Torturing innocents because they are innocent

Al-Rabiah's confessions all follow the same pattern: Interrogators first explain to al-Rabiah the "evidence" they have in their possession (and that, at the time, they likely believed to be true). Al-Rabiah then requests time to pray (or to think more about the evidence) before making a "full" confession. Finally, after a period of time, al-Rabiah provides a fill confession to the evidence through elaborate and incredible explanations that the interrogators themselves do not believe. This pattern began with his confession that he met with Osama bin Laden, continued with his confession that he undertook a leadership role in Tora Bora, and repeated itself multiple other times with respect to "evidence" that the Government has not even attempted to rely on as reliable or credible.

Finaly, al-Rabiah "did not know what to admit..." The Judge then moved on to al-Rabiah's own explanations of how he came to make false confessions, noting that he had stated that, shortly after his arrival at Guantánamo, "a senior [redacted] interrogator came to me and said, 'There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent." All the innocent men at Guantánamo were expected to make false confessions, either so that they could continue to be labeled as "enemy combatants" on release, to maintain the illusion that Guantánamo was full of "the worst of the worst," or, as in al-Rabiah's case, so that they could be tricked and transformed into terrorist sympathizers and facilitators. As he also explained:

[M]y interrogators told me they knew I had met with Osama bin Laden, that other detainees had said I met with Osama bin Laden, that there was nothing wrong with simply meeting Osama bin Laden, and that I should admit meeting him so I could be sent home ... In about August 2004, shortly before my CSRT hearing [the tribunal at which al-Rabiah repeated his approved confessions in detail], my interrogators told me the CSRT was just a show that would allow the United States to "save face." My interrogators told me no one leaves Guantánamo innocent, and told me I would be sent home to Kuwait if I "admitted" some of the false things I had said in my interrogations. The interrogators also told me that I would never go home again if I denied these things, because the United States government would never admit I had been wrongly held.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote:

The record contains evidence that al-Rabiah's interrogators became increasingly frustrated because his confessions contained numerous inconsistencies or implausibilities. As a result, al-Rabiah's interrogators began using abusive techniques that violated the Army Field Manual and the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The first of these techniques included threats of rendition to places where al-Rabiah would either be tortured and/or would never be found.

She added, pointedly, "These abusive techniques did not result in any additional confessions from al-Rabiah, although he continued to parrot his previous confessions with varying degrees of consistency." Her conclusion:

The evidence in the record reflects that, in 2001, al-Rabiah was a 43 year old who was overweight, suffered from health problems, and had no known history of terrorist activities or links to terrorist activities. He had no military experience except for two weeks of compulsory basic training in Kuwait, after which he received a medical exemption. He had never traveled to Afghanistan prior to 2001. Given these facts, it defied logic that in October 2001, after completing a two-week leave form at Kuwait Airlines where he had worked for twenty years, al-Rabiah traveled to Tora Bora and began telling senior al-Qaeda leaders how they should organize their supplies in a six square mile mountain complex that he had never previously seen and that was occupied by people whom he had never met, while at the same time acting as a supply logistician and mediator of disputes that arose among various fighting factions" — Huffington Post

The best of Alfred Hitchcock: Notorious

1. Notorious
2. Rear Window
3. North By Northwest
4. Vertigo
5. Strangers on a Train
6. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
7. To Catch a Thief
8. The Trouble With Harry
Notorious, because its has everything — Grant at his darkest, Bergman as a drunk, a three-minute kiss, a great duplicitous plot, and the sleepiest of rescues. Rear Window is endlessly inviting. North by Northwest prefigures everything you see at the cinema during the summer. I'm don't fall for the woozy spell of Vertigo as hard as some, but it is his greatest love story, just as Strangers on a Train is his tightest plot, and The Trouble With Harry has the best weather.

The best of Tom Hanks: Big

1. Big
2. Splash
3. Castaway
4. Charlie Wilson's War
5. Philadelphia
6. Turner and Hooch
7. Sleepless In Seattle
8. Toy story 2
This one was easy. Big, hands down. Then Splash, obviously. Synaptic masterclasses, both of them, with Hanks as loose and rolling and quick as great sportsmen can be. Ali, Jordan and Federer come to mind. Of his 'serious' roles, my favorite is Castaway — particularly the 40 minutes of largely silent cinema, a measure of true movie star greatness. Charlie' Wilson's War is the first time he's gone rogue and taken us with him. Turner and Hooch: speaks for itself. Toy story 2: the better Woody film.

The best of Michael Mann: Last of the Mohicans

1. The Last of the Mohicans
2. Heat
3. Manhunter
4. Collateral
5. Thief
6. Ali
7. Public Enemies
8. The Insider
The first two were the major tussle here, but Last of the Mohicans is the rarer creature: a historical drama with a pulse. The romance remains the best in recent memory and the ending is majesty itself. Heat is a magnificent-looking beast, as chilly as gun metal, but the marriages are pretentiously written; amongst the women, only Ashley Judd registers. Manhunter has a better Hannibal Lecter than Silence of the Lambs.

The best of Woody Allen: Manhattan

1. Manhattan
2. Annie Hall
3. Play it Again Sam
4. The Purple Rose of Cairo
5. Bullets Over Broadway
6. Sweet and Lowdown
7. Zelig
8. Hannah and Her Sisters
9. Manhattan Murder Mystery
10. Sleeper
This was a tough one because he's made so many, but a few axioms helped. The funny ones are better. Diane Keaton was his best leading lady. Manhattan rather than Annie Hall because it summons a whole world. Play It Again Sam I regard it as the ultimate one-stop-shop Woody Allen movie — the kind of film everyone started to make in the eighties and nineties. I have a special fondness for what I call light bulb movies, the ones rolling along on a single bright idea: Zelig, Purple Rose, Bullets. My wife's going to kill me over Hannah and Her Sisters not being higher, but what can I say. I find it a bit chewy.

The best of Mike Leigh: Naked

1. Naked
2. Life is Sweet
3. Meantime
5. Topsy Turvy
6. Secrets and Lies
7. Happy Go Lucky
8. Vera Drake
9. High Hopes
It's weird that I should go for Naked when Leigh is so good at ensembles. Maybe that's what makes David Thewliss's performance feel so utterly forsaken. Meantime is an underated gem with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as wanabee skinheads. Secrets and Lies has slipped in my estimation, like a lot of masterpieces, but Topsy Turvy remains a genuine revelation. Leigh should do more period dramas. He's just the dose of vinegar the genre needs.

The best of Martin Scorsese: Mean Streets

1. Mean Streets
2. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
3. Goodfellas
4. Taxi Driver
5. Kundun
6. Raging Bull
7. After Hours
8. The Age of Innocence
His career almost looks varied from here! Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore feels like something from alternative universe, one where he didn't so married to the mob; I wish he'd make more pictures about women. The rest speak for themselves. I haven't dared go back to Kundun in case it isn't the movie I remember it to be. It doesn't matter — it was perfect when I saw it. The only one I had a hard time placing was Taxi Driver. It belongs on its own — a list of one.

The best of Steven Spielberg: Jaws

1. Jaws
2. Close Encounters
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark
4. E.T.
5. Schindler's List
6. Saving Private Ryan
7. Catch Me if You Can
8. Empire of the Sun
9. Minority Report
10. Amistad
My metric here is lawlessness. It doesn't sound revolutionary but see what it does to Schindler's List for the clunkiness of its final reel, or Saving Private Ryan for its saggy belly. I wish I could have found a higher place for Catch Me if You Can — as close to perfection as Spielberg has come recently — but it faced, uh, a little competition. Just look at that opening quartet. Does any living director even come close?

The best of the Coen brothers: Fargo

There's nothing like the internet for coming across something you violently disagree with. I just stumbled on the following apostasy at Ropeofsilicon. It's a list of Coen brothers movies, in order of preference:—
1. O Brother Where Art Thou
2. The Big Lebowski
3. Raising Arizona
4. The Man Who Wasn't There
5. Millers Crossing
6. No Country for Old Men
7. Hudsucker Proxy
8. Barton Fink
9. Fargo
10. Blood Simple
Have they not eyes, ears? I sense a distinct case of diharditis. The list is big on what you might call signature works: the ones so covered with cute Coen Brothers add-on features you don't notice there's nothing at their centre: Brother, Lebowski, Fink. Please. The Coens run a plot as tight as a snare drum — their woozier jam sessions need no encouraging. The Who Wasn't There should be nowhere within 100 yards of this list let alone at number 4. Here's how it should run.
1. Fargo
2. Miller's Crossing
3. Raising Arizona
4. Blood Simple
5. No Country for Old Men
6. O Brother Where Art Thou?
7. Barton Fink
8. The Big Lebowksi
9. The Hudsucker Proxy
10. There is no number 10.

When did war become a national hobby?

'Last week, Capehart's Editorial Page published an attack-Iran Op-Ed from two former Senators (one from each party) who have spent the last year advocating a detailed plan for blockading, attacking, bombing and invading that country' — Glenn Greenwald

"Tragically, a young Afghan girl was killed in late June by a box of information leaflets falling from a British military plane over Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, in a case that the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense said it was investigating earlier this morning (Reuters, AP). The box failed to break open mid-air as planned and struck the girl, who later died of her injuries (BBC). Michael Evans details the case and writes that this is believed to be the first time a civilian has been killed by a box of information leaflets" Times of London

As the drumbeat starts up again for war against Iran, the thing I find missing from the debate is any sense that war is a festering sump hole of irreversible, bloody, Godless ghastliness for everybody concerned. Somehow, we seem to have gotten ourselves into a situation where it's considered normal to be involved in at least one war at any one time, maybe even two, and — why not? — three. That's a strange position, to say the least, not least because America does not feel like a country at war right now. It feels like a country happily minding its own business. War has become a kind of dimly-registered national hobby, like a sport nobody quite wants to watch.

Should Roman Polanski go to jail?

A reader has asked me what I think of the Roman Polanski case. To be honest, I was hoping nobody would ask, if only because I am in two minds, which is never pleasant. Also, I'm not a judge or legal expert and find it a lot easier to say whether I prefer Chinatown to Rosemary's Baby (I do) or which made me laugh harder Bitter Moon or Frantic (Bitter Moon, by a long mile). But the man himself. Yikes. On the one hand, I am extremely repulsed by the people rallying around Polanski at the moment, celebs and filmmakers of various stripes, all waving the 'he's a genius' defence, which strikes me as wholly obnoxious. It's almost worth putting him in prison just to put paid to such nonsense. He's a film director. That's his job. He should no more be allowed to get away with molesting minors than a plumber or a real estate salesman should. What happens if the quality of his films dips? Do we throw him in the slammer then? Or how about a sentence of five years, say, for the dancing scene in Bitter Moon, and then let him out again?

On the other hand, judgement is never pretty. Last night a prosecutor on the Chris Matthews Show seemed to be gunning for him as political sport. There was zero allowance made for the peculiarities of his case, which is not so excuse him because of his fame, but to point out that because of the distorting lense of his celebrity on a judge's decision-making, he has already fled a country he once called his home. The shape of his life has been permanently altered. The idea that he might be uprooted a second time, this time from his wife and two children, and imprisoned in America, for a crime committed 30 years ago, for which he has been forgiven, and which he has never repeated, seems excessive — not wrong, but not wholly just either.

Having read around the blogs a bit, I like David Thomson's comment best: "This is a case that the parents of children should decide." There are more innocents in this story now. If a bank-robber broke down in court and pleaded, "please don't separate me from my family," the judge might be tempted to reply, "Well you should have thought of that before." In this case, that reply is not possible.

One of my favorite things

I don't know why but I've been thinking a lot about Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder a lot recently. I have a weakness for melancholy sweet-savage horror movies about men who dream they are part of the human race only to one day wake up. The Sixth Sense hit exactly the same sweet spot but it is Lyne's movie that has stayed with me, from Tim Robbin's gentle, baffled performance to the Francis Bacon frights which flash up out of nowhere to Elizabeth Pena's terrific "fuck you" moment to Danny Aiello's angelic chiropracter. I can't figure out how it manages to be both so heartbreaking and so horrific, but suspect the two play off and sharpen one another: the horrific stuff loosening you up for the longing, the transcendence all the greater for being mired in such horror. Its quite a movie which moves its audience towards such nape-of-the-neck surrender.

A whiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was

My friend Nat recently took me to task for that post I wrote about films losing their visceral power over time — Psycho losing its power to shock, Cary Grant films their power to ellicit belly laughs, etc. The conversation went something like this.

"Ive got a bone to pick with you"
"Uh-oh."
"That post you wrote about films losing their power to shock or make you laugh... What about Young Frankenstein?"
"Ah.... hmm.... I take your point. Young Frankenstein had me helpless with laughter, too, but look that was made in the seventies. That's pretty recent."
"So Alien, What's Up Doc...."
"God yes. They were all made while we were alive. I'm talking about Marx brothers comedies. Buster Keaton. That kind of thing. And I'm not saying I don't love those movies. In fact, love is what you get in exchange for them not having quite the same voltage. But we're kidding ourselves if we mistake the sepia-tinted affection with the jolt they once had. North By Northwest was once as exciting as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Probably more."
"I see. By 'old' you meant 'before we were born.'"
"Yes."
"So what about some young kid who watches The Wizard of Oz and is blown away?"
"I think when you're younger you have a more unjaundiced eye. Plus its not a comedy or a horror movie. Its only really the visceral genres that lose their punch. The old epics, particularly the epic romances, seem to do pretty well. We've actually got worse at making those."
"I see. You just pared away all that was reasonable about your argument and left the obnoxious part."
"A trick I learned."

Philip K Dick on Blade Runner: 'Invincible'

After catching his first glimpse of Blade Runner on TV, Philip K. Dick, wrote the above letter to the film's production company. He passed away just 5 months later, 4 months before the movie was released. From Letters of Note, a website devoted to noteworthy historical correspondence.

Dear Jeff,
I happened to see the Channel 7 TV program "Hooray For Hollywood" tonight with the segment on BLADE RUNNER. (Well, to be honest, I didn't happen to see it; someone tipped me off that BLADE RUNNER was going to be a part of the show, and to be sure to watch.) Jeff, after looking --and especially after listening to Harrison Ford discuss the film-- I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people -- and, I believe, on science fiction as a field. Since I have been writing and selling science fiction works for thirty years, this is a matter of some importance to me. In all candor I must say that our field has gradually and steadily been deteriorating for the last few years. Nothing that we have done, individually or collectively, matches BLADE RUNNER. This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that, well, after the segment I found my normal present-day "reality" pallid by comparison. What I am saying is that all of you collectively may have created a unique new form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, BLADE RUNNER is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, can be.

Let me sum it up this way. Science fiction has slowly and ineluctably settled into a monotonous death: it has become inbred, derivative, stale. Suddenly you people have come in, some of the greatest talents currently in existence, and now we have a new life, a new start. As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you..and it is going to be one hell of a commercial success. It will prove invincible.

Cordially,
Philip K Dick

Revisiting the scene of the crime

"Is this the queue for Coco Before Chanel?"
"No Capitalism."
It's always fun to queue for an ism.
Capitalism: a Love Story looked to me like one of those career-summarising projects which filmmakers ought always to be gently steered away from making. You know, the ones that result when the artist, not content with making a project about a specific subject, ascends to a loftier, more abstract plane in which they examine their raison d'etre as artists, spell out what had been happily subtextual and finally get down to setting down What They Believe. I'm thinking of David Fincher's Fight Club, which lectured us on the aesthetic philosophy so beautifully implicit in Se7en. Or Spielberg's Hook, which went public with the Peter Pan analogy that had been happily underscoring Spielberg's career from its inception. The idea of Michael Moore spelling out his beef with capitalism is a bit like Michael Moore telling you how he voted: you don't really need to know.

But it wasn't like that, or only a bit. Yes, his interview with Wallace Shawn is a portrait of two men in perfect agreement with themselves. And yes, he never really marks out his perimeter, hopping, disconnectedly, from General Motors, FDR, the second world war, to Wallstreet Derivatices, the 08 collapse and Obama's election, with one too many stopovers in his hometown of Flint, Michegan, for me to be able to feel that he was really telling the history of Western Capitalism, per se. And yet individual sequences have terrific power: the scandal surrounding a for-profit juvenile detention center in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in which two judges got millions of dollars in kickbacks for sending more than a thousand juveniles to the establishment; the stuff about corporations getting rich off their employees when they die by taking out life insurance policies on them, unbeknownst to even their next of kin — all this was genuinely shocking. And without ever quite persuading me that the bail out was unnecessary, he nevertheless stirred up enough outrage at how few strings were attached to the money that his stunts ellicited cathartic belly laughs. As many on the Libertarian Right, as on the Democratic Left, will get a kick out of seeing Michael Moore trying to make a citizen's arrest of AIG executives, or circling the head quarters of Citibank and Bank of America with crime-scene masking tape.

There's no pleasing some people

So let's see if I've got this straight. Obama totally busts Ahmadinejad over his secret nuclear facility. He successfully unites the international community — France, Germany, Great Britain — against Iran. He scores a major breakthrough with Russia — next stop China. And Drudge's day-long headline, throughout all of this, is "caught by surprise" next to a picture of a pensive-looking Obama? Come on. How does "known for over a year" equal "caught by surprise"?

It's no longer a counter-insurgency

"The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands — that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together. To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads. These are the realistic choices for America’s Afghanistan policy — all out or all in, surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building."— David Brooks, NYT

It's a great piece but there's a flaw in Brook's argument: it's no longer a counter insurgency operation in Afghanistan. The Afghan government is too corrupt and illegitimate — as much of a threat to the US mission there as the Taliban. General McChrystal himself says so. The basic conditions for a counter-insurgent campaign have therefore not been met. It's a two front war.

Adventures in wonderland

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Rod Blagojevich
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

This is one of the most skilful interviews I've seen Jon Stewart conduct. Blagoyevich is such a pure liar — he's freeform, flying through the air, unattached to anything — that less experienced interviewers can be driven to distraction as they attempt to pin him down. But you can't pin someone down if they refuse to even acknowledge the gaping hole beneath their feet. Blagoyevitch just hangs there, like Wile E Coyote treading thin air. Given this adversary Stewart does something inspired: he joins him in his fantasy. He doesn't try to deconstruct it. He inhabits the lie and tries to make it make internal sense, the way you might a short story. The Illinois state legislature is against you? They must be bad people. The feds are out to get you? Wow. That must be stressful. The district attorney has a grudge against you? You must feel like you're getting Punk'd by the entire city of Chicago... It's beautifully done, and also surprisingly big-hearted.

Falling off the wagon (almost)

I almost fell of the Nicorette wagon yesterday. After a long couple of weeks in which I could get seemingly nothing commissioned, a magazine editor dropped the one piece I was supposed to be working on. It was too much. It brought me right to snapping point: I paced the streets, circled a few pharmacies and even went inside one and stared longingly at the boxes of nicorette on the shelves. I imagined my excuses to my wife: they pushed me too far. It doesn't do any harm. just while I finish this draft of the book. But then I "played the tape", as they say in recovery. I imagined what the whole thing would feel like, the moment the immediate thrill of relapse had passed. The drama of falling off the wagon would soon be replaced by the flat, weary, suckered feeling on the other side of it. That's the feeling I was heading towards. I turned around and walked home again, trying to content myself with the thought of the sugar-free Orbit I knew I had at home. Orbit sucks.

Never doubt the great and powerful Oz

"Iranian activists -- trying to blanket New York City with their trademark green color -- lobbied to bathe the top of the Empire State Building in green light all this week during their rallies against Iran's president, who is visiting the United Nations. The request was rejected. But on Thursday, to the protesters' delight, it will be green anyway, for another reason: an "Emerald Gala" for the 70th anniversary of the film The Wizard of Oz" – WSJ