Let us join in what is surely widespread linkage to this excellent post by Juan Cole, who completely demolishes that prime squeaker of pip, Dennis Prager. Said pipsqueak had published a copious upchucking of ignorant racist bile in the Los Angeles Times.
Muslims and the Five Questions
From the New York Times and The Guardian; offered without comment because the stories speak for themselves.
Torture Alleged at Ministry Site Outside Baghdad (NYT)
173 prisoners found beaten and starved in Iraq government bunker (Guardian)
Excerpts: Iraq’s government said Tuesday
that it had ordered an urgent investigation of allegations that many of
the 173 detainees American troops discovered over the weekend in the
basement of an Interior Ministry building in a Baghdad suburb had been
tortured by their Iraqi captors. A senior Iraqi official who visited
the detainees said two appeared
From AP (via Antiwar.com): The Iraqi army and multinational forces violated international law during
military operations in western Iraq last month by arresting doctors and
occupying medical facilities, a U.N. report said Monday. The five-page
report, from the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq, said military
operations by the two forces had “a negative impact on human rights”
and cited figures that more than 10,000 families have been displaced in
two restive provinces – Anbar and Nineveh – alone.
Amy Goodman has a remarkable interview with Tony Lagouranis,
a conscience-stricken former Army interrogator in Iraq. Lagouranis
arrived after the worst of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, yet found fresh
hell awaiting, especially out in the field, where U.S. forces were
torturing Iraqis in their own homes. It’s an important piece that
should be read in full, but below are some excerpts. (Note: There seems
to be a chunk of the transcript repeated in the middle on the Democracy
Now site, but it will probably be fixed soon.)
AMY GOODMAN: You were in Fallujah?
TONY LAGOURANIS: Right.
Just when you think the sick and sinister Bush gangsters have hit bottom, they blow a hole in the floor and drag us down even deeper.
I will be writing on the Senate’s evisceration of habeas corpus in this week’s upcoming Moscow Times column, but meanwhile, below is an excellent article by Sabin Willett in the WP, Detainees Deserve Court Trials, which sums up the case well. Meanwhile, David Cole, in Slate, demolishes the double standard that Bush is employing to torture his foreign captives while claiming that he is not violating U.S. laws
We have been most remiss in not linking people to this important story by John Gorenfield: Ambassadaor de Sade. (From Alternet, via Mark Levine via Buzzflash.) It’s a chilling account of how cruelty and corruption always rise to the top, like heavy scum, in the Bush Administration. This is a horror story that spreads its tentacles deep into the power structure of the American elite, and shows the preciptious decline in honor, morality, reason and compassion in American society under the relentless pressure of the right-wing money/ideology machine. Gorenfield’s reporting is, as always, vigorous and piercing. Excerpts just won’t do; read
There has been much throwing about of brains in the
American media regarding the upheavals in France, but very very little
sense. For that, we must look elsewhere — specifically, to Jason Burke
in The Observer, who provides us with this succinct and savvy overview.
Excerpt: First, the facts.
According to the French intelligence services, the areas where radical
Islamic ideologies have spread furthest in France have actually proved
the calmest over recent weeks. Second, characterising the rioters as
‘Muslim’ at all is ludicrous. Most were as Westernised as you would<br
Below is a vastly expanded and reworked version of a column originally published in the Nov. 11 edition of the Moscow Times. For my first MT report on chemical warfare in Fallujah, see Filter Tips. For a report on the destruction of the city as it was happening, see Ring of Fire, from November 2004.
This week, the broadcast of a shattering new documentary provided fresh confirmation of a gruesome war crime covered by this column nine months ago: the use of ch<IMG style="WIDTH: 305px; HEIGHT: 205px" height=326 hspace=2
It’s very easy — and often important — to become engrossed in the fine details of the immediate politics of the day. But, as George Eliot noted, “there must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry;” the mind “must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass.” The object-glass is daily politics; but on the broader horizon of inquiry, there are vast forces at work — environmental, economic, social — whose interrelated movements, like the slow grinding of tectonic plates, will bring forth unanticipated shifts and cataclysms in the politics
Empire Burlesque’s masterful webmaster, Rich Kastelein, has shown his mastery once again with this package he has put together on the shattering new documentary by Italian television, confirming — once again — the use of chemical warfare in the Bush-ordered destruction of Fallujah last November. Rich provides links to some of the film’s harrowing evidence, plus interviews with former U.S. soldiers who were on the scene.
The film is shocking and powerful — but it shouldn’t be news. Credible evidence of American use of white phosphorous shells and napalm in Fallujah was presented in public