Billmon, in a very eloquent post, says nothing. All he does is put up a series of quotations. Yet his message couldn’t be clearer; or more correct.
Lest visiting American wingnuts misunderstand me: I do not assert that Billmon is correct in inviting us to infer that Donald Rumsfeld is guilty of war crimes. That question [...]

Both of you.
John Barry, author of Rising Tide a rather timely book about flooding and New Orleans and of The Great Influenza a rather timely book about the 1918 pandemic, will be half of a panel about hurrican Katrina at Politics & Prose bookstore this Friday at 7pm. The store is at 5015 Connecticut Ave [...]

The FT has a piece on the growing tensions within the Republican tent over Iraq.
If we quit now, said Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, in a speech at Princeton University last month, we will embolden every enemy of liberty and democracy across the Middle East. We will destroy any chance that the people of [...]

In Brazilian football this seems to be the case, quite literally!
For all that they say about detesting corruption in public life, most ordinary Brazilians do not see it as something with a direct impact on their own lives. But one scandal has caused personal offence to millions.
�I was knocked sideways,� says Catarina Pedroso, an 18-year-old [...]

Crickey, this really does seem to fall under the definition of what you could call a scandal. According to the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn one billion dollars was plundered from Iraq’s defence Ministry between June 2004 and February 2005 (during the government of interim prime minister Iyad Allawi):
“It is possibly one of the largest thefts [...]

A few weeks ago, if you can cast your mind back that far, the big story was apparently something to do with a country called Iraq that was trying to agree among itself on its future constitution. After multiple deadlines were breached, two of the factions in the country decided to impose the constitution on [...]

As Edward suggests below, the macroeconomic effects of Katrina are just now becoming known, much less felt or sorted out.
One item that will be much more widely reported is that in addition to all of the petrochemical industry located there, New Orleans was the linchpin of the Port of South Louisiana. The port is [...]

Hot on the heels of Dougs update on the tragedy which is taking place while we watch in Louisiana, comes this distressing news from Iraq:
More than 600 Iraqi Shi’ites died in a stampede over a Tigris River bridge in Baghdad on Wednesday, panicked by rumors a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up, an [...]

Imagine the entire population of Munich, of Lyon or of Copenhagen evacuated because of a natural disaster. That’s the situation now in the New Orleans area.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

As I write, [...]

China is getting worried about the impact of the internet on one of its national passtimes:
China on Tuesday introduced an ?anti-online game addiction system? intended to protect players from the mental and physical perils of spending too much time in front of computers.
The system, which will encourage players to play less by cutting the benefits [...]