Can't sleep in the wake of some bad news about my mom. Tried to distract myself for some time with pictures of cats on IMGUR.
Then this image comes up. This leads me to read more into the conflict in Syria, and the greater
Arab Spring. This reminded me of the ongoing battle against the suppression of information and the struggle for government transparency, and led me to leaked footage of the
2007 Baghdad Airstrike by American soldiers.
I heard about it, but never watched the footage until I read that article. Two Reuters photojournalists gunned down, and the other civilians who tried to rescue them in a van were shot as well, including two children... a soldier watching a cameraman he'd riddled with holes crawl desperately toward a building, and verbally begging for him to pull out a weapon so he could shoot more. I understand that the event transpired near a conflict, and that it's possible those near the journalists may not have been local militia but enemy soldiers... but the American soldiers were treating the whole thing like a damned game, and even leapt on the excuse to gun down the civilians and their children who moved to rescue them, despite them posing no threat to the soldiers, and the rules of engagement giving them no right to do so. Who knows how many other similar incidents, without any leaked evidence, may have occurred.
As I said, I can understand the confusion, and know that the journalists accepted certain risks when covering a guerrilla battlefield. The thing that disgusts me, however, is how this information was suppressed. Despite that this video should have been made available under the Freedom Of Information Act, and that the cameras should have been returned to Reuters (who owned them, and had employed the journalists), both these were witheld by the US Military. And now Bradley Manning, who finally released this footage to Wikileaks two years later, is being prosecuted for this kind of whistleblowing, along with Julian Assange.
The Arab Spring, the debate surrounding the prosecution of Manning and Assange, and the battle to maintain Internet freedom; these issues are part of the same global struggle to oust corruption, seek social and political justice, and create honesty and transparency in the modern world. It's like anywhere you look in the world, people are petitioning for change, dissenting against old regimes, or waiting anxiously for someone to make the first move.
I don't feel any better, and sure as hell can't sleep now, but I find some solace knowing that this is what history feels like when it's being made. What a time we live in, if only we had eyes to see.