Media Excises Deep and Murky Context in Pan Am Bomber Story.

Today's 'featured" news story is on the release of a man from Libya by the Scottish Government from a prison where he was sentenced to serve a life sentence.  The man has cancer and is expected to die within 3 months.  We know he was convicted for blowing up a transcontinental flight. 

My problem with how the media is covering this is that story is being presented without context. 

We/the U.S./Reagan blew up some boats off the coast of Libya.  They retaliated and blew up a night club, La Belle Disco,  killing two U.S. service men and a civilian and wounded many dozens of people.  We attempted to assassinate Mumamar Qadaffi in a strike on Qadaffi's home that did not kill him but did kill his infant daughter.  Several Libyans then were then involved in the bombing of the flight that was exploded over Lockerbee, Scotland. 

Read a recount of this tit for tat escalation that helped no one but killed hundreds. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1653848.stm  

Reagan chose to engage in Israeli style "diplomacy" -- i.e. assassination of a a country's leader.  The U.S. and most western govenments have chosen not to engage in assassination of leaders as it elevates the person in power to a symbolic level akin to that of a regal status where the person and the government or country are all the same.  

If memory serves me, this was also the  time the French did not allow overflight and an "errant" bomb fell on the lawn of the French embassy in Libya.   This instance of neener, neener, neener with bombs illustrated a level of in your face immaturity that is intensely troubling and frightening beyond words.

This is akin to the problem implicit within the use of drones.  It personalizes war to the level of assassination.   To have to have no contact with the people you kill was a trajectory started with the use of aerial bombings.  But this trend has expanded to the point that no support staff at all has to walk among the people who will be bombed.   This is supremely arrogant.   Our technological capability has evolved to a level where we cannot justify its use and maintain any sense of humanity.  We must do things entirely differently.  

My suggestion, train and disperse an educational militia primarily composed of women into areas of conflict and work with the women of the area to solve base level problems that percolate up through society to create international conflict.  Raging Grannies and CodePink Women and Women in Black would be a good population from which to initially draw for the corps.  

Women, wake up, we have to change all this.  

Peace.

Visualization of the Scale of Death in Iraq

The Faces of Death

I happened to look up this morning as I was glancing over the smarmy chosen few purportedly "news" stories being touted by the corporate media and saw this accidental imagery on my husband's computer screen. I asked him to do a screen capture and send it to me. It doesn't show either composite picture in its entirety but it gives a chilling visualization of how far we've come -- in the wrong direction -- since the first portrait of bUsh (emphasis on U because you haven't acted) created from the faces of our dead due to their handling and exploitation as corporate mercenaries circulated on the internet. Look how far we've come. All the way from one psycho bUsh to psycho wannabe Insane McCain. Yes, I'm pissed, outraged , grieving, and murderously agitated that we've reached tombstone (definitely not a milestone as milestones are supposed to mark achievements) publicly acknowledged number of 4000 U.S. military dead. And unfortunately this number doesn't come anywhere close to showing the HORRIFIC numbers actually associated with this immolation of a people.

I'm going to go throw up.

Shame in Tucson

Louis Vitale, 75, a Franciscan priest, and Steve Kelly, 58, a Jesuit priest, were each sentenced on Wednesday, October 17th to five months in federal prison. Their crime? Attempting to deliver a letter opposing the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. The priests are now in prison.

Common Dreams describes the offense thusly:

The priests were arrested while kneeling in prayer halfway up the driveway to Fort Huachuca in November 2006. Both priests were charged with trespass on a military base and resisting orders of an officer to stop.

In a pre-trial heating, the priests attempted to introduce evidence of torture, murder, and gross violations of human rights in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and at Guantanamo. The priests offered investigative reports from the FBI, the US Army, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Physicians for Social Responsibility documenting hundreds of incidents of human rights violations. Despite increasing evidence of the use of torture by U.S. forces sanctioned by President Bush and others, the federal court in Tucson refused to allow any evidence of torture, the legality of the invasion of Iraq, or international law to be a part of the trial.

Demonstrations against the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca are scheduled for November 16 and 17 this year.

Despite the Disney-esque image that comes to mind with use of the Fort's nickname, "Fort Sneezy," the real nature of what goes on there is far more sinister. Fort Huachuca is Army Intelligence HQ. Oxymoronic but still dangerous.

In Friar Kelly's words, "“We will keep trying to stop the teaching and practice of torture whether we are sent to jail or out. We have done our part for now. Now it is up to every woman and man of conscience to do their part to stop the injustice of torture.”

Every man and woman... that's us folks. Shall we begin?