The Chomsky Tarot
Paul Mackin
mackin.paul at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 14:29:46 CDT 2009
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Bailey" <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 2:46 PM
Subject: Re: The Chomsky Tarot
> specifics on the prison camp photo here
> http://www.david-campbell.org/photography/atrocity-and-memory/
>
> links on that page to longish articles open up funky pop-ups but they
> aren't any more annoying than pdf's, really, and they detail the facts
> of that picture of the guy with all the ribs showing...and the court
> case...and so forth...
>
> not really a leftie myself (my heart belongs to pacifism/non-violence)
> I was inclined to doubt the photos simply because Bush the elder used
> them as PR when he offloaded a bunch of ordnance into the
> Balkans...exactly the kind of stuff that he used in Iraq I with the
> Kuwaiti princess and the stuff that she brought to Congress -- next
> thing I'll be learning those stories were true???
This is a problem we face every time we see some horrific image or read an
attrocious story in the media.
Regardless of which side of the political divide is promoting it.
We just have to try and develop some sense of what is plausible and within
the realm of probablity.
Oh for the days when we received information directly, though being there.
Life in the village.
>
> (straight outta W'pedia: Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the
> organisation Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the U.S. It
> hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 million,
> paid by the Kuwaiti government.[21] Among many other means of
> influencing US opinion (distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to US
> soldiers deployed in the region, 'Free Kuwait' T-shirts and speakers
> to college campuses, and dozens of video news releases to television
> stations), the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of
> members of the US Congress in which a woman identifying herself as a
> nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers
> pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor.
> The story was an influence in tipping both the public and Congress
> towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough
> for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators
> referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military
> actions in a 52-47 vote. A year after the war, however, this
> allegation was revealed to be a fabrication. The woman who had
> testified was found to be a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, in
> fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US[22] She had not
> been living in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion. The details of the
> Hill & Knowlton public relations campaign, including the incubator
> testimony, were published in a John R. MacArthur's Second Front:
> Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Berkeley, CA: University of
> CA Press, 1992), and came to wide public attention when an op-ed by
> MacArthur was published in the New York Times. This prompted a
> re-examination by Amnesty International, which had originally promoted
> an account alleging even greater numbers of babies torn from
> incubators than the original fake testimony; after finding no evidence
> to support it, the organisation issued a retraction. President George
> H.W. Bush then repeated the incubator allegations on television.
I clearly remember hearing the incubator story and NOT bel\ieving it.
>
> At the same time, the Iraqi army committed several well-documented
> crimes during its occupation, such as the summary execution without
> trial of three brothers after which their bodies were stacked in a
> pile and left to decay in a public street.[23] Troops also ransacked
> and looted private Kuwaiti homes, one residence was repeatedly
> defecated in.[24] A resident later commented, "The whole thing was
> violence for the sake of violence, destruction for the sake of
> destruction... Imagine a surrealistic painting by Salvador Dalí".[25])
This latter story I believed at the time and still believe.
>
> but the main reason that I prolong this thread is to insert an
> on-topic thought in the Vineland discussion: these are the types of
> photos that 24fps was trying to produce
>
I don't remember. Were Pynchon's people faking things?
> oh, and here's a follow up on rib-dude:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/04/warcrimes.balkans
>
>
> --
> - "Be groovy or B movie" - the old 24fps signoff
>
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