http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/2002—-.htm

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/2002—-.htm

Video game montage

A sequence of video game violence coming together

https://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235446

https://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235446

“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service.” – Albert Einstein

Why would anyone join the military and get killed in a war?

I have a vehement question that I don’t get. Why would anyone be dumb enough to join the military and go to war, where one has EVERYTHING to lose and NOTHING to gain? Technically, it’s akin to committing suicide for no valid reason, especially since American involvement in wars usually have nothing to do with “serving your country” or “defending freedom”.

The war on Terror

More insight to the start of this war on ‘terror’

Rat rant

Recognizes the medias involvement in hiding the truth and supporting a lies campaign.

Mean world Syndrom

Children freezing to death

Children Freezing to Death: Another Horrific Side of the Afghanistan War

LENGTH: 658 words

By now most readers know my (changed) position on the Afghanistan War.

I have mourned our casualties and fretted about our huge financial costs.

But – perhaps insensitively so – I have not mentioned much about the suffering of the Afghan people.

A piece in the New York Times today, brought such suffering home in the most poignant way by focusing on the suffering – the dying – of the most vulnerable human beings: the children.

The article starts with the jarring intro: “KABUL, Afghanistan – The following children froze to death in Kabul over the past three weeks after their families had fled war zones in Afghanistan for refugee camps here…”

It then goes on to list the names and ages of four of the “at least 22 [children] who have died in the past month, a time of unseasonably fierce cold and snowstorms.”

Among those 22 children:

Mirwais, son of Hayatullah Haideri. He was 1 ½ years old and had just started to learn how to walk, holding unsteadily to the poles of the family tent before flopping onto the frozen ridges of the muddy floor.

Abdul Hadi, son of Abdul Ghani. He was not even a year old and was already trying to stand, although his father said that during those last few days he seemed more shaky than normal.

Naghma and Nazia, the twin daughters of Musa Jan. They were only 3 months old and just starting to roll over.

Ismail, the son of Juma Gul. “He was never warm in his entire life,” Mr. Gul said. “Not once.”

About Ismail the Times says, “It was a short life, 30 days long.”

According to the United Nations, there are 35,000 people living – barely surviving might be a more accurate term – in Kabul refugee camps, such as Charachi Cambar and Nasaji Bagrami where the children froze to death.

“Both camps are populated largely with refugees who fled the fighting in areas like Helmand Province in the south. Some people have been in the camps for as long as seven years; others arrived in the past year,” says the Times.

Those who claim that we are making progress in Afghanistan generally point to the schools we have built and other “infrastructure projects” (Let’s not forget the $60 million prison we built at Bagram Air Base), at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

That is all good and well. However, Americans need to raise the same question the Times poses:

After 10 years of a large international presence, comprising about 2,000 aid groups, at least $3.5 billion of humanitarian aid and $58 billion of development assistance, how could children be dying of something as predictable – and manageable – as the cold?

If you have the fortitude, you can read the heart-rending stories of how and why these children are dying in these wretched camps here – camps where Solidarités International, a French group that has had a limited program of emergency food aid and sanitation in the camps, surveyed mortality rates in recent months and came to the harrowing conclusion that, among children under 5, the camps’ death rate is 144 per 1,000 children.

According to the Times, this rate is “stunningly high even for Afghanistan, which already has the world’s third highest infant mortality rate” and means “one out of every seven children in the Kabul camps will not survive until his or her sixth birthday.”

 

For those of us who believe that we should get out of Afghanistan, there is the sad conundrum:

If we stay longer in Afghanistan, will we be able to save these children?

If we leave Afghanistan now, will more children die?

Of course, this is not the only criterion, but it is a very emotive one and one we should include in any decision making process about “the future of Afghanistan.”

The reader can also view a heartbreaking set of photos about this tragedy here.

View Is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal of War in Afghanistan

Highway of death

Side of the war people weren’t show in the mass media.

America’s Army

Use a free video game to recruit new members.

http://nhmediablog.wordpress.com/tag/desensitization/

http://nhmediablog.wordpress.com/tag/desensitization/

This week there’s been a lot of buzz about a disturbing video called “Collateral Murder,” recently released by the whistleblower site WikiLeaks. The video, taken in 2007, shows the gun-site of an Apache helicopter, as American soldiers open fire on and kill 12 civilians, including two journalists, who they thought were carrying weapons (source). Particularly frightening is the soldiers’ narration in the background — which sounds eerily like a group of friends playing a video game. They laugh, seeming almost to relish the attack.