bklyndispatch led me to this incredibly informative blog post about why riots are breaking out in france this week. knowing next to nothing about the situation, i found this very helpful, so i'm passing along the link...

... in addition to all the other catastrophes currently bringing the bush administration to its knees, it appears that their most vocal hollywood apologists have begun physically transforming into saddam hussein...


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the often curmudegonly arts and letters daily really came through today, when it lead me to a rather wonderful slavoj zizek essay concerning hurricane katrina. like a lot of people, i maintain an ongoing attraction/repulsion to zizek, but in this one, he puts his tendency to over-antagonize things aside, and gets down to the real nitty gritty of ( Read more... )

brown has been removed (edit: good riddance motherfucker).

rush limbaugh is an even bigger racist than you already thought he was.

really good petition to rebuild the gulf coast.

another petition: no rubber stamps for supreme court nominees.

and, to really put that extra dose of sunshine in your day, there is a hunger strike currently in ( Read more... )

( my inevitable two cents on the hurricane )

juan cole, whose informed comment is my favorite war-in-iraq blog by far (though i'm open to suggestions), just posted a humorous and frightening sort of "intro" to bad american foreign policy (from reagan on up). being only meagerly informed about the middle east, i find this sort of thing useful once in a while-- particularly alongside the more ( Read more... )

as many of you already know, sandra day o'connor retired today. and, predictably, i'm passing along the day's petitions (katie, here's your chance to help preserve abortion rights)...

draft prado.
sign up for the planned parenthood action center.
urge the senate to stand up to bush about nomineesapologies to everyone who's been bombarded with ( Read more... )

well, the NYTimes is running a piece today saying that-- surprise!-- there may have been some koran desecration after all at guantanamo. but it is, of course, justified:

The splashing of urine was among the cases described as inadvertent. It was said to have occurred when a guard urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the ( Read more... )

i just found this article lurking somewhere in the middle of the yahoo news headlines on my start page (alongside such grave national concerns as whether or not curt schilling took steriods). a figure of 100,000 civilian casualties since the war in iraq began is being disputed as a serious underestimate. even if you put aside the very neccessary ( Read more... )

i think the most potent synopsis of what is really troubling about election 2004 comes to us from get your war on:


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