The worst part of all this may be the fact that National Security officials don’t even have enough respect for the American public and media to create a new propaganda script; like some budget-strapped studio executives eager to push a worthless sequel to the market, they instead just lazily haul out the last script that was used with only the most cosmetic changes
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6 February 2012
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2 February 2012
Lessons from Iraqi outrage over US drones — www.salon.com — Readability
“If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country,” said Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, 57, an engineer from the northern city of Mosul.
Hisham Mohammed Salah, 37, an Internet cafe owner in Mosul, said he did not differentiate between surveillance drones and the ones that fire missiles. “We hear from time to time that drone aircraft have killed half a village in Pakistan and Afghanistan under the pretext of pursuing terrorists,” Mr. Salah said. “Our fear is that will happen in Iraq under a different pretext.”
Those barbarians.
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18:42
Lessons from Iraqi outrage over US drones
So militarized is U.S. foreign policy — and so reviled is the U.S. in Iraq — that even when it “withdraws” from that country, it maintains a presence that is so large and menacing as to be unimaginable in most other countries around the world: basically the equivalent of a small army.
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29 January 2012
When the West invokes human rights concerns to justify an attack on a dictator whom it has long tolerated (and often even supported), that is rather compelling evidence that human rights is the packaging for the war, not the goal. The fact that it is not the goal means more than just another war sold deceitfully based on pretexts: it means that human rights concerns will not drive what happens after the invasion is completed.
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27 January 2012
Rules of American justice
“It’s just another barbaric act of Americans against Iraqis,” al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. “They spill the blood of Iraqis and get this worthless sentence for the savage crime against innocent civilians.”
Do we think we can condone war crimes without anyone noticing? Without paying for it later?
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11 December 2011
To the extent the word means anything operationally, it is: he who effectively opposes the will of the U.S. and its allies.
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3 November 2011
Robert Levine on Why Copyright is Good for the Internet | Adweek
Why won’t “free” work on the Internet? On the one hand, there is a public interest that the New York Times should be free online, but if it’s free, the NYT won’t send reporters to Iraq.
Try not to laugh. He thinks he’s making a Serious Point.
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5 September 2011
The DOJ's escalating criminalization of speech
Over the past several years, the Justice Department has increasingly attempted to criminalize what is clearly protected political speech by prosecuting numerous individuals (Muslims, needless to say) for disseminating political views the government dislikes or considers threatening.
We’re trying to throw a kid in jail for 23 years because he uploaded some videos (just our abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and stuff) to YouTube. This is the civilized version of bombing a house to destroy evidence of war crimes.
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31 August 2011
Alston’s letter reveals that a US airstrike was launched on the house presumably to destroy the evidence
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7 May 2011
Yes, eight years after the invasion of Iraq, the country has been liberated from a corrupt and brutal one-party dictatorship, so that it can enjoy a new political system in which the people cast votes for their government, and then other people murder the officials of that government. And then still other people murder more people in reprisal. It’s sort of like instant-runoff voting, only in reverse, and with bullets.
