(UPDATED BELOW) We hear a lot about barbarism and backwardness and bloodthirstiness among the nations of the Middle East, where violent religious extremists are praised and supported — and often hold state power. A lot of this is hype and misinformation, of course, but sometimes it’s all too true. From the Guardian: An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday. … The soldier,

"Midnight Vow": a video, of sorts. One for the late shift….    

Never, ever let it be said that the Peacer Laureate’s administration is not one of progressivistic enlightenment. I mean, just look at the sensitivity being displayed by the Obama administration toward its captives in its Guantanamo concentration camp. The Miami Herald reports: Here’s a new twist in the U.S. military’s Islamic sensitivity effort in the prison camps for suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay Navy base: Military medical staff are force-feeding a secret number of prisoners on hunger strike between dusk and dawn during the Muslim fasting holiday of Ramadan. The prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Bradley Fagan: … “Detainees

The Peace Laureate and his apologists – along with all the well-wadded neoconmen and their strange bedfellows, the liberal interventionists – may like to proclaim that the Iraq War is over (and we won!), but those actually fighting the war know that – as Cab Calloway liked to say of the stories you’re liable to read in the Bible – it ain’t necessarily so. From the Army Times: Combat brigades in Iraq under different name. As the final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., entered Kuwait early Thursday, a different Stryker brigade

To borrow once more the immortal words of As’ad AbuKhalil, “for those who care and do not care,” my recent interview with Scott Horton at Antiwar Radio is now up. As you can see from these comments (by “eppie”) attached to the Antiwar post of the interview, my intellectual acumen really wowed the folks out there. To wit: It wasn’t necessarily ‘luck’ that brought us a ‘second Pearl Harbor’, but I wouldn’t expect a pseudointellectual like Floyd to recognize that. And it’s perfectly obvious at this point that Obama has pivoted decisively towards war with Iran, and it’s clear that

Here it comes: with the bizarre "rape-no rape" charges against Julian Assange, the War Machine’s assault against Wikileaks has now begun in earnest. These days, the powers-that-be don’t go straight to the shiv in the back or the poison in the drink or the faked suicide or the tragic car accident on a dark road; no, today we are a bit more circumspect in taking down high-profile irritants of empire. The modern way is to begin the takedown with a smear campaign — preferably some sort of ""moral turpitude" to sully their public image and discredit their entire cause. And

In a week when the American establishment has been ludicrously lauding "the end" of the most decidedly unended war in Iraq, a new book takes us back to the very heart of darkness in this still ongoing war crime, which is nowhere near its end. In the Guardian, novelist and Vietnam War veteran Edward Wilson reviews what he calls "the best book by far about the Iraq war": Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent Into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, by Jim Frederick. The book tells the story of the horrific rape and multiple murder carried out one night by

Buried many fathoms deep in an LA Times story about the latest American scolding of its unruly satrap in Bactria, we find this little nugget: Some senior officials are saying privately that they fear their reliance on the Karzai administration could be the weakest link of their strategy to stabilize the country. Government corruption is seen as one of the most important factors driving ordinary Afghans to support the Taliban. … Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the newly appointed head of the international forces in the country, has hired two experts known for their strong emphasis on fighting corruption, Frederick

(UPDATED BELOW) Flights of Imagination As I noted here the other day (in a piece that went over like ye olde lead balloon), many things are still possible in this world; there are many ways in which we could be reshaping some of the present abominable realities that beset us. Tom Englehardt presents a few possibilities for profound change in our militarist empire — although, sadly, these must be offered more as thought experiments, due to the extreme unlikelihood of their adoption as policy by our blood-soaked, morally lobotomized elites. Still, any genuine change begins, at some point, as an

There was great rejoicing on the port side of the blogosphere this weekend after Barack Obama took the “brave step” of announcing “his support for the Ground Zero mosque.” (There was also much rejoicing on the starboard side as well, as it “proved” the Right’s contention that Obama is a double-secret Islamic Muslim Moslem Mohammedan out to convert every American into Islamic Muslim Moslems.) Even stern critics of many aspects of the Obama regime declared that here, at last, the pusillanimous progressive prez had taken a worthy stand, and should be praised. [I confess that I have never understood this