International Blog Roundup

International Blog Roundup

I thought it might be interesting to some AntiWar readers if I put together a post of links to some good blogs written from interesting places that you might not have discovered yet. These are all active blogs that are worth checking daily.

  • De Spectaculis – This blog is written by Martial, an American in Kabul, Afghanistan.
  • wildfirejo – Written by a British woman in Baghdad, who is a performer in Circus2Iraq. Jo is also involved in many humanitarian efforts in Iraq and recently helped take medical supplies to Fallujah.
  • Beyond Northern Iraq – Written by Stuart Hughes, a journalist who lost his leg (Mr. Stumpy) to a landmine in April, 2003 during the Iraq invasion. Stuart is a BBC reporter now in London, but he blogs from everywhere.
  • Raed in the Middle – Written by Raed Jarrar who originally blogged on Salam Pax’s blog Where is Raed? Raed blogs from Amman, Jordan and Baghdad, where his family lives.
  • The Religious Policeman – Yes, there is actually brave blogger writing from Saudi Arabia. Alhamedi Alanezi amazingly blogs from Riyadh. He even has a FAQ, in which he explains how he manages to be critical of the Saudi government.
  • The Angry Arab – Written by As`ad AbuKhalil, who is from Beirut, Lebanon, but has lived in the US since the early eighties and is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley.

Of course there are quite a few other bloggers out there telling their stories, and more come online all the time but I listed these because they are frequently updated and often have unique insights that can’t be found in the mainstream media.

Fallujah Wanted Poster

Al Jazeera reports that the “Islamic resistance in Iraq” is offering a bounty for Rumsfeld, Sanchez and Kimmitt. This flyer is reported to have been distributed in Fallujah:

wantedinfallujah

It says 15 000 000 $ as a reward who bring one of these three heads. It doesn’t say anything about the body being attached.

Big Brother Alive and Well at WND

Guest Blog from Ken Wooley:

The one indispensable element that people such as you and “Faux” require to work their mischief is compliant flesh. Bush and his crew need their sweat, in the form of taxes, to finance their global escapades. They also need their blood, when required, to go out and put down anyone who does not agree with them. It appears that, in the most recent of their adventures, the Iraqis have not quite figured out that they are being “liberated” yet and it is requiring the sacrifice of young blood to convince them otherwise. Paul Roberts makes the excellent point in his article “Colonizing Iraq” that we have accomplished all of the stated goals for invading Iraq so why do we plan to stay there for years or decades? As more and more Americans begin to ponder that question the role of your “news” operation becomes increasingly obvious.

Your job, and choice, is not to do the fighting and the dying but to do the convincing so that the flesh remains compliant. WND has taken on the mantle of keeping the faithful convinced that America is on God’s chosen mission to make the world safe from whoever or whatever you depict as a threat or enemy. Should they begin to waver or doubt there are always fresh stories or “intelligence” that hints of finding the WMD or a new plot by Osama, etc., etc., forthcoming. On the home front there is the continuous flow of bile from the likes of Hugh Spewitt, Anne Coulter and other Republican hacks whose jobs are to demonize anything and everything about the Democratic party and their candidates.

The fundamental flaw in your reasoning is that, like Bush, you have to resort to, or in your case advocate, the wholesale killing and slaughter of those who do not agree with your ideas. Joe Farah is on record for calling for the killing of the inhabitants and the leveling of the towns of anyone who resists “Iraqi Freedom”. He has also endorsed the Israeli helicopter assasinations. Excerpt from “Advocating Terror”… :

Thus, in a rabid, but sadly not untypical, response to the murder of four Americans in Fallujah, the journalist Joseph Farah urged us ‘to make an example’ out of the Iraqi city. ‘We may need to flatten Fallujah,’ he wrote. ‘We may need to destroy it. We may need to grind it, pulverise it and salt the soil. … Here’s an opportunity to show that it doesn’t pay to resort to barbarism and terrorism.’ (Irony is not Farah’s strong point.)”

He is also on record calling for the silencing of anyone that disagrees with approved US policy and who is critical of the president.

Of course one will never find any of you out on the battle field with a weapon. Your weapon is the word processor and the poison that flows forth from it. The poison that gets impressionable young men like Pat Tillman wound up and eventually killed or maimed. The poison that keeps oblivious Americans putting bumper stickers and flags on their vehicles that say they “support the troops” while having little or no idea of what the troops are actually fighting for. The poison that keeps a large segment of the American public believing the lies that Saddam had WMD, Nukes and was in cahoots with Osama. The poison that gets them to elect naive dunderheads like Bush who believe that their calling is to save the world while the nation falls apart back here at home.

Joe Farah claims he wants to “take back America”… God save us all if Farah ever gets to be in charge. He would make Bush & Cheney look like pikers.

~ Ken Wooley

A Project for the Neocons

Ted Koppel intends to read aloud the list of 530 troops killed in action in Iraq, while showing a photo of each captioned with their hometown and age on Nightline. Koppel claims the inspiration for the program is the famous Life magazine June 1969 issue, which published the pictures of all the Americans killed in one week in Vietnam.

Neocon spokesbot William Kristol has denounced the program, calling it a “stupid statement.” Kristol claims to be offended because reading the names of the Iraq invasion dead neglects those killed in Afghanistan.

I agree with Kristol that it is unfair to leave any of the dead in Afghanistan and Iraq unnamed. I propose that Kristol and whatever other neocon warfloggers he can get to help him should be allowed to read the names of all the Afghanis and Iraqis killed in the WOT so far. Surely we can get someone to donate a few hundred hours of airtime for such a worthy project.