Month: March 2009

Not all terrorists are equally damndable, apparently.

The Washington Post has an article today on the Iraqi government’s plan to shut down the camp of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, or MEK. This is a violent Marxist organization that was designated by the State Department as terrorists in 1997 because of their long record of killing civilians (they also killed some Americans). But the Post characterizes MEK as merely an “Iranian opposition group.”

The Bush administration -especially Dick Cheney – loved and protected the MEK because the MEK ginned up information to justify threatening to attack Iran. The Post notes that “U.S. officials credit the MEK with providing information about Iran’s nuclear program.”

The Post neglects to mention that MEK’s allegations turned out to be crap and were debunked by a National Intelligence Estimate in late 2007.

MEK sanctified U.S. aggression, and thus they were the good guys. The Washington Post’s Middle East reporting continues its hallowed tradition of rising above the facts… [[This riff is also posted here

The London Police department is launching a new ad campaign to keep people frightened and submissive.

The campaign includes a bizarre poster which encourages people to view as a terrorist suspect anyone who looks closely at government surveillance cameras.

Here is the link the ad. sheet_road_cctv [[I could not figure out how to get this to open up on this page of the blog — If anyone has any suggestions, I’d be obliged..]
h/t boingboing

Yesterday, on the anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, there was an interesting selection of media coverage of Antiwar.com.

The long-established left-wing San Francisco newsweekly, the Bay Guardian, ran a nice piece about Antiwar.com on their Website (they will follow this with a longer piece in print next week).

The conservative magazine, The New American, ran part 1 of a lengthy interview with Antiwar.com founder Eric Garris. Today part 2 ran.

And, a bit more mainstream, the San Jose Mercury News featured an op-ed on the Iraq War anniversary by Antiwar.com executive editor Alexia Gilmore.

What do you expect from a site with contributors from Pat Buchanan to Daniel Ellsberg?

Sorry for the late notice, but Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo is speaking in Paris on Saturday, March 21.

He is a featured speaker at the conference on ”How To Reach Peace in the 21st Century,” sponsored by the College des Bernardins and co sponsored by the Sorbonne.

College des Bernardins, 21 Rue de Poissy, 75005 Paris, at 4:30pm.

Former President George W. Bush announced in Calgary yesterday that he is planning to write a memoir “so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.”

Bush did not reveal if John Yoo would be the co-author.

Bush spoke to an “invited audience of Calgary businessmen,” according to a report in the Examiner.

The paper noted that “Bush was full of jokes throughout his speech.”

Since it was an “invited audience,” there were no awkward questions about torture or whether Bush expects to be indicted as a war criminal.
[h/t TAC]