Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Select Page

Home » And the children. And the babies. And everybody else.

Sarin in Syria

[Updated on April 19/August 23, 2015 with the two “60 Minutes” links to [Flash video] clips below]
A crime against humanity
Behind the “60 Minutes” decision to show disturbing video
[Updated on Sept. 8, 2013 with the highly disturbing video, below]

From Le Monde, Aug. 22 2013

Damascus, Syria, from Le Monde, Aug. 22, 2013

 And then, writers, artists, filmmakers and anti-war activists try to do something about this.
See my own Information Missing by Pier Marton
Information Missing
&
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics

David Gentleman – Stop the War Coalition c. 2003 from the CSPG Blogspot.

The US in Vietnam after the My Lai massacre – a picture taken by Ron Haeberle private camera and part of the work of the Art Workers Coalition

Artists Poster Committee (Frazier Dougherty, Jon Hendricks, Irving Petlin) Courtesy: Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles. Photo: Ron L. Haeberle.

Partial transcript of a Mike Wallace interview with Paul Meadlo in which he describes his participation in the massacre:
Q. So you fired something like sixty-seven shots?
A. Right.
Q. And you killed how many? At that time?
A. Well, I fired them automatic, so you can’t- You just spray the area on them and so you can’t know how many you killed ‘cause they were going fast. So I might have killed ten or fifteen of them.
Q. Men, women, and children?
A. Men, women, and children.
Q. And babies?
A. And babies.

AND THE “ADULTS.”

From Ernst Friedrich’s “War Against War” – how war is unseen (through censorship) and allowed to happen over and over.

… by the great Ernst Friedrich (1894-1967) who founded the first anti-war museum (most countries have War Museums).

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos - The sleep of reason produces monsters. Goya in Prado Museum

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos – The sleep of reason produces monsters. Goya in Prado Museum

     Two other Goya Etchings
– Victor Hugo was similarly traumatized, but as a child, by witnessing the war in Spain –

Grande hazaña, con muertos - Great heroic action with dead. Prado Museum

Grande hazaña, con muertos – Great heroic action, with some dead. Goya in Prado Museum

Enterrar y callar - To bury and to shut up. Goya in Prado Museum

Enterrar y callar – To bury and to shut up. Goya in Prado Museum

This now seems a pale reaction…

In the context of the Vietnam war by Lorraine Schneider, 1966

But why stop here…

Nino Kirtadze’s masterpiece, Chechen lullaby (with English subtitles) needs to be part of the most important reactions to war and violence.

And even if it seems quieter today than the scream it generated back then:

Picasso’s Guernica – 1937 – In response to the Spanish civil war.

The list of films is endless: Night and Fog, Hotel Terminus, Shoah, The Act of Killing… Are images enough?

WHAT TO DO?

Translate »