John Yoo, coward, won’t deal with #torture questions
If you can’t stand a comedian questioning you, why didn’t you send in the clowns to Gitmo? Coward. h/t Susanne Ure
Day: July 22, 2009
Contemporary Pakistani Music
It’s not all about Junoon anymore, if it ever was. CNN ran this article several months ago about heavy metal in Pakistan, including some type of hip-hop dancing thing. Videos below: Compare this view of music to what the Kominas deal with in their expression of punk (h/t Sepia Mutiny): Of course, both sources have distinct narratives they need to tell. The truth of the popularity and acceptability of such music in Pakistan is somewhere in the middle. Although Junoon did lay the ground work, the increase in Islamist activity and thinking means that performing music remains problematic. I’m not…
New The Kominas Tour Poster
The Kominas Tour Poster Originally uploaded by rockistani. I kind of liked the other one, but this is good.
Prisoner Treatment, Morality, and #Torture
Juan Cole is brilliant in his analysis of how the US lost the moral high ground on prisoner treatment, in part because of our torture polices. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won’t take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say…