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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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joerene.aviles

1. Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg noted the connections between global inequality and threats to U.S. health security: “World health is indivisible, [and] we cannot satisfy our most parochial needs without attending to the health conditions of all the globe.”

2.Erin Koch (chapter 5) describes the implementation of a TB-control program called DOTS (for “Directly-Observed Treatment, Short-Course”) in post-Soviet Georgia.

3. the problem of maintaining quality control over global food and drug production chains, as indicated by recent scandals over the regulation of ingredients for pet food, toothpaste, or blood thinner that are imported from China.

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joerene.aviles

The author is Adriana Petryna, who is an anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the "public and private forms of scientific knowledge production, as well as on the role of science and technology in public policy". Her work doesn't specifically focus on emergency response, but more on the political and scientific developments that occur in a country after a disaster.

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joerene.aviles

The methods used to produce the arguments in the article were ethnographic research, interviews with dozens of subjects suffering from epilepsy or similar disorder from several countries, and analysis of the subjects' narratives from psychological and anthropological viewpoints.  

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joerene.aviles

Brian Concannon (executive director) and Beatrice Lindstrom (lawyer) of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a nonprofit in Boston that fights for human rights on the island

Carrie Kahn is an international correspondent for NPR.

President Michel Martelly was the president of Haiti (from May 2011 to February 2016). 

Ban Ki-moon; the 8th and current Secretary General of the United Nations.

Jake Johnston is a researcher "of the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy and Research"