Last Thursday [...] the House quietly passed a renewed appropriation that keeps open the U.S.'s most infamous torture-teaching institution, known as the School of the Americas (SOA), where the illegal physical and psychological abuse of prisoners of the kind the world condemned at Abu Ghraib and worse has been routinely taught for years. [more]

"A big reason for the new-found intimacy is the Indian government's desire to solidify its friendship with the United States. Indian officials have been bending over backwards to ingratiate themselves with the pro-Israel lobby in Washington in order to work Congress and to gain access to the neoconservatives who dominate the Bush administration's foreign policy." [more]

"The 288 American soldiers and countless Iraqis who have since died in a pointless, bloody war will not be mentioned, nor will the administration's own responsibility in their deaths. Of all the lies this administration has told its people, one false promise resonated most deeply with frightened Americans — the promise that a war with Iraq would make us safer." [more]

"Like other examples of doublespeak, the concept of 'shock and awe' enables its users to symbolically reconcile two contradictory ideas. On the one hand, its theorists use the term to plan massive uses of deadly force. On the other hand, its focus on the psychological effect of that force makes it possible to use the term while distancing audiences from direct contemplation of the human suffering that force creates." [more]

"Complicating the humanitarian crisis has been a behind the scenes international struggle against the Bush administration's militarization of humanitarian aid." [more]

"Given how continually Bush plays the fear card, we might acknowledge that Americans have some reasons for fear. And then make clear that reckless zealotry and a willingness to make entire populations expendable does nothing to bring real security." [more]

"One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors — conceptual structures like those we have been describing. When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored." [more]

"In an exhilarating expression of the anti-war movement's profound decentralization and spontaneity, peaceful demonstrators filled the streets, marching in whatever direction they could. It was the best anti-war protest yet, everyone agreed. Who needed to stand still in the cold and listen to the (at least 30) boring speeches, when so much of the city was one enormous, intoxicating, unpredictable protest march?" [more]

"It was only the remarkable restraint of protesters accustomed to obeying the law — a diverse array of families from the boroughs, twenty-something Manhattanites, and retired couples from Westchester — that prevented the day of peaceful dissent from turning into a riot." [more]

"The only reason — the only reason — that Congressional Democrats this past week started speaking out against invasion, in more than their previously token numbers, is because they have been deluged with phone calls, faxes, and e-mails expressing the public's opposition. Polls show widespread doubt. Congressional office intake valves, a measure of the people passionate enough to contact their public officials, has been running more than 90 percent against the planned invasion. And volume has been high." [more]