City Belt

THE THIRD DEGREE: A.C. THOMPSON

What always horrifies me is, as Hannah Arendt phrased it, the utter banality of evil. Every generation’s atrocity has the pencil pushers who work, somehow, in the business of murder, torture and degradation. While they literally don’t get their hands dirty, the horrors would be impossible to accomplish without them.

Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights, the beautifully written and investigated book by Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson, shows how the US policy of torture can be traced to a family law office in a forgettable building surrounded by a bagel shop, hair salon and Wardle’s Pharmacy in Dedham, Massachusetts, and to the sleepy town of little league games and Boy Scout camping trips that is Smithfield, North Carolina.

A.C. Thompson, a staff writer at SF Weekly, recently spoke with City Belt.

You've got a background of touring with punk bands -- so how did you end up in journalism?

I was always interested in writing, and I was always into journalism. But I spent a bunch of years hanging out in the punk scene, and doing that whole trip. In my mid-20s, I realized I needed to have my own career, my own vocation, rather than just basically being a roadie for bands and supporting their dreams. So I got into writing when I was about 24 years old.

VOICES OF RENDITION

Amnesty International has collected chilling testimony from some victims of the U.S. program of rendition; the stories of three men are reprinted here.

Muhammad Abdullah Salah al-Assad

In Dec. 2003, Tanzanian officers arrested al-Assad, a Yemeni national, at his home in Tanzania. He was taken to a waiting airplane and turned over to US custody. After about two weeks in an unknown detention facility, he was flown to a second detention facility, where he stayed for about two weeks, and was then taken by car to a third place, where he stayed about three months. His last secret transfer probably took place in April 2004. In Jan. 2006 he was still detained in Yemen.

THREE KEY LEGAL MEMOS ON TORTURE

In his interview, A.C. Thompson refers to three memos that helped -- and continue to help -- the administration legally justify its torture and rendition programs: Yoo, Gonzales and Bybee. Here is a basic overview of the three memos, based largely on a educational lesson plan from Teachable Moment.

THE YOO MEMO (Jan. 9, 2002)

A Justice Department memorandum stated: "Restricting the president's plenary power over military operations (including the treatment of prisoners)" would be "constitutionally dubious." This memo concluded that the Geneva Conventions did not cover non-state organizations like al-Qaeda or Afghanistan under the Taliban, since the latter was a "failed state" whose territory "had been largely overrun and held by violence by a militia or faction rather than a government."

The memo was written by Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Robert Delahuntym, and was addressed to the Defense Department's general counsel, William Haynes II.

STEWPOT: NEWS STARS

I knew something was up when I flipped to CNN one day and found myself breaking into an involuntary smile. My joy was triggered by the sight of one John Roberts substitute anchoring what is now cringerifically called AC 360. Never heard of this fellow? Neither had I, hence my delight. Refreshing, indeed, this generic “news man,” blandly reporting the day’s top stories.

That in contrast, of course, with “AC” himself, with his signature Anderson Cooper eyebrow knit, his patented Anderson Cooper sympathy eyes and his trademark Anderson Cooper hand-to-hip gesture of gravity. For the rest of the country, Hurricane Katrina was a tragedy. For Coop, it was career gold. He stood amid the wreckage and told us the unvarnished truth. “Shocking images from New Orleans. What is happening there is an outrage,” he said, opening the show on Sept. 1, 2005. Some considered his subjective reporting an outrage. But he seemed genuinely shaken, and his abandonment of journalistic objectivity fit the desperation of the moment. There was talk of a new kind of TV journalism, with Cooper at its helm.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: THE PAPER WASTE

Sometimes we find a photo in our photo pool that, for whatever reason, just works thematically. This photo of the Grove St. PATH stop, by Eric Harvey Brown (Flickr's "Dogseat") seemed like the perfect photo to pick this week, as two free publications will no longer be available to litter our public space, Exit and yours truly, City Belt. The decision to indefinitely cease the print edition of City Belt was multi-faceted, but mostly involved money, cheese, scrilla, or whatever you want to call it. However, with us freeing up that massive amount we had been using to kill trees each month, we can now focus on improving the site, compensating contributors better, doing more in-depth investigative stories and the like. We decided that, rather than turn into businesspeople and worry about money all the time, we'd rather get back to why we started this -- because we love good journalism.

Now that that's out of the way, enjoy the photo, you crazy kids.

To be featured as Photo of the Week, tag your Flickr photos with CityBelt -- or you can just e-mail them to us.

On the Web:
Eric's Flickr page
City Belt's Flickr page

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MEDIA MASSAGE: DEATH OF A FAUX-ALT

Exit Weekly to cease publication immediately

Media Massage learned today that the North Jersey Media Group, owners of the Bergen Record among other publications, has shuttered the majority of its "Specialty Publications" division, which includes the youth-oriented weekly Exit. Our source says the closure is effective immediately, and all Exit staffers have been laid off, just in time for the holidays. No word on if North Jersey Media Group's other "Specialty Publications" -- N.J. Cops, The Parent Paper, and Country Kids -- will also close.

North Jersey Media Group was not available for comment.

Honestly, we at City Belt were never too impressed with Exit -- as people who work inside the alternative press, Exit often felt like it was a labor of business, rather than a labor of love -- which it ultimately was: a top-down approach to alternative journalism, rather than a bottom-up one. The paper was improving, though -- becoming more substantial. But it looks like, as in so many other cases, business won out.

We should make it clear that we're not gloating or anything like that here -- we never really saw Exit as a competitor (our styles are just far too different). If anything, we express our sympathies to those staffers who got canned. At this point, it's unclear whether any severance pay was extended to those now ex-employees.

We can't help but wonder if this is related at all to the rumor that North Jersey Media Group had been approached about buying the New York Press, as floated a few weeks back in the New York Observer. I don't really see how this would make any sense, nor do I see why anyone would want to buy the New York Press, which seems like a business-side walking disaster, especially a newspaper chain that is struggling with its own roster of papers, like the aforementioned Record.

So, farewell, Exit, and good luck.

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BUT I DIGEST ... RINGING TACO'S BELL

By Kimberly Kaye

There is something unbelievably comforting about the heat of a fresh warm tortilla radiating across chilled fingertips on a cold night. And when said tortilla is filled with tender steak or seasoned pork and accompanied by savory salsa verde the effect is all the more soothing. I know this because I had the luck to spend our first truly wintry night of the season seated happily at one of the backyard-chic tables in Jersey City’s inspired little Mexican spot, Taqueria.

DAY JOB: DUJUANA SHARESE

Photo by Michael Gates

There are a lot of poets in New Jersey, and a large concentration of them in Jersey City. Dujuana Sharese is one of the major forces in the city's poetry slam and spoken word scene. The 38-year-old is not only an accomplished poet herself, but she's the organizer of Cypher Movement, an event that happens every fourth Friday which combines spoken word performances, visual arts and, sometimes, music performances as well.

SPLENDID MARBLES: THREE LITTLE PIGS

by greg strid

ON THE WEB:
Splendid Marbles

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IDLE HANDS IN IRAQ

Guest Viewpoint
By Michael Embrich

Picture a man with little to lose. Picture a man with an abated sense of self-respect and pride. Picture a man who can do little to change his situation or the conclusion that he draws of himself, that of a “useless” person.

This is how close to 70 percent of the able-to-work Iraqi men feel. This is how close to 70 percent of the able-to-work Palestinian men feel.

These two countries seem to have little problem recruiting suicide bombers. These two countries have some of the highest unemployment rates in the world.

Coincidence? I think not.