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The painful home truth of America’s military psyche.

IMAGE STILL FROM KYLE MEMORIAL VIDEO

“Despite what your momma told you, violence does solve problems.” These words belong to Ryan Job, a US Navy SEAL who died a few years after sustaining serious injuries in Iraq. They show up in the 2012 autobiography of Chris Kyle, “the most lethal sniper in US military history.”

Chris Kyle is a symbolically perfect representative of US citizenship. Cowboy, Texan, father of two, he did four tours of Iraq and tallied at least 160 confirmed kills while on duty.

After the publication of American Sniper, Kyle made the rounds of mainstream media. For the most part, he referred to his enemy as “Iraqis” or “insurgents” or “bad guys,” but the book’s prologue clarifies his feelings about what, not who, he was fighting in Iraq: “Savage, despicable evil.” He refers to Iraq as “injun country,” characterizes high-kill areas as “target-rich environments,” and overall has a dim, racist view of every single Iraqi he comes into contact with, enemy combatant or not. On some level, it’s easy to embed in Kyle’s narrative while reading his book – easy to be riveted,easy to hope that Kyle and his fellow fighters will emerge unscathed,easy to feel relieved when their “threat” is “neutralized” – especially if you take Kyle at face value, when he says in a SOFREP.com interview that the US was “going back to right a wrong” in Iraq.

Kyle styles himself as the purveyor of good over evil, following a meticulous moral code. His version of the US presence in Iraq asserts the military’s strict adherence to rules of engagement – it’s not enough to think an Iraqi is about to engage in war, he says, he’s got to see the person pick up a gun or a grenade. In one instance near the end of the book, Kyle zeroes in on a child dragging a rocket launcher. He doesn’t pull the trigger: “I wasn’t going to kill a kid, innocent or not … I’d have to wait until the savage who put him up to it showed himself on the street.”

In American Sniper, insurgents die with regularity every fire fight, but you can count the number of American casualties on two hands, and each American death or injury is gut-wrenching and memorable. This is partially due to Kyle’s voice and perspective – but it’s also due to the complete disparity in combat casualties between Iraqis and Americans. It’s the amount of training, financial dedication and access to high-tech weaponry and armor that make the pace of Kyle’s autobiography possible.

For a time, Chris Kyle fulfilled the US fantasy of superhuman strength and justice. But then, in early 2013, he died – not on a tour of Iraq but on a gun range, when Eddie Ray Routh, a fellow Iraqi vet with PTSD, snapped and shot him and another man several times. Routh’s double homicide sent shock waves through military and civilian America and made headlines across the globe.

But Routh’s post-service violence is nowhere near uncommon. American soldiers have been fighting for over a decade in the Middle East. They’ve been waging a war for a metaphor – “freedom” – but the reality of what they experience on the ground is wreaking psychological havoc when they return to America. In 2011, the Veterans Administration treated almost 100,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In 2012, 349 active service members committed suicide, outpacing the number of soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan. Chris Kyle’s death is just once instance among many, emphasizing the painful home truth of what happens when a country organizes its identity around violence, dehumanization and martial strength.

Read more on Adbusters.org

Adding diversity in TV content might be the ticket for networks looking to boost ratings, according to Lisa Torres, president of ZenithOptimedia’s multicultural group.

Ms. Torres and crisis communications executive Judy Smith – she inspired the Olivia Pope character played by Kerry Washington on ABC’s “Scandal” – dissected the topic of diversity on TV during a panel moderated by Sallie Mars, senior VP-chief diversity officer at McCann Worldgroup.

Following a short clip of “Scandal,” Ms. Mars asked if writers in Hollywood like Shonda Rhimes are changing “the way we watch TV.” Ms. Torres said, “They naturally write for a world they see, and for a multicultural audience. It’s not deliberate, which makes it authentic.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The land of hipsters (and apparently Drone sightings) has birthed a water brand — and now the rest of the world gets to meet it.

Despite the sustainability criticisms of bottled water, boutique brands in the category continue to crop up. Fred, a brand of spring water whose founders are from Brooklyn, is trying to get the word out to consumers. It’s just named Made Movement, the agency focused solely on American-made brands, as its agency of record.

Madewas started less than a year ago by former CP&B execs; Alex Bogusky has been advising the shop. It will produce all creative work for the water brand as it aims to target a younger, edgier demographic than existing spring-water brands. Its “pocket-friendly” refillable bottles are BPA-free and and can be upcycled into T-shirts after several uses.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A New York Supreme Court judge has overturned Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on large, sugary drinks.

The decision was announced just hours before the ban was to go into effect. Industry groups including the American Beverage Association, the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Theatre Owners and others sued to stop the plan, which was approved by New York City’s Board of Health in September.

At the time, the Board of Health reported receiving 38,701 oral and written comments. Of those, about 32,000 comments were in favor of the proposal, while 6,000 were opposed. One opposing petition, however, included 90,000 signatures.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

“Mindless Behavior: All Around the World,” a concert film about the boy band Mindless Behavior, will run in about 120 AMC theaters.

The company, owned by Disney, says it will pursue a “new direction” in animated programming based on the Star Wars narrative.

First Book, a nonprofit that promotes literacy among children in low-income communities, will give two awards through its Stories for All project to publishers offering multicultural books.

Voici Fabien Oefner, un photographe passionné de couleurs et notamment par les projections de peintures. Avec cette série intitulée « Black Hole », cet artiste nous propose de découvrir l’effet de peintures déposées sur une perceuse puis éjectées. Un résultat splendide à découvrir en images et vidéo.