
today
8:30 a.m. Audubon Society Field Trip See Event Description
read >9 a.m. Arcata Farmers' Market Arcata Plaza
read >9:30 a.m. Discovery Walk: Unknown Waterfront See Event Description
read >9:30 a.m. Manila Dunes Restoration Manila Community Center
read >10 a.m. Manila Dunes Guided Walk Manila Community Center
read >10 a.m. Library Book Sale Humboldt County Library
read >10 a.m. Dia de los Muertos and Mexican Folk Art Sale Private Eureka home
read >10 a.m. Final Arcata Farmer's Market Arcata Farmers' Market (off the plaza)
read >11 a.m. Donlin Foreman Dance Workshop Dell'Arte
read >2 p.m. Humboldt Coastal Nature Center Draft Trails Plan Walk Stamps House
read >5 p.m. Bati Zado and Show Redwood Raks World Dance Studio
read >6 p.m. The Tumbleweeds Chapala Cafe
read >6 p.m. Ali Chaudhary (jazz duo) Libation
read >6:30 p.m. Not Evil, Just Wrong Humboldt Area Foundation
read >7 p.m. Guitar Stan (country) Old Town Coffee & Chocolates
read >8 p.m. Guitar Orchestra of Barcelona Arkley Center for the Performing Arts
read >8 p.m. Stones in His Pockets Arcata Playhouse
read >8 p.m. A Christmas Carol North Coast Repertory Theater
read >8 p.m. Donna Landry Swing Dance Moose Lodge
read >8 p.m. North Coast Wind Ensemble Fulkerson Recital Hall at HSU
read >8:30 p.m. The Last Minute Men (international) Cafe Mokka
read >9 p.m. Ian McFeron Band (folk rock) Six Rivers Brewery
read >9 p.m. The Michael Paul Band WAVE @ blue lake casino
read >9 p.m. The Generatorz (classic rock) Central Station Cocktail Lounge
read >9 p.m. Taxi Bear River Casino
read >9 p.m. VJ Itchie Fingaz Pearl Lounge
read >9 p.m. Jack Ruby Presents + Blue Street + Acufunkture (DIY rock) Jambalaya
read >9 p.m. 2nd Annual Scorpio Bash The Red Fox Tavern
read >10 p.m. Music by DJ Sidelines
read >10 p.m. DJ Icy Hot Aunty Mo's Lounge
read >10 p.m. Jemimah Puddleduck (rock) Humboldt Brews
read >10 p.m. White Manna + Midday Veil + The King Salmon Duo (rock) Jambalaya
read >11 p.m. Radio Moscow (psychadelic blues) + Mosquito Bandito (one-man surf/garage) The Alibi Lounge and Restaurant
read >previous columns
Nov. 13, 2008
Black Sabbath, Master of Reality
By John Darnielle. Continuum (33 1/3 series).
read >Nov. 6, 2008
Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision
By Thom Hartmann. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.
read >Oct. 30, 2008
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
By Maggie Jackson. Prometheus Books.
read >Photos
The Dark Side
By Jane Mayer. Doubleday.
By Maxwell Schnurer
Jane Mayer has produced a terrible, wretched testament of United States policies on torture during the last seven years in her new book, The Dark Side. The text exposes for public reckoning the directives and specific cruelties exacted in the name of national security.
It is a strangely dispassionate read given the subject. At moments when Mayer could write in bold or italics instead she reports the stuff of nightmares with barely a hint of outrage. The Dark Side sticks to the historical record of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's reworking of presidential powers to justify capture, detainment and torture.
Evidence of endemic criminality and global war-making will be the markers of the eight years of the Bush administration. The framework used to circumvent international law to develop secret torture facilities, build a massive prison at Guantánamo Bay and populate it with citizens kidnapped from nations the U.S. was not at war with will be long-term hindrances to global peace and justice.
Mayer describes how executive branch directives to the CIA and the military developed a mechanism for the application of callous brutality. Using foreign bases that are famed for cruelty, the United States outsourced torture to prisons in Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Not to mention creating a near invisible squad of snatch-n-grab CIA goons who hijacked perceived terrorists. Or the development of trained interrogators who subjected people to years-long bouts of deprivation and pain once the U.S. torture facilities were up and running.
Worse still are the trickle-down commandments for "enhanced interrogation," "golden shield" memos to protect torturers from future criminal prosecution and the twisted re-articulation of a torture resistance program into a torture refinement program.
Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have become known worldwide as the locations where the most refined and long-term methodology of terror has been put into operation. The Dark Side outlines the complicity of medical officers, military trainers and academic psychologists who helped to keep patients alive as they developed new psychological terrors and refined practices of pain. Thanks to Jane Mayer, we have a strong trail of evidence to mark just how grim the "war on terror" has become.
It will be curious to see the legal shenanigans used by the Bush Administration during the final days of its reign. I suspect we'll hear bizarre justifications for some serious shredding, and claims of promises of legal immunity for underlings with blood on their hands. Videotapes of interrogations where detainees were water boarded, deprived of sleep, punched and denied bathroom breaks until they soiled themselves will be hard to view, even when the tapes come wrapped in an American flag.



















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