Tag Archives: mainstream media

A Shroud of Shame that Suffocates Our Humanity

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A woman holds the body of her daughter, who medics said died on Friday from injuries sustained in an Israeli air strike on Thursday afternoon, at her funeral in Rafah

Photographs of a mother’s grief have a way of transcending the cold, hollow and cruel rhetoric of politicians and military generals.  In this one, Netream Netzleam embraces her one year old daughter, Razel, killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

The Israeli establishment stepped up its PR campaign along side its murderous assault on a largely defenseless and wholly captive population.  But no matter how they mince words, Gaza is an open air gulag.  A prison for a people who have been condemned by the world for decades.  And the prisoners are periodically and collectively punished in order to insure that their spirit is sufficiently crushed.

From the plains of the American West, to the Warsaw Ghetto, to the killing fields in Indonesia, it is an oft repeated saga.  The oppressor manages to deftly cast themselves as the victim, even as they rob, strangle, starve and plunder in the open.

This narrative has been necessary to carry out these crimes, for it is not only to convince the unconvinced.  It is intended to soothe the conscience of the oppressor.  It acts as both a balm and an elixir for the perpetrators of barbarity. The act of killing exacts an enormous price from both the victim and the victimizer.  One is seen very easily, the other is most often obscured in some dark corner of the soul, waiting to emerge in the silence of night, or as an unanticipated flashback to the horror once inflicted.

No jingoistic narrative can sponge this image away.  This mother’s sorrow is the very definition of injustice.  It is a curse to the hawks of war.  And it is a shroud of shame that suffocates our humanity as long as we remain silent in the face of such merciless savagery.

Kenn Orphan  2014

Photo by Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters

No Excuse

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Palestinian boys watch a scene simulating clashes between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers in Gaza CitThere is grief in Israel today.  Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, had gone missing in mid June, and their bodies were found yesterday in a shallow grave in the occupied West Bank.   The grief in Israel echoes the grief of Palestinians whose children have been targeted far more often and almost always with impunity by settlers and by the Israel Defense Forces.  In March of this year 15 year old Youssef Shawamra was shot to death by IDF troops  as he picked wild thistles to be used for a meal.  In May Israeli forces killed Nadim Nuwara, 17, and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir, 16, in an unprovoked attack caught on CCTV.  And just this month Mohammed Dudin, 15, was shot to death by Israeli soldiers in the infamous “Operation Brother’s Keeper”.  And these are only a few cases.

The killing of any child is abhorrent, but looking at American media coverage, or lack thereof,  regarding such tragedies reveals an insidious bias and an endemic racism.  In the last decade thousands of Palestinian children have been killed or maimed by Israeli occupation forces and settlers, and many more have been snatched from their homes in the middle of the night and spirited away to military detention centers.  According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and the UN there is ample evidence of torture and inhumane treatment at these facilities.  But this reality is obscured by the mainstream media.  It is as if they do not exist at all.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu begins his rampage of collective punishment in the West Bank and Gaza this lack of fair and unbiased journalism only pours fuel on the fire of animus and indiscriminate violence and fosters the myth that the conflict is equal.  Israel has a military, has occupied Palestinian territories for decades, colonized its lands and kept its population in a constant state of terror and oppression through home demolitions, destruction of fields and orchards and carving up properties with the wall of separation.  Israel controls the sea and air space and routinely fires on farmers tending their fields or fishermen attempting to bring in their catch.  When militants respond with rockets, Israel responds with collective punishment through bombings that level entire apartment blocks or critical infrastructure or the use of white phosphorus that blinds and burns children.

Of course the abduction and murder of these three Israeli teens is deplorable and the criminals should be found and punished.  But it should be noted that these boys were the children of illegal settlers in a region where settlers routinely harass and persecute the indigenous population, and vandalize property and destroy wells and farm land with impunity.  To ignore the conditions out of which this tragedy was born is nothing less than irresponsible, and as long as it persists the result will continue to be the same.

There is no excuse for the crime of harming or murdering children.  And as we mourn Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel whose lives were mercilessly cut short, we should take care to remember and mourn for Youssef Shawamra, Nadim Nuwara,  Muhammad Abu al-Thahirand and Mohammed Dudin, whose lives were also robbed of them by meaningless violence, and whose worth as human beings was not one bit less.

Kenn Orphan  2014

(Photo: Reuters)

The Map Out

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MALL1-facebook     One of the most harrowing challenges of modern life in the West is navigating through the massive desert of mindless, materialistic consumerism. It is within this landscape that a soul can become lost and drenched in despair. From the endless stream of vacant eyed wraiths that glide down catwalks, to the pervasive advertising that never ceases to demean the values of empathy and compassion and hollow out any meaning associated with human connection, to the entertainment industry which revels in the depths of cruelty it can sink to, the onslaught on the psyche is both constant and merciless.

consumerism Picture Source Green is SexyThe American shopping mall is a reflection of this nightmare of ravenous cupidity and a message of stark disenfranchisement to the ever growing underclass. Its glossy finishes and plastic displays erect a wall of defense against anything remotely human or sacred. It entices the youngest of our society with the promise of fulfillment and social status through the acquisition of objects, the alteration of their faces and bodies, and the tacit abandonment of any connection with the natural world and all the beings that inhabit it. Concrete and glass monoliths of corporatism drive home the deepest sense of alienation and desolation by design. It is a fantasy land of the cruelest fakery, replacing the lively, chaotic and thoroughly interactive market place with the impersonal, the absurd, and the surreal. Exported around the world to some of the most impoverished nations on the planet, it is a unique, exclusionary and effective form of imperialism.

The Big Box stores, in contrast, make no pretense to that kind of romanticism. They sit shamelessly on seas of pavement in wetlands, lush meadows or downed forests, scraped and drained clean of their original life and inhabitants. They are a reflection of what America has become; a stark and depersonalized vision of depravity within the setting of a dying ecosystem. Their plastic and glossy objects fill giant bins as they fill our oceans and river systems. Their clothing racks conceal the stain of sweat shop slavery. They exude the callousness of a factory farm, encouraging and cheering on aggression, prodding livestock into its maw of spiraled decadence. This is the architecture of banal cruelty and indifference.
mindless consumerism Philosophers Stone

Understanding this landscape it should not come as a surprise that stories about vampires and zombies dominate contemporary, popular entertainment. These themes perfectly mimic the corporate capitalist economic model which glamorizes and celebrates the ghoulish and the macabre, while it rapaciously feeds upon the most vulnerable and powerless members of society for profit. The monsters in these tales are almost always fascinating, beautiful or so powerful as to be envied, while their victims are generally bereft of any identity at all. And this is exactly the way the wealthy elite want ordinary people to think of themselves. This ideology may contribute to the emergence of the mass shooter phenomenon, but it also underlies the mass acceptance of the police state model which relies on the violence of the state to reinforce the boundaries of class, and to bolster the mythology of the superiority of the powerful and wealthy.

The map out of this nightmare is often masked by the empty promises of having more stuff, altering ones outer appearance or conforming to socially acceptable shallowness. Advertising, social media and the political class, which sanctify the zombification of modern society, demand we attune and respond to their dictates and Siren song, lest we be banished from the corporate kingdom. Of course exclusion is terrifying to the elite and serf alike. We have been trained to avert our eyes from the homeless, the working poor and the far flung slaves to our insatiable consuming. If we dare look we might see our collective future. We might see exactly how our separateness is a grand deceit, a scam. And in doing so we might indeed shun otherness for the embrace of actual human beings. Free or revolutionary thought cannot be tolerated in a capitalist corporatocracy where denial, jingoism and conformity are embedded in the liturgy.

Black Friday Shoppers

But we are coming to the end of the illusion, for better and for worse, sooner rather than later. The planet’s ecosystems are wailing from the misery our way of life has inflicted upon them. They are dying. And the humanity that has been enslaved to continue this insanity are beginning to recognize their chains. Mass extinction is fast closing in on us.  All of us will be forced to face this reality whether we want to or not. An industrial, consumerist society, based upon an endless growth economic model on a planet with finite resources, is impossible to sustain. It will eventually collapse.

Shell oil pollution Niger Delta Agence France Presse

Camel dead from plastic consumption

Polar bear on dwindling Arctic ice sheet PA

If there is map out of the cemetery that we have long dug for countless species by our selfish indulgences and out of the wreckage of civilization, that irony of all ironies, it may very well lie in the chance, however remote, that some of us will emerge from the ruins long enough to tell a different story of who we are.  Perhaps we will have enough time to honor all that we had and mourn all that was lost.  And perhaps future generations, if there are any who survive, will not hate us too much for the brutality we tolerated and the ecocide we caused.

Perhaps.

Kenn Orphan  2014

Photo Credits:
-An abandoned shopping mall in Mid-west America and is credited to Seph Lawless, courtesy of TWC (The Weather Channel)

-Courtesy of the Philosopher’s Stone

-Black Friday shoppers and is stock footage (Techno Buffalo)

-Devastation in the Niger Delta from oil pollution. Agence France Presse.

-Camel dead from consuming plastic waste.  Plastic Pollution Coalition

-A polar bear on a ever dwindling Arctic ice sheet/PA

Where True Hope Lies

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diego     One of the most persistent myths of the American empire has been, and continues to be, exceptionalism.  It is a belief rooted in white supremacy that allowed the European colonizers to ethnically cleanse much of the continent’s indigenous population; and to justify building its infrastructure and economies from the forced labor of African slaves, migrant workers from Asia and Irish indentured servants.  This eventually led beyond the borders of America to the occupation and forced annexation of the sovereign nation of Hawaii with the imprisonment of their Queen, and the colonial subjugation of the Philippines, and the domination of virtually all of  Central America and the Caribbean .  Almost all of the United States’ national history, roughly 210 out of 236 years, has been involved in some military conflict.  This history is more important today than ever before, because the empire never ceased expanding; and its rapacious consumption and aggressive militarism imperils virtually all life on the planet.

queen-liliuokalani-photograph-from-1891-the-palace-chair-she-is-sitting-on-is-now-located-in-the-drawing-room-of-iolani-palace

us imperialism

The reach of the American empire is now in over 148 countries around the planet, with over 600 military bases and covert, “black sites” and military support of some of the most brutal regimes humanity has ever known. From the wholesale bombing of Laos decades ago to the indiscriminate drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia and Syria, American imperialism has barely taken a breath between its expansionist exercises. Branded under ambiguously noble terms like “humanitarian intervention” or “the War on Terror” or “protecting US interests,” the persistent doctrine of imperialism for the maximization of capitalistic profit is marketed and sold to the American public.

RNC OUR MILITARY MUST BE STRONG TO DEFEND OUR SHORES 2014 6-12

It is unsurprising that most Americans are glaringly ignorant of this history.  That is by design.  And despite the revelations of the empire’s malfeasance by courageous whistle blowers like Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, many Americans still remain trapped in a mindset that begets a ruling elite and allows for their continual exploitation and plunder.  Now this wealthy power class, aided by the world’s biggest military,  is fatally drunk on their own hubris, collecting untold fortunes from the rape of the natural world, the theft of indigenous resources, and the global suppression of dissent.  Their crimes are whitewashed with the eager help of the corporate owned media; and they do this with impunity thanks to the institutions that they bought and paid for, openly and secretly, at lavish, well heeled fundraisers, exclusive, high end dinner events, and back room “trade deals.”

Wall Street elite dinner with Ben Bernanke REUTERS Lucas Jackson

Iraq Civilians Getty ImagesThe ghosts of America’s global massacres still roam. They have no glorious tombs in which to repose. No wreath clad monuments grace their dusty graves. Their ends were met in the killing fields of Honduras, and Guatemala, and Palestine, and Iraq, and Yemen, and Laos, and Vietnam, and Indonesia from a brutality paid for in full by the US taxpayer. Their ghosts haunt any prospect of fairness and justice in imperialism’s latest manifestation of barbarity: neoliberal capitalism.  And their descendants, those who slave at sweatshops in Bangladesh for multinational clothing corporations, or who pick pesticide-laden vegetables in fields in Nicaragua for Big Agra, or are kept from leaping to their deaths in slave towers that furnish computer software giants their products, call out the hypocrisy of “free trade” for the malevolent lie that it is.

My_Lai_massacre_woman_and_children

With each passing year it becomes clearer that the strife wrought around the globe, decade upon decade, by the robber barons and plutocrats is returning to heart of the empire itself.   It is the natural outcome and saga of oligarchy that the tyranny we sow abroad will be the tyranny we shall reap at home.  And with climate change accelerating and species extinction exploding before our eyes, the end result will be nothing less than terrifying.

Kissinger War Criminal

But we are still fortunate to have access to the people’s record. Despite their chains or the dank prison cells they have been assigned to, people around the world are rising up. Their struggle to confront the demons of the past and the story of their enslavement is frightening beyond anything else to the oligarchy.  And that is why they are fighting back like never before, codifying their tyranny brick by brick into the bedrock of society with the help of a subservient mainstream media. In many cases they appear to be winning; but it isn’t over yet.

Philippines June 13 2014 Photo by Bullit Marquez AP

True hope lies in defiance of tyranny and brutality.  And it is measured in the depths of our capacity to speak out and to care. There is not always a happy outcome to this, but that is not what hope is really about anyway.  It could be said that the pages of human history are drenched in the blood of innocents and bound up with their bones, but understanding it as such pays no respect to the untold courage of those who stood up, often shaken and terrified, who refused to be a part of the killing and often ended in the shadows of a mass grave for doing so, those who nurtured the core that gives a human life meaning and worth. Their legacy is one which history will ultimately remember. Despite the tremendous drive to silence them, their story is in all of us; and there is nothing anyone can do to sponge that away.

Kenn Orphan  2014

Photo Credits:

-Photo on top is courtesy of Art Archive and is “Glorious Victory,” by Diego Rivera. It depicts the 1954 CIA coup against the democratically elected government of Guatemala.

-Photo of Queen Liliʻuokalani (September 2, 1838 – November 11, 1917) the last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii.  She was deposed from the throne January 17, 1893 following a coup d’état orchestrated by US military forces (Marines) at the behest of powerful US and European business interests.  The wealthy white class of Hawaii had long awaited the opportunity to seize control of the government and with the help of an all white militia, the Honolulu Rifles, they were able to establish a provisional government which eventually led to the annexation of the Kingdom into the United States of America.  It is widely seen as one of the most blatant acts of American imperialist aggression of the 19th century with repercussions lasting till this day.  On November 23, 1993 President Clinton signed the Apology Resolution which “acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaii or through a plebiscite or referendum” (U.S. Public Law 103-150 (107 Stat. 1510), but does little more than provide a weak nod to an outright overthrow.

-Political Cartoon circa 1914: “What the United States Has Fought For”
Text on cartoon: “Before the United States intervened in behalf of these oppressed peoples. Philippines-Spanish oppression. Hawaii-Industrial slavery. Porto Rico, Cuba-Spanish yoke. Isthmus of Panama-Quinine. After the United States had rescued them from their oppression. Philippines-Philippine Assembly, Education, Busine[ss] Prosperity. Hawaii-Prosperity. Porto Rico-Prosperity. Cuba-Self gov’t, prosperity. Panama Canal Zone-Health.”

-RNC Tweet

-Wall Street elite dinner with Ben Bernanke.  Reuters/Lucas Jackson

– An Iraqi family grieves the loss of family following US airstrike.  Photo, Getty Images.

-A heart wrenching photo of Vietnamese women and children in abject terror at Mỹ Lai just before being mercilessly killed by US troops, 16 March, 1968.  Photo: Ronald L. Haeberle.

-Henry Kissinger confronted by CODEPINK.  Associated Press

-Mass protest against austerity, neoliberalism and US imperialism in the Philippines.  Photo by Bullit Marquez/AP