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Michael Moore calls for Newtown crime scene photos to be released


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The year was 1955. Emmett Till was a young African-American boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi. One day Emmett was seen "flirting" with a white woman in town, and for that he was mutilated and murdered at the age of fourteen. He was found with part of a cotton gin tied around his neck with a string of barbed wire. His killers, two white men, had shot him in the head before they dumped him in the river.

 

Emmett Till's body was found and returned to Chicago. To the shock of many, his mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so that the public could see what happens to a little boy's body when bigots decide he is less than human. She wanted photographers to take pictures of her mutilated son and freely publish them. More than 10,000 mourners came to the funeral home, and the photo of Emmett Till appeared in newspapers and magazines across the nation.

 

"I just wanted the world to see," she said. "I just wanted the world to see."

 

The world did see, and nothing was ever the same again for the white supremacists of the United States of America. Because of Emmett Till, because of that shocking photograph of this little dead boy, just a few months later, "the revolt officially began on December 1, 1955" (from Eyes on the Prize) when Rosa Parks decided not to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The historic bus boycott began and, with the images of Emmett Till still fresh in the minds of many Americans, there was no turning back.

 

In March of 1965, the police of Selma, Alabama, brutally beat, hosed and tear-gassed a group of African Americans for simply trying to cross a bridge during a protest march. The nation was shocked by images of blacks viciously maimed and injured. So, too, was the President. Just one week later, Lyndon Johnson called for a gathering of the U.S. Congress and he went and stood before them in joint session and told them to pass a bill he was introducing that night – the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And, just five months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

 

In March, 1968, U.S. soldiers massacred 500 civilians at My Lai in Vietnam. A year and a half later, the world finally saw the photographs – of mounds of dead peasants covered in blood, a terrified toddler seconds before he was gunned down, and a woman with her brains literally blown out of her head. (These photos would join other Vietnam War photos, including a naked girl burned by napalm running down the road, and a South Vietnamese general walking up to a handcuffed suspect, taking out his handgun, and blowing the guy's brains out on the NBC Nightly News.)

 

With this avalanche of horrid images, the American public turned against the Vietnam War. Our realization of what we were capable of rattled us so deeply it became very hard for future presidents (until George W. Bush) to outright invade a sovereign nation and go to war there for a decade.

 

Bush was able to pull it off because his handlers, Misters Cheney and Rumsfeld, knew that the most important thing to do from the get-go was to control the images of the war, to guarantee that nothing like a My Lai-style photograph ever appeared in the U.S. press.

 

And that is why you never see a picture any more of the kind of death and destruction that might make you get up off your couch and run out of the house screaming bloody murder at those responsible for these atrocities.

 

That is why now, after the children's massacre in Newtown, the absolute last thing the National Rifle Association wants out there in the public domain is ANY images of what happened that tragic day.

 

But I have a prediction. I believe someone in Newtown, Connecticut – a grieving parent, an upset law enforcement officer, a citizen who has seen enough of this carnage in our country – somebody, someday soon, is going to leak the crime scene photos of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. And when the American people see what bullets from an assault rifle fired at close range do to a little child's body, that's the day the jig will be up for the NRA. It will be the day the debate on gun control will come to an end. There will be nothing left to argue over. It will just be over. And every sane American will demand action.

 

Of course, there will be a sanctimonious hue and cry from the pundits who will decry the publication of these gruesome pictures. Those who do publish or post them will be called "shameful" and "disgraceful" and "sick." How could a media outlet be so insensitive to the families of the dead children! Someone will then start a boycott of the magazine or website that publishes them.

 

But this will be a false outrage. Because the real truth is this: We do not want to be confronted with what the actual results of a violent society looks like. Of what a society that starts illegal wars, that executes criminals (or supposed criminals), that strikes or beats one of its women every 15 seconds, and shoots 30 of its own citizens every single day looks like. Oh, no, please – DO NOT MAKE US LOOK AT THAT!

 

Because if we were to seriously look at the 20 slaughtered children – I mean really look at them, with their bodies blown apart, many of them so unrecognizable the only way their parents could identify them was by the clothes they were wearing – what would be our excuse not to act? Now. Right now. This very instant! How on earth could anyone not spring into action the very next moment after seeing the bullet-riddled bodies of these little boys and girls?

 

We don't know exactly what those Newtown photographs show. But I want you – yes, you, the person reading this right now – to think about what we do know:

 

The six- and seven-year-old children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School were each hit up to eleven times by a Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic weapon. The muzzle velocity of a rifle like the AR-15 is about three times that of a handgun. And because the kinetic energy of a bullet equals one-half of the bullet's mass multiplied by its velocity squared, the potential destructive power of a bullet fired from a rifle is about nine times more than that of a similar bullet fired from a handgun.

 

Nine times more. I spoke to Dr. Victor Weedn, chairman of the Department of Forensic Sciences at George Washington University, who told me that chest x-rays of a person shot with a rifle will often look like a "snowstorm" because their bones will have been shattered into fragments. This happens not just because of the bullet's direct impact, but because each bullet sends a shock wave through the body's soft organs – one so powerful it can break bones even when the bullet didn't hit them. A video here shows what the shock wave looks like in the "ballistic gelatin" used by experts to simulate human tissue. (Would Gabby Giffords have survived if shot by a rifle rather than a Glock pistol? Probably not, says Dr. Weedn; the shock wave would have damaged the most critical parts of her brain.)

 

As horrifying as this is, there's more; much more. Dr. Cyril Wecht, past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, told me this:

 

The kind of ammunition used by the Newtown killer would have produced very extensive, severe and mutilating injuries of the head and face in these small victims. Depending on the number of shots striking a child’s head, substantial portions of the head would be literally blasted away. The underlying brain tissue would be extensively lacerated with portions of hemorrhagic brain tissue protruding through the fractured calvarium and basilar skull, some of which would remain on portions of the face... actual physical identification of each child would have been extremely difficult, and in many instances impossible, even by the parents of any particular child.

 

 

We also know this, according to Dr. Wecht:

 

In one case, the parents have commented publicly upon the damage to their child, reporting that his chin and left hand were missing. Most probably, this child had brought his hand up to his face in shock and for protection and had the hand blasted away along with the lower part of his face.

 

 

Veronique Pozner, the mother of Noah, the six-year-old boy described by Dr. Wecht, insisted that the governor of Connecticut look at Noah in an open casket. "I needed it to be real to him," she said. The governor wept.

 

The pictures showing all this exist right now, somewhere in the police and medical examiner's files in Connecticut. And as of right now, we've somehow all decided together that we don't need to look, that in some way we're okay with what's in those pictures (after all, over 2,600 Americans have been killed by guns since Newtown) – just as long as we don't have to look at the pictures ourselves.

 

But I am telling you now, that moment will come with the Newtown photos – and you will have to look. You will have to look at who and what we are, and what we've allowed to happen. At the end of World War II, General Eisenhower ordered that thousands of German civilians be forced to march through the concentration camps so they could witness what was happening just down the road from them during the years that they turned their gaze away, or didn't ask, or didn't do anything to stop the murder of millions.

 

We've done nothing since Columbine – nothing – and as a result there have been over 30 other mass shootings since then. Our inaction means that we are all, on some level, responsible – and therefore, because of our burying our heads in the sand, we must be forced to look at the 20 dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary.

 

The people we've voted for since Columbine – with the exception of Michael Bloomberg – almost none of them, Democrat or Republican, dared to speak out against the NRA before Newtown – and yet we, the people, continued to vote for them. And for that we are responsible, and that is why we must look at the 20 dead children.

 

Most of us continue to say we "support the Second Amendment" as if it were written by God (or we're just afraid of being seen as anti-American). But this amendment was written by the same white men who thought a Negro was only 3/5 human. We've done nothing to revise or repeal this – and that makes us responsible, and that is why we must look at the pictures of the 20 dead children laying with what's left of their bodies on the classroom floor in Newtown, Connecticut.

 

And while you're looking at the heinous photographs, try saying those words out loud: "I support the Second Amendment!" Something, I'm guessing, won't feel right.

 

Yes, someday a Sandy Hook mother – or a Columbine mother, or an Aurora mother, or a mother from massacres yet to come – will say, like the mother of Emmett Till, "I just want the world to see." And then nothing about guns in this country will ever be the same again.

 

Pack your bags, NRA – you're about to be shown the door. Because we refuse to let another child die in this manner. Got it? I hope so.

 

All you can do now is hope no one releases those photos.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/newtown-gun-control_b_2866126.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

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Tough call, I can see the benifit of letting people see what these things truely are, as well as letting people see the horros of war, but the question would be this. Would it make people think twice about the pitfalls of each or would it just desenstize us further?

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They'd find something else to transfer their dilusions to.

 

 

I agree that "conspiracy nuts" tend to apply their confirmation bias to absolutely everything, but I can't help but notice how CT's existing assault weapons ban received little if any mention in coverage of Newtown.  One doesn't have to believe the incident was fabricated to see a definite agenda at work in its wake.

 

Not really trying to dredge up the whole gun control debate again so much as pointing out that using the massacre as a rallying cry to pass a law that was already on the books where it occurred could be considered disingenuous.

 

The unfortunate side effect of all the noise from the Art Bell/Alex Jones crowd is that there are conspiracies and underhanded shit going on constantly, but if you express the slightest skepticism towards an official version of events, you're lumped in with the tinfoil hat crowd.  It allows governments and corporations a lot of leverage when people are hesitant to even question their motives.

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I agree that "conspiracy nuts" tend to apply their confirmation bias to absolutely everything, but I can't help but notice how CT's existing assault weapons ban received little if any mention in coverage of Newtown.  One doesn't have to believe the incident was fabricated to see a definite agenda at work in its wake.

 

Not really trying to dredge up the whole gun control debate again so much as pointing out that using the massacre as a rallying cry to pass a law that was already on the books where it occurred could be considered disingenuous.

 

The unfortunate side effect of all the noise from the Art Bell/Alex Jones crowd is that there are conspiracies and underhanded shit going on constantly, but if you express the slightest skepticism towards an official version of events, you're lumped in with the tinfoil hat crowd.  It allows governments and corporations a lot of leverage when people are hesitant to even question their motives.

 

That's because it doesn't matter.  You can't expect a patchwork quilt of laws that vary from state to state to work,  you need comprehensive federal law.  Sure, CT had an assault weapons Law on the books, but Pennsylvania and West Virginia don't, so people just gravitate to those states when they want to buy a gun.  It would be like Ohio saying you can't drink until 21, but Indiana being at 18, you'd still have the same number of drunk teenagers, they'd just be driving farther in a drunken stupor.

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That's because it doesn't matter.  You can't expect a patchwork quilt of laws that vary from state to state to work,  you need comprehensive federal law.  Sure, CT had an assault weapons Law on the books, but Pennsylvania and West Virginia don't, so people just gravitate to those states when they want to buy a gun.  It would be like Ohio saying you can't drink until 21, but Indiana being at 18, you'd still have the same number of drunk teenagers, they'd just be driving farther in a drunken stupor.

 

So to use your example, if there was a story about a DWI crash killing a bunch of people, the drinking age being 21 would be irrelevant to a campaign to raise the drinking age to 21.  It's not about whether it's effective, it's about omitting pertinent facts because they don't fit an agenda.

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I agree that "conspiracy nuts" tend to apply their confirmation bias to absolutely everything, but I can't help but notice how CT's existing assault weapons ban received little if any mention in coverage of Newtown.  One doesn't have to believe the incident was fabricated to see a definite agenda at work in its wake.

 

Not really trying to dredge up the whole gun control debate again so much as pointing out that using the massacre as a rallying cry to pass a law that was already on the books where it occurred could be considered disingenuous.

 

The unfortunate side effect of all the noise from the Art Bell/Alex Jones crowd is that there are conspiracies and underhanded shit going on constantly, but if you express the slightest skepticism towards an official version of events, you're lumped in with the tinfoil hat crowd.  It allows governments and corporations a lot of leverage when people are hesitant to even question their motives.

 

Great post. 

 

Honestly, I think people who believe the official story on things are just as coo-coo as the ones who believe every conspiracy theory. 

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Wouldn't that mean we're all coo-coo? :lol:

 

Yes, you're all coo-coo :ninja:

 

Ha....I guess what I meant to say is that those who believe what the television box tells them to are just as cooky as the aluminum foil hat conspiracy extremists.  The sane ones are the ones in the middle who know that what the official story isn't likely what happened but it's not so craziness to the point conspiracy extremists like to make things out to be either.  

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Tough call, I can see the benifit of letting people see what these things truely are, as well as letting people see the horros of war, but the question would be this. Would it make people think twice about the pitfalls of each or would it just desenstize us further?

 

Desensitize us further.  The reason, IMHO, the pictures of My Lai did not change things (by themselves) were the pictures being sent back on the Massacre at Hue (upwards of 6000 massacred in that one by NVA affiliated forces).  Between January and March of 1968, there were multiple massacres/atrocities in Vietnam  and most of them were committed by others (South Korean forces were among the perpetuators) and not the US.  The little girl who was Napalmed was carried out by the South Vietnamese Air Force (albeit on orders from US military).  The guy getting his brains blown out in the street was also done by South Vietnamese.  This is not to excuse our part in this matter by supporting the South Vietnamese government but the majority of atrocities were not all on the US shoulders.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)

 

Desensitization also refers to reduced responsiveness to actual violence caused by exposure to violence in the media.[8] Desensitization may arise from different sources of media including TV, video games and movies. Violence can prime thoughts of hostility with the possibility of affecting the way we perceive others and interpret their actions.[9] Research shows that initial exposure to violence in the media produces a number of aversive responses such as increased heart rate, fear, discomfort, perspiration and disgust. However, studies conducted show that prolonged and repeated exposure to violence in the media reduces or habituates the initial psychological impact until violent images do not elicit these negative responses. Eventually the observer becomes emotionally and cognitively desensitized to media violence. In an experiment to determine the effects on violent video games causing physiological desensitization to real-life violence, participants played either a violent or non-violent video game for 20 minutes. After that, they watched a 10 minute video containing real-life violence while their heart rate and galvanic skin responses were being monitored. The participants who played violent video games previously to watching the video showed lower heart rate and galvanic skin response readings compared to those who had not played violent video games displaying a physiological desensitization to violence.[10] To understand the effects of repeated exposure to violence, researchers have suggested that viewers become comfortable with violence that is initially anxiety provoking, much as they would if they were undergoing exposure therapy.

 

In other words, I don't support the release of these pictures.

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My fear is that even the soldiers are being desensitized in this manner by being constantly exposed to violence and graphic images.  This in itself will lead to further incidents of violence/atrocities in the wars theater and more than likely these soldiers will bring this desensitization home within our own borders of the US.  This in itself might be one reason the VA is sending out letters concerning gun ownership to Veterans suffering from PTSD (severe forms of PTSD).  These measures will not solve the problems the veteran is experiencing and may even cause the veteran to not seek help at the VA.  Oddly enough, one method of treatment for PTSD is systematic desensitization.  IMHO, it is the desensitization to violence that is causing some of the problems the veterans are experiencing and the problem is being compounded by the treatment being given by the VA.

 

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