Al-Zarqawi

foret said:

think i was being a bit of a cunt when i posted that
however some of the stories of american war crimes ('little' war crimes rather than the ur-war crime of the war/occupation itself) sicken me, and i'm sure they are many more that happen out of sight; on newsnight a couple of months ago a former soldier spoke of how they could get away with killing pretty much anybody

some of those deserve everything they get

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I don't know... I obviously wouldn't defend what they're doing, but it seems that this sort of stuff is part and parcel of what will happen when an army that's been recruited and trained in the way that the allied one has gets put into a position like they're currently in. If I tried to land a jumbo jet, my training and preparation wouldn't be up to the situation and I'd probably crash it, but the fault would lie with whoever let some yahoo off the street try to land the thing. Likewise, when you grab (in a lot of cases) stupid people, give them guns, train them to kill, and send them out to a place where everyone's trying to kill them then they probably aren't going to respond well. But IMO the fault lies with the people whose idea the whole thing was.

It's disgusting to see Bush and Blair expressing their profound shock that soldiers would behave in this way, and that the war would have been so nice if they'd just behaved themselves. The responsibility for these crimes has to lie with the people who caused them to happen.

hundredmillionlifetimes said:

Did we see any mutilated corpses on - or after - 9/11 in the mainstream media? Nada. Sanitised. Air-brushed out: the fantasy of immortal Western purity has to be preserved and sustained, as with the total media blackout on white corpses (as opposed to black ones, which were broadcast everywhere in the racist media) after Hurricane Katrina, as with the total media blackout on inward-bound US bodybags from Iraq and Afghanistan.

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excuse my niavety, but wouldn't this backfire? viewing those images certainly makes me feel angry and upset - the fact that they exclusively feature "the other" only serves to harden my feelings about the rights and wrongs of the conflict.

although you could construe it negatively as pornography i think its important that people understand the reality of war - and maybe a strong emotional reaction is part of that, feeling the shame we should be feeling.

but yeah, it could be more balanced. paradoxically, they keep count of our losses but don't bother with those of the enemy. not sure how this squares with your immortality fantasy theory though.

"the total media blackout on inward-bound US bodybags from Iraq and Afghanistan."

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Well it's simple isn't it? US bodies show that the war is going badly and need to be hidden, enemy bodies show that it's going well, let's get the pictures out there!

"total media blackout on white corpses (as opposed to black ones, which were broadcast everywhere in the racist media) after Hurricane Katrina"

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I'm not sure what you're saying here. The media is racist and black bodies are more acceptable? I don't buy that. You could just as easily argue that showing more black bodies than white is an attempt to show how the hurricane disproportionately affected the black community and is an attempt to draw people's attention to the racism in society. To my mind though the obvious explanation for seeing more black corpses on tv is that there were more of them.

Idlerich said:

... The media is racist and black bodies are more acceptable?

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Yeah, I've seen that before, I'm not saying that the media isn't racist as such, I'm saying that I'm not certain that it serves a racist agenda to show more black bodies than white after the hurricane. I would say that when people saw that the hurricane was affecting the black community so disproportionately they immediately started asking why.

mainstream media schmedia

The main stream media, mostly owned and controlled by white men, is the hypnotist, and school is where we learn to be hynotised.....

some are hypnotised by tits and titilation, spite and innuendo, some are hypnotised by the increasing value of their property and the holidays they plan to take abroad, others still are hypnotised by the capitalist ideal, that endless wealth will mean that eventually the trickle down from that immense pool of riches will be such that there is no poverty and that's what history and school in general really is about .....

setting that fairy tale in the forefront of any rational discussion on the issue, thus distorting dissent from the perspective of those who comply .... unconsciously, through conditioning some people really cannot see the truth.

They are the people the mainstream media seek to manipulate and control. Our brothers and sisters.

We must talk to each other. That is what is happening on the net right now, and is happening in neighbourhoods around the world. We are talking to each other, the family of humanity, across oceans and landmasses and much truth is being revealed. And much that is a distraction too. Heed it not.

Value for Money Mercanaries

By the way, I believe the US has killed Zarqwahi about 5 times already .......

http://derekpgilbert.com/?p=2159

No Collateral Damage?

Link to video in article. 3rd paragraph.