Radical Nun Big On Book

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, which was made into a film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, is the first to offer a blurb for my forthcoming book.

Below is the email she sent me.

Dear Dave,

We need your book.

All the best...

Sister Helen

BLURB:

Griffith offers gripping personal testimony to the difficulties of living out the Christian imperatives of love and forgiveness amid a culture that legitimizes government violence as the only "real" way to establish social order.

Short and to the point. Punchy. I hope my book lives up to it.

Click on the title of this post to see her website, in which she argues persuasively for the abolition of capital punishment. And while you're at it buy Dead Man Walking: ww.amazon.com/gp/product/0679751319/sr=8-2/qid=1140705069/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-9023702-9307200?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Here's a number to remember: 14,000

Anti-war.com reports that there are over 14,000 Iraqis incarcerated in U.S. military prisons.

Perform For Us All that We Love and Hate

The title of this post is phrase I wrote in the margins of Susan Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others" while researching my book. It just sort of popped into my head. I think it came about from thinking about this passage from Sontag:

"All images that display the violation of an attractive body are, to a certain degree, pornographic. But images of the repulsive can also allure. Everyone knows that what slows down highway traffic going past a horrendous car crash is not only curiosity. It is also, for many, the wish to see something gruesome. Calling such wishes "morbid" suggests a rare aberration, but the attraction to such sights is not rare, and is a perennial source of inner torment."

While I take issue with Sontag's thesis from her New York Times Magazine article, "Regarding the Torture of Others," that what happened at Abu Ghraib was due to America's porn addiction, there is an aspect of the abuse that is related to the experience of porn. This is where I think the title of the post comes in. The allure of images that show a violated body, especially images of sodomy and rape, comes from a deep desire to participate in such acts but knowing that they are morally and culturally wrong. As a result, we have men like Charles Graner using detainees as proxies to act out these pornographic fantasies. So the photos allow for a "safe" gratification of these urges while debasing and punishing the detainees.

Bagram Airbase Case Being Tanked

Tim Golden, the New York Times Pulitzer-winning journalist who has been covering this Bagram Airbase story, must be pissed. He's been reporting on this well-documented, seemingly open and shut case of abuses (and, frankly, murders) at an airbase in Afghanistan that happened in December 2002, before the Abu Ghraib abuse ocurred.

The linked article, which came out last week, reports that every one involved is getting off with either a slap on the wrist or time served. Check out this interview with Golden: http://www.cjrdaily.org/the_water_cooler/tim_golden_on_digging_deep_tim.php

Salon.com First With "New" Abu Ghraib Photos

Well, first an Australian news service puts out some never-before-seen (by the public at least) Abu Ghraib photos and now Salon.com.

The implication in the new photos, as far as I can tell, is that the use of nakedness and sexual humiliation is/was/is systematic and is/was/is communicated from the top down.

Investigators from the Army revealed "a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts."

This is a heck of alot more images than I imagined existed. The implication here is that early allegations might be right: photographically documenting the abuses was part of a systemic regimen of psychological tactics designed to wear down the "Arab male." It just seems like way too many images and videos to be the work of some sadistic shutterbugs with a lot time on their hands.

I still stand by assessment, which appears in my forthcoming book in a chapter titled "City of Lost Souls," that the actual taking of such photos constituted an act of power and control over the detainees that reestablished the guards' sense of just-world thinking. This is one of the tactics torture states use to retain their torturers--they find ways of demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy so that the torturers feel they are carrying out necessary work against an evil foe. Peter Suedfeld's "Psychology and Torture," a source book on the Psychological dimension of torture and torturing, is a must for anyone trying to understand this phenomena on a more clinical level. It contains articles by several of the most prominent thinkers in this field.

In the Same Breath as John Stewart?: Book's Cover one of the 50 Best

I got this email from the designer of my forthcoming book, Brett Yasko ( brettyasko.com )

Hi David

We went to New York City to see our book in AIGA’s “50 Books, 50 Covers” exhibition.

At the beginning of the exhibit was a “Chair Statement” from Cheryl Towler Weese and I wanted to send you the final paragraphs of it:

“Four politically activist works are of particular note, and others pepper the group, representing the full range of production values: America (The Book), A Good War is Hard to Find, NorthSouthEastWest, and the opulent Something Lived, Something Dreamed. Books like these, in particular, are an encouraging reflection of contemporary American culture – the way we live, work and think – as well as the state of American designers’ ambitions and ethics. To paraphrase the artist and critic Johanna Drucker, there’s a critical question these designers have asked themselves in taking on these projects: ‘Who are we designing for, and to what ends?’

“What we design reflects what we deem important – and the doggedly persistent flourishing of the book industry and book design leaves me optimistic.”

A Room of One's Own

Here's a shot of my "office." I'm doing this as a test. I got a digital camera for Christmas, and I'm trying to figure out how to upload photos.

Let me narrate: The bulletin board bears a few motivational images. The first is a photo roster of my students, which reminds me that they're counting on me to know what the hell I'm doing. The second is a black and white photo (maybe by Richard Avedon) of my man John Cheever sitting on a set of stone steps looking haggard. It reminds me that drinking and writing are a dangerous mix. The last is a Polaroid of Flannery O'Connor's grave stone in Milledgeville, GA. (My wife and I went there last Christmas on our way to visit her folks in Louisiana.) Kind of morbrid, but she's still my biggest literary crush.

"Visionary" Soft Skull Publisher Richard Nash Wins Indie Publishing Award

On December 22nd the Association of American Publishers awarded Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press, the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Indie Publishing.

From the citation:

A judging committee representing a cross-section of the publishing industry selected Mr. Nash based on his tireless and visionary work at Soft Skull Press. Mr. Nash single-handedly took a struggling company and turned it into one that has become synonymous with excellence in literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Mr. Nash has demonstrated a remarkable ability to find and publish exciting and challenging new works as well as skill and creativity in getting his titles noticed, reviewed and publicized. Soft Skull titles have been featured and reviewed by national publications including The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly and Vanity Fair, and on television programs such as “The Today Show,” “20/20” and “48 Hours.” The Neighborhood Story Project, a community documentary program in New Orleans, garnered national attention as well when Mr. Nash and other printers donated printing services and published books by four young authors.

“I think of an award like this as a symbol of something much larger than the individual recipient. It's a celebration of the remarkable ecology that is independent publishing and it is an honor to be, for a moment, representative of that beautiful ecology,” Mr. Nash said of the honor. Jed Lyons, President of Rowman & Littlefield commented, “Miriam Bass loved creativity in people, especially when it was in service to the book business. Miriam would have heartily approved of the selection of Richard Nash who is one of the most talented and audacious people in our industry.”

A bit of transparency necessary: Richard and Soft Skull are publishing my book A Good War is Hard to Find early in this new year (April 15th or there abouts).

Congrats to Richard and the crew at Soft Skull. Check them out at www.softskull.com Be sure to browse their blog as well.

Where Have All the Cadets Gone? Ian Fishback and Joshua Casteel Speak Up...But is Anyone Paying Attention?

It's already come and gone. Ian Fishback's letter to John McCain complaining about the ambiguity of military doctrine on how detainees are to be treated in this war against a "radical" Muslim insurgency is already old news. Fishback did the difficult, the unheard of; he broke the long silence of American military officers surrounding the treatment of detainees.

McCain proposed a bill, which, in no uncertain terms, dictates the way detainees should be treated, and it passed--although Bush has said he will veto any bill that hinders his Executive power to wage war.

At the recent Catholic Peace Fellowship retreat/conference "A Day with the Prophets," Joshua Casteel, ex-Abu Ghraib Army interrogator told me that he has been in contact with Fishback--they were cadets together at West Point. Casteel, currently a playwrighting student at Iowa's famed Writer's Workshop, told me that they dicussed the lack of outcry on the part of ex-West Pointers, who are known for their deep and refined sense of moral certitude.

Casteel told me and crowd of retreat attendees--a crowd made up of Catholic Workers from Massachusetts to Des Moines, as well as priests, theology students from Notre Dame and community members--that the majority of interrogations he conducted were of innocent men who were caught up in broad sweeps.

More later.

Soft Skull: Expect More Religion Themed Books...Expect to "Get Dirty"

Richard Nash is my hero. I know I'm biased--his press, Soft Skull, is publishing my book in February--but I'm continually impressed by his willingness to go where others don't dare.

This from Soft Skull's news blog:

...Soft Skull is embarking on a plan to start publishing a good deal about religion and how it plays into politics and society. And it's not all anti-clerical, either, though I can assure you that it is also not going to involve books about how the Dems can win in 2008 by being more religious. What it is about is recognizing that the U.S. is by far the most religious country in the West, and if we're to tussle with understanding this country, we have to engage with religion, and we're going to have to get our hands dirty with it. And, notwithstanding the relative secularity of the rest of the West, and notwithstanding my massive antipathy towards utterly ahistorical Huntingtonesque theories about clashes of civilizations, to also seek to understand the role religion (theological religion, let's say) plays when cultures (Algeria and the Netherland, Somalia and Italy, Morocco and Spain, etc etc...) interpenetrate.

Interestingly enough, almost everyone writing for us on this subject is in blog land. Michael Standaert is writing on Tim LaHaye and the Left Behind series in Skipping Toward Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire; Laurel Snyder is editing Half/Life a collection of original essays on growing up half Jewish; and David Griffith has written what is probably the finest title for a book we'll publish this year: A Good War Is Hard to Find which we're describing as a Catholic Regarding the Pain of Others or as Joan Didion meets Flannery O'Connor...the first chapter of the book is online here [http://www.godspy.com/issues/Abu-Ghraib-Flannery-OConnor-and-the-Problem-of-American-Innocence.cfm]

A Day With the Prophets: Fr. Dan Berrigan, Kathy Kelly, Bishop Botean and ex-Abu Ghraib Interrogator Joshua Casteel

I spent all day yesterday at the Catholic Peace Fellowhips' Day With the Prophets retreat. What a great experience. I feel rejuvenated. The focus was on the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah, St. John the Baptist and Jeremiah. Speakers included Kathy Kelly (founder of Voices in the Wilderness), Fr. Dan Berrigan (of Catonsville Nine fame), Bishop John Michael Botean of the Romanian Catholic Church in North Canton, OH who made headlines for telling his parishoners that participating in an unjust war such as Iraq would be a mortal sin. Also speaking was Joshua Casteel, a former Abu Ghraib interrogator and now playwright enrolled in Iowa's famed Writer's Workshop.

It was an amazing time. More later.

Visit the Catholic Peace Fellowship at www.catholicpeacefellowship.org

The new issue of Image is out

The long-awaited Fall issue of Image: Art, Faith, Mystery is out and yours truly has an essay in it. The piece is a chapter from my forthcoming book, A Good War is Hard to Find. Visit Image's website at www.imagejournal.org

Leon Golub: Prophetic Art

I saw this painting, Interrogation II (1981), in person on a recent trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. It's a very large painting (120 X 168") on unstretched canvas. It just sort of hangs there on the wall, without a frame. It's definitely one of the most overwhelming paintings I've seen in person. Based on this experience, I can't imagine what it must feel like to see Picasso's Guernica.

The painting is part of a series of that Golub executed in the late seventies/early eighties in response to the revealation of atrocities during the Vietnam war and events in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America. Along with another powerful series--ironically titled "Horsing Around"--"Interrogation" calls attention to the prevalence of sadistic behavior among soldiers, no matter the war and how the behavior, for the most part, goes unpunished. Ultimately, the paintings are illustrations of how masculinity and cruelty become elided.

The paintings are very interesting their two-dimensionality. The figures all occupy the same ground--no one figure is more prominent that the others, like a snapshot. In fact, if you notice, the men seem to "horsing around" for the audience, smiling, making gestures toward the hooded prisoner; it makes it hard to resist comparisons to the Abu Ghraib photographs.

I'm still trying to find a way of working Golub into my book. He's such an interesting figure, but I'm already giving space to Francis Bacon, the troubled Irish-born painter whose paintings are no less violent, but definitely more abstract.

Army Interrogation Techniques Designed by....Hollywood?!

On Friday, a declassfied investigation lead by the Army's Inspector General released to the ACLU via a Freedom of Information Act suit revealed that officers in the Army's 4th Infantry Division interrogated prisoners "using interrogation techniques they literally learned from the movies." However, the report still maintains that "systemic" break downs were not the cause of prisoner abuse.

My Book Now Available for Pre-Ordering at Amazon.com (click here)

I'm very excited to say that my book, A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America, is now available for pre-ordering at Amazon.com. Search: A Good War is Hard to Find. The above image is a prototype of the cover designed by Brett Yasko (www.brettyasko.com). Brett's design has already been named one of the Top 50 book designs by the AIGA, the National Professional Organization of Graphic Design. I hope this is an omen of things to come.

Soft Skull Press is publishing the book ( www.softskull.com). They are the most fearless indy press in the country. Based in Brooklyn, NYC, they have had huge successes as of late, most recently with David Rees' Get Your War On, a comic strip lampooning attitudes toward the War on Terror and. The release date is set for early February '06.

My book will be the first book published by Soft Skull dealing with political and cultural issues from a Christian position. Richard Nash, the head of Soft Skull, told me that in order for the press to stay true to its indy spirit that they must publish the most challenging and fresh points of view out there. For this, I am grateful. (Check out their site for their latest project: publishing fiction by inner-city New Orleans youth.)

More on the book: The first chapter of my book was published at Godspy.com last June under the title, "A Good War is Hard to Find: Flannery O'Connor, Abu Ghraib and the Problem of American Innocence."

Another of the chapters, "Prime Directive," is out this month is the new issue of Greg Wolfe's fabulous literary magazine, IMAGE: A Journal of Religion and the Arts ( www.imagejournal.com ). Look for it.

Channel 4: The Torture Network

Damien Love writes in the Sunday Herald ( http://www.sundayherald.com/47945 )that the reality torture show, Guantanamo Guidebook, is only the beginning of Channel 4's season-long "torture strand", which will include a documentary on the US government's "Special Removal Unit"--aka, "special rendition"--which sends suspected terrorists, without charging them of any crime, to countries known to have no ethical qualms about torture (see Feb link below).

Love writes: "The season explores a post-9/11 acceptance of, even appetite for, torture – or, to use the Newspeak euphemism, “enhanced interrogation techniques” – within the US and UK administrations. An acceptance this has led to Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and to the situation where Britain will happily use information extracted from captives in Uzbekistan, whose intelligence agencies (according to Craig Murray, our former ambassador to that country) boil their prisoners alive. "

Love writes of Guantanamo Guidebook:

"There is a danger about the programme. The intentions – to confront us with what is happening – seem clear, but it could shoot itself in the foot. It requires a lot from a viewer. In a sense, you have to bear in mind that it’s a TV show while forgetting it’s a TV show. "

He continues:

"You must remember that these techniques are only the mildest of those actually employed; that these volunteers can leave at any time. Then, for it to work, you must imagine this is not the case. It teeters between documentary experiment, and some hardcore reality revival of Endurance, the famous Japanese gameshow, whose contestants won for being able to stand having their nipples burned the longest. It is easy to imagine someone watching thinking, “I could handle that”. Indeed, the original adverts for volunteers asked prospective entrants how “hard” they were. It unwittingly runs the risk of introducing the idea that light torture might not be so bad. But it is grim, genuinely unsettling watching, and maybe constructive. If all The Guantanamo Guidebook manages is to force us to glimpse the tip of the iceberg, then wonder more about what enormities lie beneath, it’s worthwhile."

DG

Torture Reality Show: Are you tough enough?

This mornings online edition of Britain's newspaper The Independent bears the headline: "Channel 4 is Condemned over Torture TV Show." http://news.independent.co.uk/media/story.jsp?story=615215

Reporter Severin Carrell writes:

"The programme, Guantanamo Guidebook, was filmed in an east London warehouse and shows the men being assaulted, stripped naked, verbally abused, sexually humiliated and exposed to sensory deprivation by a team of former US military interrogators."

The men the article speaks of were selected from a pool of 150 of the fittest, toughest chaps they could find.

Carrell continues:

"Several of the men - who include a martial arts champion, "Britain's fittest fireman" and a triathlete - became ill during the 48 hours of ill-treatment - called "torture-lite" by the US authorities. One man fell ill with hypothermia, another wet himself, and others suffered cramps, hallucinations and vomiting."

Though the show claims to be raising public awareness by "investigating the Pentagon's illegal use of torture in the 'war on terror'," the show's critics in the humanitarian and medical communities are accusing the show of "glamorising the abuses suffered by torture victims."

"Dr Nimisha Patel, chief psychologist for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which treats torture survivors, claimed the programme risked being seen by some viewers as "sadistic voyeurism". He said: "Torture is torture, and as such is always inhumane and unjustifiable. The packaging of it as entertainment by Channel 4 is not only grossly distasteful but potentially offensive to many, including survivors of torture and their families."

Commercials for the show asked the question: "Are you 'hard' enough?" The implication being, "could you hold up under these circumstances?" and "Are you tough enough to watch it?"

Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4's head of news and current affairs . . . said Channel 4 was "determined to educate viewers on the use of illegal torture by the US and British complicity in that torture."

DG

For "Rape" press "A". For "Pillage" press "B"

Last Wednesday the University of Notre Dame hosted a one day conference on the current humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. John Prendergast, special advisor to President Clinton on Africa and current advisor to the president of the International Crisis Group, gave a straight-forward, no nonsense talk on the daily atrocities in the Darfur region committed against non-Arab Sudanese.

Prendergast's theme was "shame." He said that if the world could not be convinced by rational means to intervene in the genocide now responsible for nearly 220,000 deaths and countless rapes, the world would have to be shamed into doing something.

After Prendergast spoke, Notre Dame political science professor George Lopez was invited to give some remarks in response. He calmly walked to the podium and said, "Rape and Pillage. Rape and Pillage. Rape and Pillage" very slowly, pausing each time he uttered the phrase. He said that rape and pillage is the reality in Darfur, but he wondered if we could really comprehend the magnitude of that reality. Adressing the mostly undergraduate audience of about 150 students, he said, "many of you play video games in which there is rape and pillage." There was a deep and weighty pause. I sensed that he was going to elaborate on this statement indicting "Grand Theft Auto" and other sexually explicit and exceptionally violent video games, but he dropped it in favor of a more academic response echoing the the finer points of Prendergast's talk.

I was disappointed, so afterwards I tracked him down asked him to expand on the issue he raised, if only briefly. He said that the terms "rape" and "pillage" have no "conceptual" power for us. In other words, there is a fundamental disconnect between the word and the act.

The thing is, I wish this were the only problem. Consider as well the conceptual power, or lackthereof, of race.

peace,

DG

If You Were a Torture Method What Would You Be?

Just found a site this morning which asks:

"If you were a torture method (or an inquisitor/executioner), which do you think you'd use? The Rack? The Iron Maiden? The Pear?" http://selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=torture_devices

The site asks you to answer a series of questions about your disposition and the way you channel your anger. "Do you torture inanimate objects when you're angry?" "Are you a pyro?" "Do you want to throw your enemies off something high?"

It seems like it's a silly I've-got-nothin-better-to-do-at-work-today project or the creation of some sly Psychology or Sociology PhD cadidate. Based on your answers to these questions, the program determines which torture method your are most like.

But the more frightening thing is an adjacent animated ad of a ski-masked, black-uniformed soldier with an assault rifle stalking around in the desert. The ad reads: "Shoot the enemy and win a free I-Pod." When you drag the mouse pointer over the window a red crosshairs appears.

I'm waiting for I-Pods to come down a little in price.

peace,

DG

PS In March of 2004 a twenty-something Memphis woman bludgeoned her boyfriend to death with her I-Pod after he allegedly erased the contents of the device. When police arrived she complained that it had taken her 3 months to build up her collection.

See the story here http://www.liquidgeneration.com/rumormill/ipod_killing.html

PPS I'm also reminded of the film Back to the Future when Michael J Fox uses a Walkman cued to a Heavy Metal guitar solo, turned up to 11, to blast the eardrums of his sleeping father in order to convince him that he is a menacing alien.

"Toying With Evil"

Mark Shea's article "Toying With Evil" in the March issue of Crisis Magazine blasts conservative Catholics who want to make arguments for torture on the grounds that this is a new kind of enemy and a new kind of war, so quit being "sqeamish." It's a fiery read. It'll leave you saying, "dang, no he didn't!"

The basis of Shea's argument is Romans 3:8: Evil deeds may not be committed so that good may result.

But there's also no getting around the Catholic church's teaching:

Whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as . . . torments inflicted on the body or the mind, attempts to coerce the will itself . . . all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor of the Creator.

or what Pope John Paul II said of torture:

"intrinsically evil"

Most poignant is Shea's argument that the slackening of norms against torture will lead to an increasingly slippery slope. He points out that the writing is already on the wall. "According to ABC News, 'U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of foreigners as enemy combatants are allowed to use evidence gained by torture in deciding whether to keep them imprisoned in Guntanamo Bay, Cuba' ( http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id/=299228 ).

So not only does this mean that residents of Camp X-Ray--as its affectionately called--have no rights whatsoever, but anything they say under the extreme duress of stress positions, sleep deprivation, temperature control, or whatever combo of the 25 interrogation tactics personally approved by president Bush for use at Gitmo, can be used against them.

Read any reputable expert on interrogation and they'll tell you that torture is ineffective in "extracting"--lovely word--"intelligence"--another lovely word--from a suspect. As one suspected IRA detainee said of his torture at the hands of British para-military interrogators in 1971, "I would have told them I was in the cradle." Translation for Americans: I would have told them I was present at the birth of Jesus Christ just to get them to stop.

What's apropo about this Northern Irishman's testimony is that his torture, and the torture of several other men, consisted of the same basic techinques currently used by the Bush administration. These men, known today in torture literature as the "Hooded Men," were arrested without being charged, hooded, taken by helicopter to an unknown location, and made to stand "spread-eagle" for several days with their hands high against the wall in front of them. The entire time, they were subjected to an unrelenting hissing sound. No other sounds were audible--many said this was the most horrific part of the ordeal. They were not allowed to remove their hands or they were beaten. They did not sleep for a week. Most were not allowed to use the toilet. One man said that during the ordeal he became so deranged that he tried to throw himself down against a pipe at his feet hoping to hit his head and kill himself.

When the men were finally released, without charge, most of the men had swelling in their feet and hands that caused them chronic problems for years afterwards. One man reported afterwards that he did not remember that he was married and had children until someone reminded him.

peace,

DG

ps Those interested in reading more about the "Hooded Men" and other instances of institutionalized torture should check out John Conroy's book, "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People."