Filed under: Uncategorized — giantkicks @ 10:45 pm
+ I found myself sinking into a sort of heartbreak while watching this, thinking about how trapped the people of Iraq must feel. Trapped in a perpetually dehumanizing social chaos.
The Death Squads - Google Video
The torture and slaughter of Iraqi civilians is reaching unprecedented heights with estimates of up to 655,000 dead.
Night after night … all » death squads rampage through Iraq’s main cities. In Baghdad, up to a hundred bodies a day are dumped on the streets. Often they’ve been tortured with electric drills. Yet those doing the killing have little to do with al Qaeda or Sunni insurgents. The majority of the killings are carried out by Shia death squads who want to turn Iraq into a Shia state aligned to Iran.
This shocking film investigates the links between the death squads and high-ranking Shia politicians. It reveals how the Shia militia that these politicians control have systematically infiltrated and taken over police units and even entire government ministeries. It investigates how these units are closely linked to the death squads, indeed they often are the death squads. And the killers act with impunity — there’s little investigation into their activities.
The Woman Who Thinks Like A Cow (Horizon 2006) - Google Video
Dr Temple Grandin has a legendary ability to read the animal mind and understand animal behaviour when no one else can. But this is no feat of telepathy; her explanation is simple. She’s convinced she experiences the world much as an animal does and that it’s all down to her autistic brain.
+ Pure unadulterated sectarian verbal violence. If there were weapons in the room, someone would be dead. LiveLeak.com - Screaming match on AlJazeera over Saddam Hussein
New Orleans: Big Easy to Big Empty - Google Video
In this half-hour film, Greg Palast and his team travel to New Orleans to investigate what has happened since Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast last year. On his visit, he discovers that the population of New Orleans is miniscule, the reconstruction sparse, suicide rates are climbing, and many have not, nor know how to, return to the city that care forgot. He examines why residents had to leave, what really caused the flood and why they aren’t returning.
Bonus Features Include: Tomorrow’s New Orleans - Whose City Will it Be? A half-hour conversation with Amy Goodman and Greg Palast where they sit down to discuss who is accountable for the ongoing disastrous situation in New Orleans.
Filed under: Uncategorized — giantkicks @ 10:16 pm
Oil, Smoke & Mirrors. - Google Video
“Oil, Smoke & Mirrors†offers a bleaker view of present global circumstances than many of us would dare consider. It deals with issues that are largely marginalized, if not ignored, in the discourse of mainstream media and politics.
However, as the film argues, it may well be that mediated political culture itself which, by sidelining some of the most challenging questions of historical truth in our time, poses the gravest threat to our future.
“Oil, Smoke & Mirrors†is an independent production. The producer has neither association with, nor membership of, any political organization.
‘The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans’ | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited
Abu Aisha, a mid-level Sunni commander, had come to understand that the threat from the Shia was perhaps greater than his need to fight the occupying Americans. Abu Aisha fought in Baghdad’s western Sunni suburbs, he was a former NCO in the Iraqi army and followed an extreme form of Islam known as Salafism.
Jamming
Deep lines criss-crossed his narrow forehead and his eyes half closed when he tried to answer a question He seemed to evaluate every answer before he spoke. He claimed involvement in dozens of attacks on US and Iraqi troops, mostly IEDs (bombs) but also ambushes and execution of alleged Shia spies. “We have stopped using remote controls to detonate IEDs,” he volunteered halfway through our conversation. “Only wires work now because the Americans are jamming the signals.”
On his mobile phone he proudly showed me grainy images of dead bodies lying in the street, their hands tied behind their backs . He claimed they were Shia agents and that he had killed them. “There is a new jihad now,” he said, echoing Abu Omar’s warning. “The jihad now is against the Shia, not the Americans.”
In Ramadi there was still jihad against the Americans because there were no Shia to fight, but in Baghdad his group only attacked the Americans if they were with Shia army forces or were coming to arrest someone.
“We have been deceived by the jihadi Arabs,” he admitted, in reference to al-Qaida and foreign fighters. “They had an international agenda and we implemented it. But now all the leadership of the jihad in Iraq are Iraqis.”
Abu Aisha went on to describe how the Sunnis were reorganising. After Sunni families had been expelled from mixed areas throughout Baghdad, his area in the western suburbs was prepared to defend itself against any militia attack.
“Ameriya, Jihad, Ghazaliyah,” he listed, “all these areas are becoming part of the new Islamic state of Iraq, each with an emir in charge.” Increasingly the Iraqi insurgency is moving away from its cellular structure and becoming organised according to neighbourhood. Local defence committees have intertwined into the insurgent movement.
“Each group is in charge of a specific street,” Abu Aisha said. “We have defence lines, trenches and booby traps. When the Americans arrive we let them go through, but if they show up with Iraqi troops, then it’s a fight.”
Filed under: Uncategorized — giantkicks @ 9:56 pm
+ Rick Scavetta, the former head of Army’s Media Relations in Afghanistan spills some beans to Mother Jones.
December 22, 2006The Butt-Stroke Mentality
By April Rabkin
MJ: What are other ways to manipulate public opinion?
RS: Since I’ve been home, I still constantly monitor the news from Afghanistan and Iraq. Everyday I get the casualty lists. The thing that’s startling is that they’re masking the casualties, the cost of the war in Afghanistan. Iraq is bad enough, but Afghanistan — that was supposed to be the shining jewel of the war on terror. We went in kicked out the bad guys and set up a democracy and everything’s gonna be fine now.
MJ: What? Masking the casualties? I’ve never heard this before.
RS: It’s a public relations tactic. A news cycle lasts 48 to 72 hours. Say Johnny Smith from New Haven, Conn., is in Kunar Province where his American infantry battalion is operating. He’s in a fight with local insurgents — not Osama bin Laden, maybe some foreign fighters, but mostly local. Johnny Smith dies in combat. Within 24 hours there’s a news release that comes out of this island we call Kabul that says a coalition soldier was killed in Afghanistan today. We’re not going to give out his name because we’re going to say, “The next of kin have to be notified.” We’re not going to give out his nationality because we’re all part of this quote “coalition.”
But here’s the sad fact: 99.99 % of coalition forces in Kunar are in fact American. So now in the news — NBC news, national news, wire services — the only thing that’s released is that a “coalition” soldier was killed in Afghanistan today.
And 72 hours later when the DOD finally releases Private Johnny Smith’s name, the New Haven Register and Channel 8 will pick up the memorial service and how sad Johnny’s family is. But in San Francisco, they never hear about it. In Minnesota, they never hear about it. In Florida, they never hear about it. It’s a very clever public affairs strategy. Now we have NATO in Afghanistan, so it’s, “A NATO soldier died.”
+ The way I understand it is that like soldiers, people will do everything they can to defend themselves in a war zone. A gun shot will put everyone on high alert and the only people you will trust are those you know. Fear will either make you kill or be killed.
Afghan mess-up: Crossed signals lead each side to mistake the other for enemy
DARNAMI, Afghanistan (AP) - When blasts of gunfire woke Mohammad Shafik at 1 a.m., he was sure the attackers were Taliban or al-Qaida, out to punish his family for its close ties with the Afghan government.
Huddled with nine close relatives in their mud-brick compound in eastern Khost province, he heard a man with an accent from the southern city Kandahar - the Taliban’s former stronghold - order them to step into the icy winter night.
“Come out and be safe,” the man said.
