I love this observation about our media, and the fuss the US has made in attempting to refute an Amnesty International report about abuses at Guantanamo Bay by Adam Felber in Fanatical Apathy: Light Years Ahead (felbers.net). Of course, you should go read the whole thing, but here's a hint:

First, bear in mind that the summary on the US from the Amnesty International annual report does not contain the word “gulag.” Nor does an exhaustive specific report released a couple of weeks ago. The phrase “gulag of our times” comes from a speech made two weeks ago that refers to the reports.

That’s where our stunning advantage in spin technology began to assert itself. By the middle of last week, there wasn’t a single member of the Bush administration who wasn’t pushing his or her way towards a microphone in order to denounce Amnesty International for their ridiculous, unfounded, absurd, unfair “gulag” statement. They likened Gitmo to a gulag! Do they even know what went on at those gulags? What kind of gulag gulag says that we gulag our gulag with the gulag gulag still at gulag? Our technicians stuffed the foreign and domestic press’ ears so full of gulag that it became the story, the lead that consigned the actual report to the background.

This is the same point being discussed by Jefferson Morley in The Guantanamo Debate Comes Home (washingtonpost.com, 06/20/05)

In the U.S. media, the debate about Guantanamo often focuses on the propriety of the language used to describe the treatment of prisoners. The White House, conservative columnists and his Senate colleagues criticized Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) for saying U.S. interrogation techniques were reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The Post's Anne Applebaum, a Guantanamo critic, rebuked Amnesty International for likening the prison camp to the Soviet gulag.In the foreign media, the debate is more likely to focus on the propriety of the treatment itself.

Imagine that! Focusing on the treatment of the prisoners! What a novel idea.

When the going gets tough, inadvertently offend your allies by flushing copies of their holy books down the toilet: BBC NEWS | South Asia | Dismay at US Koran 'desecration' (05/08/05).

t r u t h o u t - Bob Herbert | Lifting the Censor's Veil on the Shame of Iraq (truthout.org, 05/05/05) describes some of the disturbing photos taken by soldiers in Iraq that we have NOT seen on the national news.

It's not necessarily something you need to read, - it is upsetting - but I found it interesting that the Abu Ghraib torture photos were such a media sensation... and then, nothing. I didn't believe that soldiers stopped taking photos, or that the only photos they had were from that one prison. And, it turns out, there are a lot more out there.

That raises some questions about the U.S. news media, and what motivates them to publicize, or not publicize, that kind of information.

t r u t h o u t - Naomi Klein | How to End the War (truthout.org, 05/07/05): is one of several articles that discusses how profitable war can be, and how that is always encouragement for those who profit to make new wars.

There are several articles which have detailed how the US government has attempted to subvert efforts at "democracy" in Iraq, with puppet governments, payola, and other tricks. This discusses the motivation for doing so:

The reality is the Bush administration has fought democracy in Iraq at every turn.

Why? Because if genuine democracy ever came to Iraq, the real goals of the war - control over oil, support for Israel, the construction of enduring military bases, the privatization of the entire economy - would all be lost. Why? Because Iraqis don't want them and they don't agree with them. They have said it over and over again - first in opinion polls, which is why the Bush administration broke its original promise to have elections within months of the invasion.

...They protested that 500,000 people had lost their jobs. They protested the fact that they were being shut out of the reconstruction of their own country, and they made it clear they didn't want permanent US bases.

That's when the administration broke its promise and appointed a CIA agent as the interim prime minister. In that period they locked in - basically shackled - Iraq's future governments to an International Monetary Fund program until 2008.

Democracy without actual FINANCIAL control for the people is a foreign capitalist corporation's dream!