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Do not mourn the defense secretary. Mourn his victims. There were nearly too many to tally, but his Pentagon refused to count anyway.

An interview with musician Siavash Amini. Following U.S. sanctions, widespread protests, internet blackouts, and government crackdowns, COVID-19 is the latest calamity to befall Iran’s avant-garde.

Maria interviews Rafael Shimunov, the man who made a video in which scenes of the consequences of the Iraq war are shown behind Ellen Degeneres’ apology for being friends with noted genocidal war criminal George Bush. "So basically I just got really upset… I’d thought her response would be an apology. And then it occurred to me that she was standing in front of her set, in blue, like, a single color. Like a natural green screen, but just blue. So I could put any image behind her, to make the point. "So then I had to go through all of the Iraq War images, and choose, kind of… I still can’t get a lot of those images out of my head, images I’ve never seen before, that I was searching through but didn’t select, because they would just have been flagged as graphic. There was a lot of imagery that I couldn’t use. I had to censor myself, ironically, because if I’d chosen those images, they wouldn’t have been seen: Modern images of the aftereffects, of children being born today, with fatal deformities and things like that, because of the war."

An overview. If you were a 70 year old who had lived in Iran all your life, you would not be able to remember a time, except for a brief interlude in the early 1980s, when your country was neither (a) occupied by a foreign power, (b) ruled by the puppet of a foreign power, nor (c) prevented from free trade by the sanctions of a foreign power. That is what comes of being what the British imperialist Lord Curzon called in 1892—even before oil became a strategic issue—one of “the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world”. More than a century later, Iran (Persia as it was in Curzon’s day) is still a piece on the board.

Powell’s ultimate conclusions regarding the malignancy of a “military style,” appropriated along hyper-masculine, hyper-nationalist, and highly commodified lines in American civil society, are correct. But Powell’s analysis erroneously refers to the same cultural zeitgeist to explain both military conventions, and the civilian appropriation of the “military style.” Treating both as manifestations of the same overarching culture effectively ignores the material concerns that distinguish the military’s appearance and design standards from the “future fascist paramilitary participants” Powell rightly warns us about. [...] There are many service members and veterans, myself included, who are uncomfortable with the various ways that civil society has been militarized, from the entanglements between sports and the military to the weapons of war found in American streets. Their voices are important in our discourse because they carry the weight of credibility. They are difficult to dismiss, especially for those who fetishize the military. Yet, criticisms of the “military style” that mischaracterize the military create a space for people to flippantly dismiss valid criticisms of militarization as just more political posturing, even when those criticisms come from military veterans.

A Chris Hayes essay turned into a comic. *Very good.* How America’s infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience.

And since the human mind estimates probability by the ease with which it can recall examples, newsreaders will always perceive that they live in dangerous times. All the more so when billions of smartphones turn a fifth of the world’s population into crime reporters and war correspondents. … The world is not falling apart. The kinds of violence to which most people are vulnerable—homicide, rape, battering, child abuse—have been in steady decline in most of the world. Autocracy is giving way to democracy. Wars between states—by far the most destructive of all conflicts—are all but obsolete. The increase in the number and deadliness of civil wars since 2010 is circumscribed, puny in comparison with the decline that preceded it, and unlikely to escalate. … An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits. It would calibrate our national and international responses to the magnitude of the dangers that face us. It would limit the influence of terrorists, school shooters, decapitation cinematographers, and other violence impresarios. It might even dispel foreboding and embody, again, the hope of the world.

Perhaps one of the most important points drive home after the attacks was the dissonance present in President Obama’s saying that these were “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we all share.” This, of course, begs the question: Whose humanity? Who has the privilege of being humanized? Why weren’t the recent suicide attacks in Baghdad and Beirut also an attack on humanity? … In attempting to discuss both historical colonial and present neo-imperial European violence, many people expressed a non-desire to politicize the deaths. But how do we reconcile the dissonance in hastily naming a political perpetrator whilst refusing to analyze the motivations for their actions? It is important to honor the individuals who were killed in these acts of violence, and central to honoring their deaths is ensuring that we understand why these attacks may have happened in an effort to prevent further human suffering. Thus, it is important to conceptualize these deaths as “collateral damage” within the War on Terror. We are unused to classifying western deaths by terror attack as “collateral damage,” because we are unused to situating ourselves within the paradigm of violence and unused to likening ourselves to similarly victimized Muslim civilians abroad. “Collateral damage,” in our detached wartime vocabulary, connotes unnecessary deaths: it is a term that normalizes both the dehumanization and expendability of the black and brown, foreign Muslim “other.” We cannot properly honor the deaths of Parisians killed in these terror attacks without analyzing our governments’ understanding of the subsequent radicalization that has followed invasions and airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria; drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and other countries; and the American bombing of the Doctors without Borders hospital in Afghanistan in October.

Once he left Syria, Mr. Aljasem said one of the first things he did was get a new smartphone, because it was too dangerous to travel with one in Syria. Soldiers at government checkpoints, as well as at Islamic State checkpoints, commonly demand Facebook passwords, he said. They look at Facebook profiles to determine one’s allegiance in the war.

An anonymous writer explains his adventurous life with dangerous NGO work.

“The gallowglass were an elite class of mercenary warrior who came from Norse-Gaelic clans in the Hebrides and Highlands of Scotland between the mid 13th century and late 16th century.” “They were the mainstay of Scottish and Irish warfare before the advent of gunpowder, and depended upon seasonal service with Irish chieftains. A military leader would often choose a gallowglass to serve as his personal aide and bodyguard because, as a foreigner, the gallowglass would be less subject to local feuds and influences.”

A good interview, and explains Obama's long-game strategy explicitly. His indignation at progressives and Democrats complaining about the state of things when much has actually been accomplished is reasonable, but his final statement bothers me. "We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that's what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we've got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." OK, but what does that mean? What's going to make a difference with ten-to-one odds and enormous corporations and special-interest groups lined up on the other side? Your base gave you a lot of money to help you get elected, but is that what you're asking them to do again, deep in a recession? They need direction, advice, some instruction or insight. What exactly do you want us to 'try harder' at?

"As the TSA feels you up and dresses you down, terrorists are tearing a hole in a new target: The U.S. economy."

"So why not look for constructive things to use the military for? Why not get some use out of our military resources—particularly if that use makes it less likely that we’ll need to use the military for more violent purposes?"

"If somebody you care about is bleeding profusely, it’s not loving to insist that she’s flawless and has nothing to worry about. The loving thing is to stop the bleeding then get her to a doctor. If a guy is clearly suffering from blood poisoning, ignoring the problem isn’t loving. Instead, say, 'Dude. You need to get that looked at immediately.' Or, better yet, go with him. Do what you can to make things better."

On the situation in Afghanistan and how, step-by-step and with troops we already have, we can start to fix it. "It's still winnable, but only just."

"Almost fifteen years after my mandatory military duty ended, I went back to several Israeli army bases, using the medium of photography as a vehicle to re-enter this world."

Scary lecture on torture techniques by Dr. Larry Forness of the American Military University in 2005. "I fill a syringe with the pig’s blood and threaten to inject him in the arm. The prisoner will talk -- and quickly."

"The above tag cloud shows the popularity, frequency, and trends in the usages of words within speeches, official documents, declarations, and letters written by the Presidents of the US between 1776 - 2007."

M.I.A. as modern protest music. "It’s safe to assume, for instance, that when M.I.A. says in 'Bamboo Banga' that she’s 'knocking on the door of your Hummer-Hummer,' that she’s not looking for a lift."

"Having volunteered for Iraq, Mark Daily was killed in January by an I.E.D. Dismayed to learn that his pro-war articles helped persuade Daily to enlist, the author measures his words against a family's grief and a young man's sacrifice."

America's latest "Hitler" is Ahmadinejad, Iraq is Bush's Vietnam, and the NYTimes "failed the First Amendment." "You'd think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can't possibly do the same dumb thing again." But "there is no learning."

He was introduced as a "petty and cruel dictator." An interesting event. A long writeup compiling all of Ahmadinejad’s points and his answers to the crowd's questions.

A documentary on the interminable and massive mess that is the Iraq War.

Any picture can speak 1,000 words, but only a select few say something poignant enough to galvanize an entire society. The following photographs screamed so loudly that the entire world stopped to take notice.1. The Photograph That Raised the Photojournalistic Stakes: "Omaha Beach, Normandy, France"Robert Capa, 1944"If your pictures aren't good enough," war photographer Robert Capa used to say, "you aren't close enough." Words to die by, yes, but the man knew of what he spoke. After all, his most memorab...

Comparing the Soviet Gulag to current US detention centers and secret prisons.

"creative policies of engagement are called for and are possible"

"the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.'"

In which the president marks the Iraqi innocent death toll at 30,000 and continues to say he made the right decision and that 9/11 and Iraq are linked.

"The Downing Street Memo, recently leaked, reveals that President George W. Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in summer 2002 and 'fixed' the intelligence..."