American Gulag: Bad Gulash?

By JULIETTE ROSSANT When I hear the word "gulag" I always think first of "gulash" -- but a new description of "gulag" has arisen of late: Hypocrisy, an overarching war mentality and a disregard for basic human rights principles and international legal obligations... Thus reads the latest report by Amnesty International on global human rights abuses in "gulags." Only problem is that the country which Amnesty associates with "gulag" is the United States of America, and the location is Guantanamo Bay... Of course, even The New Yorker tried to push off responsibility for the riots which exploded in Afghanistan and Pakistan (in particular) in the wake of Newsweek's infamous May 9 article: The New Yorker blamed Pakistan's former cricket master (now politician) Imran Khan. Now, I understand it when someone like The Weekly Standard's David Brooks uses national television to shift blame from Newsweek to Muslims for inciting their own riots over Koran abuse -- he's a neo-conservative in New York Times clothing. But The New Yorker, home of Seymour Hersch...? Besides, that was just fancy footwork on the part of neo-cons like Brooks, who rightly say "they should focus on who are the real villains here, and that's not Newsweek" -- Newsweek was never to blame in the first place for inciting riots -- only the abusers at Guantanamo and their bosses are to blame for any riots and deaths. Maybe our guys are just eating a lot of bad gulash down at Gitmo? A silly, wishful thought: horrors like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are really happening. Today's New York Times cites previous allegations of "Koran abuse," thus justifyng Newsweek's famous May 9 article about the flushing of a Koran down a toilet at Gitmo. According to the Times, "military personnel... in one case in 2002... had flushed a Koran down a toilet.." (So why did Newsweek retracted their story?...) What's wrong with our country? Weren't gulags supposed to be a Soviet thing? If memory serves, we even welcomed ex-gulag inmates like the Nobel Prize-winning author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to write books like The Gulag Archipelago. National Review, that bastion of old conservatism, claimed not too long ago in an article that "This is a magazine that was pro-Solzhenitsyn before pro-Solzhenitsyn was cool." It goes on to ask whether National Review is cool now. NR seems to think so -- but I'll only bellieve that when I see them criticize this Administration on Guantanamo Bay, for starters. Instead, however, in a relatively recent article, NR criticized the International Red Cross for "going after Gitmo again." Thus does National Review dishonor their hero Solzhenitsyn -- and, no, that's definitely not cool, not at all. What was the word Amnesty used? "Hyprocrisy"?... This topic is not outside the scope of a blog about super chefs, in light of the many humanitarian works of chefs. Many chefs were very forthcoming when it came to relief for victims of the 2004 Tsnunami. My challenge to super chefs is: what are you going to do about horrors closer to home -- like Guantanamo Bay? Aren't Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib even worse -- not because our country pepetrates such crimes there, but because they are caused by humans and not by unpredictable, uncontrollable forces of Nature? Paul Prudhomme visited Gitmo last year (see previous article): anyone going to get on a plane with a trunk full of Korans -- and some really good gulash? Alexandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago: "Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig." Chefs, knives out! -- We've got some fat to trim! And forget the new USDA food pyramid: chefs, what we really need is good old humble pie. (Click here to see a BBC video interview with Amnesty International's secretary general Irene Khan.) Related articles: New York Times UPI (Dalal Saoud) Previous articles: Paul Prudhomme Seasons US Troops at Gitmo Technorati Tags: chefs food politics democracy Guantanamo --> back to superchefblog