78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it."
[more inside]
posted by carter
on Jan 29, 2012 -
15 comments
America's Secret War: charming Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to the Iraq-Iran border to investigate claims that the United States is supporting militant groups that are attacking Iran.
posted by Surfin' Bird
on Oct 23, 2008 -
31 comments
Is This a 'Victory'? "We hear again and again from Washington that we have turned a corner in Iraq and are on the path to victory. If so, it is a strange victory."
posted by homunculus
on Sep 28, 2008 -
52 comments
The Man Between War and Peace. "As head of U. S. Central Command, Admiral William 'Fox' Fallon is in charge of American military strategy for the most troubled parts of the world. Now, as the White House has been escalating the war of words with Iran, and seeming ever more determined to strike militarily before the end of this presidency, the admiral has urged restraint and diplomacy. Who will prevail, the president or the admiral?"
[Via Think Progress.]
posted by homunculus
on Mar 5, 2008 -
50 comments
Seymour Hersh speaks at third Annual Amnesty International Lecture at Trinity College, Dublin, Oct 24/2007. YouTube links
1,
2,
3,
4.
posted by dougzilla
on Nov 11, 2007 -
19 comments
In the U.S., motorists do not pay their way. The US government spends more on highways and other auto-related expenses than it receives from auto-related taxes, unlike almost every country in Europe. In a recent
report [pdf], Mark Delucchi calculates automobile-related costs and revenues in three different ways and concludes the subsidy is around 20-70 cents per gallon or $24-105 billion in 2002. But what are automobile-related costs, you ask?
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posted by salvia
on Oct 2, 2007 -
99 comments
This opinion piece in Prospect magazine argues that perhaps the importance of the problems in the Middle East are overblown. Interesting read.
posted by zeoslap
on May 17, 2007 -
33 comments
Iranian envoy wounds 'confirmed': The head of the International Red Cross in Tehran, Peter Stoeker, says he saw wounds on an Iranian diplomat who has alleged that US forces in Iraq tortured him. There were marks on Jalal Sharafi's feet, legs, back and nose. [
photos].
On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be under American control, had seized Jalal Sharafi, while he was
carrying a videogame, a gift for his daughter. Read more about the US secret operations against Iranians in Iraq in
an exclusive report by The Independent.
posted by hoder
on Apr 11, 2007 -
49 comments
The Redirection. "Is the Administration’s new policy aiding our enemies in the war on terrorism?" New article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.
posted by homunculus
on Feb 25, 2007 -
40 comments
One more time? It looks like the case against Iran has begun publicly. Unfortunately, this seems eerily familiar. Unnamed officials with unverified claims are holding press conferences - on a Sunday, no less. Is this an attempt to explain our difficulties in Iraq or a prelude to retaliation with Iran? Worrisome, or not?
posted by Benny Andajetz
on Feb 11, 2007 -
145 comments
..."Shifting to StratCom indicates that they are talking about a really punishing air-force and naval air attack [on Iran]," says Lang. ..."If they write a plan like that and the president issues an execute order, the forces will execute it. He's got the power to do that as commander-in-chief. We set that up during the Cold War. It may, after the fact, be considered illegal, or an impeachable offense, but if he orders them to do it, they will do it." ...by the end of February the United States will have enough forces in place to mount an assault on Iran. That, in the words of former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, would be "an act of political folly" so severe that "the era of American preponderance could come to a premature end."
From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq
Stepped up US preparations for war against Iran
The United States and Iran: the logic of war
How the press can prevent another Iraq
What to Ask Before the Next War
posted by y2karl
on Feb 8, 2007 -
105 comments
Last March, the White House put numerous Iraqi government documents online, hoping to "leverage the internet" to find evidence of Saddam's nuclear potential. After questioning from the
New York Times this week, the site has
now been shut down, as it has been revealed that the Bush administration, by publishing the information,
may have publicly published detailed information on how to build atomic weapons.
Right-wing bloggers, many of whom have been discussing the documents all year, have seen the
sunny side of the news,
claiming the real issue of the potential distribution of nuclear plans (which were dated pre-1991) is the "proof Saddam had a nuclear program."
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Nov 3, 2006 -
55 comments
Shooting War: a graphic novel by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman. The 11-chapter first act has been lauded in
Rolling Stone,
Wired and
The Village Voice. It's 2011: President McCain is fighting for political survival, America is stuck in Iraq, and there's another oil embargo. 'Vlogger' and indie icon Jimmy Burns happens to catch a terrorist attack in NYC on his web cam, making him the new face of wartime journalism.
posted by spaltavian
on Oct 1, 2006 -
36 comments
Iran's influence in Iraq has superseded that of the US, and it is increasingly rivalling the US as the main actor at the crossroads between the Middle East and Asia... As a result, the US-driven agenda for confronting Iran is severely compromised by the confident ease with which Iran sits in its region... The report also looks into the ideology of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and unpicks Iran’s complicated power structure. It claims that despite his popularity, Ahmadinejad neither holds an insurmountable position within Iran nor commands universal support for his outspoken foreign policy positions... On hostility with the US, the report argues that while the US may have the upper hand in ‘hard’ power projection, Iran has proved far more effective through its use of ‘soft' power. The report also holds a cautious view of the Iran-Israel relationship. It outlines four future scenarios for the relationship between the two states, one of which is the creation of a ‘cold-war’ style nuclear stand-off should Iran achieve nuclear capability.
Iran, its Neighbours and the Regional Crises(full report in pdf)See also
Iran now the key power in Iraq, says UK think-tankSee also
Iran 'boosted by war on terror'
posted by y2karl
on Aug 23, 2006 -
21 comments
Moqtada Sadr promises to help defend Iran. The Iraqi Shi'ite leader promised to defend Iran -- presumably in Iraq -- if Iran is attacked by the US.
Moqtada Sadr is the commander of the
Mahdi Army, which fought US troops for weeks in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, threatening to unite poor, discontented Iraqi Shi'ites in common cause with Sunni insurgents. Sadr and his followers are known to have close ideological and logistical links to clerics inside Iran. In the event of a conflict with Iraq, their assistance to the Iranians could greatly increase instability within Iraq, possibly assisting elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guards'
Qods Force in infiltrating Iraq, and orchestrating attacks upon American interests.
posted by insomnia_lj
on Jan 24, 2006 -
72 comments
Civil war. Surely this is an adjectival misnomer of the first rank. Of all of the various types of war, civil war -- that is, a violent conflict waged between opposing sides within a society -- has generally been the least mannerly and the most savage... By just about every meaningful standard that can be applied -- the reference points of history, the research criteria of political science, the contemporaneous reporting of on-the-ground observers, the grim roll of civilian and combatant casualties -- Iraq is now well into the bloody sequence of civil war. Dispense with the tentative locution "on the verge of." An active, if not full-boil, civil war is already a reality.
Shattering IraqSee also
Iraq: see no evil, hear no evil
Iran gaining influence, power in Iraq through militia
Bush's Strategy, Iraq's New Army Challenged by Ethnic Militias Outside View: Iraq's Grim Lessons
More Inside
posted by y2karl
on Dec 14, 2005 -
93 comments
Iran
executes two teenagers. Their crime? Making love. Homosexuality is a crime under
Sharia law. Meanwhile, newly "liberated" Iraq moves closer to embedding traditional Islamic laws in its new constitution,
reducing rights for women. Will
Iraqi gays be the next to suffer the wrath of "Allah's law" after years of secular oppression under Saddam Hussein?
posted by digaman
on Jul 21, 2005 -
109 comments
Damning leak for Blair / Bush! A leaked transcript of a senior British government meeting indicates that the Bush administration viewed war with Iraq as
"inevitable" as of July 2002, even though the rationale for war was
"thin" and that
"Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." It further states that the desire to bring about regime change was
"not a legal base for military action", and that the only legitimate reason to declare war was with UNSCOM approval. Most disturbingly, it indicates that there were
"strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change."
posted by insomnia_lj
on May 1, 2005 -
139 comments
Whereas, in the past, national power was thought to reside in the possession of a mighty arsenal and the maintenance of extended alliance systems, it is now associated with economic dynamism and the cultivation of technological innovation. To exercise leadership in the current epoch, states are expected to possess a vigorous domestic economy and to outperform other states in the development and export of high-tech goods. While a potent military establishment is still considered essential to national security, it must be balanced by a strong and vibrant economy. 'National security depends on successful engagement in the global economy,' the Institute for National Security Studies observed in a recent Pentagon study.Regarding
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency by Michael T. Klare, here is an
excerpt from the book and here is his most recent article--
Oil and the Coming War With Iran. Well, at least he has been consistent--consider
The Geopolitics of War,
Wars Without End,
Oiling the Wheels of War, and
Imperial Reach from his
articles for
The Nation alone. Here is an excerpt from his previous
Resource Wars and here is
Scraping the bottom of the barrel and
Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil. Well, as to his position on current events, I don't think we need to draw a picture here.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 13, 2005 -
52 comments
Jeffords' Theory: "U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords, the Vermont Independent, may face a clear field right now in a 2006 re-election bid, but his March 22 performance on Vermont Public Radio's Switchboard program raised a few eyebrows.
I think it was all done to get oil, Jeffords said of invading Iraq.
And the loss of life that we had, and the cost of it, was to me just a re-election move, and they're going to try to live off it. Probably start another war, wouldn't be surprised, next year. Probably in Iran, said Jeffords, echoing
Seymour Hersch's words from January.
posted by jenleigh
on Apr 11, 2005 -
84 comments
Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision [access:sexy247@mailinator.com/
biteme]
You can't always get what you ask for:: ...Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.
Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran...
posted by Postroad
on Feb 14, 2005 -
59 comments
The Salvador Option --sending Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, in imitation of our actions in El Salvador.
It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. More
here, including this:
In Iraq, in fact, as in many other places where the United States has tried to train ethical armies to fight dirty wars, the Iraqi troops are tacitly expected to do what American troops won’t. A fundamental purpose of the upcoming elections on January 30 is to create democratic legitimacy for whatever extreme measures the newly organized military decides to take.
posted by amberglow
on Jan 14, 2005 -
18 comments
Order 17--sovereignty sure, but... The Bush administration has decided to take the unusual step of bestowing on its own troops and personnel immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for killing Iraqis or destroying local property after the occupation ends and political power is transferred to an interim Iraqi government, U.S. officials said. (including contractors, btw.) Apparently US immunity was used by
Khomeini in Iran as a rallying cry in the 60s. Are Sadr and Sistani listening?
posted by amberglow
on Jun 24, 2004 -
32 comments
A War Crime or an Act of War? But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. ..
This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.
And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. (NYT)
posted by y2karl
on Jan 31, 2003 -
34 comments
