Clipmarks | debbyski's 'war' clips

For those who think war is all glory

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:36:35 GMT

clipped by: cptenaud
clipper's remarks: Pictures from the Hell zone that Bush and Cheney created.

My hands still shake and my heart pounds despite my fatigue. A combination of depression, fear, and adrenaline makes my thoughts race with the realization that a simple decision was the only thing that seperated me from a body count that grows daily. I look at the images I took on the 26th of June, and realize they do nothing to capture the emotion of being an eyewitness to the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda suicide attack in Karmah/Garma... the smell... the sound of screams and crying.

I want you to observe and comprehend what others live through on a daily basis -- to see what the Iraqi civilians and foreign soldiers see. I want people who follow my photography to understand that although I am able to bring images of war to the world in a form of art, what actually goes on here is horror. My message is not that war yields great photography. My message is: War yields human misery and suffering.

CLICK HERE to view my June 26th diary entry

Tags: war, glory, or, gory

A most unlikely hero: a Fascist who saved Jews - Giorgio Prelasca

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:02:38 GMT

clipped by: Lexica

Clip Source: findarticles.com

Perlasca had named himself Spanish consul, without any authorization whatsoever, on December 1, 1944, when the real Spanish ambassador fled to Switzerland. For the next two months, Perlasca would be in charge of the embassy, and his management of Spain's protection program for Hungarian Jews would save some five thousand of them from certain death in the gas chambers.

Perlasca's diary of his two-month consulship

recounts the extraordinary exploits of Perlasca and a small group of collaborators on the embassy staff: churning out thousands of false documents, setting up and defending eight "safe houses"under Spanish jurisdiction, finding food and medicine on the black market, negotiating with the Hungarian authorities, and, together with Wallenberg and representatives of other neutral countries (Portugal, Switzerland, and the Vatican), pulling innocent victims from freight cars bound for the death camps

an ingenious organizer, a convincing "diplomat,"and a truly magnificent impostor

Tags: history, heroes, war

The original Mother's Day (hint: it's not from Hallmark)

Mon, 12 May 2008 06:00:26 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, was one of the early advocates for a national Mother's Day holiday, as an antiwar organizing effort. Here's her "Mother's Day Proclamation" from 1870.

Clip Source: womenshistory.about.com

Women's History

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Tags: gender, history, women, peace, war, primary_source, america

'Bush Is Too Horrendous to Be Forgotten'

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:21:45 GMT

clipped by: schreibe
clipper's remarks: SPIEGEL talks to American author Philip Roth about growing old, why George W. Bush is the worst American president ever and why he never gives out his cell phone number.

Philip Roth, who will be 75 in March, is one of America's most critically acclaimed living writers. His 1969 novel "Portnoy's Complaint" brought him fame, and he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for 1997's "American Pastoral."

Clip Source: www.spiegel.de

'Bush Is Too Horrendous to Be Forgotten'

Roth: Well, the biggest thing would be the war, the deceptions surrounding the entrance into the war. The absolute cynicism that surrounds the deception. The cost of the war, the Treasury and the lives of the Americans. It's hideous. There is nothing quite like it. The next thing would be the attitude towards global warming, which is a global crisis, and they were utterly indifferent, if not hostile, to any attempt to address it. And so on and so on and so on and so on. So he's done a lot of harm.

SPIEGEL: Since your book is set in that week during the 2004 elections, can you explain why Americans voted for Bush once again?

Roth: I suspect it was the business of being in a war and not wanting to change, and political stupidity. Why does anybody elect anybody? I thought highly of John Kerry when he began, but he couldn't stand up against Bush. The Democrats aren't brutes, which is too bad, because the Republicans are brutes. Brutes win.

Tags: politics, war

Iraq Through the Eyes of Soldiers

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:53:47 GMT

clipped by: Bluephoenix4

Clip Source: you.presscue.com

A lost soul

What I really want

Exporting democracy

The Truth

To sleep, perchance to dream

Hi Tutsie

No pull-ups

Sorry for the inconvenience

Soldier's Cross

Love in times of war

Tags: war, war on terror, iraq, photography, soldiers

McCain: Forever Warrior for a Forerver War

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:09:14 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday, "It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars." Offering more of his increasingly bleak "straight talk," he repeated the claim: "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."

McCain did not elaborate who the United States would be fighting. But he did warn the crowd to be ready for the ramifications of current and future battles.

"And right now - we're gonna have a lot of PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] to treat, my friends," he said. "We're gonna have a lot of combat wounds that have to do with these terrible explosive IEDs that inflict such severe wounds. And my friends, it's gonna be tough, we're gonna have a lot to do."

Tags: mccain, politics, war, empire, praetor

935 Lies, That Led A Nation To War

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:31:47 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Wow. This doesn't even count the deliberate lies since 2003. And how many people have died because of it? More than 935, is for damn sure.

Clip Source: blogs.usatoday.com

Study: Bush, others 'methodically propagated' false info before Iraq war

In a report that is sure to evoke passionate responses from supporters and opponents of the Iraq war, two nonprofit groups have concluded that President Bush and his top advisers made nearly a thousand false statements between 2001 and 2003.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials

made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion

The Associated Press says a White House spokesman wouldn't comment on these conclusions. "The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," spokesman Scott Stanzel tells the wire service.

Tags: neoconservatism, war, crimes, usa

Small Minds

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:54:48 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: silence, justifies, their, war

War Casualities Not Forgotten

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:01:39 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Thousands of crosses and stars cover four tapestry-like "peace panels" across the imposing stone walls in the nave of the church.
That location was selected so worshipers would see a constant and powerful reminder of the war's human toll as they leave the sanctuary.
We wanted to create a symbol that would help us stay uncomfortable, that would constantly remind us of the daily needs to build peace, to choose peace in everything we do," said psychologist Lo Sprague, a member of the committee."

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

During a solemn 10 a.m. Mass at St. John's Cathedral on Sunday, Deacon Lester Mackenzie recited the names and ages of six Americans who had lost their lives in Iraq the previous week.

Pray for them, he told the congregation, and for prisoners of war and those missing in action.

Then Mackenzie, who is being ordained today as an Episcopal priest, called on parishioners "to pray for the Iraqi people who have died, whose names we do not know."

Each crimson cross at St. John's represents a lost American -- "the enduring cost of that death to a family of loved ones, to a community of friends and neighbors, to a country," according to the parish's Peace and Justice Committee.

And every gold star symbolize "hundreds and thousands" of Iraqi men, women and children, "whose names we will never know," according to the committee's mission statement. "We acknowledge each of the deaths they represent also forever impacts a family of loved ones, a community of friends and neighbors, and a country."

Tags: lets, end, this, crazy, war

Tolstoy & Gandhi: Two Giants Bound By Pacifism

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:08:06 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Enlightening account of the relationship between Tolstoy & Gandhi

"In South Africa, Tolstoy's writings landed on the desk of a young Indian dissident, Mahatma Gandhi. He was overwhelmed, declaring that after reading Tolstoy his "lack of faith in non-violence vanished."

He hung a picture of Tolstoy on his office wall and named the camp where he trained activists in peaceful resistance Tolstoy Farm.

Gandhi wrote five letters to Leo Tolstoy and received four in return, all glowing with praise and intellectual exchange. In his last letter, written in September 1910 only weeks before his death, Tolstoy told Gandhi that his activity was "the most central and important of all the work now being done in the world."

Years later, Gandhi repaid the compliment, writing that he knew of no one "in India or anywhere else who has had as profound an understanding of nonviolence as Tolstoy had." Tolstoy had inspired Gandhi's legendary instruction to "be the change you want to see in the worl

Clip Source: www.thestar.com

Gandhi, assassinated 60 years ago this month, was overwhelmed by Tolstoy's writings

Sixty years ago this month, history's most famous pacifist was felled by an act of senseless violence. Just after 5 p.m. on January 30, a Hindu nationalist named Nathuram Godse shot Mahatma Gandhi three times in the chest. He died the following day.

Yet while Gandhi's life and message of non-violence are well known, a crucial chapter in his philosophy's genesis is largely forgotten. The story features the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, includes a bridge from Russia to Canada, and begins nearly 20 years before Gandhi's birth with the Crimean War (1853-56).

How could men commit the most horrific atrocities in the most gorgeous places on Earth? Tolstoy asked.

Outside literature, he came to see clearly that you cannot achieve positive change through violence. "Think of his pacifism as a strategy,"

"His argument was that if you do things the old way, by fighting, you're going to turn into what you hate."

Tags: history, pacifism, war, peace, gandhi, tolstoy

Should We Question Authority?

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:55:56 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.opednews.com

Has the Federal government become so powerful that it can imprison people for dissent?

Has the global war on terrorism taken such a priority in this nation that it now infringes on our personal freedom? If this is the case, can we ever get back what we have lost?

Have we really come to this point?

Some believe we have. There are some that honestly believe that America has no safeguards for civil liberties.

We should be asking ourselves if this government really needs the power that we seem to have ceded to them

Have we turned into a police state? You tell me. Many Americans claim that the question is not important because they have nothing to hide.

Now is the time to reflect on what one of the greatest patriot and statesmen in American history once said. Benjamin Franklin said “Those that would give up their freedom for a little security shall have neither freedom nor security

Tags: government, war, on, terror

The Cost of the Iraq War: A Pundit's Guilt

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:40:58 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: This is a stark moment of humanity for Christopher Hitchens, who I must admit, is not always a lovable character.

He has had to soberly (or, maybe not soberly!) face the consequences of his punditry.

Political opinions do not exist in a vacuum. These are not simply ideas we are talking about. This nation is overwhelmed with flippant armchair strategists on both sides who have no real understanding of what is actually going on.

The Iraq War isn't a failure of American ideals, it is a disaster of well-meaning ignorance.

Clip Source: www.vanityfair.com

A Death in the Family

The attached item turned out to be a very well-written story by Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times. It described the death, in Mosul, Iraq, of a young soldier from Irvine, California, named Mark Jennings Daily, and the unusual degree of emotion that his community was undergoing as a consequence.

when I saw the following:

"Somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. His family says there was no epiphany. Writings by author and columnist Christopher Hitchens on the moral case for war deeply influenced him … "

I don't exaggerate by much when I say that I froze.

I feverishly clicked on all the links from the article and found myself on Lieutenant Daily's MySpace site

And there, at the top of the page, was a link to a passage from one of my articles, in which I poured scorn on those who were neutral about the battle for Iraq … I don't remember ever feeling, in every allowable sense of the word, quite so hollow.

Tags: iraq, failure, bush, ignorance, islam, democracy, freedom, war, christopher hitchens

The Nature of War

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:35:00 GMT

clipped by: cptenaud
clipper's remarks: Need to go to the source to get the full story. A little philosophy can stimulate the mind.

Clip Source: www.opednews.com

Warriors exist in a world totally incomprehensible to those who have never known war. For the apathetic and for those who trumpet and champion war’s necessity from a safe distance choosing not to fight in war themselves, war is a distraction – bleak, dire and unpleasant – from their consumer driven lives, better left for others and for other peoples’ children to fight. For many who oppose the war, it is murder declared by incompetent and deceitful politicians, to be prosecuted by soldiers who, it is hoped, would recognize the crime and refuse to become instruments of slaughter.

Tags: very, revealing, about, war, and, those, that, support, it

AND THE WINNER IS... IRAQ WAR!!

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:38:20 GMT

clipped by: thinkingblue
clipper's remarks: Mark Morford, one of the best satirical journalists weighs in on the BEST OF 07, naming IRAQ, winner of BEST WAR OF 2007. The relentless passing of time, has no effects on this war, each year it enters History's Hall of Shame, without end as long as Bush/Cheney are at the helm. It's so agonizingly painful that Morford's column this time in '08 will read again, Iraq named "War of the Year"! Bloody nation cheers 5th straight title. Bush will be speechlost and VP Dick Cheney, will utter "On behalf of myself and my boss who will both go down in history as two of the most insipid and deleterious world leaders you will ever have the displeasure of miserably recalling all your sad and pathetic days," The many years of this calamitous, tragic war have been augural, each year’s outcome predictable, no crystal ball needed. And no matter how WE THE PEOPLE bang our heads against the wall to end it, all we come up with, is a collective BUMP on our anguished heads. http://thinkingblue.blogspot.com/

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

Iraq named "War of the Year"!

Bloody nation cheers 4th straight title. Afghanistan sulks. "I'm speechlost!" sniffled Bush

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

"Best Of" lists for 2007, comes the news that you, your ravaged and saddened heart, and the world at large have all just awarded George W. Bush's disastrous, embarrassing, profoundly disgusting occupation of Iraq "War of the Year," for the fourth consecutive year.

Vice President Dick Cheney, from the side of his mouth,

"On behalf of myself and my boss who will both go down in history as two of the most insipid and deleterious world leaders you will ever have the displeasure of miserably recalling all your sad and pathetic days, I can only say, who the f- are you people and how did you get past security?"

"It is high honor to be even nominated,"

said

bullet-riddled and violently hemorrhaging nation of Iraq

Iraq's win, long considered the overwhelming choice to voters,

no surprise

California

reeking

unpatriotic

disgust

from

hippies

tofu

Clooney

Tags: iraq, war, bush, cheney, winner, morford

WAR is a racket.

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:21:55 GMT

clipped by: raven714
clipper's remarks: This is a free book, and one of the best ever written. Please take the time to at least look at it.

Clip Source: www.lexrex.com

by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient:

Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC [Retired]

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

TO HELL WITH WAR!

http://www.WarIsARacket.com

Tags: war