There are no real halcyon days of college to look back on for me. I was mostly pickled in beer and liquor. I wrote drunk, which is idiotic, and I went through four-day weekends drunk and skipped so many classes I didn’t graduate. There was plenty of fun, but I look back with embarrassment for wasting the opportunity and for wasting the money. It showed in my contributions to Buzzsaw, which were sloppy, stupid, profane and ill-conceived. Even the one piece I think is still printable withers at the end.

But there is some minor salvation. Buzzsaw is still going, and better than in those initial days. I would have said a few years ago the survival of Buzzsaw was improbable. But it isn’t.

Buzzsaw Haircut is, in hindsight, a triumph of common sense. It was more fun in its birthing stages to think of it as a mild revolution, but it should not be surprising to hear that a liberal arts college with a strong media/communications/journalism program has a thriving “alternative” publication.

And it seems that is what Buzzsaw has become, rising up from its poorly edited, yet inspired, roots in Sam Costello and Cole Louison’s bunkered-down dorm room, where there always was stale piss in the toilet at Sam’s insistence, and where we sat on the beds or window box or Indian-style on the floor.

Sometimes common sense feels like a revolution, and as small as it was in the winter of 1999, the revolution felt pretty foamy and bright—it would have been best celebrated in a beer hall with mugs slammed on the tables and huzzahs! in loose unison.

We’ll do that this year at the Glenwood Pines. It will be a celebration of our willingness to give physical life to a thousand bitch sessions in the halls of Park and dorm rooms. And it will be a celebration of the work of all the students in the intervening years who kept Buzzsaw a respected, legitimate publication at Ithaca College and throughout the city. So a rousing huzzah! for all of them, and for us, too.

And never forget someone stole our first issue and threw it in the trash bins. Cocksuckers.

James Sigman

I took Bryan’s phone call in the basement of the Sigman Family Compound in Staten Island. I had learned to pay close attention to what Bryan said in his calls after the incident about a year earlier when Bryan said, yes, I should buy him a ticket for that Steve Earle show in a few months. And then pointed the family car toward Austin, Texas, a few days later in his Escape from Central New York. He hadn’t, to the best of my recollection, hinted at that in the phone call.

Anyway, in this particular conversation, Bryan related how he’d been “fired” from his “job” as columnist for The Ithacan because he had committed the unforgivable sin of handing a column in late. Neither Bryan nor I were big fans of The Ithacan’s editor-in-chief at the time, and since we figured he had something to do with Bryan’s “firing,” one of us suggested that we start our own newspaper and that the cover of the first issue should have the editor-in-chief’s face with a big X across it. I should point out that I’ve matured only slightly since that phone call.

I don’t know if the seeds had been sown before that, but I do know that soon Bryan was telling me that something was being put together, and he, Kelly, Cole, Abby, and some guy named Sam were working on it. Eventually, the time came to publish, which, as it turns out, costs money. I was living at home and making piles of cash in the lucrative field of copy-editing direct-mail brochures, so I figured writing a check to cover the expenses would be a good idea. So I did, and soon there was Issue #1 (we went in a different direction with the cover).

Now, roughly a decade later, you’re reading Buzzsaw Haircut’s 10th anniversary issue, funded by genuine IC cash and assembled by people way more together than we were. Pretty cool.

As much as I love seeing Buzzsaw Haircut hit the Big 1-0 and look forward to celebrating many more anniversaries at the Bowl-O-Drome, I would love it even more if, after reading this issue, you called a friend and said, “Hey, we should start a magazine, too!” Because you absolutely should. There’s room for everyone.

Just don’t ask me for money. I’m tapped out.

Sam Costello

Other people probably remember it differently. They may cite other causes. If I had to lay money, I’d wager that we’re all correct: There was no single moment or event that caused the seven of us that late winter/early spring of 1999 to say, “Let’s start a magazine.” But if I had to pick one thing, for me, it was an ad in The Ithacan.

Cole, Bryan and I were in Egbert dining hall, reading the latest issue of The Ithacan. A small, text-heavy ad caught my eye. It took just a few seconds to read it. Buzzsaw debuted weeks later.

What was so powerful in that ad? It was a bounty. From a Holocaust-denial organization.

The organization—whose name I’ve forgotten now (I’ve got better things to put my memory to)—was offering thousands of dollars to an on-campus organization that could stage a debate about the Holocaust. That is, to debate if it happened.

This organization had been trying to sucker college papers across the country into running their ad. Most had the good sense and good taste to turn them down.

Not The Ithacan.

The editors cited their love of free speech in taking the ad, as I recall (not cited was that law holds that it doesn’t abridge free speech to turn down advertisements).

It’s been nearly 10 years since I last read The Ithacan, so I make no claims about what the paper does these days. Back then, though, some segments of the campus population—Buzzsaw founding editors and supporters among them—had been cringing at its editors’ efforts for a while.
With that ad, we’d had enough. We knew that there must be something better. Turns out, there was.

Cole Louison

It’s Easter Sunday in Brooklyn. It’s cold and bright and blue and the trees are out, and my e-mail just turned back on with a note from the Buzzsaw editors saying alum essays are due today. And with this more e-mails, and with these the temptation to launch into a VH1-sounding story about the purity of yesteryear—that’s nice reading, but not so true.

Because personally speaking, Buzzsaw was founded out of hate. Hate for the school where my Dad taught and all the students who weren’t enough like me. Hate for The Ithacan and all the people who worked for it. Hate for the girl who never returned my CDs and published herself in Stillwater. Hate, hate, hate; and not just hate, but fascist hate, because I wanted people to hate what I chose to hate. And out of this hate came love. Love so strong that 10 years later, it’s hard not to squawk about it here and talk about every late night at the Ichabod Lounge and every black morning in Sam’s heatless car, headed to the garage press in Chenango Bridge. Every dorm room meeting, every good idea—like publishing an ‘enjoy the cookies’ note from my Grandmother—and every bad idea—like calling our publication “The Humongous.”

Last week in Ithaca was the 10-year reunion for Buzzsaw, which is now a magazine with a staff, an office, a Web presence, an adviser in the journalism department and school funding. One alum is a lawyer. Another is a mom of two. All the men are balder and have beards. And the group hadn’t been together in a decade. And it was awesome. It was fun. A good, funny, happy time with fond memories and a feeling that the best is yet to come. That’s accomplishment.

Much love in 09 ever after.

Thom Denick

Buzzsaw taught me how good writers write. I can’t read the stuff I wrote back then because it’s too ridiculous. “Way Cool, Junior” is mediocre, and it’s the best of what I wrote. The other editors were too nice to shit on my stuff to my face—even when it deserved it. What I did do while working at Buzzsaw was really read and think about what everyone else was working on. I took a lot of writing classes in college, but the best lessons came from sitting in Emerson, working on the latest issue with the Buzzsaw crew.

Ten years later, I wouldn’t say I’m a great writer, but I’m good, and I can do it professionally. If cornered. I would say I owe at least a small part of that to Buzzsaw. Well, Buzzsaw and a few torrid alpha-sensual affairs with grammar nerds.
***
“Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?” -Neil Gaiman, Sandman: Dream Country.

Working at Buzzsaw you can’t avoid learning that good storytellers were liars. Liars are a much-maligned segment of our society, but how drab it is without them.

Ted Haggard, swearing off the blow and cock one more time on Larry King Live, a crying wife at his side; a politician’s bleached teeth gnashing and weaving absurdist non sequitur; a beautiful woman smiles, lies keep her hair out of her face; seven miles west of the Cincinnati airport, children line up to hear a smiling woman with a hairdo escaped from 1984 tell them that God gave Tyrannosaurus Rexes 8-inch teeth so they can crack open coconuts.

Lies can be debilitating, destructive and detrimental, but they are the things people remember the most. Maybe that’s why the founders and I are celebrating Buzzsaw’s 10th year and not trying to re-create parties faded by serial weekend blackouts.

Thanks, founders.

Abby Bertumen

In the past couple of weeks, I have thought a lot about Buzzsaw. My first thoughts are how hard it is to write, especially to look back on something on a personal level. I never really was good at that, which shows in the pieces I wrote in college and which I guess is why I do what I do today. But when I reflect on Buzzsaw, it always starts with people who are, and will always be, my favorite writers.

I met James Sigman and Bryan Chambala my freshman year at Ithaca, when they were editors of the Accent section of The Ithacan. At the end of his tenure as editor (and as an Ithaca student), James wrote to me in an e-mail that I have saved over the years: “The day The Ithacan stops being fun is the day they should fold it up. It’s nice to hit deadlines and getting awards is good for a fragile ego, but without fun, The Ithacan is an insignificant piece of shit. Believe that.” And so, roughly a year or so later, Buzzsaw Haircut was formed.

I realize that today, Buzzsaw and The Ithacan are very different publications than they were then and I am glad now that they can co-exist with other publications on campus. I know that when we started Buzzsaw, one of our goals at least was to stop one publication from being the sole source of information on campus. That doesn’t usually fly in the rest of the nation, and so it shouldn’t have there either. I look at Buzzsaw now, and I am continuously impressed, and that is something for which I take no credit. But I remain grateful for what it was and what it is now.

When I think about Buzzsaw, I think about how important it is sometimes just to do things, without dwelling on the why or how. Recently, I have wondered why I don’t do that more. And then I find myself missing my friends, the founders of . It was a good ride, but also something you carry with you and that’s a great thing. Hunter S. Thompson, a great inspiration to the founders, inscribed his book Hell’s Angels as follows: “To the friends who lent me money and kept me mercifully unemployed. No writer can function without them. Again, thanks. HST.” Happy Anniversary, (Haircut).

Kelly Burdick-Chambala

If you’re in college and you’re not angry about something that you have learned in class, seen at a party, or found out about in this world—take your damn pulse.

Starting out at Ithaca as a journalism major with thoughts of one day reporting from France (really), I was constantly soaking up the world around me. There was a lot to learn from a professional standpoint (layout, inverted pyramids, ethics) and way more to learn from a growing up standpoint (taking showers with beer in your hands, 2 a.m. talks with people you never knew, questioning everything).

In class, the word objectivity was drilled into our heads. We argued about it, we tried really hard to report objectively and we didn’t always like it. When you are a journalist, you have to show all sides. Or try really hard to show two sides equally.

So what happens when something you see makes you angry and you have to report about it? What happens when the publication that you work for pisses you off or makes decisions that you don’t agree with? Or they don’t want to run that great idea that’s been running around in your head for weeks? Ten years ago, you would have started your own publication called Buzzsaw Haircut. At least that’s what we did.

But it was born from so much more than anger. There were creative, excited, intelligent and crazy people who were part of the whole founding process. I know I didn’t think too hard about what was happening. I just liked that I had a place to write without restriction, and I liked that other people were going to have a space to write thoughts that weren’t conventional or stories that didn’t make sense or stories that didn’t appeal to the president of the college.

It was good to create that space. I’m so happy that each year, someone has taken that space seriously enough to keep it going and make it a worthwhile publication.

Nowadays, there are other things that people—journalists and others— do when they get a little edgy about something. We create blogs (worth reading, too!). We seek jobs that are worth our time and that let us sleep at night or day. We turn into librarians—at least I did.

And eventually, we get a little happier about things. We’re still critical, we’re still always questioning, but we can see that as lovers/haters/writers/artists/30-year-old weirdos, there’s a lot out there in this world—and you better take note of it. And then write about it.

From its inception, Buzzsaw has existed on the fringe of the campus community. Every semester the issues pile up in The Ithacan boxes, waiting to be read by the dedicated reader or the curious passer-by, but Buzzsaw doesn’t exist for the masses. Buzzsaw exists for those who can see through the bullshit, those who are tired of our two-faced society, those who want to get away from force-fed entertainment. It’s a pompous, self-congratulatory thing to say, but it’s the truth, and the truth is what Buzzsaw strives for.

Buzzsaw Haircut was founded by a group of students pissed off enough at the community and world around them to start writing about it. Those who continued the magazine are cut from the same cloth. Sure, we may have added sections, dropped sections, stopped writing rants, started printing fiction, changed the font, or changed the name, but we never forgot where (or why) the magazine started. In the following pages you’ll see the evolution of Buzzsaw (Haircut). We couldn’t reprint every article, and your favorite might be missing, but we think these articles represent the spirit of Buzzsaw.

So this is for everyone who’s contributed to Buzzsaw over the years: the cultural warriors, the political activists, the satirists, the artists, the angry, the kids who knew from age 11 that the world is full of bullshit.

And, as always, our goal is that our readers walk away inspired, motivated, or enraged enough to continue the discussions started in these pages. Thank you. It’s been a great 10 years deconstructing society, pop culture, politics, college life and dominant Western beliefs and getting away with it. Here’s to another 10.

by Meagan Murray

Oh, Upstate New York. The image of dim-witted, Carhartt-sporting dairy farmers, too stupefied by their own reflections in the frozen tundra of the land laid out before them to know which way is up comes to mind.

At least, this is the projected stereotype of most people downstate. I was, until recently, one of the many who regarded such “demographically-challenged” lost souls inhabiting the upper regions of New York State (including myself) as severely lagging behind in the evolutionary process. Then I had a somewhat stress-induced epiphany, but an epiphany no less—and voilá, the focal point of this article was born.

First off, I will give my own geography lesson. Many a person is confused as to what qualifies as “Upstate territory.” Well, contrary to what most Manhattanites and other southern New Yorkers believe, upstate is, in my eyes, not just any stretch of land north of Albany and the Hudson.

“Upstate” is the outlying areas north and northwest, inclusive of, the Adirondack Mountains: Clinton County, Franklin County, Essex County, and St. Lawrence County. Approximately 282,000 people inhabit Upstate New York—about 82,000 being from Clinton County, my motherland.

When it came to writing this all down in a fashion that would please and maybe acknowledge the reader, I couldn’t even begin to describe my moral struggle over what to write about Upstate New York. But then I recalled that my hometown in Clinton County, the city of Plattsburgh, is home to the first openly gay, elected official in New York State history—Mayor Daniel L. Stewart, one of only six openly gay Republicans in the nation.

I was born and raised in the city of Plattsburgh, the industrial epicenter of Clinton County—and, many say, Upstate New York. Located just down the road from the Canadian border and only a hop, swim, and a jump away from Burlington, Vermont via Lake Champlain, I live in what has been proudly branded “The North Country.”

After shipping off to Ithaca College in Fall 2004, I returned home in October to my primarily conservative family brimming with my newfound knowledge. To most of them, I was nothing more than a “born-again liberal,” brain-washed with progressive fallacies by outraged, hippie professors.

On one occasion, before returning back to Ithaca at the close of October break, I brought my new boyfriend, Jacob, down to visit my grandparents on my father’s side of the family. As my young companion and I wrapped up the conversation, my grandpa shot me his “Don’t-think-you’re-getting-off-the-hook-this-easy” look. I knew what was coming—politics and badgering. I didn’t have the stamina.

After I interrupted his prodding examination into my political views, he gave me his playful, yet somewhat juvenile, devilish grin that I’ve grown to recognize with increasing anxiety throughout the years.

“Oh God, don’t tell me you’re one of those liberal bitches now,” he scoffed. Horrified, I looked over at Jacob to see if he had taken flight from the situation and my seemingly insane family, but he had remained dutifully at my side, wearing a look of mock horror and shock that ran deeper and more expressive than my own.
At that time, I became thoroughly convinced that the anti-Christ had hunkered down somewhere within my demographics and was in cohorts with my family to advance his stages for the Apocalypse. It was easy to say I was somewhat hostile toward my region, and I saw little hope for change. But would it really be fair of me to cast such a negative opinion on the entire region just because of harmless, endless, family quarrels? What good would I be doing in hopes of helping to shed this incessant stereotype of Upstaters?

I needed a positive viewpoint here; I needed to utilize my resources in the North Country. I needed to talk to Mayor Stewart. Who better to express a more insightful view on the Upstate region than an openly gay, Republican mayor?

Upon my first encounter with him, I found Stewart to be a man of sturdy yet amiable character. Towering over 6 feet in height, his booming voice echoes off the walls of his City Hall office. His youthful, charismatic smile showed that he was ready and equipped for my prodding, probably repetitious questions. We got down to business.

Serving his third term as the mayor of Plattsburgh since first being elected in 2000, he has since brought all components of politics, economics, arts and education to the table and has learned to work with the community for growth, progress, and industrial innovation.

“You can’t survive on just politics,” he said with a grin. A recovering alcoholic and drug addict, it’s safe to say Stewart has a colorful past filled with renewed opportunity, and he seemed to find it in the North Country. At age 17, after graduating from Cumberland High School in Cumberland, Rhode Island, Stewart went on to join the U.S. Air Force.

“When I was in the military, I was actively using. I left the military in 1988 and in December of ’88, I got clean and sober. Part of my recovery was to stay in Plattsburgh and not go back [to Rhode Island]…I still have friends who are standing on the same corner selling drugs.”

“In August 1988, I became homeless in Plattsburgh. I went to the food shelf and slept under the Bridge Street Bridge for two nights because I had nowhere else to go,” he said. “Twelve years later, I was mayor. God bless America.”

In the community, Mayor Stewart stands as a moderate Republican. He is a member of the “Log Cabin Republicans,” a political organization that began in 1978 and consists of members of the Republican Party who fully support equal distribution of lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights in the United States.

So how does a man like this survive in Plattsburgh? More importantly, how is he a respected leader of the community? Stewart is a member of the Republican Party, a personal aspect enticing enough to compel me to ask, “What makes you a Republican?” Luckily, he found this humorous.

“Well, I’m pro-choice, I believe that gay-marriage rights should be distributed evenly in America. With the national Republican Party, I have little in common,” Stewart said. “I have always found the gay issue to be a ‘perceived handicap’ for me. When you really add it up, it’s how you take the perceived handicap and turn it into a productive part of what you do.”

So how exactly does the North Country react to this brand of politics? My personal opinion on politics at any level—local, state, and national—had always been that people will follow the lead of their elected official for their due term and when that leader is replaced, people will simply fall into whatever line is directed by the successor. That was, until this summer.

Most people have probably heard of the “Reverend” Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. If not, I’m sorry I’m the one to tell you.
Phelps has paraded his caravan of family members and followers to over 20,000 protest sites to represent “God’s hatred” and attest to “His holy attributes” to the sinners of the world. They have protested at funerals for AIDS/HIV victims, held up signs at the funeral for Matthew Shepard that read “No Fags in Heaven,” and are now beginning to protest the gravesites and funerals for soldiers killed in service in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming that events such as 9/11 are positive and symbolic of God’s hatred for the state of America.

Then Phelps found our mayor. Last year, Phelps sent a self-addressed letter to our “Fag Mayor” claiming the right to protest at our annual Mayor’s Cup Festival, held last year from July 1-9.

Plattsburgh suddenly came to arms, ready to defend our mayor. Plattsburgh for Peace, an organization that is still functioning today, was created to educate and unify the city about Phelps and his message.

True to his word, Phelps pulled up shop several days into the festival. I was fired up myself, and I went down with a friend to the Plattsburgh for Peace rally. Never in my 20 years of living in Plattsburgh have I seen a more bizarre assortment of people brought together for one unified cause. The biggest hick was standing next to the biggest lesbian, shouting as one in defense of our mayor and

“If you don’t treat your baby right, she’ll come see me some lonely night.”
-Steve Earle, “Graveyard Shift”

For those of you who have tired of what the Ithaca area has to offer in terms of news outlets, we welcome you on this lonely night. Have a drink, sit in the rocking chair and leaf through the music collection.

From the rain puddles of Ithaca, stained with mud and cigarette butts, Buzzsaw Haircut has risen.

These pages smell of mid-winter sickness and the dead chill of February’s bitter wind. But this is the first issue. It is a work in progress.

These 24 pages are the result of a collaboration between a tight-knit group of friends, relatives, acquaintances and soothsayers. Surrounded by drinks and wearing lace undergarments, we offer you our first response to the inadequacy currently provided by Ithaca’s existing publications.

Like a long and lonesome train barreling through the Appalachian night, we are on track, but we have no idea exactly where that track will lead. Hopefully we will grow and the morning light will give us a sense of direction.

The first issue is a collection of our opinions, our voices and our views. The next issue should be a collection of your opinions, your voices and your views. We created this publication with the intention of providing a legitimate forum for discussion on the Ithaca College campus and within the entire Ithaca area.

We decided that the current system which allowed folks with a very limited editorial vision to control the flow of discourse did not satisfy us and most likely did not satisfy the general reading populace. Our goal was to shift the balance of power from the editors to the readers. We’ll be looking for submissions, reporters, opinions, pictures, blood samples and family histories.

Think of us as a “community” publication minus the gossip column. We are what you make us to be and our potential matches yours. In short, we are an old woman standing in the parking lot with a tire chain wrapped around her shoulders and a fist full of razor blades, waiting for the privileged few to step into the fog and answer the hard, ugly questions. And she’s not leaving until she gets some answers.

By Erika Spaet

Suzanne Watin was a Jewish dental hygienist from Union, N.J. She and her now ex-husband had their daughter late in life, moved around a lot and always had enough money; they lived what could be seen as an ordinary, upper-middle class life together. But when fate knocked on Watin’s door six years ago, she decided the comforts of her home and the life were a little too ordinary.

“I was just never satisfied, and I had been looking for something like this for a long time,” she says.

The knock came from two members of the Twelve Tribes, a religious group starting to establish a community in Ithaca. Several years before, Watin, now 66, had converted to Christianity, becoming what she calls a “zealous Christian.” Her marriage had crumbled, and she became frustrated with infighting at her church. She founded a Messianic church in Ithaca but still couldn’t reconcile church politics with the words she read in the Bible about peace and love.

So when the Tribes’ evangelists appeared on her doorstep, Watin was ready to listen.

The Twelve Tribes live according to Acts 2:42-46, in which the apostles sell all their worldly possessions to live with one another:

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need … They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”

The hippie counterculture of the 1970s had a Christian element known as the Jesus Movement. During the 70s and early 80s, dozens of Christian denominations were created, one of which was the Twelve Tribes. Its name comes from the Twelve Tribes of the Old Testament — the descendents of Jacob’s 12 sons. Today, it’s a religious sect that has formed roughly 40 “communities” all over the world. Each geographic region where communities can be found — from Australia to Argentina — belongs to a tribe, and collectively they form the “Commonwealth of Israel.” The community in Ithaca is just one of several that comprises the Yehudah tribe, and, just like every other community, it practices a lifestyle that emulates that of Jesus’ — Yahshua in Hebrew — disciples. They reject both Judaism and Christianity in favor of this lifestyle. They work together — at their café, the Maté Factor on the Commons — pray together and, most importantly, live together.

“With our way of life, as we learn how to serve each other, we’re becoming true disciples,” says Yedediyah Jedd. “We’re keeping the things that Yahshua taught.”
More than 30 disciples live in their communal home on Third Street. They’ve turned an old fitness center into a magnificently humble mansion with fireplaces, handmade tapestries on the wall and a cottage-like lighting scheme of which Martha Stewart would be proud. The whole community, and usually several visitors, gathers every Friday night in the great room to celebrate the Sabbath with group prayer, Israeli dances and a homecooked Kosher meal. They don’t attend church, and there’s no particular organization to their worship.

“We aren’t a religious people,” Watin says.

Instead, the Twelve Tribes emphasize a simple, communal lifestyle. They only wear clothes made of organic fibers; much of their produce is grown at another community’s farm; and their income is earned from their café, a construction company owned by a nearby community, and, of course, the added incomes of new members.

So many Ithaca café-goers have embraced the Twleve Tribes as twenty-first century flower children — many of their members are recruited at jam band concerts, and they even practice fair trade. But Jedd, a former Deadhead himself, makes it clear that their community is very much separated from the rest of the city.

“What Christ taught was a very radical message: abandon your own pursuits and establish a kingdom of love. But the status quo of mainstream Christianity is not very radical,” he says. “You can’t even tell if someone’s a Christian or not. But in every aspect of our lives we are a demonstration of love.”

In his prayer one evening, Jedd spoke about a gate God has placed between the Twelve Tribes and the “outside world.” He compared this world to a snarling dog, ready to pounce on passersby. All gathered in the circle that night said an “amen” to that distinction.

But recently that gate has been challenged. Some concerned citizens in town have formed Ithacans Opposed to the Twelve Tribes Cult. The group has a blog featuring testimonials from former members of the Twelve Tribes and is encouraging a boycott of the Mate Factor. These definitely aren’t flower children, argues John Sullivan, one of the founders of IOTTC.

“A cult can be identified by an excessive devotion to some person, idea or thing and the unethical employment of manipulative techniques of persuasion and control,” says Sullivan. “If you listen to what former members of the Twelve Tribes have to say about their experiences, you’ll see that the group fits this description very well.”
Whether or not the Twelve Tribes truly is a cult is subject to interpretation, but public suspicion has spurred several investigations into the behaviors of communities over the years. Charges of racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia and child abuse have all surfaced. In one 1984 case, 90 state troopers and 50 social workers raided the Island Pond, Va. community and took 112 of the Tribes’ children under child labor and abuse allegations. The judge dismissed the case, calling it a “grossly negligent misuse of state power,” but concerns still remain, especially here in Ithaca.

“The kids are beaten and not allowed to go to public school. They’re not allowed to read anything that wasn’t written by a Tribes member. How can you possibly make an informed decision about the world when you only have one point of view?” says Wendy Hyman, assistant professor of English and IOTTC co-founder. “That’s the most chilling thing to me.”

Children do work alongside their parents in the café and at home, and their contact with outside intellectualism is, if not banned, severely deterred. “Child Training” is a very important part of parenting in the community, so apart from home-schooling the children, Tribes’ parents believe in strict discipline, starting when the children are still infants. And, according to Twelve Tribes teachings, a rod should be used to do the disciplining.

Dr. Rachel Wagner, assistant professor of religion, points to Proverbs 13:24 as the source of that teaching. “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”

“We spank our children…but we never, ever raise our voices with our children. I’ve seen child abuse out in the world where mothers are screaming at their children who disobey. We don’t do that,” says Watin.

“If you just come and watch us with our children, you wouldn’t think they were abused; you would think we were good parents,” says Jedd.

The Twelve Tribes also rarely uses public health services; women give birth with the assistance of midwives, and unless there’s a serious illness or injury, herbs are used to treat illnesses.

“They believe that beatings are not sufficient until blue marks are left on the child’s flesh. Doctors rarely see the children, so there is little opportunity for outsiders to spot signs of abuse,” says Sullivan.

Though some writings that are believed to be penned by Eugene Spriggs, founder of the Twelve Tribes, tell parents to beat their children this severely, black and blue marks are not evident on any children in the Ithaca community.

“Children who are abused have a fear about them; they’re very quiet. You don’t see that in our children; we have happy children,” says Watin as she holds one small, smiling disciple named Dodavah.

Children take a variety of classes during the day including geography, music, math, spirituality and art; they’re responsible for decorating the table at night with their drawings and egg carton caterpillars but they will never be given the opportunity to get their G.E.D.’s or attend college. As strong advocates for the separation of church and state, disciples wouldn’t think of handing their children over to public schools every day.

“We want to know what’s going on with our children; we’re responsible for them,” says Dodavah Jedd, Yedediyah’s wife.

And there’s one lesson disciple children would undoubtedly miss out on if they were enrolled in public schools.

Spriggs also teaches that Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s three sons, are the ancestors of three races: Caucasians, Blacks and Asians, respectively. Canaan was the son of Ham, and God condemned him: “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers,” says Genesis 9:25. Thus, according to Twelve Tribes belief, blacks — descendents of Ham — were commanded by God to serve other races.

Watin says she can never really remember the story that well, but she knows one thing. “We believe that, just like in the Bible, the descendents of Ham are spiritually fulfilled when they serve. They are set free when they become servants.”

IOTTC point to this as one of the more egregious aspects of the Twelve Tribes belief system.

“This same kind of rhetoric was used to justify slavery and the Holocaust,” says Sullivan.

Dr. Wagner agrees. “That interpretation isn’t inherent in the text,” she says, because nowhere in the Bible does it say that those ethnic groups are descendents of Noah’s sons. “It sounds like a pre-determined argument that shapes interpretation to serve a particular agenda.”

Watin admits that some slave masters were cruel. But others “had the kind of relationship that God intended for both servant and master. When you see a black person serving, you can see how fulfilled they are. It’s beautiful.

“We love black people. They’re our equals. And they are meant to serve,” says Perats Hunt, a disciple, graduate of IC and former church pastor. But when pressed on the issue, he becomes reticent. “You know, I’m a strong supporter of the first amendment and free speech, but sometimes people ask too many questions,” he says.

The Twelve Tribes are also criticized for their treatment of women and homophobia. For a group living “radically,” their approach to both women and homosexuals isn’t far from traditional Judeo-Christian practices. In the Tribes, some women work in the café during the day, but most stay at home where young girls learn to bake and sew with their mothers. They aren’t allowed to participate in more laborious tasks for fear that it will hurt their uteruses and their ability to have children. In addition, only men can receive revelations from God. As for homosexual or trans-gendered individuals, Watin takes a live and let live approach.

“They wouldn’t want to live with us,” she says. “We don’t support that kind of lifestyle, because it doesn’t bear children; it isn’t fruitful. But it’s their choice.”

So why can’t IOTTC take that same approach when it comes to the curious behaviors of the Twelve Tribes?

“I find it morally incumbent upon me to not just laugh at it, but to really look at it,” says Hyman, “even if they’re perfectly nice.”

“As long as they live within the law, the Twelve Tribes are free to believe what they like and promote their own beliefs, no matter how hateful,” says Sullivan. “We simply want to inform Ithacans about what the Twelve Tribes are and what they stand for so that people can make informed decisions about where to spend their money.”

Watin, who can usually be seen working the register making sandwiches every day at the café, has just gotten her breath back after dancing a few numbers during the Sabbath celebration. She’s had quite the faith journey, and it shows in her weathered skin. She’s had to give up a lot to be here, including her now grown daughter who doesn’t understand the choice her mother has made. But she’s glad to have finally arrived on Third Street. with her new family of fellow disciples.

“When I was out in the world, I could never have imagined this for myself. And I’m so thankful.”

Erika Spaet is a sophomore journalism and politics double major who enjoys the mate, but thinks the chocolate tastes funny. Email her at espaet1@ithaca.edu.

By Matthew Farrell

Terrorism – The calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.
WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

If terrorism is exclusively violence that targets civilians then why do we consider the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole a terrorist attack? What about Hezbollah’s 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut? Was the September 11 attack on the Pentagon not a terrorist operation?

~~~~~

Terrorism – The actual or threatened use of violence, directed by groups or individuals against noncombatants, to achieve political ends. Under U.S. law, international terrorism involves the citizens or territory of more than one country, and noncombatants include unarmed or off-duty military personnel as well as civilians. Terrorist activities include, among other violent acts, assassinations, bombings, suicide bombings, hijackings, and skyjackings.
Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia

If noncombatants can include off-duty soldiers, then was it an act of terrorism when Israeli commandos raided Beirut in 1973 and assassinated three Palestinian leaders? Would it be a terrorist operation if the U.S. bombed an al-Qaeda hideout while bin Laden was “off-duty?”

~~~~~

ter·ror·ism (tr-rzm) – The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

If terrorism is limited to “unlawful” acts of violence, does that mean lawmakers have the final say on what acts of violence are considered terrorism? Whose law do we refer to? Ours or Afghanistan’s? The UN’s or Iran’s? Israel’s or Palestine’s? The French Resistance during World War II was “unlawful.” Was that terrorism? What about the American Revolution?

~~~~~

Terrorism – The systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.
Encyclopædia BritannicaWorkspace

This seems to be a pretty comprehensive definition of terrorism, but it suggests that nearly every armed institution in history has been guilty of terrorism at one time or another. Does the war on terror really include crooked police, every authoritarian regime in the world, organized crime and neo-Nazis, as well as militant Islam? Is declaring war on every form of violent intimidation imaginable a sound foreign policy?

~~~~~

CONCLUSION:

The “War on Terror” is a blank check for the Bush Administration. There’s no clear criteria to judge how well we’re doing, because there’s no clear objective. There’s no clear enemy, so Bush can do what he wants domestically and internationally to whomever he wants as long as he manages to keep it muddled up somewhere in his abstract war. Is Iraq part of the “War on Terror?” Will Iran be part of it soon?

What if instead of declaring a “War on Terror” after September 11, we declared a war on al-Qaeda or even militant Islam? At this point I think it would be clear that we’re losing. Al-Qaeda still operates freely in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and with Hussein out of the way, they’ve found a new front in Iraq. Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri are still at large. As long as we’re engaged in a “War on Terror,” however, there is no losing or winning, because there is no clear, achievable objective to measure our progress against. Do we really want to commit to a war with no conceivable end?

Matthew Farrell is a junior TV-R major, and anywhere you meet him, guaranteed, it’s going down. He can be reached at mfarrel1@ithaca.edu.

By Briana Kerensky

In 2008, the mini-skirt is an article of fashion that seems to be reserved for a few different types of people. These include but are not limited to: women just “trying to put themselves through college,” women working too hard for attention, models, drag queens, and Photoshopped pictures of Sarah Palin.

So, in short (yes, the pun was intended), the mini-skirt is something we often associate with people of a particularly skanky nature. But in the late 1960s, this flimsy piece of clothing for women was equal to long hair for men; it was a generational symbol of sticking it to The Man.

Described by the Web site Icons: a Portrait of England, the mini-skirt is “the first skirt to go above the knee since prehistoric man chose to slip into something more comfortable.” Before the arrival of the mini-skirt, it wasn’t appropriate for women to wear clothing any higher than the knee.

Of course, it wasn’t always the knee that marked the line between “tasteful” and “what a whore.”

Until the 1920s, showing an ankle was enough to raise eyebrows. Then the flappers came along during the Jazz Age, and charlestoned their way into fashion history with higher hemlines.

The fact that the mini-skirt, a product of England, came about in the late 1960s was no coincidence. The “Swinging 60s” was the first decade that schooling until age 15 was available to all women in England. More women than ever were attending universities and the workplace received an influx of females. The 1967 Abortion Act legalized abortion in England and in 1969 married women were allowed to file for divorce, no matter what the marital circumstances were. England was suddenly becoming a woman’s world.

The modern incarnation of the mini-skirt is the brainchild of London boutique Bazaar owner Mary Quant. The silhouettes were simple – geometric forms made out of cotton and PVC. Quant is credited with inventing colored and patterned tights, although this accessory is also attributed to Cristobal Balenciaga.

To the younger generation the mini-skirt was the official uniform of second wave feminism’s coming-out party. Women were going to college and working to reach their own goals and could get married when they damn well wanted to. The shortened hemline was seen as a celebration of the female form and addressed one of the most urgent concerns of the Women’s Liberation Movement by giving women a sense of control over their own sexuality. The mini-skirt was a ready-to-wear, affordable and daring outfit designed for women, by a woman, in a fashion industry dominated by men.

The style of the skirt tended to vary by nation. In the United States, in the late ‘60s the average mini-skirt length was four inches above the knee. In England, girls were wearing it as high as seven or eight inches. But no matter the length, women were wearing minis.

Pamela Church-Gibson of the London College of Fashion said, “there wasn’t any freedom… Everybody had to wear a mini-skirt, whatever your legs were like… it really was a diktat… Even the Queen felt compelled to shorten her skirts. It shows just how tyrannical it was.”

1968 was also when the mini-skirt began to receive some of its worst backlash. Of course, the older generation for the most part was uncomfortable with the mini from the start. Schools in the United States would suspend girls for wearing them. In England some stores wouldn’t carry mini-skirts, claiming they were too small, even for the lingerie department. But in 1968, when the women’s liberation movement was in full swing, the outfit began to receive negative reviews from the very people the mini-skirt was intended for.

The argument was that when a woman wears a mini-skirt, people only see the legs, not the brain. The outfit has a dehumanizing effect, and turns its wearers into sexual objects. If a woman was whistled at and pinched while wearing something so revealing, she was “asking for it.” Some men charged with cases of assault and sexual harassment used the same argument, saying that their victim’s mini-skirts made them think they would consent to their actions.

The mini-skirt evolved from something women could wear to show they controlled their sexuality, to an outfit inviting others to control it for them. And today, when search the term “mini-skirt” in Google Images, you get thousands of pictures of women truly being sexually objectified. But for just a little while, in the 1960s, showing a little leg equaled showing a little power.

Briana Kerensky is a junior journalism major. E-mail her at bkerens1@ithaca.edu.

By Marc Calderaro

War is stupid. I like to think I understand games well enough to be objective, but the fun aspects of this card game elude me. I used to think that it simply rewarded good shuffling skills; then I learned that shuffling is illegal. What does this game actually entail? I found out.

The official rules of the game are as follows: (a) Divide the cards evenly face-down for all players involved (usually two piles of 26). (b) Players simultaneously flip over the top card of their pile; the player with the highest card wins the round (b-1) some shit about “ties” and “wars” or something (c) The most important rule: the player who wins the round takes the cards and places them on the bottom of their pile. (d) When one player has all the cards, that player wins. What is that?

Not only is absolutely no skill involved at all, but the game will invariably repeat itself throughout the course of a couple cycles of the pile. And if it doesn’t repeat itself, with enough cycles, a player can figure out what cards are coming up. This would be forgivable, perhaps, if the normal game of War was short. But it’s not. It’s really long. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say it’s the longest card-game short of Continental Rummy, and you need two decks to play that. So War simply comes down to a set of values that are predetermined before the first card is flipped. What kind of a game is that? It’s pretty much the same as betting on a cheetah racing a dead turtle with lumbego and a broken leg.

In most games there’s an aspect of determinism. When I play Super Smash Bros., I understand that because Richard plays 12 hours a day and I don’t, he’s probably a better player and will most likely beat me. For me, the Sisyphusian battle against fate is part of the fun, mostly because I’m horrible at most games I play (excluding Magic: The Gathering). The overlooked-underdog mentality is what makes watching playoff games more fun than the regular season. All the factors have been weighed in, all the tapes watched. The whosie-whatsies should win, but will they?

It’s with this lens that we can look objectively and say that War sucks. In fact, to prove that it sucks as much as I thought it did, I found a Java Applet that took into account all the variables that go into a game of War, and with the touch of a button, you can simulate a randomly generated game of War that lasts anywhere from a half-second to five or six seconds. It then spits out which player won and in how many turns. Well, the screen is downright mesmerizing—so much so that I decided to find out if it’s more fun than actually playing War by clicking the “Play Game” button over and over again for the duration of an average game of War.

For 45 minutes I sat in front of the screen clicking the mouse button, watching little arrows move down the screen. It was so much fun. I invented my own game to see how long or short I could make a game of War last. Clearly I wasn’t actually “making” the game do anything, but what the human mind can justify is truly staggering. After my 45 minutes were up, I had finished 1,605 games (an average of 35 2/3 games per minute); my longest game was 915 turns and my shortest was 20. At this point I actually had to pull myself away from the screen I was having so much fun. I really wanted to break 1,000 turns or see if I could get a game to last 13 or fewer turns. Contrasting the end of this session with the end of most games of War, where one player lugubriously flips over the same five to ten cards hoping to finally lose so they can go out drinking, it’s pretty clear that the electronic, one-player, two to four second version of War is more fun—not to mention more efficient. To play all those games of War physically, it would have taken me approximately seven weeks, one day, three hours and 45 minutes.

That’s half of a semester spent playing War, and I did it in 45 minutes.
What a dumb game.

Marc Calderaro is a senior writing and English major who will be attending the world series of War (the card game) after graduation. He is looking for sponsors. If you’re interested, e-mail him at mcalder1@ithaca.edu.

By: Jenna Scatena

Tension had been building throughout the country for months. Tumultuous events—vast protests, cultural upheaval, assassinations—during the first eight months of 1968 turned the entire nation into a spectacle of turmoil of historic proportions. Watching to see what would happen next, America turned to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago during August of 1968 for the crescendo.

Ten thousand protesters marched down Michigan Avenue, undeterred by government threats, with the intent of getting to the convention site. In preparation for what everyone knew would be a historic event, the government assembled 11,900 Chicago police, 7,500 army troops, 7,500 National Guardsmen and 1,000 Secret Service agents. Cops decorated the city with police lines in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the masses from reaching the convention site.

An issue of LIFE magazine printed two days before the start of the convention states, “The convention is a target for mass protests by rebels and dissenters of every stripe,” but reminded people, “the American tradition is the right to resist when order and system are deemed oppressive.”

The protesters, determined to take a stance, and the police, determined to stop them, collided, turning protests into riots. Protesters, reporters, bystanders and doctors offering medical assistance were beaten, tear-gassed and arrested in groups. The protesters’ long-time ally and tool, the media, taped footage of undeniable abuses on the part of the Chicago police and exposed their wrongdoings to the world.

Footage of the madness was ubiquitous across the country. At that point, any Americans who still believed in the assumption that all citizens were free were forced to wake up. They could neither ignore nor deny the raw images of police beating protesters in the streets of Chicago. Getting the public to recognize this was the first step toward change.

When the convention was over, 100 people were injured and 589 others were arrested. A CNN flashback report on the convention says, “. . . police [saw] the press as the enemy” that day. From the police’s perspective, the media, not the protesters, got the rest of the country involved—they were the megaphone that attracted the attention. The Chicago Police and the U.S. government received severe criticism for their aggression against civilians and, like any entity, they took action to protect themselves.

America is now faced with the dual battle of the ongoing fight for change and the simultaneous battle to uphold First Amendment rights. America is still fighting for things parallel to those fought for in the ’60s—equality, peace, women’s rights—and the public is still struggling to be heard.

Tom Hayden, one of the “Chicago 8” arrested at the convention and charged with inciting a riot, later became a California state senator. In a recent interview with Hayden, he says, “Demonstrations at conventions [now] are met with ‘war on terror’ barriers, overwhelming police response and [the] generation of fear among the public. . . quite different from ’68.”

U.S. government efforts to silence the public and the media have increased to the point that it is a stretch to even call America a democracy. Since ’68, the government’s favorite tactics have come to include requiring protest permits and subsequently refusing to grant them, enforcing “free speech areas” and restricting the media’s ability to cover events. Although protest permits and “free speech areas” existed back in ’68, they were not abused like they are today.

Alicia Swords, professor of sociology at Ithaca College, says the effort to minimize protests is “the government responding to pressure to control its people.” The radical protests of ‘68 may have resulted in increased government regulations to prevent similar disasters from happening now. Since ’68, Americans have generally viewed protesters as unpatriotic, disagreeing with the U.S. government and, by extension, disagreeing with America; rebels who are up to no good; aimless hippies and progressives looking for an excuse instead of a reason to go against the status quo. Consequently, our rights are being taken away and the government is silencing its people and the media.

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention in New York City, “free speech areas” (commonly known as “free speech cages” or “protest pens”) were constructed so that protesters would have designated areas to voice their opinion. The purpose of these areas was for national “security reasons,” which is why they were usually miles away from the main site.

Needless to say, the “protest pens” were not well received and accrued massive amounts of criticism from people and the press for infringing on the rights of the protesters. So you’re allowed to protest, but only in designated areas; your rights aren’t being taken away, only displaced. But voicing one’s opinion is only useful when someone is listening—and protesting miles away from the site you are contesting ensures that no one who cares is listening.

Professor Swords comments, “If a regime can’t listen and respond to its people, it is an absence of any ethics and democracy in our current system.” Issuing protest permits reduces the purpose of protesting to a useless cathartic release rather than a tool for change.

In addition, it’s now common practice for cities to require protest permits. However, a lot of times cities flat-out deny protest permits or limit protesting to certain locations. The permit system has also gained extensive criticism for being used solely as a pretext for arresting people who violate them by choosing to protest regardless of whether permits are granted or not. The protest permit system is a deceptive and oppressive paradox for regulating free speech. According to Don Mitchell, professor and Chair of the Geography Department at Syracuse University, in an article titled “Permitting Protest/Silencing Dissent,” in 1931 the Supreme Court developed a doctrine that Mitchell paraphrases as, “the governments have to prove the validity of prior restraint in each instance; its validity can never be assumed. . . And permit systems, by definition, assume the validity of prior restraint.” This, Mitchell continues, “undermines critical means for dissent in America and thus undermines democracy.”

At this year’s Republican National Convention, which took place Sept. 1–4 in St. Paul, Minn., twenty thousand protesters attended—twice as many as the ’68 Democratic National Convention. Over 800 people were arrested because of their participation in the protests, including health-care workers, lawyers and almost 30 journalists—despite the reportedly peaceful nature of the protest.

CEO of freespeech.org and former outreach director of Democracy Now! Denis Moynihan was at the scene with a small crew of other Democracy Now! journalists and producers to cover the convention. The group had rented offices in downtown St. Paul from the local public access television center. In a recent interview, Moynihan says that before the convention even began, they “had been dealing with house raids, arbitrary arrests, and unidentifiable, unresponsive riot police for a few days.” Five preemptive raids had been launched, resulting in six arrests and hundreds of people being detained preceding the convention, courtesy of the local sheriff department and the FBI.

Mitchell emphasizes that preemptive raids and unjustifiable denials of protest permits is a form of prior restrain—it is government censorship.

Though there was not the same amount of skull-cracking violence at the Republican Convention this Sept. as there was at the Democratic Convention in 1968, there is still something terribly wrong with this picture:

Hummers wrapped with barbed wire patrolled the streets of St. Paul; armies of police marched alongside with clubs, AR-15 machine guns, pistols and tazers in hand and riot gear covering their faces—looking like thousands of replicas of each other. Orwell warned us of militant hegemonic sights such as this.

It was “reminiscent of Nazi Germany or the many neo-fascist states that flourished in South America,” Moynihan reported.

On Sept. 1, Moynihan reportedly saw “a hundred or so riot police violently forcing people. . . away from the Xcel Energy Center,” where the convention took place.

Moynihan then received a phone call that Nicole Salazar and Sharif Kouddous, producers for Democracy Now! who were documenting the unnecessary violence on part of the police force, were arrested. Moynihan then raced to 9th and Jackson to find his colleagues seated in handcuffs in a parking lot along with a group of others.

In a transcript of a conversation between award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!’s host, and St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington about the events of the convention, Goodman says, “Nicole Salazar. . . was taping the whole thing. The police moved in at her. . . As she shouted ‘Press! Press!’…they pushed her to the ground. They put their boot in her back. . . They bloodied her face.”

Moynihan asked police who the commanding officer was and “got no response—it was as if these heavily armed men could just. . . round up perfectly law abiding citizens and journalists, violently arrest and haul them off, without announcing who they were or under whose command or jurisdiction they operated. It was a chilling scene.”

Goodman also raced to the scene from the Xcel center where she had been conducting interviews. When she asked who was in charge, a policeman ripped the credentials from her neck and she was immediately arrested without an explanation, joining a slew of journalists. Moynihan concluded the interview by saying that what he witnessed that day was police “violating the civil rights. . . and trampling on the constitution.”

The uncanny treatment of the American people and the press at this year’s convention reflects that the government views them as rebels, as people other than their own. The mistake here is assuming that protesters and the press representing them are merely rebels. As history reminds us, underestimating rebels can be a fatal mistake—after all, rebellion is how America gained its independence.

The media serves as a megaphone and the government’s only hope to stop the uprising is to break the megaphone. Goodman reported on the Democracy Now! Web site that she and the two other producers who were arrested were fully credentialed by the convention. Commenting on the suspicious arrests, Goodman reflects, “The press are the eyes and the ears, and when they are closed, it’s dangerous. We need a free press to guarantee a free society.”

The era of censorship and silence we have slowly been slipping into over the last 40 years is no doubt a dangerous one. It tags revolutionaries as unpatriotic and the media that supports them as the enemy. These, Swords says, are “signs of fear in an administration that knows it has something to lose.” These are signs of a government that knows and fears the power of its people and for this reason tries to silence them, breaking the megaphone.

Jenna Scatena is a senior writing major. E-mail her at jscaten1@ithaca.edu.

By Craig Duncan

To people who oppose torture, the response is always the same. “Ah, so you’re against torture? Well, what would you do if you had in your custody a terrorist who has planted a ticking nuclear bomb somewhere in Manhattan, and he refuses to tell you where it is? Wouldn’t you do anything, including torture him, in order to try to save millions from that bomb?”

How should opponents of torture reply to this game of gotcha? Let’s start with a little background in moral philosophy. Moral philosophers have identified at least two broad approaches to moral issues. The first, known as “consequentialism,” judges actions as right or wrong exclusively on the basis of their consequences: the right act to perform is always the act with the best overall consequences.

According to consequentialism, then, “the end justifies the means.” Clearly, the ticking time bomb case described above exemplifies the consequentialist approach: torture may be a bad means, it says, but torture is surely not as bad as the deaths of millions of innocent people.

The second approach, which I will call the “respect for persons” approach, rejects the claim that only consequences matter. According to this approach, each individual, simply in virtue of being a person, has an inherent dignity—a dignity that morally demands respect. Respecting this dignity means recognizing that other people matter in their own right, that they are not merely disposable instruments that can be manipulated in pursuit of other goals, even other worthwhile goals. Instead, individual people are beings endowed with rights: rights to life, liberty, fair treatment at the hands of others; these rights place moral constraints on what we may do, even when we are seeking to do good.

Within the respect for persons approach, which I favor, there is a quite direct explanation of why torture is wrong. Torture is, it says, the ultimate insult to another person’s dignity, the most complete act of humiliation possible. Torture is the total subjugation of one person within another’s power; it destroys the subjugated being’s integrity—his or her wholeness, his or her separateness—as a person. The torturer strives to make his victim a mere puppet, with the victim’s nerves pulled taut to serve as puppet strings, so to speak.

The intention of the torturer is that the victim can do nothing other than his, the torturer’s, bidding; if in fact the victim can summon up the will to resist the torturer’s demands, then this is a defeat for the torturer. In short, torture aims at nothing less than the utter destruction of its victim’s will, the essence of his or her personhood. That is why it is the ultimate form of disrespect. That is why the doctrine of respect for persons easily entails that people have a right not to be tortured.

Still, we must ask: is this right not to be tortured an absolute one? Is it really correct to say it is never right to torture another person? Against a picture of an absolute right not to be tortured, it is tempting to think that when the consequentialist case for torture is supremely strong—as it seems to be, say, in the ticking time bomb case with which we began—then even basic rights against torture can legitimately be overridden.

I think this picture is correct. Rights not to be tortured (as well as all other rights) are not absolute rights—though I would still hasten to add that they are near absolute, that is, they should only be violated in the gravest, most urgent and supreme emergency.

That said, I don’t think this abstract concession is at all the resounding victory the pro-torture crowd thinks it is. One obvious observation is that the recent acts of torture perpetrated by U.S. personnel—acts apparently savored by the pro-torture crowd—have hardly met the exigent conditions of the ticking time bomb case, to put it mildly. More importantly, though, this reply overlooks the fact that, although in extreme cases there may be consequentialist reasons to torture, there are also grave and weighty consequentialist reasons not to torture.

First, it very probably won’t work. The tortured person may be innocent and hence not possess the sought-after information. Or he may be guilty but be able to stall long enough by just making up answers. Either way, we end up with one tortured suspect and lots of dead bomb victims.

A second and even weightier consequentialist reason not to torture is that torture has awful long-term consequences, and hence carries a high danger of winning the battle but losing the war. History suggests that once torture begins, it has a habit of spreading. The French in Algiers in the 1950s, for example, first began to torture suspected Algerian terrorists solely in order to learn of future terrorist plots, but they soon were torturing much more frequently in order to spread fear among would-be terrorists at large, or simply to vent their hatred of their foes. Something similar appears to have happened at Abu Ghraib.

What is more, torture is almost always counterproductive. It inspires more terrorist reprisals and it can serve terrorists’ goals in at least two ways. First, appeals to the evidence of American brutality can serve terrorists’ recruitment goals, so that although you may have foiled one bomb plot, in doing so you have merely created scores more bombers. Second, torture can serve terrorists’ political goals by inspiring a broader loss of sympathy for America (and a corresponding rise in anti-Americanism) among even non-terrorists.

The harm this does to the fight against terrorism is hard to underestimate. Foiling terrorist plots requires the cooperation of foreign governments and the pooling of international intelligence resources. Political leaders in countries with a strong anti-American public will feel less free to cooperate with American intelligence agencies. Additionally, civilians in those countries with be less inclined to provide information about any terrorist activities they happen to learn of.

In order for consequentialist reasons to be weighty enough to override rights against torture and render it permissible, it is simply not enough that the deaths of many innocents are at stake. To think this way is to forget that the force of the consequentialist reasons for torture is always opposed by the force of the very powerful consequentialist reasons against torture just described.

Instead, what must be the case for torture to be permissible is that the force of the reasons for torture “minus” the force of the reasons against it (the “resultant force,” perhaps) must still be forceful enough to override the near absolute force of a person’s rights against torture. This is not a very promising case for torture. It is hard to say how often these conditions will be met, but I would be surprised if such conditions were met more than once a century, if that.

“But still…but still…” the pro-torture crowd will say. “If you concede in principle that there might be permissible torture in some cases, then you should at least agree with us that there should be no complete legal ban on it.” The reply to this is no. We should not craft laws solely with extreme cases in mind.

It is better to craft laws with the general case in mind and then handle extreme situations on a case-by-case basis via a legal defense known as the “necessity defense.” Someone who speeds away after a car crash violates the law against leaving the scene of accident, but if she did so in order to rush her grievously injured passenger to the nearby emergency room, she will likely be allowed to argue before a jury that breaking the law was necessary in those circumstances, and she will likely prevail. A pharmacist who administers nitroglycerin to someone having a heart attack in his shop breaks the law against providing drugs without a prescription. A hiker caught off guard who breaks into an empty cabin to escape a snowstorm breaks the law against trespassing. In these cases, a necessity defense will almost surely spare the law-breaker any conviction.

The general idea, then, is that it is better to handle such exceptional cases via the mechanism of the necessity defense, rather than inserting a bunch of exceptions into the law’s definition (i.e. changing the law to read “It is illegal to speed, unless you are in situation X, or you are situation Y, or…”). For one thing, you will never be able to predict all such situations in advance, so you will need something like the necessity defense anyway. What is more, even if you could predict such situations, the resulting law would be unwieldy and more prone to abuse.

Surely these considerations imply that we should not forgo an absolute legal ban on torture just so that torturers, in that once-in-a-century justified torture case, will not fear prosecution. Instead, let’s keep the legal ban on torture. Should that extremely rare event of justified torture arise, the torturer will have to argue his or her case in front of a jury of twelve peers. If it really was a justified case of torture, the torturer will have little to fear.

Of course, the George Bushes and Dick Cheneys of the world may think that a total legal ban on torture is still too risky and that given the high stakes we should not force torturers to take their chances with a jury. They think that this risky prospect may keep some officials or soldiers from doing what (they believe) needs to be done to save lives in a supreme emergency.

Three replies suffice to reveal the flimsiness of this argument. First, it simply ignores the risks inherent in a less-than-total ban on torture, namely, that the risk that such a ban will serve as cover for unnecessary (and hence morally abhorrent) torture, and the risk that this unnecessary torture will sour America’s image and help terrorist recruitment.

Second, this argument insults the courage of the people charged with protecting us. These are soldiers who will fall on a grenade to save a buddy. Why think they won’t risk a jury trial if that is what must be done to save thousands of American lives in a supreme emergency?

Third, this argument insults the courage of the American people. “Just do anything to save us, please!” it portrays the American public as saying. “We don’t care about our honor! Forget our deepest values! We’d rather sacrifice those things than be exposed to any risk of danger at all, no matter how slight!” This, however, is not the American public I know. Last time I checked, we were still the home of the brave, not a country of cowards concerned only with saving our own skins.

Craig Duncan is an assistant professor of religion and philosophy at Ithaca College. It’s hard to write something funny here after an article on torture. E-mail him at cduncan@ithaca.edu.