This is old but needs to be posted
OVER A million Iraqis are dead from America’s war.
That sentence is a cognitive litmus test. Some people’s immediate reaction is, “That can’t be right,” because the United States couldn’t do that. Or because crimes on that scale don’t still happen. Or because they do happen, but only in horrible places that the United States hasn’t rescued.
One million is a “Grandpa, what did you do to stop it?” number. It’s a number that undeniably puts the American state among history’s villains. Those who are not willing or able to accept this are physically unable to retain the fact that over a million Iraqis are dead. Their brains expel it like a foreign germ.
Noam Chomsky once wrote that the “sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of ‘Fuck You,’ so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response.”
That pretty much sums up the how the media reacted to the one million figure in 2007 when it was announced by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB). (In fact, the firm estimated 1,220,580 Iraqis had died, confirming and updating a separate study done the year before by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal.)
Take Kevin O’Brien, deputy editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Upon receiving a media advisory about the findings from ORB, whose clients include the British Conservative Party and Morgan Stanley, this was his response: “Please remove me from your mailing list and spare me your transparent propaganda.”
The silence is deafening.
(via fralcon)
The Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs has said a deal has been reached with Israel to end a weeks-long hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Issa Qaraqe said the Palestinian prisoners signed the deal on Monday afternoon at an Israeli prison in Ashkelon.
(Source: akio, via palestinianrefugeerevolution)
It’s been two years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil on the Gulf of Mexico. In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released Monday offer some new insight to just how grim the Gulf became for sea life.
The images were released in response to aFreedom of Information Act request that Greenpeace filed back in August 2010, asking for any communication related to endangered and threatened Gulf species. Now, many months later, Greenpeace received a response from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that included more than 100 photos from the spill, including many of critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles dead and covered in oil.
Most photos are missing dates and descriptions, though the FOIA request covered the period of April 20, 2010, to July 30, 2010. But they’re pretty shocking—which is probably why they weren’t made public at the height of the spill. “It just makes me furious,” said John Hocevar, a marine biologist who works for Greenpeace. “I had so many conversations with people in various government agencies working on the Gulf spill, and I feel like they were hiding things from all of us.”
“The White House was sitting on this stuff for over two years, at the same time they were saying everything was fine, that the oil was gone, and while they were rushing ahead with plans for new drilling in the Gulf, the Arctic, elsewhere,” Hocevar continued. “It’s just not okay. This is not an acceptable type of collateral damage.”
Mother Jones has requested comment from NOAA but had not received a response at press time.
Jump below the fold to see some of the photos that have been kept under wraps for the past two years:
Click the hyperlink title of this post to see the grim toll for yourselves. It’s remarkable how quickly we’ve moved on from this disaster, even though its effects will be felt for generations.
(via socialistscum)
Palestinian Hunger Strikers: Fighting Ingrained Duplicity
what does it have to do with american values? why is it always based against american standards? when have these supposed american values EVER been shown by america?
(via wa6an-0)
The 20-minute short film revolves around the idea of assessing social, psychological and economical affects on people from the tribal areas of Pakistan. The film identified problems that families face after becoming victims of drone missiles.
(via secondhandsocks)
A person selling gun range targets modeled after slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin says that their “main motivation was to make money off the controversy.”
WKMG’s Mike DeForest reported on Friday that the unidentified seller told him that the targets “sold out in 2 days.”
“The response is overwhelming,” the seller said.
While the item appears to have been removed from GunBroker.com, a cached version of the page was still available at the time of publication.
Photos of the item, which was titled “10 Pack Trayvon Martin Targets,” showed crosshairs over a hoodie similar to the one Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February. The figure has a bag of Skittle in his pocket and is holding what appears to be a can of iced tea, similar to what Martin had purchased before being gunned down. The pack of 10 targets was being sold for $8.
“Everyone knows the story of Zimmerman and Martin,” a description on the targets reads. “Obviously we support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug. Each target is printed on thick, high quality poster paper with a matte finish! The dimensions are 12″x18″ ( The same as Darkotic Zombie Targets) This is a Ten Pack of Targets.”
The seller’s ID was listed as “hillerarmco” from Virginia Beach, Virginia. A website by the same name is registered to Hiller Armament Company in Virginia Beach, but the associated phone number had been disconnected.
Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara told WKMG that this type of “hatred” just makes his client’s defense even more problematic.
(via theeducatedfieldnegro)
(Source: mehreenkasana, via pro-revolution)
