Abu Muqawama [hearts] David Smith

Is everyone out there clear about how much Abu Muqawama admires many of the Guardian's far-flung reporters (and football coverage) yet hates the newspaper itself? When it's not sending its reporters to harass a perfectly nice, altruistic girl doing some good in the world, it publishes not-at-all-clever editorial cartoons portraying President Bush as a simian, sub-human creature. Abu Muqawama's granola-munching Guardianista friends chuckle at these cartoons, forgetting all that critical theory they read in university which taught them, among other things, how dehumanizing a subject means relieving yourself of the moral obligation to engage with it. Thus, we can slag off President Bush as some monkey-creature rather than throw ourselves into a more difficult task -- such as an intelligent debate of the issues. Cool. These are some of the same folks, remember, who righteously condemned the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) as hateful and despicable (even if they defended their publication on free-speech grounds).

That said, reporter David Smith's reports from Iraq were really fantastic, and now he's back with video. Check it out. Good on him for humanizing the jack-booted imperial thugs of the U.S. Army.

UPDATE: One other thing in London that pisses Abu Muqawama off is the guy in his gym -- you know who you are, buddy -- who uses the only squat rack in the entire place to do his freaking pull-ups. This is bad etiquette, folks, especially on Abu Muqawama's leg day. Don't be that guy.