Former U.S. soldier droppin’ some Truth about this bullshit war in Iraq. Do your self and your conscience and your country and your fellow human beings a favor by watching this and then doing something about it.
Tag: terrornoia
Categories
The Highest Cost of War
If i were living in a video game, i would probably do video game things: senseless slaughter, reckless driving, and generally causing mayhem. It’s sure as hell fun in a video game.
I’d probably have a real itchy trigger finger; blowing character’s heads clean off would cause me to ceaselessly cackle as i wheel about looking for more victims, and more nastiness to get into.
Soldiers, however, do not live in video games. They kill real people. Actual human beings, with lives and families and friends and day jobs – be they evildoers or just innocent civilians, caught in the line of fire. Sometimes, though, things go wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.
Frankly, it’s getting a little tedious, hearing and reading about all the civilian deaths in Iraq. It has been going on for a long time, after all.
That’s why i put off reading this The Nation piece (alt.link.print) for about a week before i got around to reading it.
The Iraq War is a vast and complicated enterprise… Fighting in densely populated urban areas has led to the indiscriminate use of force and the deaths at the hands of occupation troops of thousands of innocents.
I can not and will not blame soldiers en masse or individually. It’s a real bad situation over there, and we need to get those guys out of there as quickly as we possibly can, before more soldiers crack under pressure and bring the whole damn thing down.
It’s ok to be against the war and NOT spit on returning soldiers. That kind of folly is for idiot hippies with misguided frustration. These guys need a lot of help, from many different angles. War does terrible things to a man’s soul. But we must have hope that these inner demons can be defeated, every last one of them, for every last soldier who was there and saw bad things happen.
The bottom line: we’ve gotta get out of that place.
In the four long years of the war, the mounting civilian casualties have already taken a heavy toll–both on the Iraqi people and on the US servicemembers who have witnessed, or caused, their suffering. Iraqi physicians… published a study late last year… that estimated that 601,000 civilians have died since the March 2003 invasion… [They] found that coalition forces were responsible for 31 percent of these violent deaths, an estimate they said could be “conservative,” since “deaths were not classified as being due to coalition forces if households had any uncertainty about the responsible party.”
“Just the carnage, all the blown-up civilians, blown-up bodies that I saw,” Specialist [Jeff] Englehart said. “I just–I started thinking, like, Why? What was this for?”
“It just gets frustrating,” Specialist [Garett] Reppenhagen said. “Instead of blaming your own command for putting you there in that situation, you start blaming the Iraqi people…. So it’s a constant psychological battle to try to, you know, keep–to stay humane.”
Check out this angrily passionate editorial by the great Keith Olbermann re: the new, absolutely diabolical Military Commissions Act. (Read up on it and know that this is terrible and insane.)
[youtube]uqxmPjB0WSs[/youtube]
Categories
Your history.
May I just take a moment of your time to point out that:
Every white (and non-American Indian) person living in the United States today is a descendant of debatably illegal immigrants? And that, while we’re on the topic, the non-white immigrants to this country were nearly exclusively brought here in chains by whites?
So just exactly what god damn right does anyone have to say that any human being is illegal or that they are trespassers?
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
-Emma Lazarus
Homeland Security Secretary (and Skeletor imposter*) Michael Chertoff, presumably issuing a sweeping indictment of all thought-criminals everywhere:
“Clearly, at the end of the day, we’ve got to eliminate that pool of people who are susceptible to becoming killers.” (Spoken at around 7:20 on the stream’s timeline; emphasis mine.)
Possible translation?:
Are there any queers in the theater tonight? Get them up against the wall!
There’s one in the spotlight, he don’t look right to me! Get him up against the wall!
That one looks Jewish! And that one’s a coon!
Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
There’s one smoking a joint, and another with spots!
If I had my way, I’d have all of you shot!
(Roger Waters, “In the Flesh”)
Pre-Crime, anyone?
* doesn’t he remind you of Senator Palpatine, just before he becomes the evil Emperor? I tell you, Michael Chertoff will likewise reveal himself to be Skeletor one dark day….
Categories
NORAD 9/11 tapes
Listen to these 9/11 tapes from NORAD’s NEAD base for chills. Read the whole story of how the effort to quell the 9/11 attacks was doomed from the beginning by faulty communications and a military that was sadly outmanned, overwhelmed, and ultimately outgunned. From Vanity Fair. Chilling, terrifying stuff. The candor, and humanity, on these tapes is stone-cold real.
Henry Rollins: A Love Letter To Ann Coulter
“But mostly, Ann, you will shut the fuck up.”
Priceless!
Categories
hilarious spoof
Categories
link roundup
Korea unveil’s world’s 2nd (life-like) android. I had no idea there was another, but there is: it’s Japanese.
Best Buy invaded by faux blueshirts! Hail Eris!
Security guards and managers started talking to each other frantically on their walkie-talkies and headsets. “Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!,” one employee shouted. They were worried that were using our fake uniforms to stage some type of elaborate heist. “I want every available employee out on the floor RIGHT NOW!”
Student kicked out of private university for – get this – being gay! Honestly, wtf?!
This revolving kitchen is a serious space-saver. How awesome is that?
Superhero underwear fetish spoof! Female superheroes have always been objectified as so much T&A… now male superheroes can be fluffy C&B models!
German superhero Robin Hoods steal gourmet food to give to the poor!
“The Not Your Soldier Project gives youth the tools we need to stop the military invasion of our schools and our communities.”
Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer.
Remix My Life in the Bush of Ghosts tracks!
The Skeletor Show. Yup. The Skeletor Show.
Terrorist video game mod is a hoax. Who knew? Anyone with half a brain, that’s who.
Categories
link roundup
from the Missing Link files: 375 million year old Fishapod fossil discovered. A fish with a freaking neck. Oh, and finger-like bones attached to wrist-like bones. Fuck you, Creationistas! (See also: Ray Troll’s related artwork)
“Dark Miracle: Trinity, the Manhattan Project, and the Birth of the Atomic Age”, a fabulous piece by Josh Ellis (see also: video of Ed Grothus’ Black Hole tour)
SXSW video coverage. Sweet.
Big Brother is (or will soon be) watching you, via SkySeer. Already this drone camera-plane is in use in L.A. skies.
Remember this, GWB? “Leaks of classified information are bad things. We’ve got too much leaking in Washington… I want to know who the leakers are.” Does anyone have a mirror for Mister Bush?
It’s All in the Mind, man: psychedelics research.
Israeli soldier murders journalist. From a related BBC News story:
“The inquest has heard that Mr Miller approached an armoured personnel carrier, carrying a white flag which he shone a torch on, calling out that he was a British journalist and wearing a helmet marked TV. He was shot in the neck, unprotected by his body armour.He had been attempting to ask for permission to leave the area.”
So, yeah, just keep on supporting Israel, all you Left Behind-reading end-times obsessed know-nothing Revelationist fuckwits.
Categories
link roundup
Sun’s idea for an open-source DRM has the potential to fix many extremely problematic issues with potentially dangerous, proprietary DRM.
Goodbye, PSP movies. We hardly knew ye.
When you tell He-man gung-ho shootemup types that war is just plain bad, and that the American war against Iraq is one of the worst, maybe you should make him read this article entitled “Baghdad By Night” instead, from NPR producer JJ Sutherland. To paraphrase Serena Tali, the author of comment #1 from that article, Americans don’t know about this kind of thing because they just don’t want to know.
Still don’t think the US is becoming a police state? Bully cops suck the worst.
Evil terrorist mastermind Mario apparently on the loose in Ohio.