Freedom's Just Another Word

     Going to add Dahr Jamail to my blogroll.  Found the link via Matt at DailyWarnews.  He's an independent journalist who has been in Iraq for seven months or more.  He reports this

The US-backed Iraqi government has announced draconian measures which state that from January 29th-31st the borders of Iraq will be closed, mobile and satellite phone services will be cut, the borders of Iraq's 18 governorates will be closed and no civilian traffic will be allowed near the polling stations.

     Don't expect the establishment media to cover any of this, but I'll check now.  Let's see

"News"	Borders	Interior Borders	Celphones	Satellite Phones	Car Traffic
NY Times
Wash Post
NBC

     Also from Jahr, a quote from one of his Iraqi friends

"I do not know why they detained me," he told me, "This is the freedom-they are free to detain anyone here without a reason."

     Well, thanks to Civil Libertarians like Antonin Scalia, the cops are free to detain Americans and bring them downtown, without telling them the charge, for any thing in the entire law books, if their State allows it (Texas does).

     I'm a bit of an amateur archaeologist, and, I agree with this snippet Jahr found at the Guardian

"Outrage is hardly the word, this is just dreadful," said Lord Redesdale, an archaeologist and head of the all-party parliamentary archaeological group. "These are world sites. Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it's actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world."