Suketu Mehta, author of the magnificent Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, has a moving Op-Ed in the NYT about the Mumbai tragedies. Anna at Sepia Mutiny does a close reading of the text. Both are worth your time.
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Military-Industrial Complex
I only saw a little bit of Bush’s speech the other day, and it happened to be the part where he wants the military to run this country when it gets too tough for him to do it. I was going to write some commentary on the military industrial complex, but these two pieces pretty much cover what I wanted to say: TPM, Gadflyer (related). Technorati Tags: Katrina, military industrial complex
Do we need to explain?
Read Bob Herbert’s op-ed today. Do we really need to explain to people why torture is bad? Why it demeans the US? If we do, have we already fallen too far?
Torture and Cowardice, Pt.2
JMM hits it out of the park with this piece. Being bold means taking responsibility for being bold. As I’ve argued before, I think the answer to the ticking time bomb rationale for torture is this: that in the extremely unlikely circumstance that government officials ever found themselves in that position of having a ticking time bomb ticking away, they might have to make the decision to break the law. Not fudge it or keep their actions hidden, but take the decision on their own responsibility that it was the best thing to do in the situation — despite it…