"The lead headline in last Monday's Los Angeles Times was "Iraqi City Lies in Ruins." That would be Fallujah, a metro area of 300,000 people that many Americans had never heard of until we felt impelled to destroy it. And our reasons were neither trivial nor contemptible. They followed with confident logic from the premise that Saddam Hussein was an intolerable danger to the United States. If so, he had to be taken down. And if that destabilized the country, we had to occupy it for a while and calm it down. And you can't run a national occupation with rebels occupying a major city, so you have to besiege the city and kill a lot of people and leave the place "in ruins." An American general in Vietnam famously said, "We had to destroy the village to save it." This has become the definitive expression of the macabre futility of war. Last week we destroyed an entire city to save it (progress!)"

Rights Groups Cite Pattern Of Abuse by Nepal's Army: U.S. Gave $22 Million to Forces.

Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos: Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion.

Chaos in Iraq Imperils Voting.

"The US wants to base at least 10 missiles in Europe for the "son of Star Wars" missile defence system within the next five years."

All Jamaicans are threatened by a culture of homophobia.

Don't think that Israel has stopped killing Palestinians just because Arafat is dead. Those two kids (15, 16) were shot by Israeli forces yesterday. This is Zionism. 

"The International Red Cross has made an unprecedented appeal for an end to human rights abuses in Iraq, saying it is 'deeply concerned' at the impact of the fighting in the country and at apparent failures by all sides in the conflict to respect humanitarian laws."

Bush loves this dictatorship. Tunisia : Behind the Western mask.

Rev. Graham, who never met a US war that he did not bless, who admired segregation, and who used to sit with Richard Nixon and engage in antiSemitic talks, offers his views on Iraq: "It's a Bible country as far as history is concerned and the Garden of Eden is there and Adam and Eve were there."

In Arkansas, 75 percent of state legislative races this year were uncontested by either the Republicans or by the Democrats. The same was true of 73 percent of the seats in Florida, 70 percent in South Carolina, 62 percent in New Mexico. And Congressional races were an embarrassment. Only seven incumbents in the House of Representatives lost their seats this month. Four of those were in Texas, where the Republican Legislature gerrymandered Democrats out of their seats.

"Sentier dans les coquelicots, île Saint-Martin", 1880. Monet.
 

'The war is over, but there is no peace ... and the killings go on'.

As U.S. Forces Raided a Mosque.

Here we go again: "US accusations on Iran 'based on single source'."

Maryellen tells me that there is an embedded pop-up ad on the site. I do not see it on my home computer where I have tons of protective shields and firewalls. But it is not an ad by me. I was offered an ad placement but said no. Maybe if I was offered a payment in potatoes I would have accepted. I told Neal about the problem and if it persists we can change the company for the Angry Poll which is responsible for this problem. Neal thinks that I should post less, and pontificate more. I was complaining to him about how much time this site is consuming.

Televangelical tentacles.

This is Zionism: This picture from 2003 was published in an Israeli newspaper. It shows an Israeli soldier "posing" with his boot on the chest of a dead Palestinian.

Sudan factions promise UN to finalise peace deal this year (the deal will allow the Sudanese government and its puppet criminal militia to continue the killing the Dharfur).

"One-third of President George W. Bush's top 2000 fundraisers or their spouses were appointed to positions in his first administration, from ambassadorships in Europe to seats on policy-setting boards, an Associated Press review found. The perks for 246 "pioneers" who raised at least $100,000 also included overnight stays at the White House and Camp David, parties at the White House and Bush's Texas ranch, state dinners with world leaders and overseas travel with U.S. delegations to the Olympics and other events, the review found."

Cultural sensivity in Iraq. An Arabic newspaper (Al-Quds Al-Arabi) printed this picture on the 1st page. 

46 Groups Will Boycott Iraq puppet Vote.

Descending from Karmil by Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish (my translation):
(Part I)
To a day that specifies me a arendezvouz,
I said to Karmil: Now I depart.
And the sea spreads between the sky
and the entrance to my wound
And I go toward a horizon
that bows down over us, and prays
for us, or breaks it. This land
resembles us
when we come to it.
And it resembles us when
we depart from it.
I left its features behind me,
and its name was walking
in front of me
calling its features and my
explosion. I left the
maternity bed
I left a tomb prepared
for any talk...
I left that who was pained
by my hand.
I left that whose hands hurt me.
Looking for a lover five minutes
after my departure.
To a day that specifies me
a rendezvous, I said to the Karmil:
Now I depart.
The bullet passes near
my forehead, and it collects me
like the kiss collects the lips
And a pomegranate is born
between the rocks that domesticated
me, and it makes me lovers
far away..far away.
And the sea spreads between the sky
and the entrance to my wound...
(to be continued)

US Congress will find this cute: Israelis aided Ivory Coast military in attacks. (thanks Alex).

Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor, Le Havre,
1874. Monet. 

Unlikely Challenge in Shiite Province:
Resistance in Maysan to rule by outsiders poses problems for British troops and underscores uncertainty over Iraq's future as a viable state.

93% of Americans who supported the war in Afghanistan should read this: Afghanistan: a nation abandoned to drugs. Country produces 87% of global opium. One in ten Afghans works in opium trade. UN: state is world's second worst to live in.

Heroin addicts for Bush.

Oh, really?? Allawi aide says election deadline looks more and more unrealistic.

"THE global managing editor of British news agency Reuters said today the US military was entirely to blame for the deaths of three of its employees in Iraq since the start of the war there in March 2003."

Waiting in line..to be "liberated" (in Iraq). 

Newsman Who Taped Marine Shooting Captive Keeps Silent: "On www.kevinsites.net, his Web site, Mr. Sites has posted photographs and writings from the days he spent with the marines in Falluja. In one journal, he wrote, "The marines are operating with liberal rules of engagement." It goes on to quote a marine saying everything to the west of his position in Falluja was "weapons free." It continues, "Weapons free means the marines can shoot whatever they see - it's all considered hostile."

Evidence of surgical strike. 

"Fallujans in Flight: Transit Camps Are Not Much Safer Than Siege They Left."

"People around the globe largely mistrust their political leaders and nearly half fear the world will be less safe for their children."

Israeli forces kill 3 Egyptian soldiers, and the Egyptian government is too scared of US and Israel to protest (thanks Matt).

Cultural sensitivity in Fallujah. This will really contribute to Bush's efforts to win "hearts and minds" in Iraq, and the Muslim world in general. 

"The recapture of Fallujah has not broken the insurgents' will to fight and may not pay the big dividend U.S. planners had hoped to improve security enough to hold national elections in Sunni Muslim areas of central Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi assessments."

"The Israeli army is looking into allegations that combat soldiers desecrated the body of a Palestinian in Gaza and posed for a picture alongside the ravaged corpse."

There is no person who is more unprincipled than Bill Clinton, who has just opened a $165 million monument to his person today. Only Clinton can claim to like both Bush and Kerry. But then again, this is a man who was for welfare and against it, for affirmative action and against it, for the 1991 Gulf war and against it, etc. Thomas Friedman reminds of Clinton in his wishy washy columns. You know that I detest this columnist (I cannot believe that I once shared a panel with him which allowed him to refer to me as "my friend As`ad"). This is somebody who thinks that he is witty and is not, who thinks that he is funny and is not, who thinks that he is insightful and is not, and who thinks that he is wise, and is not. Like Clinton, he stands for the thing and its opposite, to use the Hegelian framework. (It is an insult to the composition of the brain to use "Hegel" and "Thomas Friedman" in the same sentence). Read this passage from his column today: typical. He has been for the Iraq war but also with the critics: "I'd say the score is still 4 to 4. We can still emerge with a decent outcome. And the whole thing could still end very badly. There's only one thing one can say for sure today: you won't need to wait much longer for the tipping point. Either the elections for a new governing body happen by the end of January, as scheduled, and the rout of Saddam loyalists in Falluja is consolidated and extended throughout the Sunni triangle, or not. If it's the former, there are still myriad challenges ahead, but you can be somewhat hopeful. If it's the latter, we've got a total fiasco on our hands." Look at this brilliant analysis here: he is saying that it is either going to succeed or fail. In the same vein, Thomas Friedman predicts that it will either rain tomorrow or it will not. He also expects the stock market to either go up, or...(brace yourselves) down. Wow. And this guy gets paid for this.

Who are they fooling? Or are they that stupid? US media are now peddling the US government propaganda claims to the effect that Abu Mus`ab Az-Zarqawi's "headquarters" were found in Fallujah. "Headquarters"? Do they really think that this person had a fixed "headquarters" with receptionists and waiting rooms and a beverage dispenser for visitors? Zarqawi is a fanatical kook but would he keep a "headquarter"? In other news, in the fanatical websites of Al-Qa`idah and its allies they are defaming the recent victim Margaret Hassan. This woman devoted her life to helping Iraqis, and now they are spreading lies about her after her gruesome murder by terrorists (whoever they are). (And why would Robert Fisk (who I admire) thinks that Zarqawi killers were not guilty of killing her? They are defaming her on their websites already? And it would not be the first time that they would kill an innocent person). Zarqawi and Al-Qa`idah by the way found ways to justify not only their killing of innocent civilians, but also of innocent civilian Muslims. Bin Laden first did that in the interview with Al-Quds Al-`Arabi in 1998, and now they do that causally in their websites and their literature. They merely resort to a disgusting fatwa by the fanatical guru Ibn Taymiyya, who is lionized by Wahhabi fanatics.

(Poppies, Near Argenteuil), 1873. Monet.
 

How dare he oppose US attacks and bombing: "US forces have detained the deputy head of Iraq's interim parliament and senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party in a dawn raid on his Baghdad home."

Even Pentagon's propagandist Jackie Spinner is saying this: "Fallujah Residents Emerge, Find 'City of Mosques' in Ruins."

U.S. Troop Death Toll This Month Nears 100. (Should you not call for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq if you really care about the troops?)