MEDIA ROOTS– In addition to throwing our country’s finances (and morals) away on the bombing of other countries, the Pentagon is also spending millions buying up all US satellite imagery in Afghanistan to make sure the stark reality of war is shielded from the western world. In America, the human cost of US bombing campaigns is never shown on corporate media outlets. When civilian casualties are reported on, they are relayed as cold statistics of the lowest estimates– no names, no faces, no stories of who these people were.
America’s wars are fought from a distance with robots, and people have never been more disconnected with what their country is sponsoring abroad. If people saw the dead bodies littering the streets of Afghanistan, they might feel more empathy and connection to the individuals who are casualties of US occuptaions. Eradicating the “us” and “them” mentality would completely undermine the logic of these endless wars– the last thing the establisment wants.
Abby
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The GUARDIAN reports from 2001:
The images,
which are taken from Ikonos, an advanced civilian satellite launched in
1999, are better than the spy satellite pictures available to the
military during most of the cold war.
The extraordinary detail of
the images already taken by the satellite includes a line of terrorist
trainees marching between training camps at Jalalabad. At the same
resolution, it would be possible to see bodies lying on the ground after
last week’s bombing attacks.
Under American law, the US defence department has legal power to exercise “shutter control” over civilian satellites launched from the US in order to prevent enemies using the images while America is at war. But no order for shutter control was given, even after the bombing raids began 10 days ago.
The decision to shut down access to satellite images was taken last Thursday, after reports of heavy civilian casualties from the overnight bombing of training camps near Darunta, north-west of Jalalabad. Instead of invoking its legal powers, the Pentagon bought exclusive rights to all Ikonos satellite pictures of Afghanistan off Space Imaging, the company which runs the satellite. The agreement was made retrospectively to the start of the bombing raids.
Continue reading more of US Buys Up All Satellite War Images.
Abby
Photo by flickr user Ms Blue Sky
