Monday, December 05, 2005
I'm This Far from Full-On Paranoia
As you may have picked up from the last dozen posts or so--I've been hinting at this since getting off the plane--living abroad, especially in Central Asia, can be a bit trying. Not that I don't love being here or that I'm not glad we're doing it or any of the many things that could also go in this sentence. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, sometimes it's a bit hard to be an American not living in America. Especially when only one tiny sliver of a country separates you from a country we handily carpet-bombed a few years back then turned over to warlords and opium dealers and called liberation. The Kyrgyz Republic still has a great relationship with the US and a predominately warm and trusting relationship with its people. But, ya know, the more times people go on television and say things like this, the more I'm gonna feel the need to start looking over my shoulder every time I leave the apartment:
We are working hard in good faith on both sides to come up with an approach that can be supported by the president and the Congress, to both find a way to be aggressive in the war on terror and still comply with U.S. law. -- National security adviser Stephen Hadley, on "Fox News Sunday."
I mean, c'mon! Negotiating being able to torture people? And not even caring enough to hide it anymore? And telling a man who spent years in a POW camp that his proposal banning our use of torture is ill-advised? Really? That's what we're doing now? Really?
All I'm saying is, this could make these next six months harder than they need to be. And I don't want that. I don't want that at all. I just want to wake up in the morning, write for a few hours, exercise, take a shower, go around the corner to buy some delicious 8 cent bread and fake a conversation in Russian, head to campus and edit some press releases, come home, watch Return of the Jedi or a Tom & Jerry cartoon dubbed in Russian, eat some tofu and weird black mushrooms, read a little, then go to bed. That's all. But if this keeps up, I don't know, boy, I just don't know.
Link to the full story here.
We are working hard in good faith on both sides to come up with an approach that can be supported by the president and the Congress, to both find a way to be aggressive in the war on terror and still comply with U.S. law. -- National security adviser Stephen Hadley, on "Fox News Sunday."
I mean, c'mon! Negotiating being able to torture people? And not even caring enough to hide it anymore? And telling a man who spent years in a POW camp that his proposal banning our use of torture is ill-advised? Really? That's what we're doing now? Really?
All I'm saying is, this could make these next six months harder than they need to be. And I don't want that. I don't want that at all. I just want to wake up in the morning, write for a few hours, exercise, take a shower, go around the corner to buy some delicious 8 cent bread and fake a conversation in Russian, head to campus and edit some press releases, come home, watch Return of the Jedi or a Tom & Jerry cartoon dubbed in Russian, eat some tofu and weird black mushrooms, read a little, then go to bed. That's all. But if this keeps up, I don't know, boy, I just don't know.
Link to the full story here.
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So before I even got the puppy, i stopped listening to the news. I was depressed and it made me more depressed...but then the puppy arrived and then the puppy left...and now I listen to the news again. Last night, I was expecting a story w/ the headline: "But How Much Water Poured Over One's Head Actually Consititutes Torture?" and I thought: I have to move. I can't live here anymore...and then I thought: um...where would I move that people wouldn't hate me for the fact that this story exists?
I'm picturing future, more lengthy, congressional debates with actual quantities of water discussed. there will be charts and graphs used to establish which amounts of water poured over someone's head constitutes torture (it'll be measured right down to the ml ... i mean the ounce). I hope "The Yes Men" get on this quick and mock up the necessary guidelines. ugh.
-nu
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I'm picturing future, more lengthy, congressional debates with actual quantities of water discussed. there will be charts and graphs used to establish which amounts of water poured over someone's head constitutes torture (it'll be measured right down to the ml ... i mean the ounce). I hope "The Yes Men" get on this quick and mock up the necessary guidelines. ugh.
-nu
# posted by 
: 12/06/2005 08:41:00 PM
: 12/06/2005 08:41:00 PM << Home
