we are not all jerks...

You might not read BoingBoing or Lambda The Ultimate or Conscious Entities or any other blog that I'm generally telling you guys to read... but you should at least sometimes take a look at In These Times.

Every morning they insert the tube through Al-Haj’s left nostril and every afternoon, his right—presumably to avoid excessive pressure on a single nostril. According to Al-Haj, the pain of putting the tube up his nose is considerable; the tube’s diameter is 12 millimeters, (three times the clinically recommended width of a nasogastric tube) and he gags when it passes through his throat. As it descends into his body, the attendants blow air into the tube to hear where it is, and then they put a stethoscope near his heart to listen. Most days he suffers in silence until tears stream down his cheeks. Three times they have inserted the tube the wrong way, so it went into his lungs. When they think that has happened they check by putting water into the tube, which makes him choke. Al-Haj says that never once have the hospital personnel apologized when the tube entered his lung.

-- H. Candace Gorman, civil rights attorney, writing for In These Times about the ongoing hunger strike. Sami Al-Haj is an Al-Jazeera cameraman who's been held at Guantanamo for over five years now. No mention of charges or trial.

People are amazingly pliable. And amazingly resolute. And humane, and inhumane.