"Don't forget that you're alive." - J. Strummer

I'm happy to see that my favorite New York-based Militant Librarian is back to regular blogging. Ever since I read her post about Julien Temple's documentary of Joe Strummer, I was wondering when the flick would open in Chicago. It amazes me that the movie biz still thinks you have to open in N.Y. or L.A. first, (to get the critical buzz going?) before they can venture into the desolate heartland in the middle of the country. By the way, for more background on the movie check out this article at Salon.

Anyway, yesterday, the Lovely Carla and I went to the Music Box Theatre to see, "The Future is Unwritten," and yes, well, it is essential viewing for anyone who wants to know more about an amazing rocker, a world-class character, a singer/songwriter who tried to wake people up to their own possibilities. I mean, Strummer was not a wide-eyed idealist, he was a complicated dude, a self-described bully as a child, who emerged as the voice of one of the great bands of the 80's. Please see "London Calling" and "Sandinista" for a grand overview of their work. Both are multi-disc excursions through punk, rock, reggae, etc. Vivid illustrations of why that band was once called "the only band that mattered."

Temple is quite the documentarian. He's also responsible for a great doc on the Sex Pistols, "The Filth and the Fury." So yes, there many things you will learn about Strummer: he was the child of a diplomat, he was a squatter, a hippie, a punk. He truly was committed to being an authentic voice. When the Clash began to drift into "RockStarism," he blew the whole thing up.

Strummer also did some great work with a much lower profile group - the Mescaleros. Let's let Joe have the last word. Check out his beautiful take on Bob Marley's "Redemption Song."

Black Face is Verboten

I have to mention that the Lovely Carla and I did a little theatrical performance last night. We were on a bill with our comedy heroes, Famous in the Future. We went into the whole thing with zero expectations. Not a bad way to do anything. We did a scene I decided to call "the Unbearable Whiteness of Being White." We played a sort of white-trash couple, a polka duo, (she sings, he plays accordian).

It was a scene that was originally based on Ike and Tina Turner. I had heard a story about Ike Turner (one of the most hated and discredited men in show biz - a wife beater, an emotional monster) who was watching Tina on TV, she was wearing a wig and Ike commented that he wanted that wig back, his money had put it on her head. This reminded me of a song recorded by Hound Dog Taylor called "Give Me Back My Wig." This was the seed of the piece.

I've always been fascinated by Ike Turner. He was one of the true originators of rock and roll, his "Rocket 88" was one of the seminal cuts in the genre. Later, Ike and Tina became one of the great acts, they really broke into the mainstream when the Stones put them on the bill during one of their late sixties/early seventies tours (see "Gimme Shelter"). Ike just seemed like good material. A man of great creativity and orginiality, who never seemed happy, an innovator, a survivor, a hustler, a man who had been exposed as a bully and a creep and who lost everything: Tina, fame, honor, credit, freedom (he spent time in prison for drugs and tax problems).

The scene just came to me in a dream. I saw two actors (African Americans) who we had worked with in the past, doing the scene onstage while I sat in the audience and watched. Since I'm a believer in following your dreams where they lead, I wrote it all in a flurry over a couple of days. I don't know why I wrote it. I didn't question. I didn't know if we'd ever use it. It seemed like a stretch, and really, who wants to see a scene depicting Ike Turner? Didn't "What's Love Got to Do With It," (I never saw it.) have the last word?

Our original casting didn't pan out, (I actually think our male lead bugged out because he did not want to play such a scurvy character as Ike!). My idea of doing it all in blackface was roundly derided. This is one taboo that cannot be breached. For more on this see the history of the Wooster Group. They were roundly condemned, they lost patrons and funding, when they did a blackface show. The days of minstrelry are over! And rightly so, irony will only go so far. I mean, I can't really write from the African American perspective. I can only write from my own. And really it wasn't Ike's black skin that was important to me or the scene I wrote, it was the examination of a man's dark soul. Black or white. Didn't really matter. I wasn't hung up on the facts...it's all about the imagination baby!

Anyway, I decided to re-write the scene for a white couple. It was now about the Elston and Gladys Revue. A white-trash polka duo. People so damn white you'd need dark glasses to see them clearly. I buried Ike and Tina way down inside. I'm sure no one in the audience made the connection. Which is just how I wanted it. And by abstracting it all, I think it actually worked better all around.

Surprisingly, we played to a full house, most of the folks were there to see Famous in the Future. We rode their coattails. Another obscure and obtuse experiment (our specialty) for Black Forest. Carla flounced around in a blond wig, I nearly broke down, begging to wear it myself. It was all quite satisfying. And well, who knew?! This whole process is just so strange.

The more I do it, the stranger it gets. And well, that's OK by me.

Tough Guys Don't Dance Forever

Norman Mailer has been silenced. He was one of the great American writers, an American character who sometimes overshadowed his own work. I think he must have been born a "literary lion," never a literary cub, always a lion. He has roared his last. I will miss him. As per the Coen's brothers movie, this is "no country for old men." Mailer wasn't the last old man, but he seems like the last of a type. The two fisted, ego-maniac, wielding a pen like a sword.

He ran for mayor of New York. He stabbed one of his wives. He lobbied to get Jack Henry Abbot ("Belly of the Beast") out of jail, and then, tragically, inevitably, Abbot murdered a man. How would you like that on your conscience? He had some weird ideas - a really great fuck would lead to the birth of a genius, birth control was nihilistic.

He wrote over 40 books. I'm one of those who thinks his non-fiction was superior to his fiction, although, to be honest, I haven't waded through much of his work. I believe he wrote one masterpiece, "The Executioner's Song." It is a book about a murderer, it is a book about America. It's a book you can't really sum up. You should just read it. From cover to cover. It will change you.

I think Mailer was one of those guys who would actually sit down at a typewriter and aim to write the "great American novel." I think "The Executioner's Song," is that book. It's not even a novel. But it's certainly great. I would say "rest in peace" Mister Mailer, but it just doesn't seem appropriate to the man, no instead, Norman, I hope you are still "raging against the dying of the light!"

Time is a Circle

I'm still sort of sick. Nothing major. Won't kill me. Probably. But being sick certainly focuses me. I mean, some things I think about, or do, I drop and let go, because lack of energy. One can see how one slowly and easily lets the things of the world go. We think time is a line. Sometimes it looks like a line. But really I think it's more like a circle. We start out as some sort of quasi ameoba-like thing, and well, eventually we return to that state, and then I guess sort of drift off into dust. And then some essence starts the cycle again. Is that really how it goes? Not exactly sure...but maybe something like that...

Which Means There's No Lack of Material!

According to Jacques Barzun, "The vulgarity of mankind is not only the source of art, but the ultimate one."

A Dream of a Shadow

Whacked by a bug, I spent some quality time on the couch last night with Percy Shelley, via Ann Wroe's engrossing experiment, "Being Shelley." It's not your typical biography. Wroe recreates the mind of a poet, using his poems, his notebooks and his friend's impressions of him. She re-imagines a man's thoughts, feelings, emotions.

The book jumps around, much like you would imagine a poet's mind would too. The book is broken into sections: earth, wind, water and fire. It's a great read, although it has been very slow going for me. Partly because Shelley's poetry is dense, from another time and meter, and also because I've been sort of savoring each page.

Shelley is a lost type, one no longer to be found in this modern world. He had much time on his hands, living like a butterfly, floating, running; a mad prophet of liberty, atheism and revolution.

He was in love with LOVE, and with Plato's world of the ideal. He not only read the ancient texts, he translated them for himself. He was an idealist, unhappy with the world as it is. Nothing more forlorn (and maybe dangerous - at least to himself) than a disappointed idealist. This is one of his favorite passages from Pindar, a poet born a long, long time ago. It works for me too.

"Creatures of a day, what is anyone? What is anyone not? Man is but a dream of a shadow; but when a gleam of sunshine comes as a gift from heaven, a radiant light rests on men, and life is sweet." - Pindar

I think we live for that radiant light...

Germ Day

I've been invaded. By a germ. It happens. To all of us. It's amazing how a little bug can turn the whole boat over. So, I'm a little waterlogged. Foggy. It's strange, but when I get sick, I actually sort of float through the day. Bogged down but at the same time kind of like a ping-pong ball floating in a raging river. Just floating above myself and the day.

I know we've all kind of evolved out of bacteria. We come from real humble roots don't cha think? But some germs when they visit don't make for a real happy homecoming.

It's a little bifurcation. Kind of reminds me of the body/spirit and/or the brain/mind dichotomy. That same old cross. I've gravitated to a zen-like philosophy where I try to blow the old "this and that" frame of mind to smithereens, but sometimes one really can feel disconnected from the body, there's the experience of spirit, unconnected, floating above or beyond.

And our minds, seperate from that lump of flesh, the brain, can jump around like a mexican jumping bean. Whenever we try to come up with an analogy of mind, everything sort of falls flat or seems grossly inadequte. Is that self-flattery?

Mind = video game, computer, clock, machine, mercury, sponge, movie projector, movie screen, movie, dream, amusement park, carnival ride, mirror, ocean, software, music, song, rock, tree, leaf, smoke, air, water, fire. None of the above. Whatever it is, we have it, in spades.

Are our minds the recorder, the record, the thing vibrating in the grooves? Ah, whatever. My energy is sapped. Time to put on some music and float...

More "Proverbs from Hell?"

Walking on the planet for awhile, (maybe too long?) one begins to suspect some things that one hopes really aren't true:

1. It isn't really all going to work out for the best.
2. Hate is stronger than love.
3. Time won't heal all wounds.
4. Love will tear us apart (thanks to Joy Division).
5. Some things happen for no good reason. I mean there's a reason. But it isn't a good one.
6. Life isn't something we can figure out. It's not a puzzle or riddle to solve. (This might be a good thing. But it's frustrating).
7. Age doesn't make us smarter.
8. Rock and roll won't save our souls (for more on this, please see the movie of Ian Curtis' life - "Control").
9. If we have a soul, it isn't anything we can understand, or redeem for valuable prizes later. It's probably more like a cloud.
10. Being a human being is kind of embarrassing.
11. As per Samuel Beckett - other people's misery (and ours too) is quite funny.
12. Pleasure evaporates quickly, pain lingers.
13. Life, it's not a journey, it's not a lesson book, it's not a quiz. What is it?

Imperfection!

"The spirituality of imperfection is what interests me." - Steve Coogan

Art Brut - Charismatics! New Pic Too!

The Lovely Carla and I ventured out to a rock show at the Metro last night. We were quite pleased to find that smoking is no longer allowed inside the club - what a brilliant policy (we thank you, our lungs thank you too!). Two relatively new bands. One I've heard before, The Hold Steady and one I hadn't, Art Brut. It was an enjoyable night of loud and spiky r&r delivered fast and furious. Art Brut was the real revelation. They are quite good. Especially live. Their frontman is funny and charismatic. The music is sort of edgy - reminded me of a Brit version of the Strokes (sort of). Anyway, it was all thanks to the Telepath's drummer, our very own man about town - Bruce Wayne - Mr. Big Bang. He is a musicologist of the first rank. There's nothing quite like a spirited r&r show. It's kind of like a revival meeting. In this case, it's the slashing guitar notes, the pulsing bass lines, the ringing drum shots, and the articulate British dude stumbling around and swinging the microphone like a lasso that conjures the unameable power of the holy ghost.

UPDATE: Listening to a couple of cuts from Art Brut's recorded output, I'd say they're better live than on "memorex." On reflection, I'd say the Hold Steady probably make better records, but there's was just something about Art Brut that I loved. They seem a little decadant and dangerous and happily sloppy, (someone who knows them says they're great and fun drinkers), eventhough they're well-rehearsed and pretty tight. I guess it's something about "charisma." A hard to figure and hard to package commodity. I guess, you had to be there. And isn't that how a lot of rock and roll goes? That moment. That night. Never to be repeated. Yes, that's it. Art Brut has some kind of undefinable charisma that transcends the tracks.

Moondog's Corner - Center of the Universe

Stand in one place long enough and just possibly the world will come to you. Happened to a guy dressed as a Viking who used to hang out on the corner of 54th street & 6th avenue in New York. His name was "Moondog." He was blind. He wrote music. In braille.

Famous people came to visit him. Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali, Martin Scorcese and a bunch of folks recorded his music: Elvis Costello, Julie Andrews and Janis Joplin. He composed and recorded classical pieces and little ditties such as this one:

Oh lord, wont you buy me a mercedes benz ?
My friends all drive porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So lord, wont you buy me a mercedes benz ?

Oh lord, wont you buy me a color tv ?
Dialing for dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh lord, wont you buy me a color tv ?

Oh lord, wont you buy me a night on the town ?
Im counting on you, lord, please dont let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh lord, wont you buy me a night on the town ?

Everybody!
Oh lord, wont you buy me a mercedes benz ?
My friends all drive porsches, I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So oh lord, wont you buy me a mercedes benz ?

Life Raft

You know, when it all comes down to it, it's all about the passion. And well, maybe (as per Buddha Boy), compassion.

As this mad, media-saturated monster of a virtual world we have conjured around us, begins to teeter, authenticity (that rare unicorn-like quality) starts looking like some kind of life raft.

"You got any room on that boat?"

Elvis and Dylan

I'm lucky to live in a city where I can hop on a train and in less than an hour I can step off the train platform and walk right into the Chicago Theater. Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello were in the house last night.

It was a very spirited and rousing show. And well, surprise, suprise, it was Elvis who really blew me away. I mean, I cannot criticize Bob Dylan, in my book he's kind of like a river or the grand canyon, or a willow tree. He just is, love him or hate him. I happen to love him, or maybe it's not him, he's a cantankerous, strange and quirky dude, but his music, his poetry in all it's various guises is a gift that keeps on giving. David Kehr talking about Errol Flynn's "The Adventures of Robin Hood," once remarked that the movie was "beyond criticism." (Errol Flynn jumping around in green tights - could be ridiculous, but for some reason it works!). That's how I feel about Dylan. No one, especially not the little man in the black hat and shiny black suit with stripes down his pant legs can live up to DYLAN. There's the man, the work, the myth.

All that said, Dylan has a very tight and solid band backing him these days. There were only two songs that I thought they really murdered. I'd suggest to Bob that "Positively Fourth Street," and "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol" just should not be re-arranged in some weird, faux Lawrence Welk manner. I get the feeling that Dylan believes he has the right to do anything he wants to his songs, even arrange them out of existence. Like Piccasso in his later years, no one around him can say "no." Sometimes a good collaborator can save you. Anwyay, that said, these guys know how to do that old-timey stuff as per Dylan's "Modern Times," but it was when they rocked out on the up-tempo numbers where they really grabbed me. I guess, when I go to see Dylan, all those other times I've seen him still resonate with me (Dylan backed by the Band, Dylan backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Dylan backed by the guitar masters Charlies Sexton and Larry Campbell). All in all, happy to see Mister Dylan still going strong. He's a true American treasure.



But it was Elvis Costello opening for Dylan who stole the show. One man, one guitar, one voice. He absolutely tore the house down. I've seen Elvis before, with the Attractions, with the Imposters, in fact, I saw Elvis when he first came to U.S. shores all those years ago, at a little club in Schaumburg, Illinois way back when "My Aim is True," first hit the shelves, he's always been good, but this time around, you realize the man really is a master.

Elvis (excuse my French), fucking rocked. So much passion, so in the moment. He had the audience in the palm of his hand. he was wielding an Epiphone Acoustic/Electric, the same model J. Lennon used to play, it was hooked up to a small tube amp, and he got a perfect, creamy overdriven sound to back his superb vocals. I can't say enough. It was so powerful, so inspiring. When he quoted Lennon's line, "I don't want to be a soldier mama, I don't want to die," in "Wake Up," when he did a rousing, punkish, version of "What's So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding," he hit the bullseye. The audience roared with delight. It was one of the best performances I've ever seen. Totally unexpected. Elvis truly is the King. This one writes his own songs too! Elvis lives!

"authorized and ordered crimes of torture to be carried out ... as well as other war crimes."

Yes, well, sometimes there's a glimmer of light. I know sometimes justice is slow, or never comes, (or doesn't exist?!), maybe this never goes anywhere, but this is good news from Europe, or at least it's a first step. We have our own homegrown Milosevics and Pinochets (think Rumsfield, Cheney, Bush) and one can at least hope that they one day there is some kind of reckoning, that they "get what they deserve."

I suppose just having to be a Rumsfield, a Cheney, a Bush is punishment enough on some karmic plane. But in this human element, it would be good for all of us to bring these guys to account for their crimes against humanity.

Tonight I am going to see Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello at the Chicago theater, and I'm really looking forward to it. My band, the Telepaths are thinking of adding Dylan's "Masters of War," to our set list when we play in early December. I'll let Dylan have the last words. He is of course, speaking of those who build the death planes, who build all the bombs, those who "hide in your mansion/as young people's blood/flows out of their bodies/and is buried in the mud."

And then the final stanza: "And I hope that you that you die/and your death'll come soon/I will follow your casket/in the pale afternoon/ and I'll watch while you're lowered/down to your deathbed/and I'll stand o'er your grave/Til I'm sure that you're dead."

Here's Eddie Vedder giving it a whirl:

Life - I recommend it!

I hate nostalgia. I love history. Makes sense? For instance, I listen to music from the sixties or seventies or eighties, not because it reminds me of a lost time, or reminds me of who I was back then, I'm not fondly looking back through misty eyes, hell no, I listen because some of that music still resonates with me NOW. When that snare drum shot rings out to start "Like a Rolling Stone," it's the kick, the immediate adrenaline rush of now that grabs me by the lapels. I'm thinking there are some songs, some novels, some poems, whatever, that are so much of the moment, that they are beyond time. The moment stretches out forever and you can dip in and you are alive in an ever-expanding nowness.

At the same time, the now, is the aquarium we swim in. Sometimes there just seems to be too much now. I find it refreshing to read about times and people who lived long ago. Partly to see a glimpse of a lost world, and also to illuminate, or to put on fresh eyes to see what's happening today.

So lately, I've been reading a biography of Percy Shelley. An English poet. I kind of get the impression that he and his fellow poet, Byron, if they lived today, would be fronting rock & roll bands. I see Shelley as kind a kinky Ray Davies, and Byron, well of course, he'd be the lead singer of the Doors.

I came across this yesterday, something Shelley wrote in a notebook in 1819. It seems to me, not so old really, no, I think it could have been written today, and well, there's a real kick when someone from another time and place hits the bullseye in your head, this moment.

"Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing...we are struck with admiration at some of it's transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are the changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religions and of political systems to life? What is the universe of stars, and suns...and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life?"

Murdering Mother Nature or "Oedipus. You can't handle the truth!"

If you want to know how poorly we are taking care of our planet, you should check out CNN's Planet in Peril. I didn't see it all, (frankly some of it is quite painful to watch!), but it is impressive in it's scope and there is a ton of new information to process. To sum up, our wealth and affluence and prosperity are killing the planet (all of us are culpable - every last one of us!). Seems that our great technological/industrial paradise is squeezing out the planet-wide ecosystem that spawned us. We truly are murdering Mother Nature and at an alarming and accelerating rate. Did you know that our world-wide population has grown by 400% since 1900? Unchecked growth (don't the economists tell us this is a desirable state?) in nature is what we call CANCER! Human Beings are now a Cancer on the Planet! Yikes! Not so good for one's self-esteem.

Reminds me of one of my heroes, the famous beat poet Gary Snyder.

Back in the 70's he wrote a truly great book called "Turtle Island." That's what the Indians called the territory we now call the U.S. Anyway, Gary was kind of like the canary in the coal mine. The lone poet/prophet whistling past the graveyard. And well, now that we know we are turning this blue planet into a grave, can we somehow stop it?

It's kind of funny in a sort of sick way, we are the uppity monkeys that just don't know our place. Everything in an ecosystem has a job. At some point, we got it in our heads that our job was to destroy the ecosystem and replace it with Orlando, Florida, a faux paradise of glitz, a desolate, god-for-saken amusement park of cheap thrills. Not so amusing after all. And is it our fear of Mother Nature, our fear of death, that drives us to killing everything that is not us and in that way, we actually assure our own destruction? Maybe there's a play in there?!

Wake Up and Smell the Roses

Supposedly a cow, a horse, a pig, a dog, a cat, a mouse, a bug, etc. (I mean there's a long list of fellow creatures on this planet, although according to the latest count, species are disappearing at an alarming rate - and may I ask if we finally kill off all off our fellow species, won't it actually be quite a lonely damned place to live? And if you listen to the news (oh god no!), the water, the air, the soil, and of course the ice, is all being polluted, corrupted and destroyed by our heavy-handed presence - so I mean, what's the end-game here?) these creatures don't fret about their place in the world, although, I'm thinking this might just be more of that human hubris we've all grown so accustomed to, who are we to say what goes on in the mind of a pig, or cow or a mouse?

But as a human being, a guilt-riddled, brain-addled specimen, no doubt, I sometimes wonder what exactly I'm doing here. I mean, I've kind of opted out of the "be fruitful and multiply" directive. My seed has not engendered an offspring, no indeed, instead, it has fallen on deaf eggs, and in my book that is a good thing. Does the world really need any kind of facimile of me? I dare answer, "I think not!"

So, what purpose? Some days it's not even a question. Just glad to be alive. Other days, well, is it my job to enjoy, or only to endure the pummeling of the world? Maybe I don't really have a purpose or job at all. Aye there's the rub. So, what's the matter, except the matter? On the other hand, as my father used to say (quoting someone else) "I never promised you a rose garden." And if I don't have a rose garden to haunt, can I still take a whiff and smell the roses?

Turning Guns to Butter!? (or how about "I can't believe it's not butter!?")

A must read from Chalmers Johnson:

"There is, I believe, only one solution to the crisis we face. The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge, still growing military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic -- becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force."

Two wars and counting! Big Dick and Little Bush are itching for more. Anyone for dismantling an empire? How would that play in Iowa, in New Hampshire? As Nick Lowe wrote, and the other Elvis once sang, "what's so funny about peace, love and understanding?" Who will step up to the plate?

Sparklehorse!

Sometimes a record whaps you upside the head and you can't get it out until you play it to death. Then it's imprinted forever. Or at least until they finally put the pennies on your eyes.

Sparklehourse's album, "Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain," wasn't like that for me. I bought the cd sometime in 2006, just after it came out. Played it once in awhile. Liked it, but it kind of washed past me, if you know what I mean, it sat in a stack of other discs, filed under "nice background music," but still, I didn't listen to it very often. I gravitated to other stuff.

Well, I do think this thing is some kind of masterpiece. Totally hypnotic. Captivating. Creeps up on you. I "re-discovered" it one afternoon, and now I play it obsessively. Not exactly sure what it's all about. But it's about something. And I can't get enough. Makes me think of Yo Lo Tengo on some tracks, but only tangentially. Then it has it's own unique sounds. Unlike anything else. A haunting, ethereal beauty. And some rocking tracks, and some dissonance, and fractured surreal lyrics.

It's all the brain-child of a guy named Mark Linkous. Seems he's had a strange and difficult existence on the margins of musicland. Anyway, I love this cd...

Torture Logic!

Why am I so tortured about the torture debate? Not really sure. Maybe I've been on the losing end of that bargain in another incarnation. Or maybe my powers of imagination and empathy somehow make it real easy for me to see how you could find yourself under the screw for no good reason. Maybe it was all those formative years sitting through Benediction and taking in the stained glass re-enactment of the stations of the cross. I mean, that seemed to be a case where a fairly likeable dude who talked about love was whipped and pummeled and nailed to a tree for what was in his head. I guess the injustice of it all kind of seeped into my DNA.

So, eventhough I know torture goes on, it's been employed by many nations, many police forces, many armies, it's usually been condemned. I mean some of the great practitioners were folks like the Nazis and Stalin, and the French, the Spanish. Or for years if you wanted to know how to torture you'd go to folks like the KGB or the CIA for the latest methods. Again, I realize that bad shit happened. Happens still.

What's amazing though is how you now have a President, a Vice President, an Attorney General (or Attorney General to be) who basically has decided to "redefine," what torture really is, because if we do it, even if the Geneva Conventions says what we're doing is torture, it must not be torture because well we're doing it!

So you actually have a statement sort of like this (I'm paraphrasing what I heard on the radio this morn): If it's torture, it's unconstitutional, we don't do anything unconstitutional, so we don't torture, even if we do what we are doing looks like torture, don't worry it's not! Also this Attorney General-to-be tells us that we have a "war president" (remember this is a never-ending war!), and as WAR PRESIDENT our Commander in Chief can do anything to protect us! And by the way, if he does it, even if it includes torturing us, or ripping up our constitution, well it's all ok, because once he does it, it's actually legal and constitutional. And NO ONE CAN TELL US ANY DIFFERENT.

Is this what it's like to live in a BANANAS REPUBLIC!?

UPDATE: I just wanted to add to the list. Of course, just about every country, every army, every police force, every bully has at some time used torture, to either get information, or well, maybe just for the sadistic pleasure of having power over another human being. George Orwell's definition of power - one man's boot-heel crushing another man's head. Elizabethan England along with being a such shining, verdant village idyll was also a terror state with Catholics and Protestants torturing (the rack and screw) and murdering each other for what was in their hearts and minds. There are many arguments against torture - doesn't work, false confessions, brutalizes the tortured and the torturer. It's immoral, it's wrong. There's some thresholds a man, a force, an army, a nation should not cross. Once crossed we are lost. When dudes in suits with big salaries start hedging on the meaning, the definition of torture, I think it is safe to say that our ship of state is on shaky ground. The more boot-heels, the more pain, the more brutality, the weaker we become. A hollow bully of a nation.