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Peter Kwong
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They're sitting in darkened rooms weaving conspiracy fantasies
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a movement; they're not doing enough to stop the war in Iraq.
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The picture in the paper of the young
soldier being led away in handcuffs bore an eerie resemblance
to the pictures of Lynndie England at her trial. Both young,
scared and perhaps not truly sure of what they had done wrong.
Like England, who suffered from learning disabilities and Post
Traumatic Stress Syndrome before entering the military, Private
Steven Green, charged with the rape and murder of a young Iraqi
girl and the murder of 3 members of her family, suffers from
"anti-social personality disorder" which the military
cited as the reason for his discharge earlier this year.
We will no doubt once again
be assured that this was an isolated incident, a few low-ranking
soldiers run amok. But it will be no more true now than it was
at Abu Ghraib. The rape and murder of civilians has been a systemic
tool of war since the dawn of time. It is simply not believable
that we have been in Iraq this long without other incidents of
rape and cold-blooded murder of civilians taking place. And
in fact that has been documented by human rights organizations,
NGOs and independent media.
But despite the enormous press
coverage and airplay that this story is getting, the context
in which the atrocity took place will only nominally be examined,
if at all. That aspect of the story is not what is newsworthy.
Or to be a tad more crass and honest, it is not what sells.
And the dissemination of news is most definitely a business,
one that is now owned and controlled primarily by large corporations
who are far more concerned with the bottom line than with truth
and integrity.
Many of the companies that
make the news accessible are also heavily invested in the pornography
industry, a form of media that makes much, much more money than
does hawking the news. Knowing this, it should not be at all
surprising that when a news story that contains the same elements
as a good porn plot occurs, the media doesn't hesitate to frame
the story from that angle. Sex sells. Violent sex sells even
better.
Like Abu Ghraib, the brutal
rape and murder of 15 year old Abeer Qasim Hamza was just such
a story. Young soldiers, the supposed keepers of integrity and
courage, defenders of our rights and values, in a premeditated
act of sex and violence against a young, helpless girl who had
earlier refused their taunts and advances at a checkpoint. The
scene could just as easily been a script of a reality porn flick.
In this sense, this story bears a resemblance to the coverage
of cases such as the murder of Lacey Peterson as well as the
Duke University rape allegations. Virile young men having their
way in a manner that crosses the line of what is offensive in
sufficiently obscene ways to be titillating and very marketable
stories.
None of this is lost on news
producers who are completely aware that their product is distributed
in many cases by the same companies that profit so handsomely
from pornography, companies such as Time Warner, Comcast and
DirecTV, all of whom have invested heavily in the pornography
industry.
The pervasiveness of this connection
impacts how the media frames the story, even to the extent of
editing the facts to fit the story. In an Op Ed piece about
the Duke rape allegations, David Brooks waxed poetic about the
reputation of the Duke Lacrosse team-their good grades and community
service; that the alleged victim was an honor student and a military
veteran was conveniently omitted from his piece. To have included
that information would have damaged the media portrayal of the
alleged victim as being deserving of whatever may have happened
that night by virtue of her 'behavior'. Not quite as blatant
as Rush Limbaugh's portrayal of her as a "ho", but
the intent is the same.
Similarly, the Associated Press
ran an article on July 2 by Bassen Mroue that offered this astounding
take on the context in which the rape and murder of Abeer Qasim
Hamza took place,
"Iraq is a conservative,
strongly religious society where many women are sheltered from
contacts with males who are not family members."
Mrouc conveniently leaves out
any reference to the fact that prior to the U. S. invasion, women
in Iraq enjoyed far more freedoms than in most Arab countries
and that religious restrictions on women's lives have increased
dramatically since Saddam Hussein's ouster.
The omissive wording in the
'news' report is no accident. What it effectively does is redefine
why this story is an atrocity in a way that objectifies the victim
as a pawn of war to be defended or destroyed; in the eyes of
the perpetrators of this act, her attack was a de facto victory
in the war on "terror".
Another recent incident in
Iraq illustrates the extent to which the acceptability of misogynist
violence in Iraq belies the Bush Administration rhetoric of bettering
the lives of Iraqi women. In a video that has circulated widely,
U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile performs a song he wrote,
"The Rape of Hadji Girl" which tells about a Marine
using a young Iraqi girl as a shield, the last stanza says that
the men who were shooting at him should have known, "They
were f*cking with a Marine."
"Abeer Qasim Hamza made
the fatal error of refusing the "advances" of Marines.
She had to have known, said they, that she was hot. She had to
have known, said they, what she was doing, sashaying through
that checkpoint every day. And she turned them down. Ignored
them. Rejected them. Acted like she was scared. Who the hell
did she think she was? What. They were there all the way from
the United States to defend her and her family, and she thought
she could get away with that kind of bullshit?
After they raped her and killed
her family, they blamed it on "insurgents." And in
their minds, that wasn't really a lie. In fact, to men under
male heterosupremacy, beautiful women who refuse their advances
are always "insurgents"."
Sounds like a porn plot doesn't
it? Let's lead with that angle.
Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist.
She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org.
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