West of Eden: Discouraged.

Congratulations Russia, killing your first 30 civilians in a single day in your very first week! You guys are going to go far in this business, I just know.

Updated 10/2/2015

Image by Heiko Sakurai, via Bayerische Schloßverwaltung.

So when Americans bomb a wedding party they sometimes manage to kill as many as 40 people (Mukaradeeb, Iraq, May 19 2004), 47 tops (Dih Bala, Afghanistan, July 6 2008), and they haven't really brought one of those off in years, frankly. So it's time for some of the younger countries to show up—Hi, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, wiping out upwards of 130 wedding guests, mostly women and children, in the village of Al-Wahijah in western Yemen on Monday, possibly a record.

West of Eden: Syria report

Kurdish wedding ceremony, Kobane, 1960s. Via ARA News.

Glad to be able to report that in his first press briefing since the war on the Caliphate began in June, commander Lloyd Austin stressed that US efforts to not kill civilians are not merely humanitarian, but part of the overall strategy:

White House Fool Report: Haunted, but maybe not *that* haunted

The village of Kafr Daryan, with a report in Indonesian accusing "Crusader invaders" of targeting civilians for death there. Arrahmah.com. Sorry, that's what they're calling it. I'm sure you'd rather they didn't. One weird trick for stopping people from talking like that would be not killing civilians.

Hey Mr. P

Sorry to hear about the armed maniacs in your house. I mean, I guess the Secret Service guys were supposed to be there, but the other one...

*rimshot*

I'll get down to the point: Last May, you told us

Call for signatures

You can sign an official WhiteHouse.gov petition here (h/t m50bing0 at Kos) asking the administration to pardon Bradley Manning of any and all crimes he may have committed in the course of liberating extremely important facts about the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and subsequently to back Manning's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Before you start giggling, just step back a minute, and think. It's true that Manning is a somewhat comic figure, bewildered where Daniel Ellsberg was dashing, and especially after that third WikiLeaks dump, which was more about amusing gossip than information being held back to deceive the American people. It's partly the fault of the press, because that was the batch of documents that got them really excited. They quickly lost interest in the horrifying Collateral Murder video, showing our troops in Iraq murdering a Reuters employee from a helicopter like Sarah Palin after a wolf, and in the Afghan War Diary, 92,000 documents unveiling the criminality and the hopelessness of our situation in Afghanistan, but it was the quarter of a million US embassy cables that really got their attention, with their stories about high life around the dictators in Baku and Grozny, and news of European politicians saying nasty things about one another.

It is the first two items that really count, and if you think of the risks he knowingly ran, and the skill he brought to the job, and the more-or-less torture he has undergone since his capture, he really is indisputably a hero, and it's not that funny. Again, sign here.

From The Cult of the Dead Fish.