No more torture!

My heart swelled when I read this:

A second executive order [by President Barack Obama] will formally ban torture by requiring the Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations, essentially ending the Bush administration's CIA program of enhanced interrogation methods.

Then I had to stop and think - I'm getting excited over the fact that torture will be now, again, illegal. The brutalization of bodies for information (and possibly fun) is returning to the dark, illegal place where it used to live before President Bush, VP Cheney and Karl Rove.

And then I get a little sad for the fact that I'm excited we're respecting human rights.

Torture is a moral issue and wrong. If there's anything that gets as close to clear-cut cases of right and wrong, this is it.

Dear Conservatives, I'm Pro-Abortion! And You Know What That Makes You?

Anti-American!

I really tire of the abortion debate. Even so-called liberals that I have contact with through various political groups always claim to understand the motivations behind the Anti-American clusterfuck that is the conservative party and their holy quest to deprive women of fundamental freedoms.

I'm talking, specifically, about reproductive freedom.

You dudes: us women, well, we don't rape people in the same numbers you do. We can also chalk our violence up to mental deficiencies, rather than the self-perpetuating prophecy of masculinity. If you weren't content with the free pass the justice system has given men to rape women that I detailed exhaustively in my last post, your penis-buddies on Capitol Hill also would like us women to know that they value the "life" of a clump of cells, a fetus, or whatever you want to call it, more than freedom.

Because in case you haven't gotten the message: America's "freedoms" only apply to white men. Also, because I'm having a bad day, I tire of talking points and meaningless posturing.

So here it is, for everyone who cares to know: I'm Pro-Abortion. I don't dress my opinions up with fancy terms like "pro-choice" to distance my stance from the fact that I am supporting the systematic termination of a pregnancy that will result in the "death" of a fetus, embryo, fertilized egg, or a sack of cells that might be a human depending on your political agenda.

So, I admit that I am Pro-Abortion. Which means that if we wish to dispose of loaded phrases and cut to the heart of the issue, we're going to redefine "Pro-Life".

Note: graphic shamelessly lifted from Andy Singer's No Exit

First, you are not pro-life. Most conservatives support the death penalty, and holding enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay until presumably the Apocalypse or nuclear winter. Killing people and torturing them isn't pro-life. Conservatives also shoot down any efforts to expand affordable health care, even to children. That's not pro-life either.

To liberal dudes who sympathize with conservatives: you might be pro-life. Sure, you might oppose the death penalty. You probably think water-boarding sucks. Your trendy liberal sentiments might also require you to admit that reducing the cost of health care is instrumentally important to the thousands of children who go without. However, you do share something fundamental with anti-abortion conservatives:

You're Anti-American.

Nothing is more intrinsic to the idea of Americanism than freedom. Not the hijacked definition of freedom which is used to mount submachine guns on a suburban Hummer, but the kind of freedom to go where I want and do what I please, provided I am not impeding anyone's rights. Probably the best and most basic exercise of freedom is that over your own body. Someone that does not even have the right to control their own body would, obviously, be a slave.

Now we've arrived at a point where sound bites are irrelevant. If I wish to be honest, then I must say that I am firmly and completely Pro-Abortion. If you wish to be "pro-life", you must oppose the unnatural and purposeful death of all of humanity. Your policies, instead encourage or allow war, torture, grueling child poverty, or a complete dismissal of the rulings of the Supreme Court. Anti-abortion activists and sympathizers are firmly and completely Pro-Slavery (of the reproductive variety) and Anti-American.

So let's just cut the bullshit, okay? I admit that I love abortion. Now you admit that you love reproductive slavery, and that you hate freedom. Fair is fair, after all.

(Cross-posted)

The Traitor who Wrote the Patriot Act

Earlier tonight, Amelia and I attended a speech at our school, Knox College, by John Ashcroft, former Attorney General of the United States and the man responsible for the Patriot Act. He also has the honor of being the only man to lose a Senate seat to an opponent who died prior to the election, the governor of Missouri who oversaw a 72% increase in incarceration rates in only seven years, the instigator of legislation that would have banned abortion, even in cases or rape and incest, and a leading perpetrator of waterboarding as an acceptable torture practice.

Ashcroft gave a fairly unremarkable speech, citing new technology as both an asset and a disservice to leadership, leaving many of his controversies unspoken. He did address the Patriot Act, attempting to explain its conception in the terrifying days following September 11th. Ashcroft is not a dumb man, he spoke about the Act in this context to play on the patriotism in the audience, and he recieved his most rousing applause during this portion of the speech. Unshockingly, he didn't mention how the Patriot Act weakens civil liberties in innumerable ways. Maybe he couldn't count the ways?

During his speech, many Knox students protested, covering their hands in red paint to symbolize the blood on Ashcroft and the Bush adminstration's hands, standing with their heads covered in black bags while wearing orange shirts, obvisously in refrence to torture victims, and even laying outside the speech in a way that directly reflected how waterboarding is used.

Many of the questions posed during the Q and A portion of the evening had to do with Ashcroft's involvement with the approval and use of waterboarding. What is waterboarding? It is a torture technique used by US officals that consists of strapping the victim down, wrapping plastic over the victims' face, tiltling his or her head back to simulate a gag reflex, and pouring water into the victim's mouth and lungs. It is drowning and causes all the damage drowning does: lung damage, brain damage, and extreme psychological damage.

Ashcroft skillfully avoided directly answering questions about the legality of waterboarding, but he was obvisously uncomfortable throughout, coming close to yelling at students and making jokes. I think it was these jokes which angered me most. When confronted about his own definition of torture, Ashcroft said his list of what consitituted cruel would be different than most; he would include attending a high school dance. Hardy Har Har. I love when powerful men compare drowning suspects to high school memories. Fucking hilarious, Johnny.

So what does this have to do with feminism? Maybe nothing, espically because his extreme stance abortion was not mentioned during his speech. But, because the mainstream newsmedia has ignored US torture techniques, it is the responsibility of the alternative press, such as blogs like this, to present the information. So we are.

-Kate

Kate did a pretty good job covering the speech. I did find it rather unsettling how much he focused on new technology and its relation to weaponry, especially considering this was supposed to be a speech about leadership. He also did a pretty good job hyping up the United States, discussing about its multiple superiorities, be they political or religious (yes, he did throw that in there, indirectly).

But what upset me the most was his performance during the question and answer section. I realize that he must have been aware of the rather hostile environment he had stepped into - many people in the audience were visually protesting him during his speech - but he did not do very much to change my opinion of him or his policies by outright refusing to answer several questions and skirting the rest. He also responded to some of them in ways that I found very inappropriate. He challenged the validity of questions, for example, by calling out one asker who could not cite the exact date of an interaction the Ashcroft had recently had in Washington (I think it may have been this one, but I'm not sure because Ashcroft didn't really let the person ask their question without interruption). He also managed to dodge questions by twisting the background information provided by one student so that she contradicted herself.

I admit that some of the audience members were disrespectful at times (but only a handful of times), but I believe that Ashcroft, an experienced politician, should have known better than to react equally as disrespectfully. He made himself look bad by refusing to answer questions posed by college students who only wanted their voices to be heard.

And with regard to how this is related to feminism, check out this neat little list of Ashcroft's views on abortion. He also seems very heteronormative in his views, as he completely disregarded a question about the effects of his actions on the LGBTQ community.

Also, if you want to see some pictures I took of the people who protested his speech, you can view them here.

-Amelia

A local paper carried this article today; I felt that it was very anti-protesters, and it did not accurately portray Ashcroft's reaction (and dismissal) of many of the questions that students asked, even the ones that were not directly accusatory. And as for the article's last line, “The difference between you (the audience) and them is they don’t want to see. There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see," (about some protesting students with blood on their hands and hoods over their heads), someone else yelled out after that, "But they can still hear!"