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The 1971 shooting of students by government forces in Mexico’s so-called “dirty war” has been classified by an investigating prosecutor as genocide.
While I think it’s a step forward to break the immunity of high officials who have committed serious crimes, I just don’t see how the dirty war in Mexico rises to the status of “genocide”. It degrades the term and seems to me to indicate a prosecutor more interested in blaring headlines than justice. It’s particularly jarring to see this claim while people argue about whether the situation in Darfur is genocide or not.
UPDATE: Samizdata notices this story as well.
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The capture of three Kenyan hostages in Iraq has bewildered newspapers back home, who demand to know why the insurgents have picked on a country that refused to join the US-led invasion.
Uh, because they’re nihilistic psychopaths? Can this really be a surprise to anyone without severe Reality Dysfunction?
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The United States said it would donate 50,000 tons of agricultural commodities through the World Food Program to nuclear power North Korea, which is grappling with a food shortage.
“Grappling with a food shortage”? Wouldn’t “starving their people in to cannibalism” be far more accurate?
Even after bin Laden’s departure from the area, CIA officers hoped he might return, seeing the camp as a magnet that could draw him for as long as it was still set up. The military maintained readiness for another strike opportunity. On March 7, 1999, Clarke called a UAE official to express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and bin Laden. Clarke later wrote in a memorandum of this conversation that the call had been approved at an interagency meeting and cleared with the CIA. When the former bin Laden unit chief found out about Clarke’s call, he questioned CIA officials, who denied having given such clearance. Imagery confirmed that less than a week after Clarke’s phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted.
Yes, it’s the same Richard Clarke who was involved in the bin Laden family exodus, which was no big deal but is frequently treated as something evil to blame on President Bush.
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Just days after Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger called state Democrats “girlie men” for failing to pass a budget by the state’s July 1 deadline, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur has begun selling T-shirts over the Internet with the slogan “Sacramento Girlie Men.”
Words fail me.
An Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades cell killed a 16-year-old Palestinian youth in Beit Hanun on Friday after his family opposed the cell’s attempt to launch Qassam rockets from their yard, security sources said.
He’s already been lumped in with “Palestinian casualties” caused by Israel.
UK says “we need fewer troops”
Britain is to slash around 19,000 posts from its armed forces over the next four years as part of an overhaul of military priorities, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced.
The reforms will see the Royal Air Force shed about 7,500 posts and the Royal Navy 1,500 by 2008, while the army will shed some 10,000 personnel, Hoon said.
So we’ll send them to Sudan!
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The Bush administration is pressing Britain, France and Germany for strong measures against Iran in response to its violation of a nonproliferation agreement reached with the three last fall, a State Department official said Wednesday.
The issue is part of a deepening American concern over recent Iranian activities that range from weapons programs to terrorism. To head off a potential crisis, some analysts believe the administration should work harder to promote a dialogue with Iran.
Oh, because dialogue has worked so well in the past. Doesn’t the just previous paragraph note that Iran simply blew off the results of the last dialogue? The mindset that can write things like this is beyond my capability to understand.
It is not clear what the United States expects the three European Union members to do in response.
Stop offering Iran more concessions in exchange for more meaningless dialog? Stopping shipping them equipment to support their nuclear ambitions? Heck, at this point maybe just frowning severely in Iran’s direction would be an improvement.
Iran has said it feels no obligation to honor the agreement, alleging that the Europeans had violated a promise to ensure that the U.N. nuclear watchdog group would give Iran a clean bill of health.
Hahaha, I almost had to clean my monitor on that one. Beyond wondering how the EU could ensure how the UN group would report, what in the world was the point of that? Maybe the action the USA expects from the big three is to stop helping Iran pretend it’s not working on nuclear weapons?
Rend al-Rahim Francke, Iraq’s chief representative in Washington, told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that Iran has played a positive role in the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
Calling the act of sending over intelligence agents with explosives as a “positive role” is quite teh aggressive propaganda effort.
[…]
[former CIA director Robert Gates advocated appeasement of the current regime and] added that a U.S. military attack would galvanize support for the Tehran government across the country. Iranian authorities, he said, could retaliate by destabilizing neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, countries in which, he noted, the United States has an undeniable strategic stake.
In sharp contrast to Iran’s current efforts to destabilize Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Saddam lawyers appeal to Europe
Of course they would appeal to the EUlite.
Mr Ludot said he had petitioned the US to gain access to Saddam Hussein - to no avail.
He said he had chosen France to put pressure on Washington because it had a reputation for respecting human rights.
Like in Sudan, for instance.
Maybe Ludot should try appealing to, say, Iraq about this?