Annals of Liberation: Everyday Hell on Haifa Street
This is the day the Dear Leader hath made for his beloved children, the people of Iraq:
My name is Lina Massufi. I’m a 32-year-old laboratory assistant who works 10 hours a day just to make enough money to raise my children.
My life has been like hell over the past three months. US and Iraqi soldiers have raided m<span
Untruth and Consequences: The Reality Behind Iran War Rhetoric
Excerpts: Iran’s efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology. Iran’s uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.
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Friendly Fire? Another Look at Brazen Raid in Iraq
Excerpt: In perhaps the boldest and most sophisticated attack in four years of warfare, gunmen speaking English, wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons abducted four U.S. soldiers last week at the provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and then shot them to death…
The brazen assault, 50 miles south of Baghdad, was conducted by nine to 12 gunmen
Death and Dishonor: Bush’s New Assassination Order
The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort…
Three officials said that about 150 Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Command, are believed to
Blogging a Dead Horse; or The Ballad of Luther Baldwin
It so happens that family business has taken me back to the Homeland where, for once, I am in a position to see the Dear Leader in action live. The newpapers and tube jibber-jabberers have been a-twitter all day about the SOTU by the POTUS. It has been a salutary shock for me to see how seriously the good gray geese in the media take the blood-soaked kabuki in the Beltway, especially tonight’s tissue of lies and spin and desperate pitches for applause.
In the years since I escaped the reach of the deafening, maddening echo chamber
Jimmy Carter Destroys the World
Jon Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution gives a demonstration on how a U.S. president could make the Earth explode without the use of nuclear weapons: by employing a far more dangerous substance — the truth. Below is an excerpt from the post, in which a fictionalized Jimmy Carter gives a forthright answer to criticism of his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. It is, of course, and sadly, a fantasy: It’s also important to understand why many in the third world, Muslim and not, feel so strongly about Palestine. Here in the U.S. people often ask exactly the question you just
Rising From Their Knees: New Bill Strikes Blow at Oil Barons
The measure passed 264 to 163, with many Republicans joining a bloc of Democrats…The bill will rescind $7.6 billion in tax breaks for oil drillers that Congress passed in 2004 and 2005 and will
Court Circular: Richard Cohen and the Apologists of Power
If you would like to know how a ruling clique really works, with its vast army of retainers and court
iers scurrying Osric-like to serve the needs of power, you need look no further than Richard Cohen’s latest column in the Washington Post. The good folks at Sadly, No! picked out the choice passage below for special
Live Burlesque with Antiwar Radio
No, it’s not Gypsy Rose Lee shaking that thing to bring the troops home, but just your humble correspondent talking with — or rather, talking at — Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio. You can hear a tape of the talk here. (By the way, I’m not actually speaking from the bottom of a tin can with a clothespin on my nose; it just sounds that way through the transatlantic wires from Oxford to Austin. In real life, of course, I sound — and, oddly enough, look — just like Clark Gable. Go know, eh?)
Burnt Offering: 3,000 Sacrifices to Greed and Folly
A few weeks ago, I was asked to write a piece about the 3,000th American military casualty in Iraq. For various reasons of scheduling, time pressures, etc., the piece never ran. But I thought I’d offer it here – even though that grim milestone is now receding in the distance as we surge toward ever-greater levels of pointless death. This is a somewhat revised version of the original, which