CHORUS 1 (venal and soulless
Republican wing of the political class lying to its religious, conservative,
patriotic constituents):
Indefinite detention will keep
our nation free
Indefinite detention is a boon to
liberty
It's a Sacred Practice that our
Founding Fathers love
They cry for it from Heaven now,
joined by God above!
CHORUS 2 (venal and soulless
Democrat wing of the political class lying to its hip, liberal, fun-loving
constituents):
Indefinite detention, it's groovy
and it's cool
Indefinite detention transgresses
all the rules
Think some more about it with a
few hits from the bong
Then, my man, you'll see the
fascists were right all along!
VERSES
R:Our homeland's National Defense
Authorization Act
D:Added something in '012 to show
it has our back
R:If you support the terrorists
(or so you are accused)
D:You'll be detained without a
trial, tortured and abused.
Chorus: Dems
R:Guantanamo's in danger, give
this warning heed
D:Human rights fanatics want
detainees tried or freed
R:But thanks to the NDAA our way
of life is sound
D:They cannot close GTMO now 'cause GTMO's all around.
Chorus: Repubs
R:Foreigners are dangerous; they
harbor terror dreams
R:To keep them from destroying us
we must go to extremes
D:But we all came from foreigners
so logically you see
D:Indefinite detention must apply
to you and me.
Chorus: Dems
R:The Senate critics of this bill
lost 7 to 93.
R:They are on our watch list now
for hating liberty.
D:Obama signed it into law to
honor New Year's Eve
D:So check out any time you like
but you can never leave.
Chorus: Repubs
R:The Democrats are left wing;
Republicans are right
D:Their partisan bickering's a
never-ending fight
R:But on this sacred matter they
can all agree
D:Indefinite detention is made
for you and me.
Chorus: Dems
D: Seen in its proper context
this bill is not so odd
D: We already assassinate
Americans abroad
R: Indefinite detention is not a
giant leap
R: And since it's trial and
lawyer free, it's also really cheap.
Chorus: Repubs
D:Osama bin Laden is dead and
we've killed many more
R: But why deprive us of the
spoils of everlasting war?
D:The orcs may be much weaker,
but watch out for the elves
R:Indefinite detention will save
us from ourselves.
Chorus: Dems
D: Manning and Assange exposed
our underbelly warts
R: And we can't get the justice
we want for them from the courts
D: Indefinite detention with
torture suits the first
R: To put the second in his place
it might require a hearse.
Chorus: Repubs
D: APA psychologists interrogate
so well
R: Making them betray their
ethics was an easy sell[1]
D: Indefinite detention will
flood that field with pork
R: We paid them well for GTMO;
we'll pay more for New York.
Chorus: Dems
D: First target: Occupy Wall
Street, with their Otpor[2]
raised fists
R:They oppose our violence which
makes them terrorists
R:Indefinite detention will teach
those kids who's boss
D:The markets have determined
that our profit is their loss.
Chorus: Repubs
D:Then Ron Paul libertarians
'cause they're loose cannon cranks
R:They don't want to bomb Iran
and they don't love the banks
D:Indefinite detention will chill
those grandpas out
R:And crushing all dissent is
what America's about.
Chorus: Dems
R: We're one nation under God and
God means Jesus Christ
R: But that does not mean human
beings are blessed with human rights
R: If you won't grovel down
before us, pack up and go home
R: Jesus died so we could build a
new Imperial Rome.
Chorus: Repubs
D: Islam's authoritarian, Marxism
as well
D: Freethinking bon vivants must
therefore bomb them back to hell
D: If that means you lose all
your rights then that's the price you'll pay
D: Just embrace the irony,
there's no truth anyway.
Chorus: Dems
R:Whistleblowing journalists have
sued to stop the bill
D:But our wise leaders will not
rule out jailing them at will
D:The courts keep on betraying
us; we keep losing our case
R:So smile while you can before
we wipe it off your face.
Chorus: Repubs
*****************************************************
ELECTION DEBATE SPECIAL
D: "I shot down Osama,"
our president beams,
D: "Right there in front of
his kids I turned his brains to cream,
D: "I detain and assassinate
when it suits my will,
D: "I'm the
Commander-in-Chief and I know how to kill!"
Chorus: Dems
R: Romney stands there
unimpressed; he thinks Obama's weak
R: "Detention without
drowning's like a kiss upon the cheek,
R: "Bring back enhanced
interrogation!" Mr. Romney says,
R: "Isn't Appendix M[3] enough?" replies the puzzled Prez.
Chorus: Repubs
*****************************************************
R:Moonbats pick on Pinochet for his detention style:
D:Torture disappearance murder
everyone on file
R:But Chile's fun for business
now that wasn't always true
D:Indefinite detention will save
our nation too.
Chorus: Dems
D: America's a great empire whose
victories are sweet
R: But it should now be clear the
Bill of Rights is obsolete
D: The free market's the only
principle we should enshrine
R: So work hard, obey in fear, or
be drowned in the brine.
[1]
My own field of psychology, horrifically, stands to benefit from what will
probably become a burgeoning industry of indefinite detention. One of the innovations of the Bush Administration
was to dramatically increase the involvement of health professionals in
detainee interrogations (particularly as the U.S. decided after 9/11 to try its
own hand at more-dramatic-than-usual torture techniques instead of relying on
nations like Mubarak’s Egypt to do it for us).
The American Psychiatric Association and the American
Medical Association, while not acting sufficiently to prevent medical
complicity, did at least forbid their members from taking part in coercive
interrogations and eventually from taking part in any kind of ongoing
interrogation. The American
Psychological Association, however, actively undermined its own ethics code
(and governance procedures) to pre-empt discussion on the matter and ram
through a policy of having psychologists present and participating as
consultants to enhanced interrogations at GTMO and other “national security
settings.” The Coalition for an Ethical
Psychology provides a good introduction to this disturbing story: www.ethicalpsychology.org.
In fact, the enhanced interrogations themselves were
developed from a menu of known torture techniques by two psychologists—James
Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who have professional links to the APA even though
they are not members. Thus psychologists
have been a cornerstone of the new “health professionals in interrogations”
practice, and will likely see their relevance expand in this domain in the
coming years.
[2]
There is a great deal of internet-spawned paranoia over the parallelism between
the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Otpor movement that (with U.S. State
Department help admittedly) contributed to the popular nonviolent overthrow of
Slobodan Milosevic shortly after the NATO bombing campaign. OWS’s raised fist icon is very similar to the
raised fist icon of the Otpor movement.
Ivan Marovic of Otpor has also addressed an OWS general assembly. The
internet-circulated idea that Otpor (or, by extension, the State Department,
CIA, etc.) runs the OWS movement is preposterous (or, if true, bizarre and
Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass like).
The rather explicit similarities in imagery were intended, I imagine, to
appeal to a broad cross-section of ideologies who share a common support for
nonviolence and democracy over war, torture, oligarchy and tyranny, whether in
Serbia or in the U.S.
[3] Appendix M is the appendix of the Obama-approved Army Field
Manual which offers guidelines on acceptable and recommended interrogation
techniques. Included as acceptable
techniques are sleep deprivation (widely used by the Soviets and satellite states as Orwellian no-marks torture), various “fear up” procedures,
exploitation of phobias, and certain modes of sensory deprivation (sensory
deprivation in the classic form developed by Psychologist Donald O. Hebb is
known to induce psychosis after 48 hours).
Drugs that cause “permanent damage” are forbidden under Appendix M, but
drugs that cause serious psychosis and sensory derangement are not. Stress positions are also not explicitly
banned. There is already a great deal of
overlap, then, between Appendix M interrogation procedures and “enhanced
interrogation” procedures, though, e.g. drowning people (waterboarding) is
excluded.
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