Mostly I am on my other blog lately, http://theelvesattic.blogspot.com and my site where I am pounding out my late3st book, http://wakingupjesus.blogspot.com
Tonight was an interesting evening of about as underground as the cinema gets. We are talking one step away from watching student films being screened at the end of the semester. Uh, actually... there were some other shorts shown as well that were indeed from film school -- I had some seriously Nam-like flashbacks to attending columbia and watching dozens of these dreary productions of badly cliches spread out over long, long minutes of boring camera work.
DON'T GET ME WRONG... this is going to end up being a DAMN GOOD REVIEW of the feature film... DEAD CREEK starts out with a satire of directors and producers and actors doing the kind of commentary that one expects nowadays with all films. The boring, self-promoting actors and the guy who loves everybody and... They actually even used little bio's of white type, over blood splatters, making jokes about the various people talking in the mock documentary. One beefy guy on the crew had below his name, "Definantly takes it anally,' for a beefy guy who looked like a hick --good funny. A mock producer who made it out like he loved everybody and took credit for everything who was immediately deconstructed by the director--an amusing cat in elaborate black sun glasses, looking very 'Hollywood.' Another great bit had them forgetting to pick up a eviscerate dog prop, complete with bloody pig intestines. Some kids find it and poke it with sticks, and then the mother bitches at them for killing a dog during the scene (which they make clear they did not do, but when they say the dog was made out of wire, one wonders? Maybe I just missed something... Well, of course I missed a hell of a lot, of course).
There was a bizarre subplot with a homosexual actor proposing to his gay lover, which some on the set find beautiful (the Hollywood director), while others on the set keep punching him in the balls. ????? There were also an actor who said, in two different bits, that he thought he was in a zombie movie, not a gay coming of age zombie movie, which he seems to believe this one turned out to be.
I laughed a lot, and the effects were not gory or overblown. It was a silly movie that worked best as a mockumentary, maybe....
BUT the DVD we were watching the movie on kept having problems, to the point where we had to stop the film like ten times, take out the disc, clean it, do all this shit... We all felt so bad for the film maker. I mean, shit happens, and me and my crew were not about to let this destroy our buzz, you know. In fact, the one hitter got pretty hot before the show and during various bathroom breaks. I got like six people stoned, laughed a lot, helped make for a good crowd for a filmmakers worst nightmare -- the opening night from hell. He is going to email everyone and let us know when he gets the DVD problems figured out and can run the entire films. In fact, one you couldn't see much of at all...
Anyways, for the price of cup of java I had an interesting night in the city. The conversation was great, too....I also did a drawing which is supposed to be part of this review, and will be soon.... Dark, like they have been lately...
So, that is my unworthy review of a movie. The director will probably be rich and famous one day, but won't we all, eh???? Ha.
This mockumentary went on for about twenty minutes, and then, as one began to suspect as the talking heads and other shots.
ALL WRITING IN HERE IS THE PROPERTY OF JOHN SCOTT RIDGWAY, AND YOU CAN GET MY PERMISSION TO PERFORM AND REPRINT WITH AN EMAIL. Steal from me and you will be cursed in such a way that your hands turn into worthless, jelly fish like appendages that sting your intimates.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
torture here, torture there, torture, torture,everywhere
This is from the village voice. More orwellian doublespeak about america's torture policy. I do not want to be part of a country that tortures, I want to be part of a country that leads others away from barbarity. My apologies to the village voice for associating them with this vile, vile little blog.
Liberty Beat
The CIA's Kidnapping Ring
U.S. ally Uzbekistan teaches interrogators how to boil suspected terrorists to death
by Nat Hentoff
April 15th, 2005 1:13 PM alert me by e-mail
write to us
e-mail story
printer friendly
U.S. law and international conventions bar sending prisoners to another nation unless there are strong assurances of humane treatment. The CIA says with a straight face that it gets those assurances before delivering suspects to jailers in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Pakistan—countries that have such abysmal human rights records that promises of decent treatment are a joke. Editorial, Los Angeles Times, March 11
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But of course they're out of control, there's only so much we can do. Porter Goss, director of Central Intelligence, quoted by Democratic congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts in a letter to his colleagues, March 8
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During a White House press conference on March 16, George W. Bush was asked: "Mr. President, can you explain why you've approved of and expanded the practice of what's called 'rendition'—of transferring individuals out of U.S. custody to countries where human rights groups and your own State Department say torture is common for people under custody?"
The president: "[In] the post-9-11 world, the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack. . . . One way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured. That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture."
Question: "As commander in chief, what is it that Uzbekistan can do in interrogating an individual that the United States can't?"
George W. Bush repeated his talking point: "We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured."
Actually, there is much that U.S. interrogators can learn from their counterparts in Uzbekistan on how to break down prisoners. One of the CIA's jet planes used to render purported terrorists to other countries—where information is extracted by any means necessary—made 10 trips to Uzbekistan. In a segment of CBS's 60 Minutes on these CIA torture missions (March 5), former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told of the range of advanced techniques used by Uzbek interrogators:
"drowning and suffocation, rape was used . . . and also immersion of limbs in boiling liquid."
Two nights later on ABC's World News Tonight, Craig Murray told of photos he received of an Uzbek interrogation that ended with the prisoner actually being boiled to death!
Murray, appalled, had protested to the British Foreign Office in a confidential memorandum leaked to and printed in the Financial Times on October 11 of last year:
"Uzbek officials are torturing prisoners to extract information [about reported terrorist operations], which is supplied to the U.S. and passed through its Central Intelligence Agency to the U.K., says Mr. Murray." (Emphasis added.)
Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly reacted to this undiplomatic whistle-blowing. Craig Murray was removed as ambassador to Uzbekistan.
On the BBC (October 15), Steve Crawshaw, director of the London office of Human Rights Watch, spoke plainly about George W. Bush's continual, ardent assurances that this country would never engage in torture:
"You can't wash your hands and say we didn't torture, but we will use what comes out of torture."
CIA director Porter Goss also engages in what George Orwell called doublespeak. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17, Porter Goss said, "The United States does not engage in or condone torture."
As for our ally Uzbekistan, run by the merciless dictator Islam Karimov, Philip Stephens, a forthright columnist for the Financial Times, noted on October 19:
"Uzbekistan provides a vital base for U.S. operations in neighbouring Afghanistan. U.S. financial aid [to Uzbekistan] provides a bulwark against Russian influence." And—dig this—an October 16 Financial Times editorial points out that because the Bush administration supports the barbaric government of President Karimov, the U.S. "has given [Karimov] the confidence to sell a long-running campaign against internal dissidents as part of the campaign against Al Qaeda." (Emphasis added.)
In 2003, Fatima Mukhadirova sent photographs of her son—who was tortured to death in an Uzbek prison—to the British embassy. As reported in Muslim Uzbekistan (February 12, 2004): "His teeth were smashed, his fingers were stripped of nails, and his body had been cut, bruised and scalded." His mother was put on trial "for attempted encroachment on the constitutional order" to convince her to shut up about what was done to her son. (She was subsequently convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.)
Meanwhile, Porter Goss told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17 that one of the CIA's own techniques, waterboarding, is "an area of what I call professional interrogation techniques."
As Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch, noted in a March 21 letter to The New York Times: "Waterboarding, known in Latin America as the submarino, entails forcibly pushing a person's head under water until he believes he will drown. In practice, he often does. Waterboarding can be nothing less than torture in violation of United States and international law.
"Mr. Goss, by justifying the practice as a form of professional interrogation, renders dubious his broader claim that the C.I.A. is not practicing torture today." (Emphasis added.)
I cannot resist repeating what George W. Bush said on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (June 26, 2003): "The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States . . . in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture." Let's start at home.
ALL WRITING IN HERE, with the noted exception of marked text, IS THE PROPERTY OF JOHN SCOTT RIDGWAY, AND YOU CAN GET MY PERMISSION TO PERFORM AND REPRINT WITH AN EMAIL. Steal from me and you will be cursed in such a way that your hands turn into worthless, jelly fish like appendages that sting your intimates.
Liberty Beat
The CIA's Kidnapping Ring
U.S. ally Uzbekistan teaches interrogators how to boil suspected terrorists to death
by Nat Hentoff
April 15th, 2005 1:13 PM alert me by e-mail
write to us
e-mail story
printer friendly
U.S. law and international conventions bar sending prisoners to another nation unless there are strong assurances of humane treatment. The CIA says with a straight face that it gets those assurances before delivering suspects to jailers in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Pakistan—countries that have such abysmal human rights records that promises of decent treatment are a joke. Editorial, Los Angeles Times, March 11
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But of course they're out of control, there's only so much we can do. Porter Goss, director of Central Intelligence, quoted by Democratic congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts in a letter to his colleagues, March 8
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During a White House press conference on March 16, George W. Bush was asked: "Mr. President, can you explain why you've approved of and expanded the practice of what's called 'rendition'—of transferring individuals out of U.S. custody to countries where human rights groups and your own State Department say torture is common for people under custody?"
The president: "[In] the post-9-11 world, the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack. . . . One way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured. That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture."
Question: "As commander in chief, what is it that Uzbekistan can do in interrogating an individual that the United States can't?"
George W. Bush repeated his talking point: "We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured."
Actually, there is much that U.S. interrogators can learn from their counterparts in Uzbekistan on how to break down prisoners. One of the CIA's jet planes used to render purported terrorists to other countries—where information is extracted by any means necessary—made 10 trips to Uzbekistan. In a segment of CBS's 60 Minutes on these CIA torture missions (March 5), former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told of the range of advanced techniques used by Uzbek interrogators:
"drowning and suffocation, rape was used . . . and also immersion of limbs in boiling liquid."
Two nights later on ABC's World News Tonight, Craig Murray told of photos he received of an Uzbek interrogation that ended with the prisoner actually being boiled to death!
Murray, appalled, had protested to the British Foreign Office in a confidential memorandum leaked to and printed in the Financial Times on October 11 of last year:
"Uzbek officials are torturing prisoners to extract information [about reported terrorist operations], which is supplied to the U.S. and passed through its Central Intelligence Agency to the U.K., says Mr. Murray." (Emphasis added.)
Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly reacted to this undiplomatic whistle-blowing. Craig Murray was removed as ambassador to Uzbekistan.
On the BBC (October 15), Steve Crawshaw, director of the London office of Human Rights Watch, spoke plainly about George W. Bush's continual, ardent assurances that this country would never engage in torture:
"You can't wash your hands and say we didn't torture, but we will use what comes out of torture."
CIA director Porter Goss also engages in what George Orwell called doublespeak. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17, Porter Goss said, "The United States does not engage in or condone torture."
As for our ally Uzbekistan, run by the merciless dictator Islam Karimov, Philip Stephens, a forthright columnist for the Financial Times, noted on October 19:
"Uzbekistan provides a vital base for U.S. operations in neighbouring Afghanistan. U.S. financial aid [to Uzbekistan] provides a bulwark against Russian influence." And—dig this—an October 16 Financial Times editorial points out that because the Bush administration supports the barbaric government of President Karimov, the U.S. "has given [Karimov] the confidence to sell a long-running campaign against internal dissidents as part of the campaign against Al Qaeda." (Emphasis added.)
In 2003, Fatima Mukhadirova sent photographs of her son—who was tortured to death in an Uzbek prison—to the British embassy. As reported in Muslim Uzbekistan (February 12, 2004): "His teeth were smashed, his fingers were stripped of nails, and his body had been cut, bruised and scalded." His mother was put on trial "for attempted encroachment on the constitutional order" to convince her to shut up about what was done to her son. (She was subsequently convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.)
Meanwhile, Porter Goss told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17 that one of the CIA's own techniques, waterboarding, is "an area of what I call professional interrogation techniques."
As Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch, noted in a March 21 letter to The New York Times: "Waterboarding, known in Latin America as the submarino, entails forcibly pushing a person's head under water until he believes he will drown. In practice, he often does. Waterboarding can be nothing less than torture in violation of United States and international law.
"Mr. Goss, by justifying the practice as a form of professional interrogation, renders dubious his broader claim that the C.I.A. is not practicing torture today." (Emphasis added.)
I cannot resist repeating what George W. Bush said on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (June 26, 2003): "The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States . . . in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture." Let's start at home.
ALL WRITING IN HERE, with the noted exception of marked text, IS THE PROPERTY OF JOHN SCOTT RIDGWAY, AND YOU CAN GET MY PERMISSION TO PERFORM AND REPRINT WITH AN EMAIL. Steal from me and you will be cursed in such a way that your hands turn into worthless, jelly fish like appendages that sting your intimates.
the complete gallery... for what it is worth.
Okay, here they are… the compiled, newly edited, joke added, hopefully slightly less lame pictures than last time. Don’t hate me for bringing out the photo album so much, either. I could be showing you aunts of mine that you will never meet smiling and waving in front of their rv’s, like the rest of the people in your silly, Disneyland world.
PICTURES OF PAIN. VOLUME 1
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/cde4&.src=ph&.tok=phHD91CBrszIi5aV
PICTURES OF PAIN VOLUME 2
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/b43b&.src=ph&.tok=phtD91CBi1JnH7ib
PICTURES OF PAIN volume 3
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/39a0&.src=ph&.tok=phZE91CBJGiQq28H
Pictures of Pain Volume 4
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/39a0&.src=ph&.tok=phZE91CBJGiQq28H
ALL WRITING, ART AND PHOTOS IN HERE ARE THE PROPERTY OF JOHN SCOTT RIDGWAY, AND YOU CAN GET MY PERMISSION TO PERFORM AND REPRINT WITH AN EMAIL. Steal from me and you will be cursed in such a way that your hands turn into worthless, jelly fish like appendages that sting your intimates.
PICTURES OF PAIN. VOLUME 1
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/cde4&.src=ph&.tok=phHD91CBrszIi5aV
PICTURES OF PAIN VOLUME 2
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/b43b&.src=ph&.tok=phtD91CBi1JnH7ib
PICTURES OF PAIN volume 3
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/39a0&.src=ph&.tok=phZE91CBJGiQq28H
Pictures of Pain Volume 4
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/johnsridgway/album?.dir=/39a0&.src=ph&.tok=phZE91CBJGiQq28H
ALL WRITING, ART AND PHOTOS IN HERE ARE THE PROPERTY OF JOHN SCOTT RIDGWAY, AND YOU CAN GET MY PERMISSION TO PERFORM AND REPRINT WITH AN EMAIL. Steal from me and you will be cursed in such a way that your hands turn into worthless, jelly fish like appendages that sting your intimates.
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