Media Roots Radio: Video Game Warfare, Covert War in Iran, SOPA & Fair Use
Via Media Roots:
Abby and Robbie discuss the reality of war: the pre-propaganda that has manufactured consent for the illegal occupations, video game warfare and cognitive dissonance in combat, the Marine urination scandal; Martin Luther King Jr. and historical revisionism minimizing how anti-imperialism was the main pillar of his philosophical platform; the CIA and the US covert war in Iran; SOPA, PIPA breakdown, the difference between copyright and fair use, the threat to net neutrality and websites like Media Roots under this overarching legislation.
Who Did Give the Green Light to Torture?
Paul Vallely writes at the Independent:
There has been something artificially over-heated about the international reaction to the video of four American soldiers urinating on the bodies of their dead Taliban enemies in Afghanistan. It was, of course, a fairly disgusting thing to do.
But all the breastbeating about how the men’s “egregious inhumanity” had brought “disgrace to their armed forces” and “dishonour to their nation” had something of bluster about it. How could anybody do such a thing, asked people who had never been to war, heard their wounded friends scream or seen them die, blown to pieces, before their very eyes.
There may yet be demonstrations and deadly riots around the world in protest. But I suspect not. This is no Abu Ghraib, for the scenes of degraded torture in that Iraqi prison were inflicted upon the living rather than the dead. But what the two have in common is that…
US Soldier Says He Was ‘Told to Lie’ About Iraqi Killings
A picture taken at the scene of the Haditha killings shows several dead Iraqis who were killed by Marines.
Have they always taught soldiers to piss on dead people, or was it a special directive Cheney and Rumsfeld came up with? Via Al Jazeera English:
A US soldier has told a military jury in California how his commander killed five Iraqi civilians in the western al-Anbar province in 2005 and then asked him to lie about it.
At a trial stemming from one of the Iraq war’s most controversial episodes, Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz testified on Wednesday, the third day of Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich’s court martial.
Wuterich was Dela Cruz’s squad leader, who Dela Cruz said gunned down the Iraqis after they pulled up in a car near the scene of a bombing in which a US marine had died.
In all, 24 Iraqi civilians including women and children were killed in the revenge attacks –…
US Marines Urinating On Dead Afghans
This is the LiveLeak video (allegedly) showing US Marines pissing on dead members of the Taliban that has Afghanistan in an uproar. Semper Fi?
U.S. Marines In Dress Uniform To Protect Occupy Protesters
Via OccupyTheHamptons (thanks Miles Jaffe):
U.S. Troops To Get Silky Boxers For Safer Combat
Not only are US troops getting new helmets, but ‘ballistic boxers’ are also on the list to protect the privates’ privates. CNN reports:
Next month, the Army is going to start sending the “ballistic boxers” to soldiers in Afghanistan, and the Marines intend for each of their troops there to have four pairs of the “protective undergarments,” as they are formally known, before the end of the year.
The heavy silk boxers, which look like shorts that professional cyclists wear, won’t stop a bullet or shrapnel from an IED. But the silk can stop small projectiles like those kicked up by an explosion.
“It is expected to prevent fine sands and particles that are thrown up by explosives, so that the tissue wounds are cleaner, less ragged and easier to treat,” said Lt. Jamie Larson, a Marines Corps spokesperson. And since the silk is treated with antimicrobial agents, the boxers help protect injured troops from…
