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    Feeling the Unthinkable Vol. 1: State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name
    Feeling the Unthinkable Vol. 1: State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name
    Feeling the Unthinkable Vol. 1: State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name
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    Feeling the Unthinkable Vol. 1: State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name

    By Donald Gutierrez

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    About this ebook

    WINNER! Political Book, 2013 NM-AZ Book Awards! Amador Publishers, LLC is proud to release Feeling the Unthinkable, Essays on Social Justice by Donald Gutierrez in a 4-volume collection of e-books for ease of reading and reference. Each of the four volumes follows exactly its corresponding Part in the print edition. Each e-volume is introduced with relevant excerpts from the Author's original Introduction to the consolidated print edition.

    Of Volume 1, "State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name," Professor Gutierrez states: I feel, perhaps wrongly, that one would want to know that one's government is using his or her tax monies for despicable, brutal ends - especially a country like ours that brags so much about itself being the beacon on the hill, the shining example to the world of freedom and equality. Millions of Americans either have no idea or any concern that their government has used their money and its immense power to assist - even direct - hellish activities abroad in their name. So one intention of the human rights essays in Feeling the Unthinkable ... is to exemplify some of the ruthless, exploitative behavior committed by the American state. Other essays ... deal with victimized individuals who symbolize Washington's egregious abuse of power domestically or abroad.

    "What an incredibly powerful book! The oppressive atmosphere created
    by worldwide financial instability makes it difficult to face the inhumaneness presented by Professor Gutierrez. But, if we don't feel the pain of the unthinkable acts committed by our government and others, how can we reach into our reserves to find the fury necessary to stop the insatiable barbarism being committed in our name? Professor Gutierrez reminds us why public outrage is more necessary now than ever." --Leslie Hall, Ph.D., Associate Clinical Professor, Washington State University, Spokane

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAmador Publishers, LLC
    Release dateSep 15, 2013
    ISBN9781301298389
    Feeling the Unthinkable Vol. 1: State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name
    Author

    Donald Gutierrez

    Donald Gutierrez was a member of the University of Notre Dame English Department faculty from 1968 to 1975, then joined the English Department at Western New Mexico University in Silver City. He retired from WNMU in 1994 and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife Marlene Zander Gutierrez. He received a "New Mexico Eminent Scholar Award" in 1989.Gutierrez has published six books of literary criticism, two of which focus on D. H. Lawrence and and one on Kenneth Rexroth. Since retirement, he has published over fifty essays and reviews, most of which concern social justice and American state terrorism abroad.

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      Book preview

      Feeling the Unthinkable Vol. 1 - Donald Gutierrez

      FEELING THE UNTHINKABLE

      Essays on Social Justice

      by Donald Gutierrez

      edited by Zelda Leah Gatuskin

      Collection Copyright © 2012 by Donald Gutierrez

      All essays used by permission of the author.

      Volume 1

      State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture In My Name

      published by

      AMADOR PUBLISHERS

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Dedication

      To my wife-artist Marlene

      (April 1932 - August 2011)

      Cover Art: detail from

      Illuminating the Dark Side by Marlene Zander Gutierrez

      Collage and acrylic, 24.5x 40.5

      Feeling the Unthinkable Volume 1

      State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name

      Contents

      Author's Preface

      About the E-Edition

      Introduction to Volume 1

      Chapt. 1. My Country Must Not Torture in My Name

      Chapt. 2. The Black Light on the Hill: United States Foreign Policy Hypocrisy

      Chapt. 3. Review: Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

      Chapt. 4 .Review: Frederick H. Gareau, State Terrorism and the United States: From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism

      Chapt. 5. Where Is the Humanity? America's Use of Excessive Force Over There

      Chapt. 6. Review: William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

      Chapt. 7. American Middle Eastern Detainees and You

      Chapt. 8. The Extraordinary Cruelty of Extraordinary Rendition

      Chapt. 9. Review: Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture:CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror

      Chapt. 10. Diliwar's Thigh: Deep Inside the Dark Side

      Chapt. 11. Review: Neil Belton, Helen Bamber: The Good Listener, A Life Against Cruelty

      Chapt. 12. Review: Dianna Ortiz, The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth

      Bibliography

      …if way to the Better there be,it exacts a full look at the Worst.

      Thomas Hardy, In Tenebris: II

      Author's Preface

      The essays and reviews in this book were written during fifteen years of retirement beginning in 1994, a few of them before that year. All but one of them have been published in a variety of venues, and most of them in at least two or three different publications.

      Feeling the Unthinkable is not a scholarly study or an organically structured work. It is a collection consisting of essays and reviews and one memoir. Nevertheless, the various pieces are, I feel, sufficiently interrelated in subject and polemical stance to lend Feeling a certain unity of voice, tone and social-political humanist outlook. That unity is based on the implication that a revolution in sensibility is essential to changing and repairing the world, and that that revolution could be brought about by coming alive in our feeling states and imagination to the social evil abounding in the modern era, no little of it created by governments (certainly ours) and the elites they serve.

      We can think about the unthinkable, but feeling it is a challenge reaching to the depths of our being. Who knows what we become after that immersion into personal darkness. That is the ultimate challenge of Feeling the Unthinkable. [Donald Gutierrez, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2012]

      About the E-edition

      Amador Publishers, LLC is proud to release Feeling the Unthinkable, Essays on Social Justice by Donald Gutierrez in a 4-volume collection of e-books for ease of reading and reference. Each of the four volumes follows exactly its corresponding Part in the print edition (that is, Volume 1 has the same articles in the same order as Part I; Volume 2 as Part II, etc.). However, the chapter numbers have been changed in Volumes 2, 3, and 4 so that the first essay in each e-book is Chapter 1 and those that follow are numbered sequentially.

      The complete print edition Table of Contents with corresponding e-book volume and chapter numbers is available online: http://amadorbooks.com/books/xrpftu0.htm

      The complete Bibliography has been published at the end of all four e-volumes.

      Each e-volume is introduced with relevant excerpts from the Author's original Introduction to the consolidated print edition. This complete Introduction is also available online: http://amadorbooks.com/books/xrpftu1.htm

      The Afterword and other back matter are published at the end of Volume 4.

      Grateful acknowledgment is made to the periodicals which previously published, in slightly different forms, the essays and reviews collected herein. Their credits appear at the end of each chapter.

      The print edition of Feeling the Unthinkable is available from Amador Publishers.

      Feeling the Unthinkable

      Introduction to E-edition Volume 1

      State Terrorism - My Country Must Not Torture in My Name

      The title of this book, Feeling the Unthinkable: Essays on Social Justice, accents its cardinal stress: not just to think but feel about matters that too many people generally don't want to even think about - but should.

      I feel, perhaps wrongly, that one would want to know that one's government is using his or her tax monies for despicable, brutal ends - especially a country like ours that brags so much about itself being the beacon on the hill, the shining example to the world of freedom and equality. Millions of Americans either have no idea or any concern that their government has used their money and its immense power to assist - even direct - hellish activities abroad in their name. So one intention of the human rights essays in Feeling the Unthinkable such as American Middle Eastern Detainees and You: The Extraordinary Cruelty of Extraordinary Rendition, Where Is the Humanity? America's Use of Excessive Force Over There, and reviews of such books as Frederick H. Gareau's State Terrorism and the United States, is to exemplify some of the ruthless, exploitative behavior committed by the American state.

      Other essays in the State Terrorism section deal with victimized individuals who symbolize Washington's egregious abuse of power domestically or abroad, whether it is the innocent American-Middle-Eastern detainees swept up shortly after 9/11 and violently treated in jail by guards or the long, graphically shocking memoir of the American Ursuline nun Dianna Ortiz who was tortured by Guatemalan military with the knowledge and tacit approval of American authorities.

      I feel (as well as think) that there are more than a few individuals who want to know about the terror being imposed on other human beings because they urgently want to extend their own humanity to others undergoing horrific brutality, pain and death. John Donne's No man is an Iland intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent [sic] (Devotions XVII, 1623) applies here. These individuals want to know about the malicious imposition of agony, suffering, injustice and death on anyone and everyone so as to stop it. They probably don't enjoy knowing that they might be living in reasonable comfort or safety while their government is savagely afflicting other nations and peoples directly or supporting and backing brutally repressive regimes or genocidal crack-downs - as Kissinger did Chile's General Pinochet or Ambassador Marshall Green did Indonesia's General Suharto.

      Further, there are other individuals who, ignorant of their government's demonic behavior abroad, might find the pieces in the collection educational, even eye-opening. If some might feel that some of the essays and reviews are disturbing or even repulsive (and blame messenger Gutierrez), others might be spurred to further investigation or even to individual or organizational activism.

      Some might question peering into the Abyss when, as the common retort has it, there's already so much unhappiness and misery in the world. People who say that often don't realize how far worse off others have been than themselves, and, tightly connected, how the grief and agony of others is firmly connected to the United States, their country. If nothing else, Americans have a profound moral responsibility to know what their government and the military and commercial forces it represents are up to at home and, especially, abroad.

      Volume 1 - Chapter 1

      My Country Must Not Torture in My Name

      Spiritual contemplation, state political torture and the individual either vulnerable to or secure from the latter - what do or can these matters have to do with each other - and with us today? The individual safe - at least, for the time being - from political intimidation and terror inhabits a different world from the person vulnerable to, say, the Salvadoran para-military, the Shah of Iran's SAVAK (taught by the CIA how to torture women) or our Special-Access-Program Elite Forces working over some Iraqi or Afghan detainee picked up in a sweep. These two individuals might as well be in different universes, as the experience of being savaged by state personnel administering intentional pain and agony can only be understood either by someone who has undergone torture or by those capable of considerable empathy.

      Individuals tortured lie in the inconceivable clutches of the demonic. The

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