I am having quite a bit of difficulty wondering why everyone is freaked out about two U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban. I can't figure out why that is so horrible while at the same time we don't make a fuss over all the dead civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thousands have died but what makes something especially horrible is urine?
I am having difficulty dealing with the Albuquerque Journal's kid glove treatment of Governor Martinez on the awarding of the contract for Casino operations at Expo New Mexico. If the protests about that contract procedure had happened a couple of years ago then Bill Richardson's name would have been in every other paragraph. Martinez was mentioned as appointing the contract review committee. Do the editors at the Journal think people don't notice this?
I am having difficulty in figuring out why the Governor is favoring the large internet retailers over small local businesses by making the locals collect gross receipts taxes which add to their merchandise cost, while not requiring it of the giants like Amazon and others. Plus, the amount of money that is being lost to state coffers is astonishing. Everyone should be treated equally. This is another case of corporate America running the New Mexico's State Capitol.
2 comments:
That's an interesting point about high interest in urinating on a few dead people versus low interest in the killing of thousands of dead people. Like a lot of things the answer may lie deep in our unconscious. Maybe it's sexual. I've come across pornographic sites involving urination but never one about sex with dead people. Americans and especially older conservative Americans, which are the ones who control the airwaves, are still very puritanical, meaning they are obsessed with sex but must pretend they aren't. Piles of dead enemies are fine, but here you have Americans standing over dead enemies waving their assault rifles, having left their mark on them.
Capitalism may have achieved some of its strategic goals with the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan but there isn't much to show the people for all their trouble. After defeating the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie, Admiral Perry sent the dispatch, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." Now our leaders can say, "We have marked the Taliban (and all the fears and horrors about it our leaders have put inside of us) and they are ours."
The Guardian agrees with you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/13/us-marines-video-urination-war-crime
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