Five Blackwater Employees Indicted on Manslaughter and Weapons Charges for Fatal Nisur Square Shooting in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A 35-count indictment was unsealed today in the District of Columbia charging five Blackwater security guards with voluntary manslaughter, attempt to commit manslaughter, and weapons violations for their alleged roles in the Sept. 16, 2007, shooting at Nisur Square in Baghdad, Iraq. The defendants are charged with killing 14 unarmed [...]

Journalists and Youth Fair Game

LONDON (Reuters) – An Israeli tank crew who killed a Reuters cameraman and eight young bystanders in the Gaza Strip four months ago acted properly and will not face legal action, Israel’s senior military lawyer has concluded. The military advocate-general told the international news agency in a letter sent on Tuesday that troops could not [...]

Thoughts on an article by Gareth Peirce in the LRB

While surfing about the net today I went to one of my favourite sites …. the London Review of Books on line. Even if they are speaking of something that has no interest to me, so many of their articles are so well written that it is a joy to read them for the prose [...]

Bright Star

Stand Up for Canada

Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

Image via Wikipedia
What a fine sounding title. Who doesn’t want security and prosperity? What a wonderful and ambitious goal! Unfortunately like so many other programs current governments offer, the title belies the intent.
From Integrate This;
In March 2005, Paul Martin, George W. Bush and Vicente Fox met in Waco, Texas to ratify the Security and Prosperity [...]

OF NAZIES, MOVIES AND THINGS SAID/UNSAID

I was in a bar the other day (how many stories begin that way?) watching a replay of the Superbowl. On another of the TV screens (one for curling, one for celebrity poker and some jiggley beach volleyball) a movie began. I did not catch the name, but the credits rolled (articistically) [...]

You can’t handle the truth

That is the message that the Washington Post has for it’s readers.
The images are contained in thousands of pages of NCIS investigative documents obtained by The Washington Post. Post editors decided that most of the images are too graphic to publish…
The descriptions of some of the photos do indeed sound brutal. A brutality the [...]