Showing posts with label Robert Fisk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Fisk. Show all posts

Friday, January 28, 2011

Military Rape


New World Notes News
Vol. 4, No. 5 -- January 28, 2011

This week in New World Notes, radio program #152, February 1, 2011:

Military Rape


In brief

Award-winning journalist Dahr Jamail--interviewed by Dori Smith, of Talk Nation Radio--discusses the extraordinarily high level of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) in the U.S. armed forces today. Essentially, MST is the rape of a soldier by a fellow soldier. Victims are of both sexes, but women soldiers are extremely likely to be victimized. Victims who report the assault are persecuted and denied therapeutic care; their rapists are promoted; and the Pentagon does nothing to fix the problem.

Jamail attributes the epidemic in part to changes in military training, which now "dehumanizes" soldiers much more than in past generations. Jamail also associates dehumanization with another military epidemic, PTSD.

Finally, distinguished journalist Robert Fisk, speaking in 2008, searches for the causes of U.S. soldiers' newfound delight in torturing people. He finds one in the same dehumanization produced by the new military training.

Most graphics: Click to enlarge.

Notes, credits, & links

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/
http://www.talknationradio.com/
Fisk excerpt courtesy of TUCradio.org

This week's music: Bruce Springsteen, Bring Them Home. See the music video here. Pete Seeger's Vietnam-era version is here.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "thumb") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.


Top: Dahr Jamail. Bottom: The Pentagon's response to the epidemic of rape and other sexual assault: a small P.R. campaign.

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut dates shown)

  • February 8 -- Controlling the People (1): On the Job .

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A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net

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Saturday, June 27, 2009

Afghanistan: "And Now For Something Completely Different"



All Photos: Click to enlarge.

This week in New World Notes, radio program #70, June 30 & July 3:

New World Notes presents its First Annual "What the Heck Are We Doing in Afghanistan?" show. The title of this installment is Afghanistan: "And Now For Something Completely Different." Antiquarians will recognize the quotation from BBC-TV's Monty Python' Flying Circus, ca. 1970.

Between satiric sketches, cut to John Cleese, seated at a desk, resembling a BBC-TV announcer more than the real ones do. He looks up into the camera, pauses, then intones, deadpan, "And now for something completely different."

Cut to the next sketch, which proves to be quite similar to the previous one.

Dr. John Watson (Top, to left), friend and biographer to Sherlock Holmes
(to right) had his army career cut short by an archaic Jezail bullet that
injured him during the Battle of Maiwand, Afghanistan, in 1880 (Bottom).
In the 19th century, Britain made two major attempts to conquer and
rule Afghanistan. Both failed.


Sport's Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue; the Christmas Issue of Playboy; whatever that stupid football game is, with all the Roman numerals; and the State-of-the-Union fertilizer-spreading festival (a charming remnant of our republic's agrarian past) . . . . As with these other annual Media Events, we expect NWN's Annual Afghanistan Lamentation & Jeremiad to become a beloved part of America's popular culture.

Note to supermarket managers: Think lamb, rice, pignolia nuts, yogurt, and beard-grooming accessories to celebrate NWN-Afghanistan Day. Think low-price sales! In the East, on cutlery. In the Mountain States, on telescopic sights and medium-caliber rifle ammo (but don't hesitate to go down to .223 Rem if you're overstocked!). In California, North Beach, Provincetown, & parts of Westchester and Fairfield counties, yogurt from unusual mammals.




Top: NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Bottom: Expert U.S. rifleman demonstrates his mastery of hold,
use of sights, aim, and trigger control.


This week's lineup of heavy hitters:

  • Distinguished foreign correspondent Robert Fisk (talks)
  • Hartford lawyer & political activist Steve Fournier (rants--his term!)
  • Activist, SDS co-founder, & California politician Tom Hayden (is read aloud)
  • Musicians Willie Nelson and The Foremen (sing)
  • Dr. Kenneth Dowst (again tries & fails to make sense of U.S. foreign policy)

Coming soon (dates of WWUH Tuesday broadcast shown):

  • July 7--Greg Palast & John Pilger on Neocolonialism & Democracy
  • July 14--Are Our Schools Bad on Purpose? (J.T. Gatto, Part1)



Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Connections:

A better alternative


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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Memorial Day Special

This week in New World Notes, #65, May 26 & 29:

Memorial Day is Monday, May 25, and this week's show commemorates it.

Just as the wrong sorts of people wave the flag, for all the wrong reasons--so the same people do their best to turn Memorial Day into a celebration of military service, unnecessary wars, belligerent foreign policies, and obscenely high and ever-increasing expenditures for quote-national defense-unquote.


Top: 2 flags.
Bottom: 20 flags

Personally, I prefer Christmas--the only national holiday in which the word "peace" is ever uttered, however insincerely.

And don't even get me started on Armistice Day! Originally a multinational holiday celebrating the end of the most gawdawful war in history, to that date. Now transformed into "Veterans Day" by our patriotic, peace-loving Congress. Quite a metamorphosis, eh?

This week, New World Notes offers an Alternative Memorial Day Celebration. The full title is, The Slippery Slope of Memorial Day.

First I elaborate on the main theme. To remember those whom the State caused to die is worthy. To celebrate a foreign policy consisting mainly of armed belligerance is unworthy. To call for ever more deaths and ever more killing so that "these honored dead shall not have died in vain" is obscene--the bottom of the slippery slope.

Guess where most conventional Memorial Day celebrations end up.

Top: Graphic by Eric Drooker
Bottom: "Spain, 1936" by Robert Capa


Then we hear veteran Middle-East correspondent Robert Fisk sharing his own thoughts on war.

Finally I'll read Howard Zinn's fine 1976 column on war and Memorial Day. At the time, he was a columnist for the Boston Globe. The day afterwards, he was no longer a columnist for the Boston Globe.

Well--to invert T.S. Eliot--at least he went out with a bang, not a whimper!

Happy motoring!
Ken


From The Phantom English Major:

Zinn's essay both begins and ends with a few words about drunken smashups. At the end, though, he's talking about more than just highway accidents. Clever.

This week's music:

  • Steppenwolf, Monster

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


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