War porn: The new safe sex

[Hoosiernorm]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NC30Ak02.html

The new Guernica
Iraq may indeed be seen as the Star Wars of war porn - an apotheosis of sequels. Take the (second) Fallujah offensive in late 2004. At the time I described it as the new Guernica. I also took the liberty of paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre, writing about the Algerian War; after Fallujah no two Americans shall meet without a corpse lying between them. To quote Coppola's Apocalypse Now, there were bodies, bodies everywhere.

The Francisco Franco in Fallujah was Iyad Allawi, the US-installed interim premier. It was Allawi who "asked" the Pentagon to bomb Fallujah. In Guernica - as in Fallujah - there was no distinction between civilians and guerrillas: it was the rule of "Viva la muerte!"

United States Marine Corps commanders said on the record that Fallujah was the house of Satan. Franco denied the massacre in Guernica and blamed the local population - just as Allawi and the Pentagon denied any civilian deaths and insisted "insurgents" were guilty.

Fallujah was reduced to rubble, at least 200,000 residents became refugees, and thousands of civilians were killed, in order to "save it" (echoes of Vietnam). No one in Western corporate media had the guts to say that in fact Fallujah was the American Halabja.

Fifteen years before Fallujah, in Halabja, Washington was a very enthusiastic supplier of chemical weapons to Saddam, who used them to gas thousands of Kurds. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time said it was not Saddam; it was Khomeinist Iran. Yet Saddam did it, and did it deliberately, just like the US in Fallujah.

Fallujah doctors identified swollen and yellowish corpses without any injuries, as well as "melted bodies" - victims of napalm, the cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel. Residents who managed to escape told of bombing by "poisonous gases" and "weird bombs that smoke like a mushroom cloud ... and then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them. The pieces of these strange bombs explode into large fires that burn the skin even when you throw water over them."

That's exactly what happens to people bombed with napalm or white phosphorus. The United Nations banned the bombing of civilians with napalm in 1980. The US is the only country in the world still using napalm.

Fallujah also provided a mini-snuff movie hit; the summary execution of a wounded, defenseless Iraqi man inside a mosque by a US Marine. The execution, caught on tape, and watched by millions on YouTube, graphically spelled out the "special" rules of engagement. US Marine commanders at the time were telling their soldiers to "shoot everything that moves and everything that doesn't move"; to fire "two bullets in every body"; in case of seeing any military-aged men in the streets of Fallujah, to "drop 'em"; and to spray every home with machine-gun and tank fire before entering them.

The rules of engagement in Iraq were codified in a 182-page field manual distributed to each and every soldier and issued in October 2004 by the Pentagon. This counter-insurgency manual stressed five rules; "protect the population; establish local political institutions; reinforce local governments; eliminate insurgent capabilities; and exploit information from local sources."

Now back to reality. Fallujah's population was not protected: it was bombed out of the city and turned into a mass of thousands of refugees. Political institutions were already in place: the Fallujah Shura was running the city. No local government can possibly run a pile of rubble to be recovered by seething citizens, not to mention be "reinforced". "Insurgent capabilities" were not eliminated; the resistance dispersed around the 22 other cities out of control by the US occupation, and spread up north all the way to Mosul; and the Americans remained without intelligence "from local sources" because they antagonized every possible heart and mind.

Meanwhile, in the US, most of the population was already immune to war porn. When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke out in the spring of 2004, I was driving through Texas, exploring Bushland. Virtually everybody I spoke to either attributed the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to "a few bad apples", or defended it on patriotic grounds ("we must teach a lesson to "terrorists").

[Hoosiernorm]

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[Typhoon]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NC30Ak02.html

The new Guernica

. . .

Meanwhile, in the US, most of the population was already immune to war porn. When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke out in the spring of 2004, I was driving through Texas, exploring Bushland. Virtually everybody I spoke to either attributed the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to "a few bad apples", or defended it on patriotic grounds ("we must teach a lesson to "terrorists").

A highly insular and uninformed population combined the world's largest, by an order of magnitude, military-industrial complex does not bode well for the future.

[Demon of Undoing]

My contention is that the uber- slasher genre of horror films - Hostel and the Saw series- were direct reactions to the beheading videos. When the head cutting started coming out, it was appalling and people wouldn't watch. Now the kids will go into details of why it looks only a little more real than CGI.

It's kind of a nightmare. I'm very worried about America.

[Demon of Undoing]

In full disclosure, I have watched literally hundreds of hours of CCTV footage of robberies, fights, riots, what have you. However, I have used them for training. I don't sit and stare.

[Enki]

My contention is that the uber- slasher genre of horror films - Hostel and the Saw series- were direct reactions to the beheading videos. When the head cutting started coming out, it was appalling and people wouldn't watch. Now the kids will go into details of why it looks only a little more real than CGI.

It's kind of a nightmare. I'm very worried about America.

With the amount of apathy I see toward actually making the change that people claim they want, I think it has to get worse before it can get better.

People complain about a top-down hierarchy, but they don't seem to realize that a bottom-up solution starts with them.

[monster_gardener]

My contention is that the uber- slasher genre of horror films - Hostel and the Saw series- were direct reactions to the beheading videos. When the head cutting started coming out, it was appalling and people wouldn't watch. Now the kids will go into details of why it looks only a little more real than CGI.

It's kind of a nightmare. I'm very worried about America.

With the amount of apathy I see toward actually making the change that people claim they want, I think it has to get worse before it can get better.

People complain about a top-down hierarchy, but they don't seem to realize that a bottom-up solution starts with them.

Thank you Very Much for your post, Beserk/Demon & Tinker.

Not saying things are good but...........

Didn't you say the murder rate was down as of late.........

Weren't things MUCH worse before:

Lynching by Whites, Torture as the Native American National Sport, Hanging & Quartering in England, Auto de Fe Burnings in Europe especially Spain, Rock around the Clock stonings in the Islamic world & the Armenian Holocaust, the death of 1000 cuts in China, Crucifixion & Cutting & Going in Japan, Chaka Zulu in Africa, Suttee & Thugs in India etc..

Just a few.............

Not that we may not out do them all if we don't put our Nukes to do something good like going to the Moon, Mars & beyond instead of their likely soon use in Iran & Israel...........

[Demon of Undoing]

The mind precludes the act. If we depend on torpor to keep violence down, as opposed to right mind, well. The disaster is baked in.

[monster_gardener]

The mind precludes the act. If we depend on torpor to keep violence down, as opposed to right mind, well. The disaster is baked in.

Thank you Very Much for your post, Beserk/Demon.

right mind

Right Attitude & Right Actions.........

I put that down on as a prayer request regularly .........

But best to work at it too.......

[Enki]

Many people live in a state of cartoon violence.

There is a lot of violence in the world, it just mostly doesn't result in actual harm.

Was just watching this video:

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I like the music, I am a sucker for deep bass like that. But the video is definitely war porn. It's kind of indicative of a lot of people's lives though, the pursuit of senseless animus. I've been there, I know what it's like. People doing lots of drugs and hurting one another, but not too badly most of the time. It's just that they want to feel 'big emotions'. This underlies the root of our commodified culture. Everyone is out trying to purchase big emotions. We have boring ass jobs that suck out our souls most of the week and then we spend our money on anything from bungie jumping to shopping sprees to an eight ball. Anything to feel big emotions. All of our movies, our music, everything is based around that idea.

[Demon of Undoing]

See, I'm just the opposite. Life is pretty big all its own. Maybe it's just me, but life has only rarely suffered me bothering to look for it before it sat on my face.

[Enki]

See, I'm just the opposite. Life is pretty big all its own. Maybe it's just me, but life has only rarely suffered me bothering to look for it before it sat on my face.

I hear ya.

[noddy]

It's just that they want to feel 'big emotions'. This underlies the root of our commodified culture. Everyone is out trying to purchase big emotions. We have boring ass jobs that suck out our souls most of the week and then we spend our money on anything from bungie jumping to shopping sprees to an eight ball. Anything to feel big emotions. All of our movies, our music, everything is based around that idea.

yeh, a very common sympton for those that follow the scared-of-life rules out of decency and then end up feeling a bit hollow, its everywhere... ive met so many of them that have crazy wildman crisis in their 40/50's when they finally realise that the "people that know" actually dont.

on topic, i dont think war pron is new but like many things in our modern culture alot that used to be implied and required imagination is now in your face, in slow motion 3D.

[Aferim]

Typical Escobar agitprop. A waste of perfectly good photons.

Re the larger subject of war porn, anyone who has seen Jacques Callot or Francisco Goya will be hard pressed to find the modern hack-jobs impressive or shocking. People are fascinated by death. Nothing abnormal about it. War porn is simply the ultimate in snuff movies. Kinda sick, sure, but what of it? BDSM is kinda sick too, so what? Do you honestly believe that people who watch this stuff are turned more evil somehow, or what?

[Ibrahim]

It's just another symptom of the US leaving its Republican Rome phase and entering its Imperial Rome phase. With professional armies and small, colonial-style engagements the majority of the population doesn't get involved in wars, but is still constantly bombarded with war news and propaganda. So they head to the coliseum/war porn/videogames/movies instead.

[Sparky]

Start 'em early with Junior War.
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[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

More cartoon pr0n........

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I'm an absolute weakling, but listening to this makes me feel like I can beat the lavender out of anyone.