The sequel to Postergasm I, here I drop various images of various things for various purposes. As with the first post the high-res versions are optimized to print on an 11 x 17 sheet — not exactly movie-poster size, but large enough to be noticeable.
After the fold, miscellaneous posters along with descriptions. Enjoy!
Part of the ongoing tragedy of the stupidity of Iraq is the killing of uncounted tens — or hundreds — of thousands of innocent civilians by (let's face it) US troops. Without going onto the ethics of action under combat, the fact is indisputable that, had we not invaded in the first place, those people would not be dead.
Often overlooked, though, is the could-have-been.
For instance there was a fairly hefty oil spill on the west coast of South Korea last month, a spill that wrought havoc on maritime ecosystems, and now seems to have killed at least one fisherman, protesting corporate inaction in the cleanup efforts:
Ji Chang-hwan drank poison before dousing himself with inflammable liquid and setting himself alight.
Now I'm not going to try to blame this on Bush — but I am going somewhere with this, so bear with me. In the same edition of the Beeb's news we come across a report of a flood disaster in Zambia:
More than 40 people have been killed in the region, and roads, crops and livestock destroyed.
Rains have been going on for weeks and thousands are displaced. But wait, there's a trifecta; hell appears to be breaking loose in Colombia too:
Thousands of people have been evacuated after a volcano erupted in southern Colombia, throwing out clouds of ash several kilometres high.
No one's reported dead — yet anyway — but the eruption's still young, so to speak.
What has any of this to do with Iraq? Imagine, if you will, a US military unencumbered by a pointless, endless, useless war. Imagine a military that hasn't been overtaxed and overdeployed for the last half decade. Imagine an economy not crippled by mounting and overwhelming debt. What could the US do with all those resources?
Last year I wrote that I wouldn't say anything more about Obama unless I had to.
Yeah, well.
The Dem primaries are really bringing out a stack of ugly, aren't they? Apart from the locker-room thinking that goes toward disparaging Edwards or Kucinich, we've got the usual gang of inbreds and their comments on Clinton and Obama. It's funny, in a wretched gut-twisting sort of way, to see the right wing carefully stepping through their self-laid minefield of misogyny, sexism and racism as they try to find legitimate reasons to dislike the lead runners. It seems that, to them, the race has become all about gender and color.
But as Pam has pointed out, this isn't happening with just the right wing. We know that cretins such as Limbaugh and Coulter are going to savage anyone in the Dem camp — it's their raison d'etre — and we know that they're going to use the veiled (and not-so-) language of privilege in order to accomplish it. Seeing it happen from the left as well is simply shabby.
There are legitimate reasons to have qualms about either candidate; for instance, Clinton voted in favor of attacking Iraq, and Obama genuinely is a little green (though, to be honest, there's simply no way in hell he could do a worse job than the inbred caretaker at 1600 Penna Ave right now, but that could also be said of Clinton). I'd rather see Edwards and Kucinich getting more attention, because it seems to me that they're closer to the mark in terms of what the nation actually wants — but hey, this is our political American Idol, innit? So we can't count on being right winning out.
But when qualms become covert attacks — particularly racist ones, or fearmongering ones, or attacks that try to make an issue of something that's already been discussed openly and in publication — it makes it a hell of a lot easier to knock out of the running the candidate whose campaign appears to be supporting the tactics. For me, that shoves Clinton to the back of the line, I'm afraid.
