antarchia | ordered disorder

blessed britons

The staggering death toll -- 5.5 million to 12 million died in India despite modern railways and millions of tons of grain in commercial circulation -- was the foreseeable and avoidable result of deliberate policy choices.

mythbusting

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Mini Archive

Of selected articles on the South Ossetia conflict

mad world

Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?
A: Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.

— Groucho Marx

iraq

I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids.

— An Iraqi

honorary ants

modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

— George Orwell

poverty

On September 11, 2001, while the world lamented the deaths of innocent people in the United States, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation reported that the daily mortality rate continued: 36,615 children had died from the effects of extreme poverty. This was normal in the age of 'economic growth'.

forgettance

If memory is kept alive in order to cultivate old hatreds and resentments, it is likely to culminate in vengeance, and in a repetition of violence. But if memory is kept alive in order to transcend hateful emotions, then remembering can be healing.

the pot and the kettle

Submitted by antarchi on August 25, 2008 - 21:00.

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century" George Bush

Says who. Says the man who began the 21st century with unprovoked invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and who threatens to engineer a third invasion before the first decade of the century is over. Says the man at whose hands over a million have died and as many at least have been forced from their homes. Says the unelected President and Commander-in-Chief of the strongest military force the planet has ever known. Says the self-appointed ruler of the world... Read on

the victim of disinformation

Submitted by antarchi on August 24, 2008 - 10:29.

I have been accused of relying on sources which are funded by the CIA - in particular, the reports by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and United States Institute for Peace (among about another 30 funding organisations). So the following was my justification for reading their reports, and even believing some parts of them. The particular article in question was How the Georgian War Began.

rushing to judgement

Submitted by antarchi on August 18, 2008 - 18:05.

The internet has been bubbling for 10 days now with experts on the Caucasus, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Georgia, and the big bad Russian bear. Everyone understands what's going on. No-one agrees with anyone else. Firm, decisive analyses from 'experts' (and a few experts) tell us precisely who did what, when, for which reason, and what we can expect to see next. Until you read the next analysis - which tells you exactly the opposite.

facing the bear

Submitted by antarchi on August 15, 2008 - 23:05.

Eyewitness: Carnage in Tskhinvali

Submitted by antarchi on August 14, 2008 - 09:38.

An Ossetian who was in South Ossetia during the Georgian assault tells her story.

By Larisa Sotieva in Vladikavkaz

High in the sky I saw five steel-coloured planes. As I was studying them, they formed a line like geese and plunged towards the ground. From their bellies they dropped bombs like eggs. Their insane whistle shook the mountain gorge and the ground shook like an earthquake. Having dropped their eggs, the planes flew on in the direction of Tskhinvali.

It was the morning of August 8 and I was next to the road to the northern village of Java in South Ossetia, having spent most of the night in the forest sheltering from bombardment by the Georgian army.

The night before had been the culmination of all our worst nightmares for many years.

how many razor blades, Officer?

Submitted by antarchi on August 12, 2008 - 11:29.

I've been living in a cage in rural England. The cage was a field was a camp site for concerned environmentalists, and had barricaded gates and sentinels inside and out.

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war crimes

"How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis." [George Bush, December 2005]

As it happens, the White House has had something of a predilection for the pleasantly round number of 30,000. In 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, in the President's State of the Union Address, he used that very number for Saddam's mythical stock of "munitions capable of delivering chemical agents"; and, post-invasion, for police put back on patrol in the streets of Iraq. In 2005, that number was cited both for "new businesses" started in Iraq and new teachers trained since the fall of Baghdad. In 2006, in the President's "Strategy for Victory," that was the number of square miles Iraqi forces were by then primarily responsible for patrolling.

— Tom Englehardt

mad and bad

The “separation wall” is being built at a frantic pace. It does not separate Israel and the Palestinians. It separates the Palestinian villages and their lands. It cuts whole Palestinian villages off from the West Bank. It penetrates deep into the Palestinian territories, in order to attach dozens of settlements to Israel. It surrounds the West Bank on all sides, cuts it into pieces and cuts it off from the world.

— Gush Shalom

ant nuggets

* There are more than 12,000 different species of ant, ranging in size from 2mm to 25mm (about an inch).

* African driver ants are so vicious they have been known to kill humans. Although cases are rare, babies or already unconscious adults are occasionally found killed by the creatures, which attack in swarms of up to 100,000.

— Steve Connor