Blackwater’s Youngest Victim
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| Ridgeway admitted
that he and the other five defendants “opened fire with automatic
weapons and grenade launchers on unarmed civilians…killing at least
fourteen people” and wounding at least twenty others. “None of these
victims was an insurgent, and many were shot while inside of civilian
vehicles that were attempting to flee” the Blackwater forces. |
| Ridgeway admitted to shooting and
killing Dr. Al Rubia’y in the Kia sedan, adding that another Blackwater
shooter launched an M-203 grenade, “causing the vehicle to erupt in
flames.” He acknowledged that “there had been no attempt to provide
reasonable warnings to the driver.” As the Raven 23 convoy exited the
square against the flow of traffic, Ridgeway admitted, Blackwater forces
“continued to fire their machine guns at civilian vehicles that posed no
threat to the convoy.” |
A new collection of academic studies reveals a strong strain of violence and militancy that runs through the world’s historically Buddhist cultures. So — it’s not all about “present moment, wonderful moment” after all, I guess. | Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence |
Buddhist monk with toy gun. Bhutan, 2008.
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During my visits between 2006 and 2008, southern Thai monks shared the challenges of living in their fear-infested communities. All but a few concentrated on survival; peacemaking was the last thing on their minds. |
One day after teaching an English class for Buddhist novices at a monastery a young monk came over and pulled back the folds of his robe to reveal a Smith & Wesson. I later learned that he was a military monk—one of many covert, fully ordained soldiers placed in monasteries throughout Thailand. To these monks, peacemaking requires militancy. |
| It was then that I realized that I was a consumer of a very successful form of propaganda. |
In a way, I wish I could return to that dream of Buddhist traditions as a purely peaceful, benevolent religion that lacks mortal failures and shortcomings. But I cannot. It is, ultimately, a selfish dream and it hurts other people in the process. |
The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade |
The media are awash with talking
heads bloviating about the top stories of the last decade. The
wired-in society. The growth of organic food. The new frugality.
This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the culture:
pacification. It’s their way of signaling the masses that Bigger
Thinkers are looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor
or Facebook reveries. |
| So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the ones that really matter. |
| The Supreme Court
hijacking the 2000 presidential election |
| Iraq was all
premised on lies, yet we’re still there. |
| The surrender
of civil liberties. |
| The failure of
“the free market” to sustain prosperity. |
| The collapse
of the media. |
| The meaninglessness
of elections. |
| It was the decade when all the institutions that they believed would protect them — the media, the courts, Congress, the market, a messianic new president — in fact betrayed themRead more at www.commondreams.org |
Pickens says U.S. firms ‘entitled’ to Iraqi oil |
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens
told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are
“entitled” to some of Iraq’s crude because of the large number
of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the
country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq. |
“They’re opening them (oil fields) up to other companies
all over the world … We’re entitled to it,” Pickens said of
Iraq’s oil. “Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000
injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars.” |
From the piece: “When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.” We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade. |
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents. |
| I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. |
| I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
PRESS CONFERENCE BY UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, DIRECTOR |
OF GAZA OPERATIONS FOR UN RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES |
Indeed, the activities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had been suspended today following the killing by Israeli tank fire of one driver and the wounding of another in a clearly marked aid convoy less than a kilometre from the Erez crossing. A second convoy dispatched to recover the body of a United Nations staffer had come under small arms fire in Gaza City during today’s three-hour lull in hostilities. |
Mr. Holmes, who was joined via video link by John Ging, UNRWA’s Director of Operations in Gaza, emphasized that both convoys had been the subject of careful coordination between the Agency and the Israel Defense Forces through the Israeli liaison office and had been given the green light. See more at www.un.org |
Annals of De-mining
Man, Mongoose, and Machine
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A trained mongoose sniffs the ground in search of mines. Behind the mongoose is an impediment sensor, which tells the robots (below) if it has bumped into something too solid to push out of the way.
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Standing outside a Sri Lankan army base in the spring of 2007, Thrishantha Nanayakkara mapped an entire minefield without once setting foot in it. Nanayakkara held a remote control and periodically made a note on his computer. A mongoose hitched to a robot did most of the work. |
| Nanayakkara, a visiting scholar at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a 2008-09 Radcliffe Institute fellow, picked an indigenous mongoose for its temperament, size (roughly 2.5 kilograms, light enough to step on a mine without detonating it), and sense of smell (able to detect explosives three meters away). He equipped his robot (roughly a meter long and half a meter wide) with a harness to keep the mongoose under control and a video cameraSee more at harvardmagazine.com |
Bonhoeffer - The Church and the Peoples of the World
Fano, Denmark - Ecumenical Conference of ‘Life and Work’
August 1934,
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| Once again, how will peace come? Who will call us to peace so that the world will hear, will have to hear, so that all peoples may rejoice? The individual Christian cannot do it. When all around are silent, he can indeed raise his voice and bear witness, but the powers of this world stride over him without a word. The individual church, too can witness and suffer - oh, if it only would!- but it also is suffocated by the power of hate. |
| Why do we fear the fury of the world powers? Why don’t we take the power from them and give it back to Christ? We can still do it today. |
| The world is choked with weapons, and dreadful is the distrust which looks out of all men’s eyes. The trumpets of war may blow tomorrow. For what are we waiting? Do we want to become involved in this guilt as never before?
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Georgia on August 10 announced a withdrawal from the disputed territory of South Ossetia, but Russia’s bombing campaign against the South Caucasus country continued apace. |
National Security Council Secretary Alexander Lomaia said the decision to pull Georgian forces out of the territory was made “in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire” with Russia. “We can only hope that we will be able to do this to stop the aggression, ” he said. The decision followed an August 9 order for a withdrawal from the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali. |
At roughly 7pm on August 10, Russian planes bombed Tbilisi International Airport, the government reported. No casualties were reported. Three bombs had hit a plane factory and military airfield not far from the airport at roughly sunrise on Sunday morning. See more at www.eurasianet.org |
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