Goddamnit, without this shirt the US base on Okinawa might’ve actually been closed. “A fashion designer like me can wear this, but not the leader of Japan”, said some real-life Brüno named Dan Konishi.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged the Organisation of American States to readmit Honduras, which was suspended last year after the overthrow of president Manuel Zelaya.
Mrs Clinton said the new Honduran President, Porfirio Lobo had shown a strong commitment to democracy and the constitutional order.
The “If you insist” coup: A polite way for a superpower to get rid of a government it doesn’t like. Contrary to stereotypes, Canada (in this case through the mouth of Peter Kent) doesn’t get the polite part.
In April 2008, Ma Wanli, a professor of American history at Nanchang Hangkong University in Nanchang, China, emailed me to introduce himself as the translator of the Chinese version of my U.S. best seller, Lies My Teacher Told Me. He also invited me to write a preface for this new edition. I agreed.
Lies exposes seamy aspects of the U.S. past. The preface I wrote for the Chinese edition suggests that a similar exposé might be useful in China. As I wrote, I realized that saying this in China might be problematic, but on behalf of the publisher, Central Chinese Compilation & Translation Press, one of the largest publishers in China, Ma Wanli assured me that my preface would not be censored. I finished the preface in late fall, and the Chinese translation reached me in December of 2008. My U.S. publisher had it translated back into English and assured me that my meaning had not been changed. All seemed well.
This book had a huge influence on me. This, along with Eric Foner’s “Reconstruction”, have been the most personally important books on US history I have read. The closest thing I have read about Chinese history is Mobo Gao’s “The Battle for China’s Past”, which engages memoirs, biographies and other records of the PRC’s history around the Cultural Revolution and Mao, but it is very polemical and doesn’t engage high school textbooks. The only thing I’d quibble with in the linked article is that as far as I can tell, the Great Leap Forward is presented as involving great human suffering in present-day China, but the historical cover-up is about where the blame is assigned (basically, Deng Xiaoping and those of his faction or who were rehabilitated by his faction after taking power are presented as utterly sidelined). But a lot of that is from reading Mobo Gao, so I have to read more widely.
UPDATE: I was going to write this sentence but forgot it: Of course, my lack of Chinese knowledge means I can’t read as widely as I should nor get a real feel for the Chinese debates.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today released evidence it says indicates that the Bush administration conducted “illegal and unethical human experimentation and research” on detainees’ response to torture while in CIA custody after 9/11. The group says such illegal activity would violate the Nuremburg Code, and could open the door to prosecutions. Their report is based on publicly available documents, and explores the participation of medical professionals in the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program.” Download the full report at phrtorturepapers.org.
Boing Boing spoke with the lead medical author of the report, Dr. Scott Allen, who is co-director of the Center For Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University, and Medical Advisor to PHR.
Meng…DOWN, GODWIN, DOWN!
Footage of Mexican teen shot by US border patrol released (via RussiaToday)
Like all oppressive forces that shoot kids and yet are weak (paper tigers even?), the claim of self-defence against stone-throwing is immediate.
via Isaac
美國反伊斯蘭情緒太超過? Is Islamophobia sweeping the US? (via NMANews)
It looks like another Chinese website has taken up Apple Daily’s CGI news coverage/reconstruction/delusion portrayal (in this case, Obama’s sekritmooslem identity). Barely understood anything, but no Chinese is necessary. Covers the “Ground Zero mosque”, Murfreesboro TN Islamophobia, the hate crime against the cabbie, white people delusions about sharia and Obama, etc.
‘Resolutely support the American people in their resistance against American imperialist aggression in Vietnam’
(via fuckyeahmarxismleninism)
Mouse-over and learn at History is a Weapon
The exposure of US “running dogs” (the usually derided term seems appropriate here) is probably going to be one of the larger results of Wikileaks. The rejoinder is that people in those countries already knew of these figures’ sympathies, but the cables have them presenting their bellies for rubs. From Arbib in Australia to Munoz in Bolivia to Murr in Lebanon and beyond, the names are out.
In the case of Arbib, a right-wing senator of the Labor Party (that’s how they spell it), he was, of course, instrumental in the right-wing Gillard coup against Kevin Rudd. It’s quite clear that this is one aspect that determines the quite different responses of now foreign minister Kevin Rudd and Prime Minister Julia Gillard (thanks to Hegemonik for that analysis. Also, check out this round-up of Bolivia and Venezuela-related cables by plagal)
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As Afghanistan descended deeper into the chaos of this civil war, the Taliban movement emerged in 1994, in Kandahar, promising to bring order guided by Sharia law to Afghans. In 1996, the Taliban gained control of Kabul and most of Afghanistan instituting the second Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Leaders of the first Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and two formerly warring mujahedeen factions retreated to the north allied as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan. Western media invented a more palatable translation of the United Islamic Front (UIF) – the Northern Alliance.
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