United States Marines charged in Iraq Killings… the Haditha incident… America’s scariest prospect: The Pandora Nation
According to the Associated Press, a group of Marines that massacred a town of Iraqi civilians will be brought to charges in US Criminal Court.
Here’s the Washington Post article explaining howthe massacre happened. Thomas E. Ricks who wrote the article for Washington Post, does a great job of weaving through official statements and occasionaly hyperboles to get to a pretty “truthy” explanation.
First off, war is utter rich-boy bullshit. We, the poor, die. They, the rich, run the show (or run away). Simplistic? Who gives a skite. True? Most definitely.
This is the case historically, in every nation, in every city-state, in almost every society, at any stage in man’s development from the paleolithic age up.
Secondly, I imagine the marines did knowingly massacre the civilians. I’ve read through a few articles and it seems likely. That being the case, these were mind-fucked young men, unleashed and freshly disillusioned. The intensity of emotion between an American soldier andan Iraqi civilian is immense–from what a few vets have told me. Classic ‘nam shit. You don’t even know who’s on your side, who’s against you and who doesn’t care. Maybe someone was snipering at them and they decided THEY weren’t going to be the ones that go down like that, so they’d lay down the law. Is that evil? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!!! no shit it’s evil, the whole scenarion is evil….
who the fuck is gaining from this except those who have mounds of wealth already…. who is losing from this war besides poor and common men? (maybe saddam, and some of his richest relatives… given the following…. i kinda feel like that was a fight “in-the-family” (do ya like the rolling stones? they’re ahead of my time, but idk, i feel this is kinda appropriate)
(just checking but that IS recently fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein aka the Butcher of Baghdad aka the Bad Guy? right? or am i losing it…cuz that seems pretty fucking crazy to me…)
In any scenario, the american public must pressure the government harder than ever before to stop this insane, frat-boy butchery or we are all, as they say is in the porn industry, “eternally fucked.” This prosecution is a right step, even if the marines were american at war (which I don’t understand as an excuse any way… ). We need to be more than a little contrite for what we’ve unleashed. If the middle east erupts in a trans-national religious war (alla sectarianism: remember the whole protestant/catholic prob) we will be seen, historically and without plausible excuse, as the Pandora Nation.
Buck Fush,
Reverend Manny and the Hawthornettes
Video of New York Knicks v Denver Nuggets in a two-round fisticuff flury (NBA Action = National Boxing Association?) + Mighty Mouse and the 36 chambers
A little time for sports.
If you didn’t see last nites game, which I didn’t either, the Knicks got beaten by the Nuggets in a 30+ trouncing. But alas, these words aren’t just cliche metaphors, the knicks really did get physically beat. Late in the game, when the Nuggets were clearly going to coast to a victory, the Knicks were playing their backups while the Nuggets cotinued to try to pour the points on, as if to humiliate the Knicks on their home turn, Madison M’Fin Square Garden. Gentlemen….. here’s the video
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The nuggest were trying to bitch the knicks. In my view, and maybe this makes me knuckle-dragger, the guys who wouldn’t let there team get abused and their guys pushed around, those are the guys should build around. Gimme some Nate Robinson
Man, I’m at the point, as a Knick fan where I’d even give up Marbury for Iverson, if they also took one of our rich egomaniacs, we have plenty.
The New York Times, explains how it all went down here.
As per usual, Dan Shanoff expounds with timeliness, and he raises the same question I do. Is David Stern gonna really suspend the league’s leading scorer, one who is a media and fan darling? I’m speaking of course of the rightfully touted Carmello Anthony. Idk, hombre, the fact that it was a sucker punch better count for something. And you can’t really put all too much blame on Nate “mighty mouse” Robinson, ya gotta protect ya neck
one,
Reverend M and the So Forths
Veep Cheney: Throw US support behind Shiia in an Iraqi Civil War
Dick’s people (as in veep Dick Cheney) are floating around a crazy new idea for the Iraq conflict: support the Shi-ites in civil war to the death against the Sunni. Their plan would be to take advantage the Shi’ia rise to power and the fact that they’re population is three times bigger in Iraq than the Sunni one. The New York Times explains.
Keep in mind that most of the rest of the arab world is actually Sunni. The only major arab country to practice a Shiite version of muslim? Iran.
Reverend Manny Flips the Format…. lessons from the New York City Underground…. the Apology (part 2)…
There’s alot of paranoia in the journalist ranks about the displacement of traditional newspaper and media outlet jobs. What they fail to apprecate is the nature of the new game. That’s why I flip the script. I dig the magazine (a little love for Beyond Race here) being bimonthly. Instead of rushing to cover what’s being covered already (one of a dozen egomaniacs, half of whom have talent) we take our time, and really plow into the music scene, the underground culture. We take the time to look artists over. For every band that’s in there you can believe there more than a few that we’ve seen. Instead of sucking huge PR rooster Rarer, but harder researched material. Think Harper’s for urban culture: mind you this doesn’t mean “black culure” or even “hip hop culture.” The fact that these terms are used as synonyms to “urban culture” is further proof that we as people living in cities, and i don’t mean living very pretty either, are assumed to all be of a certain ken or type. Manual Laborers and Working Class urban dwellers are the most disregarded un-niche (because they are such a massive m’fin demographic) in the journalism market today. (poof, i’ve given away my secret, so go take care of it, i have senior joaquin daniels i need to attend to) Noone talks to us. Sorry man, I know the average NYTimes readers makes something like 90gs a year (Levihson correct me on this). What good material exists for working class people actively engaged in their own culture? My point, and yes there is one, is that we flip the format and I truly dig the magazine I write for because it favors deep knowledge over instantaneous reporting. Some people bottle pepsi, and honestly, that takes a certain machinery and produces a rather different product from a winery. One’s not necessarily better than the other, shit perhaps its a matter of preference. Instead of instantaneously reporting every Tony Snow hiccup we get to know something and talk about it. Different schemes, ey. And we know our racket pretty goddamn well. h, but you say that’s not everybody market. We cover music and culture in NYC. Well, I retort, we’re not weekly, and that’s who on many levels we “should be” competing with. We go with quality, before they’re magically selected from a pool of talented, good-looking or well-connected musicians, and run with that instead of just writing about the same 12 ppl everyone else is writing about.
But if we’re really talking types of news, then lets talk types of news. There are types of news. War is more important to cover than just the attack of some key points in town. The trees are sparse enough, and we’re still missing the goddamn forest.
So Reverend Manny flips the format. I’m purposefully weird and esoteric. I’m trying to be difficult, have been doing so my whole life, ask my parents, ex-teachers, and roiling clan of ex-girlfriends. It’s what makes me a decent journalist, and on here, one of the more interesting bloggers. I mean. Look at this whole gloating vainglorious paragraph. I mean, where do I get off? Who does that?
I do.
The whole blog format begs for schizoid presentation. Well… here it is. We’re the products of screens. Pretty goddamn futuristic for a world where 1.1 billion people lack clean drinking water.
Techno-freakism…. the new broadcast medium
More Buck for your Fush than ever before,
Reverend Manny and the Expressionistics
ps. i even love the huge hawthorne-ian first paragraph
The death of Augusto Pinochet… new international realities
The recent news of Augusto Pinochet’s death brings into focus new international realities that the US, as well as all of the major powers (including the asian ones) must wrestle with. Pinochet’s death signals the death of an era. The old school military strongman model has not entirely disappeared from the scene, and understanding where the model stands now may help us to better understand the current losses at the hands of grassroots religious zealots. We are no longer prepared to fight the most modern warfare.
to be continued….
help the rev?! how do i show my blogroll
how do you show your blogroll? i notice its not on my site… my bad, i’ve linked many of you, and i don’t know why my blogroll isn’t showing… do i have to add it manually thru the links side widget??
sunday morning musing… assessing the middle east political scene
I predicted a long time ago, some two years ago now, that the US actually wanted a civil war in Iraq, which might hopefully break down the Arab world into two major sects… sunni and shi’ite… well now look at what these good folks are saying on the sunday morning talk shows
Meawhile, in Lebanon, crowds have thronged to the major cities to demand that Faoud Senoria give up some of his power. For those who don’t know, Senoria is american backed, and these protests are led by pro-syrian entities within the country, most notably hezbollah. The New York Times discusses this mornings rallies here. Perhaps now would be a good time to take stock of exactly where it is in the world the United States is actually winning… for example… er…. you know… in the US sorta… and i guess the canadians still kinda like us, the brit politicians dig us, although their populace is as pissed as ours… so where exactly are we throwing this nearly $3billion in annual foreign aid? What capital does the US have to better this situation for itself? Not much anymore it seems.
So I have to give my dude Alexander Cockburn some love here (that sounded a little nasty, but alas, we progress). He is the renowned progressive columnist and one of the editors (I believe) of Counterpunch.org, which I tend to be a huge fan of, simply for its freedom to think outside of lefty war-drumming. Cockburn (pronounced co-burn) rips the Dems a new for their lack of testicular fortitude. I’m curious as to where the netroots stands on this one. For myself, I can’t see any way for the people in Iraq not to hate us. The longer we wait, the worse it’ll be. We don’t understand jack diddly about the internecine battles within the middle east and South Asia. Some cat on Meet the Press just said that out of 1000 ppl in the Iraqi embassy only 6, yes six, speak Arabic. The US lacks arab speakers. We are fucked. We are out of touch and uber-humped.
We used to be humans…
Heads up NY, a fare headed your way for the staten island ferry
sorry for the quick blog today, but if you care at all about them instating fares for what’s been a free ride for nearly a decade, then get your acts together and bother councilman oddo…
i’m out…
