Exactly 35 years to the day after he captured this iconic image...
...AP photographer Nick Ut grabbed another front page scoop with a photograph of another whimpering child - though this one hadn't been splashed with napalm...
This did strike me as being a slight waste of his skills and experience
I've been prattling about how disgraceful our media is over the last few posts. The irony of these two very different pictures of sobbing kids, separated by 35 years of conditioning of what to expect from our newspapers, captures one aspect of what's so very wrong with our media today. When they're not recycling lies they're distracting us with irrelevant bullshit.
And we lap it up
-
And whilst on the subject of Vietnam in 1972, it's worth remembering that even though the US realised that it was fighting an unwinnable war by '67 or '68, direct US involvement continued for another four years and indirect involvement for another three after that. Some of the worst horrors and most gratuitous slaughter of civilians of the entire war took place long after everyone knew what the result was going to be.
So, next time you hear anyone, the entire leadership of the Labour Party for example, saying that whatever the circumstances of our entry into Iraq, that's all water under the bridge (yeah, right) and we are now honour bound to stay until the situation is somehow magically 'fixed', it's worth asking them, if you can get an opportunity, what the fuck they're on about.
Just because you can break something that's no reason to kid yourself that you can put it back together.
(Of course, we Conspiraloons™ believe that US and UK forces were always going to be kept in the region, however the occupation worked out, but we're mad and our opinions can be safely ignored)
.
7 comments:
There never was any intention to win the 'nam war the Iraq war or any other post WWII war (ie one that there was never the slightest possibility of a threat to Moronica) - these spectacles aren't about war; they're about theft/loot/robbery. The idea of a war is a propaganda smoke screen. Iraq war: USD 8 Billion per month; everything is done to keep this faucet open. (As it was in 'nam).
History appears to be with you on that one
Game of dominoes anyone?
Very true. The great thing about wear for the banks and the big corporations is they always win. Was 'nam about oil particularly? I always thought it was more about expending billions upon billions of dollars on arms and bombs and helicopters and so forth.
billions of dollars on arms and bombs and helicopters and so forth...
two and half thousand Hueys lost alone
you'd have thought after they lost the first thousand or so that the US military would have got the idea, but they kept on buying them
cf. AH-64 Apache
www.exile.ru/2003-April-17/war_nerd.html
'a Yugo is still a Yugo even if you put armour on it'
I have a copy of an interesting little tome that's long out of print called The Baroque Arsenal by Mary Kaldor. Per one of the handful of reviews I found on the Interweb...
"Modern military technology is not advanced," Mary Kaldor writes on the first page; "it is decadent." This theme pervades a book which sees weapons, rather than their users or the incentives for acquisition, as the culprit. Today's overly sophisticated arms are viewed as remote from military and economic reality: they are often incapable of achieving even limited military objectives, and they erode the economies of the United States and other nations-both arms producers and buyers. Many will find this perspective overly simple and apolitical, but the author's intellectual verve and courage are to be admired.
Paradoxically who was most insistent that the Communist Vietnam became a member of WTO so US compoanies could source their trainers there ?
Hint : Dubya went himself to secure the deal and Vietnamese who protested in California avout recognising the Communist regime ...well they got locked up.
Post a Comment