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Author | Topic: "Only have ourselves to blame" NO! | |||||||||||||||||||||||
MangyTiger Member (Idle past 6384 days) Posts: 989 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
IMHO, FOX's stance is called "Counter programming". They have no more vested interest in content, in supporting Bush or the right wing than in any of the other programs they air. I couldn't disagree much more with this. FOX is an arm of the world wide media empire owned by Rupert Murdoch. Although I haven't lived in the US since he appeared on the scene (so I've never watched FOX) Murdoch has a track record of making his products very popular by pandering to our baser instincts and then exerting influence on politicians so they follow his preferred ideology. As it happens Bush has virtually the same views as Murdoch - unrestricted free market capitalism and globalisation is good, any kind of restriction on business is bad and social programs to help people are pretty much anathema. IOW Murdoch doesn't just follow the dollars he subtly (or not so subtly) is actually trying to set the political agenda to reflect his own views. Confused ? You will be...
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jar Member (Idle past 425 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
I can't argue too much with you except to say that Murdoch is, IMHO, after money and power. If he thought the best thing for RM was to change camps and become a flaming liberal, I bet he'd do so in a heartbeat. I don't think either Bush or RM have any moral base.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Silent H Member (Idle past 5850 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
I think you give FOX and most of the others way too much credit. Maybe you are thinking I am giving them more credit than I am. The fact is that any organization, especially an entertainment for profit organization, will have its "flavor" shaped by those who run it. If you have people on the left running something then when a choice comes up, they will take a left. Same for those on the right. It is not sinister, just a reality of humans being humans and making choices. It takes a very strong hand to keep something objective, and unfortunately these days most people find real objectivity on an issue too bland, or too offensive depending on where reality intersects with their favorite issue. Thus the hand of the consumer forces news programs, who are now almost entirely run by entertainment moguls, to pick some form of nonobjective position. And the desire for more viewers creates more need for spectacle, so nonimportant issues are concentrated on in excess, just to get people's knickers in a twist (apparently people like the feeling). However, I believe FOX is something else. It's entertainment programming is totally mainstream, indeed almost leftist. It is undoubtedly populist. Thus Murdoch uses his purely entertainment driven capital to feed his news shows where he does not present the news. It is without question filled with stunning inaccuracies if not downright lies. The level of propagandizing (I mean by the book propaganda techniques) left me floored. I remember on one "news" segment on Chirac they had edited a roll of tape so that he was constantly turning in disgust, then they intercut that footage with him greeting Hussein, and then images of Hitler. Uh, yeah, none of this is anything less than pure base propaganda. So FOX, unlike others that are drivel and left or right due to choices humans make, has a decided position. It is churning out propaganda. If ratings were impacted by this decision and money was clearly lost, you may be right. He might change to keep his money flowing. But that was the genius of Murdoch. His entertainment programs generate so much viewership, and thus money, there is little chance that his news programs would ever cost him. Indeed he gets the added money of the true believers, many of which are repulsed by the entertainment FOX puts on. holmes "...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Now, I really cannot understand how a rational person would claim that, and for all our differences I do view you as a rational person. But really, what is the basis for this claim? Because in order to make it, you have to ignore ALL the human rights NGO reports, and those by the UN, that indicate that America has an extremely poor human rights records. Again I say: the US is the most thoroughly propagandised state on the planet, becuase its own citizens are absolutely deluded as to what the US state actually does in the real world. It's as if Americans live inside TV-land.
quote: Why do you leap to the assumption of hyperbole? Again, this is a border-line accusation of Anti-Americanism - the reflexive denial of criticism "just because". Perhaps you should stop just dismissing such complaints out of hand and consider that just possibly, just maybe, a perception shared by so many observers of the US might haver some basis in fact. Why, for example, did Human Rights Watch wordl eport 2001 say:"As the Clinton Administration's second term ended in 2000, evidence of its domestic human rights legacy was scant. The country made little progress in embracing international human rights standards at home. Most public officials remained either unaware of their human rights obligations or content to ignore them." How do you explain that? Universal anti-americanism that has just afflicted the world out of the blue as a mass psychosis? This is absurd apologetics, holmes. The report goes on:"The United States in 2000 submitted reports on its compliance with two international human rights treaties-the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment-to the respective treaty monitoring bodies. Both reports acknowledged significant abuses of the rights affirmed in those treaties." And: "In May, the U.N. Committee against Torture issued a statement of conclusions and recommendations highlighting a range of U.S. practices that contravened the convention. The committee's concerns included: ill-treatment by police and prison officials, much of it racially discriminatory; sexual assaults upon female detainees and prisoners and degrading conditions of confinement of female prisoners; the use of electro-shock devices and restraint chairs; the excessively harsh regime of super-maximum security prisons; and the holding of youths in adult prisons. The committee urged the U.S. to enact legislation making torture a federal crime; to withdraw its reservations and declarations to the convention; to take the necessary steps to ensure those who violate the convention are investigated, prosecuted, and punished; to prohibit stun belts and restraint chairs; and to ensure that minors are not incarcerated in adult facilities." Do you not see that from any perpsect EXCEPT the delusional self-referentiality of the American dream, the abuses of Abu Ghraib were entirely predictable, and were indeed predicted? Abu Ghraib was not an isolated incident by a few loose cannons: it is indicative of the generally low level of human rights compliance in and by the US.
quote: Well as you should certainly know, I criticise each and every state because all states are oppressive in my view. But, in relation to whom is the US so superior? And, why should I care about the US being better than SOME states; the position I am criticising is that the US is the BEST of states and is therefore entitled to act as the worlds policeman.
quote: Who goes left? Who is, right now, challenging the US massacre in Falluja? Who is holding up the high moral standards of the US? The US lives in a self-justifying media bubble, assuming the pronouncements of the state are inherently and universally true. They have converted themselves into so many PRAVDA-clones. Here's Naomi Klein pointing out the extent to which real human rights abuses in Falluja are being buried under the glorification of the military, murderess rendered into heroes merely becuase they share your passport: Smoking while Iraq burns Its idolisation of 'the face of Falluja' shows how numb the US is to everyone's pain but its own Naomi KleinFriday November 26, 2004 The Guardian Iconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with the photograph of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old marine from Appalachia, who has been christened "the face of Falluja" by pro-war pundits, and the "the Marlboro man" by pretty much everyone else. Reprinted in more than a hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Times photograph shows Miller "after more than 12 hours of nearly non-stop, deadly combat" in Falluja, his face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips. Gazing lovingly at Miller, the CBS News anchor Dan Rather informed his viewers: "For me, this one's personal. This is a warrior with his eyes on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it. Study it. Absorb it. Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don't dampen, you're a better man or woman than I." A few days later, the LA Times declared that its photo had "moved into the realm of the iconic". In truth, the image just feels iconic because it is so laughably derivative: it's a straight-up rip-off of the most powerful icon in American advertising (the Marlboro man), which in turn imitated the brightest star ever created by Hollywood - John Wayne - who was himself channelling America's most powerful founding myth, the cowboy on the rugged frontier. It's like a song you feel you've heard a thousand times before - because you have. But never mind that. For a country that just elected a wannabe Marlboro man as its president, Miller is an icon and, as if to prove it, he has ignited his very own controversy. "Lots of children, particularly boys, play army, and like to imitate this young man. The clear message of the photo is that the way to relax after a battle is with a cigarette," wrote Daniel Maloney in a scolding letter to the Houston Chronicle. Linda Ortman made the same point to the editors of the Dallas Morning News: "Are there no photos of non-smoking soldiers?" A reader of the New York Post helpfully suggested more politically correct propaganda imagery: "Maybe showing a marine in a tank, helping another GI or drinking water would have a more positive impact on your readers." Yes, that's right: letter writers from across the nation are united in their outrage - not that the steely-eyed, smoking soldier makes mass killing look cool, but that the laudable act of mass killing makes the grave crime of smoking look cool. Better to protect impressionable youngsters by showing soldiers taking a break from deadly combat by drinking water or, perhaps, since there is a severe potable water shortage in Iraq, Coke. (It reminds me of the joke about the Hassidic rabbi who says all sexual positions are acceptable except for one: standing up "because that could lead to dancing".) On second thoughts, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated to the status of icon - not of the war in Iraq, but of the new era of supercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is, of course, a different marine who has been awarded the prize as "the face of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of a two-year-old Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead child lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble. Inside the US, these snapshots of a lawless occupation appeared only briefly, if they appeared at all. Yet Miller's icon status has endured, kept alive with human interest stories about fans sending cartons of Marlboros to Falluja, interviews with the marine's proud mother, and earnest discussions about whether smoking might reduce Miller's effectiveness as a fighting machine. Impunity - the perception of being outside the law - has long been the hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have deepened since the election, ushering in what can only be described as an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies. At home, impunity has been made official policy with Bush's appointment of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, the man who personally advised the president in his infamous "torture memo" that the Geneva conventions are "obsolete". This kind of defiance cannot simply be explained by Bush's win. There has to be something in how he won, in how the election was fought, that gave this administration the distinct impression that it had been handed a get-out-of-the-Geneva-conventions free card. That's because the administration was handed precisely such a gift - by John Kerry. In the name of electability, the Kerry team gave Bush five months on the campaign trail without ever facing serious questions about violations of international law. Fearing that he would be seen as soft on terror and disloyal to US troops, Kerry stayed scandalously silent about Abu Ghraib and Guantnamo Bay. When it became painfully clear that fury would rain down on Falluja as soon as the polls closed, Kerry never spoke out against the plan, or against the other illegal bombings of civilian areas that took place throughout the campaign. When the Lancet published its landmark study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as result of the invasion and occupation, Kerry just repeated his outrageous (and frankly racist) claim that Americans "are 90% of the casualties in Iraq". There was a message sent by all of this silence, and the message was that these deaths don't count. By buying the highly questionable logic that Americans are incapable of caring about anyone's lives but their own, the Kerry campaign and its supporters became complicit in the dehumanisation of Iraqis, reinforcing the idea that some lives are expendable, insufficiently important to risk losing votes over. And it is this morally bankrupt logic, more than the election of any single candidate, that allows these crimes to continue unchecked. The real-world result of all the "strategic" thinking is the worst of both worlds: it didn't get Kerry elected and it sent a clear message to the people who were elected that they will pay no political price for committing war crimes. And this is Kerry's true gift to Bush: not just the presidency, but impunity. You can see it perhaps best of all in the Marlboro man in Falluja, and the surreal debates that swirl around him. Genuine impunity breeds a kind of delusional decadence, and this is its face: a nation bickering about smoking while Iraq burns. A version of this column was first published in The Nation This message has been edited by contracycle, 11-26-2004 06:52 AM
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zephyr Member (Idle past 4581 days) Posts: 821 From: FOB Taji, Iraq Joined: |
I honestly don't know how balanced this kind of journalism is. I know we are not as perfect as our leaders like to claim, and I know our mass media tend to sweep a lot of misdeeds (arguably war crimes) under the rug. I haven't been on the front lines (not quite) and I don't see everything those people do. But I have spent five months in a place where we take daily or near-daily indirect fire. It's frequent enough to really freak some people out. Still, the majority of the time, we don't even shoot back. Why? Because there are farms and houses nearby and we can't tell if we're going to take out innocent people. That is a fact. If we cared only about protecting our people, and not the lives of Iraqis, we would have razed everything withing five miles of the base and set a firm policy of wasting anybody who crosses the line. Instead we allow the locals to go about their business, working right across the fence and even in sight of some of our operations. I can't really say much about the measures we do take, but I can give you this conclusion: we are, on the whole, very careful not to take innocent life.
I do think the hoopla over a picture of a guy smoking is utterly ridiculous, and we do need to pay attention to reports and widespread perception that we have committed human rights abuses. However, at the level of the common soldier/airman/marine etc., I can categorically deny that these things are institutionalized or trained. In fact, everyone in the armed forces is required to have intitial and annual refresher training in the Law of Armed Conflict. This is where they remind you of who is and isn't a combatant, and remind you that it is your duty to disobey any unlawful order involving action against noncombatant people and facilities. We are also reminded that having received an order does not remove responsibility for a LOAC violation; both commander and troop are culpable. We spend a lot of time and money on ensuring that over a million people receive this training yearly. Tell me, do our enemies do the same? The civilian casualties in places like Fallujah are a genuine tragedy. That we would take deliberate military action against further civilian targets just to keep it covered up is very, very hard for me to believe. I am keeping my ears open for more information, but it would have to be very concrete. As for your discourse on US policy toward protestors... I echo the charge of hyperbole. Yes, there have been abuses. Yes, it is absolutely outrageous when it happens. But the vast majority of demonstrations are not marked by that kind of thing. Hell, one organization maintains a perpetual protest directly in front of the White House, condemning our actions as imperialist murder etc., upsetting quite a few visitors with their harangues, and the Secret Service doesn't lift a finger to stop them.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
Oh god how tiresome - presented by an external viewpoint the first recourse is to wonder if its "balanced reporting". As long as Us media uses terms like "insurgent" to describe the Iraqi resistance, referes to the "liberation" of Iraq to describe an illegal invasion and occupation, and describes its enemeis as "terrorists" the US has absolutely no right to complain about bias.
But putting that aside, your argument about the human rights training of US forces is badly undercut by several realities, such as that those charged in Abu Ghraib were only introduced to the Geneva Convention AFTER the storm broke. Furthermore, the US has made it abundantly clear it holds human rights in contempt by establishing the gulag at Guantanamo in which people are held without charge, trial, representation or access to support organisations. Indeed, as the Human Rights Watch articel below shows, the "tribunals" at Gauntanamo are no more than kangaroo courts with neither the ability nor intent to give anyone a fair trial; human rights and war law education in the US military is honoured more in the breach than the observation:
quote:
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: The order to invade Iraq was illegal, point blank. Yet has been obeyed. How do you explain that?
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote:
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Analysis: Risk to civilians mounts
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jar Member (Idle past 425 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Nonsense.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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jar Member (Idle past 425 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
And was there some point to your post?
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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contracycle Inactive Member |
Nonsense?
What legal basis did it have? Since when did the US congress have rights superceding those of its treaty obligations? Is all the world subject to US law, or what? And yes there was a point to my next post. That is the EFFECT you are inflicting on the people of Iraq. And you will be judged by your actions, not by your excuses. This message has been edited by contracycle, 11-26-2004 10:47 AM
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zephyr Member (Idle past 4581 days) Posts: 821 From: FOB Taji, Iraq Joined: |
quote:It wasn't my first recourse. I have read several pieces describing action in Fallujah that trouble me deeply. I do not question the veracity or even-handedness of a report simply because it disagrees with what my mass media attempt to spoonfeed me. I question it because I am in Iraq, I live and work with the same people who are there, and I am just high enough on the food chain to have a little insight into war planning and the culture of military leaders. Your presumption is starting to get to me. quote:It is fairly accurate because there is an official government (like it or not) trying to set up simple things like police forces and civil infrastructure. Whether you like the US being here or not, attacking a government's attempts to develop its own trained army and police force and civil services is an action in the service of anarchy. I'm pissed that we're in this country. I'm even more pissed that these idiots are too stupid to understand they're only prolonging our presence here. Do you begin to understand where I'm coming from?quote:I'm ABSOLUTELY with you on that... it's utter bullshit. quote:Well, some of them are. I disagree with the overuse of the term - it has lost its impact and generally stifles most intelligent conversation quite well, but kidnapping a civilian and beheading them messily while filming it for the news is, well, textbook terrorism. quote:Any bias is bad. We have ours, Al-Jazeera has theirs... it's tangential to the more serious issues here. I wasn't complaining or alleging bias anyway. I questioned balance in the sense of completeness. quote:Say what? Are you saying it has been documented that they received no training in human rights? Because I have been forced to sit through that damn LOAC class every year since I joined, even when I was working IT policy in a sea of cubicles. quote:Gitmo is a farce. I totally disagree with it. Won't argue on that one. However, it is an exception, and Abu Ghraib is an exception. There are 140,000 troops in Iraq alone. Yes, some of them are inhuman assholes, like anywhere. Yes, some of them cooperate with orders to violate human rights - well, they are guilty, as are their commanders. But we are talking about a minority. I work with these people and I know them. I know how they are trained and how they live. Just because I don't disagree with everything American news sources say, you seem to discount my firsthand experience. It is just as fallacious for you to uncritically accept reports of our misdeeds as representative of daily practice, as it would be for me to read the DoD newspaper Stars and Stripes and think it tells me the whole story.
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Silent H Member (Idle past 5850 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
Now, I really cannot understand how a rational person would claim that, and for all our differences I do view you as a rational person. But really, what is the basis for this claim? Because in order to make it, you have to ignore ALL the human rights NGO reports, and those by the UN, that indicate that America has an extremely poor human rights records. Well the reason is actually going out in the world and getting some experiences, which includes getting friends from all across the globe. I am aware of human rights abuses that the US is charged with. I am certainly not going to claim we are anywhere near the top of the best nations regarding human rights. What I said is that the US is better than many nations when it comes to human rights. There are a heck of a lot of countries out there and the US is better than many. As good as it should be, or expected to be since it is a first world nation? No. Better than many out there? Yes. Oh and did we just really screw up royal as a self-proclaimed protector of other people's human rights when we invaded Iraq? Hell yeah. Are we still better than many? Yes, actually we are. Though I still wish the international community would put the hurt on us for conducting an illegal invasion of another country. Well maybe we are getting our karmic desserts, as the dollar is falling badly.
Why do you leap to the assumption of hyperbole? I'm not leaping to an assumption of hyperbole. Your comments regarding what life is like and what citizens are like in the US are patently hyperbolic. When you address specific cases that is fine, and talk about trends that is also clear. But then you blow some specifics into generalizations that just aren't real, and leap to the ends of trends as if they have always been. The portrait of the US that you paint is not just incongruous with how US citizens see themselves (which I agree is distorted, especially in the media), but it is incongruous with reality.
the position I am criticising is that the US is the BEST of states and is therefore entitled to act as the worlds policeman. We share that criticism. It is not the best, and is not entitled to be the world's policeman.
Yes, that's right: letter writers from across the nation are united in their outrage - not that the steely-eyed, smoking soldier makes mass killing look cool, but that the laudable act of mass killing makes the grave crime of smoking look cool. Better to protect impressionable youngsters by showing soldiers taking a break from deadly combat by drinking water or, perhaps, since there is a severe potable water shortage in Iraq, Coke. I am so glad not to have been aware of that controversy. Apocalypse Now was truly the greatest human study ever made. Kids destroy Iraq listening to cool music, now the people back home are more offended by the personal tastes of soldiers than what atrocities they are forced to commit. holmes "...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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zephyr Member (Idle past 4581 days) Posts: 821 From: FOB Taji, Iraq Joined: |
quote:That is a separate issue. We're talking about combatants and non-combatants. LOAC does not deal with the justifications for a conflict itself, but rather the legitimacy of hostile action against a particular target once conflict has been initiated. I am not trying to dodge the issue of legality as pertains to the war itself. In fact, I am fully in agreement with you on that one. I'm only pointing out that we do not institutionalize violations of human rights and in fact train people to recognize and avoid them.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
I believe that the Iraq invasion was illegal.
Iraq was not an imminent threat.
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