Shoot an Iraqi

From John McFarland on Shelfawareness December 1, 2008 - about a book that describes how easy it is to desensitize humans to shoot other humans.

Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance under the Gun by Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen (City Lights Books, $18.95, trade paperback original, 9780872864917/087286491X, December 2008)

Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen tell two intricately intertwined stories in this provocative and illuminating book. One is a vivid documentation of a month-long interactive art installation (through diary entries and photographs); the other is a memoir of life under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Bilal, an art professor and Iraqi refugee living in Chicago, designed "Domestic Tension," a gallery installation that required him not only to be present without interruption for a month but also to be the target of paintballs fired by visitors to the Internet site he had set up. A real-time web cam allowed visitors to see the installation, choose to fire or not fire by remote control and monitor the damage done by themselves and others.

Bilal hoped that his project would comment on the nature of modern technological warfare and show what living in a war zone, always under attack, looks like. He noted that the technology used for his installation is the same as the technology that allows military personnel stationed at computers to drop a bomb on a target that is thousands of miles away.

In its month's life, the website received 80 million visitors, and more than 60,000 shots were fired at Bilal. Photographs illustrate the transformation of a pristine white gallery space into one submerged in yellow goo from fired paintballs. As Bilal observed, "It's an entirely man-made disaster. That's what war is."

Bilal also learned how cruel and malicious people can be in the anonymous world of the Internet. One hacker converted the single-shot paintball gun into a machine gun. The chat room set up to facilitate dialogue logged comments so hateful and off-the-wall that Bilal's experience became more intense than expected. "I seem to be filling quite a range of roles for different people," he wrote while dodging shots. "Symbol of the anti-war movement; lightning rod for hatred and racism; subject of intellectual discussion."

Counterpoint to details about the installation are Bilal's memories of his childhood, student days in Iraq and his escape from the reign of terror that Saddam Hussein visited on his country. His first-hand witness testimony is eye-opening and disturbing. Imagine family members recruited to spy on other family members and reporting back to the secret police. Imagine an unfounded accusation being sufficient to justify executing a person on the spot. "The motherland of my nostalgic memories doesn't exist any longer," Bilal lamented in this strikingly personal record of how a people who once loved humor so much now seem unable to laugh.--John McFarland

Helen Benedict

Helen is publishing The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq with Beacon in April. Here is her terrific Huffington Post about veteran violence:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-benedict/violent-veterans-the-big_b_157937.html

the hooks being the nine murders of women in Ft. Carson Colorado alone! The number of veteran suicides and attempts jumping six times since the Iraq War began!

After descrying the situation, she goes about making suggestions. Brava.

Weapons Grade

This fall U. of Arkansas Press is publishing my fifth book of poetry, Weapons Grade about occupations, past and present. I love the cover art, an image by Michael Kvium and am looking forward to what the wonderful designer Brian McMullen will do with it. The book will contain a long poem entitled "Secret Executions of Black GIs in Occupied Japan" to be published in the next Ploughshares issue.

Japan Times

David Cozy at the Japan Times named Black Glasses Like Clark Kent to his "Best of Asia 2008" list--which is very short! Now if there were only more readers of English in Japan.

Old but Relevant

Practically a movie already! 28 black veterans wait 64 years to have their names cleared in the lynching of an Italian POW in Seattle--and the last survivor dies right after hearing the Army apologize. All because Jack Hamann wrote On American Soil. My dream of course with Black Glasses.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93304327

NOW THE HELL WILL START

A "non-fiction thriller" by Brendan Koernan about a black soldier fleeing WWII racism by hiding in the Burma jungle. Very well-documented, exciting chase and sad ending. But the book did get written.

Apologies

Somewhere in the shift of blogtech, I was lost--but now I'm found. Several posts to follow.

New Doc by Hoop Dreams Directors about Death Penalty

Hoping to renew discussion on the death penalty, the directors have just released At The Death House Door about a chaplain who oversaw 95 executions and concluded that "they served neither justice nor morality." This is the NY Times review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/arts/television/27docu.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Lawsuit: Veterans Affairs has failed to prevent suicides

April 20, 2008

Lawsuit accuses Department of Veterans Affairs of failing to prevent an 'epidemic of suicide'

By PAUL ELIAS

The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs isn't doing enough to prevent suicide and provide adequate medical care for Americans who have served in the armed forces, a class-action lawsuit that goes to trial this week charges.

The lawsuit, filed in July by two nonprofit groups representing military veterans, accuses the agency of inadequately addressing a "rising tide" of mental health problems, especially post-traumatic stress disorder.

But government lawyers say the VA has been devoting more resources to mental health and making suicide prevention a top priority. They also argue that the courts don't have the authority to tell the department how it should operate.

The trial is set to begin Monday in a San Francisco federal court.

An average of 18 military veterans kill themselves each day, and five of them are under VA care when they commit suicide, according to a December e-mail between top VA officials that was filed as part of the federal lawsuit.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4689416

First Nebraskan killed in Iraq from my hometown

He died two weeks into the war five years ago and his relatives are still for the war! His nephew has signed up to join the reserves!


NPR March 23, 2008
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88883461

army blocked help for soldiers

Yesterday NPR had a show http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18742202
about how last year Army officials instructed representatives from the VA at Fort Drum, NY not to help veterans with their disability paperwork because there was a "conflict of interest." Soldiers who get help from the VA tend to get higher disability ratings--which means that the government owes them more money. Bush's administration' is too corporate to let that happen.

suicide post Abu Ghraib

In November of last year, CBS concluded a five-month, national investigation into veteran suicide. What they discovered exposes another shocking cost of war. CBS reports that in 2005, 120 veterans took their own lives each and every week -- or 17 a day.

It found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets.

One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age.

My note: Very unlikely these figures included elderly vets.

Bertrand Roehner

My terrific historiographer, Bertrand Roehner, just emailed me about some of his frustrations researching in Japan about the U.S. military during the postwar period. He was reading "Documents concerning the Allied Occupation and Control of Japan, Vol. II, Political, Military and Cultural compiled by Division of Special Records, Foreign Office, Japanese Government. The document is dated March 1949. It contains a letter written in April 26, 1946 from the Central Liaison Office of Japan (now Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to MacArthur on the subject of Compensation for Damage Caused by Allied Military Personnel. The fifth point in the letter says: "The misconduct and accidents involving Allied military personnel have reached considerable numbers, as set forth in Enclosures 1 to 3, and not a few of the victims stand in need of speedy relief."

Guess what? The bottom of the document reads: "Enclosure omitted." The note from the archivist is as follows:

"We are sorry to inform you that we can not show you the enclosures which were
attached to covering letters. We do not possess the enclosures and there is no
information about them".

"Fairly surprising, isn't it," writes Bertrand, "when one thinks that the enclosures were written by the
Japanese side?"

Japanese capital crimes

Toshiyuki Nishikawa's article "Capital Punishment in Japan" reveals that rape was not a capital crime in 1946 in Japan when American GIs were being hung for rape there. It was also not a capital crime in England when 7 black American soldiers were executed for rape at Shepton Mallet at the end of WWII.

William M's certificate

My chief consultant on all things military, William M., read Black Glasses Like Clark Kent last week and emailed me:

Interestingly on my office wall I have a Certificate & Letter of Appreciation from the 306th. Military Police Battalion, who ran the Abu Ghraib and other military prisons in Iraq for supporting their efforts. Apparently people never learn from past actions. The e-mails to me, were asking me what,why and how we managed Prisoners of War and Military Prisoners in custody.The questions were more pointed toward the retention of POW's held during the Korean War, what we did, how we did it, and why we did it.
Surprisingly to me is that although all military units have a historian, who is supposed to keep all facts on the unit it must not be part of any "corporate knowledge" retained anywhere.
To think what went on at Abu Ghraib can be pushed onto enlisted folks, boggles the mind. The only losers were the 2-3 enlisted people(private & three stripe Sgt.) receiving confinement time is crazy. The only officer punished was Brigadier General Janis Carpinski, who was reduced to the rank of Colonel and in fact was a reservist called to active duty for Iraq and had never dealt with or had trained for this type of assignment.

New York Post "Required Reading"

January 27, 2008 Sunday New York Post declared Black Glasses Like Clark Kent "Required Reading" above John Grisham! Here is the on-line version (click image to read review):

Video for Black Glasses Like Clark Kent

Terese Svoboda

Black Glasses Like Clark Kent is my tenth book, first memoir. This blog will present new material relating to the book, especially on issues relating to Abu Ghraib, PTSD, and inequality in the US military justice system.

Visit my webpage www.TereseSvoboda.com to see where I'll be reading, my bio, and descriptions of other published work.