Ever since my move, besides being very sleepy, my social calander has really filled up. I guess it’s just a summer thing, summers in Amsterdam are always choc full of celebrations and cultural events, as they should be. Last night I was at Concertgebouw listening to the UvA Orchestra play Mahler. Quite nice.
But lets get to beheadings and bullshit. First off, I find the exagerated coverage of the beheading of American workers in Iraq, over the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, rediculous. It’s as if human life is now valued according to how someone dies, not if they die. If you get shot in Iraq you make the third page of the newspaper, if you get kidnapped and beheaded, you make the front page and you get all sorts of special reports about you. Wonderful isn’t it? Even the blogosphere is into it. Though far more diverse than traditional news sources I would hope.
Why are these Americans working in Iraq? Most of them are there because they can’t get good jobs in the US, so they join the war-profiteers Halliburton, who on their own website offer a service for sending messages of “support” for American employees. Welcome to the new private army, working and dying for the sake of profit. I am not shocked that they are beheaded or whatnot… people are angry.. their country is under the control of a foreign government and they are desperate. Rather than go for the classic “they are barbarians” talk, I would rather say the other awful force in this equation are the corporations who insist on persuing big-money contracts in Iraq, and then hiring Americans to work there. There are no statistics available since there’s barely a government in place, but we all know there are an enormous percentage of Iraqis without jobs. Ironically, the ones doing the kidnapping were probably once the engineers and technicians of the country. I think it’s far too easy to just sit around calling them evil and barbarians… the situation is far more complex.
Add to that, in this day and age… all of those videos and websites could easily be forged… and they are somehow conveniently revealed every two months or so. Perhaps whenever support for the “war” dips, someone makes up another beheading story/video/site. (yeah yeah, I know.. its a conspiracy theory.. they have families.. but it is not impossible)
Here’s the part where I remind everyone I’m a pacifist and I don’t support war or violence as a means to accomplish any sort of advances in this word. On other hand, I love them video games!
Today’s Music: Noir Desir – acoustic Live on TV5