“Abu Bakar Bashir is the elderly cleric Western intelligence has identified as the man most likely to have organised Saturday night’s Kuta slaughter… Asked if there was anything he wanted to say to families who lost relatives in the bomb blast, he said: ‘My message to the families is please convert to Islam as soon as possible.’ Mr Bashir offered no sympathy for those who died; just his belief that by converting to Islam, the survivors could ensure they would avoid the fate of those non-Muslims who died and went to hell.” – The Age, Australia, today.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “For many they are brute macho breathtaking reassurance that America is still fighting some sort of good fight, still kickass and badass and hoo boy watch out here come the Good Guys, that our tax-dollar trillions in bloated military expenditures can at least provide a nice afternoon air show in the park, whew. But of course these exact jets are also, for millions of others, the bringers of death. These very same aircraft are awesome machines of violent destruction sent by Cheney and Dubya and Rummy to blast already destitute and deeply oppressed foreign countries into submission so that Bush & Co. can lay some pipe and their oil crony pals can stop salivating at the prospect of a newly gutted Iraq and actually get in there and make some billions. This is the true reality.” – Mark Morford, SFGate.com.
The Dish 