meta-roj

Mass rape atrocity in west Sudan [bbc]

Mr Kapila said 75 people were killed in the attack on the village of Tawila at sunrise by Arab militiamen two weeks ago.

“All houses as well as a market and a health centre were completely looted and the market burnt. Over 100 women were raped, six in front of their fathers who were later killed, ” he said.

A further 150 women and 200 children were abducted.

i wonder if there’s a “mad man” involved that we could do something about… because you know you can’t wait around to do something if you’re dealing with a “mad man.”

bringing down the democratic leaders….

not terrorists. not wars. but lies.

well, gay people getting married is a big story in america, but if you really want to get to the whole sanctity of marriage question, perhaps a quick glance across the equator will shed some light:

Church slams Chile divorce plans

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Chile has criticised government plans to introduce the nation’s first divorce laws.

according to the article, if this goes through, that will leave malta (a mediterranean island-nation “slightly less than twice the size of washington, dc”) as the only democratic nation without legal divorce.

perhaps there’s enough room on this democratic bastion of solid marriage values for all the righteous sanctity of marriage advocates?

aw, geeezz… you had to open with coffins and piles of rubble?

daniel ellsburg on npr’s morning edition

i remember former senator wayne morris telling me in 1971 that if i’d given him the relevant documents from my safe at the pentagon in 1964, the tonkin gulf resolution would never have made it out of committee, and if it had been brought to a vote, it never would have passed. that’s a heavy burden to bear.

i admire katherine gun for recognizing what she should do sooner than i did. she did all that she could, at personal risk, to save lives.

i would also like to say to all those with access to documents that may shed light on official deceptions: don’t do as i did. don’t wait until thousands have died to tell the public and congress the truth they need. the personal risks are real, but a war’s worth of lives may be at stake.

groupthink and political agendas drive the pentagon under the bush administration. it sure seems like it from the outside, and recently, la weekly interviewed a now-retired pentagon officer, giving us a view from the inside.

USAF Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in la weekly

I remember in one case, I had to rewrite something a number of times before it went through. It was a background paper on Libya, and Libya has been working for years to try and regain the respect of the international community. I had intelligence that told me this, and I quoted from the intelligence, but they made me go back and change it and change it. They’d make me delete the quotes from intelligence so they could present their case on Libya in a way that said it was still a threat to its neighbors and that Libya was still a belligerent, antagonistic force. They edited my reports in that way. In fact, the last report I made, they said, “Just send me the file.” And I don’t know what the report ended up looking like, because I imagine more changes were made.

for more (please remain seated and keep your arms in the car), soldiers for the truth and the insider notes from the pentagon archives.

[metafilter gave me an excuse to get this public]

a few days ago, the fcc told congress that low power fm wasn’t the most evil thing in the universe, despite heavy lobbying from the more established radio industry (hi clearchannel). a good thing.

just write a check for… oh… $24, 138 or so, and we’ll call it even.

(that’s only 4687 hours at minimum wage)

update: us consumer debt went through $2 trillion back in january.

Court upholds Ryan’s clearing of death row

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that former Gov. George Ryan had the constitutional authority to block the executions of all 167 Death Row inmates last year.

…

Ryan gave commutations to 167 inmates and pardoned four others in January 2003, three years after imposing a moratorium on the death penalty. His actions stemmed from the high court’s reversal of 13 Death Row cases because defendants were shown to be innocent or wrongly convicted.

167 persons spared the ultimate retribution of the state

forgetting for a moment the question of all the new airline security measures that are supposed to make us safer, but target children and let fish slip through…

the old news is that brazil decided to give the united states a taste of it’s own prescription – and started fingerprinting and photographing americans on entry to the country.

the new news – an american airlines pilot gave the brazilian federal police the finger, and ended up with a $12,000+ fine.

matheus baraldi magnani (federal prosecutor) international herald tribune

Since this was a minor crime I proposed that he be fined 36,000 reals, which will later be donated to a home for the elderly,

they’re trying to make a point, and we (americans) seem to be just too thick to get it. we’re spending $380 million (or more) a year to do this fingerprint-and-photo deal at the border, and it’s going to net us nothing but animosity.