A BUZZARD OMELET #6

I just read Christopher Hitchen’s essay A Very, Very; Dirty Word, published in Slate Magazine of July 2004. 

In this essay Hitchen opines on the phrase Fuck Off, claiming it was a legacy of the British Empire; attributing Fuck You and Go Fuck Yourself as the American form.  His example for this proclamation was a statement made in 1967 by the British governor of South Yemen - Denis Healey; also expletives by Vice President Dick Cheney, John Kerry and Paul Wolfowitz.   

I am not saying that Hitchen was totally out of touch with the world outside of elite Washington and Britain, and I do not know how he dissected the roots and origin of Fuck Off; but I distinctly remember Fuck You and the bird as a part of the 60’s revolution in this country (remembering Easy Rider)  – and a young girl in San Francisco yelled Fuck You at me in the airport when I returned from Viet Nam (along with: how many babies have you killed?) and I replied Fuck Off. 

Now, I claim all the variations of the Fuck word as primarily American.  

Anyone my age can remember George Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on television:

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits.

‘The good churchgoing people’ were scandalized at Carlin’s proclamation that these words existed, much less that someone would dare to utter them in public; while the flower generation picked up on them and unpretentiously wielded them for the shock factor they knew they could effect.   

Actually this day and age I find the Fuck variations, along with bitch, cunt and bastard colorless and trite.   I actually think arcane Britain may have coined better, more colorful expressions of disgusts and contempt – Or at least the author Ariana Franklin did in her book Mistress of the Art of Death.   (If you have not read Ariana Franklin you have missed a great mystery read in the era of King Henry II - circa 12^th. century.)  

In her book the female doctor Adelia is being held captive by a necked man wearing deer antlers and sporting and erection – Adelia defused the situation by unleashing a series of insult (curses): calling him a stinking crap-hound; a turd-mouth; stench-sucking lummox; dressed like a dog’s beef; son of a pox-ridden sow, and a betty-buttered mother’s boy; a jelly bag; snot-faced; arse-licking; goat fucking; bum-bellied; farting; turd-breathed apology.  (She left out Shakespeare’s cream-faced loon.)

The book is a great mystery read, but like the dictionary when I was young, I couldn’t help but latch on the ‘rude words’ section.

I know I am not the first to express this, but there are few enough words in the English language to emphasize expression, and no word should be forbidden (censored.) ... and damnit - fuck off is ours.

Or in a more British vernacular:

Off we Fuck then,

the Ol’Buzzard

I AM NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORIST

BUT…

I am seventy-plus years old.   I have been around the block numerous times; and though I don’t think that age necessarily equates to intelligence – I can post an impressive resume.  And, the one thing I know for sure is: I don’t blindly trust our government to act in our best interest.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a loyal American (of American ideals) – and I have the scars to prove it.  But, I don’t trust our government (politicians.)    Our government has never been a government of the people, by the people… etc.   It has always been the government of special interest and “the bigger picture” gamesmanship.

Our government constantly packages swamp land as “Preferred Real Estate Property” and sells it to the citizenry.   They tell us it’s candy but in the bottom of the box there is often a scorpion.

The last thing I blindly bought into was the liberation of the South Vietnamese people in the Vietnam war; only to discover that our real reason for occupying South Vietnam was to tactically establish a permanent nuclear military presence on the southern border of China (sounds familiar in reverse: Cuban missile crisis.)    Then, of course, “Iraqi Freedom” where a White House full of oil men invade a country with the second largest oil reserve on earth. 

We have constantly been sold a bill of goods only to find that some patriotic spin name has been added to cover up the smell:  The Patriot Act – I need say no more.

We have moved from Bush’s “phone tapping of (only) foreign suspected terrorist”, to authorized surveillance of American citizens and to expanded surveillance authority for civilian police.  Now Obama has just signed an appropriations bill that allows the government to arrest and detain, without trial, any American citizen suspected of terrorist connections.   Obama says he will not use this authority, but what about a future fundamentalist, Tea Party, Republican President – what about a President Cheney clone?  

 Think about how this could fit in to George Orwell’s 1984 repackaged as 20XX.  

Now there is a new government threat covertly aimed at taking the first step to control and censor the Internet.

On October 26, 2011 the Bill HR-3261 was introduced by Lamar Smith (R-TX.)   The bill is touted to prevent the piracy of U.S. copyrighted material.  The bill is commonly known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act.)  The actual title is “To Promote Prosperity, Creativity, and Innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes."

It’s the - “and for other purposes,” - that bothers me.  At first glance the bill seems to require Internet providers to monitor customer’s traffic and block web sites suspected of copyright infringement.  

But, the bill also states that it would make unauthorized streaming of copyright material a crime with a maximum imprisonment of 5 years for ten infringements within six months.

That has me nailed; and probably everyone reading this blog who include pictures or YouTube clips on your post.  This is an open invitation to some political regime of the future to use the NSA or FBI to monitor web sites and blogs that they feel are not in the best interest of Big Brother and shut you down; or to threaten or actually imprison people that speak out.    (Does anybody still remember the First Amendment to the Constitution?)

The internet should not be the property of any government and no government should have the right to censor it “for the greater good” of its people.

the Ol’Buzzard.  

ENHANCED INTERROGATION

THE GREATER GOOD

Dick Cheney has been all over the news lately justifying the atrocities committed during the Bush administration: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, enhanced interrogation and the death of thousands due to an unnecessary rush to war. He keeps posing the administrations action as for the greater good. Unfortunately many conservatives blindly buy into this philosophy.

The problem is that propounding the greater good of a society always leads to the sacrifice of rights and liberties of a few. Using the argument of the greater good we could justify slavery: a situation where a few slaves are worked for the pleasure and well being of the rest.

Deductive reasoning is an essential component of logical argument. Deductive reasoning simplified states: A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, therefore A is greater than C.

An argument can be logically valid but unsound if it contains false premises; in such a case it will lead to a false conclusion.

Republicans are masters of false premise: their political arguments have always been premised by the manipulation of facts: half truths, false statements, innuendoes and appeals to patriotism. They spin every situation with sound bites meant to enrage their uninformed base to illogical protest. (We have witnessed that the whole purpose of the tea party was to be outraged.)

Morality is a complicated issue: it boils down to how we treat each other. Cheney argues that the ends justify the means. He constantly poses the quandary of the terrorist bomb set to explode as justification for enhanced interrogation. However, it has been documented that there was no eminent attack concerned with the water boarded victims – it was a fishing expedition to confirm information already in CIA possession.

Cheney hides the dirty secret of U.S. torture with the noble sounding phrase “enhanced interrogation.” But, once you cross the line into torture of prisoners where do you draw the line? The progression is unimaginable for most civilians: isolation, white noise, sleep deprivation, stress positions, beatings, water boarding, psychotic drugs, rape, electric shock, surgery, amputations, burning…

Using deductive reasoning, if we can justify enhanced interrogation techniques in one case we can logically carry that scenario further: enhanced interrogation techniques could be used by police on criminal suspects and anyone suspected of contemplating or having knowledge of a crime (the optimum word here is suspect.) Once a government justifies this type of action it tends to become normal ops.


A post script by the Ol’Buzzard


For eight years of my military career I was a U.S. Navy S.E.R.E instructor; so, I am familiar with enhanced interrogation techniques (torture) of which all are outlawed by the Geneva Convention.