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Today's
Stories
June
3, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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June
3, 2004
Hoodwinked
by Hoodlums
America
in tha Hood
By
Dr. SUSAN BLOCK
Last Saturday night, I opened my show
in a hood. No, I'm not a detainee, enemy combatant, prisoner
of war, prisoner of love, nor even (despite the rumors) Saddam's
sex therapist. So, why did I wear a hood? Because these are hooded
times. We as a nation have been hoodwinked by hoodlums. All around
the world, our brothers and sisters in and out of American uniform
have been putting human beings in hoods. This is Bush's War,
Perma-War, War in tha Hood, every hood and village and city block.
These are the Hoods of War.
A hood is a mask over the face
of humanity. A hood covers up the truth. A hood is a bag, a War-on-Terror
twist on the rude old saying, "Just put a bag over her head,
then you can do anything to her (or him)." A hood is one
of the simplest, cheapest, most efficient sensory deprivation
systems known to sadistic civilization. No wonder we use them
on prisoners.
Some of us also use them on
ourselves. Americans have had our own heads up our hoods, especially
as concerns Bush's War. We hide in our hoods and hope for the
best. A hood can make you feel safe. Of course, it's an illusion;
wearing a hood makes you anything but safe! But many of us prefer
the illusion of protection to the awareness of painful reality.
News of Bush's lies wreaking death and destruction barely penetrated
the consciousness of many Americans; our hoods were so securely
wrapped around our heads.
Then The Photos were released:
Vivid excerpts from "Bush's POW Porn," a multi-billion
dollar production, showing Americans torturing naked prisoners
in hoods! The sheer naked hooded horror operated on Americans
like Shock & Awe was supposed to operate on the Iraqis, zapping
our collective psyches, burning our own hoods right off our heads--at
least temporarily--letting us see with our own naked eyes that
we are up to our hoods in war. Now our eyes smart with the truth.
It's a stinging revelation.
Even many members of the American Press, who had been behaving
like hooded lapdogs to our own Mad King George II, are beginning
to see and talk and write about the real, unvarnished horrors
of his horrid little war.
But it's hard to keep your
hood off in times like these. Now our Senators and military leaders
say that some of the latest Photos are too horrible for us to
see. They are trying to pull the hoods back on our heads, "protecting"
us from reality, depriving us of our senses of sight, hearing,
feeling and the common sense we need to pull ourselves together
and put a stop to this hooded madness.
Meanwhile, on the Fashion Front,
thanks to The Photos, the Hooded Look is fast becoming a style
statement: Girls in tha Hoods. Supermodels in tha Hoods! Rock
Stars in hoods. Straight Hood. Gay Hood. Hooded games. Hood therapy.
Hooded Protests, too. In a sign of discontent over Bush's War,
several hooded mannequins were suspended on trains in Rome's
metro system. The Hooding of America--and the World! --is hot.
Very edgy. Paris runways beckon.
Of course, the hood I wore
Saturday night was just your basic old pillowcase. But can you
imagine a silk Gucci Hood? A sheer Chanel hood emblazoned with
logos? A Victoria Secret Hood of lace with sweet little bows
on the corners? A pure white hood (um, maybe not, too Ku Klux
Klan). A black leather hood (actually, hardcore deprivation fetishists
have been wearing those for years). How about an i-hood that
wires you up to your favorite music, movies and video games?
The U.S. military uses what
look like garbage bags for hoods, sometimes with the garbage
still in them. Or sand bags, the better to grind your humanity
into granules.
There's what I call the Water
Hood, also known as "water boarding' or the "water
cure," where interrogators shove a prisoner's head in a
barrel of water and make him think he's drowning. Actually, he
is drowning; they just save him from death at the last
second (if all goes well).
Then there's what I call the
Full-Body Hood, also known as a sleeping bag. Interrogators at
a detention center run by the Third Armored Cavalry, of Fort
Carson, Colorado stuffed senior Iraqi officer, Maj. Gen. Abed
Hamed Mowhoush head first into a sleeping bag, then kicked and
rolled him around while attempting to question him. By the time
they removed the man, he was dead. Dead in tha Hood.
I know, it's awful! But, everything
awful becomes fashion. Then it becomes fetish. The hood thing
has already become one of my fetishes (can't you tell?). I confess:
Since I saw The Photos, I've fantasized about hoods. I decided
to "role-play" my fantasies when I opened the show
in a hood. But after a couple of minutes, I took it off. I mean,
I couldn't breathe! But what do I expect? It's torture. It's
not supposed to be comfortable, is it?
Guess not. Guess I'm too much
of a hedonist for serious hood torture, and too much of an
ethical hedonist to see any kind of nonconsensual torture
of helpless prisoners as what Rush Limbaugh calls "having
a good time." Ha, ha, ha. Let's put Rush in the Hood, deprive
him of his drugs, as well as sleep, food and clothes, then make
him stand on a box and let a dog bite his quivering ass, and
see how much of "a good time" he has.
As a sex therapist, I find
the "good time" excuse to be particularly disturbing.
Unlike "abuse," in the world of consensual sex, "torture"
is not always a bad thing. In fact, a little bit of torture--pranking
on your lover, tickling their sense of reality, pinching 'til
it hurts so good--is spicy. Spice is good. But like too
much spice spoils the meat, too much torture, well, it kills
you or maims you.
And that is what we have to
stop.
The Photos of American soldiers
grinning proudly as they torture their hooded captives blew our
See-No-Evil-Hear-No-Evil-Speak-No-Evil hoods right off our heads.
These Photos are a gift, an awful opportunity for us to see what
we already know in our hearts, that Bush's "Preemptive"
War is one gigantic atrocity, causing its participants at every
level of the military food chain to commit little atrocities,
and some big ones (like massacring half the people at a wedding
party).
But everything new becomes
old after a while. Now that the Shock & Awe of The Photos
is wearing off, some of us--too many--are slipping back into
our hoods again.
These are hooded times. Terrorized
times. But it's times like these that demand that we resist allowing
our leaders to put these goddamn hoods on us. Or maybe it's just
time we pull the hoods off our own heads, so we can get a good
look at the humanity in each other's eyes.
© May 31, 2004, Dr. Susan
Block
For reprint rights, please contact rox@blockbooks.com
Dr. Susan Block is a sex educator, cultural commentator,
host of The Dr. Susan Block Show and author of The 10 Commandments
of Pleasure. Visit her website at http://www.drsusanblock.com
Send all hate mail, love letters,
commentary, questions and confessions to her at liberties@blockbooks.com
Weekend Edition
Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
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