Unsexy War Blogging

Today, I thought I'd get a bit personal. I didn't post links to the usual litany of stories on Friday as a week of staring at the computer was just too much. I host a progressive radio talk show and play jazz in between the stories. Most of the stories I talk about were found somewhere in the blogosphere or on twitter. Needless to say, I depend on the help of many good people to point me in the direction of those stories the MSM finds inconvenient to pay much attention to.

I blog American, International and environmental stories here and Canadian news at the sister site NMPCanada. I also blog all this stuff over at the radio station. So Friday, after a busy week I'd had enough and went for a 60k bike ride, cooked supper and collapsed in front of what can only be described as bad TV. So I didn't post my newswrap - which I should clarify is generally a list of the stories I talked or will talk about on my radio show.

So, it was a busy Saturday as always but I'll try and hit on stories that seem to be the day's most important. Beginning with those related to the wars of occupation in the Middle East. (Whoops! Somehow managed to slip into early Sunday morning.)

As always, war news is unwanted and unsexy but the US has kids and good people doing grunt work in two wars of occupation, Canada in one, so it is important to never forget.

Today in Afghanistan, the third major attack on NATO forces in six days occurred. Insurgents fired rockets, mortars and automatic weapons and launched a ground assault against NATO's largest base in southern Afghanistan. The AP is reporting twelve Afghans were killed outside of Kabul when US soldiers spotted two suspected insurgents of trying to plant IED's - no word if any among the dead were civilians. Marjah, the object of a major spring offensive faces a deteriorating security situation. Afghan civilians fleeing for their lives.

Someone on twitter today, noting the lack of prosecutions for torture and BP's seeming impunity from charges both for the negligent death of the 11 who died and the ongoing ecocide in the Gulf, said it sometimes feels like GWB's third term. I'd like to echo that and point to a story about a ruling today by a DC Circuit court today that ruled detainees being held by the US at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan don’t have the right to challenge their detention, even though that right is guaranteed to prisoners in the US Constitution.

In Iraq, anger over the deaths of six detainees who died while being transported. Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi said in a statement that the deaths constituted "murder." A busy Friday in Iraq as 56 were killed and 158 wounded.

Since the war began back in 2003 so many of Iraq's legacies have been destroyed and lost forever. Since the last American "surge" Bahgdad has been made a city of rubble and walls. Push aside any romantic notion you may have in your mind about what has often been called the cradle of civilization. Read this story from 2008 about the city of walls  5 after the war began and this poignant story about the loss of the home of the renowned Arab novelist, poet, painter and translator Jabra Ibrahim Jabra which was destroyed in an April 4 car bomb attack that also killed 17 people in Baghdad.