Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in."

The Guardian has an imressive graphic of the security wall being built to separate them from the west bank. Quite a piece of work.

Hmm. Make fun of the Americans, go to jail. A US soldier leads arrested 17 year old student Khaled Salim with his hands tied behind his back towards a waiting army truck in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dura. Salim was arrested on his way to school, as a warning to others after he insulted US troops.

Craig B Hulet has argued...to defeat an entrenched enemy that will fight a guerrilla war, the attacking force must have at least a ten to one ratio in favor of the attackers. That we are hopelessly outnumbered in both countries means quite literally we cannot defeat these guerrilla forces. We will lose. We will have to increase the number of troops to even stay stationed in these countries.

More excellence from Clay Bennett
Liberia	Yellow Ribbon

"Just as the heat begins to let up, the first tank comes roaring along the street. The entire house vibrates. And this continues hourly until five in the morning." He says that Ahmed Husseini, the son of a neighbor, protested at the garden gate in early June. "The Americans simply shot him. These people don't know what they're doing."

Abid is a graduate of the University of Baghdad, and holds a doctorate in economics. He has travelled throughout Europe and the United States, and his English is good. But he is puzzled as to how the Americans have even managed to alienate such Iraqis as himself. He says: "The problem with the Americans is that they have no respect for us."

One giant leap!

Back to the Future (?) 2 options for NASA's Space Plane The cool Apollo style capsule on the left is just too interesting for NASA. I bet they'll pick another winged coffin.

Ah crap.

I heard someone ask the galley aloud what the word “secular” meant. It seems it was on a handout we were supposed to be reading. Immediately, a teacher with a general English certificate offered that it meant “being religious.” This was followed by a second of silence and then the jejune banter began again. I could not let the talking continue. “No,” I asserted. “Secular is the antonym of religious. It means ‘of this world.’”

“Don’t you hate it when he does that?” my new boss asked.

The numbers are staggering; one in five Palestinian dead is a child. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) says at least 408 Palestinian children have been killed since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000. Nearly half were killed in the Gaza strip, and most of those died in two refugee camps in the south, Khan Yunis and Rafah. The PCHR says they were victims of "indiscriminate shooting, excessive force, a shoot-to-kill policy and the deliberate targeting of children".

Fear and aggression - Bingo! George is an AWOL chickenhawk!
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity - Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out!
Uncertainty avoidance - Are they sure about this one?
Need for cognitive closure - that's putting it mildly
Terror management - har har

Ted Rall: The American political spectrum

Bush is having a good day. Head on over and find out why....

Clay Bennett: Credibility

Papers among thousands of files captured from the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, claim tons of live Second World War munitions were buried in concrete bunkers beneath the runways of Schoenefeld airport in East Berlin. It is now the main destination for discount airlines, such as Ryanair, and numerous charter companies.

Not only did the commissars intern munitions beneath the runways, but also entire Nazi fighter planes, all fuelled and fully bombed-up, according to the Stasi.

The captured files of Interflug, the former East German government airline and the airport authority of the DDR, are now being examined to see if the Stasi claim is true.

One defector told Indict that jailed soccer players were forced to kick a concrete ball after failing to reach the 1994 World Cup finals. Another defector said athletes were dragged through a gravel pit and then dunked in a sewage tank so infection would set in.

...once made a group of track athletes crawl on newly poured asphalt while they were beaten and threw some of them off a bridge. Indict also said Uday ran a special prison for athletes who offended him.

The Yoda clock!

Obscene Xylophone.

Giz yer jacket.

Ted Rall: Fun Facts: The War Against Iraq

A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York. Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.

"For me, it's a no-brainer," said Mollie Ingebrand, a puppeteer from Minneapolis who plans to go to Vancouver with her lawyer husband and 2-year-old son.

"It's the most amazing opportunity I can imagine. To live in a society where there are different priorities in caring for your fellow citizens."

File under "Not Good": Shiite protest Thousands of followers of a hardline Shiite Muslim cleric marched on the U.S. headquarters (in Najaf), demanding American forces leave the town and shouting derision at the newly formed Iraqi Governing Council.

Superb flash versions of arcade games! The screenshot is from Frogger. There are also versions of Pacman, Tetris and Asteroids!

"I can fill your editorial pages with comments on 'who to believe' but will simplify my response to this week's Sound Off by borrowing a quote from Groucho Marx," she said. "'What are you going to believe, what we tell you or what you see with your own two eyes?'"

3 cheers for the Red Cross - Body parts' return shocks dad In a FedEx package came his son's corneas, packed in a preserving solution. In a cooler filled with dry ice Roberts found his son's femurs, kneecaps, hip bones and shoulder blades. His son's heart was in a jar."He'd been deboned like a piece of sausage," Roberts said. "Then to send everything back to you and hold up the funeral while you wait, it's unbelievable. The bereaved citizen failed to realise that the profit motive is more important than human dignity. It's 1984 already - get with the program people!

Lego fan Reed Anderson has crafted an amazing lego Nazgul from Lord of The Rings. There are 10 images here in total. While you're there, check out his impressive medieval village!

Steve Bell - UK prisoners in Guantanamo Bay Bell's cartoons get better every day. His portrayal of Blair as a madman looks increasingly believable. Thatcher lost it too by the late 80's. That crazy glint in the eye ... yikes.

Genius: Silence of the Lambs - THE MUSICAL Much of the musical is available for free download, including "Put the Fucking Lotion in the Basket" and the lyrical "Are You About a Size 14?"

On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he'd been "kicked in the guts, slapped in the face." Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit.

The retaliation from Washington was swift.

"It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers."

Careful: The FB-eye may be watching "I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that."

"One of the few to see the flash from here was Tom Street, who happened to be standing in the patio if his Spring Mountain home when the blast came," reported the July 21, 1944 edition of the St. Helena Star. "First there was a sudden mushroom of white light, followed an instant later by another, then a few moments later the intense roar and the concussion of the blast. At the rate of about a mile for every 5 seconds, it required a little over 4 minutes for the blast to reach St. Helena." In another account in the same newspaper, it states. "The force of the explosion was felt at the Mt. St. Helena observation tower, but apparently the range of the mountains at the end of the valley stopped the concussion, for Lake County residents didn't feel it."

Steve Bell: George Bush's re-election campaign

Three months since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq is tottering between the forces of renewal and revolt.

Amid the anarchy, some women are seizing opportunities to make an impact in ways never before possible. Some are just trying to stay afloat in conditions that make life feel more difficult than it was under the Baathist regime. Still others are alarmed to find that many liberties appear to be fast disappearing under the weight of ongoing violence and the newfound muscle of Islamic fundamentalists.

For the more than half of Iraqis who are women, whether life is better now than under Mr. Hussein depends on whom one asks.

ABC's "Good Morning America" showed soldiers from the Third Infantry Division in Iraq criticizing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and questioning their mission. Minnesota Public Radio this week quoted Mary Kewatt, the aunt of a soldier killed in Iraq, saying: "President Bush made a comment a week ago, and he said 'bring it on.' Well, they brought it on, and now my nephew is dead."

AOL's recent start page! (via mediawhoresonline)

The headlines announced by John Roberts, substituting for Dan Rather on CBS, were: "President Bush's false claim about Iraqi weapons; he made it despite a CIA warning the intelligence was bad. More Americans say U.S. is losing control of Iraq. Also tonight, food lines in America; they're back and getting longer."

The Iraq campaign, of which they were in charge, has been grossly mishandled. I use the word campaign because the overthrow of Saddam's army and regime was only the opening phase in what has to be, if this country is to maintain any credibility, an open and democratic society in Iraq. This may yet happen, but the current leadership of the Pentagon, through a fatal combination of hubris and incompetence, has so far bungled the job. If there were any accountability in the Bush administration, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz would be asked to resign.

"If it becomes more vivid in people's minds that there was not a serious threat [in Iraq], then the costs will become even more salient, and people may feel we made a mistake" in going to war, says Steven Kull, director of the Project on International Policy Attitudes. "We're not there yet," he adds. "But the arrows are going in that direction."

"If Donald Rumsfeld were sitting here in front of us, what would you say to him?" I asked a group of soldiers who gathered around a table, eager to talk to a visiting reporter.
"If he was here," said Pfc. Jason Punyahotra, "I would ask him why we're still here, why we've been told so many times and it's changed."
In the back of the group, Spc. Clinton Deitz put up his hand. "If Donald Rumsfeld was here," he said, "I'd ask him for his resignation."

"It's hard on the families, it's hard on the soldiers, and it's especially hard to know that you put your faith and trust into a president, and they continue to lie to you, they break promises, and it's hard to fight for somebody like that."

Terminator 3 - Pro-Bush propaganda? ...this John Connor is very self-consciously W- like: he sees the impending machine-led apocalypse on humanity as some kind of Christian/ New Age test of his strength and fortitude, billions dead specifically to test him and make him a better man, much like W himself in real life views the War On Terror.

So this week I went to Lemoore to see the fireworks, and it still got me choked up. That surprised me. I’m not a big sentimentalist usually. Nothing to be cheerful about: hate my job, hate my life, hate just about everybody I work with and every face I see on TV. They weren’t great fireworks even. And the sponsor was a casino, if you can believe that—sleazy fakes posing as big patriots.

But sitting there in my car I was ready to kill anybody who said anything bad about America. What that showed me is, the way you love your country is way deeper than how you feel about the people running the country. I hate W., the little draftdodging oil-money phony, but if any foreign army tried to “liberate” the US from him, I’d die trying to stop them. I realized how your country is so much to you, even if you hate the fuckers running it, you’d sooner have them than a bunch of foreign troops...

...Even when the locals welcome the army at first, they change their mind later on. The Ukrainians cheered the Wehrmacht in 1941, but changed their minds fast. The Catholics in Ulster cheered the British Army in 1969, but changed their minds after the Brits killed 14 demonstrators. And in case you don’t remember US troops killed 18 Iraqis in Fallujah a couple months ago. 18 dead—that’s a lot of pissed-off relatives who are going to start digging up the AK-47s they buried in the back yard, looking for some payback. No wonder Fallujah is now the least-pacified city in Iraq.

Our creepy universe: Puzzle of empty galaxies "If you look for gas with a radio telescope you see an enormous blob of gas. If you look for stars through an optical telescope you only see a small smudge of stars on the sky,"... For some reason these galaxies have failed to form stars out of their hydrogen gas. The search is on to find out why.

After playing an astronaut, a mad scientist, a man from Mars, and other challenging roles in his previous 40 films, what new worlds were left for Jerry Lewis to conquer in 1972? What about the nightmare world of Auschwitz? How about the premise of a lovable circus clown who entertains children about to be gassed by the Nazis? Sounds terrific, huh? Startlingly original, no? Tasteless and nauseating -- definitely yes.

"If he's Germany's greatest clown, God help the Fatherland."

The Commandant at Auschwitz explains to Helmut (Lewis) what is done here - how the buildings without windows are ovens used to exterminate the Jewish children. He goes on to tell Helmut that as he has lead the children this far and that he now has a special bond with them, almost as if he is "one of them," he should lead them for the remainder of their journey. It is then, in the last ten pages of the screenplay, that the true dementia of the film truly takes hold. Helmut replies "No... no! I'm not one of them. I'm not! I'm a German. A loyal German. You can't kill me, I'm not one of them. I swear it. I'm not." The Commandant explains that he doesn't have to die, "I'm just asking you to lead them." Helmut looks unwilling to comply. "Not... even to save your own life?" Helmut gives in. "I'm glad to see you're not a self-appointed martyr. Just think! Now you're really one of us."

While British legislators met to decide whether it is in that nation's best interests to join the European Union, a small but elite group of private wealth managers, economists, and institutional and hedge-fund managers gathered blocks away at London's Institute of Directors to participate in a decidedly unique review of the world's increasingly shaky financial stability. Much of the discussion revolved around the politics and financial policies of the United States.

Ted Rall, the angriest man in America strikes again. Bush Lied. They died. Not only is he a cartoonist, but he writes too. Unlike many of the "experts", Ted has spent a lot of time travelling through the 'Stans' - here's one of his latest bits: A CRACK IN BUSH'S FAÇADE

On C-Span radio the other morning, I heard a Vietnam combat veteran earnestly worrying that our troops in Iraq might be "hand-cuffed." He had heard a rumor about rubber bullets that upset him. Another caller made the point more angrily "For every American who gets killed, they should take 20 Iraquians (his term) and hang them from lamp posts." This, he explained, is how the Klingons from Star Trek would handle it.

Then I got an email from a right-wing friend, a learned man with a Ph.D. in history: "We need a tough-minded Patton or MacArthur in full dress uniform...Follow the Roman rule: haul those people off in slavery and burn down the country...For every ten Americans slaughtered, burn down whole villages."

LEGO DNA Another great lego model from Eric Harshbarger. He specialises in sculptures and mosaics made from the mighty block - be sure to visit his main lego page for more amazing creations.

In Ledeen’s most recent publication, The War Against the Terror Masters, he reiterates his beliefs outlined in this 1999 Machaivelli book. He specifically praises: “Creative destruction…both within our own society and abroad…(foreigners) seeing America undo traditional societies may fear us, for they do not wish to be undone.” Amazingly, Ledeen concludes: “They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”

If those words don’t scare you, nothing will. If they are not a clear warning, I don’t know what could be. It sounds like both sides of each disagreement in the world will be following the principle of preemptive war. The world is certainly a less safe place for it.

In Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, Ledeen praises a business leader for correctly understanding Machiavelli: “There are no absolute solutions. It all depends. What is right and what is wrong depends on what needs to be done and how.” This is a clear endorsement of situational ethics and is not coming from the traditional left. It reminds me of: “It depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.”

Ledeen quotes Machiavelli approvingly on what makes a great leader. “A prince must have no other objectives or other thoughts or take anything for his craft, except war.” To Ledeen, this meant: “…the virtue of the warrior are those of great leaders of any successful organization.” Yet it’s obvious that war is not coincidental to neocon philosophy, but an integral part. The intellectuals justify it, and the politicians carry it out. There’s a precise reason to argue for war over peace according to Ledeen, for “…peace increases our peril by making discipline less urgent, encouraging some of our worst instincts, in depriving us of some of our best leaders.” Peace, he claims, is a dream and not even a pleasant one, for it would cause indolence and would undermine the power of the state. Although I concede the history of the world is a history of frequent war, to capitulate and give up even striving for peace—believing peace is not a benefit to mankind—is a frightening thought that condemns the world to perpetual war and justifies it as a benefit and necessity. These are dangerous ideas, from which no good can come.

HAPPY JULY the 12TH! The day when Northern Ireland's OrangeMen give the Catholics a well deserved MARCHING! Go ite Willy and Iain, and give them Fenians a good walloping! A wee little knee-cappin' will show 'em who's boss. While yer at it, ye might as well beat up any Muslims, Chinese or blacks that ye stumble across, ye shower of MEDIEVAL RACIST BASTARDS.

The war is over, but the situation in the fields of Iraq continues to rapidly deteriorate. The banks, which provide credit and cash, have been looted, irrigation systems destroyed, road travel restricted, markets closed, warehouses and grain silos pillaged.

To harvest the grain before it rots in the fields Iraqi farmers need more than eight million gallons of diesel fuel to power Iraq's corroding armada of combines and harvesters. But most of the fuel depots were incinerated by US bombing strikes.

Smart-Ass Card - you'd better have yours citizen, or it's a one way ticket to an iso-cube! This SMARTCARD will be linked to you as well as to a gigantic database located in an undisclosed area in Omaha, Nebraska, called DEATHBASE. It will monitor you for 24 hours a day with the ability alert authorities should you threaten national security. Only the federal government and telemarketing firms will have access to this data.

Everything is set for a new Pentagon program to become perhaps the federal government's widest reaching, most invasive mechanism yet for keeping us all under watch. Not in the far-off, dystopian future. But here, and soon.

Hurray for Steve Bell: Blair defends the Iraq war It'll be a happy day when the gutless creep Blair and his heinous cronies get booted from No. 10. Gee Tony, what's wrong? Shocked that your vewy best fwend George is blaming you for the uranium report? WHAT A SURPRISE! A Bush that lies!

Iraqi swimmers hoping to make a splash at the world championships in Barcelona next month are having to train in the murky Tigris River because the US Army have taken over the only Olympic-sized pool in Baghdad for their troops, team trainer Faisal Sayed Jaffar said Thursday.

'This place is just not ready for different people' "My son walked in and said: 'Mam, are we Prod or are we Catholic?' I said, you're a Muslim. "And he said: 'I know I'm a Muslim, but am I Prod or am I Catholic?' We thought we had been making progress, but the child who had asked him the question was maybe six years old."

Hulk doll's monster willy SHOCKED six-year-old Leah Lowland checked out a mystery bulge on her Incredible Hulk doll — and uncovered a giant green WILLY... And when she peeled off the green comic-book character’s ripped purple shorts, she found the two-inch manhood beneath them...

American troops could still be in Iraq (news - web sites) four years from now, the war's former commander told members of Congress concerned about persistent, deadly attacks.

The number of U.S. troops in Iraq probably won't decline significantly from the current 148,000 until sometime next year, Gen. Tommy Franks said Thursday. The kinds of hit-and-run attacks that killed two American soldiers Wednesday will continue, he warned.

Vote early, vote often. As long as it's for Bush. Now come on. What possible reason could this guy have for not trusting the republicans to deliver a fair and honest election result? It's not like they stole the last one!

The order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa seeks to copyright her name in a bid to stop other organisations -- from banks to business schools -- trying to cash in on the Nobel peace laureate's image worldwide.

"We are seeking legal protection for the use of our logo, and also want such protection for the name of Mother Teresa and that of the Missionaries of Charity," Sister Nirmala, the head of the order, said in a statement.

Hitler Vs. Stalin: the comic! Joseph Stalin is © & TM by the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Inappropriate usage will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law with expelling from the Party and ten years of hard labor. Adolf Hitler is © & TM by the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Inappropriate usage will be reported to the appropriate authorities. We cannot guess what they are gonna do, but it will definitely be something unpleasant as well.

Steve Bell: Blair's response to Iraq dossier inquiry

Posters for the Brave New World!

Ted Rall: Never again?

Many more great posters here!