You don’t go backwards with consciousness. Sure, life gets in the way and you pause awhile, as you deal with the tax collector, but sooner or later out come the joss sticks again. The war against terror is also the great recruiter. Many of those who supported the invasion have been shamed by the manner of its execution. The most basic concepts of morality, ethics, values, justice and law, have been shoved aside by very people pledged to uphold them. Don’t you think there’s something rotten at the core of Coalition consciousness? As I’ve said before, Australians are in it up to their necks. One of our own military legal offices, Major O’kane, helped draft a letter to the International Red Cross, purporting to come from the commander of Abu Ghraib, which defended the horrors within as “humane treatment”. Pulease. (He’s now being tipped for “promotion” to a desk at the Pentagon.) When Paul Wolfovitz was asked if forcing naked Iraqi prisoners to wear hoods for 72 hours was inhumane, this leading light of Western civilization needed to stop and think about it, the clock ticking, until he grudgingly agreed. This is bad will, bad faith and rotten consciousness.

So the troubling aspect of today’s glossy handbook of enlightenment is the role it ascribes to Uncle Sam in shaping the fate of the planet. The basics of its case are hard to deny, that America was once a beacon of freedom and is now a symbol of power. Also, that the world is shuddering towards catastrophe while its leaders are in denial. “The planet is on a collision course with itself”, writes Jim Garrison, founder of the State of the World Forum, and author of the mag’s geopolitical vision. “Whatever qualms people may have about it, America has become an Empire, and there is no turning back”. So the question is this: What should America do with all its power? It’s a good question.

The answer is scary. Because of the magnitude of the problems, from climate change, the extinguishment of nature, entrenched poverty, HIV/AIDS and the dysfunctionality of state relations, only one nation on earth can save the Earth. Oh, no. Yes. “America must consciously view itself as a transitional empire, one whose destiny at the moment of global power is to midwife a democratically governed global system”. Its historic task is to create mechanisms to manage the “emerging global system such that its own power is subsumed by the very edifice it helps build.” If only. What’s missing here?

IS POWER EVER SURRENDERED? AM I TOO HARSH?

That a large and influential body of Americans can’t stand the rest of the world & rarely visit it, like the pre presidential George Bush.

Other organisations have long been coaxing nations towards higher states of awareness – the UN, Greenpeace, Amnesty - without the need for hoods, cluster bombs, rubber gloves and star wars.

The flouting of civilized standards by the US leadership, the defiance of human rights, treaties and the failure to punish those at the top, make it difficult to accept Uncle Sam as a transcendental philosopher king. Not until its own creative citizens re-ignite the beacon of freedom. Some already talk of impeachment.

Which is not impossible. The Convention Against Torture was signed by the US in 1988 and ratified 5 years later, subsuming it into the law of the land. Its strictures apply to all American citizens, whether operating inside or outside the United States. Penalties are severe; there are no loopholes. Article 2 Paragraph 2: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." Which is why the fuss over the memo on pain management.

When Donald Rumsfeld claimed that the interrogations at Abu Ghraib were “not technically torture”, what did he mean? That the sessions were sleep therapy? With extras. America’s flair for innovation is now being applied to POW’s, re-branded as unlawful combatants. Gone are the “quaint” provisions of the Geneva Convention, when all that was required was name, rank and serial number. Today the prisoners must present their rectums.

Welcome to the new age of porno-torture®.

After its disastrous drift into fiction, the New York Times returned to investigative reporting on June 8, revealing that seven Afghan men “held at the main detention center in Bagram, where the deaths of two detainees and accusations of abuse are now under investigation, said in recent interviews that during various periods from December 2002 to April 2004, they had been subjected to repeated rectal exams …” . In other words, fisting.

MORE THAN A FEW APPLES -
IT’S THE WHOLE ORCHARD

The prisoners were also forced to parade nude, shower and “go to the bathroom in front of female soldiers”. Zakim Shah, a 20-year-old farmer, and Parkhudin, a 26-year-old farmer and former soldier, told the NY Times that female soldiers had watched groups of male prisoners take showers at Bagram and undergo rectal exams. "We don't know if it's medical or if they were very proud of themselves," he said. On other occasions, the women joked about the size of prisoners' penises. "They were laughing a lot," Parkhudin said, adding that the women taunted prisoners during showers, saying, "You're my dog." This brings to mind the Iraqi-on-a-leash pic from Abu Ghraib. Part of a pattern, part of post modern correctional culture. Nude torture and other acts of sadism have been reported at Guantanamo Bay, four US prisons in Iraq, and other US installations in Afghanistan. What’s going on? The globalisation of porno-pop.

After reading the NYT’s rectal revelations, I googled ‘nude prisoners – images’, and was presented with four charming studies from the intro page of www.prison.depravedlust.com. Its copy is a streetwise echo of the Times: “Once they get started these prison guards explore every depravity in some of the wildest group sex orgy scenes. There seems to be nothing that these guards won't try. Join us now as the prison party gets into full swing. Make sure you have lots of room on your hard drive to download these rare and very hard to find shots!” The site’s “graphic fisting pics” are offered free to all adults. Which is partly why so many are seeking a radical new moral and philosophical architecture for the 21st Century.

"I'm 50 years old, and no one has ever taken my clothes," said Abdullah Khan Sahak, who was released from American custody on April 19 and complained that he was photographed nude in Afghanistan. "It was a very hard moment for me. It was death for me." And it is surely the death of an illusion that a nation with military might beyond challenge and sanity can ignite a global enlightenment. Ends.

Post script.

Thanks for the love/hate mail, everyone, I keep meaning to post it, but the workload gets in the way. Soon, soon… Also, congrats to Four Corners, to the world’s whistle blowers and to Midnight Oil rocker Peter Garret for his bid to be a Minister in the Labour Party. You’re already panicking the fossils up top.

A note about AES + F: Formed AES in 1987, with Tatyana Avzamasova, Lev Evzovitch, Evgeny Svyatsky, and in 1995 with Valdimir Fridkes . All live and work in Moscow.

In a national televised address to justify Australia joining the invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed a “human shredding machine as a vehicle for putting to death his critics”. Such a machine has not yet been found. “This is the apparatus of terror we are dealing with”, said Howard.

During former Dick Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, his oil services firm raked in billions from dubious commercial dealings with Saddam Hussein. Cheney departed Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package.

As a fast rising staff officer in Vietnam, Colin Powell recommended against prosecuting those responsible for the My Lai massacre, in which 347 women, children, old men and babies were slaughtered. He said American troops had gone through an “hour-long course on how to treat prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions”, and that relations with locals were “excellent”. It took braver souls to reveal the truth.

Condoleezza Rice repeatedly ignored reports of torture at Abu Ghraib, until the bare bottom pyramids hit the headlines. She told Al Arabiya TV, “we will get to bottom of what happened”. Sure. But will it get to the top?

Collage by Jim Anderson.