Month: September 2006

Torture Chic: Sign of Decadence

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…..Perhaps the clearest indication of sheer decadence, however, is the emergence of what can only be called “torture chic” in certain sectors of our ruling classes. That it is not universally considered bizarre and outlandish that a president and most of his henchmen would spend so much of their political capital on publicly gaining the “legitimized” authority to torture people, and that they would be able to carry along most of the major ruling political party and (apparently) the vast majority of the most self-conscious and eager-to-be-acknowledged “religious” or nominally Christian people in the country along with them in this clearly barbaric quest cannot be anything but a sign of decadence….. Continue Reading →

Why are Pope Benedict’s remarks about Islam ‘Derogatory’?

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…..To an outsider it would seem that Pope has now jumped onto the Islam bashing bandwagon and has lent his support to the destructive idea of clash of ‘ideologies’ or ‘civilisations’. I am afraid that Pope has done un-repairable damage to the cause of interfaith harmony. Whether the apology offered by Vatican will be enough to convince the Muslim world otherwise remains to be seen. Continue Reading →

When rockets and phosphorous cluster

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“In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs, what we did there was crazy and monstrous,” testifies a commander in the Israel Defense Forces’ MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) unit. Quoting his battalion commander, he said the IDF fired some 1,800 cluster rockets on Lebanon during the war and they contained over 1.2 million cluster bombs. The IDF also used cluster shells fired by 155 mm artillery cannons, so the number of cluster bombs fired on Lebanon is even higher. At the same time, soldiers in the artillery corps testified that the IDF used phosphorous shells, which many experts say is prohibited by international law. According to the claims, the overwhelming majority of the weapons mentioned were fired during the last ten days of the war….. Continue Reading →

Gaza doctors encounter ‘unexplained injuries’

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Doctors in Gaza are reporting what they say are unexplained injuries among the dead and wounded in operations by the Israeli military, which have killed more than 200 Palestinians in the past nine weeks.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is considering whether there is a case for an investigation into the injuries amid suspicions by the medics that the injuries were inflicted by what they claim may have been unidentified “non-conventional” weapons.

Beside especially severe burning “down to the bones”, the doctors say that, in other cases, internal organs have been ruptured without any obvious sign of shrapnel wounds….. Continue Reading →

The American Way of War

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…..The problem is rooted in American political and military culture. Americans are frustrated with limited wars, particularly counterinsurgent wars, which are highly political in nature. And Americans are averse to risking American lives when vital national interests are not at stake. Expecting that America’s conventional military superiority can deliver quick, cheap, and decisive success, Americans are surprised and politically demoralized when confronted by Vietnam- and Iraq-like quagmires….. Continue Reading →