Slashdot Mirror
US Military Launches YouTube Channel
Jenga717 writes "The US military has launched its own channel on YouTube, in efforts to shift the media's focus of Iraq from a negative to a more positive light, and to 'counter the messages of anti-American sites.' From the article: 'The footage is not picked specifically to show the military in a good light ... and is only edited for reasons of time or content too graphic to be shown on YouTube ... And while all the clips currently posted have been shot by the military's combat cameramen, soldiers and marines have been invited to submit their own clips.' The question is, where are they supposed to submit them? Starting 'on or about 14 May 2007', the Department of Defense will block troop access to Myspace, Youtube, MTV, and more sites, due to a 'growing concern for our unclassified DoD Internet, known as the NIPRNET'." More commentary below.
The troops will be unable to access these sites from any computer on the DoD network, yet are still able to access them from their home computers — which they can't use on the DoD network. So why the censorship? The DoD cites security reasons, but the Commander of Global Network Operations (DoD's Joint Task Force)"has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites." The PDF released by the DoD reminds troops that this "benefits not only you, your fellow Servicemembers, and Civilian employees, but preserves our vital networks for conducting official DoD business in peace and war." Sounds like quite a sticky situation."
They have done other things like this with other media formats - like Soldier Radio in the 50's.
Isn't that called "propaganda"?
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
US soldiers only give flowers to children, play games with them and everyone loves them!
They would never stack prisioners in a naket pyrimid and abuse them, or kill anyone running to them, or other nasty things!
See proof we are there to help! we are friendly! we just want to HUG you!
Not saying that the other side is not nasty, but we are sugar coating it pretty damned hard.
The 3 guys I know that finally came back from combat, all with purple hearts and one will never walk again have told me that it is HELL over there for everyone involved.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The military has no business telling people what to think. The consensus is that this is a failed mission (as the world warned the US it would be) and they have to live with that.
I understand that being deployed military is quite a bit different from working in an office, but there are many, many sites I can't get to from my desk at work that I can get to at home. If I try to go to somewhere the network gods say I shouldn't, I get a big Websense error message instead.
Gaming sites? Filtered. Hacking sites? Filtered. Gambling and porn as well (I assume, haven't tried those.) Recently, they've figured out how to filter the google cache of pages sometimes, too.
Unfortunately, sometimes the hacker sites have been the sites with the info I need for work, but the guy two cubes down has a VPN to his home up most of the time, or I just wait until I go home and look stuff up there.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
the whole bit about footage too graphic for you tube... well by its very nature that is what puts the military in a bad light. sounds like propaganda to me.
on another note... I'm in the air force, and for quite some time the base network has blocked access to the following (though some of the blocks have since been rescinded):
1.e-bay
2.something awful
3.any flash content
4.any URL with the word "game" in it
5.any URL with the word "forum" in it
6.countless other harmless sites that don't come to mind right now
just because the military puts up its own youtube channel doesnt mean you HAVE TO watch it. the right to speak/broadcast doesnt mean anyone will listen. keep that in mind
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
hehehe, United states soldiers
... until it has sleeping cats falling off TV's, narcoleptic dogs and drunk people doing the Macarena.
Here is a nice video from the good american army educating the Iraqi population?
Is that the kind of classified information we should not allow the marines to post?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6c4_1176720508&p=1
John Vai
The only way to get positive feedback is to not exist, at least if you're in authority.
How many bad cops are there, really? But there are plenty of people that paint them all with the same brush. I'm not saying that the military is filled with righteous humanitarians who just get stuck in a rough spot every now and again. But the fact is that bad news sells and good news doesn't. When given the choice between bad news and good news, the bad news will win every time. That having been said, I don't think the DoD should be in the business of making sure their side of the story gets told. I know people over there now, and have few friends that have made it back. It's still a war, they're still in the military, and the story isn't going to be all rosy. Or all bad.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Oh really? So what is the criteria then? number of shots on target? cost to the taxpayer of munitions expended? rounds discharged per second?
Entertainment value?
I mean, c'mon, that's just such a silly statement. What other reason can the military ever have for releasing any media at all beyond terse official communiques?
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Theft is Investment
Destruction is Development
We're not killing babies, we're preventing terror.
Fuck 'em all, and the horse they rode in on. 50 years from now, when the USA is a pathetic, second-rate banana republic, the world will marvel how the people let it happen.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
And if you get blown up by an IED, just hit replay and you're good to go.
well better post some true history on what the usa and uk are up to then so i'd better link these vids on mp3's to the site!
. mp3
. mp3
Rory Bremner gives a hilarious and historical look at the history of conflict in Iraq.
1 Between Iraq and a Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by43joQLYj8
2 Beyond Iraq and a Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2JCLwhwTmM
3 Beneath Iraq And A Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipa8DuKyN6I
Robert Newmans History of Oil:
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Ecd6361Ls
2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZefONsT1E8
3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ0RX3vz-Og
4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLxxybJWVRI
5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsknJvrfSYA
WE ARE NOT IN IRAQ FOR OIL !!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWiLshk6fSU
an interesting lecture by Michael Ruppert: part on starts after brief music:The Truth and Lies of 9-11 A lecture by former LAPD narcotics officer, Michael Ruppert, held at Portland State University in November 2001. He explains how September 11th is connected with oil, gas, heroin, money laundering and the US stockmarket
1: http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug95-hour1mix
2: http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug95-hour2mix
The Truth Is Out There:
This is completely pointless. I already support the troops. By and large, they are just doing what they have been told to do. I also have no doubt that Abu Ghraib and others all began at the top of the chain of command and worked their way downward, providing plausible deniability to the people who were actually responsible for it all.
The only way that this is about the troops at all is in the sense that they are even there in the first place. This is about the U.S. invading a sovereign nation on false pretences. It is about our soldiers dying not for our safety, to keep the country free, or to liberate an oppressed people, but simply for oil interests. It is about the Iraqi families which have been torn apart, killed, and subjected to death and destruction every day, caused by both extremist groups and U.S. forces. It is about placing the security of the country in the hands of NATO, aggressive multinational diplomacy, and rebuilding the infrastructure of a decimated country.
Showing us that the U.S. troops are performing their given tasks is going to accomplish absolutely nothing at all.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
- accidently shooting your friend in the back
- blowing up children by mistake
- shooting at reporters as they wave the white flag of war... ect
National Internet Porn Repository Network?
Even if the military is spreading propaganda, it is always good to listen to all sides in a debate. Even if you disagree with someone its a great idea to learn why they hold a certain belief. Once you understand someone's point of view, it is easier to persuade them to change their mind or to argue against them. Its even possible that you might agree with them.
Heres a cute comic that neatly summarizes what I mean: http://xkcd.com/c106.html
What the anti-war and anti-troops (two distinct, sometimes linked groups with separate agendas) don't want is a source of public information that they cannot control or spin for their own purposes.
Aside from the obvious example of Fox News, all other TV news outlets have a consistent negative slant on the efforts in Iraq.
It scares the Hell out of the George Sorros backed loons that there might actually be an information source they cannot control.
I don't suppose they will be posting these:
The famous "Awe Dude" air-strike on a crowd of civilians. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQUK5rA4DaI
Or this apparent murder of civilians driving by in their cars. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnyjH5wusqs
Or the Apache killing these unarmed men in a farmers field, working on a tractor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZRyNd6ru8
Or executing a wounded Iraqi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W41srr6CQU
Blowing up Mosque's doesn't look so good either. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFVnqUJWsiU
this'll be countered by hunderds of YouTube users speaking out against the War in Iraq?
Personally, you all should remember this before you respond.
Don't blame the military, blame the military's Commander-in-Chief! The military is just doing what they signed up for... well except the National Guard who SHOULD BE helping the nation bounce back from stuff like Hurricane Katrina, but again blaim the Commander-in-Chief. He got us into this war and is now refusing to allow the war to be funded on the other parties' terms.
Because the army had to lower their standards in order to fill recruitment quotas, they also had to launch The Dislexic Soldier Channel. Their motto is "Can All You Be Can". (ripped off from Bill Mauer)
Table-ized A.I.
"How many bad cops are there, really?"
That's not really the right question to ask if you want to make your point. It's pretty well accepted that the question isn't of how many bad cops are their, but one of how bad is each individual cop, as well as how bad are they on average.
And while all the clips currently posted have been shot by the military's combat cameramen, soldiers and marines have been invited to submit their own clips.' The question is, where are they supposed to submit them?
Yeah, after checking with their superior officers first...
Okay. The last election was in 2006. There was no presidential race that year. A lot of Republicans got voted out of both houses of Congress, so I think some Americans are losing patience with the Republican war strategy. Congress attempted to pass a defense bill with a named exit date this year: that's another sign.
The last presidential election was 2004. Maybe we should've known to kick our current president out by then: I mean, Fahrenheit 9/11 was already released. But, even though things looked bad then, they looked better then than they do now. (When did we learn about Abu Ghraib, anyway?)
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Actually, I think people who are attracted to positions of authority are, in fact, assholes.
That being said, the people in the military are not actually in a position of authority.
Thus, it's entirely possible to paint the military in a good light while letting the authority decisions be painted in a bad light, and I think that this type of PR works perfectly for their target market: new future soldiers.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
No one is even pretending that American mass media is for the dissemination of unbiased facts anymore. Read the article, read the slashdot summary... all of it contains biased wording.
I accept that this may be modded offtopic. It just pisses me off that everyone is pushing their agendas via a medium that has such potential to empower.
The media climate has reached a point where even if I were to put together a youtube series depicting the life of veterans after returning to the states, chronicling both their triumphs and their tragedies, the series would be politicized by all the f*cking pundits and bloggers and politicians to where very few people could view it without preconcieved notions about my own personal opinions about war, politics, and the state of our democracy.
Anyone else out there feel like you can't even trust what you see with your own eyes anymore? Do any other Americans out there feel like it is damn near impossible to speak directly to your fellow countrymen without having your words filtered through the opinions of the talking heads that fill their t.v. screens and babble out of their radios?
Regards.
BS. The news media concealed atrocities in Vietnam, such as the destruction of Huan, and the widespread use of defoliants that killed thousands of children. The bombardment of Laos, and the creation of the world's biggest minefield were all ignored. They ignored the death squads in El Salvidor, and are currently ignoring the genocide in Sudan. The NY Times had the balls to publish a picture of US Soldiers attacking a hospital in violation of the Geneva Convention without mentioning that they had been committing a war crime. The American news media is a propaganda arm of the US government.(Source: Noam Chomsky). No mention of the fact that we assisted Saddam with the crimes we executed him for has been made, or that the only chemical weapons he ever had were the ones that we gave him.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Hunderds of thousands. It's more the norm than an exception. It's like they say, there's a fine line between being a cop and being a criminal. Both careers attract the same sort of people.
... and then they built the supercollider.
They think...that's why we have generals, which in turn, is why someone like the president *should* rely on feedback from these strategic positions. If there's any absence of thought regarding Iraq, it's certainly not with the military - it's with the commander-in-chief and his neo-con know-it-alls.
Is there really some reason they needed this when they already have DVIDS?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
And what about those of us who opposed this war BEFORE we invaded?
Propaganda is a funny word with a million connotations. Sure, this could be called propaganda, as could much of the reporting coming out of Iraq from various outlets.
Wars are hard to cover, and the mish-mash conflict/counter-insurgency that is Iraq is no exception. The problems are similar to those of any other big, contentious political conflict, such as elections, only now people are shooting each other, a reporter's access is often limited to a certain area and frequently only to one side, and the emotions run about 100 times stronger.
I like the use of the word "propaganda" in Spanish better, as a word used to describe any advertisement as well as its perhaps less savory meanings. Propaganda tries to influence people, yes, but it can play a role in informing people. A car ad, for example, informs me about say the gas mileage of a car and attempts to convince me to buy the car at the same time. The information regarding gas mileage is accurate and factual, but it is not simply handed to me straight - it's done in a persuasive manner.
News "reporting" has become more of the same, as the 24 hour networks seem to have a system where supposedly unbiased reports - and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're all biased - are viewed, and then commentary from a pundit whose main qualification is having an opinion is solicited, and this commentary runs just as long if not longer than the report itself. I for one am tired of hearing Jack Cafferty, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs (I particularly dislike Dobbs, but that's another post), Hannity and Colmes blabber on.
The problems are not simply ones of bias - it's a lack of depth, and this problem exists on the supply and demand sides as well. American news outlets have consistently cut back on international news for well over a decade now, and other than a few select cities worldwide most simply don't have correspondents overseas. The results of this problem could easily be seen in the recent Israeli-Lebanese (well, whoever exactly the other party was - it was pretty nebulous) conflict last summer. The major wire services, news outlets, etc. simply didn't have many reporters in Beirut to keep track of things. They flew out their usual talking heads and depended on the information of local stringers, who often have their own agendas and biases built in. A textbook example of this would be the Adnan Hajj photography controversy - a local stringer who doctored photos and used misleading captions to get his point across.
Keeping reporters overseas is expensive, and combat embeds - the safest method of transportation for journalists in Iraq - isn't exactly cheap, either. If you notice, television coverage in the U.S. is often interspersed with clips of combat and other footage from the Iraq conflict recorded during the invasion over four years ago. Or from the latest 12 - 24 hour embed a reporter did with a unit, which is hardly sufficient time to get to know things. Troops also hate these short embeds, something I say from personal experience not as a soldier but from long discussions I had with a French friend talking about his military experience in Afghanistan as a unit commander. Reporters often kept his group from getting the job done. After putting up with a few embeds, he told all those who followed that if fighting occurred they were on their own - and he sure hoped they brought weapons and ammunition.
But there's another reason for this lack of depth of coverage: Americans don't really care about what's going on in the world. Fewer than 20% of Americans have a passport at any given time, and I'd wager that 4 years into a massive troop deployment in Iraq more than 50% of the public still couldn't find the place on a map or identify its capital city. Americans tend to have strong moral feelings about war in general, good and bad, but few and far between are those actually informed. This apathy combined with the extremely
Take some literary theory classes and you will quickly begin to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to seperate writers from bias. In the few rare occasions that you can (stereo instructions for example) the READER will still add their own bias to their interpretation of it.
The media is doing exactly what it always has done. Provided facts laced with opinions. This has been going on since the dawn of time. Our jobs as readers are to parse that information as best we can. Reading it is a active, not passive, experience. You can't expect to be spoon fed the truth. The truth itself is subjective and often subject to interpretation.
if they can only access the internets to actually upload stuff *at home* then anything they upload will be 6 to 15 months out of date. Firstly, this means that it's unlikely that anything that would compromise current operations would get out and secondly, it means that as Iraq descends further into chaos, the youtube clips will be showing an Iraq 6 to 15 months earlier when it wasn't quite so bad.
FGD 135
in the last presidential election did not vote for Bush in 2004, nor did we really in 2000.
To paraphrase Douglas Adams: 'Anyone who wants a position of authority should under no circumstances be allowed to do the job'
FGD 135
According to the article, the channel is named "Multi-National Force-Iraq", but a search on YouTube does not turn up anything.
The article states it is the 16th most subscribed channel on YouTube, but I don't see it anywhere in the top subscribed channel list.
Did the military or YouTube remove it?
...According to the most recent government figures, 37 million Americans are living below the official poverty threshold, which is $19,971 a year for a family of four. That's one out of every eight Americans, and many of them are children.
...
More than 90 million Americans, close to a third of the entire population, are struggling to make ends meet on incomes that are less than twice the official poverty line. In my book, they're poor.
The number of poor people in America has increased by five million over the past six years, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to historic proportions. The richest one percent of Americans got nearly 20 percent of the nation's income in 2005, while the poorest 20 percent could collectively garner only a measly 3.4 percent.
So, what makes America more secure? "Fighting" "terrorists", or using the 150 Billion to support those at home?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I am sure good things are happening, but NO amount of good things can make up for the damage we (The US) have done. I personally hold Bush and his clan responsible for ~3500 American deaths and more importantly over 1/2 million Iraqi deaths. Not to mention all the injuries, destroyed lives and a destroyed country. The SOB Bush has killed more Americans than Osama bin laden and more Iraqi's than Saddam had in a long time. We talk about catching Osama (or not..) We should be catching Bush. Everyday that goes by I find myself more furious over what he has done to my country (and what we have let him do). This is like some horrible nightmare. I am going to stop here so I don't get into a rant and type 3 pages. On an individual level our troops are good people, doing their job, but as a whole they have been sent to do a horrible thing.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Now I can get constant updates of the war in Iraq, eleven grainy, stuttering seconds at a time!
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
What planet are you from? The U.S. military operates at the behest of our elected officials... We call them politicians.
I can't help but get the impression that when you use the word politician you mean it in a slanderous manner to describe someone who doesn't share your opinion.
Everyone has an agenda, get over it.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Probably. But that doesn't matter.
The IMPACT of a single innocent child being killed by our troops outweighs a literal TON of candy and flowers being handed out.
Meanwhile, comments from REAL military leaders
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/12/ap/nati
So dead women and children don't matter to the officers in charge.
Again, read the above link.
The problem is that this is now an occupation. We are occupying Iraq. But we are still treating it as an invasion.
We need to switch our strategy to law enforcement now. No more bombings. No more tanks.
The war is over. We won. But we're still going to lose Iraq because we cannot understand that police work is not the same as calling in another bombing run.
And the fault of that is our government AND the military leadership.
Our troops WILL crack under pressure. We KNOW that. Yet we keep putting more pressure on them because we still believe that Iraq is a "war" when we are really an occupation force.
The military leadership refuses to tell the politicians "NO".
Iraq IS a tragedy.
We paint schools and then shoot the parents of the children because they're traveling too fast when they approach our road block. How is that anything other than tragic?
Our troops are PEOPLE, not machines. They cannot take the continued stress.
And now we're extending their tours.
Or not kill innocent people
Or not rape their girls
Or make a youtube channel
Seriously, I'm not sure about the first three.
1. The .PDF is from General Bell, who is Commander, United Nations Command/Combined Forces Command/United States Forces Korea.
The letter is addressed to Military in Korea.
2. Beginning May 14th they will be blocking....
The have had blocks on myspace and youtube in CONUS for over a year..
3. The message says DoD will be blocking, but the fact of the matter is almost all Installation block access to these sites already at the installation level and at regional levels.
this is really not news, they are just doing it at the gloabl routers where the NIPR hits the highway
I was out protesting with MILLIONS of other people.
I wrote letters to my representatives.
Senator Patty Murray voted AGAINST the war.
Fuck your sophomoric "we're all to blame" bullshit. Many of us stood up and opposed this war. We are not to blame. We are still trying to get our troops back before any more of them die.
"oh look... a clip of marines handing out sweets to Iraqi kids. How did that get in there? Damn, That doesn't leave any room for the torture and rape videos we were going to post."
God Be Gone
Sure, that's probably one of the reasons why the administration wants to have a new surge of troops. Others are to quell the rising amounts of violence and set an example that America won't accept looking like it lost and is retreating. The actual result of such a surge, though, is most likely going to be a rise in violence. When we phased out of Vietnam, we experienced the bloodiest time of that war.
Yeah the truth can get pretty ugly. Can't have you see any of that.
What?
ar.my, pl armies*:
1. a large organized body of men too stupid to realise that they are risking their lives to enforce the will of their political elite, instead of assuring the defense of their country.
Canadian, Australian, Indian, Irish and NZ army exempted from the definition. Other countries have different purpose, names and definitions (in their own native tongue) for their countries' military force.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
English is easier said than done.
I don't get it. What does this have to do with censorship? Since when have other journalists been barred from reporting stories and posting Youtube videos that portray the military in an other-than-positive light?
Or is Slashdot/submitter suggesting that the military should be censored?
Please explain.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I did let my Member of Parliament know how I felt about the prospect of invading Iraq, and my country made the correct decision on the matter.
The military is intended to do, not think, and that's part of the problem. There needs to be a mechanism for the military, at all levels, to understand when they're in a bad mission and make the best of it. As opposed to sticking their heads in the sand and crying "support the troops" when they do something stupid.
The so-called "censorship" exists because:
1. Congressionally-mandated enforcement of business ethics. It is a waste of taxpayer resources to have GIs visiting sites such as YouTube, MTV, etc., as these sites are not mission essential. (Something possibly only the over-30, not still living with mommy crowd might understand.)
2. Operational security prohibits visiting any web site that permits posting of messages, or in this case, videos. Residents of the 5-pointed cesspool have seen too many instances of publicly accessible forums used by DoD personnel to post information about operations that are yet to occur. It's the old, "Loose lips, sinks ships," mindset. Rightfully so.
!%$@#%#@! Slashdot is blocked on my DoD system, so I had to go home to Mommy's house and post this.
All militaries (not just the American one) have a need to feel that their mission is worthwhile. That has to be corrected. Quite often, militaries get sent off on fool's errands, or have to stay somewhere they shouldn't have gone into in the first place.
I'm not blaming the poor SOBs who signed up under Clinton for getting sent to Vietnam 2.0. I'm blaming them for sticking their heads in the sand and pretending it was a good idea, when it's been made quite clear to even the thickest redneck that it wasn't.
Oh, and I'm not American. I, along with the rest of the world, warned you that this was a bad idea. I bear no responsibility for your mistakes.
coming soon to MySpace near you.
I am sure more than one philosopher has written about this at length. Doxa vs. episteme etc.
Anyone who thinks the Game (I call it "The Second Great Game" to put its proper historical perspective) is over when we have Persia in a pincer between Bactria and Babylonia, what a lightweight twit to be so blown about by public opinion, so ignorant of history... well I am hoping that reality is far more textured and profound than any consensus!
Consensus is doxa, hearsay, trivia, rumor, crap. Even legend and outright myth have more truth than does public opinion.
If we do lose this, well I am sure more than one good author has written at length about that scenario, that desire of public opinion that fart of a million asses:
Dan Simmons
Orson Scott Card
I have spent some years in various DoD organizations. Pretty much all of them block traffic to site that a slacker might use to waste time. Too many receptionists bloging or checking their myspace friends. In the government, firing people for this is almost impossible, so they just block the sites. It is a pain in the ass. No webmail, nothing even remotely "social" (that includes wikipedia at some places). Oh yeah and our email filter routinely blocks incoming mail from webmail. Eventually, I will leave the government over stuff like this.
After perusing this thread, I'm holding out for the MySpace site.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I mean, that's what these guys want... right... to disseminate the Truth that the evil Western decadent nations are refusing to let be known.
Or something like that. Whatever.
You're kidding right? Did you bother to read those?
First link:
Wednesday, 12 August 1999: The first surveys since 1991 of child and maternal mortality in Iraq reveal that in the heavily-populated southern and central parts of the country, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said the findings reveal an ongoing humanitarian emergency.
The surveys reveal that in the south and center of Iraq -- home to 85 per cent of the country's population -- under-5 mortality more than doubled from 56 deaths per 1000 live births (1984-1989) to 131 deaths per 1000 live births (1994-1999). Likewise infant mortality -- defined as the death of children in their first year -- increased from 47 per 1000 live births to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame. The surveys indicate a maternal mortality ratio in the south and center of 294 deaths per 100,000 live births over the ten-year period 1989 to 1999.
Ms. Bellamy noted that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."
Second link:
"Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades,"
The latter link is from a suspected CIA plant, but lets say it's factual. SC sanctions and Bush Senior killed at least 210,000 more BABIES than Hussein's government killed men, women, and children (combined).
An enlightening pair of links. Thank you.
They're being purposely disingenuous. If they were honest about their reasons for wanting to occupy Iraq (securing oil), we could have an informed discussion on the merits of their position.
That's not what they're doing. They're using buzzwords intended to invoke an emotional response in support of their position.
Regular grunts-blocked access. Psyops corps with carefully crafted propaganda pieces = "you tube channel". And I am too lazy to go google for the references to on purpose media manipulation, but you can find them, going way back, in this nation and foreign nations, they co-opt newsies or create their own "news" and get it inserted-or keep trying, either way. Lot of internet references there if you have been paqying attention over the years..
Remember, they have billions to play with, and the so called "law" from decider&co. is on their side, disregarding the entire iraq war is blatantly illegal and was slammed through congress with complete and total lies (just like the gulf of tonkin lies which to this day most nam vets aren't aware of yet) and that phony US spook run official US army brand anthrax attack against congress and the news media. that was for passage of the patriot act and to send them a message-play ball, you have no choice.
And they are *good* at propaganda, I have met a number of both regular "informed citizens because they watch the news!!" civvies *and* guard members who fervently believe that saddam hussein was tied to 9-11 and they are over there for "payback". I kid thee not. This is 2007 and they are still being told that and still believe it, millions of them.
And no, you can't refuse illegal orders, they court martial you for it. Lt. Watada is a prime example there.
cool, we'll get unreleased Abu videos ... with background laughs !!!
keeping my bad karma
The full version of the "helicopter kill" video was shown on ABC Nightly News. Watching it, it's pretty obvious the guys who were killed were looking around, trying to make sure they weren't being watched, and trying to minimize the time they were actually in possession of what looks a lot like a SAM launcher tube. It's very ironic that a version of the video edited to make the military look bad should show up in a discussion criticizing the military of propaganda.
Gulf War I - Military recognizes the importance of public support for a war, and how important media portrayal is to that support. It controls reporters mixed with troops, and censors news reports back home.
Gulf War II - Military attempts to reproduce media strategy from Gulf War I. It works initially, but as the occupation drags on it starts to fall apart. Military again perceives the media as focusing excessively on negativity. The military realizes they can bypass the media, using the Internet to reach the public directly
The Internet has ushered in a new age in which duplication and distribution of information has (for all practical purposes) zero cost. A lot of the old models we've grown up with aren't going to survive this. We all know what's happening to the music and movie industry. A similar thing is going to happen to the press - they are just the middlemen in the distribution of newsworthy information to the public. They're not going to survive the Internet in the form we all grew up with. The emergence of blogging was the first salvo. There are going to be many more. I don't know where all this is going to lead, or what solution will be the best if we want to preserve some semblance of "objective reporting". But the notion that only the "official press" can distribute true news, and anything else is propaganda, that notion isn't going to survive much longer.
Forget for a moment any biases you may have for or against the military. If any group of people felt (rightly or wrongly) that they had been misrepresented by the press in the past, would you expect them to react any differently? Say a Canadian citizen was unjustly deported by the U.S. during an anti-terrorism investigation to a third country where he was tortured. Say you felt the mass media were not giving his story enough coverage, so you decide to make a web site and post some videos on YouTube publicizing the story. Does that automatically make it propaganda?
Our concepts of "news", "reporting", "objectivity", and "propaganda" are going to go through a lot of changes in the next 20 years.
Who modded "War is HELL" informative? Go outside.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
Your comment fails to appreciate (a) the fact that most of the violence in Iraq comes from native Iraqis; foreigners, while not insignificant, are the vast minority; and (b) that doesn't take very many civilian deaths to really annoy an occupied population.
Leaving wont change this. It isn't like the US pulling up stakes and leaving is going to make the violence suddenly vanish. The vast majority of deaths in Iraq these days is not collateral damage, and it isn't Americans even kill insurgents. The vast majority of deaths stem from Sunni and Shiites trying to kill each other with a helping of Al-Qaeda suicide bombers to keep everyone perpetual pissed, as if Saddam's brutal treatment of the Shiites wasn't enough. Look, we have seen this kind of warfare before.
After the Jews Holocaust of World War II, the world declared never again. Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur are all examples of the sort tide the US is desperately trying to push back. The 'never again' mantra has rung hollow in the face of these horrific genocides.
Right now the US stands in an ugly place. One option is to spend money and lives trying to hold back the genocide that is all but certain to take place in the absence of a hundred thousand+ multinational forces. The US can probably stabilize things in the end, but it might take years, and it might require more American blood and money. Iraq can't stay in genocide mode forever, and as long as the US is there outright genocide is impossible.
The other option is for the US to pack up their bags, offer some empty apologies for killing the brutal authoritarian who was keeping chaos at bay, hand the current government a check, and give any who help us and fears for their life US citizenship for them and their family and a free airplane ride to the nation of their choice. I am not completely against the idea.
That said, we really need to understanding what the 'screw you guys, I am going home' option means. We need to consciously recognize and accept that by doing this, we could kick off a true genocide and spawn a massive three way regional proxy war with 'moderate' Arab states funding the Sunnis in a battle against Iranian funded Shiites. Further, we need to accept that the one group that really would be sad to see us leave, the Kurds, are going to get the pissed pounded out of them by the Turks when they declare an independent Kurdistan. Further, we need to accept that the one Arab state that can honestly claim to be a moderate democracy, the Turks, are going to have a large hunk of their nation flare up in violence as Turkish Kurds try and join Iraqi Kurds in independence.
If we can consciously accept all of this, bow to idea that all of this might come to pass, bow to the idea that we are going to wash our hands of this mess, and bow to the idea that America spawned a genocide and refused to pay in blood to stop it, THEN I am fine with us leaving. Sadly, this is not what is happening. The people that want to pull out frame the retreat as if as soon as the US leaves the Sunni, Shiites, and Kurds will all of a sudden put down their weapons and hug. Listen to the people who want to pull out, and you get the impression that leaving would be doing Iraq a favor and that a simple retreat will solve all problems. It wont. It will solve the Americans problem for sure... they will stop paying in blood and money to fix the mess they made, but it will not solve anything in Iraq. Instead, the one force that is desperately trying to keep the waring parties from slaughtering each other will be gone, and only Iraq's weak and pathetic central government will stand in the way of genocide.
You guys are all arguing about the just side, or the corrupt side, or how many people are dieing. But you are missing the larger picture, the USA is a war driven economy, it's the world's number one superpower, what happens to a large superpower when it has no wars to fight? The army has to be cut back and their position as a superpower becomes threatened by another superpower like China.
To maintain their global position, they must create war to facilitate the need for the endless budget that is the number one military in the world. The actual reasons and outcomes of individual fights really don't matter as long as the generality of war exists. Everything else becomes forgotten details over time.
Aside from the obvious politcal spin this is trying to accomplish I have a big problem with what continues to be a major issue in my opinion. Videos and photos of dead enemy comabatants. We strongly condemn it when our dead troups are photographed or video taped, however we aparently have no problems doing the same to our enemies. And before anyone says it, I firmly believe they are either enemy comabatants and subject to the laws of the Geneva Convention or they are terrorist, and since terrorists get trials.... well you get it.
No, the screen name is MNFIRAQ
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MNFIRAQ
Care to back that up with anything other than uninformed bullshit you just pulled from you ass? Maybe something like statistics?
There's no place like
What is your good news? The mainstream media is reporting that people are dying. From what I understand, people are dying. Also, their country is being looted, a couple of hundred thousand Americans, both military and civilian, are roaming Iraq with complete immunity from Iraqi law. The security contractors are, from what I can tell, immune from any law. Iraqis can be jailed just for criticizing the USA. Iraqis can be tortured to death for being Sunni, or blown up for being Shiite. What the hell would you like the media to report? "A flower bloomed today?" "A dog had puppies, and they were cute?"
Since the media sucks so much, please link to this good news we're missing.
Care to back that up with anything other than uninformed bullshit you just pulled from you ass? Maybe something like statistics?
Here you go:
Bad cops: 73%
Good cops: 27%
Cops are dicks. Maybe if they weren't forced to conduct a para-military war on the civilian population in the name of fighting drugs then they wouldn't be such dicks. Maybe not.
The problem I see is that we consider "being a good person" to be an innate, defined trait, not an character assessment made on your actions. If someone supports torture, I don't consider them a good person, even if they give candy to kids and scratch puppies behind the ears. Most of us have the assessment backwards, thinking that someone couldn't have done what they clearly did so we can continue to think what we already thought of them. Consequently, reports of widespread torture, abuse, beatings, unecessary killings, etc are discounted so we can continue to think rosy thoughts.
It isn't that Americans are bad or that soldiers/seamen/marines/airmen are bad, but that people all have the capacity for evil, and the situation our government has put them in makes it surface and blossom. And is it still their fault? You're damned right it is.
If you support torture, much less engage in it, you are a bad person. I don't care if someone is wringing their hands and saying "but you have to understand what they've been through!" We don't ask what the suicide bombers or death squad members have "been through," and I don't care what a torturer has been through, even if we share nationalities. Americans don't get a free pass on morality.
Look, are you really missing something so obvious? Picture a couple of hundred thousand foreign military and civilians occupying your country, with complete immunity from the laws of your country. They paint some schools, hand out some candy, and then shoot your wife at a checkpoint. Which of their actions do you really consider relevant to evaluating the impact of their presence in your country? How much "balance" would you have?
We are killing a lot of noncombatants over there and then saying "well, sorry about that" and actually thinking that people should just judge us by the nice things we do. Sorry dude, the bad things carry a lot more weight than the nice PR handing-out-candy things. The problem is that you want credit for your virtues but not commensurate blame for the ill effects of your actions. While I consider that desire normal, I don't consider it realistic or moral.
There would have been less dead in Iraq (in total) in the last few years (counting that most of the dead due to Saddam's regime were before during the genocide period and irak/iran war period before the 00's), and the average Iraqi would be more content if Saddam was still in power. The civil war mess will not be solved until one side is so bloodied that the population as a whole revolt against the insurgent (or revolutionist as I rather call them) OR one side bloody the other so much that it can call victory. But the bottom line is that there will be more dead until it ends.
A person is responsible for their actions even if they are just there to earn a living, just following orders, don't really believe in what they're doing, or secretly think that the Decider is a moron. If they torture someone, they're a despicable person, even if it's okayed or ignored through the chain of command, and even if they get away with it. Our troops are human beings doing a job for pay, and shouldn't be viewed as sainted martyrs incapable for shouldering responsibility for their actions. They chose to take the money, chose their actions, and are no less culpable for their actions than the CIA or State Dept civilians. That they didn't make the policy doesn't exempt them for moral responsibility for implementing the policy.
Mmmmh. My neighbours because he is late in the harvesting, and you can't pospone that much ? It happenned more than once because his tractor was not the best in the world and needed a lot of repair. Just because you freaking can't think of a reason why, this does not mean there was not a reason. As for the rest, Please this might be true, but cAn you link to a news site showing all those missile afterward ? PS: the guy which raped the irak girl (was she not underage ?) and killed her whole family and then killed her, what was their excuse ? Or the guy murdering an iraki and then burying a ak-47 weapon with him ? How many of those are covered in Irak by fear that this would fuel even more the violence ? How many missile palced after the fact to justify killing?
So, where would you find statistics on that? There are no hard numbers, but all you have to do is observe how cops behave in the real world, and you'll see that most of them aren't shining examples of humanity.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Nobody called you in the first place.
Why don't you go free Pakistan? Musharaf is a dictator as well.
"in efforts to shift the media's focus of Iraq from a negative to a more positive light" If the media's focus has been negative, you have to wonder what positive is. The media championed the war all along. No dissent. No critcism. No objectivity. Just Bush licking dogs.
Google News Search for "Quagmire"
Oh...and it's a QUAGMIRE! QUAGMIRE! WE'RE LOSING!
I hate the world .. I hate the world .. I hate the world .. I hate the world
... I love the world ... I love the world (no more than that please)
[valium-intake]
I love the world
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
That's funny. I can say the same thing--only in reverse. Take a look at cops in the real world. Most of them are shining examples of humanity. As a former EMT I worked with a lot of officers each and every day. They were good people. Out of a group of about 30, there were 2 bad apples. They were both terminated for their bad behavior. The rest of the officers were kind, caring, and compassionate. They may not be perfect like a lot of people would want them to be, but they are decent human beings.
There's no place like
Code of ethics?
You can't take the sky from me...
Poverty is one of America's most persistent and serious problems. The United States produces more per capita than any other industrialized country, and in recent years has devoted more than $500 billion per year, or about 12 percent of its gross national product, to public assistance and social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps, and Medicaid.i tedStates.html
http://www.econlib.org/library/ENC/PovertyintheUn
The poverty problem is not essentially a money problem. We already spend fortunes of money on poverty programs, have for 40 years, and it's getting worse, not better.
People are not poor solely because they don't have money. There are many factors, and it's a complex problem. I submit to you that there are several things that could be done to dramatically reduce poverty in the US, and few of them require throwing more government-managed dollars at the issue.
The core issues revolve around what people consider to be an acceptable living standard in our culture, and what is "normal."
People who are able to work should work.
People should not borrow money for things that depreciate.
People who don't understand the consequences of borrowing money should not borrow money at all.
People who have no ability to earn an income should not start families.
People who do start families that way should lean predominantly on their family members to help provide food and shelter rather than turning to the government. If you can't pay rent on an apartment, then you should get roommates to help pay the bills. This is common in other cultures. In my neighborhood there are several first-generation immigrant families. Most of them rely on family members and non-family members to help pay the mortgage. To those of us who are not immigrants, this seems unacceptable. Why? Because we're spoiled.
I do have compassion for people, and know that there are some people who just cannot make it on their own. (Mental handicap, physical infirmity, crushing medical bills, etc.)
As I see it, the largest root cause of the poverty problem is
a) People are not willing to get the education that they need to provide the earning opportunities that are needed.
b) If they do have an education, they are unwilling to work hard and consistently to earn money.
c) If they do earn money, they do stupid things with it. e.g. play the lottery, borrow money to buy cars, run credit cards to the limits for crap they don't need, 100% mortgages with interest-only options, and
d) then get overextended, borrowing to their credit limit where they are abused by financial institutions who are driven by shareholders who care about profitability more than whether these companies are abusing people to drive up profits. These mortgages and credit cards should never have been issued in the first place. Those people could not afford to borrow that money.
e) refuse to learn how to develop relationship skills, and they buy into the lie that divorce solves your relational problems. As a result, children are thrown into poverty because the income that was insufficient to cover one household now is split to try to cover expenses for two households.
There are many things we can do to help reduce poverty. Most of them involve getting people to stop living above their means, learn to sacrifice a bit, hold people accountable for bad choices, and teach relational skills so that families are not broken into multiple households. It's not a money problem, it's predominately a character problem, and that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the money being spent in the war on terror.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
There are things called "line breaks" and "paragraphs".
If you want to be taken seriously, learn what these are, and use them.
You can't take the sky from me...
Well, that's either a highly unusual police force, or you are looking at them with rose-tinted glasses. most cops really aren't decent. They don't have a good sense of ethics, and don't believe in innocence until proven guilty. Quite the opposite, they believe they are always right about who is a criminal. Most cops will take any opportunity available to inflict violence on a suspect. Most are willing to lie or exaggerate events in order to incarcerate someone they dopn't like.
Those who join the force as decent human beings usually leave, or the job drives them crooked. Honest people don't last very long as cops.
I imagine your perception of them is shaped by the role you were playing - they treated you differently because cooperating with you was part of their job. So, you only saw their good sides, not what they were really like. That's one thing cops are good at - creating a good public face to cover up their crimes. They are expert liars and deceivers.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Y'know, they can be right about one thing and wrong about another, right? So we might be right under the GC to blow up some particular Mosque used as a military facility, yet we're clearly wrong to use torture, etc.
It's not a matter of expecting them to do anything. It's a matter of saying this one instance was probably justified, even if some other stuff, like torture, or even the whole damn war, isn't the least bit just.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234585&cid=191 06803
Kthx.
Quite the opposite, they believe they are always right about who is a criminal.
...or could it be that because they've been doing the job for a while, their skills and intuition do a good job of telling them who is a criminal and who is not. And don't forget, they don't decide who is a criminal and who is not. That's a job for the courts.
Most cops will take any opportunity available to inflict violence on a suspect. Most are willing to lie or exaggerate events in order to incarcerate someone they dopn't like.
Everyone gets 'amped' up in stressful situations. I don't think they *like* to inflict violence on someone. But let's face it. If you're chasing down someone who just robbed a bank and you tackle them into the pavement--well, they did just rob a bank at gunpoint.
imagine your perception of them is shaped by the role you were playing - they treated you differently because cooperating with you was part of their job.
A lot of people believe that misconception that EMS just cooperates with the cops. In actuality we have to follow the federal HIPAA laws. Unless a patient is currently in the act of breaking the law (shooting up in the back of your ambulance, or maybe assaulting your partner) you can't go tell on them to the police. Even if they just told you they were driving drunk and slammed into a school bus full of kids, you can't tell the law enforcement office. The officer has to get the information out of the patient.
The police aren't even allowed to copy the patient's information off our charts. They have to get name, address, etc from the patient directly.
The only way we can really cooperate with the legal system is through subpoena.
It caused quite a rift between EMS and our local police department for a while until we explained to them that if we said "he was drunk", they could have their entire case thrown out of court for using federally protected information.
There's no place like
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This is the same as the issue I discussed in another article here
Geeks strike again 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Then how,precisely, exactly, would YOU deal with a combatant you had reason to suspect may be armed and playing possum? Ask Jessica Lynch if she thinks wounded enemies should be executed on the off chance that they still have some fight in them.
If you defend your marines when they illegally murder wounded enemies, then you are telling the rest of the world to kill YOUR wounded. Why should they risk getting their hospitals attacked by bringing your blue eyed wounded there for treatment? It's much safer to just kill them in cold blood.
I would like the troops to be treated humanely when they are wounded by the enemy, you're telling your enemies it's better to shoot them like dogs.
You can't take the sky from me...