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Archive: Jul 2007

Lieutenant Gustl Visits Alabama

These days I have taken to starting the day with a survey of the Alabama newspapers to see how they’re covering some of the matters I am following. I travel…

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Neocon Jokes

The blogosphere ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, but one of the safest ports of call has consistently been Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. He offers a mix of serious…

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Dr. Johnson on Oats

Doctor Johnson proposed to define the word ‘oats’ thus: ‘A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’ And I replied: ‘Aye, and…

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Javert’s Wailings

Anyone wanting to know why nearly fifty state attorneys general from around the United States have petitioned the Congress demanding an investigation into the outrageous, politically motivated prosecution of former…

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Media Alert

Harper’s No Comment writer Scott Horton appears tomorrow (Thursday, July 19) on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman to discuss the Bush Administration’s war on journalists and particularly the case of…

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Archive Highlights: Spalding Gray

Robin Snead as told to Victor Ozols, “What It Feels Like . . . to Find Spalding Gray’s Body,” Esquire, August 2007: I got in touch with his wife, and…

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The Cure for Insomnia

Here at No Comment we deal with current events, politics, foreign policy, pre-Baroque sacred music, philosophy and literature… and we dispense a foolproof cure for those who just can’t manage…

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Kazakhstan Recruits American Supporters to “Monitor” Its Election

The Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan will be holding parliamentary elections this August and is hoping to make a positive impression with the international community about its progress towards democracy. If…

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Newsflash from the Ministry of Fear

In Graham Greene’s World War II-era classic, everything starts when the protagonist guesses the correct weight of a cake at a fair and walks off with his prize, not knowing…

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As Contractors Exceed Troops in Iraq, The Dawn of a New Military Culture

America’s armies have always relied in some way on contractors. However, the dramatic expansion of the role and number of contractors in Iraq is changing the culture of American warfare.…

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Twain’s Ironic Juxtaposition

We marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks which I could not remember to have seen before–which puzzled me and made me wonder–and yet we did not come to…

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Congress Moves Forward on Siegelman

Today the machinery of justice in America strains under a heavy hand of misdirection coming out of Washington. And now Congress has decided to take up one of the most…

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Bush and Psychologists Who Abet Torture

Just out: Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban provides a polished, probing account of the Bush Administration’s use of torture techniques, and how it bamboozled and coerced medical professionals into disregarding their…

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Archive Highlights: Conrad Black

“Black facing rest of life in prison, say experts,” The Daily Telegraph, July 17, 2007 While a United States government prosecutor suggested in court last week that, by “conservative” estimates…

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As North Korea Gives Up Reactor, Kazakhstan Seeks a Nuclear Edge

North Korea may have just shut down its reactor, but here’s something new to worry about: Kazakhstan, the Caspian country ruled by a man who has just effectively declared himself…

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The Tide Turns, Decisively

Word in Washington is that an overwhelming majority of Congressional Republicans are now prepared to turn on the White House over its criminal mismanagement of the Iraq War. They’ve put…

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It’s the Oil, Stupid

The old adage was that a society had to choose: guns or butter. You can’t have both. However, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were determined to prove that false. In…

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Obstruction at Justice

Q: When does the U.S. Department of Justice, once one of the most highly respected law enforcement organizations in the world, behave like an organized crime family? A: When it’s…

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Bush’s War on the Rule of Law

In the current issue of Harper’s, I described how the Bush Administration has waged a relentless war against the Rule of Law in connection with the Guantánamo detainees—attempting to overturn…

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Schiller on the Bubble-Boy Leader

Before observing his deeds, let us cast a brief glance into his soul and find there the key to his political life… He was no “people person,” because he never…

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Weekly Review

Caught in the Web, 1860. A White House report showed that only eight of eighteen benchmarks for progress were being met in Iraq, but President Bush asked Congress to wait…

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Staging Iran

Following on No Comment’s “Setting the Stage for the Next War” (June 21, 2007), we hear further murmurings about possible conflict with Iran from across the Atlantic. The international community…

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Making Murder Respectable

The great chronicler of the corruption of language, George Orwell, noted in Politics and the English Language (1946) that “political language . . . is designed to make lies sound…

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Meet the Pentagon’s New Spin Unit: Bush Administration hacks court bloggers, talk radio

The Bush Administration has installed hacks across the federal bureaucracy, with Michael Brown, the man who helped destroy New Orleans while director of FEMA, as only the most notorious example.…

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I Accuse… 44 Attorneys General Demand an Inquiry Into the Siegelman Prosecution

Today forty-four attorneys general from forty of the fifty states of the Union petition the United States Congress [PDF] demanding a formal inquiry into the prosecution of Don Siegelman, the…

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The Tower Between Being and Time

On July 5, I posted a little piece on Martin Heidegger’s cabin in the woods, located outside of Freiburg, drawing on a wonderful essay written by Leland de la Durantaye,…

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Patmos

for the Landgrave of Homburg By Friedrich Hölderlin God is near Yet hard to seize. Where there is danger, The rescue grows as well. Eagles live in the darkness, And…

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Zola’s Thirst for Justice

Ah, what a cesspool of folly and foolishness, what preposterous fantasies, what corrupt police tactics, what inquisitorial, tyrannical practices! What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under…

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