in her palm/

Suddenly I see/ This is what I wanna be/ Suddenly I see/ Why the hell it means so much to me (Repeat x1)

And I feel like walking the world/ Like walking the world/ And you can hear she's a beautiful girl/ She's a beautiful girl/ She fills up every corner like she's born in black and white/ Makes you feel warmer when you're trying to remember/ What you heard/ She likes to leave you hanging on a wire/

Suddenly I see/ This is what I wanna be/ Suddenly I see/ Why the hell it means so much to me (Repeat x1)

And she's taller than most/ And she's looking at me/ I can see her eyes looking from a page in a magazine/ She makes me feel like I could be a tower/ Big strong tower/ She got the power to be/ The power to give/ The power to see yeah yeah

Suddenly I see/ She got the power to be/ The power to give/ The power to see yeah yeah/ Suddenly I see/ She got the power to be/ The power to give/ The power to see yeah yeah/ Suddenly I see/ She got the power to be/ The power to give/ The power to see yeah yeah /

Suddenly I see/ This is what I wanna be/ Suddenly I see/ Why the hell it means so much to me (Repeat x1)

Suddenly I see/ Why the hell it means so much to me (x2)

--"Suddenly I see"- KT Tunstall

Torture, a part of the soul

Torture is Now Part of the American Soul

Cost of the War in Iraq$351,428,317,771

Torture Is Now Part of the American Soulposted Monday, 18 December 2006

Torture Is Now Part of the American SoulBy George Monbiot, The Guardianhttp://www.alternet.org/story/45613/

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

In early December, defense lawyers acting for Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant," released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk -- taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.

Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture." The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for over three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.

The forensic psychiatrist who examined him says that he "does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation." Jose Padilla appears to have been lobotomised: not medically, but socially.

If this was an attempt to extract information, it was ineffective: the authorities held him without charge for three and half years. Then, threatened by a supreme court ruling, they suddenly dropped their claims that he was trying to detonate a dirty bomb. They have now charged him with some vague and lesser offences to do with support for terrorism.

He is unlikely to be the only person subjected to this regime. Another "enemy combatant," Ali al-Marri, claims to have been subject to the same total isolation and sensory deprivation, in the same naval prison in South Carolina. God knows what is being done to people who have disappeared into the CIA's foreign oubliettes.

That the US tortures, routinely and systematically, while prosecuting its "war on terror" can no longer be seriously disputed. The Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project (DAA), a coalition of academics and human rights groups, has documented the abuse or killing of 460 inmates of US military prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. This, it says, is necessarily a conservative figure: many cases will remain unrecorded. The prisoners were beaten, raped, forced to abuse themselves, forced to maintain "stress positions," and subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation and mock executions.

The New York Times reports that prisoners held by the US military at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan were made to stand for up to 13 days with their hands chained to the ceiling, naked, hooded and unable to sleep. The Washington Post alleges that prisoners at the same airbase were "commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep" while kept, like Jose Padilla and the arrivals at Guantanamo Bay, "in black hoods or spray-painted goggles."

Alfred McCoy, professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argues that the photographs released from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq reflect standard CIA torture techniques: "stress positions, sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation." The famous picture of the hooded man standing on a box, with wires attached to his fingers, shows two of these techniques being used at once. Unable to see, he has no idea how much time has passed or what might be coming next. He stands in a classic stress position -- maintained for several hours, it causes excruciating pain. He appears to have been told that if he drops his arms he will be electrocuted. What went wrong at Abu Ghraib is that someone took photos. Everything else was done by the book.

Neither the military nor the civilian authorities have broken much sweat in investigating these crimes. A few very small fish have been imprisoned; a few others have been fined or reduced in rank; in most cases the authorities have either failed to investigate or failed to prosecute. The DAA points out that no officer has yet been held to account for torture practised by his subordinates. US torturers appear to enjoy impunity, until they are stupid enough to take pictures of each other.

But Padilla's treatment also reflects another glorious American tradition: solitary confinement. Some 25,000 US prisoners are currently held in isolation -- a punishment only rarely used in other democracies. In some places, like the federal prison in Florence, Colorado, they are kept in sound-proofed cells and might scarcely see another human being for years on end. They may touch or be touched by no one. Some people have been kept in solitary confinement in the United States for more than 20 years.

At Pelican Bay in California, where 1,200 people are held in the isolation wing, inmates are confined to tiny cells for 22-and-a half hours a day, then released into an "exercise yard" for "recreation." The yard consists of a concrete well about 12 feet in length with walls 20 feet high and a metal grill across the sky. The recreation consists of pacing back and forth, alone.

The results are much as you would expect. As National Public Radio reveals, 10% of the isolation prisoners at Pelican Bay are now in the psychiatric wing, and there's a waiting list. Prisoners in solitary confinement, according to Dr Henry Weinstein, a psychiatrist who studies them, suffer from "memory loss to severe anxiety to hallucinations to delusions ... under the severest cases of sensory deprivation, people go crazy." People who went in bad and dangerous come out mad as well. The only two studies conducted so far -- in Texas and Washington state -- both show that the recidivism rates for prisoners held in solitary confinement are worse than for those who were allowed to mix with other prisoners. If we were to judge the United States by its penal policies, we would perceive a strange beast: a Christian society that believes in neither forgiveness nor redemption.

From this delightful experiment, US interrogators appear to have extracted a useful lesson: if you want to erase a man's mind, deprive him of contact with the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with obtaining information: torture of all kinds -- physical or mental -- produces the result that people will say anything to make it end. It is about power, and the thrilling discovery that in the right conditions one man's power over another is unlimited. It is an indulgence which turns its perpetrators into everything they claim to be confronting.

President Bush maintains that he is fighting a war against threats to the "values of civilized nations": terror, cruelty, barbarism and extremism. He asked his nation's interrogators to discover where these evils are hidden. They should congratulate themselves. They appear to have succeeded.

George Monbiot is the author of 'Poisoned Arrows' and 'No Man's Land' (Green Books). Read more of his writings at Monbiot.com. This article originally appeared in the Guardian.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/45613/

if you're not angry, you're not paying attention

Mirror Mask

Wow... I was so close. TIME magazine "person of the year" turns out to be...well, 'You'.

Honestly I had a similar first thought. I was thinking, they'll probably just throw away all candidates and just have it be everyone. 'You', as the consumers and citizens that make up the most influencial event(s) of 2006, according to TIME. It was a perfect choice. Couldn't go wrong with it. There was simply too many major events this year that could have been covered.

I mean, as soon as they started narrowing the choices down, I started dismissing my original ideas. I switched them out for what I wanted it to be. I personally thought, maybe they out to do the "bad guy" this time. It's been too long since there was a "bad guy". So I was going more for Ahmedinejad ((sp?) AKA the modern Hitler??). But I'm happy with their choice, and can't wait to head over to Borders with a Starbucks and read it!

"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost." --Aristotle

Damn.. if only ^. All congress will be doing in 2007 seven is focussing on how to gain more power for their party or just themselves in preparation for 2008. They aren't the leaders....we're the leaders, the people........ummm.... right?

“We believe that atomic energy is a blessing given by God”-- Mahmoud Ahmedinejad-- "How can you prove you are not a bad person? You can't prove that.”

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C.S. Lewis