i hope people pay attention to this

[danschank]

hopefully by now you've all read that johns hopkins bloomberg school of health is reporting an estimated 655,000 civilian deaths to date, as a result of the american invasion of iraq. if you haven't, click the link above. i found an article pertaining to this tucked away in the international section of today's NYtimes online. now, obviously all

Comments

i should have said "in the states" it's had footnote status

[danschank]

yeah, i'm not posting this because i necessarily think those #'s are 100% accurate, but, as you said, that's one hell of a leap from what's been generally reported. iraq body count has it listed significantly lower. it's particularly alarming following the non-stop news of violence going on over there very recently (at least 2500 dead for each of the past three months, according to less controversial statistics

that quote makes me wanna bust out the book

[danschank]

me and my roommate have been discussing what you're talking about quite a bit, via NPR... he was saying how they'll split their time between the most devastating international crises, and the most saccarine shit imaginable ("and now, a young retarded boy who plays the violin", to use his exact phrase). it's this sorta thing that makes me like warhol so much ("you're happy." "so what?" "you're sad." "so what?"), he really had his hand on the right button, culturally.

hadn't even realized kapuscinski was up for the award! ahh, nice to hear good news... i just read another book of his, another day of life, my third in two months. he's going in the next ten good things post (which has been half written for literally weeks). i haven't read pamuk either, but the news made me curious. i put my name is red on my amazon wishlist today.

Re: it is a good one...

[danschank]

well, i wouldn't go as far as to align NPR and fox news, really. NPR, in all honesty, is about as close to a realistic center as you're going to get in this country. it gets tagged as "liberal" more because its presentation is catered to a certain liberal bourgeois type (sarah mc laughlan records, organic produce, volvo, etc.), and because most news sources in america are so far right that we've completely lost any sense of a center (take a gander at the new york post, to see what i mean). for a left equivalent to the right, you'd have to go to the pundits-- michael moore and that sort of thing-- where it's the same smear tactics, albeit for (somewhat) more noble causes. i've been thinking a lot about the aesthetics of politics lately, and it's discouraging how often the left and the right appear the same, unfortunately