Posters: "Kidnapped - Bring Them Home NOW"

On a postbox in Harrow, London HA1 today

Radiohead: Harry Patch (In memory of)

BBC - Today

World War I veteran Harry Patch will be buried tomorrow. The former plumber, who fought at the battle of Passchendaele in 1917, gave a memorable interview to Today reporter Mike Thomson in 2005.
Thom Yorke, lead singer of the band Radiohead, was moved by the interview to write a tribute to the veteran, inspired by Harry Patch's words.
The song can be downloaded from the Radiohead website - all profits will go to the Royal British Legion.

Harry Patch (In memory of)

I am the only one that got through
The others died where ever they fell
It was an ambush
They came up from all sides
Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
I've seen devils coming up from the ground
I've seen hell upon this earth
The next will be chemical but they will never learn

Harry Patch (1898 - 2009)

Israeli tourism ads wipe Palestine off the map

A Different Perspective: Wiping Palestine from the map!

"Posters have recently appeared in London Underground tube stations advertising Israel as a tourist destination. The map on the advert depicts Israel as incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights (see photo below).

Please write to London Underground, the Advertising Standards Agency and CBS Outdoors – the company which manages the poster sites – asking for the removal of these posters, which deliberately deny the existence of Palestine. Contact details are at the bottom of this email." (Via: Lenin's Tomb)

Travel Desk

Downing Street petition for trade sanctions on Israel

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ISRAELISANCTIONS/

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to take economic & trade sanctions against Israel and urge the EU to boycott the EU/Israel trade agreement and EU/Israel Association agreement." (More details)

Newsdesk

State organised murder

Israel shelled Gaza Palestinians after evacuating them, UN says

"At least 30 people were killed in the Zeitoun district of Gaza after Israeli troops repeatedly shelled a house to which more than 100 Palestinians had been evacuated by the Israeli military, the UN said today." (World news | guardian.co.uk)

With one of the most dreadful pictures I have ever seen. It shows the law of the conservation of beauty, no matter how much you try to destroy it, it cannot be made into anything other than beauty. The destruction marks the destroyer, it never marks the victim. And medical help was denied access for several days, till they arrived to find dying children waiting beside dead parents. The great democracy!

Zoz

War should be by assassination of leaders

There's far too much in the way of war and not enough in the way of assassination. If Hitler had been shot... If Saddam had been shot... If Joseph Kony could be shot... The world would be a better place. The United Nations should declare that any country formerly with a legal right to wage war, in future will only be allowed to assassinate its enemies' leaders. In effect war will be redefined as a battle to the death between leaders. Any leader who tried to launch an old-fashioned war would be eliminated. It's a safe bet there wouldn't be any wars if the leaders had to put themselves in the firing line. It's only our lives they don't value.

"Confirming the kill"

karmalised: "...even if it's a three-year-old."



It's so frustrating and infuriating to read these reports and to be unable to do anything whatsoever about them. The selfish actions of people who don't give a damn about anyone only themselves, will be the death of all of us. And the worst thing about it is, it's not really worth living in this world anyway. This is Hell we're in. To walk out of Hell is to enter Heaven.



Zoz

It's time for a Pointless Gesture

"There are a lot of crossed fingers in Westminster" (Andrew Marr, BBC News at One)



What does that mean? People are to be sent to their deaths, and the government are "crossing their fingers"?



"Okay, 100 of you, you're sons are going to be shot. It's time for a Pointless Gesture. Got to be done. Sorry old chaps. Duty to allies. Ours not to reason why and all that rot."

Zoz

Base Details

IF I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
    I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
    You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
    Reading the Roll of Honour. ‘Poor young chap,
’I’d say—‘I used to know his father well;
    Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
Counter-Attack and Other Poems. 1918.

More non-US casualties needed?

MPs must have a vote (Guardian)

90% bad, 80% good.

Bush's answer to Kerry's criticisms: increase British casualties. Bush wants reports of British soldiers being killed in the run-up to polling day, so he can turn around and accuse Kerry of "demeaning the allies" and exaggerating the isolation of the US position.

We've had more hoons today about weighing up the advice. It's all crap - they've decided already. The man whose name is synonymous with lies, Geoff Hoon, was stupid enough to give the game away in an answer in parliament, when he said it was Britain's duty as an ally to agree to the US request for secondment of troops to their command.

He's been caught out telling hoons again. Either he is so stupid he doesn't know that most people can see through him, or he is reckless, inconsiderate and bloody-minded, happy to survive on the gullibility of a constituency of idiots. Or is he just completely and numbly incompetent? When answering difficult questions, he has the look of a cow watching a train go by.

How the hell do these people in government sleep at night?

Hoon, Blair - they love playing war with the soldiers

They are not proper men, they're like half-popped corn - boymen, but the nightmare is that we have given them control over us. These half-men are conspiring with zombie hordes of their ilk in parliament and the media to play war with real soldiers. Peter Snow will be stomping around in his computer generated battlefield with his toy tanks. The fierce, bald, short of breath ex-major generals will be wheeled on to add colour to the fantasy. But when all these unpeople shout their playground orders, real men, women and children are blown to bits. This would never happen under Charles Kennedy, would it? It wouldn't, it just wouldn't. That's why I'm voting Liberal Democrat. I've always been a liberal at heart.



Zoz

More hoons from the quislings

Refusal of US troop request would be a failure

"There will be no penalty, but we will have failed in our duty as an ally and as a country"



This is the latest hoon from the government, which is trying for a Guinness Book of World Records entry for "Most Tangled Web Woven after First Practicing to Deceive". When will they stop telling hoons, and admit that they are blairholes?



Zoz

"Give us your troops"

Up to 650 troops could be involved in the move to cover for U.S. units battling insurgents in the rebel-held city of Falluja and elsewhere, according to various newspaper reports. (Reuters)



Isn't it transparently obvious with the US Presidential election just a month away, and a possible bloodbath in Fallujah even worse than the present bombardment, that the Americans just want to "blood" the Brits in this part of Iraq. They want to pretend they don't need US reinforcements, and at the same time use the Brits as a shock absorbers for whatever new ignominy they have planned.



Is it possible that they are deliberately stirring up more war in the region to pass as a poison chalice to Kerry if he should win next month? They are capable of anything.



It's essential that the conservatives are defeated in the Presidential election, and the liberal Democratic candidate is installed. Why isn't Blair helping Kerry's campaign? He could do something, a nod and a wink. Because he's a Tory, simple as that. If not, let him say something in favour of Kerry.



Here is a challenge to Blair. If he is not a Tory let him say something to help Kerry. It would be easy and the media would pick it up with alacrity. If he wants to save his own skin, and start to try and make amends for outrageous misjudgements and wrong-headedness, now is his chance.



Zoz

"Draft the Brits"

The U.S. government has asked for British troops to "stand-in" for American troops south of Baghdad, so that more troops can be sent to Fallujah. Translation: "Cannon fodder needed to promote re-election of George Bush and Co." Is Blair capable of saying "No" to his puppet-master? Hardly. But why should Brits pay the price for U.S. violence, avarice and incompetence? Where do they get off? I'm not a Brit, but I would be very surprised if the British people stood for this.



The Brits are in the South, around Basra, and regardless of how they got there, it's clear they have been better at occupation than their big brothers in "the coalition." Had the Americans been in the south instead, they would've been bombing Basra on account of the presence of 200 or so militia men, and by now would have turned the entire population against them.The US has made its own bed in the north of Iraq and let them now lie on it.



It's clear President Bush doesn't want to send reinforcements before next month's election, and so he thinks he can throw some Brits into the fray. I hope the move by eleven MP's led by Plaid Cymru's Adam Price to impeach the Prime Minister, for conspiring with a foreign power against the national interest, succeeds. For Blair to agree to the latest order from Bush / Cheney would be a repeat and compounding of his original crime.



Zoz

The offensive nonsense that kids find funny these days*

	Music -[ Throwing Rock ]- Video
NEW	Gay Bar - Electric 6
BOOM!	Watch the video NOW in Real Video | QuickTime | Windows Media: 56 100 300	by System Of A Down
	Watch an interview with System Of A Down about the video: Real Video, QuickTime, or Windows Media: 56 100 300

*This little item landed in my in-tray today. I needn't tell you I had an apoplexy when I saw what it was. Ed.