[Peace-discuss] David Swanson - (where is?) "The Video That Could Indict the Pentagon for Murder"

Fri Apr 10 15:01:37 EDT 2015

"[...] But the U.S. government is horrified by the idea of releasing 
more photos and videos of torture in Abu Ghraib. It seems that direct, 
personal violence, even short of murder, is seen as more offensive than 
mass-murder by aerial assault.

I think these weaknesses in how visual documentation of killing in war 
is perceived can be overcome, and that in fact a greater volume of 
videos and photos obtained more rapidly could have a qualitative impact. 
Most Americans imagine a video like collateral murder 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0>to be an exception. Most 
have no idea at all that U.S. wars are one-sided slaughters killing 
primarily civilians and overwhelmingly the people who live where the 
wars are fought. *One video of a family being dismembered by a bomb 
could be dismissed as accidental. Tens of thousands of such videos could 
not be."*

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	[ufpj-activist] The Video That Could Indict the Pentagon for 
Murder
Date: 	Thu, 9 Apr 2015 21:57:11 -0400
From: 	David Swanson <davidcnswanson at gmail.com>
To: 	media at lists.mayfirst.org <media at lists.mayfirst.org>

  The Video That Could Indict the Pentagon for Murder

By David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/content/video-could-indict-pentagon-murder

As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting points out 
<http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=913422cb5a&e=cc624ad699>, 
until a video surfaced of South Carolina policeman Michael Slager 
murdering Walter Scott, the media was reporting a package of lies 
manufactured by the police: a fight that never occurred, witnesses who 
didn't exist, the victim taking the policeman's taser, etc. The lies 
collapsed because the video appeared.

I find myself asking why videos of missiles blowing children into little 
bits and pieces can't dissolve the stories churned out by the Pentagon. 
With several qualifications, I think part of the answer is that there 
are not enough videos. The struggle for the right to videotape the 
police at home in the United States should be accompanied by a campaign 
to provide video cameras to populations targeted for wars. Of course the 
struggle to videotape people dying under a bombing campaign is at least 
as great a challenge as videotaping a murderous policeman, but enough 
cameras would produce some footage.

There are other parts to the answer as well, of course. One is 
complexity, exacerbated by intentional obfuscation. To explain the 
current war in Yemen, the /Washington Post 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/saudi-air-war-struggles-to-make-gains-as-yemen-fragments/2015/04/09/1a045766-ddf6-11e4-b6d7-b9bc8acf16f7_story.html>/ 
finds someone to quote saying, "nobody can figure out either who started 
this fight or how to end it."

Really? Nobody? The second U.S.-armed dictator in the past few years is 
overthrown by militants empowered by opposition to U.S.-armed 
dictatorship. This after a Yemeni man told 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtQ_mMKx3Ck>the U.S. Congress to their 
faces that the U.S. drone strikes were empowering terrorists. A larger 
neighboring U.S.-armed dictatorship in Saudi Arabia starts bombing and 
threatening to take over, as in nearby U.S.-armed dictatorship Bahrain. 
Saudi U.S. weapons are destroying piles of Yemeni U.S. weapons, and 
nobody can figure anything out?

Here are some U.S. children hiding from Soviet nukes many years ago, and 
a Yemeni child hiding from U.S. drone strikes more recently (source 
<http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1403/S00093/fear-is-fear-no-matter-where-you-are-from.htm>). 
How does that alone not indict anyone?

Here are photos and stories <http://supportyemen.org/airstrike-stories/> 
of innocent children murdered with U.S. drones in Yemen. How does that 
not indict anyone?

Beyond complexity and obfuscation and the justification of pretended 
rationales and euphemized explanations like "collateral damage," lies 
the problem of getting Americans to give a damn about people far away. 
But the U.S. government is horrified by the idea of releasing more 
photos and videos of torture in Abu Ghraib. It seems that direct, 
personal violence, even short of murder, is seen as more offensive than 
mass-murder by aerial assault.

I think these weaknesses in how visual documentation of killing in war 
is perceived can be overcome, and that in fact a greater volume of 
videos and photos obtained more rapidly could have a qualitative impact. 
Most Americans imagine a video like collateral murder 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0>to be an exception. Most 
have no idea at all that U.S. wars are one-sided slaughters killing 
primarily civilians and overwhelmingly the people who live where the 
wars are fought. One video of a family being dismembered by a bomb could 
be dismissed as accidental. Tens of thousands of such videos could not be.

Of course, logically, war victim selfie videos ought not to be needed. 
It's no secret that the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan 
and Yemen and Libya have fueled greater violence and failed utterly to 
drop little baskets of liberty and democracy on the people being burned 
to death. It ought to be no secret that 80 to 90 percent of the weapons 
in the supposedly inherently violent region of the Middle East are 
U.S.-made. The White House does not deny that it has significantly 
increased weapons sales to that region among others. With no plan for 
success and open confession that "there is no military solution" it 
rushes more weapons into war after war with no end in sight.

But words don't seem to do the job. Explaining that police were getting 
away with murder wasn't producing any indictments. A video finally 
indicted a cop. Now we need the video that can indict the world's policeman.

-- 

*David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He 
is director of WorldBeyondWar.org <http://WorldBeyondWar.org> and 
campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org <http://RootsAction.org>. 
Swanson's books include /War Is A Lie <http://warisalie.org/>/. He blogs 
at DavidSwanson.org <http://davidswanson.org/> and WarIsACrime.org 
<http://warisacrime.org/>. He hosts Talk Nation Radio 
<http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41>.**He is a 2015 Nobel Peace 
Prize Nominee <http://davidswanson.org/node/4682>.

Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson 
<http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson> and FaceBook 
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#>.

Sign up for occasional important activist alerts here 
http://davidswanson.org/signup

Sign up for articles or press releases here http://davidswanson.org/lists

This email may be unlawfully collected, held, and read by the NSA which 
violates our freedoms using the justification of immoral, illegal wars 
absurdly described as being somehow/for /freedom.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20150410/b5120be1/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
ufpj-activist mailing list

Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org
List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist

To Unsubscribe
        Send email to:  ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org
        Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/ufpj-activist/slevy%40ncsa.uiuc.edu

You are subscribed as: slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu