What Manhattan Might Look Like If Sea Levels Continue to Rise

Original photograph by Cameron Davidson; photo illustration by John Blackford.

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The Shameless Audacity of Egyptian Police

This story is utterly shocking.

An Egyptian man named Imad Kabir tried to intervene in a dispute between Egyptian police and his cousin in January, 2006. The police detained Kabir and tortured him by sodomizing him with a stick. One of the abusers filmed the incident, the video became public on the Internet in November, and Egyptian bloggers circulated the video. Two of the officers accused of torturing Kabir were detained and will go on trial in March.

The most ironic twist in this incident, however, is that now the Egyptian government has detained Kabir again for “resisting authority”, and Human Rights Watch said that Kabir has “received several phone calls threatening him and his family unless he dropped his case against the police.”

Sadistic torture is a integral part of the culture in Egyptian prisons. In addition to Kabir’s video, a handful of other videos of Egyptian prisoners being tortured – including female detainees – have begun to surface on the Internet.

One would hope that this publicity, as embarrassing as it is to the torture victims, will apply enough pressure on the Egyptian government to eliminate these disgusting practices.

Read more:

• BBC: ‘Torture’ victim jailed in Egypt

Stephen Colbert and FUSSDIRAGs

Referring to the recent deaths of former Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milošević, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein:

And Nation, we are running out of FUSSDIRAGs. “FUSSDIRAGs” of course is my acronym for “Former United States-Supported Dictators Internationally Reviled for Acts of Genocide.”

Stephen Colbert
The Colbert Report
January 8, 2007

Reuters: Israel has plans for nuclear strike on Iran

An excerpt from a Reuters article:

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper said

Citing what it said were several Israeli military sources, the paper said two Israeli air force squadrons had been training to blow up an enrichment plant in Natanz using low-yield nuclear “bunker busters.”

Two other sites, a heavy water plant at Arak and a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan, would be targeted with conventional bombs, the Sunday Times said.

Read more:

• Reuters: Israel has plans for nuclear strike on Iran

Reuters: Report says U.N. troops in Sudan raping children

Reuters ran an article about The Daily Telegraph reporting that U.N. troops in Sudan raping children. Here is an excerpt:

The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday that U.N. peacekeepers and civilian staff were raping and abusing children as young as 12 in southern Sudan.

The newspaper, in a story posted on its Web site, said it had gathered accounts from more than 20 young victims in the town of Juba of U.N. civilian and peacekeeping staff forcing them to have sex.

Read more:

• Reuters: Report says U.N. troops in Sudan raping children

Maps of War: History of Religion and Imperial History of the Middle East

Maps of War features a handful of Flash presentations, two of which are featured below.

The History of Religion
Click here to view the full-size presentation.


Imperial History of the Middle East
Click here to view the full-size presentation.