Thursday 17 September 2009

CENSORSHIP AMERICAN STYLE


THE REALITIES OF WAR ~
PEOPLE DIE! OURS AS WELL AS THEIRS!!!
GET USED TO IT

The first thing I noticed when the Gazan Holocaust began last winter was the unreal imagery that was presented in the West. We saw war machines, Israeli soldiers, an old lady in a bombed area already swept clean of debris and body parts. These images did not fit with what I knew was really happening in Palestine. I knew there were bodies and children and women and why, why were these not being shown in North America?

That is when I took it upon myself to seek out such imagery and post it. Somehow we had to get these photos out there so people could see the truth. Many others had the same idea and within weeks, the web was awash with the blood of the innocent. They were horrific images and even now, I could weep at what we saw, read, and posted.

Westerners were not supposed to see THIS.

Updated July 4, 2010

Israel did NOT want such images shown to the world. They wished to present a sanitized war, despite the fact this was plain and simple violent genocide full of illegalities as has been born out by recent reports by many international agencies, including the UN. They hoped to sweep the atrocities under the carpet so that they could paint themselves once again as victim defending itself against violent terrorist warriors. But, we all know, that was not the truth. Their main target was anyone Palestinian, be it man, woman, child or animal. The pictures told the story that they did not want told.

The Israel office of propaganda was furious! Images of bloodied babies, dying children, dead women carrying white flags, etc were a powerful international weapon that they could not compete with. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how they saw the truth and news regarding Palestine, as a war of public relations and imagery!

The documentary Peace, Propaganda in the Promised Land is an eloquent testimonial to the lock down Israel tried to enforce during this massacre. Israel even targeted international press during this "war".

But such control of the media is not new to Israel. Of course the American media, being primarily owned by Zionists, would follow the lead from Israel itself. And so it has shown almost nothing of the deaths of soldiers in the wars it fights for Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. They show images of the dead civilians, but not the men and women sent over there to fight and die in these ridiculous wars of imperialistic greed. And why don't they show them?

If the public raises its children to be sent as fodder for the war machine, why can they not see the truth of what these children experience and endure. Perhaps then there would also be better understanding of their suffering when they return home broken either physically or mentally, or being rotted from within by the deadly chemicals they have been exposed to?

I came across the following piece at THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING! and in my usual style have added to it, adapted it, put in my $.02 worth as well as a few new photographs.

I believe greatly in the power of media and thank the internet every day for its ability to spread the truth that is hidden from the hoi poloi by our "leaders". People MUST demand honesty from the media and understand just how they are being manipulated by the military for whatever reason they have. It is not just victims who die. It is the soldiers. It is the families of both victims and killers. That pain MUST be seen and people need to understand the true deadly cost of war, especially an illegal war that costs so many so dearly.

Removing a dead American from the field in Afghanistan. For some strange reason, during the Vietnam war, it became taboo to show our own fighters to the world when they were down. Was that because the military wished to appear invincible? It wanted to spare families and sensibilities? Or to hide the ugly face of war?

A grieving American widow. Another victim the media would rather the public not see. Such unfettered grief might frighten them ~ or remind them of their own losses to the war machine.

Blood soaked, a shocked and grieving Iraqi woman shows where, just moments earlier, her husband had been selling his garden produce. Now American snipers have stolen his life and changed her life, and those of their children, forever. Americans are not supposed to see such things. They might begin to feel sympathy for "the enemy".

HIDE THE U.S. WAR DEAD FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Dave Lindorff

September 9, 2009

THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!

The Obama administration's freak out, as expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, over the Associated Press Agency's belated circulation of a photograph of a dying US soldier in Afghanistan, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, is the latest of example of the hypocrisy of US authorities who claim to be concerned about the feelings of American military families, while really simply desiring to censor the war's horrors from the eyes of the American people.

When the US and its small contingent of allied nations invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001and 2003, respectively, most people in the country and government thought warring with these two countries would be a cake walk.

There was no way two underdeveloped nations in the Middle East would put up any kind of Resistance that would cause the largest Military force in the world to even blink an eye. We had the technology, so why not bomb the hell out of them with the most advanced multi-million dollar weaponry on the planet? After the barrage of war planes and naval ship bombings, it seemed as if all hostile parties in both countries were erased.

Then out of nowhere insurgents in civilian clothes started detonating large amounts of explosives in public areas throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. This caused many civilian casualties and chaos but that wasn’t the end. Those same men started to strategically place Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) ~ essentially roadside bombs ~ in position and then let them rip as US soldiers passed by.

This turned out to be one of the most successful tactics the insurgency has used in either country. Along with the combination of small gun battles between insurgents and the US military, this has been the cause of thousands of US soldier casualties.

Mainstream media refuses to report and showcase actual numbers of US military casualties and injuries. If you find the stats, and watch YouTube clips, you might see these wars in a whole new light.

Lance Cpl. Josua Bernard, fatally wounded in Afghanistan ~ The truth: Americans until only the last 18 years, have been able to see the carnage of war as it has been felt by our own troops from as long ago as there were cameras.

Pioneering photographer and war chronicler Mathew Bradey brought home the horrors of the US Civil War with photos like this one of dead Union and Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Antietam.

Dead soldiers at Civil War Battle of Antietam by Mathew Brady

Dead soldiers at Civil War Battle of Gettysburg by Mathew Brady

In World War II, while the military tried to prevent publication of the photos of dead American troops at first, by 1944, President Roosevelt lifted the ban, hoping that the images would fire up American resolve on the home front.

Another attempt by the military to manipulate the populace. It was not to INFORM them, it was to inspire them to greater levels of patriotism.

World War II ~ Invasion of Normandy ~ Allied troops advance on a beach during the invasion of the Allies in Normandy, France, 6 June 1944. The 'Operation Overlord' went down in history as D-Day, the day the downfall of the German Reich was doomed. The surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945 ended the Second World War in Europe.

Although it was a much less popular war, photos of American dead were plentiful from the Korean War.

Vietnam was awash in press photographers, and the Pentagon never banned them from depicting American casualties.

US Dead Prepared for Evacuation After Viet Cong Ambush US Dead Prepared for Evacuation After Viet Cong Ambush

In fact, when American policy-makers talk about the "lesson of Vietnam," they generally aren't talking about the real lesson of not sending American troops to fight unpopular wars, or of not intervening on the side of corrupt regimes in wars of national liberation, or of not fighting in wars where there is no chance of the US winning. They're talking about the "lesson" of not letting the American people learn the real nature and cost of the war in question.

That's why journalists ~ and particularly American journalists ~ since Vietnam have been kept on short leashes, and why they are vetted by Pentagon officials and hired media "experts" before they are allowed to be "embedded" with units in the field. It's why the Reagan administration had a navy destroyer turn its guns on, and threaten to sink a small boat carrying reporters trying to make its way to Grenada to cover the US invasion of that island. And it's why since the Gulf War in 1990-91, photographs of American battlefield dead have been banned.

AP deserves credit for finally breaking the ban and offering its photo of a dying soldier, shot in a firefight with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan ~ even if the news agency did wait three weeks to offer the photo to subscribers. The real shame is that so few American newspapers and electronic media organizations chose to run that photo.

Perhaps it is for the same reason no Western media showed images of the slaughtered civilians of Gaza in the recent Gazan Holocaust. They knew that real images of blood, gore, loss of life, might sway the public to a position that would require "management" and more social manipulation.

Gates claims that AP was "insensitive" to the dead soldier's relatives, but it's hard to see how that can be. The real insensitive thing would be to try to hide his death from the public, as the Pentagon wanted to do. Hell, if the Afghan War is worth fighting, it should be worth dying for, and if it's worth dying for, and if young soldier Bernard gave his life for his country, his death and the manner of his death should not be hidden from his countrypeople. We should all see the terrible price he paid acting in our name.

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed American soldiers dead on the beach in the Pacific in World War II being insensitive?

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed America's dead in Vietnam being insensitive?

Bodies of US Soldiers on Personnel Carrier ~ The bodies of US soldiers lay on the back of an armored personnel carrier which moved through the fighting near Tan Son Nhut Airbase to pick up the dead. Feb 3, 1968.

The Invasion of Grenada US Invasion of Grenada ~The corpse of an American soldier after his helicopterwas shot down in Grenada Island. November 7, 1983

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed America's dead in Korea being insensitive?

Were the photographer and news organization which dared to break the ban and publish a photo of America's dead in the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq being insensitive? Or show the pain of loss and injury America's soldiers suffer? Or those of "the enemy"?

A recent so-called breach of an embed contract yielded images of the aftermath of a suicide-bomb attack. The American photographer incurred heavy criticism for publishing the pictures which his Marine unit had ordered him to erase. But they were published in B&W, which invokes the famous WWII Pacific Theater dead, but it does lessen the realism, doesn’t it? These casualties seem more distant than our losses in Vietnam. And how do you reconcile that the simultaneous photos of the Iraqi casualties were printed adjacent in color? We can handle seeing the red of their blood, but not ours?

Dead Marines in Fallujah, Iraq

American Soldier Grieving for Comrade ~ Ken Kozakiewicz (left) breaks down in an evacuation helicopter after hearing that his friend, the driver of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle, was killed in a "friendly fire" incident that he himself survived. Michael Tsangarakis (center) suffers severe burns from ammunition rounds that blew up inside the vehicle during the incident. All of the soldiers were exposed to depleted uranium as a result of the explosion. They and the body of the dead man are on their way to a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).

Medics clean the Ibn Sina Hospital emergency room after trying to save a severely injured soldier. They report many more such casualties are coming in.

I don't think so.

Moreover, there is a terrible double standard at work here, if news organizations accept the censorship or deem it inappropriate to show dead American bodies, but go ahead and show dead bodies of the enemy, like these:

American Soldiers Dragging Body of Vietcong Soldier ~ Members of the U.S. Army drag the body of a dead Vietcong soldier from their armored vehicle following a Vietcong night attack against the defensive perimeter of elements of the U.S. Army's Infantry Division.

Dead Iraqi fighter

Dead Iraqi fighter

Dead Taliban fighter ~ This is by far the most disturbing image I have ever posted! It is also best advertisement for NOT going to war I have ever seen. I cannot even look at it. But THIS is the reality, the reality we are not supposed to see. And this happens to American and Canadian soldiers as well.

After all, if all we see are dead enemy fighters, it might give the false impression that the war in question ~ in this case the Afghanistan War, or what might now be called Obama's War ~ is a one-sided affair where the only terrible casualties are those suffered by the "enemy," not by "our boys."

So there you have it; the US media was not permitted to depict fallen soldiers, in or out of the coffin. Next military censors forbade photos of US wounded. Most recently US soldiers have been under orders to prohibit the press from photographing them at all, to promote the illusion that our Iraqi surrogates alone are handling security. How infuriated our officials must have been to see the above photograph in the international press.

Do Americans not want to see their fallen boys? When one has an experience with death, it is the norm to most certainly want others to see what happened straight up. Do the families of soldiers really not want to see how their loved one met his/her fate? What utter bullocks! If they don’t I do. Someone should care enough for the poor lost life!

Hopefully the total control our military has been asserting over media images will result in more outright mutiny on the part of international photo journalists.

Enough with the censorship!

If America is going to be a warlike nation,

if they are going to have a public

that cheers every time the government

ships off men and women, their children,

to fight and kill overseas in countries

that most Americans cannot even

locate on a globe,

then make sure that everyone

at least gets to see the blood and gore

in full, including their own,

and of course,

also the civilian casualties of their military.

24 comments:

  1. OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG i am learning about ww2 and these images showed up , i think im gonna cry

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  2. fucking bitch ass mulsim slave. conform to the slum of the world. everyone is against you fucking satanic pigs. You all need to fucking die to make this world a better place

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    1. get away yankee mourder

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    2. Wow, the intelligence of American citizens is so low...

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    3. Couldnt of said it any better myself brother!

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    4. Couldnt of said it any better myself brother!

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  3. Anonymous I will leave your filthy words in the blog. This way you are an example of the filth and hatred that exist with those who have no soul or decency and are ruled by demons not sensibility.

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    1. And in word of noor if your goverment is so smart why is it throwing you in places where you know you would die you would suffer and some of never would see home your goverment only thinks in one way and that how can we fuck up a nation and make them homeless and oil thats it if you dont want us to kill and do what we like to do then why in hell are you invading our homes ??

      as a goverment you have no right to invade shit plus if you were not a pussy you wont hide behined your pc or what ever go serve your fagy goverment :D

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  4. to the paragraph about the government hiding the pictures of the us soldiers take make the military look invincible.............

    i am a United States Marine and i understand where u come from talking about not getting the whole truth about the war from the government. I fight the war for the government and i dont even know why we do this stuff. about the pictures if i was to go down in country and be come a casualty of war i would not want my family to see pictures of my bloody body and mangled body parts.....

    I beleive the government hides the pictures of us soldiers and marines more out of respect for the family rather than to make them look invincible thank you plz reply to this and tell me if u understand wat im saying...

    sincerely
    Lcpl Hall

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  5. Thank you for telling me this. We forget sometimes there are two sides to almost all stories. Sometimes three, four, five and more! And I truly thank you for sharing.

    IT IS NEVER EASY IS IT?

    What would you like me to do? Open to suggestions. Some of those are very old photographs, historical archival material. I am thinking here and biding for time.

    How be, I put those images on their own page so they are not in everyone's faces as they read. they would have to click a link to view.

    Does that work for you?

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  6. It is the soldier above all others who prays for peace, it is he that truly knows the horrors of war. (para-phrased from Gen Douglas MacArthur I believe.) To LCpl Hall, this is the exact response I would expect from a professional in the service of his/her country. Thank you. Mr Haqiqa, LCpl Hall and myself (a retired Army Infantry soldier) fought for many things in our service. The one common thread is (I hope) freedom. Freedom to express our opinion, popular or otherwise, is one of many freedoms we hold dear. So please make your case intelligently, and honestly (we demand integrity in our soldiers, why not our media) and I will gladly listen with eyes, and mind wide open.

    P.S. the other "ugly" comments remind me of a verse in one of my favorite songs.
    Quick to Judge, Quick to Anger
    Slow to Understand.
    Ignorance, Prejudice, and Fear Walk Hand in Hand...

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  7. The only this i disagree on that is written here is when you said that people want to see the fate of their loved one in the form of a photograph of their dead body. i dont know if you know anybody in war at the time but my brother is in Iraq now and i would be crushed to see a picture of him dead covered in blood. so next time you say something like that speak for yourself.

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  8. All of you are missing the point.

    The point is that you are *supposed* to be crushed if your loved one is killed in that manner and seeing and feeling the truth of the event is what will allow you to heal from it and also seeing the truth is the way to stop future violence by seeing the truth of what violence really looks like.

    The *problem* is that you all live in denial and fantasy and live in insanity to believe that all the censorship is for your own good and for the good of your families. That the problem is you live in a delusional state where you believe the lie that the best thing for your family is to *protect* them by lying to them. The best protection and help for them is to see and know the full truth so they can heal from it honestly and fully.

    The ignorance and stupidity and the grand lie of American society where telling lies is for the benefit of the person lied to. Only in a malevolent and evil country can this be true and people truly who are powerless drones could believe such lie to be true.

    Ignoring and trying to believe lies is why you all are in so much pain, trying to numb it with drugs and alcohol and violent sports and movies which are complete fantasy and lies.

    Wake up! The problem is all of you, not muslims or jews or christians. The problem is that all of you live in a delusional world and everything you believe that are your own beliefs are not your own and the entire system of beliefs you say you believe in are all lies designed to keep you in that dumb state you are in.

    Wake up!

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  9. To Anon about speaking for yourself.

    She is speaking about herself.

    What you are really saying is "don't say it at all". how is this from someone who lives in a country who claim free speech as a right? lol.

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  10. The marine had it right. There are pictures of brutality on both sides, and the main reason for the "censorship" is to spare broken wives and little children the horrors of their husband and daddy's injuries. That's war.

    Many of you seem to be coming to the conclusion that war is main problem here. If the war is ended, these pictures will never even exist, correct?

    Say we ended this war. Say we withdrew every single troop from every foreign soil right this second.

    Know what's worse than a wife seeing her husband dead or a child's daddy blown up from some hidden bomb in the road while he's protecting their country?

    Seeing the wife and the child dead amongst tons of rubble, or burning in the wreckage of a hijacked airplane.

    Think about that.

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  11. im a marine, i understand where your coming from, there are two sides to every story, but if i die in a combat zone, i dont not wish for the woman who gave birth to me, my mother and the man who helped get me here and served his country to , to see there soon lying dead in the sand with pieces of me missing, please for the sake of the famillies of these men! remove these photos!

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  12. Gazan Holocaust? Don't be dramatic, especially since the whole debacle began courtesy of Arab bigotry. If they stopped firing rockets and sending suicide bombers into Israel then I think the Israelis would be a lot more inclined to negotiate.

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  13. And FYI the person behind the 'Lance Corporal Hall' post is definitely not a Marine. The capitalization is wrong. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but there is only one way to display and every Marines uses it. He would also definitely not have publicly posted his name.

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  14. Holocaust means Burnt offerings. Fried Palestinians, 1400+ of them counts as a holocaust. And perhaps you need to study who really began that horrible blitz because it was not Palestine. Just sayin don't open your mouth until you know your facts.
    And no negotiations with the mad settlers and all that criminal activity either.

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  15. A salaam aleikum. We ALL know how bad US troops are, our media shows the world. However, I never saw any "war crimes" as a grunt in 18 months in Iraq. What you need to show Noor is the Palestinians, Mahdi Army, Chechin mercenaries or Taliban [do you want me to go on?]firing from school yards and mosques. Not true? Or the car bombs and seriously unspeakable torture [I saw] and beheadings [do you want me to go on?] of the Palestinians, Mahdi Army, etc etc

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    1. u are mercenaries tv propaganda boy

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  16. The solution is for USA: STOP WAR !!!
    Vietnam not enough? Iraq not enough? Afghanistan not enough? Iran not enought? and even, China maybe ? anti Communism, anti terrorist, anti Islamist, etc, whatever ....
    Too many enemies you've created. Finally you'll break and come to your fatal end. Allah knows best.
    Again, USA, STOP YOUR WAR !!!

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  17. As a prior Marine Infantryman, I fully agree that the truth is of foremost importance. I never have agreed with censorship as a child, as a young Marine, or now. I also don't necessarily say that someone who doesn't capitalize "Marine" couldn't have been one, but obviously it is a common convention.

    I must commend the author of this blog on seriously engaging in a search for truth. That is commendable, and that is the point of this blog. It is clearly and consistently about getting to the truth, and we don't have enough of that in this world.

    Also, I am not special because I was a Marine, nor do my opinions inherently have more value. I could pretty much do whatever I wanted to, if I put my mind to it. However, it certainly did clear up for me what is The Truth about the nature of warfare, conflict in general, the meaning of having honor under pressure, the ability to resist brainwashing and conformity for the sake of conformity.

    I was never broken by the system that is designed to break you. If one wishes to give credence to anything I say, let it be for that, and not just because I was there.

    Also, I deliberately chose not to pull the trigger on any innocent people, nor was I ever swayed by bullshit and immaturity when I heard it coming from higher or lower ranks.

    Actually, being in a government environment helped me to appreciate the truth of many things, ironically.

    I think it bears mentioning that the official September 11 narrative is complete and utter bullshit that is logically inconsistent and totally unsubstantiated, like most major events of history, including the Holocaust shoved down my cousin's throats in the old country. The bottom line is that Arabs did nothing deserving of war, and the United States is run by troublemakers who have caused every major war we've ever been in for no good reason.

    I am not a pacifist. I am a warrior disgusted by the complete lack of honor exhibited by people who manage to be greedy for Monopoly Money issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Nothingness, Inc.

    Imagine that, greed for fake money. Truly, everything we are taught to believe in over here is 100% completely and totally fake.

    Zionist supremacy is nonsense and needs to be stopped. I remain Nordic and unapologetically pro-White and conscious of the future of my children (all the proof one needs of that Truth is to see how that is demonized for no reason). I remain a believer in God and not in a building or mortal pastor. I remain of the belief that every race and tribe has the right to live in their own territory and not be slaves to someone else.

    And like The Truth, I remain.

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    1. Thank you for coming by Anonymous Feb 12. Your comments are invaluable because you have been and seen and come out of it knowing yourself very well indeed. Being a warrior is an honourable thing, just as righteous anger can be blessed actions. Being too much of a pacifist makes one a sitting duck as we have seen before ~ courtesy of the turn-the-other-cheek mildness instilled into so many to keep them compliant.

      My Vietnam day self would be shocked to hear me say these things now in my dotage but we all lose those rosy sunglasses the second our eyes open and mine opened long ago.

      If you speak as well as you write, consider getting into a bit of eye opening yourself? Although methinks from your tone, you already do! BTW have you found the blog of Joe Cortina? Methinks you might enjoy his "ramblings". He, too, is a decent man, ex military with an acerbic take-no-prisoners style.

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