Click the image for the 2004 American presidential election Ultimate Metaphor:
From Tim at Doctor Recommended.
Lawrence of Cyberia on Arna’s Children:
Arna’s Children won the Best Film award at Prague’s One World Film Festival in April 2004. Days later, it received the Best First Documentary award at the Canadian International Documentary Festival. The following month, it was named Best Documentary at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. Sadly, by the time Arna’s Children received this international recognition, all but one of the movie’s leading characters were already dead.
Fafnir interviews Tim Russert and Robert Novak:
FB: Wow. I wish I could be a real journalist like you guys!
RUSSERT: Oh, journalism isn’t for the faint of heart, Fafnir. You gird your loins every day only in the cloth of justice, and the only thing you’ve got coming to you is a lot of scorn, a lot of enemies, a ton of money, TV appearances, book deals, a promotional boys’ club that props up everything you do…
NOVAK: And the work. You’ve gotta get right in the thick of it. Some days you’ll get a call from the White House giving you something to write, and other days the phone won’t ring – and you’ll have to just make stuff up on your own!
Oh, and speaking of making stuff up, here’s Abu Aardvark on the NYT’s Team Miller and Chalabi.
Arthur Silber on THE USELESS PRESS, AND DEEPER INTO DISASTER.
Julia Child, 1912-2004 by Martial at De Spectaculis
Stupidest press conference ever. While you’re at TalkLeft, check out the post on Bush’s ‘Born-Again Drug War’ “There are faith-based organizations in drug treatment that work so well because they convince a person to turn their life over to Christ,” Bush divulged to the religious journal Christianity Today. “By doing so, they change a person’s heart [and] a person with a changed heart is less likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol.”
Jesse Taylor at pandagon: Annie Jacobsen, discredited paranoid and the white woman who actually made herself seem like more of a terrorist than the 14 Arabic men she says were acting suspiciously, is back, desperately trying to prove her point. She interviews Billie Jo Rodriguez, apparently also a passenger on the flight, and the results are hilarious.
In the last three weeks in Balata alone, soldiers have shot and killed three teenagers, one while he was drinking tea with his friends in the cemetery next to the grave of his relative. There is no reason for the soldiers to be in the camp: often they do not appear to be doing any kind of military operation; they do not arrest anyone; they just seem intent on terrorizing the residents.
The last boy killed was shot from a house which soldiers had occupied up on a hill. The family whose home it is told us that just after the soldier shot the boy, he turned to them and said: “We just shot an Arab boy, now you will hear his screams”.
Aaron Trauring links this story from Amira Hass in Ha’aretz: Gandhi’s grandson to kick off unarmed Palestinian campaign As Aaron says, this is hopeful news.
Yes, I know, everyone is posting it, but for anyone who hasn’t come across the link, here’s Roderick Long’s talk on anarchism from Mises University.
Joe at American Leftist comments on Wolfowitz’s latest brilliant plan:
So Wolfowitz wants $500 million to build a network of “friendly militias”, presumably, in places like the tribal areas of Pakistan: (from “A network of friendly militias to fight terror”, AFP)
The Pentagon urged Congress Tuesday to authorize US$500 million for building a network of friendly militias around the world to purge terrorists from “ungoverned areas” and warned Muslim clerics against providing “ideological sanctuary” to radicals. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, told the House Armed Services Committee the money would be used “for training and equipping local security forces– not just armies — to counter terrorism and insurgencies.”
I think the key here is finding the really really friendly militias. Hey, I know, how about those Afghan jihadists who we funded and trained to fight the Soviets in the 80’s? — I wonder what those guys are up to? …
Joe says he found this story at the Whatever It Is, I’m Against It blog, which I’m glad he linked up because I’d been meaning to blogroll this blog since finding the link over at Left I and forgot about ’til now. Anyhow, check out all WIIIAI’s posts – they’re good. Sample:
The attack on Najaf, which I believe is called Operation Sensitive Resolve, has been postponed in favor of trying to starve the city into submission, but sensitively, or as Colin Powell puts it, “Our forces in Najaf are squeezing the city.” He says the insurgents “don’t understand the spirit of peace and reconciliation” and therefore have to be starved, bombed and shot, in a spirit of peace and reconciliation.
I can remember when I thought Perry de Havilland was a libertarian.
UPDATE: Check out Swopa’s post on the Shi`a descending on Najaf.
About 10,000 demonstrators, some in buses, others on foot, arrived in Najaf on Saturday to show their solidarity with the militants and act as human shields to protect the city.
Many of the demonstrators arrived from as far away as Baghdad, as well as the southern cities of Amarah and Nasiriyah, demanding the interim government’s resignation and an end to the offensive here.