Long Sunday

A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true [updated]

Having just watched the later, 60's film version of Hemingway's The Killers (after the Tarkovsky and Burt Lancaster) featuring one Ronald Reagan, I cannot help but feel I understand these comments about "time and space" in a whole new way.  Ronald was an odd duck wasn't he (the word, "stilted" seems invented just for him, back when art of faux-working class swagger and unflinching confidence was quite enough).  A common thought:  why was America always so much behind the times?  Anyway this guy Rx is saying something very much in the manner of cognitive dissonance with this mashup; perhaps usefully provoking: Download freedom101Rx.mov

Those familiar with the story and even those not may find this engaging article by Ron Berman useful reading:

War portraiture

Terror Town | The Duct Tape Guys | Sovereign Authority

.. face down, face up to, facing off, losing face, prima facie, saving face ...

Neither With Nor Against

It's hard to believe this happened a year ago (that's a long but must-see video, via).  There were, and likely are, not too many witnesses to this event,  at least not on the civilian side.  But maybe some stories yet will be forthcoming, in addition to those documented by the video (and not just the endless stream of American soldier book-deal pap).  Accounts of this particular atrocity must continue to demand the attention they rightly deserve.   Not to put too fine a spin on it:  in Fallujah we used white phosphorous like napalm:

The use of the incendiary substance on civilians is forbidden by a 1980 UN treaty. The use of chemical weapons is forbidden by a treaty which the US signed in 1997.

One can only hope the returning soldiers will be so bold; to speak, and above all to complicate the picture (that is, to speak for the sake of a truth, as parrhesiastes, and not just as Johny-come-lately book promoters.  Or what-passes-for-a-book promoters.  Most of that stuff truly belongs on a blog).  (In good spirit, please see, relatedly, Chris Allbritton.) The future of the world may just well depend on something like this will to truth (as the insidiously 9/11-sanctioned Bushspeak continues its quasi-fascist descent into international politics, specifically as the language of disease).  Meanwhile, of course by now you're aware that we  have a (no longer "secret") Gulag (paltry more here).

Update:  In the meantime, here's The Independent.  Also, the answer to 'lenin's question is, obviously, "no."  In bureaucratic-legal speak, it seems we used a "conventional" (!) weapon deadly illuminating firebomb device somewhat unconventionally as a weapon, in that never-failing attempt to destroy the city in order to save it.

Update II: For more on the riots in France, please see Lenin's Tomb, Hoipolloi Cassidy and Le Colonel Chabert.

Iraq in the Name of Freedom

Some video of Iraq, for "mature audiences only," which rules out most of our current leaders, I figure (courtesy of Splinters). 

Update:  For the no-bullshit words of someone who's been there, and who is still there now, you may go here.  Goddamn this fucking war, and the greedy, head-in-the-sand OCD crooks who brought it.