Baghdad Burning: "It has been three years since the beginning of the war that marked the end of Iraq’s independence. Three years of occupation and bloodshed.

Spring should be about renewal and rebirth. For Iraqis, spring has been about reliving painful memories and preparing for future disasters. In many ways, this year is like 2003 prior to the war when we were stocking up on fuel, water, food and first aid supplies and medications. We're doing it again this year but now we don't discuss what we're stocking up for. Bombs and B-52's are so much easier to face than other possibilities.

I don’t think anyone imagined three years ago that things could be quite this bad today. The last few weeks have been ridden with tension. I’m so tired of it all- we’re all tired.

Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots."

(Via Baghdad Burning.)

In the Twilight Zone | Salon.com News: "The days when journalists could move around Iraq just by keeping a low profile -- traveling in beat-up old cars, growing an Iraqi-style mustache, and dyeing their hair black, or when women reporters could safely shroud themselves in a black abbaya and veil -- are gone. When Jill Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor tried such tactics this January, she was kidnapped while trying to get to an interview with a Sunni politician, Adnan al-Dulaimi.

What journalists have learned to do in this unprecedented situation is to give increasing responsibility to their Iraqi staff -- readers of the Arab press, drivers, fixers, researchers, translators, or stringers whom the larger bureaus have placed around the country or in key government offices."

(Via Salon.)

Saving a Nazi Church: Aryans on the Altar; Swastikas on the Church Bells - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News: "It is the country's last surviving Nazi era church with an interior still dominated by fascist symbols. Consecrated in 1935 two years after Hitler seized power, its exterior was designed in the Bauhaus style in 1929, before the reign of the Nazis began. Brown-tiled and cavernous, it is foreboding and devoid of grace, yet religious services took place here regularly until just a year ago when the church was deemed unsafe because tiles started falling off the façade.

'When you hold sermons in this church your words clash with the symbols around you,' Isolde Böhm, dean of the parish, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. 'It's hard work talking about human dignity when you're constantly aware that your surroundings evoke a system that trampled on dignity. Sometimes I had the feeling that the symbols overpowered the words.'

Despite the remnants of Nazism in the church though, Böhm and other priests and parishioners are trying to raise the €3.5 million needed to rescue the church from collapse. It's an ethical dilemma, but one they regard as worth tackling. The building could serve as a warning to future generations and as a reminder of how the German church aligned itself with the Nazis in the 1930s, they say.

In the early 1930s the Protestant church came under the influence of a racist and fascist movement called the 'German Christians' -- called 'stormtroopers of Jesus,' by the group's leader and founder Rev. Joachim Hossenfelder."

(Via Martini Republic.)

Iraq Edges Closer to Open Civil Warfare - Yahoo! News: "Iraqi authorities discovered at least 87 corpses — men shot to death execution-style — as Iraq edged closer to open civil warfare. Twenty-nine of the bodies, dressed only in underwear, were dug out of a single grave Tuesday in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.

The bloodshed appeared to be retaliation for a bomb and mortar attack in the Sadr City slum that killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 200 two days earlier.

Iraq's Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, meanwhile, told The Associated Press security officials had foiled a plot that would have put hundreds of al-Qaida men at critical guard posts around Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. and other foreign embassies, as well as the Iraqi government."

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

New Poll Finds 86 Percent Of Americans Don't Want To Have A Country Anymore | The Onion - America's Finest News Source: "A Gallup/Harris Interactive poll released Monday indicates that nearly nine out of 10 Americans are 'tired of having a country.'

Among the 86 percent of poll respondents who were in favor of discontinuing the nation, the most frequently cited reasons were a lack of significant results from the current democratic process (36 percent), dissatisfaction with customer service (28 percent), and exhaustion (22 percent)."

...

"'I already belong to a health club, a church, and the Kiwanis Club,' Tammy Golden of Los Angeles wrote. 'I'm a member of the Von's Grocery Super Savers, which gets me a discount on certain groceries. These are all well-managed organizations with real benefits. None of them send me a confusing bill once a year and make me work it out myself, then throw me in jail if I get it wrong.'"

(Via The Onion.)

Defense Tech: The Enemy is Me: "Today, I hear that the President and the Pentagon's higher-ups are trotting out the same argument. 'News coverage of this topic has provided a rich source of information for the enemy, and we inadvertently contribute to our enemies' collection efforts through our responses to media interest,' states a draft Defense Department memo, obtained by Inside Defense. 'Individual pieces of information, though possibly insignificant taken alone, when aggregated provide robust information about our capabilities and weaknesses.'

In other words, Al Qaeda hasn't discovered how to Google, yet. Don't help 'em out."

(Via a DefenseTech.)

AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: "In the most recent case the ACLU acquired documents showing that 'the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting investigations into a political organizations based solely on its anti-war views.'

That's right, organizations like the dreaded Thomas Merton Center, whose inspiration is the nonviolence-pushing monk of the Center's name, are the focus of FBI counter-terrorism investigations."

(Via AlterNet.)

Reporters Exempt From Eavesdropping Bill: "Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration's eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in U.S. law.

But an aide to the bill's chief author, Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said that is not the intention of the legislation.

'It in no way applies to reporters _ in any way, shape or form,' said Mike Dawson, a senior policy adviser to DeWine, responding to an inquiry Friday afternoon. 'If a technical fix is necessary, it will be made.'

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft of the legislation, which could be introduced as soon as next week.

The draft would add to the criminal penalties for anyone who 'intentionally discloses information identifying or describing' the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program or any other eavesdropping program conducted under a 1978 surveillance law."

(Via Washington Post.)

Seth's Blog: Bite sized: "What do the Dubai port deal, the numa numa video, Danish cartoons and yellow wristbands have in common?

They all spread because they were easy to spread. At the same time that climate cancer languishes in the background, voters inundate Congress with phone calls about the port deal. And pundits are surprised--shocked!--at how irrational the public is.

Actually, our behavior as people is pretty easy to predict. We like things that are simple, not complex. Issues where we can take action without changing very much."

(Via Seth's Blog.)