Guantanamo Detainees Take a Cue from South Beach

If it's good enough for Osama. . . 


As if it weren’t clear to anyone not living under a rock, Donald Rumsfeld has proven himself yet again to be an elitist bastard and an ass. Politicians are well-known to make crazy, misleading statements on a regular basis, but Rummy’s latest gem is on par with such ludicrous gapes as U.S. senator and medical doctor Bill Frist’s assertion that you can catch AIDS from people’s tears. Asked at a press conference about hunger strikes being carried out by Guantanamo Bay detainees (yes, the mainstream American media finally decided to report on this issue after months of silence), Rumsfeld responded by saying, “There are a number of people who go on a diet”. Unbelievably, the U.S. Secretary of State compared the hunger strikes, where 24 prisoners are being restrained, sedated, and fed “a diet of protein, glucose and fat. . .with tubes pushed into their stomachs through their noses, to keep them alive”, to being on a diet.

Rumsfeld went on to belittle the detainees’ strike by suggesting that, “what they're trying to do is to capture press attention, obviously, and they've succeeded.” Clearly Rumsfeld and the American government adopted a none-too-subtle plan to keep the detainees out of the press and the public mind from the very beginning. I guess if I was depriving a group of people of any legal rights, not to mention their rights as human beings with daily humiliation and degradation, I wouldn’t want anyone to know about it either. But those blank-eyes optimists who can actually listen to Rumsfeld’s comments with a straight face can rest assured that the detainees now look like the models in a fashion magazine, free from those unwanted extra pounds and love handles, in their day spa of a military prison.

Stay tuned to major news outlets to see how this story unfolds, just give them a few years to issue a short blurb about how it all ended up. The government’s hard-handed intent to keep the detainees confined to the oblivion of the center of a block hole makes it rather difficult to stay informed of their situation. Actually forget about the media altogether, what we really need is for Stephen Hawking to start theorizing as to what the prisoners’ legal status really is.

Election Day, ah, the Sweet Smell of Democracy

 

Another Election Day is upon us. Here in America it is the best time of the year to express our democratic rights as citizens as we head off to the polls (except for convicted felons, of course, for who could trust them with a ballot?). It should be expected that Election Day, being the holiest of holies of the American system, should shine brilliantly as a beacon to the world of the grandeur of democracy American-style. After all, it is being force-fed to many parts of the world like a sedated prisoner on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay. So just what is American democracy anyway?

As schoolchildren we learn that our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, it even says so in the Constitution. This gives people a warm fuzzy feeling in the pit of their stomachs, and have no doubt that that was its intention, but the truth is somewhat harder to swallow. The Constitution also mentions checks and balances, having the different branches of government keep an eye on each other to keep things in line. To really understand the way government works, we need to look at another form of checks and balances, those exercised by the government over the people.

The American system was never intended to be a government of, by, and for the people. According to James Madison, one of our deified Founding Fathers, government’s main purpose is “to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.” In other words, all of the country’s elitist bastards, like slaveholders, speculators, landlords, bankers, lawyers, corporations, government officials, etc., should have their interests looked out for above all else. After all, everyone knows these are the powers that control the system, not the common people. So in order to keep the ins in and the rich rich, the people's power had to be checked from the very beginning.

The government employed, and continues to employ, two types of checks and balances, positive and negative. Negative checks, things like racism, sexism, and class division, have served beautifully over the years to keep the masses disunited and quarrelling amongst themselves. As long as they remain fragmented and divided, they can pose no real threat to the system. Positive checks, on the other hand act as rewards for the people to keep them happy and feeling important as the tools of the machine. Patriotism, usually stoked up by invading other countries and condemning their inhabitants as evil haters of American democracy, has been a long-time favorite manifestation of positive checks.

Elections are the cornerstone of the positive check system, being built right into the government itself. The people will feel that they have a choice in how their society is set up and how it operates by casting a vote. What many people fail to realize, however, is that there is actually no choice in an election. No matter who you vote for, government wins. The same government that acts to protect its own interests, along with the interests of its pals in corporate America, by keeping the common people divided and submissive. So cast a "no" vote against government this and every Election Day by staying away from the polling places. Do something constructive instead like taking a walk in the park or doing a jigsaw puzzle.

Spelling Test Oppression

Thanks to my email subscription to “A Word a Day”, I know what heterography is. It is a spelling different from the one in current use. For example, if I spelled “ghost” without the “h” as “gost”, I would be practicing heterography. A good friend of mine recently sent me an email in which he referred to the reality-altering disease schizophrenia, which he spelled “schictso frenya”. While he may claim to be a heterographer, most people would say he is just a terrible speller.

But is my friend really wrong? Who said we have to spell our words in a particular manner in the first place? Those elitist bastards at Merriam-Webster, that’s who. The invention of the dictionary is simply another example of corporate control choking the life out of society. Granted, dictionaries do serve a noble purpose. By having one clear, well-known set of spellings, a written language is much more accessible to a wider population and makes communicating more understandable. But at what cost? I understood what was meant by schictso frenya, and I even had a good chuckle at it. Assigning yet another set of rules and regulations to society is just another nail in the coffin of one of humanity’s greatest gifts, its creative expression. Even William Shakespeare spelled his own name in various ways (Shakespear, Shaxspear, etc.). If I had to choose as to whether he was practicing creative heterography or was too stupid to spell his own surname, I know where I would put my money.

If you like capitalizing all “proper nouns” and crossing every “T”, by all means go for it, just realize the control that is being exerted over you by outside forces. Conformity, even in the seemingly mundane aspects of life, is just what they want. Once they have us all spelling the same, then they’ll want us to start thinking the same, acting the same, buying the same. . . a regular brave new world. But if you rather desire to explore your individuality a little, throw out a “shew bocks” every once in a while or opt not to capitalize “george washington”; after all, what makes him any better than an all-lowercase “bucket of nails”? Or if you are simply a shitty speller, at least now you have a big word for an excuse, you’re a heterographer. Just don’t forget how to spell it.