Slaughter @ MindSay 
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Dixie currently feels:
Depressed
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Blog #28
Ash to the slaughter!
I figured how to solve the white noise problem on my radio alarm.
The station was tuned to NOTHING. So I just had a faff on with it, switched it to SOMETHING.
Now I keep getting woken up by some random woman ranting on about traffic jams and spending time with her grandma - but it's better than shitty white noise.
Dad took me to college - then I sat around playing Solitaire on my iPod - waiting for my appointment with Dianne.
They're starting to become more meaningful now we've started looking deeper into previous occurances - mainly life between 5 and 15.
All seems reasonable - and I didn't cry this week, so that was good.
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I retreated back to the table I was previously sat on - reverted back to Solitaire - thus proper kaning my iPod battery even more.
Ashleigh turned up - talked with her for 20 minutes before her Art lesson. Shelly appeared too - and Zoe soon followed. The last time Zoe sat with us, I didn't speak.
I seemed in a weird mood today - I didn't stop talking.
I didn't stop laughing either - she had me in constant fits - her accent is hilarious and she comes out with some really random shit as well.
And she bestowed the title of "most random person she's ever spoken to" onto me. :)
I responded to this with a 5 minute silence, then turning to Shelly and saying: "...ARE YOU GONNA SELL YOUR CRABS ON EBAY?!" - Zoe pissed. :)
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Initiating our usual plan - we went into town - I got another orgasmic sandwich, only to be verrrrrrrry disappointed.
There was too much mustard in it - thus making everything soggy and a weird colour and taste.
For my Photography project - I had to venture into the Dundas butchers - buy yet another pig's heart.
This one was 47p - but it was considerably larger than the previous one.
Returning to college - we sat around munching on various chocolate products we'd all gotten from Home Bargains.
On the way back, Ashleigh had kept randomly breaking off squares of Bournville - handing them to me over her shoulder. She chose the best times too - under Albert Bridge and the walkway before college. Usually at these places, I start to ache - mainly my arms and my shoulders from maintaining the wheelchair pushing posture for too long. :)
I got some Highland Toffee - but it was too cold, so it was hard and snapped into little pieces, rather than melted and went all gooey. I should have kept it warm in my pocket or summat...
Oh, and I got a marshmallow-filled chocolate egg - it was called summat Princess - so I kept saying: "OOOH LOL I'M A PRETTY PRINCESS..." - then naturally, pissing myself laughing.
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When Photography arrived - thankfully I was made to work in the art rooms - and everyone else sodded off to town.
I had to share a camera with Ash, since she was working inside for her project too.
This wasn't bad - Ash and I can co-operate, and when she was taking her photos, it gave me a chance to make alterations to my compositions.
Paul had set up a plank of wood over a wooden frame for me to work on - and this was positioned beside the computer line.
There was initially a gap between myself and the others working on the computers - but then this random lass came and sat beside me on one of the PCs.
I really must have been hyper from the chocolate and Coke - I turned to her, smiled and said: "I hope you don't have a weak stomach."
She goes: "...Not really, no... Why?"
I raise the bag slightly.
"...What's in that? ...WHAT'S IN THAT?! WHAT'S IN THAT?!!!!"
I was seriously pissing myself by this point.
"...A pig's heart."
"A pig's heart?! Are you SERIOUS?! OH MY GOD, REALLY?!"
I was seriously in fits - more so when I took it out and laid it out on my composition.
I'd taken along a bottle of the golden syrup blood too.
I expected to use all of it, but I only used 1/4 of the bottle - a little goes a long way, so it seems.
I took the first photos of just the heart with blood drizzled over it - then Paul gave me a Stanley knife and told me to slice it apart.
...Oh nice one, I thought.
I was right to think that - I don't mind holding it - and I can tolerate the smell (for a little while...) - but once I drove the blade into it - it was tough, gristly - and the more I sliced through the thick flesh, the more fluids from inside dribbled everywhere and the stronger the scent became.
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This heart-slicing lark went on for around 40 minutes - then I got another idea of what to use some blood for.
I turned to my camera-sharing-partner, shook the bottle and smiled.
She assured me it was fine - so I found a paperclip, twisted it into the shape of a hook and bent it around her bottom lip. Then I found an easel clip and she clipped it to her left ear.
I used a hard paintbrush and spread the blood around her lips - being careful to catch the drips in the bottle.
Here's the result:
The idea is - the easel clip looks similar to that of the tags they attatch to the ears of cattle/pigs/etc before they're slaughtered. This symbolises the element of butchery in my project, as well as representing the loss of dignity, rights and freedom. It also shows some significance of Ashleigh being treated as an animal.
The paperclip "meathook" actually stopped Ash from talking - which also ties in with the loss of dignity anfd rights that the clip represented - but the contrast of flesh and steel is a nice touch.
Steel on flesh is a symbol of torture, restraint, harm and punishment.
Aye - now if I can turn all that rambling into a detailed analysis in my sketchbook - I SHALL BE ROLLING IN MARKS. :)
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Oh, and here's some of the heart:
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NOW, and not one or two months before the 'Nightmare' begins, is the TIME TO START THE BOYCOTT! And let it 'NOT END' until the 'SLAUGHTER ENDS!'
The seal fur represents only 5% of these Canadian Fisherman's yearly income! Surely they can find a 'HUMANE' alternative to such a 'CRUEL and BARBARIC' activity!
One such alternative is ebay! That is how 'millions of people' supliment their income, and they can make a 'great deal more than 5%!'
BEST of all, they will 'NOT' be harming 'these 'PRECIOUS BABY SEALS,' and 'Bringing their 'OWN' Status' to 'SUBHUMAN' in the eyes of 'GOD' and THE WORLD!
THERE ARE A 'HANDFUL' OF CANADIANS THAT ARE SPEAKING OUT! EVERY CANADIAN NEEDS to 'SPEAK OUT, and BOYCOTT' as well, or you can 'ONLY BE JUDGED, AS NEARLY AS GUILTY!
For those reading this 'IMPORTANT MESSAGE' who speak other languages, PLEASE pass this along to the OTHER CONTRIES, AROUND THE WORLD!
[but naturally deny responsibility, as we know that Americans only kill the bad guys, not innocent bystander children, adults, and a 75-year-old.]
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14138980.htm
Posted on Sun, Mar. 19, 2006
Iraqi police report details civilians' deaths at hands of U.S. troops
By Matthew Schofield
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police have accused American troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, in the aftermath of a raid last Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad.
The villagers were killed after American troops herded them into a single room of the house, according to a police document obtained by Knight Ridder Newspapers. The soldiers also burned three vehicles, killed the villagers' animals and blew up the house, the document said.
A U.S. military spokesman, Major Tim Keefe, said that the U.S. military has no information to support the allegations and that he had not heard of them before a reporter brought them to his attention Sunday.
"We're concerned to hear accusations like that, but it's also highly unlikely that they're true," he said. He added that U.S. forces "take every precaution to keep civilians out of harms' way. The loss of innocent life, especially children, is regrettable."
Accusations that U.S. troops have killed civilians are commonplace in Iraq, though most are judged later to be unfounded or exaggerated. Navy investigators announced last week that they were looking into whether Marines intentionally killed 15 Iraqi civilians - four of them women and five of them children - during fighting last November.
But the report of the killings in the Abu Sifa area of Ishaqi, eight miles north of the city of Balad, is unusual because it originated with Iraqi police and because Iraqi police were willing to attach their names to it.
The report, which also contained brief descriptions of other events in the area, was compiled by the Joint Coordination Center in Tikrit, a regional security center set up with United States military assistance. An Iraqi police colonel signed the report, which was based on communications from local police.
Brig. Gen. Issa al-Juboori, who heads the center, said that his office assembled the report on Thursday and that it accurately reflects the direction of the current police investigation into the incident.
He also said he knows the officer heading the investigation. "He's a dedicated policeman, and a good cop," he said when reached by phone in Tikrit from Baghdad. "I trust him."
The case involves a U.S. raid conducted, according to the official U.S. account, in response to a tip that a member of al-Qaida in Iraq was at the house.
Neighbors, interviewed by a special correspondent for Knight Ridder, agreed that the al-Qaida member was at the house. They said he was visiting the home's owner, a relative. The neighbors said the homeowner was a schoolteacher.
According to police, military and eyewitness accounts, U.S. forces approached the house at around 2:30 a.m. and a firefight ensued. By all accounts, in addition to exchanging gunfire with someone inside the house, U.S. troops were supported by helicopter gunships, which fired on the house.
But the accounts differ on what took place after the firefight.
According to the U.S. account, the house collapsed because of the heavy fire. When U.S. forces searched the rubble they found one man, the al-Qaida suspect, alive. He was arrested. They also found a dead man they believed to be connected to al-Qaida, two dead women and a dead child.
But the report filed by the Joint Coordination Center, which was based on a report filed by local police, said U.S. forces entered the house while it was still standing.
"The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men," the report said. "Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals."
T
he report identified the dead by name, giving their ages. The two men killed were 22 and 28. Of the women, one was 22, another was 23, a third was 30 and the fourth was 75. Two of the children were 5 years old, two were 3, and the fifth was 6 months old, the document said.
The report was signed by Col. Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf, who was described in the document as the assistant chief of the Joint Coordination Center.
A local police commander, Lt. Col. Farooq Hussain, interviewed by a Knight Ridder special correspondent in Ishaqi, said autopsies at the hospital in Tikrit "revealed that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed." Efforts to reach hospital spokesmen Sunday were unsuccessful.
Keefe, the U.S. military spokesman, said that he had seen photographs of the victims and had not seen handcuffs, which caused him to doubt the validity of the report.
He said, however, that he has no reason to doubt the body count provided by local police.
"We conducted a preliminary investigation," he said. "They were the investigating officers on the ground."
Keefe said that he didn't know which U.S. unit conducted the raid. An official account of the raid provided Sunday by the military also did not mention the unit involved by name.
Ibraheem Hirat Khalaf, whose brother Faiz owned the house and was among the dead, said he watched and heard the assault from his home 100 yards away. He said that U.S. troops used six missiles from helicopters to destroy the house as they were leaving.
Abu Hijran, 38, and a neighbor, said those in the house were liked and respected, though the wanted al-Qaida member was not as well known.
Rasheed Thair, an employee of Ishaqi, said that the town was in a state of shock over the killings.
"Everyone attended the funeral," he said. "We want the Americans to give an explanation for this horrible crime which took the smile and the dream of a spring night from 11 people, and destroyed even the simple toys of children."
Three Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondents contributed to this report. Their identities are being withheld for security reasons.
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POLICE REPORT
This is a translation of the Iraqi police report obtained by Knight Ridder, including accounts of events not related to the Ishaqi raid.
In the name of God, the most merciful
This is the morning and afternoon events of 15/3/2006
1. Interior Ministry Operations:
All forces belonging to the Interior Ministry will go on 100 percent alert status starting Wednesday 15/3/2006 until 1000 hours Friday 17/3/2006.
2. Coordination Center of Beji
At 810 gunmen in a white vehicle, duck type (a reference to the local name for a Toyota model) kidnapped the child Mohamed (Badei Khaled) from Samaha school in Beji (map coordinates 617667).
3. Coordination Center of Dujail
At 730 a benzene truck burned near Gassem al Queisy fuel station after one of its tires caught fire. The incident burned the driver (Hamed Abdalilah) and he was transported to the hospital (map coordinates 263519).
4. Coordination Center of Balad
At 230 of 15/3/2006, according to the telegram (report) of the Ishaqi police directorate, American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals (map coordinates 098702).
They were:
Turkiya Muhammed Ali, 75 years
Faiza Harat Khalaf, 30 years
Faiz Harat Khalaf, 28 years
Um Ahmad, 23 years
Sumaya Abdulrazak, 22 years
Aziz Khalil Jarmoot, 22 years
Hawra Harat Khalaf, 5 years
Asma Yousef Maruf, 5 years
Osama Yousef Maruf, 3 years
Aisha Harat Khalaf, 3 years
Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months
(Signed)
Staff Colonel
Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf
Assistant Chief of the Joint Coordination Center
3/16/2006
Three Knight Ridder special correspondents contributed to this report. Their identities are being withheld for security reasons.
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[The actual report in Arabic]
Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion
Estimates vary, but all agree price is far higher than initially expected
[Picture of Murder Inc.]
 Jacob Silberberg / AP file The economic ramifications are rarely included in the debate over whether to go to war, although some economists argue it is quite possible and useful to assess potential costs and benefits. |
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| NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE |
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By Martin Wolk
Chief economics correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 7:25 p.m. ET March 17, 2006
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One thing is certain about the Iraq war: It has cost a lot more than advertised. In fact, the tab grows by at least $200 million each and every day.
In the months leading up to the launch of the war three years ago, few Bush administration officials were willing to comment publicly on the potential costs to the United States. After all, no cost would have been too high if the United States faced an imminent threat from an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction, the war's stated justification.
In fact, the economic ramifications are rarely included in the debate over whether to go to war, although some economists argue it is quite possible and useful to assess potential costs and benefits.
In any event, most estimates put forward by White House officials in 2002 and 2003 were relatively low compared with the nation's gross domestic product, the size of the federal budget or the cost of past wars.
White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was the exception to the rule, offering an "upper bound" estimate of $100 billion to $200 billion in a September 2002 interview with The Wall Street Journal. That figure raised eyebrows at the time, although Lindsey argued the cost was small, adding, "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.”
U.S. direct spending on the war in Iraq already has surpassed the upper bound of Lindsey's upper bound, and most economists attribute billions more in indirect costs to the war effort. Even if the U.S. exits Iraq within another three years, total direct and indirect costs to U.S. taxpayers will likely by more than $400 billion, and one estimate puts the total economic impact at up to $2 trillion.
Back in 2002, the White House was quick to distance itself from Lindsey's view. Mitch Daniels, director of the White House budget office, quickly called the estimate "very, very high." Lindsey himself was dismissed in a shake-up of the White House economic team later that year, and in January 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the budget office had come up with "a number that's something under $50 billion." He and other officials expressed optimism that Iraq itself would help shoulder the cost once the world market was reopened to its rich supply of oil.
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Those early estimates struck some economists as unrealistically low. William Nordhaus, a Yale economist who published perhaps the most extensive independent estimate of the potential costs before the war began, suggested a war and occupation could cost anywhere from $100 billion to $1.9 trillion in 2002 dollars, depending on the difficulty of the conflict, the length of occupation and the impact on oil costs.
The most current estimates of the war's cost generally start with figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which as of January 2006 counted $323 billion in expenditures for the war on terrorism, including military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just this week the House approved another $68 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which would bring the total allocated to date to about $400 billion. The Pentagon is spending about $6 billion a month on the war in Iraq, or about $200 million a day, according to the CBO. That is about the same as the gross domestic product of Nigeria.
Scott Wallsten, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, put the direct cost to the United States at $212 billion as of last September and estimates a "global cost" of $500 billion to date with another $500 billion possible, with most of the total borne by the United States.
That figure is in line with an estimate published last month by University of Chicago economist Steven Davis and colleagues, who put the likely U.S. cost at $410 billion to $630 billion in 2003 dollars.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and self-described opponent of the war, puts the final figure at a staggering $1 trillion to $2 trillion, including $500 billion for the war and occupation and up to $300 billion in future health care costs for wounded troops. Additional costs include a negative impact from the rising cost of oil and added interest on the national debt.
In the buildup to any war, financial costs rarely play a big role in the debate, especially for a superpower like the United States, which is presumed to have virtually limitless resources. But economists like Wallsten and Davis say there is no reason wars cannot be subjected to the same type of cost-benefit analysis as other government activities.
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After all, even a society as rich as ours has finite resources, and the public has a limited appetite for absorbing the costs of war, whether human or economic.
"I come at this from a background in regulation," said Wallsten, who served in the Clinton White House but said his analysis is not rooted in any particular perspective on the war.
"When the government proposes a new regulation they have to by law do a cost-benefit analysis," he noted. "So we have this framework, but it's never been applied to this kind of policy decision."
Wallsten said some people might look at his estimate of up to $1 trillion in costs and conclude that the war was worth it given its benefits, such as the removal of Saddam Hussein from power and the possible installation of a democratic government in the heart of the Middle East.
"I wasn’t trying to say whether the war was worth it or not. There are lots of benefits that could arise, and I don't know how to place a probability on whether they would occur. I was interested more than in coming up with a number, coming up with a framework that people might want to have in coming up with such decisions in the future," Wallsten said.
Wallsten also offers amateur and professional policy-makers the chance to come up with their own cost estimates by plugging in values for variables like the length of the occupation (up to nine more years) the number of annual deaths and injuries and the statistical "value" of a life. (To try your own assumptions, click here.)
In addition to the economic costs, any military conflict can also have financial benefits, although in this age of more limited wars and a service-oriented economy, war is not the economic pump-primer it once was.
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Davis and his colleagues at the University of Chicago recently updated a paper to make the point that the cost of the war alone is not necessarily an iron-clad argument against it.
They estimate that continuing the previous policy of containment with a deployment of 28,000 troops in Turkey, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf would have cost $14.5 billion a year for many years to come. And they say containment eventually could have failed, meaning a more costly armed conflict might have broken out anyway. Factoring in those possibilities, they say containment could have cost $350 billion to $700 billion over the long term, possibly as much as the war option.
They also point to potential net economic benefits to Iraqis, concluding that the war is likely to lead to "large improvements in the economic well-being of most Iraqis relative to their prospects under the policy of containment."
And, Davis and his colleagues argue, even though the war has led to thousands of Iraqi deaths, tens of thousands were dying prematurely each year under Saddam's regime, due to repression, economic failure or UN sanctions.
"If, over the course of a generation, Iraqis recover even half of the economic losses they suffered under Saddam Hussein, then they will be significantly better off in material terms as a consequence of forcible regime change," they say.
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive
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[Meanwhile...]:
The Other America
An Enduring Shame: Katrina reminded us, but the problem is not new. Why a rising tide of people live in poverty, who they are—and what we can do about it.
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Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It takes a hurricane. it takes a catastrophe like Katrina to strip away the old evasions, hypocrisies and not-so-benign neglect. It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again. For the moment, at least, Americans are ready to fix their restless gaze on enduring problems of poverty, race and class that have escaped their attention. Does this mean a new war on poverty? No, especially with Katrina's gargantuan price tag. But this disaster may offer a chance to start a skirmish, or at least make Washington think harder about why part of the richest country on earth looks like the Third World.
"I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane," Sen. Barack Obama said last week on the floor of the Senate. "They were abandoned long ago—to murder and mayhem in the streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness."
The question now is whether the floodwaters can create a sea change in public perceptions. "Americans tend to think of poor people as being responsible for their own economic woes," says sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University. "But this was a case where the poor were clearly not at fault. It was a reminder that we have a moral obligation to provide every American with a decent life."
In the last four decades, part of that obligation has been met. Social Security and Medicare have all but eliminated poverty among the elderly. Food stamps have made severe hunger in the United States mostly a thing of the past. A little-known program with bipartisan support and a boring name—the Earned Income Tax Credit—supplements the puny wages of the working poor, helping to lift millions into the lower middle class.
But after a decade of improvement in the 1990s, poverty in America is actually getting worse. A rising tide of economic growth is no longer lifting all boats. For the first time in half a century, the third year of a recovery (2004) also saw an increase in poverty. In a nation of nearly 300 million people, the number living below the poverty line ($14,680 for a family of three) recently hit 37 million, up more than a million in a year.
With the strain Katrina is placing on the gulf region (and on families putting up their displaced relatives), it will almost certainly increase more.
As a horse lover all of my life, I've closely followed the political battle to end horse slaughter for meat in the U.S. In this day and age, I consider horses domestic pets, like cats and dogs, instead of agricultural animals, like cows and pigs, and therefore am vehemently against their slaughter for meat. I understand that there are cultures that enjoy horse meat - same is true of dog meat - but the vast majority of horsemeat that is slaughtered in the U.S. is exported to Europe and Asia, and there is no reason why they can't import that meat from other countries, because Americans of all walks of life have spoken, and Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation that should have ended this practice in the U.S. But thanks to finding hoops to jump through, the Department of Agriculture has decided that it would be profitable to continue -see the article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11220454/
However, they are taking public comments on their new "system" through March 9, as it is scheduled to go into effect on March 10, so if you feel strongly about it, TAKE ACTION! E-mail your comments on the proposed policy to the Ag Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service: FSIS.RegulationsComments@usda.gov
Let's show these bureaucrats, with their capitalist-driven agenda, that compassion is worth more to us than the soiled cash reaped from this slaughter.
~Ezree
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