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Analyze

Safe Side Off the Fence

EfeCengiz

The documentary is missing because the documentary is as safe as the fence it mocks in its title.
In the beginning we are asked to bear witness to the construction and use of the most devastation weapon of indiscriminate death the world has ever seen, and all the harm the construction of such a tool, yet its construction and its use is justified near instantaneously by repeating the same old propaganda.
In continuation, we are asked to bear witness to the continuous production of similar weapons and the devastation caused by the mishandling of the waste that accumulated in their production, yet why such a production took place is not only left unquestioned, but simple hints of cold war propaganda is left in their places for safekeeping.
In the end, we are asked to bear witness to a sombre victory, same spectres of patriotism and nation-of-God watching over our shoulder, yet how the pitiful situation of being forced to celebrate even such a small victory is never explored.
To sum up, we are shown people, good people, who struggle against the symptoms of a disease, yet this disease itself never named, nor challenged. It could not have been challenged, as it would force a complete change in their discourse.

If we sincerely would like to critique how the bodies of these workers were made disposable; used, harmed, dislocated and discharged as deemed necessary; if we wish to explore this topic as the necropolitical issue it is, we cannot stop halfway through. This inability to stop chasing connections, relationalities wherever it fits our ideology, is not a call for “objectivism”, it’s a call to respect the term of Anthropocene with all its rhizomatic connections.

An investigation of nuclear waste, that does not factor the use of its product, the socio-political effects of said product, and the historical conditions that even led to the possibility of producing it in such ways and such quantities, are of no use for us.  It cannot penetrate the barrier of capitalist realism. If it could, at least a single mention of workers unions would have existed. Instead, it has confessionals by atomic weapons lawyers whose heart goes out to these workers.
An America that refuse to face up to the fact that it is what it is by the great necropolitical project it led for hundreds of years, I struggle to accumulate sympathy for, what I can easily accumulate is rage however, which this documentary is missing..
Wish the documentary would have at least attempted to say something radical, instead of praising these disposable bodies for being patriotic about it. There are lives who never had false fences built as idols for safety, the collective idols of old America, the patriotic nation under God were built upon their broken bodies, what would you ask of them?

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wolmad

By establishing for effective communication of information regarding a nuclear accident to other states which could be effected by it, and creating policies for the transfer of information, the convention addresses public health by giving goverments access to the information needed to respond to a nuclear disaster from abroad. 

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wolmad
  1. "As a result, however, the stories were often quite ambiguous as to the nature of the illness, and it was often unclear whether the stories were "reports of experience" or were largely governed by a typical cultural form or narrative structure"
  2. "Stories, perhaps better than other forms, provide a glimpse of the grand ideas that often seem to elude life and defy rational description. Illness stories often seem to provide an especially fine mesh for catching such ideas."
  3. "much of what we know about illness we know through stories - stories told by the sick about their experiences, by family members, doctors, healers, and others in the society. This is a simple fact. "An illness" has a narrative structure, although it is not a closed text, and it is composed as a corpus of stories."

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wolmad
Annotation of

This organization does not claim to have new or novel way of responding to disasters, however their uniqueness lies in the sheer number of disasters of all sizes they respond to. This is best characterized by the information found on their page titled "Disaster Relief," which states the following:

"We respond to an emergency every 8 minutes

No one else does this: not the government, not other charities. From small house fires to multi-state natural disasters, the American Red Cross goes wherever we’re needed, so people can have clean water, safe shelter and hot meals when they need them most."

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wolmad

They confess that ‘survivors of sexual violence have generally been neglected in standard models of humanitarian aid delivery’.

To return to the story: with humanitarians effectively governing in crisis zones, it is not surprising that gender-based violence should become an issue; having been categorised as a human rights violation, one which garnered significant attention, it could not be easily ignored or brushed aside as a ‘private’ matter.

In this sense, gender-based violence makes it clear that the suffering body – while purportedly universal – requires certain political, historical and cultural attributes to render it visible and worthy of care.

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wolmad

Detailed research into historical cases was done to produce the claims and arguements presented in this article. No new investigation was conducted to obtain support for the arguement, and the historical cases were used to draw ties with the ongoing investigations taking place at the World Trade Center site.