Motley Moose – Archive

  Make sure you let your peeps know where to find you!  

Hiroshima Peace Park, no known attribution. Because we all probably could use a bit more, or a lot more, peace.

Tonight’s title involves the opening photo and last link.  I normally host this on Sunday evenings at the GOS, and am experimenting with a cross-post right now.

Opening Commentary by Denise Oliver Velez

Black Kos – Young Martin Luther King, Jr.

Oh, I know we celebrate his birthday later on this month, but I wanted to think about him as a young child, and as a young man before he went on to become an icon of the civil rights movement.  

He was not so very different from many young black men born into a black middle class family.

Like many members of the black middle class his father, Michael was a preacher.

Like many members of the black middle class his mama was a teacher.

Like many members of the black middle class, the family roots were not far removed from poverty.

He was really born with the name Michael King Jr. His father changed his own name and his sons’ in 1939 after a trip to Germany-to honor Martin Luther.

When I read about his childhood I am reminded that being middle class-and black-was not a protection from racism.

It still isn’t.  

These 180 House members (179 Republicans and 1 Democrat) deserve to have their name emblazoned upon the wall of shame for opposing the expanded Sandy relief package that passed the House of Representatives this evening:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA, on Jan 15 in 1929.

Oh, I know we celebrate his birthday later on this month, but I wanted to think about him as a young child, and as a young man before he went on to become an icon of the civil rights movement.  

He was not so very different from many young black men born into a black middle class family.

Like many members of the black middle class his father, Michael was a preacher.

Like many members of the black middle class his mama was a teacher.

Like many members of the black middle class, the family roots were not far removed from poverty.

:::yawn:::  Good morning. I hope the day finds you well. And the night, and even the following mooring.

Some questions for today: Do famous people deserve privacy? Thai or Chinese? Purebred or mutt? Shaved head or comb-over? Favorite childhood cartoons? Fat or skinny fries? Fave milkshake flavor? Favorite dessert? So, Ann Romney turned down Dancing With the Stars? Are you disappointed?

I like hearing how actors shouldn’t have political opinions from people who worship Ronald Reagan.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) January 11, 2013

I’d like to say that my dogs like the dog treats I made for them, but they eat cat shit daily, so maybe I shouldn’t be too proud of myself.

— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) January 13, 2013

6% of scientists are Republicans and scientists have no explanation for why that number is so high. fb.me/10aG37fjA

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 13, 2013

We can do ourselves a large favor and forget about banning guns…just ban the NRA…and their own peculiar brand of in-country terrorism.

— GStuedler (@GStuedler) January 14, 2013

I’M GOING TO DEPORT YOU FROM THIS COUNTY I WANT TO SECEDE FROM!

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 14, 2013

Maybe some bankers will start circulating videos saying if the US defaults, they’ll “start shooting people.”

— David Waldman (@KagroX) January 14, 2013

If only there were a tax on stupidity, venality and greed, we’d be in budget surplus right now,

— kara vallow (@teenagesleuth) January 14, 2013

Republican Philosophy: If it ain’t broke, fix it ’till it is.

— kara vallow (@teenagesleuth) January 14, 2013

Debt ceiling cat should be consulted.

— kara vallow (@teenagesleuth) January 14, 2013

If you can ignore “Eating shrimp is an abomination” part of the Bible, it’s not hard to ignore “Well-Regulated” part of the 2nd Amendment.

— William K. Wolfrum (@Wolfrum) January 14, 2013

The last straw for Rick Scott was when Reagan tried to sell arms to his cat, Ayatollah. @erickleefeld @kagrox

— Hesiod Theogeny (@Hesiod2k11) January 14, 2013

Time for your history lesson!

  Make sure you let your peeps know where to find you!  

On Friday, I told you my husband, Dan’s history, and why I fight against torture.

http://www.motleymoose.com/dia…

On Saturday, I told you the history of Murat Kurnaz, a German of Turkish extraction, and the first part of what he went through

http://www.motleymoose.com/dia…

On Sunday, I continued with telling you what Murat Kurnaz went through.

http://www.motleymoose.com/dia…

Today I will tell the story of

Binyam Mohammed

Binyam was born in Ethiopia, and claimed assylum on the United Kingdom in 1994. He traveled to Afghanistan in June of 2001, and after 9/11, moved to Pakistan. He was arrested at Karachi airport, while enroute to the United Kingdom. Binyam says he was held in prisons in Pakistan, Morroco and Afghanistan, before he was transferred to Guantanamo.

Here is some of what he has been through:

Speaking of his time in the ‘Dark Prison’, Binyam said:

“It was pitch black, no lights on in the rooms for most of the time. They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb. There was loud music, Slim Shady [by Eminem] and Dr. Dre for 20 days. Then they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. At one point, I was chained to the rails for a fortnight [two weeks]. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.”

These are excerpts from his diary, as printed in The Guardian, a London newspaper, from when he was held in a CIA “dark site” in Morocco.

They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor’s scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they’d electrocute me. Maybe castrate me.

They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed … I was just shocked, I wasn’t expecting … Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn’t want to scream because I knew it was coming.

One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. “I told you I was going to teach you who’s the man,” [one] eventually said.

They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.

Doctor No 1 carried a briefcase. “You’re all right, aren’t you? But I’m going to say a prayer for you.” Doctor No 2 gave me an Alka-Seltzer for the pain. I told him about my penis. “I need to see it. How did this happen?” I told him. He looked like it was just another patient. “Put this cream on it two times a day. Morning and night.” He gave me some kind of antibiotic.

I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: “What’s the point of this? I’ve got nothing I can say to them. I’ve told them everything I possibly could.”

“As far as I know, it’s just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you’ll have these scars and you’ll never forget. So you’ll always fear doing anything but what the US wants.”

Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was “to show Washington it’s healing”.

But in Morocco, there were even worse things. Too horrible to remember, let alone talk about. About once a week or even once every two weeks I would be taken for interrogation, where they would tell me what to say. They said if you say this story as we read it, you will just go to court as a witness and all this torture will stop. I eventually repeated what was read out to me.

When I got to Morocco they said some big people in al-Qaida were talking about me. They talked about Jose Padilla and they said I was going to testify against him and big people. They named Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, Abu Zubaidah and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi [all senior al-Qaida leaders who are now in US custody]. It was hard to pin down the exact story because what they wanted changed from Morocco to when later I was in the Dark Prison [a detention centre in Kabul with windowless cells and American staff], to Bagram and again in Guantánamo Bay.

They told me that I must plead guilty. I’d have to say I was an al-Qaida operations man, an ideas man. I kept insisting that I had only been in Afghanistan a short while. “We don’t care,” was all they’d say.

I was also questioned about my links with Britain. The interrogator told me: “We have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?” I realised that the British were sending questions to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that the Brits were siding with the Americans.

On August 6, I thought I was going to be transferred out of there [the prison]. They came in and cuffed my hands behind my back.

But then three men came in with black masks. It seemed to go on for hours. I was in so much pain I’d fall to my knees. They’d pull me back up and hit me again. They’d kick me in my thighs as I got up. I vomited within the first few punches. I really didn’t speak at all though. I didn’t have the energy or will to say anything. I just wanted for it to end. After that, there was to be no more first-class treatment. No bathroom. No food for a while.

During September-October 2002, I was taken in a car to another place. The room was bigger, it had its own toilet, and a window which was opaque.

They gave me a toothbrush and Colgate toothpaste. I was allowed to recover from the scalpel for about two weeks, and the guards said nothing about it.

Then they cuffed me and put earphones on my head. They played hip-hop and rock music, very loud. I remember they played Meat Loaf and Aerosmith over and over. A couple of days later they did the same thing. Same music.

For 18 months, there was not one night when I could sleep well. Sometimes I would go 48 hours without sleep. At night, they would bang the metal doors, bang the flap on the door, or just come right in.

They continued with two or three interrogations a month. They weren’t really interrogations, more like training me what to say. The interrogator told me what was going on. “We’re going to change your brain,” he said.

I suffered the razor treatment about once a month for the remaining time I was in Morocco, even after I’d agreed to confess to whatever they wanted to hear. It became like a routine. They’d come in, tie me up, spend maybe an hour doing it. They never spoke to me. Then they’d tip some kind of liquid on me – the burning was like grasping a hot coal. The cutting, that was one kind of pain. The burning, that was another.

In all the 18 months I was there, I never went outside. I never saw the sun, not even once. I never saw any human being except the guards and my tormentors, unless you count the pictures they showed me.    

On 23 February 2009, almost seven years after his arrest, Mohamed was repatriated from Guantanamo to the UK, where he was released after questioning.

The US government has refused to release that documents and photographs that would allow Binyam to prove when his scars ocurred.

In a statement released through Reprieve, Binyam Moh
amed said

‘I am not asking for vengeance; only that the truth should be made known, so that nobody in the future should have to endure what I have endured.’

No human being should have this done to them.

Please help stand up for Binyam, tell your President, tell your Senators, tell your Congressional Representatives, “Not in My Name”, and demand that those responsible are held accountable.

Please contact your senators and the White House and tell them that John Brennan, who defended torture, should not be ther next head of the CIA, the agency who inflicted much of the torture since 9/11

         Hugs,

         For Dan,

         Heather

New York State is on the verge of becoming the first state to pass new, and stricter, gun control legislation after last month’s massacre in Newtown, CT.  It looks likely to head to a vote either today or tomorrow, with Governor Andrew Cuomo waiving the usual three-day waiting period before legislation can be voted upon.  According to the details reported in The New York Times, the legislation will:

1. Ban any magazine that contains more than 7 rounds (current limit is 10)
2. Expand background checks to include most private sales and ammunition sales
3. Establish statewide handgun license database
4. Require mental health professionals to report any individual deemed dangerous and such persons firearms license could then be revoked
5. Mandatory sentence of life without parole for anyone convicted of killing a first responder

Explaining his support for the legislation:

Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the leader of an independent faction of Democrats that has allied with the Republicans to control the Senate, said: “I think when all is said and done, we’re going to pass a comprehensive gun bill today. And I think it’s important, and this is an issue that shows we can work together, Democrats and Republicans.”

“Republicans, it’s very clear, wanted harsher criminal penalties for illegal guns, which is something I agree with,” Mr. Klein added, “but on the other hand we’re also going to ban assault weapons and limit the number of rounds in a magazine. So I think putting those two things together makes it a better bill.”

Full text is here.

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I woke up from my weekday post-work, cozy on the couch nap around 11pm, dozing off during one of the MSNBC shows and shuffled on down the hallway, to check in on my daughter.

Little O is 12 and she was hosting a school friend on a Friday night sleepover. I peeked in to find them laying on the foldout futon with their backs facing the door, shoulder to shoulder, an earbud in one ear, legs splayed and toes wiggling, their heads bobbing to a personal beat as they each watched a youtube music video on their separate smartphones.  

It was a picture worthy moment, the two of them, friends since second grade but now in different schools quietly enjoying themselves. The soft uplighting was perfect but flashing a pic, well, that just seemed invasive. So I resisted the temptation to reach for my camera and let the moment pass into memory. There was a time and it wasn’t all that long ago when and without any hesitation, daddy would have snapped that pic but my daughter is twelve now…… twelve going on eighteen?

Yeah, things are changing and they’re changing rather quickly.

Proceeding to the end of the hallway, I found Ms. O at her desk busy knitting away, as one eye kept an eye on a Breaking Bad episode she was watching via NetFlix on her MacBook. Glancing up, she grinned as I told her about the girls and she raised her eyebrows in that, ‘Yup, yup, I know’ expression she flashes me sometimes, when she’s kinda’ busy. I have one of those looks too. After 10 years of marriage most of us do, I hope.

Turning but still in the doorway, I stood there for a moment, murmuring,

‘We’ve become them?’