2004-05-02
WARNING Graphic Link! Nudity | Torture |
Torture of Iraqi prisoners | Okay folks, here's some of the photos from the New Yorker article that was published online this week | The article that goes with it TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB by Semour Hirsch | Propaganda nightmare | Doubtless | Already the seats of power are decrying the incident that has been publicized, but the question remains, how far up is it that the stink rises? |
Rhetorical question? Maybe | You decide |
Mind you, we Yanks are not alone in this | London's Daily Mirror saw fit to provide its readers a lurid cover photo of a British soldier urinating on a prisoner |
Sinclair Broadcast Censorship | Here's the corporate decision makers who choose to hide behind a wall of pseudo-patriotic psychobabble rather than present some reasoned statement as to why they pulled Ted Koppel's Nightline last week | Is the public dissemination of identifying the American dead in Iraq "anti-war"? In some minds, certainly | And I can understand the reluctance of some families who don't wish to be reminded of the loss of loved ones in hearing their names uttered on a broadcast that may be heard internationally |
But wars are phenomena that engender discomfort, anguish, suffering and loss | That is true regardless of one's perspective, pro or anti war | Such events affect each and every one of us | Excising what we find unseemly because it is just that, is yet another step toward censoring the truth | My sympathies go out to those who lost family | But their loss impacts more than they, themselves | There are also very likely friends these souls had who do not, as yet, know they have lost someone also | They need to know who died as well |
All the more important for a company that has holdings in outfits that make surveliiance equipment for government agencies, develops high tech radar equipment (actively soliciting government business) and also maintains a keen interest in internet, information technologies and the like that they be forthright about their reasons for restricting otherwise public information |
It's also noteworthy that Sinclair has holdings in a privately held firm known as VisionAIR, which does business with correctional facilities | Hope the correctional facility in Virginia where Staff Sargeant Chip Frederick worked isn't one of them | (giving the benefit of the doubt, SSGT Frederick kept journals that began in January 2004, and published by the Guardian and Indynews which report his dismay about what was happening under his watch and speculating that "...sh*t rolls downhill" once people are caught doing wrong.) ¶ 21:32
