The annual Riverfest Festival recognizes the role  the two rivers passing through the heart of our town have played in the heritage of our city. At its heart the City of Clarksville will always be a river town, our lives affected by their timeless ebb and flow. One of the greatest things about Riverfest is how it draws us together, all walks of life intermingling,  and for a that moment at least we are one people.

The final day of Riverfest will be jammed packed with things to see and do, so come early, and bring the whole family to join in this amazing celebration of our culture and heritage!

Riverfest Friday evening

For a complete list of activities see the schedule of events

Remembering September  11th 2001

At 5:00 pm it seemed as if the entire City of Clarksville paused for a moment to remember those who lost their lives on September 11th 2001. The City Honor Guard came on stage, made up of Police, Fire and Rescue, and members of the Sheriff’s Department. They carried two extra flags on this day, one each to honor the NYC Police and Fire Departments.

As the colors were presented, the 101st Airborne Division band kicked off with the Star Spangled Banner. As the last notes of the National Anthem sounded. Councilwoman Deanna McLaughlin began her heartfelt remembrance of that terrible day eight years ago. She continued by narrating a time line of the events that day, listing the number of casualties as each plane crashed, and as each building came tumbling down. She spoke of her certainty that our Country would be swift to take vengeance for the attacks, and how she knew that it would most likely involve her husband, a serving soldier in the U.S. Army. The crowd listened in respectful silence.

After Councilwoman McLaughlin concluded her remarks, the Fire Department’s Chaplin called for the crowd to pray. A prayer is a staple at city events, and today it  sought the blessings of God for those died securing the freedom our country enjoys, those who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks, and for our serving soldiers.

The prayer was followed by the sharp crack gunfire which echoed repeatedly between the banks of the Cumberland River,  as each of the three volleys in the twenty-one gun salute was fired. Soldiers, First responders, and ex-military members saluted as the crowd stood with hands reverently held over their hearts. Some members of the audience were moved to tears.

Things  you need to know

Food and drink

Be sure to bring your appetites as the food court features something for every one. Ranging from crispy golden funnel cakes to the biggest turkey drumsticks you have ever seen. Tickets for food and drinks are $1 each, and be sure to bring cash to purchase them with, cash is not accepted directly by the food vendors.

Parking

Parking is available at the Austin Peay State University, Dunn Center parking lot with free transportation down to the festival. Some Riverside Drive businesses may allow parking as well. Be sure to park only where you have been directly authorized to ensure your vehicle is still there when you return!

What is there to see and do

The River of Culture

Our local culture benefits from the people from all over our nation and the world that Fort Campbell to the North, and Austin Peay State University in the heart of our Historic Downtown area, brings in to our city, and is clearly reflected in groups showing their stuff in the River of Culture where you can find everything from demonstrations of the various Martial arts; to the exotic Ballet Folklorico Viva Panama, and will also feature the lithe gyrations of the Jezzebellies Dance Troupe, and the graceful Hui Hawaii O Tenesi Hawaiian Civic Club. In addition to their more exotic forms of dancing, local dance groups are also performing throughout the day if that is more suited to your tastes.

The Budweiser Stage

The Budweiser stage featured more mass appeal type acts including Highway 105, Mike Broward-Buffet, Chain Reaction, and American Floyd. Tommorow the stage will open with acts which will delight the younger members of the audience starting with a Magic show, followed the Nashville Zoo, and finishing up with Wake boarding for the teens. The Musical performances for the adults kick off at 1:15 pm with Sterling Heights, Dusty Mahan, and Stephanie Corbin.

The musicians will take a break starting at 4:30 pm for a contest which will feature local talent who will be trying their best to show the audience that they have what it takes to be the Beaver Country Idol! The contest is sponsored by the Beaver 100.3FM and Draughons Junior College. To show your support you are encouraged to make signs showing your support, and be sure to cheer as loud as you can for your favorite contestant.

The musical performances continue at 6:30 pm with The Pistols, followed by the hilarious Trailer Choir, and the Budweiser Stage closes out the night with the exceptional talent of Jack Ingram who was the winner of the the 2008 Academy of Country Music award for “Best New Male Vocalist

The Gateway Stage

The Gateway Stage has been set aside primarily for religious acts, though on Saturday morning many of the local dance studios will be holding performing there. In addition to the dance performances at 1:00 pm the Gateway to Stardom talent competition will be held, followed by a Stepping competition from 3:00 pm till 4:00 pm.

Friday night featured the headlining Christian band Rush of Fools, along with performances by G Man, Jamie Worley, Xample Praise, and August Christopher. Tomorrow the music resumes at 4:15 pm, with Keisha Williams, Alfonz, Renay Ross, Atomic Blonde, Five Minus One, Stan Lassiter, and closing out the evening with the blues performed by Stacey Mitchart.

The Kids Zone

The Kids’ Zone is back this year and is packed with fun for the kids to enjoy. Visit Toddler Town, the area set aside just for the pint size visitors to Riverfest. The “bigger kids” can enjoy themselves too with inflatables for teens and adults.

Photos the 2009 Riverfest

This gallery has been updated to include photos from both Friday & Saturday night

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Both women and men are advised on how to succeed in their professions by wearing certain types of clothing, using the latest age-defying make-up, choosing the right hair style, buying that certain briefcase that shows you to be executive material, and having every blemish—from body language to teeth—corrected to fit the ideal presentation.

Over the years I’ve learned of some rather interesting misconceptions formed by judging people on their appearances.

Many years ago when I first began to teach in public school in Florida, I took a summer class in psychology at the University of Florida. The class was made up of about 20 young women, a couple of middle aged men, and one very handsome younger man. This tall, dark, handsome man could have walked onto any movie set in Hollywood and would have immediately been cast in a romantic lead. During the first class no one knew anyone else and no names were given.

When the second class began, we were told to sit in a circle so that discussions could take place easier. The psychology professor then asked each of us to tell the class our names and what our professional interests were.

You could feel the anticipation of every female (except me, of course, because I was newly married at the time and was definitely immune to the charms of this amazing stranger!); one by one people began to tell about themselves until it was the Mystery Man’s turn.

With a gracious smile and an unassuming manner, he announced, “I’m Tony Fromhart and I’m a Jesuit priest.”

The groans from the female section were audible.

Many years later I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was involved in writing a biography of a former German aristocrat named Edward Carl Wolfram von Selzam. He had had an extremely interesting life. He was captured by the Russians during the First World War and was sent to a prison camp in Siberia. While there, he acquired a pet bear that he had to give up when he was able to escape. Between the World Wars, he was assigned to the diplomatic service in Washington, D.C., where he fell in love with and later married an American socialite. They had two children, a girl and a boy, both of whom were reared for many years by a German nanny they called “Fraulein.”

The couple had to leave their children with Fraulein in Switzerland when Hitler came into power and “Eddy,” as he was called by all his friends, was called back to Germany because he was suspected of being involved in the German Resistance. He narrowly escaped being sent to the Russian Front but lost all his diplomatic ranking and privileges.

After the War, Eddy and Anita were finally reunited with Fraulein and the children and were able to move to the United States. Eddy became an insurance executive and later retired to Charlottesville after Anita’s death. Because the children were grown and married by this time, Fraulein also moved with Eddy to serve as his housekeeper and cook.

When I knew Eddy, he was in his early eighties, still played tennis almost daily, and went to every party held in upper society where he had a reputation as an excellent dancer.

Eddy held “Sunday Afternoons” at his home in Charlottesville. These consisted of light refreshments, an ample bar, and sparkling conversation with friends who dropped by between 2:00 and 5:00 p.m. I was always invited to these parties because I was taking notes for a book I hoped to write about Eddy. Other visitors included many beautiful young women, quite a few college professors, famous writers like Peter Taylor, wealthy business people, and anyone else Eddy happened to like.

One Sunday afternoon near the end of the party, a lovely Belgian enchantress made a grand appearance wearing a floor-length blue gown. With her more French than Belgian accent, she greeted everyone with her usual cheek-kissing greeting and proudly showed off her new escort. He was about six feet tall, with dark brown hair, startling blue eyes, and the stance of a military man. Impeccably dressed in a black Brooks Brothers suit, he looked as if he had walked off the cover of a magazine.

That afternoon most of the other people in the room happened to be in their mid seventies or early eighties. Eyebrows were lifted as people wondered who this stranger was and how they had not formerly met him in societal circles.

A silence occurred in the conversation as Eddy said, “And who are you, sir?”

Death by Uyacan Felipe Muniz

The young man replied in the rounded tones of a polished speaker, “My name is Charles Colbert and I’m a funeral director.”

Dead silence ensued as a near audible gasp from the older set electrified the room.

I am sorry to report that Eddy never forgave the young woman for allowing someone in Charlie’s profession to enter his drawing room. Death was not a subject for polite conversation or anything else as far as Eddy was concerned.

During a time of my life when I lived in Charlottesville, I worked for a couple of multimillionaires who were in their eighties. Ruth and Clay Peyton were not invalids but needed someone younger in the house in case of emergency. They had several servants who took care of their house and property, but it was my job to keep them company and to help them keep their minds on pleasant subjects. At the time, I was about the age of their two daughters, both of whom had busy lives and visited infrequently.

When Mr. Peyton was a young man, he owned the Packard dealership in Charlottesville. His first cousin, Bradley Peyton, owned the Cadillac dealership just across town. They were, of course, business rivals but were nevertheless friends.

One very snowy day a heavy-set rough-looking woman in men’s clothing and boots arrived in the Packard showroom. Her giant-sized mentally challenged son accompanied her. Mr. Peyton, having had few customers that day, went out to meet her personally.

The woman turned out to be someone who lived on a nearby mountain where she and her son ran some type of farming operation, perhaps raising apples and other fruit. She had a brusque voice, Mr. Peyton said, and was adamant about what she wanted.

She asked to see his best car and when shown it, said she would take it that day. She went into the ladies’ room where it is assumed she dug down into some portion of her clothing, and returned with cash for the entire amount of the price of the Packard.

As the transaction was completed, she told Mr. Peyton that she had just come from the Cadillac showroom where she could get no one to wait on her.

Mr. Peyton was still laughing forty years later at how he had “put the shuck” on his cousin.

A word to the wise is sufficient: don’t bother to judge a book or a person by its covering!

The Customs House Museum’s Women’s History Month has been extended through June 28th. This special collaborative exhibit, Underneath and Overcoming, is a three part installation created by the museum’s Community Relations Director, Terri Jordan. The exhibit meshes together a visual interpretation of where woman have come from in dress and attitude. Working with poet and author R. MonaLeza and photojournalist David Farmerie, the installation can be summarized as what happens when you put an artist, a writer, and a photographer together in one room. As viewers peruse pieces from the museum collection and the images of Farmerie’s Seven Deadly Sins series, they can read the edited poetic writing of Mona’s on the coordinating panels.

David Farmerie’s documentary and humanistic work is at the core of his profession as a photographer. In 1990 he decided to engage, predominantly, in photographic projects that add to the ‘greater good’ of humanity. Through his documentary images David explores the mysteries and stories of the world’s cultures and people. Through his humanistic images, he captures moments in order to teach, and to gain understanding through the frozen moments of the images, allowing for introspection and ponder. David’s recent work has included a photographic story entitled Roadside Redemption and the documentary Tobacco Farming: An American Tradition. The Customs House Museum exhibit, Underneath and Overcoming, is his first exhibition of the Seven Deadly Sins series.

The Customs House Museum is the second largest general museum in Tennessee. The museum is located at the corner of Commerce and Second Streets, in historic downtown Clarksville.

This review ran in Clarksville Online on Nov. 29, 2006. But as my granddaughter and I unpacked my collection of snowmen for the coming holiday, my carefully wrapped musical plush Snowman emerged, to the delight of both of us. Everything else was dropped as we sat in the living room, puling the cord that triggered a music box version of the film’s hit song: Walking in the Air. As a Christmas gift idea for the child all of us, and a reminder of just how good animation can be, I reprint this review, with an updated video clip. Enjoy.

I can’t recall how many copies of The Snowman I’ve bought over the years, but it’s been quite a few. I usually end up giving them away to children who watch and are captivated by its’ magic. And then I buy another copy.

To the uninitiated, The Snowman is a delightful, animated short film about a young boy, James, who builds a snowman that springs to life as midnight chimes. It has only a few lines of introduction at the beginning; the remainder of the film is a symphonic soundtrack that follows their adventures, first as Snowman explores James’ world, putting on pants with suspenders, trying on hats, discovering a music box and the dangerous warmth of a fire. James and his fantasy creation dance across the floor of the house before heading outside, where the he and Snowman, in his mossy green hat and scarf embark on a journey north, racing through the forest and flying through the sky to a magical gathering of snowpeople in the far, far north.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The artwork is a palette of soft colors, gentle curves and feathered edges. The movement is soft at times, buoyant and bright at others.

This Oscar winning short animated film (1982), created and written by Raymond Briggs, was directed by Diane Jackson, has brief narration by David Bowie and includes the song Walking in the Air, sung in by Peter Autry . It runs a mere 26 minutes, sans dialogue, but its magic, its’ enchantment, are timeless.

Watching The Snowman has become a Christmas tradition. It is available as a film (videotape or DVD), and as a musical soundtrack. The Snowman has quietly grown into an industry, with Snowman paraphernelia of all kinds available in stores and online. I have it on videotape, on DVD, and audio track as well. And every winter, a softly stuffed snowman, with its own pull cord that provides a few moments of enchanting music, emerges from hibernation to rest on my pillow, or somewhere highly visible in my living room, where he stays until spring.

In the midst of the flash, splash, action and noise of modern toys and audio/visuals deemed fit for Christmas giving, and hyped in all the major markets, pause for a moment and consider the giving a child, or an entire family, the simple beauty of The Snowman. It really is a gift worth giving.

The Trail of Tears Commemorative Day will lead off the Native Cultural Circle’s annual Inter-Tribal PowWow. The Port Royal site is the only remaining uncovered segment of the original trail in Tennessee.

October 11 and 12th. Mark your calendars. The second weekend of October is just around the corner. That means the Native Cultural Circle’s Inter-Tribal PowWow is here. Every year the group hosts the annual two-day powwow as a means of educating the general public about Tennessee’s native peoples traditions, culture and customs.

Clarksville is blessed, in that the powwow site has truly historic significance, because it is staged adjacent to last remaining uncovered segment of the Trail of Tears in Tennessee. The land is included in the Port Royal State Historic Park, where the quiet beauty of the area is well suited to the occasion.

This year’s PowWow will feature traditional songs and dance; host drum is the White Horse Singers, along with 18 vendors, a silent auction, and native grown organic popcorn. All drums and the general public are welcome.

Last year, a commemorative walk celebrated the National Parks Service designating the trail segment as an authentic Trail of Tears site. Over 100 native people turned out for the walk, many wearing native regalia. State and local government officials spoke at the observance acknowledging the solemnity of the occasion and its truthful place in American history. Park Ranger David Britton greeted Native American leaders and elders, exchanged flags and read a state proclamation. Representatives from the Tennessee Indian Commission and Montgomery County government also participated in the ceremony.

Port Royal Park Ranger David Britton

Park Ranger David Britton announced Wednesday that the National Parks Service has now designated Port Royal State Park as an official Trail of Tears Historic Park. For this year’s powwow celebration, on Saturday, October 11th, at 10 AM, there will be a re-enactment of the march through the town of Port Royal. There will also be re-enactments of 1830’s domestic skills and medicine. Visitors will be able to sample the foods the Native Americans were actually provided during their encampment. Additionally, guided historical tours throughout the park will be conducted and there will be exhibits on the Trail of Tears and the Town of Port Royal. When visitors have completed their tour of the park, they are encouraged to come over to the Inter-Tribal Powwow Grounds and continue their discovery of Tennessee’s Native peoples culture.

For more information on the Trail of Tears Commemorative Day, contact Port Royal State Park Office, 931-358-9696. The park office is located at 3300 Old Clarksville-Springfield Road.

For the run-off they did the chicken dance.  One might think that would look funny, like the white man’s version, but it was wildly fantastic leaving the audience roaring with applause.  One could see from the dancers’ movements that a chicken, like other animals who live on this planet with us, has it’s own “dance” that we can either laugh at and feel superior to, or study and learn from with respect to that animal.  It’s a choice that my culture usually doesn’t consider.

While the drummers, singers and dancers took a break, I bought an Indian fry bread, taco style, and while eating listened to the storyteller speak and play his flute.  Then I roamed around the booths surrounding the dance arena.  I moved through the crowds of people, checking out dream catchers, jewelry, leather goods, pottery, finger puppets, flutes, CD’s, tee shirts, sage, books, toys and tea.

When the drums started up again, we were invited to participate in a birthday dance and an anniversary dance.  The commentator explained dances and kept us chuckling with his sense of humor.

I stayed until almost closing.  I left with a tee shirt, sage, tea, jewelry and a calm feeling.  I got my fix of drum beating and that good ole true American attitude.  I’m good-to-go for another year.  It would be all right if I went to another Pow Wow sooner than in a year.  It would be great in fact.  Hearing the drums and watching the people who know how to connect to the Earth always reminds me of something I think I should already know:  How to really walk on this place we live on; how to hear the voice of the creatures around me; how to be still in my heart and know that I am, and every creature is, an important and vital part of the Great Creation.

Photos by Debbie Boen

The Power of Nightmares (Part 1) is being shown this Friday, August 1, at 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 3053 Highway 41A South. The screening is a continuation of the UU First Friday Film program.

Adam Curtis showed us in Century of Self a key way of controlling the masses is by making people good consumers. Make people want things they do not need by appealing to their secret desires. Come to present time in The Power of Nightmares, where terror and torture and the fear of such has become the new tools of control by governments.

About the movie: For a time politicians promised to create a better world. When this dream lost its promise, politicians were simply seen as managers. Their power to control has returned as their job became rescuing us from dreadful dangers. Much of the terrorism threat is a fantasy that is an exaggerated and distorted dark illusion spread by governments, security services, and the international media.

This is a series of films about how and why a fantasy about terror was created and who it benefits. This story starts with two groups, American Neo-conservatives and the radical Islams. These idealists, born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world, have similar explanations for what caused that failure.

This screening is free and open to the public and the film is a appropriate for mature, adult audiences. Bring snacks to share if you wish. To reach the UU Church, head south on Madison, 1.9 miles past the Wal-Mart.

http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

On the Road in America is an occasional and serendipitous column about people, places and observations, with publishing predicated on the random availability of internet access or lack thereof.

Being On the Road in America can sometimes be a bore.

Oh, there’s a great deal of beauty to be seen, from the Green Mountains of Vermont to the rolling farmlands across Ohio, from the rugged Rockies and the dramatic coastline of California’s 17-mile drive. That’s not the issue.

As implied in Josh Neuman’s Lemmings (right) ,what is troubling is the growing lack of identity, of uniqueness, of individuality, as one moves from state to state. North, south, east or west makes not a whit of difference. Commerce in America is cloning itself at breakneck pace, mass-producing blueprints for hotels, motels, box stores, shopping malls and restaurants that increasingly lack a sense of their own identity and certainly have no ties to community heritage or culture.

I’m on the road again, as Willie Nelson would sing, and I am heading for one of the few bastions of non-traditional development — via the central midwest to the rural northeast, home of green mountains, clothing optional backwoods beaches, interstate bike paths, and those perpetual golden arches relegated to the outermost borders of some cities.

The “Main Street” of Norman Rockwell fame in Stockbridge MA (Pine is the cross street). Photo by Christine Anne Piesyk

Travelers seeking “something different” often have to search out small little “Main Streets” in small little cities and towns, taking that “road less traveled” literally, if they hope to find any sense of the individuality that America was once famous for. Yes, Norman Rockwell’s Main Street in Stockbridge remains essentially the same — I’ve had mulled cider at the Red Lion Inn there many times, and sat beside their fireplace with its chain of antique keys hanging from the mantle. Some small towns retain and cultivate their Main Streets specifically to draw in tourists and travelers with unique architecture and themes that either reflect their history or re-create themselves as a new destination, as a place people WANT to be. Paducah, Kentucky, just a few hours from Clarksville, has done this, and done it well, redefining itself and its development with art. Yet today, in most cases, moving from point to point across America is to journey through a litter of mass produced economy.

Day by day, America’s unique local vistas are being enveloped in rubber-stamped malls with the same rubber-stamped stores: JC Penney’s, Sears, Blockbuster, Circuit City, Best Buy, Avenue, Gap (and Baby Gap), Macy’s, Kohl’s, Fashion Bug, Foot Locker, and such. It’s not just the Smiths keeping up with the Jone’s anymore; we can’t tell the Smiths from the Joneses.

Not that you can’t find good merchandise or big sales in these stores; bulk buying and and blockbuster sales can produce great deals. It is the lack of uniqueness, the absence of originality and creativity, that quickly becomes boring. This lack of diversity in the cloning of America converts shoppers into clones of one another. My own take on this: if everybody has it, I don’t want it.

It’s the same with eateries; McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway (I do favor Subway), and Arby’s are epidemic. Applebees, Cracker Barrel, Pizza Hut, Ruby Tuesday, Chicago Pizza, Pizzaria Uno and others in a slightly higher price range are everywhere. When I travel, I don’t opt for a sure thing — I know what I have had. If I wanted more of the same I could stay home.

I deliberately seek out the non-chains, the mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall places where the locals eat, a long narrow diner, or a small country inn with unique menus and local foods. It’s why I’ve bought lobsters directly off the boat on Cape Cod, savored deep fried wild turkey tenders, Moose steak, caught my own 23 pound catfish on Lake Champlain, mulled over the taste of venison in a hunter’s stew in northern New England, and savored clam chowder on (again) Cape Cod.

It’s why I like those funky purple potatoes that now grow abundantly in Maine (I first tried them in the Andes of Peru), and the taste of Hadley (MA) asparagus fresh picked from the field. And then there is French Onion soup dressed with fresh apples, or sea scallops on the pier in Monterey Bay (CA). Or chunks of cheddar cheese cut off huge aged rounds (at the Granville Country Store in the Berkshires) as I watch.

Besides grabbing some locally grown fresh fruit for the road, Atkins Fruit Farm also has home-baked goods such as warm Apple Cider Donuts, pure Maple Syrup, and a selection of goodies from regional farms. (Photo by Christine Anne Piesyk.

Loca’Vore (commonly spelled “localvore”) is the Oxford University word of the year, a term coined in San Francisco that defines a commitment to consuming only foods grown within a hundred miles radius. Now that easier to achieve in some parts of the country than others, but where there is an abundance of local produce (including jams, jellies, breads, cheeses, meats) it is a also a strategy for supporting local growers and farmers in a local economy. The products used are always unique to the region. It’s what I look for wherever and whenever I travel. Long trips, regional trips, or just ambling around town.

As for chain hotels and motels, they assure a fairly certain standard of comfort, and for those who need that kind of security or standardization, by all means be their guest…but checking into Red Roof Inn is not half as much fun as walking through a small Canadian village pool hall, paying ten dollars for a third floor walk up room (upstairs from that French-speaking pool hall/country store/post office/feed store) — a fine old room with a bath down the hall, latched but not locked doors, handmade rag rugs, feather quilts and pillows on a an old iron bed and a view of the St. Lawrence River from my window. It is not the same as finding that little cluster of cottages with a lake view to the east and a mountain view to the west and home-cooked community meals with fellow fishermen on the great lakes. It’s not as good an seaside inn on the California coast. Or a rooming house in old Quebec City. Or any small locally owned motel or bed and breakfast.

Along America’s highways, the view is increasingly the same: Motel 6, Red Roof Inn, Hometown Suites, Holiday Inn (not from the Bing Crosby musical), Hyatt, … you get the idea. Get out that rubber stamp.

I see these cloned hotels, malls and eateries as dots on the corporate maps, bottom lines on the corporate profit statements, a push toward standardization that saps individuality from the highways and main streets of America communities, funneling the competition of small business into oblivion.

Don’t “reach out.” Hang up!

It’s hard for some people to get a handle on traveling without a cell phone, not having access to internet, not being connected. It’s hard for some to get a handle on not accessing “the familiar,” not constantly being able to “reach out and touch someone.” It’s hard for some to step back from the manic pace of modern living, to turn off the music and the television and simply be, or be silent. It’s hard for some to turn the key to a hotel or hostel or cabin door and commit themselves the unfamiliar. It’s hard for some to imagine the night without a backlit afterglow of streep lamps, to imagine that the only light on a moonless night comes from the stars, that there is such a thing as “nightblack” — a completely black night.

These cloned corporate chains, this connectedness to technology, this fierce need to be bigger, faster, better, and perpetually linked are ties that bind us to work and home, precluding the kind of getaways in which we really “get away.” It isolates us, and keeps us from experiencing something new. Something different. It keeps us from knowing ourselves, and getting to know the people in other parts of our world.

As I move about the country, I become increasingly determined (moving quickly into adamant) to skip the mainstream, refuse the redundant, and seek out those places and people I don’t know yet … but want to meet. I want to slow down long enough to experience the heritage, the local color and culture,the values, the texture and taste of community. No spoon-fed culture, thanks. I like that “road less traveled.”

We cannot and probably should not always retain or re-create yesterday’s atmosphere exactly as it was. We can take the best of our history, or traditions, our cultural quirks and with careful planning redefine them in a way that anchors us to our heritage and history while moving us forward. That heritage is what gives our cities and towns solidity, and a “destination”stamp that actually means something.

This New Orleans celebration of two performances of the award winning Vagina Monologues will feature Salma Hayek, Oprah Winfrey, Faith Hill, Jane Fonda, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Hudson, Glenn Close, Julia Stiles, Ali Larter, Sally Field, Marisa Tomei, Calpernia Addams, Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington, and musicians Common, Eve, and Charmaine Neville. See details and get tickets at: http://v10.vday.org/

Ensler has a big picture for vaginas. V-Day is a vision to see a world where women live safely and freely. The monologues speak openly about vagina stories that were collected from women. Ending violence against women is the driving force behind the production. Women don’t talk about their own sexuality; they don’t talk about what pleases them, and when raped, they don’t talk about that either. Most of the time, they think it was their fault that they were attacked and they walk around with the hidden fear and shame of it.

Being a victim of rape by a parent, Eve knows how difficult it is to come to terms with that kind of violation and the work it takes to feel safe in your own body again. Being silent about our own sexuality has not been helping women to avoid violence.

Ensler, who has traveled to Africa and all parts of the world to hear issues of female genital mutilation and violence, says, It’s not enough to keep helping every crisis that happens. We need to have a revolution and change the source of the problem. We need men to get behind it because women can’t pull it off just by themselves. We need to realize that every single culture gives permission to violence against women.

International Statistics: Violence against women and girls is widespread – one woman in three will experience violence during her lifetime, most often at the hands of someone she knows. (United Nations Population Fund, Sept. 2000 and summary).

The number of girls and women who have undergone female genital mutilation is estimated at between 100 and 140 million. It is estimated that each year, an additional 2 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM. (World Health Organization, Fact Sheet No. 241, June 2000)

Internationally, 2 million girls between ages 5 and 15 are introduced into the commercial sex market each year. (United Nations Population Fund, Sept. 2000 and summary)

According to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan, and in Punjab, a woman is raped every six hours and gang-raped every four days. (San Francisco Chronicle, July 2002) National Statistics: Approximately 1.9 million women are assaulted physically annually in the United States. That’s one woman every 15 seconds. (U.S. Dept. of Justice, 200) One of every seven victims of sexual assault reported to the participating law enforcement agencies were under age 6. (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996) Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 90 seconds. (U.S. Dept. of Justice, 2000)

On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the U.S. every day. (Bureau of Justice Report, “Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993-99,” Oct. 2001) Pregnancy or recently pregnant women are more likely to be the victims of homicide than to die of any other cause. (Journal of the American Medical Association, March 2001)

In this country, MTV continually flashes us images of females in ideal male sexual fantasy roles. Clarksville On Line publisher, Bill Larson, was able to obtain a copy and permission to post the controversial film trailer to Dreamworlds III here. This film shows women always wanting sex, not meaning it when they say no, not having real minds or feelings, they are lost without men and they are just bodies. This is the trailer that MTV does not want you to see. The context is shocking and not recommended for children.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Vagina Monologues, which is part of an organized response against violence toward women, are performed at Universities and institutions across the world, with permission from Eve Ensler and with the agreement that monies raised go to groups that help battered women.

For the seventh year running, the Vagina Monologues were performed in Clarksville on Feb 26th and 27th at APSU, and despite snow fall both nights, over 200 people came to see the performance.

Dr. Eichhorn teaches the Vagina Monologues class and she is passionate about women’s studies education. Shocking, funny, and empowering are the monologues, because they talk about a subject that is taboo, the vagina and women’s sexuality.

Proceeds from the Vday event went to the following non-profit organizations:

• Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee (931) 552-6656
• Rape and Sexual Abuse Center (931) 647-3632, Crisis hotline: 1-800-879-1999
• Safe House (931) 648-9100 and (931) 552-6900

In this year’s production at APSU: Director Carrye Beth Murray, Director Holly Lanham, Coordinator Carly Hatcher, Rebecca Hubbel, Rukiya Richmond, Bess Bedell, Ellie Renderos, Sienna Finney, Laura Boudrequx, Marcy Austin, Tinesha Lott, Jessica Axley, Tiffany Davis, Amanda Abbott, Alisa Lewis, Jessica Axley, Amber Gaulden, Nicolette Tomaszewski, Jamila Weaver, Erin McNealy, Liza Kurtz, Coordinator Debbie Boen, Shannon Woodward, Amanda Hudson, Danielle Beck, Optimum Robinson, Samantha Chew, Tonika Bell, Samantha Pearson

Unfortunately, this means Tennesseans often have to rely on news media sound bytes to obtain information about the candidates. However, since news media are businesses and therefore have as their proper goal the making of money, this often leaves viewers with precious little information about how the candidates would actually go about running the county and a disturbing amount about their private lives.

Let’s be honest, does it really matter than Barrack Obama has an Islamic heritage, that Hillary didn’t leave Bill, that Mitt Romney is Mormon or that John McCain allows his adult children to live their own lives?

With this in mind, the author has put together a series of articles about how the candidates stand on some of the hottest issues of today, from abortion to the Iraq war. With that in mind, there are a few necessary disclaimers. First, the author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to OnTheIssues for doing most of the leg work for these articles. Despite their sometimes apparent bias, their repository includes sources for its statements that allowed for easy backtracking to the original source to produce the truth. Secondly, the author wishes to note that the opinions and interpretations of the candidates and their stances on the issues are his own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Clarksville Online, its publisher, or any other member of its staff. Further, the author realizes that he has not included analysis on every possible candidate and at no point intends to do so.

An issue that has become recurring throughout recent political cycles has been that of abortion, with people holding positions from outright bans in all circumstances to completely unregulated abortion. Most politicians do not hold such extreme positions as a matter of political necessity, but there is a wide range in positions among the candidates in this election cycle. Generally Democrats are painted as supporting abortion while Republicans are stereotyped as being staunchly anti-abortion. However, the truth is that these labels are not entirely correct in the current field.

Barrack Obama surprised many with his victory in the Iowa caucuses. How does he feel about abortion, though? Obama believes very strongly in the woman’s right to choose. As the junior senator from Illinois, Obama voted against the partial birth abortion ban. Senator Obama also voted against the bill that would require parental notification for minors seeking abortions outside their home state. Obama advocates age appropriate sex education that includes information about family planning and contraceptive use. Senator Obama says he believes that women should be trusted to make their own decisions regarding abortion, but he also says that he extends the presumption of good faith to abortion protestors. Overall then, Barrack Obama has a very permissive attitude towards abortion in line with the hardcore liberal stance.

Hillary Clinton was the front-runner up until the first primary but had a very disappointing finish there. Mrs. Clinton has a somewhat more centrist view of abortion than Senator Obama that has changed somewhat over the years. Clinton’s failed 1993 national health care plan included the legality and widespread availability of RU-486 and traditional abortion procedures. She has also labored strongly to have the Contraceptive Plan B (the so-called “Morning After Pill”) placed on the market.

Clinton, however, has some consistency problems. Senator Clinton indicates that she supports the banning of late term abortion, but she voted against the Partial Birth Abortion Ban that included provisions for the life of the mother. Clinton also claims to support parental notification for minors seeking abortion, but she voted against that bill too. The Senator did, however, vote for a bill that would fund sex education including information on family planning. Clinton says she believes abortion should be safe, legal and rare. She supports the Cairo document, which claims abortion is a right but not a tool for family planning. Overall, Senator Clinton’s words would suggest someone with a more populist view of abortion supporting reasonable restrictions. However, her voting record is somewhat at odds with this and suggests that in practice she adheres more closely to the liberal line.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee kicks off the Republican side of the issue. Huckabee staunchly opposes abortion in any form. He says that states rights do not exist for moral issues such as abortion. The Governor says that he would ban all abortion if able and that no consensus with pro-choice advocates is possible as he believes that they want a fundamentally different world from pro-life advocates. Huckabee was part of the leadership that led Arkansas to passing a Human Life amendment to the state constitution expressly stating that life begins at conception.

Huckabee believes that it will be a good day for America when (not if) Roe v. Wade is overturned and until then, he has stated there should be no tax dollars for organizations that fund abortion. Governor Huckabee is also a staunch supporter of Woman’s Right to Know legislation. Governor Huckabee has criticized other Republicans for their stances claiming that hating but allowing abortion, stating that it’s like saying “I hate slavery, but people can go ahead and practice it.” Overall, Governor Huckabee is very consistently against abortion, in all circumstances. Mr. Huckabee takes the hardcore conservative line on abortion.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani takes a more populist view on abortion. Giuliani has stated that he would not sign a Federal ban on abortions. He believes that the government should not be involved and that the ultimate choice should be made by a woman and her health care providers. However, the former Mayor does support the Partial Birth Abortion Ban despite opposing parental notification requirements.

Mr. Giuliani, as Mayor, supported adoption and other alternatives to abortion in an effort to decrease the abortion rate by providing other suitable alternatives to having an abortion. As President, he says he would leave individual states to decide whether or not to fund abortion. He claims he would appoint constructionist judges, but that there would be no litmus test for any nominee he put forward. Overall, Giuliani takes the stand that abortion should remain legal, but that it can be reasonably regulated. His stance fits well with the populist line, although his stance on parental notification bucks that trend.

Senator McCain is the moderate conservative on abortion. Senator McCain said he was concerned about women undergoing dangerous and illegal procedures if the culture and views surrounding abortion were not changed before it was outlawed. Senator McCain believes that abortion is acceptable in cases of rape, incest or medical necessity as determined by a medical professional, and that the benefit of the doubt should be extended to a person claiming rape or incestuous pregnancy. Senator McCain claims that he wishes for Americans to work together to make Roe v. Wade and abortions irrelevant.

Senator McCain’s voting record supports this philosophy for the most part. McCain voted to strip tax money from organizations that support or perform abortions. Senator McCain also voted in favor of the Parental Notification bill and in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. He also voted yes on attaching a criminal penalty to harming an unborn fetus while committing a crime. Despite his claim of supporting alternative to abortion and seeking to make it irrelevant, however, Senator McCain did vote against funding for sex education that includes information on other family planning options as well as contraceptives. Overall Senator McCain has a mdoerate conservative view of abortion, which is fundamentally a view against abortion.

Other candidates generally fall into camp with one of those positions. John Edwards toes the Obama Clinton line. Mitt Romney professes to being roughly in line with Huckabee, although his sincerity on that point could be legitimately questioned given his pro-choice stance as Governor. Fred Thompson is very similar to Senator McCain in his views of abortion, although he opposed the parental notification bill and does include a litmus test for judges. Representative Ron Paul is the odd-man out for both parties, in keeping with his more libertarian mindset and his voting record could reasonably place him on both sides of the fence. However, Ron Paul appears to consistently take decisions that remove the Government from the realm of sex in general, including abortion, at any point in any fashion (he voted against both abstinence only AND comprehesive sex ed, for example) although he did support the partial birth abortion ban.

In a complex, exhaustive and highly entertaining documentary, The Corporation, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence.

Based on Bakan’s book, The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, The Corporation charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.

Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing. In addition, a Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are also interviewed.

A legal “Person”

In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal “person.” Imbued with a “personality” of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation’s rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth but at what cost? The remorseless rationale of “externalities” (as Milton Friedman explains, the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third) is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.

The pathology of commerce: Case histories

To assess the “personality” of the corporate “person,” a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social “personality”: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a “psychopath.”

Mindset

But what is the ethical mindset of corporate players? Should the institution or the individuals within it be held responsible? The people who work for corporations may be good people, upstanding citizens in their communities, but none of that matters when they enter the corporation’s world. As Sam Gibara, Former CEO and Chairman of Goodyear Tire, explains, “If you really had a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to do that suited your personal thoughts and your personal priorities, you’d act differently.”

Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, had an environmental epiphany and re-organized his $1.4 billion company on sustainable principles. His company may be a beacon of corporate hope, but is it an exception to the rule?

Monstrous obligations

A case in point: Sir Mark Moody-Stuart recounts an exchange between himself (at the time Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell), his wife, and a motley crew of Earth First activists who arrived on the doorstep of their country home. The protesters chanted and stretched a banner over their roof that read, “Murderers.” The response of the surprised couple was not to call the police, but to engage their uninvited guests in a civil dialogue, share concerns about human rights and the environment and eventually serve them tea on their front lawn. Yet, as the Moody-Stuarts apologize for not being able to provide soy milk for their vegan critics’ tea, Shell Nigeria is flaring unrivaled amounts of gas, making it one of the world’s single worst sources of pollution. And all the professed concerns about the environment do not spare Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists from being hanged for opposing Shell’s environmental practices in the Niger Delta.

The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world disasters can be profit centers. Carlton Brown, a commodities trader, recounts with unabashed honesty the mindset of gold traders while the twin towers crushed their occupants. The first thing that came to their minds, he tells us, was: “How much is gold up?”

Planet Inc.

You’d think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your DNA.

Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains from which they were previously barred.

Perception management

The Initiative Corporation spends $22 billion worldwide placing its clients’ advertising in every imaginable – and some unimaginable – media. One new medium: very young children. Their “Nag Factor” study dropped jaws in the world of child psychiatry. It was designed not to help parents cope with their children’s nagging, but to help corporations formulate their ads and promotions so that children would nag for their products more effectively. Initiative Vice President Lucy Hughes elaborates: “You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying your products. It’s a game.”

Today people can become brands (Martha Stewart). And brands can build cities (Celebration, Florida). And university students can pay for their educations by shilling on national television for a credit card company (Chris and Luke). And a corporation even owns the rights to the popular song “Happy Birthday” (a division of AOL-Time-Warner). Do you ever get the feeling it’s all a bit much?

Corporations have invested billions to shape public and political opinion. When they own everything, who will stand for the public good?

The price of whistleblowing

It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH, a controversial synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe and Canada) to rev up cows’ metabolism and boost their milk production. Because of the increased production, the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce people’s resistance to disease.

Fox demanded that they rewrite the story, and ultimately fired Akre and Wilson. Akre and Wilson subsequently sued Fox under Florida’s whistle-blower statute. They proved to a jury that the version of the story Fox would have had them put on the air was false, distorted or slanted. Akre was awarded $425,000. Then Fox appealed, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and Akre lost her award. [For an update on the case see Disc 2 where we learn that at one point, Jane and Steve became liable for Fox's $1.8 million court costs, later to be reduced to $200,000.]

Democracy LTD.

Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn’t understand. In fact, corporations have often tried to undo democracy if it is an obstacle to their single-minded drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to install a military dictator in the White House (undone by the integrity of one U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley Darlington Butler) to present-day law-drafting, corporations have bought military might, political muscle and public opinion.

And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of democracy’s absence either. One of the most shocking stories of the twentieth century is Edwin Black’s recounting IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany-one that began in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continued well into World War II.

Fissures

The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent, but since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising wave of networked individuals and groups have decided to make their voices heard. Movements to challenge the very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The corporate charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant Unocal; a groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata, California, put the corporate agenda in the public spotlight in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the population fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation brought in by their government to privatize the water system; in India nearly 99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the U.S. government’s patent on Neem was revoked.

As global individuals take back local power, a growing re-invigoration of the concept of citizenship is taking root. It has the power to not only strip the corporation of its seeming omnipotence, but to create a feeling and an ideology of democracy that is much more than its mere institutional version.

Who’s Who in The Corporation

• Jane Akre – Investigative reporter, fired by Fox News
• Ray Anderson – CEO, Interface, world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer
• Joe Badaracco - Prof. of Business Ethics, Harvard Business School
• Maude Barlow – Chairperson, Council of Canadians
• Mark Barry – Competitive intelligence professional
• Elaine Bernard – Director, Harvard Business School Labor Program
• Edwin Black – Author, IBM and the holocaust
• Carlton Brown – Commodities broker
• Noam Chomsky – Professor, M.I.T.
• Chris Barrett & Luke McCabe – “Corporately-sponsored“ students
• Peter Drucker – Management guru
• Dr. Samuel Epstein – Emeritus Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, U. of Illinois
• Andrea Finger – Spokesperson, Disney-built town of Celebration
• Milton Friedman – Nobel Prize-winning economist
• Sam Gibara – Chairman and former CEO, Goodyear Tire
• Richard Grossman – Co-founder, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
• Dr. Robert Hare, Ph.D. – Psychologist and FBI psychopath consultant
• Lucy Hughes - Vice President, Initiative Media
• Ira Jackson – Director, Center for Business & Government, Kennedy School, Harvard
• Charles Kernaghan – Director, National Labor Committee
• Robert Keyes – President and CEO, Canadian Council for International Business
• Mark Kingwell – Philosopher, cultural critic, author
• Naomi Klein – Author, No logo
• Tom Kline – Vice President, Pfizer Inc., world’s largest pharmaceutical corporation
• Chris Komisarjevsky – CEO, Burson Marsteller Worldwide
• Dr. Susan Linn – Prof. of Psychiatry, Baker Children’s Center, Harvard
• Robert Monks – Corporate governance advisor and shareholder activist
• Sir Mark Moody-Stuart – Former Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
• Michael Moore – Author, filmmaker
• Oscar Olivera – Leader, Coalition in Defense of Water and Life
• Jonathon Ressler – CEO, Big Fat Inc., undercover marketing specialist
• Jeremy Rifkin – President, Foundation on Economic Trends
• Dr. Vandana Shiva – Physicist, ecologist, feminist and seed activist
• Clay Timon – CEO, Landor and Associates, global branding specialists
• Michael Walker – Executive Director, Fraser Institute
• Robert Weissman – Editor, Multinational monitor
• Steve Wilson – Investigative reporter, fired by Fox News
• Irving Wladawsky-Berger – Vice President, Technology and Strategy, IBM Servers
• Mary Zepernick – Coordinator, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
• Howard Zinn – Historian and Author, A people’s history of the united states

The Filmmakers

Mark Achbar Producer, Director

Working for almost 30 years on films, videos and books, Mark Achbar endeavors, through media, to challenge apathy around issues of nuclear lunacy, poverty, media control, East Timor, human rights, the religious right, U.S. hegemony and corporate power.

Achbar is best known for Manufacturing consent: Noam Chomsky and the media, which he co-directed and co-produced with Peter Wintonick. The film was honored with 22 awards and distinctions, screened theatrically in 300 cities and aired on 30 national TV networks. The two-hour, 45-minute epic is the top-grossing feature documentary in Canadian history.

Achbar received a Gemini nomination for Best Writer on The Canadian conspiracy, a cultural/political satire for CBC and HBO’s Comedy Experiments. It won a Gemini for Best Entertainment Special and was nominated for an International Emmy. In 1999 Achbar worked with editor Jennifer Abbott to direct and produce Two brides and a scalpel: Diary of a lesbian marriage, the comi-tragic story of Canada’s first legally married same-sex couple. The film has played worldwide in festivals and has aired in Canada on Pride Vision TV and Knowledge Network.

Jennifer Abbott Director, Editor

Jennifer Abbott is a documentary maker, cultural activist and editor with a particular interest in producing media that shifts perspectives on problematic social norms and practices. In addition to co-directing and editing The Corporation, she produced, directed and edited A cow at my table, a feature documentary about meat, culture and animals, which won eight international awards.

Her other past works include the experimental short film and video installation about interracial relationships, Skinned, which toured North America and Europe including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Abbott has also edited numerous documentaries, installations and performance works including Two brides and a scalpel: Diary of a lesbian marriage, produced by Mark Achbar. She is the editor and a contributing writer for the book Making video “In”: The contested ground of alternative video on the west coast. She lives on Galiano Island.

Joel Bakan Writer/ Co-Creator

Author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power A lawyer, professor and writer, Joel Bakan has degrees from Oxford, Dalhousie and Harvard, and has received several honors and awards including a Rhodes Scholarship and a Governor General’s medal. His work critically examines the social, economic, and political dimensions of law, and he has published in leading academic journals as well as the popular press. Bakan’s book, Just words: Constitutional rights and social wrongs, was characterized as “cutting edge commentary by one of Canada’s rising intellectuals.”

Bakan’s most recent book The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power will be released by Penguin Canada in March 2004, and in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster. Co-creator (with Mark Achbar) of The Corporation, Bakan’s book was written during the making of the documentary and formed the basis of the research and writing for the film.

Watch The Corporation Online

The film makers offers an official download via streaming DIVX from Stage6. This requires that you have the free DIVX web player installed on your computer in order to play either of the two videos below.

Part 1

[Stage6 is no more, so this Stage6-hosted video cannot be displayed.]

Part 2

[Stage6 is no more, so this Stage6-hosted video cannot be displayed.]

Please consider buying the DVD or contributing to the filmmaker!

Learn more at http://www.thecorporation.com/

* Much of the content of this article was taken from the press materials provided by Zeitgeist films.

By probing the homicide of an innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, the film exposes a worldwide policy of detention and interrogation that condones torture and the abrogation of human rights. This disturbing and often brutal film is the most incisive examination to date of the Bush Administration’s willingness, in its prosecution of the “war on terror,” to undermine the essence of the rule of law. The film asks and answers a key question: what happens when a few men expand the wartime powers of the executive to undermine the very principles on which the United States was founded.

Incorporating rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, and interviews with former government officials such as John Yoo, Alberto Mora and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, interrogators, prison guards, New York Times reporters Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall (who wrote the first stories about the homicides in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan) and the families of tortured prisoners, the film dissects the progression of the Administration’s policy on torture from the secret role of key administration figures, such as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and others to the soldiers in the field.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the face of thousands of prisoners passing through the system, an astonishing number of admitted homicides, and a hastily drafted law – the Military Commissions Act – that retroactively grants immunity to government officials for crimes against humanity while denying the fundamental right of habeas corpus to others, forces us to ask why, in the face of so much evidence of the ineffectiveness of cruelty as a means of obtaining information, we sought to insist on its use? Have we, by pursuing such ruthless means, lost the moral high ground in the war on terror and made ourselves less safe? Even more important, have we compromised our own sense of humanity, our democratic values and our effectiveness as a world leader?

MPAA Controversy

The MPAA unleashed a storm of controversy due to it’s refusal to allow the use a a movie poster showing a hooded detainee being lead off into the distance by two soldiers. They described it as being “not suitable for all audiences.”

According to ThinkFilm, which produced the documentary, the MPAA objected to the “image of the hood.” Last year, the MPAA also censored the poster for the documentary The Road to Guantanamo, because it showed a detainee “hanging by his handcuffed wrists, with a burlap sack over his head and a blindfold tied around the hood.” – Think Progress

A spokesman for the MPAA said: “We treat all films the same. Ads will be seen by all audiences, including children. If the advertising is not suitable for all audiences it will not be approved by the advertising administration.” But with the following posters having been approved for all audiences…

It leads me to believe that the actual reason might be more political. Take a look at the following movies posters which were rejected, compare the posters below with the posters above. Which do you think should have been rejected?

The only reason seems to be is, that the movies they are for are critical of the Bush Administration.

About the Production

“We also have to work through…the dark side…it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.” - Vice President Dick Cheney to Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” (2001)

Taxi to the Dark Side, The latest prize-winning documentary from Oscar-nominee Alex Gibney, confirms his standing as one of the foremost non-fiction filmmakers working today. A stunning inquiry into the suspicious death of an Afghani taxi driver at Bagram air base in 2002, the film is a fastidiously assembled, uncommonly well-researched examination of how an innocent civilian was apprehended, imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately murdered by the greatest democracy on earth. By using documents and records of the incident with candid testimony from eyewitnesses and participants, the film uncovers an inescapable link between the tragic incidents that unfolded in Bagram and the policies made at the very highest level of the United States government in Washington, D.C. Combining the cool detachment of a forensic expert with the heated indignation of a proud American who holds his country to a high standard, Gibney’s stunning film reveals how the Bush administration has systematically betrayed the very ideals it professes to uphold.

Gibney first got the idea for Taxi to the Dark Side from the men who would eventually go on to serve as the executive producers of the project. “The idea of doing a film on torture was brought to me – separately – by Don Glascoff, Sid Blumenthal, and Rob Johnson,” he says. “Once I took on the assignment, with the urging of my father, I went looking for a story that could carry the burden of the subject.” He first came upon the story of Dilawar, the Afghan cab driver who died while in custody at Bagram prison, in a New York Times article by Tim Golden and, before long, he realized that this was the central story he had been searching for.

“I think that the subject of corruption unites my films,” says Gibney. “‘Enron’ was about economic corruption, and TAXI is about the corruption of the rule of law. Both are about the corruption of character—how good people can end up doing very bad things. ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ fits into this model as well. I also tend to make films about perps rather than victims. It is true that Dilawar – a true innocent victim – is at the heart of the story of TAXI. But the thematic subject of the film is an investigation into how a small number of Americans took our nation to the ‘dark side.’”

Having found his subject, Gibney wisely chose not to approach it journalistically but, rather, to give it the more classically cinematic structure of a whodunit. “I think of every one of my films as a kind of detective story,” he says. “Detectives – or private eyes – are truth seekers who often discover things they didn’t expect. Putting that process at the heart of the narrative gives my films a kind of momentum, I think. ‘Enron’ was a ‘heist film;’ TAXI is a murder mystery.” And, Gibney observes, once the murder is solved, as in all true murder mysteries, you understand who was responsible. “But,” he continues, “like the best murder mysteries of, say, Raymond Chandler, TAXI is not merely a whodunit. The movie is really about the mood, the atmosphere surrounding the murder, and ‘how and why’ the murder was committed.” Obviously, in TAXI, the mystery as to who killed Dilawar is important, but far more important says Gibney, “is understanding the ‘dark side’ and how this Administration took us there with the ease of a late night taxicab ride across Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.”

Like a latter-day Sam Spade, Gibney hunted down dozens of potential witnesses in order to figure out all of the “who’s,” “how’s,” and “why’s” of the Dilawar case. “For films like this,” he stresses, “it is critical to get ‘inside’ the story. You don’t want experts; you want participants. I went in search of anyone who was at Bagram during the time Dilawar was imprisoned there –prisoners, guards, and interrogators. I also went in search of lawyers for detainees, the architects of the Administration policy, dissidents in the Administration, military officers, etc. In the end we did obtain interviews with some interrogators who questioned Dilawar, and some MPs who were directly responsible for his homicide. This was particularly difficult, but I think our quest was aided by the fact that these men really wanted to talk about what had happened, and they were bitter that they were being prosecuted when the men and women who ordered them to commit crimes were barely even investigated, much less prosecuted.”

While some of these people surprised Gibney with their willingness to talk, others whose testimony might have been very helpful to the “case” would not. “Carolyn Wood has consistently refused to be interviewed by anyone,” he says. “She’s not a high-ranking officer, but her testimony would reveal much about the way the Bush Administration conducted its interrogation and detention policies.” He continues, “I also tried to talk to other Administration officials who declined to be interviewed. The more that is revealed about this story, the more it makes sense why most Administration officials didn’t want to speak: they are concerned that they may be prosecuted for what they have done. A few dissident voices – like Jack Goldsmith, who declined to talk to me – have come forward more recently. One of the things that struck me was that many of the fiercest critics of the Administration (including those like Alberto Mora and Lawrence Wilkerson, who did speak to me) were conservative republicans. This story was not about left and right,” Gibney learned, “it was about right and wrong.”

In addition to interviews, Gibney unearthed photographs, videotapes and documents – particularly from the mysterious Bagram prison – that have never been seen before. And the videotape of the senior JAG officer in Afghanistan acknowledging a defacto policy of knee strikes that, according to the Army coroner, “pulpified” Dilawar’s legs, is a cathode ray vision of the banality of evil.

When a director plays detective in this fashion, there will not only be discoveries, digressions, and disappointments, there will also be difficulties. “The problem with this approach in a documentary,” observes Gibney, “is that the story has to be rewritten constantly in the cutting room. I find that the best documentaries end up being structured like good fiction films. But, this is very hard to do in practice, because the ‘script’ of a documentary is written during and after shooting.” Gibney also finds that the story he is trying to tell is often at odds with his key thematic concerns. “I always want to include key ideas,” he notes, “and am frustrated when they seem to get in the way of the story. So, there’s a tension in the cutting room. At some point, on every film, the evolving story seems to raise its head and demands to be given its due. When I don’t listen to that insistent voice, I usually do so at my peril.”

Gibney’s persistence in finding the perfect form for his material, and his desire to match the structure and narrative drive of a fiction feature to non-fiction material, makes Taxi to the Dark Side stand apart from other documentaries covering similar subject matter. It is interesting to note that, though Gibney served as executive producer on Charles Ferguson’s “No End in Sight,” providing guidance on key production and story issues, TAXI has a look that is very different from that and all of the so-called ‘Iraq films.’ Gibney cites as his unexpected chief stylistic influences a number of filmmakers who worked in dramatic films. “I love Sergio Leone,” he says, adding that “Once Upon a Time in the West” is a favorite film – for stylistic reasons – and that “the title sequence in TAXI – with its middle eastern ‘western’ look – is my doc nod to Sergio.” Other favorites are Luis Bunuel, Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Kurosawa (“High and Low” makes me think of “Enron,” he notes), and Jacques Tourneur’s intricately strucured noir thriller, “Out of the Past.” Even his non-fiction preferences are as notable for their groundbreaking form as for their significant subject matter: The Maysles’ “Gimme Shelter,” Marcel Ophuls’ “The Sorrow and the Pity,” and Alain Resnais’ “Night and Fog” (“Anyone who thinks narration doesn’t belong in docs,” he says, “should watch ‘Night and Fog!”).

Many politically-urgent documentaries are being made these days, but Alex Gibney is one of few practitioners of the genre who values timelessness as much as timeliness. He notes that “TAXI is not an ‘Iraq film.’ It’s not really about the war in Iraq, though we do include some materials and stories about it. Rather, the film is about GWOT, the acronym the Bush Administration uses to describe its ‘Global War on Terror.’ But, in a more fundamental sense, it’s not really about that either; it’s really about the American character and whether we have become something rather different from what we imagine ourselves to be.”

Acknowledging that for Taxi to the Dark Side to be of lasting quality, it must speak to audiences both now and decades from now, Gibney concludes, “In the here and now, I want viewers to get mad and make our leaders accountable for the damage they have done. Over the long haul, I hope TAXI will stand as cautionary tale of how people and their society can be corrupted by fear and rage. While I hope it will be seen as utterly irrelevant twenty years from now, I don’t think it will be.”

Here are some of the interviewees:

PFC. Willie Brand

Willie Brand was a MP Guard at Bagram Air Force Base, a detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan. Brand faced court martial for his role in the deaths of detainees Dilawar and Habibullah at Bagram. In his trial, Brand and his attorney spoke out about what they considered a lack of necessary training and clear rules for MP’s. Brand was convicted by a military jury of assault, maltreatment, maiming and making a false official statement. He was given a reduction in rank and pay to private.

Special Agent Jack Cloonan, Ret.

An FBI special agent from 1977 to 2002, Cloonan started working Al Qaeda cases in the mid-1990s. Cloonan, an advocate of the FBI’s humane methods of interrogation, cultivated former Al Qaeda operatives Jamal al-Fadl and Ali Mohammed as cooperative sources in the years before 9/11. Cloonan also interrogated Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who ran an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and who was one of the highest-ranking Al Qaeda operatives captured in the first months of the war in Afghanistan.

Now in the private sector, Cloonan is President of Clayton Consultants. Since retiring from the FBI, Cloonan has also served as a counter-terrorism consultant and commentator for ABC News.

SPC. Damien Corsetti

Corsetti, a Military Intelligence soldier in Bagram and Abu Ghraib, was given the nickname “Monster,” and “King of Torture” by soldiers in his unit, and was allegedly called upon by other interrogators to frighten prisoners using the interrogation technique known as “Fear up, harsh.” Other detainees, such as Moazzam Begg, describe Corsetti as a sympathetic interrogator who never engaged in abuse, and was helpful in enduring detention. As part of the Army’s investigation into prisoner abuse at Bagram, Corsetti was charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, assault and performing an indecent act with another person. Corsetti was later found not guilty of all charges.

Carlotta Gall

Carlotta Gall is a New York Times correspondent based in Kabul, assigned to cover Afghanistan and Western Pakistan. She has been covering the Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgency from the start, and led a journalistic investigation into the cause and culpability of the death of the 22-year-old Afghan detainee Dilawar.

Tim Golden

Tim Golden is an investigative reporter for the New York Times and a writer for the New York Times Magazine. Prior to joining the Times’ staff he worked for the Miami Herald and United Press International. He was a member of the Times team that won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for articles about drug corruption in Mexico. While working at the Miami Herald, he shared a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for stories on the Iran-Contra affair. Golden, along with Carlotta Gall, reported on the prisoner abuse of Dilawar and other detainees in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Scott Horton

Scott Horton a New York based attorney working international law, human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School, and is a life-long human rights advocate. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on
terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.

SPC. Tony Lagouranis

Spc. Lagouranis was a U.S. Army interrogator from 2001 to 2005, and served a tour of duty in Iraq from January 2004 to January 2005. He was first stationed at Abu Ghraib; in that spring he joined a special intelligence gathering task force that moved among detention facilities around the country. There, he learned first hand about the “culture of abuse” permeating interrogations throughout Iraq. Lagouranis is one of a number of Iraq War veterans who have provided first hand accounts of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military. Other U. S. military personnel have described torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners while shielding their identities. His book, “Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey through Iraq” will be published in June 2007.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)

Carl Levin is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he was an early and consistent advocate of efforts to prepare the American military to combat terrorism and other emerging threats of the post-Cold War world. The National Guard Association of the United States presented Senator Levin with its 2004 Harry S. Truman Award for distinguished service in support of national defense. The award cited Levin’s “long-standing, diligent and impassioned commitment on the readiness, morale and welfare of our military forces, their families and the modernization of our armed forces.” To ensure accountability in the intelligence community, Senator Levin has continued to press the Bush administration to clarify which intelligence entity is responsible for specific intelligence objectives.

Alberto Mora

In December 2002, Alberto J. Mora, then general counsel of the United States Navy, was alerted by Navy investigators to reports that detainees held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay were being subjected to cruel and unlawful interrogation practices. Mora, whose civilian position accorded him a rank equal to that of a four-star general, soon came to learn that the cruel and abusive practices of United States military interrogators at Guantanamo were the result of significant policy shifts at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Over the next three years, Mora waged a campaign inside the Bush Administration to prevent military and civilian leaders from codifying any policy that might implicitly or explicitly sanction the mistreatment of Guantanamo detainees as part of the war on terror. For his moral courage and his commitment to upholding American values, Alberto Mora was honored with the 2006 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Tom Wilner

Wilner, once a schoolmate of Al Gore’s at Washington’s prestigious St. Albans School and a fraternity brother of George W. Bush’s at Yale, is now a managing partner at Shearman & Sterling, LLP. He heads their International Trade and Global Relations Practice. Wilner has represented the human rights cases of a several Kuwaiti citizens detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since May 2002.

John Yoo

Yoo joined the Boalt Hall faculty at Berkeley in 1993, then clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96. From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he helped author a series of memos that have come to be known informally as “The Torture Memos.”

Professor Yoo has received the Paul M. Bator Award for excellence in legal scholarship and teaching from the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy. He has testified before the judiciary committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and has advised the State of California on constitutional issues.

Director Alex Gibney’s Statement

“Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now… “ – Henry Miller

Only six weeks before he died last year, my father, a journalist and author named Frank Gibney, asked me to get my video camera. He wanted me to unhook him from the oxygen machine so that he could speak to me about the film that I was trying to make about torture and the war on terror. My father had been a Naval interrogator in World War II. He questioned Japanese prisoners on Okinawa, one of the bloodiest battles of the war and had risked his life trying to persuade some of those soldiers to leave the caves from which they were launching futile last-ditch suicide missions. (Years later, bathed in the rippling neon lights of downtown Tokyo, he would introduce me to some of those former prisoners over bottles of sake in a neighborhood sushi bar.)

But on this day in Santa Barbara, overlooking the ocean on which he had sailed into battle 60 years earlier, my father was very angry at the ongoing revelations of how, in the so-called “Global War on Terror (GWOT)” American soldiers had tortured prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and in various secret sites around the world. His fury was directed at some of the top officials in the Bush Administration – George W. Bush himself, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld (whom he knew slightly) and Alberto Gonzales – who had invented and rationalized a new policy of “coercive interrogation techniques” as the only way to combat a unique, new terrorist threat from enemies brutal enough to turn commercial airliners into suicide planes.

But my father had been there before. In the waning days of the Pacific War, the Japanese had shown us the “kamikaze” – literally “wind of God” – a wave of pilots who, like the Islamic terrorists many years later, turned their airplanes into suicide bombs. Yet, in interrogating these supposedly fanatical Japanese prisoners, my father and his fellow interrogators – all of whom had extensive language training, unlike most of the interrogators in the GWOT – discovered that most of the prisoners were not so different from their interrogators. They had wives, children and dreams of a better future for themselves and their families. More important to the military mission, they were rather free with information and provided important intelligence once they had established a rapport with their interrogators. It never occurred to my father to ask for permission to employ some of the brutal techniques that the Japanese had used against our soldiers.

“Why,” I asked. “Well,” he said, “because we didn’t need to and because we thought our principles gave us a strength that our enemy didn’t have.” He was furious at the Bush Administration because he felt that, in condoning techniques like water-boarding that had once been employed by the Spanish Inquisition, they had sacrificed the very principles we were supposed to be defending. The rule of law, he told me, is what we thought we were fighting for. “It’s what made us different,” he said. He despaired that, to wage a war on terror, we were taking on the values of the terrorists. “It’s got to stop,” he said.

This film is dedicated to my father – his righteous anger and his sense of possibility. Through him, I discovered that the issue of “torture” is not really about interrogation techniques. It is about a pandemic of corruption that ensues when the rule of law is weakened. He taught me that torture is like a virulent virus – spreading, mutating, building resistance to attempts to stop it – that infects everything in its path. It haunts the psyche of the soldier who administers it; it corrupts the officials who look the other way; it discredits the information obtained from it; it weakens the evidence in a search for justice, and it strengthens a despotic strain that takes hold in men and women who run hot with a peculiar patriotic fever: believing that, because they are “pure of heart,” they are entitled to be above the law.

- Alex Gibney, filmmaker

TIMELINE

1955

• Jul. 6, 1955 – Senate unanimously gave its advice and consent to the ratification of the Geneva Conventions

1990

• Oct. 27, 1990 – Senate unanimously gave its advice and consent to the ratification of the Convention Against Torture, article 2(1) of which obligated the United States to “take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.”

1994

• US ratifies UN Convention Against Torture.

• While the U.S. Senate ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) on October 27, 1990, President Clinton did not deposit the United States instrument of ratification of the Convention with the United Nations Secretary General until October 21, 1994. The United States’ obligations under the Convention Against Torture took effect 30 days later, on November 20, 1994.

1996

• The US Congress passes the War Crimes Act. The law defines a war crime to include a “grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.” The law applies if either the victim or the perpetrator is a national of the United States or a member of the U.S. armed forces. The penalty may be life imprisonment or death.

Ten years later, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention applied to the War on Terrorism, with the unstated implication that any interrogation techniques that violated Common Article 3 constituted War Crimes.

The text of Common Article Three: “…the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever…”

• Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

• Taking of hostages;

• Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

• The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

2001

• Aug. 4, 2001 – US refuses entry to Mohamed al-Qahtani at Orlando Airport by an immigration official and deports al-Qahtani back to Dubai

• Sept. 25, 2001 – John Yoo writes memo stating President has “broad constitutional powers” for waging war.

• Oct. 7, 2001 – U.S. invades Afghanistan

• Oct., 2001 – Dick Cheney visits CIA to try to get legal opinion allowing greater latitude for coercive interrogation. CIA Gen. Counsel does not give Cheney the decision he wants.

• Nov. 6, 2001 – Office of Legal Counsel’s Patrick Philbin sends 35-page confidential memo to Alberto Gonzales saying the president has “inherent authority” to establish military commissions. It also says that trying terrorists under the laws of war “does not mean that terrorists will receive the protections of the Geneva Conventions or the rights that laws accord to lawful combatants.”

• Nov. 10, 2001 – While senior military JAGs are preparing a response to the draft military order, at the White House, Cheney, Ashcroft, Haynes and White House lawyers have their own meeting (according to the NY Times, Cheney advocated withholding the draft from Rice and Powell).

• November 11, 2001 – Capture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi in Pakistan.

• Nov. 13, 2001 – Bush signs an Executive Order authorizing the Defense Secretary to hold non U.S. citizens in indefinite detention. The Military Order: “Detention, Treatment and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in War Against Terror” authorizes detention and trial by military commissions that should not be subject to principles of law and rules of evidence recognized by US courts or the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

• Dec., 2001 – Capture of Mohamed al-Qahtani in Afghanistan

• Dec. 16, 2001 – Rumsfeld visits Afghanistan.

• Dec. 19, 2001 – Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi transferred to US control at Bagram Air Force base. FBI agents begin questioning him. But the FBI refuses to use any “coercive interrogation techniques.” According to FBI Agent Jack Cloonan, the interrogation produces information regarding Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui. Despite this progress, at the request of George Tenet, the Bush Administration decides to transfer al-Libi to the custody of the CIA. (see January 2002 below.)

• Dec. 28, 2001 – Patrick Philbin (Deputy Asst. Attorney General) and John Yoo write memo on habeas corpus and Guantanamo (federal district court could not properly exercise habeas jurisdiction over an aliens detained at GBC).

• Late 2001 – Pres. Bush signs top-secret finding authorizing DOD to set up Special Access Program (SAP) known to only a few high-level folks to kidnap or assassinate terror suspects or rendition them to sympathetic nations for more “coercive” interrogation.

2002

• January 2002 – US sends Mohamed al-Qahtani to Guantanamo.

• January 2002 – In Bagram, CIA agents wrap Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi up in duct tape and put him in a plywood box “for his own protection,” according to FBI agent Jack Cloonan. Al-Libi is sent to Cairo. After being “waterboarded,” al-Libi “confesses” that Iraq had given al-Qaeda training in bomb-making and poison gas. This supposed link between al-Qaeda and Iraq will become part of Colin Powell’s speech to the UN that laid the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq. Al-Libi will later claim that this link was part of a “false confession” obtained through torture. The CIA will confirm that al-Libi’s testimony about the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda was false.

• Jan. 9, 2002 – John Yoo writes memo stating Geneva Conventions (as well as all international and US laws) do not apply to Al Qaeda and Taliban.

• Jan. 11, 2002 – William H. Taft responds to Yoo memo, calling Yoo’s opinions “seriously flawed.”

• Jan. 11, 2002 – First group of 20 detainees arrive at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo.

• Jan. 18, 2002 – Bush decides that detainees who are classified as terrorists (soon to be classified as “unlawful combatants”) are disqualified from prisoner of war protection under the Geneva conventions.

• Jan. 19, 2002 – Rumsfeld memo declares Al Qaeda and Taliban not prisoners of war under Geneva Conventions.

• Jan. 22, 2002 – Jay Bybee authors memo stating Geneva doesn’t apply to al Qaeda and Bush has constitutional authority to “suspend our treaty obligations toward Afghanistan.”

• Jan. 22, 2002 – At the request of Alberto Gonzales, Pentagon lawyers direct INTEL officers at Gitmo to fill out a one-page form for each prisoner certifying the president’s “reason to believe” their involvement with terrorism. Within weeks, INTEL officers say that they don’t even have enough evidence on most prisoners to complete the forms.

• Jan. 25, 2002 – In memo to Bush, Gonzales refers to aspects of Geneva Conventions as “quaint.” He acknowledged that scrapping GC could cause “widespread condemnation” from other countries and increase the likelihood that U.S. servicemen would be mistreated. Mr. Gonzales calls the campaign against terrorism “a new kind of war” that makes certain provisions of the Geneva Convention “obsolete.”

• Jan. 26, 2002 – Colin Powell writes a memo to Gonzales that asks the administration to reconsider its decision that Al Qaeda and Taliban members are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status, saying that doing so would “reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice … and undermine the protections of the laws of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general.”

• Jan. 27, 2002 – Four U.S. senators accompany Rumsfeld to Guantanamo: Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

• Early 2002 – Don Guter (Navy Judge Advocate General) has meeting with Haynes and says, according to NY Times’s Tim Golden: “we need more information.” “No you don’t,” says Haynes.

• Early 2002 – Documents and interviews reveal that, regarding “enemy combatants,” Gonzales, David Addington and Tim Flanigan argued against presumption of innocence and participation of civilian lawyers.

• Feb. 1, 2002 – Ashcroft writes memo to Pres. Bush stating Geneva Conventions do not apply to Taliban or al Qaeda.

• Feb. 2, 2002 – In memo to White House Counsel Gonzales, Taft argues that Geneva Conventions do apply.

• Feb. 7, 2002 – Bush issues a directive defining Taliban and al Qaeda captives as “unlawful combatants,” not prisoners of war and states the “war against terror ushers in a new paradigm”

• Feb. 21, 2002 – Federal judge dismisses a challenge to the detentions.

• Feb. 27, 2002 – 1st hunger strike at Guantanamo (to protest a rule against turbans, U.S. officials decide to allow turbans).

• Mar., 2002 – Gen. Dunlavey (in charge of Guantanamo) flies to Afghanistan and Kuwait

• Mar. 21, 2002 – Guantanamo Administrators still don’t have evidence on Guantanamo detainees, so DOD indicates that they will hold them indefinitely as “enemy combatants.”

• May 2002 – FBI agents begin to complain about treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. Complaints put in writing and relayed to Haynes at DOD.

• Jul., 2002 – 519th MI company is sent to Bagram. Capt. Carolyn Wood is the officer in charge. According to Emily Bazelon, Wood rewrote interrogation policy to include more “aggressive” techniques.

• Jul., 2002 – Gitmo officials realize that al-Qahtani – now in custody at Guantanamo – may be the man intended to be the 20th highjacker. More intensive interrogation begins.

• Late summer 2002 – CIA analyst travels to Guanatnamo to find out why so little useful intelligence is being obtained. After interviewing 30 prisoners, “he came back convinced that they were committing war crimes in Guantanamo.” (Hersh Chain of Command) His report – Highly Classified – showed how badly prisoners were treated and how recklessly they had been captured, without regard to real intelligence value.

• Aug., 2002 – 377th MP Unit sent to Bagram.

• Aug. 1, 2002 – The “torture memo”, authored by Jay Bybee and John Yoo, declares that “certain acts may be cruel, inhuman, or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within Section 2340” [of convention against torture, which bans cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment]

• Fall 2002 – General John Gordon reads the report and is very “troubled,” believing that “it was totally out of character with the American value system” and that it posed dangers for US soldiers if captured. (Hersh, COC)

• Oct. 11, 2002 – Memo from Guantanamo Administrators requesting expanded interrogation techniques travels up chain of command to Rumsfeld.

• Oct. 25, 2002 – Commander General James Hill sends memo to Gen. Myers. Hill says he is “uncertain whether all the techniques in the third category [there are three categories of techniques in the request to Rumsfeld] are legal under US law…”

• Nov., 2002 – Gen. Miller given command of Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay.

• Nov. 23, 2002 – An approved “special interrogation plan” for Detainee 063 (Mohammed al-Qahtani) begins. The beginning of the interrogation log is 10 days prior to the official approval of expanded techniques by Donald Rumsfeld (see below).

• Nov. 27, 2002 – In response to a request for expanded interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, Haynes advises Rumsfeld to apply only Category I & II and “non-injurious physical conduct” of III.

• Nov. 30, 2002 – Detainee Habibullah arrives at Bagram

• Late 2002 – General John Gordon gets meeting with Rice and Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld said he would “look into” the issue of detainee abuse.

• Dec. 2, 2002 – Rumsfeld approves techniques in Haynes’ 11/27 memo (these techniques include: stress positions, isolation, use of hoods, removal of clothing, use of detainees’ individual phobias).

• Dec. 3, 2002 – Detainee Habibullah dies at Bagram

• Dec. 5, 2002 – Detainee Dilawar arrives at Bagram

• Dec. 10, 2002 – Detainee Dilawar dies at Bagram

• Dec. 17, 2002 – Navy General Counsel General Alberto Mora learns of abuse at Guantanamo

2003

• Jan. 11, 2003 – Aggressive interrogation of al-Qahtani stops

• Jan. 15, 2003 – After opposition to interrogation techniques by military lawyers – particularly Alberto Mora – Rumsfeld rescinds permission to use previously approved II & III techniques during Guantanamo interrogations, and approves them only on a case by case basis. Rumsfeld also convenes working group to assess legal policy and operational issues related to detainees.

• Mar. 6, 2003 – Working Group Report recommends taking Geneva Conventions into account but determines that Taliban detainees do not qualify as prisoners of war and that Geneva Conventions do not apply to anyone at Guantanamo. However, the working group also says that the US is bound to Torture Convention the of 1994 (as long as it is in accord with constitutional amendments 5, 8 &14).

• Mar. 20, 2003 – U.S. invades Iraq

• Apr. 4, 2003 – The working group argues that it may be necessary to interrogate detainees “in a manner beyond that which may be applied to a prisoner of war who is subject to Geneva Conventions.” Report details defenses for use of torture and legal technicalities that can be used to “create a good faith defense against prosecution.”

• June 2003 – Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski is named commander of all military prisons in Iraq

• Jul. 6, 2003 – Joseph Wilson reveals that the central reason for going to war – WMD – was false.

• July, 2003 – 519th MI Co. – with Carolyn Wood still in charge – is sent to Abu Ghraib.

• Aug. 31 – Sep. 9, 2003 – General Miller visits Abu Ghraib to “gitmoize” Iraq detention and interrogation operations.

• Sep. 10, 2003 – Chaplain James Yee is arrested.

• Dec. 3, 2003 – Australian detainee David Hicks is first prisoner Guantanamo to be given a lawyer.

• Dec. 4, 2003 – Rumsfeld visits Afghanistan.

• Dec. 6, 2003 – Rumsfeld makes a surprise visit to troops in Iraq.

2004

• Jan. 13, 2004 – MP Joseph Darby, gives army investigators a disk containing photos showing Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. The Pentagon is informed.

• Jan. 2004 – Rumsfeld learns of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, tells Bush shortly after.

• Jan.16, 2004 – US Central Command issues five-sentence press release about investigation into mistreatment of prisoners. Rumsfeld claims this is when he first learned of abuses.

• Jan. 19, 2004 – Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski is formally admonished and quietly suspended.

• Jan. 19, 2004 – Gen. Sanchez orders investigation into Abu Ghraib.

• Feb. 23, 2004 – Rumsfeld visits Iraq.

• Feb.26, 2004 – Taguba report completed. It notes that, from Oct. to Dec. 2003, there were “sadistic, blatant and wanton crimnal abuses” at Abu Ghraib.

• Mar. 22, 2004 – Miller is appointed Deputy Commander for Detainee Operations, Combined Joint Task Force – 7/Multinational Force – Iraq.

• Apr. 9, 2004 – Article 32 Hearing (military equivalent of a Grand jury) for Sergeant Frederick.

• Apr. 20, 2004 – Supreme Court hears arguments on the Guantanamo detentions.

• May 13, 2004 – Rumsfeld visits Abu Ghraib prison.

• Jun. 22, 2004 – Haynes assures press that no prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan or Cuba had been tortured.

• Jun. 28, 2004 – In Rasul v Bush decision, the Supreme Court rules that Guantanamo detainees can challenge their captivity in federal courts.

• Jul. 7, 2004 – Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora sends memo to Vice Admiral Church that details his attempts to halt administration policy on detainees.

• Jul. 30, 2004 – The first hearings begin for the Pentagon created Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), a non-judicial process to assess value and danger of detainees.

• Aug. 30, 2004 – Pentagon permits lawyer Gitanjali Guiterrez to meet detainees Begg, and Abassi for habeas corpus suits

• Nov. 10, 2004 – Bush administration nominates Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General.

• Dec. 30, 2004 – Deputy Attorney General James Comey disavows Bybee torture memo

2005

• Jan. 6, 2005 – Gonzales confirmation hearings begin.

• Feb. 3, 2005 – Gonzales is sworn in as Attorney General

• May 16, 2005 – Sgt. Anthony Morden is charged with 1 count assault and 2 counts of dereliction of duty. Later Morden is sentenced to 75 days in prison, reduced in rank to private, and given a bad conduct discharge.

• May 16, 2005 – Sgt. Selena Salcedo is charged with dereliction of duty and assault. Later reduced in rank, fined $1000 and given letter of reprimand.

• Aug. 17, 2005 – Pfc. Willie Brand is convicted of assault, maiming, maltreatment, and making a false official statement. He is reduced in rank to private.

• Aug. 24, 2005 – Spc. Glendale Walls pleads guilty to dereliction of duty and assault. He is later sentenced to 2 months in prison, reduced in rank to private and a given bad-conduct discharge.

• Sep. 27, 2005 – Lynndie England is sentenced to 3 yrs in jail.

• Sep. 29, 2005 – Sgt. Duane Grubb pleads not guilty to charges of assault, maltreatment and making false official statement. Grubb is later acquitted.

2006

• Jan. 6, 2006 – Charged of dereliction of duty and making a false official statement against Capt. Christopher Beiring are dropped. He is given a written reprimand for dereliction of duty.

• Jun. 1, 2006 – Pfc. Damien Corsetti is acquitted of dereliction of duty, maltreatment, assault, wrongful use of hashish, and performing an indecent act with another person.

End of timeline.

Editor’s Note: Much of the information contained in this article is taken from the press packet distributed by Think Films and their publicity team.

It was an open air gallery, with work by jewelry designers, visual and graphic artists, wood carvings, pottery, and plenty of food and entertainment, a day of festivities and a celebration of local artists and craftspeople. Children’s activities included the perennial favorite, face painting.

Exhibitors included Mitzi Cross (art, above left), with a striking geometric study in black and white, and Brandi Taylor (photo, below), with this vibrant floral study.

Despite the steamy weather and high humidity, and a downtown temperature reading of 99 degrees, people turned out for this event, walking the length of Franklin Street and back, browsing the booths, buying and investing in these arts.

Franklin was alive and vibrant, and if there was a problem, it was one of trying to stay cool in a replay of summer’s heat. Fans (electric and hand held) were in huge demand. APSU students did the honor of decorating young faces, and also sold art and other items to raise money for an upcoming art trip to Chicago.

The art of woodcarving and techniques of pottery making were among the live demonstrations offered, with crowds gathering for a glimpse of what lies behind the beautiful work on display and for sale. Here are a few more glimpses of today’s Frolic on Franklin:

The day-long arts event was capped by the Gala opening of the 2007-08 Roxy Theater and their new production, Grease.

A Tennessee native and Professor Emeritus of Art at Austin Peay State University, Bryant was introduced to Saturday’s crowd as “an educator, mentor and humanitarian of the first order,” one who has guided and prodded his students to “find their voices” even as he continued his quest to develop and expand his own.

Meandering through the crowds, one could hear the comments of friends, of art lovers, watch them inhaling in awe at the beauty and substance of this work. In an era where art is displayed but art lovers are kept at safe distances, the Customs House exhibit was presented in a manner that invited touch, that invited close inspection of the most minute detail of each piece, be it a small “sleeping stone” or a majestic chair with outstretched arms. The art itself invited it.

Bryant, recipient of the Distinguished Artist Award from the 2007 Governor’s Awards in the Arts, greeted visitors at the museum’s entrance, and later spoke briefly to a gathered crowd, saying in his characteristically quiet voice that now “he knows what a deer feels like, when its looking into the lights of a car.” He said this experience “honored” him.

The collection is diverse, a sampling of majestic polished wood carvings that seem almost molded by hand rather than carved with metal tools; supple, succulent wood with a satin sheen that invited touch, wood in which Bryant found and released an ethereal spirit, a hidden essence unearthed and brought to the light of day. A gift to the rest of us.

The wood carvings fashioned by his touch are deceptively simple: the hint of eyes, mouths, faces, figures in many cases barely elevated from the base wood, but all the more expressive for it.

In one tall piece, The Actor, we are given the essence of a figure but with a second face midsection, a second ‘voice” emerging. And that is part of the truth, the honesty of his work; that form, feeling, passion are within us all and continue to emerge, to shape, to erupt or more often quietly blossom from within. Bryant deftly finds that inner beauty and presents it to us without revealing the ending. That is left to our imagination and interpretation.

Numerous ceramic pieces, many of primitive female forms with lush, full but non-graphic shapes recall the Goddess figures of ancient cultures and for me were reminiscent of Goddess art and other Peruvian pieces exhibited in Lima’s Gold Museum and the museum/home of Francisco Pizarro. The rich brick earth tones in many of the ceramic pieces evoke a sense of timelessness and a connectedness to Mother Earth.

Bryant’s famous Sleeping Stones, some clustered in a shallow dugout, are simple designs to grace a garden, a desk, a personal library — restive pieces that call out for touch.

Visitors were given a glimpse of Bryant’s process in a pedestal display of sketches and materials, and through a series of photo-graphs of the artist at work, displayed throughout the galleries.

In an alcove, testimonials from Bryant’s students and samples of art by those students were prominently displayed. At right, a selection of works by former students of Olen’s, including curator Tom Rice and Michael Adams (pictured left with his work, Infinity).

Bryant holds a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and has studied both in the United States and abroad. Bryant is a founding member of the Tennessee Association of Craft Artists.

Guest Curator Tom Rice assembled a striking and powerful collection of Bryant sculpture in clay, stone and wood from the early 1950s to recently-completed work. Rich Goodwin Created a video detailing the life and work of Olen Bryant on view with the exhibit.

The exhibit, showcased in the Crouch, Orgain and Bruner galleries, runs through December 31.

The striking entrance to the Bryant exhibit. Bold color, and a simple acknowledgment and introduction to Olen Bryant.

A study in blue, the face “sleeping” while the inner spirit is alive, a juxtaposition of the conscious and unconscious, the hidden waiting to be found.

A grouping of wood pieces, the sheen shape and subtlety inviting touch. The exhibit allows visitors rare intimacy with each of the pieces. At the right of this cluster is one of the portraits of Bryant at work in his studio.

Sketchbooks and raw materials give insight into the artist’s process.

Photos by Debbie Boen and Christine Piesyk

Debbie Boen also contributed to the story

Photographer and artist Debbie Boen toured the exhibit and took these photos, commenting “It took my breath away. Everyone is a winner in my book.” Our small photos do not justice to the works shown here; for that, a trip to Smith-Trahern is required.

Heidi Hopkins: Tentative Friendship (digital photography)

Cindy Marsh: Book of the Dead (3-D and fiber arts)

Elizabeth Hadden: Reflection (painting/watercolor)

Heidi Hopkins: Donan Castle (film photography)