Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain (or as I refer to them, LindJohn) have demanded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be charged as an enemy combatant rather than tried as an American civilian. This attempt to sidestep the US Constitution by creating an alternative jurisdiction, and to try civilians in military courts, is a stride toward dictatorship. […]
Archives for April 2013
Chechen Jihadis Reject Tsarnaevs (OSC)
The USG Open Source Center translates a reaction from the Caucasus Emirate Islamic insurgency on the news that the Tsarnaev brothers are accused of the Boston Marathon bombing. The CEII casts doubt on their guilt and also on the plausibility that these are jihadis, given their internet profiles at Russian-language sites. It does not claim […]
Moroccan, Indian have lives Ruined by old, new Media, falsely Accused of Boston Bombing
US judges’ famous reluctance to apply libel laws because of the First Amendment may need to be revisited. We can’t be having peoples’ lives ruined by being falsely accused, with photographs of them going viral. In essence, contemporary mass and social media are turning everyone into a potential Salman Rushdie. And geez, guys, Afro-Asia is […]
How not to Cover a Mass Murder (Charlie Brooker Video)
Charlie Brooker and a forensic psychiatrist give the television news media tips on how and how not to cover a mass murder. Takeaway: Don’t obsess about the killer or make him a celebrity of sorts, don’t dramatize the violence, and localize the story as a quotidian one.
Palestinians Displaced again, to Camps in Lebanon
One of the horrible things about being stateless is that you are a flying Dutchman, never assured of being able to live in your own home. Being stateless, you have no state and no citizenship in anything. It means that you don’t have firm title to your own property, because you have no access to […]
Videos on the Present and Past of Chechnya
Here are some videos for Saturday viewing that give a sense of the recent tragic history of Chechnya and of Russian policy toward it today. Also for print sources, see this brief history of Daghestan and Chechnya from the Smithsonian Magazine. A reader sent in this insightful comment yesterday, which I’m moving up here: ” […]
Fathers and Sons and Chechnya
The anger and embarrassment visible in the interviews given on Friday by the uncle and the aunt of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, are entirely understandable. But I see clues here to family dynamics that may be important in understanding what happened. In Ivan Turgenev’s 1862, novel, “Fathers and Sons,” the […]
Report: Highest US Officials Responsible for Use of Torture (Plus Daily Show Video)
The political reality of the United States in the world is that of blowback. Blowback is a term of art in the intelligence community for what happens when a covert operation goes bad and comes back to bite you on the ass. The US spent the 1980s encouraging Muslim radicals to engage in ‘freedom fighting’ […]
The New Muslim World: Dictators on Trial
The Muslim world has now witnessed several instances of a former dictator being exiled under threat of prosecution or actually being forced to appear in court to face charges arising from illegal actions performed while dictator. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia has fled to Jedda, in Saudi Arabia. Sayf al-Din Gaddafi is awaiting […]
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