Abu Ghraib Photos
- Thread starter Corax
- Start date
I suspect that is indeed the explanation.
The decline can be traced back to murdoch getting hold of the sun i believe. Since then the media has helped create a new version of britain that does much more match the american model as you have alluded to. People in britain are almost as uninformed as the american people these days purely because they're not getting the information in the first place. But they used to until murdoch changed it all to bingo and celebs.
It's not just Murdoch though, have you seen the Independent lately? It's a comic, devoted entirely to gossip, celebs, entertainment and consumption. The Guardian isn't much better either.
GarfieldLeChat
fucking awesome but wrong
tho to be fair once you start a race to the bottom you can't expect your competitors to not follow suit...
GarfieldLeChat
fucking awesome but wrong
when where you last in the uk for any significant period of time which would allow your prejudices confirmed?
eh?
by significant i mean living working and socailising here for over 6 months..
face it fela you don't know dick and are a racist with a very narrow sterotyped vision of what actually goes on from a position of ignorance and every fucking chance you get you pussyhole you use it to spred more of your racist bollocks about .
seriously, i'm not even a patriot but the constant trash talk from a position of utter ignorance is so fucking wearing it makes you look like some bitter exile from somewhere...
clearly you're generalised bullshit comment isn't true else no one here would be able to consistantly better you and throw down your arguments as being the unmitigated toss that they are...
shit even dwyer is capable of intelligent discourse without constantly resorting back to the same old refrain...
GarfieldLeChat
fucking awesome but wrong
he's a dead weight which the entire world is carrying and collectively we'd be better off without such oxygen theives on the planet and our combined IQ and progress socially, technologically and spiritually would be significantly furthered by dening such people a voice.
the old if you've nothing positive to contribute STFU concept...
Well, to be fair, I suspect that once the pictures ARE out in the public domain, Urban will wind itself up into full outraged mode, and there's be more big threads about it than you can shake a stick at.
It's a bit hard to wade in just yet with only a bit of speculation to go on.
If they are indeed as you describe, then it's not hard to understand why the US are so keen to keep them under wraps, though - although it's probably just what goes on every time someone wins a war, it's only recently that the technology to record such goings-on has been quite so prevalent.
Little correction. Whatever is on pictures "to be shown" is long-time common knowledge to have happened in reality.
"Outrage" will only be there where it is incited by the known factors and influences. Nothing new about it. Longer-lasting and more effective for public consumption and building up of prejudices in non-Islamic countries. As always.
"We are all brother and sisters"...On condition it happens far away enough and being outraged about it serves to express bottled-up frustrations about other (local) situations. Nothing new under the sun.
Empathy is cheap commodity if you don't have to do more than shout, scream or run to organized demonstration you believe are not organized.
salaam.
Yeah, i saw it last week and noted that.
But i did trace the start of the decline back to murdoch!
And i thought all the broadsheets were in a position of relative decline compared to previous times.
However, i was reliably informed that lately the british papers have had declining sales and are having a hard time of it, what with the internet competition and, no doubt, an increasing number of people simply unable to stomach the typical contents of the brtiish papers.
A bit of bright news perhaps. But there again they've all gone mad over the naughty MPs and the daily contriteness by different MPs each day has no doubt increased sales temporarily.
Common knowledge perhaps, but only in the medium of language. Photographs can have a far more immediate and powerful impact on the consciousness. It's why we never see any 'proper' war photos from the US/UK invasions of other countries. The empire machine stands to be derailed from its continued acts of hegemony. Images must be strictly controlled by the governments, and is one of many clues that the media simply are not as free as they tout.
Such photos at all costs must be kept from publication wherever possible.
Of course, we see just as bad in movies and print magazines, but that's easy: we just file it away in our minds as fiction...
Such posts really are rather unappetising. But as ever they say a lot more about the speaker than their target. Rabid dogs come to mind...
Barking_Mad
Non sibi sed omnibus
i grew up in a household where my parents both read the Daily Mail. As bizarre as this may seem their Sunday supplement, 'YOU Magazine' was, back in the mid-1980's, a decent enough mag with photo essays about all kinds of world stories from far flung places. Indeed oddly enough when i look back it was one of the things that got me interested in world events.
Yet it, like many other mags of its kind, morphed into a womens fashion mag and became full of hair and beauty tips and interior decorating advice. Not a single solid, real world article to be seen anywhere.
Many other mags went the same way.
Yes, the USA learned some good lessons in Vietnam. For many people that image of the little girl running down the road after being napalmed is the Vietnam war. Politics don't even enter into it.
Then again, I say they learned lessons, but somehow they have apparently allowed photographs of US troops raping Iraqi children to be taken, if not yet released. I suppose it is virtually impossible to control the circulation of images in the days of cellphones.
I can't recall the term used (blank space in my mind!), but in afghanistan and iraq this century they only allowed reporters to be stationed with soldiers and vetted all reports and photos that came out in the media. So yes, they learned their lessons for sure.
Presumably guantanamo is different, and they fucked up there. Not a war zone, rather a specific isolated place where humanity and rules of decent human behaviour were extinguished. Rumsfeld and others painted the inmates as less than human and encouraged their captors to basically become the primitive people that the inmates were painted to be. Taking photos was perhaps a bit of a laugh while carrying out their abuses on the inmates, with the rulers of war unaware of what the monsters they'd created were doing to the other monsters they created.
Truth always comes out, it's really only how long it takes that is the variable.
Yet it, like many other mags of its kind, morphed into a womens fashion mag and became full of hair and beauty tips and interior decorating advice. Not a single solid, real world article to be seen anywhere.
Many other mags went the same way.
All a bit different to the days of pilger and the mirror...! Like i said, murdoch created this beast, and i would say that maxwell helped it on its way.
The interesting question in my mind is how come murdoch's style of media managed to take over in britain.
bendeus
Bellend Tagline Generator
I would dispute that. In the Third World low levels of literacy, education and access to primary media sources mitigate against widespread knowledge of global current affairs. Your statement may be true of relatively educated, urbanised populations, but is less so when taking rural populations or inhabitants of periurban gece condos or barrio pobres. Surely this demographic represents a majority in the third world?
In fact a feature of less developed countries nowadays is the huge numbers of citizens going into cities to get jobs. Not saying anything about their knowledge of the world, but just look at the huge mega cities of asian countries, and i guess south american ones.
bendeus
Bellend Tagline Generator
They're the 'inhabitants of periurban gece condos and barrio pobres'. Massive populations at the urban fringes and frequently denied the services enjoyed by more established urban dwellers. Often with low levels of literacy, little access to schools or healthcare and certainly not able to splash the cash on newspapers or broadband.
I don't find that poverty breeds ignorance, except in the most dire cases. I do find that wealth breeds ignorance, in almost every case.
Perhaps you are right about the rural population of the third world, I wouldn't know. I do know about the urban population though, and I can tell you for sure that the average inhabitant of Mexico City, Istanbul or Kolkata knows more about current affairs than the average inhabitant of London or New York.
I think Jonti and Fela have suggested plausible reasons for this.
I would suggest another reason for this is that there really is fuck all in the mainstream US papers about things going on in the world outside their own border. Pretty much the same for the UK too. Whereas, certainly here in thailand (and i know the same goes for kenya too), plenty of worldwide news gets into their mainstream media.
There'll be a lot to do with the mechanics of power and perceived importance on the world stage behind this, but it remains that this is the case either way.
Also such citizens actually look out to the world to try and learn from it. Whereas in the US, they all know everything already...
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
"We're Number 1, everybody else on Earth wants a Green Card and considers our naked plotocracy as some sort of beacon of 'democracy'. Vietnam's sad because they were kept from being liberated by us in a war where precisely 58,000 people died ("the rest" are un-people), South America is grateful to us for defending them from Stalinism, the ME hates our Freedoms, and Down with the Social Instinct, it's Every capitalist man for himself because this is the essence of civilisation, the governments only task is to raise mighty armies to Defend Our Interests overseas and give our tax money to Big Industry in mad crazy Corporate Welfare schemes
w00t! We're Number 1".
w00t! We're Number 1".
bendeus
Bellend Tagline Generator
I think that there are many circumstances in which ignorance is bred. Wealth and poverty only play a bit part, IMO.
I'm not sure that this is correct. You may be correctly speaking for the average educated inhabitant of a third world megalopolis, but you certainly aren't for those who inhabit the fringes. Think the Magandas and Jontas of Istanbul, for example. They aren't particularly blessed with a world view in any way superior to their contemporaries in New York. They inhabit the margins, they were educated on the margins, and their access to information reflects their marginalisation. They also represent a significant, though largely hidden, proportion of the city's population.
Oh, they're hardly hidden. Bagdat Cadessi on a Saturday night is Maganda City. And you're right that they think much as their equivalents in the West. They don't dominate society here though, and their world-view is one among many.
The majority of people in Turkey, and in the third world as a whole, have a well thought-out political position, based on a good working knowledge of geo-politics. I'd say that extends to the slums these days too. Places like Jamaica, Haiti and Ghana are very poor, but also highly politicized. Even the poorest have access to TV, radio, the internet, and their situation forces them to evaluate things critically.
In fact, I'd say that knowledge of the world and its ways is increasing in the third world at much the same rate as it is decreasing in the West.
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