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
Category: Politics
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…
A Pakistani Writes About Philanthropy
This article in the International News is a good response to two articles in the New York Times, one by Nick Kristof, and one by Tom Friedman. Implicit in the article are two points: there is a difference between giving someone fish (charity) and teaching him to fish (development), and it’s not the white man’s burden anymore.
President #Obama on Discrimination
“But make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America. (Applause.) By African American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender. (Laughter.) By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. (Applause.) By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion simply because they kneel down to pray to their God. (Applause.) By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights. (Applause.)” Full transcript – http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-the-NAACP-Centennial-Convention-07/16/2009/
Sotomayor Nomination
Frank Rice has a good piece on the Sotomayor nomination today, and how it the process highlights how difference is threatening to some people, even though difference is becoming more normative. See also Stewart and Colbert. Unfortunately, while Rich focuses on Latino/a aspects, I think he misses the larger issue of how we all fear difference. For example, this type of fear applies to Muslims, but also emanates from Muslims. Hopefully, the recent experiences with Pres. Obama and Sotomayor help highlight how we fear difference and how we can overcome it.
Music, #Iran, and the #IranElection
With my passion for music, I’d be remiss in not pointing out some resources on Iranian music, especially with the conflict surrounding the Iranian election. This piece from Religion Dispatches is good, but I think it takes the “all politics is personal” a little too far. It’s not always about the music. Hawg Blawg is always excellent, and Talk Islam has some work as well. Andrew Sullivan is running an intermittent series called “Outing Iran” that includes a lot of music.
Daddy Party Needs Daddies
TPM Reader BD: Remember how during the 2008 campaign a lot of people suggested that Obama could prove to be an excellent role model for African-American men who have often been deemed less than responsible as husbands and fathers? Wouldn’t it be great if white Evangelical Republican men could come up with a role model like that too? [From Reader Deep Thought]
The finger in #IranElection
The photo is doctored, but it’s too good not to share. Original photo.
Persepolis 2.0
Envisioning the Iran Election through the work of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.
It was easier to hate Iran before we say their faces in #IranElection
[Apologies for the hashtags in the titles recently. However, my RSS feed goes straight to Twitter, so I need to keep track there.] David Bromwich writes: If you want to kill with a clean conscience, the faces of the enemy had better be blank. Start to see them as human beings and it becomes harder to blockade and bomb them, to mine, and pollute, and “destabilize.” President Clinton had no imagining of the disease he would bring to the innocent in Sudan by the “surgical” missile attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998. George W. Bush had a happy…