Driving back from dropping my son off at his first day of summer camp, I turned on the radio in the middle of our local broadcast of the BBC’s World Service. Almost the first thing up was an interview with director Asif Kapadia, talking about his latest project, a short film starring Yasiim Bey’s (Mos Def).
Bey’s subject: what it is actually like to be force fed, as is now being experienced by detainees at the US indefinite detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Bey’s supporting cast included two doctors, volunteering for the roles. In the camp the procedure is performed by US personnel, working towards the stated purpose of securing the freedom and liberty of the citizens and residents of the United States.
Bey’s video is propaganda in the purest sense. That does not mean it can’t show us something that we should know.
Warning — and pay attention to me here, kids: This short film is hard to watch — very much so — which is its point. Don’t hit play if you have a hard time putting images of cruelty or violence out of your mind. I’m putting it below the fold so that you don’t click on it by accident.
One more thing: If you don’t want to despair even further about the human condition, don’t dive into the comment thread on Youtube.
Image: Titian, The Scourging of Christ, 1560
Thomas F
Mr. Levenson, by showing this video, according to the standards of a critical mass of the BJ commentariat, you have exposed yourself as a Greenwaldite.
Zandar might never post here again.
srv
When is Hannity getting waterboarded?
some guy
saw this over at Juan Cole’s blog. good on the brave Yassin Bey for making concrete what to most Westerners is a purely abstract concept.
c u n d gulag
I’m ashamed of my country.
I’m ashamed of the despicable cowards from both parties in Congress.
And so, basically, I’m ashamed of myself, even if the “me” in “We the People” had little or nothing to do with this travesty – in some sense, I’m also a part of the problem.
I’d prefer to be part of the solution.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Thomas F: I love it when people come in here and expose their idiocy right up front.
ETA: Especially when it’s the first comment.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@c u n d gulag: Maybe we should dump a bunch of sand and dirt from Florida to Cuba. This would at least force it to be part of the United States.
Forum Transmitted Disease
YouTube comments: he’s faking it being painful because he’s black and the blacks love Muslims and hate America.
Skippy-san
Charles Pierce had the same question, http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/A_Simple_Question
Sibling Nonspecific Firearm of Random Adjective Followed by a Noun That Describes a Mental State (fka AWS)
@Thomas F: And a hearty fuck you too. There hasn’t been a damned thread about Guantanamo where the “BJ Commentariat” has supported what’s going on at Guantanamo. Nobody knows how best to wind it down short of Green Lantern Bully Pulpits proposed by bullshit artists like you.
But keep fucking that chicken.
Redshirt
I’ve encountered a new strain of Wingnut thought, and it goes like this: Well, we might be force feeding these terrorists, but the NAZI’s would’ve just killed them all, so clearly we’re still the good guys.
That is, taking whatever horrible thing we’re doing and comparing it to the worst thing in history as proof we’re not that bad.
Bobby Thomson
Well, Congress should appropriate the money to shut down the detention center, which it refused to do, even when Democrats controlled the House. There should also be trials.
In the meantime, while we all wait for something that doesn’t appear likely to happen anytime soon, how do you propose dealing humanely with people on a hunger strike?
Violet
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Maybe these guys should take their show on the road. Show up at county fairs with information about what’s being done and people can sign up to have it done to them. There can be a similar booth for waterboarding. Make it look “fun” and it’ll turn into something kids dare others to do. Major insurance hurdles, I guess. Still seems like it could be done. People do other dangerous stuff.
People don’t understand what’s happening in Guantanamo because it’s so out of sight, out of mind. Not very many media types have volunteered even to be waterboarded, and certainly not this.
Take it out there. Offer it up for normal people to try. Make sure they understand this is being done in their name. If someone “hates the US” it’s because we do this sort of thing. Let them try it, take home a video of it, and see if that changes a few minds.
Cris (without an H)
That’s just true for YouTube overall.
Patricia Kayden
@Bobby Thomson: Good question. I suppose letting them die with dignity is a better alternative than force feeding them. But letting them starve to death would put a black mark on the US as well.
Close down Guantanamo and try the prisoners if you have enough evidence to do so.
KCinDC
@Redshirt, the “Not As Bad As” defense isn’t new. It’s been around for years.
TooManyJens
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): It’s like some people don’t even want to give the thread a chance to unfold in a non-stupid direction. What horrible fate they think would befall us if we had a conversation without all the “firebagger/Obot” bullshit, I don’t know.
ranchandsyrup
@Bobby Thomson: I’ve heard tales of the magick bully pulpit that an executive can use to usurp congressional inaction. Never seen it work in real life, though.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Cris (without an H): Actually it seems to be true for comments sections on general topic sites, news or other. I learned the heard way.
Emma
The one thing I will never forgive the Democrats in Congress is their unwillingness to work with the President when he first tried to close Gitmo. At that moment I decided I would never contribute to any “group” fundraiser, ever. I will pick candidates whose values align with mine in important things. And this one is an important thing.
And no, there wasn’t a time when Democrats controlled nothing, nada. The Senate had the Blue Dogs, bless their hearts (in the Southern sense). And even the “most liberal” of them voted against closing Gitmo.
ChrisNYC
@some guy: Except those westerners in prison in the US, where force feeding is pretty easily allowed in all but three states (among them Georgia, of all places).
danah gaz
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Well, he *is* a Muslim, last time I checked. They’d probably send him to Guantanamo eventually anyway, on general principle. He’s just getting this out in front of it.
daverave
Very OT:
WASHINGTON — Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Monday he won’t seek re-election next year. “The time has come to pass on the mantle of leadership,” the Republican, who made a presidential bid last year, said. Perry didn’t tip his hand about another White House run but said he would pray and determine his “future path” in politics.
danah gaz
@daverave: Rick Perry does not deserve to share the same thread as Yasiin Bey.
cleek
Mos Def rocks.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Thomas F:
No. Greenwald doesn’t get to ‘own’ basic human rights, just because of some clever personal branding choices he’s made since 2006.
I could just point out that if the American people really wanted to close Gitmo for good, they could get it done in a single election… but then the shiny new Shame-Based Left(tm) would have to find some other criteria by which to find the rest of us wanting.
danah gaz
apropos of nothing? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFg7-4vBPWM
gelfling545
@Patricia Kayden: True, but pretty much everything that has happened at Guantanamo had put any number of “black marks” on the US wall.
SiubhanDuinne
My first exposure to “force-feeding” (the quotation marks are because it was a fictional, dramatized force-feeding) was an episode of the old original “Upstairs, Downstairs” some 20+ years ago. One of the story threads was about the daughter of the household who was a Women’s Suffrage activist. She was jailed with dozens of others, went on a hunger strike, and was force-fed. I still skip over that particular scene when I watch UD on DVD, it is that disturbing. So no, I won’t be watching the embedded video here. Call me cowardly.
In real life, a friend of mine grapples with severe eating disorders and has been force-fed on several occasions. Her descriptions are pretty horrific.
jprfrog
@Cris (without an H): The comment threads at WaPo are bad enough.
Thomas F
@Jockey Full of Malbec: President Obama could end force-feeding tomorrow without the intervention of an election or even the slightest alteration in the complexion of the U.S. Congress. The continuation of this criminal barbarity is exclusively his responsiblity. It is his decision – his and his alone.
danah gaz
@jprfrog: LOL, someone at WaPo called him a “3rd rate rapper”
That’s *precious*
I don’t know of any fan of hip hop, or any rapper for that matter, that would actually agree with that.
Why isn’t stupid against the law?
JoyfulA
Then again, I had a friend in a coma who was force-fed exactly this way for more than a month. The danger lay in pushing the tube into a lung instead of the stomach, and the tube placement was always x-rayed.
Baud
@Thomas F:
So to be clear, you would support the president if he said he has decided to let them starve to death?
Mino
There are no words for how cowardly we are to keep force-feeding/torturing these people who would embrace death before another day in our hands. They are rational actors by any measure of mine.
catclub
@srv: I remember that promise/dare!
The Tragically Flip
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
Uhm, the American people made if manifestly clear in 2006 that they wanted the Iraq war to end immediately and that didn’t fucking happen. Since when do US elites give two shits what the people think about foreign policy or war?
But I suspect you’re right that most people have no idea what’s happening in Gitmo and care less, all the more reason to shame them, for the torture being done in their name and with their tacit, complicit approval. This is why you don’t keep people forever without charges or trials. It’s unjust, they know it, and if they’d rather die of starvation than live forever in a gulag, who can blame them?
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Thomas F:
False.
Congress has the purse strings. So in practice, nothing happens in Gitmo w/o their consent. They can just fund/defund as they please, to get what they want.
BTW, I’m in a meta-mood today, so I’ll point out that this is another attribute of this New Left: Extremely top-down thinking. President Jill Stein will close Gitmo, socialize medicine, and convert the entire US vehicle fleet to solar power in her first 100 days in office!. (I’m being snarky here –perhaps needlessly– but serious observers will understand my meaning).
I understand why you think this way… many of you came of political age during the Bush years, and internalized the apparent top-down dynamic of the era. But it shows a serious lack of understanding of how the actual process works.
Barring some serious cultural-level changes (ha!), you will continue to get out-maneuvered by the likes of the Tea Party and the Southern/Mid-western GOP at the state level (which knows the real game very well, and has been playing that game for keeps since at least 2010).
Thank you for the shame, though. I feel like a better person already.
ruemara
@Thomas F: You guys truly need to fuck off. Not giving GG a halo does not mean you love spying, Guantanamo, war or force feeding.
I’m glad it’s making the rounds. A number of my FB friends are sharing it already. I won’t watch it, the look on his face is enough. And having had tubes in my body before, I don’t think I want to remember that so clearly.
Baud
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
I have to disagree with you there. Obama can end force-feeding — I don’t think it’s required by law. The alternative to force feeding is death, however. I guess people can debate which is worse.
Corner Stone
@The Tragically Flip:
Some percentage of people probably delight in the idea that the bad guys are having a really rough time.
But a lot of people actually listened to their elected representatives who over and over again described these people, as a whole, as the “worst of the worst”. With no trial, no judgment, nothing. Just declared them all as scum of the earth who would rape and kill their babies given 30 seconds free on the mainland.
And so they can’t be bothered anymore what happens to any of them. Even though we know some of them have never presented a threat of any kind.
I mean, what the fuck.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@The Tragically Flip:
Senate result in 2006: 51 Dem. 49 GOP. Far short of the new 60-vote
majority needed to get anything done.
The American people didn’t want it quite badly enough, apparently.
The political elites derive their power from elections, that we vote in. The economic elites derive their power from the labor of others, (that we sell them), and their accumulated wealth (which they get when you buy their products). The intellectual elites derive their power from institutions (which we subsidize), and recognition as alleged intellectual elites (which we give them, just by talking about them).
Elites only have power because of our implicit consent… even if much of that ‘implicit consent’ seems to be in the form of learned helplessness these days.
Why else would folks like the Kochs (just to choose an easy example) pour so much money into the political process? Fear. They understand (in ways that most of us out here in the cheap seats don’t) that a single session of Congress could utterly bankrupt them, by taking away their land-leases, their tax breaks, and their subsidies.
Sneering at me might make you feel better. But it won’t change a damned thing.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Baud:
Given the choice before him (force-feed, or let them starve), IMO force-feeding is the option with less blowback.
Given his statements, I suspect BHO would rather just shut the whole thing down and let the native countries deal with their own. Congress won’t let him do that. (Too many easy points to be had with the mouth-breathers).
I’ll also point out to the Greenwald set that a true fascist police state would just “solve” the problem by loading up a C130 and taking a little sightseeing tour over the Caribbean, a la Pinochet.
Redshirt
@Thomas F: Fail! You didn’t include a mandatory reference to Zandar or ABL.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Baud:
That would be an interesting answer, wouldn’t it?
Shame neither of us will get one.
Baud
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
I’m not interested enough in Greenwald to point anything out to him.
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize the administration for force-feeding unless you’re willing to advocate for the only other alternative available to the administration.
NR
@c u n d gulag: Then start voting Green.
accidentalfission
@Violet: In a similar vein, a Yemeni lawyer recently tweeted, “For every child killed by a drone strike another father goes to war against the U.S.”
I served my time in the USAF. Nine years and eight months. Back then pilots had to get within a few thousand (or tens of thousands if you were a BUFF pilot) of feet in order to hit a target. There’s no bravery in drone strikes and no bravery at GITMO.
I won’t be going to my USAFA 25 year class reunion in August. I am disgusted.
Mino
@Baud: Oh, I think I did. I think they are rational actors. Stop the force feeding and make it clear we have no idea if they will ever be released, repatriated, charged or tried. Because we truly don’t. Can anyone say we will come to our senses in another 4 yrs, 10 yrs??? If some decide to die, at least they are free to do so. They will have no illusions that their protest will move us. That may be the only freedom they will ever enjoy again. Thatcher survived it. I’m sure Obama will, too. They can all point their fingers at one another and no one will take the blame.
some guy
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
so you are saying Obama is NOT the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces? when did that happen?
Laertes
@Baud:
Is that hard? For God’s sake, yes. What on Earth is the justification for violating their autonomy in this way? If someone finds the way you’re treating them to be so horrific that they would rather commit suicide than endure another day of it, the reasonable thing to do is to start behaving like a civilized country and give them justice and fair treatment. Failing that, you ought to let them get on with it.
It’s shameful to pretend that this violation of these men’s autonomy is for their own benefit when it’s obvious that it’s really about protecting their jailers from the political fallout that would result from their deaths. Let’s at least be clear about why it’s being done, shall we?
In short: You’re asking the wrong question. “Would you rather they were dead?” is the wrong question. Ask instead “Would you rather they be treated with as much respect for their autonomy as the Congress will allow,” and my answer is yes. If they choose to use that autonomy to kill themselves, that’s a choice that they ought to be entitled to make. If that choice reflects poorly upon their captors, then their captors ought to think about why it is that people in their custody prefer death. If their suicides create ugly consequences for their captors, it seems to me that those consequences are landing squarely where they belong, and look a bit like justice.
Baud
@Laertes:
I didn’t ask that question. In all other respects, I can respect the views you laid out.
Mino
@Jockey Full of Malbec: Uh, no. We don’t have that South of the Border disdain for paperwork. We could never find a patsy to lose the evidence.
lojasmo
Def was def putting on a show there. That feeding tube was TINY, and ones twice the size are generally very well tolerated.
Now gastric lavage with an oral gastric tube the size of my thumb..those are nasty.
Shut it down.
Laertes
@Baud:
Fair enough. I started out to reply to you, and then sort of got onto addressing a point of view that wasn’t yours at all. Bit sloppy, really.
Mnemosyne
@lojasmo:
I’m not going to watch the video, but I’m guessing the tolerance is extremely individual and situational, to say the least. My gag reflex is triggered by having to hold my mouth open in one position for too long, so I probably would not tolerate a gastric tube of any size well at all.
Mino
Just to get gritty here. Long-term feeding tube nutrition is handled through a semi-permanent enteral installation. Not daily forced intubation. And you do not even want to know the opportunities for abuse that invites.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@some guy:
November, 2010.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Mino:
Hey, this is America… just blame it all on the last guy you toss out the cargo bay.
danah gaz
@lojasmo: Today I’ve learned rather more about your gag reflex control than I ever cared to. Thank you for sharing, Mr. Size Queen.
Mnemosyne
Since the new thread John posted has already gotten pretty ugly, I thought I would also post this story from the UK here that has some background information about the origins of the current hunger strike.
It sounds like David Woods, the current commander of Gitmo, needs to have his ass fired, which I’m pretty sure is something that is within the CiC’s powers. That’s the phone campaign we need to start — remove the source of the conflict.
Chris T.
@Redshirt: When some wingnut says that to you, pee on him. When he objects, say: “I could have poured gasoline on you and lit you on fire. This is just pee, so it proves that I’m the good guy!”
danah gaz
@Mnemosyne: Your comment is broken. It appears to be missing the “Like” button.
gvg
Force feeding for hunger strikes has been mentioned in news stories all through my life, around the world. It’s not new or unique to Gitmo. It has always struck me as nobodies business if someone else wants to commit suicide but age, experience and more contest than my original encounters with machines keeping the brain deceased alive have made me back off that. Mainly the fact that people fail to commit suicide repeatedly, apparently because they need help and because many later manage to achieve happiness have made me uncertain.
In the context of Gitmo (or any prison) the problem is that it would be convienent for any party doing the imprisoning to claim the prisoner starved them self to death. Allowing starvation becomes immediately subject to more serious abuse than force feeding (which I do consider pretty serious). I don’t see a way to safely allow it, which is pitiful for the prisoners.
I don’t see any way to help them except pressure Congress to fund the closing of Gitmo by transfering them back to mainland US, the perfectly adequate justice system, supermaxes, trials and sometimes the result will be the release of prisoners onto US soil because a lot of them aren’t actually wanted in the countries they were captured in nor their home states. We have become a nation of ninnies who are scared of everything. that’s what’s behind the non solution Gitmo.