Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Il Soldato colla Marlboro e l'indifferenza USA al dolore altrui

Questa riflessione di Naomi Klein sull'uso delle immagini di Falluja in 
USA mi sembra un buon commento sulla disumanizzazione dei vincitori.
E le reazioni di R.C. e S.D.C. alle recenti barbarie dell'esercito 
israeliano, mi fanno pensare che 'sta disumanizzazione si allarga.
Sono tentato d'ora in poi di chiamarli Kurtz 1 e Kurtz 2 (da Apocalypse 
Now)
A.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1359871,00.html
Smoking while Iraq burns 
 Its idolisation of 'the face of Falluja' shows how numb the US is to 
everyone's pain but its own 
  Naomi Klein
Friday November 26, 2004
The Guardian 
  Iconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with the photograph 
of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old marine from Appalachia, who has 
been christened "the face of Falluja" by pro-war pundits, and the "the 
Marlboro man" by pretty much everyone else. Reprinted in more than a 
hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Times photograph shows Miller "after 
more than 12 hours of nearly non-stop, deadly combat" in Falluja, his 
face coated in war paint, a bloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly 
lit cigarette hanging from his lips.
 Gazing lovingly at Miller, the CBS News anchor Dan Rather informed his 
viewers: "For me, this one's personal. This is a warrior with his eyes 
on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it. Study it. Absorb it. 
Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don't 
dampen, you're a better man or woman than I."
 A few days later, the LA Times declared that its photo had "moved into 
the realm of the iconic". In truth, the image just feels iconic because 
it is so laughably derivative: it's a straight-up rip-off of the most 
powerful icon in American advertising (the Marlboro man), which in turn 
imitated the brightest star ever created by Hollywood - John Wayne - who 
was himself channelling America's most powerful founding myth, the 
cowboy on the rugged frontier. It's like a song you feel you've heard a 
thousand times before - because you have.
 But never mind that. For a country that just elected a wannabe Marlboro 
man as its president, Miller is an icon and, as if to prove it, he has 
ignited his very own controversy. "Lots of children, particularly boys, 
play army, and like to imitate this young man. The clear message of the 
photo is that the way to relax after a battle is with a cigarette," 
wrote Daniel Maloney in a scolding letter to the Houston Chronicle. 
Linda Ortman made the same point to the editors of the Dallas Morning 
News: "Are there no photos of non-smoking soldiers?" A reader of the New 
York Post helpfully suggested more politically correct propaganda 
imagery: "Maybe showing a marine in a tank, helping another GI or 
drinking water would have a more positive impact on your readers."
Yes, that's right: letter writers from across the nation are united in 
their outrage - not that the steely-eyed, smoking soldier makes mass 
killing look cool, but that the laudable act of mass killing makes the 
grave crime of smoking look cool. Better to protect impressionable 
youngsters by showing soldiers taking a break from deadly combat by 
drinking water or, perhaps, since there is a severe potable water 
shortage in Iraq, Coke. (It reminds me of the joke about the Hassidic 
rabbi who says all sexual positions are acceptable except for one: 
standing up "because that could lead to dancing".)
 On second thoughts, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated to the 
status of icon - not of the war in Iraq, but of the new era of 
supercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is, of 
course, a different marine who has been awarded the prize as "the face 
of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded, unarmed 
prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of a two-year-old 
Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blown off; a dead 
child lying in the street, clutching the headless body of an adult; and 
an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble.
 Inside the US, these snapshots of a lawless occupation appeared only 
briefly, if they appeared at all. Yet Miller's icon status has endured, 
kept alive with human interest stories about fans sending cartons of 
Marlboros to Falluja, interviews with the marine's proud mother, and 
earnest discussions about whether smoking might reduce Miller's 
effectiveness as a fighting machine.
 Impunity - the perception of being outside the law - has long been the 
hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appears to have 
deepened since the election, ushering in what can only be described as 
an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are 
no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are 
openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to 
count the bodies. At home, impunity has been made official policy with 
Bush's appointment of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, the man who 
personally advised the president in his infamous "torture memo" that the 
Geneva conventions are "obsolete".
 This kind of defiance cannot simply be explained by Bush's win. There 
has to be something in how he won, in how the election was fought, that 
gave this administration the distinct impression that it had been handed 
a get-out-of-the-Geneva-conventions free card. That's because the 
administration was handed precisely such a gift - by John Kerry.
 In the name of electability, the Kerry team gave Bush five months on 
the campaign trail without ever facing serious questions about 
violations of international law. Fearing that he would be seen as soft 
on terror and disloyal to US troops, Kerry stayed scandalously silent 
about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. When it became painfully clear that 
fury would rain down on Falluja as soon as the polls closed, Kerry never 
spoke out against the plan, or against the other illegal bombings of 
civilian areas that took place throughout the campaign. When the Lancet 
published its landmark study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as 
result of the invasion and occupation, Kerry just repeated his 
outrageous (and frankly racist) claim that Americans "are 90% of the 
casualties in Iraq".
 There was a message sent by all of this silence, and the message was 
that these deaths don't count. By buying the highly questionable logic 
that Americans are incapable of caring about anyone's lives but their 
own, the Kerry campaign and its supporters became complicit in the 
dehumanisation of Iraqis, reinforcing the idea that some lives are 
expendable, insufficiently important to risk losing votes over. And it 
is this morally bankrupt logic, more than the election of any single 
candidate, that allows these crimes to continue unchecked.
 The real-world result of all the "strategic" thinking is the worst of 
both worlds: it didn't get Kerry elected and it sent a clear message to 
the people who were elected that they will pay no political price for 
committing war crimes. And this is Kerry's true gift to Bush: not just 
the presidency, but impunity. You can see it perhaps best of all in the 
Marlboro man in Falluja, and the surreal debates that swirl around him. 
Genuine impunity breeds a kind of delusional decadence, and this is its 
face: a nation bickering about smoking while Iraq burns.
 · A version of this column was first published in The Nation

its face: a nation bickering about smoking while Iraq burns.
*ROTFL*
-Stefano

 territorio.
Normalmente non mi disturbo piu' a risponderti, Kurtz 1. Ma anche 
stavolta l'hai fatta grossa: 
"Forza di pace"?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
(Questo copiaincollando un decimo delle tue sguaiate esclamazioni)
"Fecero il Deserto e lo Chiamarono Pace..."
A.

"Forza di pace"?
Esatto :)   Hai prove che siano qualcosa di diverso?
-Stefano

 -Stefano
La risposta la trovi qui, Kurtz 1:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1353156,00.html
A.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,1353156,00.html
Non vedo alcuna risposta.
Vedo solo una vigneta del ca**o di un giornale del ca**o :)  Hai altro o
sono tutte li le tue risposte? :)
-Stefano

 Now)
E perché non Rosencrantz e Guildenstern? :)))
Namib

 Namib
Perche' c'e' chi ha parlato di 'Complesso di Kurtz' a proposito di come 
vengono mandate avanti le operazioni militari americane e israeliane, 
cioe' con una prepotenza senza limite, forse per la sicurezza 
dell'impunita'.
Secondo lo stesso articolo noi europei ne saremmo stati vaccinati dagli 
orrori delle due guerre mondiali...
Io per me li chiamerei anche Ubu 1 e Ubu 2, l'importante e' non dar loro 
la soddisfazione di essere nominati, senno' magari si prendono per 
chissachi, dei geni del male... Eppoi cosi' c'e' spazio per Kurtz 3 e 
Kurtz 4 che di questi tempi non mancheranno di manifestarsi nel NG.
::))
A.

 face coated in war paint, a bloody 
Link con la forto, plz.
Tb
-- 
Alcuni di noi hanno storie di merda che fanno male. 
(il primo kiwi con tastiera incorporata)

 Tb
Ad es.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1281313/posts
ma basta cercare con Google: Marlboro Man Blake Miller
Ciao Kurtz 3,
::))
A.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1281313/posts
Miller, a three-pack-a -ay smoker who is now being sought after by
many women,
...le capisco.
Dannata efficace propaganda.

 Link con la forto, plz.
Gia' fatto. Leggi la mia risposta al post.
-Stefano