Talk Nation Radio’s Dori Smith interviews Joshua Rubenstein, an expert on the Soviet Gulag Archipeligo about Amnesty International’s comparison of America’s behavior in Guantanamo and elsewhere with the old Soviet gulag.
“Amnesty International will not be backing down,” says Soviet historian Joshua Rubenstein. Rubenstein is the Northeast Regional Director for Amnesty International.
Intro: Welcome to Talk [...]
The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Dori Smith of Talk Nation Radio and heard on WHUS Storrs in Connecticut. Yes, there is a connection, Talk Nation Radio came about in part because of this blog and is another avenue through which issues of the day can be presented. Dori [...]
I just read through this NYTimes review of Spielberg’s new version of the H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds”. It is an interesting review and tends to sum up my sense of today’s moviemaking, i.e. good enough with special effects covering up for inadequate scripts and acting. But it wasn’t the review itself [...]
From Tild
Wow, Donald Rumsfeld said the other day in an interview with Faux News’ newsreader Chris Wallace that “We’re not going to win against the insurgency”. I’m jaded enough now not to be surprised that such a statement has blown completely past the media with hardly a comment about this tacit admission of impotence by [...]
posted by trina in Currents.
The Washington Post apparently is feeling the heat for its atrocious coverage of the DSM last week. Dana Milbank’s snide, childish column generated a storm of protest to the Post.
But more importantly, although they haven’t admitted it, Michael Smith, the reporter who received the documents, has revealed that he got [...]
From the NYTimes today, Nicholas Kristoff reminds us that this administration is pretty much a complete failure in every area of leadership.
“I think the greatest threat to our future is our fiscal irresponsibility,” warns David Walker, the comptroller general of the United States. Mr. Walker, an accountant by training, asserts that last year may have [...]
posted by trina in TheWar forum.
Sid, if I read the history of just two decades, the fifties and the sixties, this is what I see. In the fifties a really frightening acceptance of extremism in the form of McCarthyism. An atmosphere of fear and paranoia created by the extreme right, which we now know encouraged [...]
posted by Monica Benderman in TheWar forum.
From our personal perspective, I can say that the very dreams that hold a soldier together while he is trying to survive in a combat zone (being with family again, family vacation, home, sleeping in their own bed, driving their own vehicle, extended family reunions, going out to dinner, [...]
posted by edandbunkie in TheWar
here is an article with voicemails from a soldier in Iraq speaking up against the war. people here have transcribed these and if i find them, i’ll post. they may be putting them on KOS.
also, here’s this soldier’s blog. please spread this info far and wide, in case it is stopped.
also [...]
If you’ve got the bandwidth, watch this video and make up your own mind. It’s a good thing he has a limousine because the bartender would take his keys for sure.
Tom Delay, righteous, religious, running the country. Make up your own mind.
The Mahablog lets loose with a couple of good rants, here and here.
I don’t know what depresses me more, the arrogance of the Rovians in their eagerness to defame half of America or impotence of the Democrats in standing by their words. Let a Karl Rove piss on his fellow Americans (and be utterly [...]
Worth a visit. The words of Liberal warriors who made the committment neither Rove nor most others in this adminstration have the integrity to make.
Take it to Karl
Needless to say, my family strongly resents Karl Rove’s comments. Karl Rove never served, my family has. If Karl Rove and the Republican Party wants to villify [...]
Hot on the heels of the comments on the Senate floor by Senator Dick Durbin of Ohio recounting the report of an FBI agent detailing an incident of torture at Gitmo we now have this report:
Military doctors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice [...]
Paul Krugman, in today’s NYTimes column, keeps hammering away on what, to me, is the critical issue of the Iraq mess. How we got into that mess and who is responsible, matters above all else. We cannot begin to address correcting the error until we not only admit the error but hold those [...]
posted by edandbunkie in TheWar
Pentagon Creating Student Database
Recruiting Tool For Military Raises Privacy Concerns
“http://www.vaiw.org/vet/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file= article&sid=1603″
The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in [...]
Wow. David Brooks, the New York Times resident buffoon, really outdoes himself today.
There’s a reason George Washington didn’t take a poll at Valley Forge. There are times in the course of war when the outcome is simply unknowable. Victory is clearly not imminent, yet people haven’t really thought through the consequences of defeat. Everybody [...]
For anyone who thinks the election of 2004 is merely interesting history I point you to this website, where they are covering the Ohio scandal known as “Coingate”. [editorial aside: we could do the known universe a huge favor by retiring "gate" as a suffix once and for all]
For those of you who haven’t heard [...]
As a followup to my post yesterday Against Self Interest, I found this entry by Representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont which illustrates my point perfectly. He’s an Independent from Vermont who votes with the Democrats but breaks with them on many issues where they lean too far rightward. And he gets elected term [...]
From Riverbend, read the whole entry in her blog.
Detentions and assassinations, along with intermittent electricity, have also been contributing to sleepless nights. We’re hearing about raids in many areas in the Karkh half of Baghdad in particular. On the television the talk about ‘terrorists’ being arrested, but there are dozens of people being rounded up [...]