Daily Archives: 11 Nov 04

US using white phosphorus in Fallujah seige

Posted on by

Via boing boing, which singles out the following paragraphs for your consideration from the San Francisco Chronicle‘s reporting about U.S. drive into heart of Fallujah:

“Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns.

Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, ‘The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted.'”

And how, do you suppose, can they tell that a corpse melted by an incendiary shell had been a fighter rather than a civilian?

Frying-Pan-to-Fire Dept:

Posted on by

[This is actually, unfortunately, a sub-department of the ‘Good Riddance’ Dept. I inaugurated below in celebrating Ashcroft’s departure].

Bush’s nominee is indeed Alberto Gonzales (New York Times ), who he called “a calm and steady voice at times of crisis”. Write or call your senators and urge them to oppose the nomination of a zealous advocate of the legality of torture for the highest law enforcement post in the country.

Gaudy complexity

Posted on by

Another Neal Stephenson interview on the occasion of the completion of The Baroque Cycle.

“I think that the period is interesting because of its sheer gaudy complexity – its baroqueness — and difficult to write about for the same reason. One cannot really make sense of all the wars and intrigues without a wall-sized family tree of the royal houses of Europe. I cheated by making the book long, which gave me space to explain at least some of these complexities. Other eras are simple by comparison; one can simply write ‘Napoleon had conquered most of Europe and wanted to invade Britain’ and the stage is set. But trying to set up the War of the Spanish Succession is a nightmare of forensic genealogy.

Setting those difficulties aside, this period is fascinating because so much was going on, and so much of it was brilliant and dramatic. The Turks at the gates of Vienna, the Barbary Corsairs and other sorts of pirates, gold-galleons on the Spanish Main, the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, the invention of modern science and finance, the Mogul Empire in Hindustan—all of this was happening at one time. I don’t think there was any other period of history to compare with it…” (Guardian.UK)