Banksy in the USA
War is hell!
Inspirational street artist Bansky has now scooped Wikileaks to bring you the exclusive video of Syrian soldiers targeting Disney’s favorite flying elephant.
Somebody call Colonel Hathi.
Tag Archive: Wikileaks
Carrie and Brody lost in the maze on Homeland’s opening credits.
As the weeks have gone by, I’ve become more and more hooked on the TV series Homeland. and the final episode ,aired on Channel 4 on Sunday night , was so tense and gripping it left me drained.
What made (makes) this drama so absorbing is that all the main characters have secrets and issues with CIA agent Carrie and Sergeant Brody (Damian Lewis) having more than their fair share.
Carrie, brilliantly played by Claire Danes, is a cocktail of positive and negative attributes – reckless, professional, brave, lonely, erratic, intuitive, manic, sexy and impulsive. Knowing that she’s a big fan of Jazz alerts us to the fact that she is no conventional heroine. Continue reading
“This is the slaughter known as the first world war” says John Pilger in tones of barely contained rage as we see black and white photographs of victims. This opening sequence sets the tone for an uncompromising documentary about the true horror of war and the lies that are propagated in its name.
The film was first shown on ITV in December 2010 but was banned from being shown in the US by the Lannan Foundation.
The question at the heart of this film is that in times of conflict: What is the role of the media?
Are journalists there to help government public relations officials communicate their ‘facts’ without question or are they there to provide balanced reporting based on known facts.
In modern warfare, the so-called imbedded journalists are employed to give a front line perspective on warfare. In the safety of our living rooms, this has the look of witnessing the action as it is happening; the ultimate reality TV.
However, what these journalists are allowed to report is carefully monitored and controlled by military forces. This, they will argue, is in the name of national security but it also means that there are confrontations and situations that will never be seen. Only scenes that show the ‘good guys’ in a good light and the ‘enemy’ as the personification of evil will be broadcast. Strenuous efforts are made to ensure a block of the kind of unfiltered films that Wikileaks have released. Continue reading
There are some books that should come with health warnings and The Case of the Pope by Geoffrey Robertson QC is one of them. Reading it will make your blood pressure rise and fuel an uncontrollable rage towards the Catholic Church in general and the current Pope in particular.
Of course, you may not feel the same way about this.
For example, if you think that ordaining women priests is as serious as sodomising a child you’ll have no problem with the Vatican’s policy towards victims of child abuse. Also you won’t feel so enraged as I did if you consider that molesting minors is a sin on a par with masturbation. You will be able to argue calmly that, after all, both breach the Catholic rule that stipulates the “non use of the sexual faculty” .
So, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a health warning needs to be directed at readers with hearts, minds and souls, and at those who place common sense above religious dogma.
This would alert those (surely the vast majority) who believe that abusing a child is not only a sin, but also a criminal act and one which demands not only that the perpetrators be brought to justice but also that the victims be properly recompensed.
And if you are hoodwinked by Pope Benedict XVI’s recent public apology on behalf of priests under his charge then Robertson’s book is essential reading. Continue reading
The U.S. rules of engagement state that the use of deadly force should only be used when a subject usually has a weapon and “will either kill or injure someone if he/she is not stopped immediately”.
From the shocking video obtained by Wikileaks it is obvious that the military on the ground in New Bagdad interpret this to mean that anyone carrying a weapon is a legitimate target.
The men we see being killed gave no indications that they were planning to launch any attack – from their position the soldiers even mistook cameras of the Reuters journalists for guns.
This being a hot zone of the city the level of tension has clearly reached a point that attack is routinely regarded as the best form of defence. The casual manner in which permission to engage was given indicates that this was far from being an isolated incident.
Even more inexcusable was the subsequent firing on those who came to the aid of the wounded. That act cannot be dismissed as the fog of war.
Wikileaks are doing an invaluable service in exposing such outrages – they present the material in a highly professional manner after investigating the circumstances fully leaving the powers that be no avenues to weasel out of responsibility.
The Pentagon are said to be angry about the leak of the video when a more noble response would be one of disgust that members of the U.S. military are carrying out acts of cold blooded murder.
But then again, they already know this yet continue to feed their lies to the media.
