Comfort Women Apology Withdrawn

Via Farls at LGM I read that the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has withdrawn the Japanese government's official 1992 apology for atrocities to "Comfort Women", enslaved into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII.

Celtic Dragon runs a longer entry on this, including some gut-wrenching, absolutely nauseating first-hand testimony. What a horrible, horrible thing.

What a world.

Yes, we torture

According to Col. Stuart Herrington. Via Sully.

Battle of Algiers

Finally saw Battle of Algiers last night ... magnificent! It will reward repeated viewing. Of course, the torture and counterinsurgency techniques depicted seem, with certain exceptions, relatively mild compared to what we are surely doing in Iraq and in connection with the GWOT. With certain exceptions (the bombing of occuped houses, execution), a sense of civilization and restraint, however vague, still seems to permeate things. And this notwithstanding Mathieu's denial (really, evasion of the question) of constraints imposed by law.

Check out Farls on The Dark Soul of Colonel Mathieu. Brilliant stuff. Not the banality of evil, Farls claims, but more a statement about how humans can be mere technologies of domination. For whom or for what may be irrelevant.

I plan on posting on some of Joy Gordon's related ideas at some point.