We have wondered here in the past about the cultural constrictions we press into skin color, and a related and deeper issue is one of darker skin — Black skin in particular — and how it is socially demonized by negative, historical, intellectual and emotional touchstones associated with “Blackness.”
One of my best friends and mentor was the late, great, Marshall Jamison and he, above anyone else, taught me many of my most important life lessons — the first of which was the definition of a “bastard.”
In our discussion yesterday concerning waterboarding, I began to reflect upon the greater — and immeasurable — value of human breathing and its punishments both invoked and self-sustained.
Continue reading → Measuring the Commodity of Human Breathing
We are having a heated political discussion in the USA this week wondering if waterboarding is torture or not as Michael Mukasey faces a Senate confirmation hearing on his attorney general nomination — but waterboarding has a long history as part of the human core in antiquity:
Waterboarding is a technique in which prisoners are subjected to simulated drowning by binding them to an inclined board, with their feet raised and head a bit below their feet. Then cellophane or cloth is wrapped over a prisoner’s face and water is poured over the person.
Vietnam 1968: In Da Nang, the U.S. military used waterboarding as an interrogation technique:
Today I will share a personal Halloween Horror Story: The Belly Rubber!
Continue reading → The Belly Rubber: A Halloween Horror Story
The Jena 6 happening brought nooses back to the mainstream mindset and we now seem to be in the midst of a media frenzy where nooses are seen everywhere and people are put on edge just waiting to be insulted by a length of knotted rope so they can express their indignant outrage.
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