Con Carlitos

** Note: As indicated last week, I was planning on writing about the presidential election. Sometime soon I will get to that, however, today, on MLK day, I do not feel compelled to.

It’s 2012, the Terror War continues, and along with it, so does detention at Guantanamo Bay – January 11th marking the 10th reunion of the establishment of Camp X-Ray.

In many regards, the treatment of Gitmo by the Obama administration is a paragon of that administration’s course of action. Riding off the euphoria of ‘change,’ President Obama signed an executive order the day after taking office on January 22, 2009 to close the prison. The language of that order reflects Obama’s campaign rhetoric – and possibly his optimism at the time – by using such powerful phrases as, in ‘the interests of justice.’

… consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice…

(c) The individuals currently detained at Guantánamo have the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.

Guantanamo would embarrass us Americans no longer.

Yet then a stern looking man from the Pentagon sat alone with the President in the Oval Office, and stated: ‘We can’t do that.’

Whether or not that conversation actually happened, at some point that message was delivered to the Obama administration; just as it was delivered to Attorney General Eric Holder that there was no fucking way that he would be allowed to put alleged 9/11 perpetrators on trial in New York in a civil court. No, fucking, way would the Obama administration be opening that can of worms.

The original sentiment of closing Guantanamo in the ‘interest of justice’ is obvious, unless you’ve joined Jim Jones in Guyanna and are currently sipping the kool-aid.

I remember when I first found out about what was really going on there. My freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin was dark – literally, I sat alone in dark rooms drinking dark whiskey playing dark video games (and I never had, nor have since, played video games). So maybe that darkness enabled me to empathize.

Living a nocturnal life, I would often walk from my dorm to Taco Cabana at three or four in the morning. Those walks were, in hindsight, ideal moments for clearing my head of the trivial problems I faced. And on those walks, if I wasn’t freestyling to myself or just walking in silence thinking, I would often listen to podcasts.

I was nearly at Taco C when the following played in my headphones. The podcast was ‘This American Life;’ the episode, ‘Habeas Schmabeas.’ I ate my Tex-mex quickly and nearly ran back to my dorm to make the following video.

To date, this clip has been viewed 540,000 times. Obviously, whatever I had heard in that episode resonated with people – and of course, I take no credit, since I merely featured the hard work of ‘This American Life.’

It shocked the hell out of me. It jolted me awake.

Empathize. Think dark. Imagine yourself living in those conditions for ten years or more without the right to trial – possibly being innocent – holding on to each day like a Holocaust victim.

So I, like many people I knew, was relieved when Obama signed the executive order, when America was going to take a new course.

So what the fuck happened?

I’m not even going to attempt to explain the motivation behind Obama reversing his policies – literally codifying the existence of Guantanamo, the removal of Habeas Corpus for all American citizens, and the opening of a new front of economic warfare upon Iran in one fell swoop in the NDAA (signed, befittingly, in the crown jewel of Empire, in the territory that proves how effective imperialism can be, Hawaii) – however, I will theorize on why the man from the Pentagon believes Gitmo must remain open.

And I think the reason is psychological. From a logistics perspective, there is no reason why Gitmo can’t be moved elsewhere. There are only 171 prisoners at the base now anyway. The idea has been floated to move them to Afghanistan, or even Illinois, but it seems highly unlikely that that change will happen any time soon.

For their part, Congress is adamant about keeping Gitmo Gitmo. But the President could, at the least, make a verbal objection, or veto an act like the NDAA on ideological grounds alone. Yet he has not (most likely because of political positioning, but, once again, I will not attempt to explain/understand his motivations).

So why are these actors working in unison to sustain the status quo?

I could put it in my own words, but to do so would only be writing an unacknowledged echo of the true source of my opinion.

I have read many good Op-Eds on why Gitmo should be closed, but few on why it remains open. And yet, the following, written by Michel Chossudovsky, has stuck in my mind since I read it years ago.

Yes, I concur with Chossudovsky – Gitmo is in itself a pyscological operation, an institution made public to normalize the continuing decline of our moral culture:

The “Spanish Inquisition” Made in America

by Michel Chossudovsky

…

With regard to the Executive order to torture, several media in the US including the Washington Post, have condemned Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, calling for his resignation.

They have not, however, acknowledged the fact that torture has for some time been a routine practice of the Military and Intelligence apparatus, since the days of “Operation Condor” and the US sponsored Central American Death Squadrons, which at the time were overseen by John Negroponte, who currently serves as America’s “ambassador” to Iraq.

What comes next?

When the Justice department emits a legal opinion stating that the Executive order to torture is “legit”, that means that a legal and political consensus is being built.

In which case, the war criminals in high office, have “the right” to commit atrocities in the name of democracy and freedom, etc. It is no longer necessary for them lie, to hide their actions or to “say sorry” if and when these actions are brought to public attention.

Under this logic, torture is no longer seen as “Un-American”, as stated by President Bush when the Abu Ghraib photos were first released.

In other words, under an inquisitorial system, the public does not question the wisdom of the rulers.

Citizens are compelled into accepting the political consensus. They must endorse the acts of torture ordered by those who rule in their name: political assassinations are no longer conducted as covert operations, the intent to assassinate is announced, debated in the US Congress, the terrorists are sent to concentration camps and this information is public.

Why is Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, Cuba, public knowledge?

Precisely, to gradually develop, over several years, a broad public consensus that concentration camps and torture directed against “terrorists” are ultimately “acceptable” and in the public interest.

When we reach that point of “acceptance”, of broad consensus, there is no going back.

The lie becomes the truth. “Democracy and freedom” are sustained through State terror. The police state and its ideological underpinnings become fully operational.

Filed under: Newsletter

ConCarlitos Newsletter #1 – Peering Over Our Shoulders at 2011

Note: This newsletter marks the first of many weekly updates to come. I’m not sure where this format will lead, but I will be dedicating some time every Sunday to ruminate on something I find interesting.

It may relate to energy, social phenomena, politics or music. As of now, the subject is not fixed. Perhaps in time that will change. More than anything, this newsletter will be a writing exercise for myself. That provided, these entries may tend to be more anecdotal than this website has been in the past – or they may not be. However, if you find yourself reading this, hello and welcome to ConCarlitos.com, a website/blog where yet another Millennial bemoans the state of the(ir) world.

The Times Square ball has dropped. Another 12 months have passed. The 21st Century continues on, every year of it having witnessed American hot war. War – perhaps the most undervalued, misunderstood, and now underused word in America’s vocabulary – is rising amongst us, becoming normalized, settling in like a cancer metastasizing in our blood stream. But is war the true cancer?

In ‘Peak Everything,’ author Richard Heinberg describes the error of falsely diagnosing a sickness. In the example he provides – if I remember correctly, my books are 3,000 miles away – Heinberg alludes to a patient suffering from lead poisoning. The victim complains of stomach pains, vomiting, diarrhea and nausea. An incompetent doctor treats each symptom separately, prescribing medicines on an issue by issue basis. And the real problem, unidentified, persists. In the end, the lead continues to be ingested until the victim inadvertently kills himself (this was not in the book, and is my morbid rendition).

War is currently but a symptom of the larger problem at hand – that of natural resource depletion; a global, extractive-based economy; and prodigal waste disposal. It is true that up until the past decade or so, the trend towards civility and away from war occurred (can’t forget the dark ages though). However, the lens in which we view the world, and progress, is extremely important. I’ll allude to this PCI video narrated by Peter Coyote.

But what we are now witnessing is (possibly) a regression – certainly for our country, the cultural regression has already begun. The trend of progress is colliding with an undeniable truth: there are set limits to the resources we have inherited in this world. When this collision occurs – and I would argue that on many fronts, it has already begun – is irrelevant; it’s inevitability is what is most essential to understand (think not just oil, but groundwater, soil, FOOD production).

Supply a group of isolated men with slabs of steak, sacks of potatoes, heads of lettuce and pitchers of beer, and they will eat and drink happily. They will reminisce and be inclusive. It would be a grand ole time. Supply a group of isolated men with only a sack of potatoes, and they will turn on each other. Hierarchies will develop. There will be those who eat, and those who starve. Morals would become relative.

Extend this thought experiment to the world, to 2011. There is still steak, that is for sure (it just happens to lie under the ground of Iraq and Libya), but there are still those who starve – in fact, more than 1 billion (1 in 7 humans) go hungry.

What strikes me about 2011?

Not more than a couple years ago, the leaders of the Western world were shaking the hand of Muammar Qaddafi, smiling with him, posing in pictures next to him. Then, like vultures, they turned on the man and murdered him in cold blood. That behavior is categorically psychopathic.

I was sitting in a crowded restaurant in Washington D.C. when it happened. An American child – since he was roughly 10 years old I imagine, every year he has lived in this world his country has been at war – was sitting in the booth opposite of me with his family. The flat screen televisions that were littered throughout the walls of the restaurant played either ESPN football highlights or CNN. And on CNN, at 7 P.M. at night, the T.V. showed a pixilated camera-phone video of men carrying Qaddafi’s bloodied body in the streets of Tripoli. The for-profit news station repeated the footage, of course, yet no one in the restaurant, besides a nod or two, seemed to acknowledge the event.

So was this past year, as Time Magazine proclaimed it to be, the ‘Year of the Protester,’ or was it the ‘Year the Protester was Used’ (even on a titular basis, given the mercenary warfare involved in the Libyan escapade) for imperial resource positioning? I would argue it was the year for both, yet to not acknowledge the latter – which is standard throughout the mainstream and mainstream left – is to deny ourselves the reality of the 21st century.

There will be blood. There will be oil (how much is unsure). There will be those who starve. There will always be those who starve.

This ruthless, flawed, tragic and simultaneously wonderful planet has circled around the sun yet again. What does the future hold for us? I pray – and I don’t; maybe I should – that the NDAA, signed as the year closed, does not portend how power systems will respond to decline.

For next week: On why, if I were voting in a swing-state, I would (still) cast my ballot for Obama (and not Ron Paul).

Filed under: Newsletter