well, then I doubly recommend Granta, particularly Shehadeh. Indeed, a common theme is the disparity between the freedoms (mostly in the sense of being exhiliratingly unshackled from tradition) experienced in the U.S. and expressed by its cultural exports and the behavior of its government with respect to less powerful nations (i.e., just about everybody else).

heru: I'm no linguist, but I believe the origin of the word "troll" in the internet sense of the word comes from:

Slang: To patrol an area in search for someone or something.

This may actually be a bastardization of the fishing term "trawl."

In any case, it refers to people baiting others on comment boards with the intent of stirring up arguments.

You may be the first big government interventionist to claim that we, the USA, has done nothing in Afghanistan since 2001. Hell, if that crazy fantasy was true, and it is not, then why waste money that should be staying in the pockets of poor, hungry Americans? If we are doing nothing --- come home! (*)

Ondelette, is there a people or place on the globe that you would not have the military brutalize if you did not like the actions of their government? (**)

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(*) And if we are doing something, come home and stop brutalizing those poor innocent sods.

(**) Given the dems in power of course. All 'interventions' are 'wars' when Republicans do it and 'humanitarian rescue operations" when Democrats do it. Well, except to the dead, maimed, raped, torture, and brutalized.

Never been a proponent of intervention.

Except when you are opining about how we Americans need Government intervention to make your shitty life more fair and protect you from all the evil racist white folks. You have no ideological consistency, just base everything on your feel good emotions, your hate and your fear.

You're my official blog archivist now, look it up.

That makes sense, since the hour I spent on your idiotic fart-sniffing blog is probably more time than anyone else has ever spent there.

My comment was directed at your bullshit accusations about intervention, which you throw [case in point] just about anywhere like a modern day McCarthy.

People have to read through other people's comments you know, to figure out whether you're telling the truth; you waste everyone's time, which I think is your point. Not everyone knows you're an obsessive compulsive troll on lithium.

Maybe they should read through your comments and see how you always morph your positions into whatever you feel is popular among certain people at UT. And they can read ondelette's comments all they like, it is pretty obvious that ondolette is a Liberal Internvetntionist. Besides, ondelette is a big boy and can speak for himself, he doesn't need an ass kissing intellectual wannabe like you distorting his love of intervention.

Do you deny that ondelette has a hard on for US Government Intervention? Or are you just reflexivly defending him because he is arguing with me and you are a basketcase who can't control his emotions?

You dodged it. I didn't say we were never involved there until 2001, I asked you to tell us, in your own words, what we have done there since 2001, and what all the other players have done there since 2001. You don't know, you don't want to find out, you just present this total bullshit story about the poor little tribal morons and the big imperialist storm troopers. It's racist and unreal to the core.

I've put quite a bit of time and energy into trying to understand what has happened in Afghanistan. It's important to the legal cases of the prisoners there, and to understand the full extent of the U.S. moral slide. I don't have legal credentials, so I'm not actually involved in any cases or anything, but for quite a while it's been apparent to me that the whole structure over there that supports the prisons and the legal limbo needs to be enumerated and explained to the American public, at least to anyone who will listen, to try to stop what's happening and stop it from happening again.

And one thing that's very apparent is that simplistic bullshit about a grand U.S. invasion and occupation has hurt mistreated prisoners in U.S. courts by giving credence to U.S. government claims of justification for incarcerations under the Geneva Conventions, and by reducing rights to common Article 3. So I'm very, very touchy about idiots who believe in stupid simplifications of what's happening over there, because real people are losing real civil and human rights because of your stupid stories. Not to mention that the U.S. military is operating without genuine authority and needlessly killing the wrong people all the time.

A good bit of all that goes on because people like you refuse to be informed.

That was back in the usenet days. One would "troll" for newbies, and it was a from the fishing term. I remember the days of newsgroups well, still do a little here and there.

But, this is now and I was giving the "Devil's Dictionary" version. =:-)

But ondelette isn't an inventionist because omooex says so and we already know, omooex is always right about everything, even when he's wrong!

Just like he isn't a proponent of internvention by the Federal Government, except for when he is! Because he is such a chickenshit scaredy cat. He is all fear no principle.

The problem seems to be that "interventionist" means whatever you want it to. McCarthy had a similar thing going on with communist.

In other news, I doubt anyone could live their life as fearfully and risk-free as you probably have.

This is a great re-focusing of the torture debate. I'm shocked to read this.

Many who can perhaps rationalize the limited examples and techniques reported so far or controversial "ticking time bomb" scenarios will not stoop to rationalizing this. Those distractions will disappear for most. Or so I'd expect.

To my completely inexperienced imagination, the stress position tortures actually sound much worse than waterboarding. That it was done to hundreds, so many more should join you. I think I have. I feel the shame.

Has Keith Olberman reported on this?