Surveillance by potential employers

In class we were discussing how possible employers will go through your past in attempts to dig up any skeletons you may have hidden in order to find out whether you are the correct individual for the job or not. However, this may not work quite as well as they would hope if people refuse to play by their rules. If someone holds a grudge (as we discussed), for instance they may never render any good memories or stories of you but only tell of the awful, horrible things you may have done. They may even create stories to damage your chances. Although the opposite could also occur.
My sister had a good friend going into the military. After the girl's training the institution began to gather information about her to make sure they were making the correct choice by allowing her in. As one of her many references she gave in my sisters information, unfortunately 2 months later her and my sister had a huge falling out. The information gatherers were persistent, calling our house several times a week and even showing up to our home in hopes that my sister was present. My sister did not want to speak ill of her ex-friend however she felt that the men deserved the truth. After awhile of unrelenting attempts to get in contact with my sister, she just told them that her and the girl were no longer friends and that she did not wish to discuss her. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) that was sufficient and they left her alone. Had my sister told the men the truth that girl may have never gotten into the military, and probably rightfully so.
Occasionally the surveillance that is hoped for does not quite work out like potential employers hope that it will. People like my sister, who refuse to work with the system don't allow it to do so and thus it breaks down.

CIA or CYA?

Stemming from our class discussion about the recently released Justice Department documents about the use of "controversial" interrogation techniques, I found the linked Newsweek article, titled, "Too Little for Langley? Presidential pep-talks may not suffice for an anxious CIA." In this article, questions are posed about the risks involved as a result of releasing these reports. In addition, the motive for the release of these documents is challenged. As we discussed in class yesterday, many former and current CIA operatives are suggesting that the release of the reports will comprimise the effectiveness of future use of interrogation techniques. The other question or risk that is raised results from the position that the government will take supporting the agents that performed these interrogations. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the upcoming weeks or months. Though President Obama has said that he will not attempt to domestically charge these agents with any crime, I am curious how far the U.S. government will go to protect these agents from foreign prosecution.

“What’s fascinating to people about torture is it gives one person absolute power over another, which is both alluring and corrupting,”

   Torture is coming up more and more in the news, I don't know if this is because of the new presidency or my new sensitivity to the issue from our class. I wish I had been more aware of the issue in the past  5 years, because the current articles have a very distinctive tone- I wonder how different this was when Bush was still in office.

   There were two articles in the Times recently that really caught me off guard- the first was about how waterboarding was used 266 times against two suspects. Even in just writing that I realized that there is a difference in language between how I feel about the issue and how it is represented in the news. I used the word 'against', whereas in the article they simply said 'used on'. Although this is a subtle difference, I find it nonetheless important. By saying it was used against someone shows how it is a forceful act that attacks another human; using the phrase 'used on' just makes it seem like another tactic.  This is something that I thought was important when Zarkov was speaking about the use of children vs. "children" and mothers vs. parents in Body Of War.

   The other article that I thought was interesting and related to our class was about the difference between torture and war- where does that line fall? I've been trying to figure that out in terms of Foucault, but no luck.  There is something about torture that is almost fetishized by news and government policy which makes it somehow condonable, almost heroic, whereas war is seen as universally wrong. I think that especially in modern times some of this might be attributed to the abandonment of the 'rules of war' because of the new types of wars we become involved in (ie- guerilla fighting, terrorist cells and all sorts of fun government catch phrases). There's no structure there, no equations of 'attack here + move here= take this hill' like in WWI. Conversely, I think that's part of what's so attractive about torture, it's an extremely cause+effect relationship. 

Amnesty International

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/nepal-government-fails-protect-women-human-rights-

activists-20090410

Even though we are not focusing on Amnesty International in class, it was mentioned and so I decided to take a look

and what exactly they write about and the issues they address. First when you enter their website you can pick what country you 

would like to look at, or you can visit their home page and look at their headlines. So I decided to look at their headlines. I came 

across this title, "Nepal's Government Fails to Protects Women Human Rights Activists", so I decided to read it over. The story that

they first talk about is a woman who was killed recently who was a big Women Rights activist and who was a journalist that worked

for a radio station. Then the article goes on to explain that in the election of April 2008, and a new Constituent Assembly was

elected. This assembly was supposed to help with Human Rights and actually improve human rights especially women rights.

As time went on there were murders of women activists and leaders in the Nepal community. So this assembly that is to help

improve women rights is killing off the women activists.

The reason i brought this up is because it seems to be a trend in all of my anthropology classes this semester, Women

activists or any types of activists and the government killing the leaders and those who are powerful or persistent. When it

comes down to it, those who are powerful and threaten the those who are in power, then they have to be "Killed" or "Exiled". So

connecting it to the body. Those who are powerful hold a sort of threat over society where if they are seen as weak or if they

show weakness of any sort, then the body they portray is not power, it is commoner. So those who threaten those in power are

often put into exile or killed because they threat the powerful body, and to maintain that powerful body, the one in power must

have control over the one trying to take their power away. And to be honest that seems to be the picture in most "Third world

countries", or countries run by dictatorships. It is a shame that the people in power preach change, but once in

power become paranoid and change to killing off threats. The people of these countries in Africa, Middle East, and so on want

change and want a place where they can live without fear, but the power, the feel of power, the change in a person once in power

then changes the way the country is ruled.