Bush blows the gaff

Reuters: "'After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain: We will not have an all-volunteer army,' Bush told a rally in Daytona Beach. "



He only opens his mouth to change feet. He retracted soon after and went back to the pre-prepared lie. Oops, I mean the pre-prepared line.

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

Stupid barrister

Angry letter costs son inheritance

Zoz

I'd like to box the apes who keep these orang-utans

The world is full of cruel and stupid fuckers.

Zoz

So, I went to see this man about a donkey ...

Terry Eagleton goes arse over tit in Sligo. Now see this is the kind of story that revives journalism. Why doesn't the Willesden Herald have this sort of thing? Because they're a pack of eejits, that's why.

Zoz

What can you do

...Things were just so easy teaching & studying & being a Lone Parent & totally penniless that I even got to write poetry... (Heaven)



Ossian

A Portrait of the Artist as a Conman

"He hid under the bible. His minister said:

--O, Tony will apologize.

Charlie said:

--O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.--

Pull out his eyes,
Apologize,
Apologize,
Pull out his eyes.
Apologize,
Pull out his eyes,
Pull out his eyes,
Apologize. "

(After James Joyce)

From Rouse Magazine

On Finding a Muse a review of Josh Davis's The Muse and the Mechanism

Ossian

BBC ghost channels busted

Poor value for money (Reuters)

This reminds us of Malachy Dunhill's definitions in his recent Herald article:

Television

BBC3 - Things that should be on ITV, mostly about how much money pop stars earn

BBC4 - Things that should be on BBC2

CBBC - Things that should be on BBC1 in the afternoon, instead of whining Australian soaps

CBeebies - Things that should be on BBC1 in the morning, instead of whining British soaps

BBC News24 - Half an hour of news, repeated forty-eight times

BBC Parliament - Closed Circuit TV from an institute for the clinically pompous

Radio

Five Live - Things that should be on Radio 2

Sports Xtra - Things that shouldn't be on at all

6 Music - Things that should be on BBC Radio 1

BBC 7 - Old things that should never have been on in the first place

Asian Network - Auntie talking very slowly and distinctly about things that should be on the BBC World Service

GLR / Local Radio - The broadcasting equivalent of make-work

(And next time you hear this, 'Please switch to BBC1 / 2 / Radio 5 Live, where the tennis / snooker / rugby continues' ask yourself this: Where is the BBC Sports channel?)

Cabbage's indifference engine

A miscalculation machine for adding up the takings at the end of another weakly edition. (via Zudfunck)

The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld

Recent works by the Secretary of Defense



Unknown knowns.



Ossian

Nobel prize for Literature, 2004

Elfriede Jelinek: "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power" (via Metamorphosism)



Ossian

Get all the latest before it even happens

If you ever thought about investing in a free newsreader program, Feedreader takes about 2 minutes to download and install, and works simply and wonderfully well.

To add the Herald to your list of sites, simply click on New Feed and paste the link listed under Tickertape in the left column. It will tell you when there are new messages and show you the headlines. Then you can click to read the complete article here.

Simon Moribund

Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger leaves Google

evhead: Next?: "It's been almost six years now since I started working on what became the company I sold to the company we started talking to two years ago because of the product we launched five years ago."

Simon Moribund

Have you seen this country? - picture*

"Wales has completely disappeared off the face of the earth, according to an official EU map." (Skynews)

*Does this mean I will have to cancel my car ferry trip from Holyhead to Dublin? It appears that the Irish Sea now comes in as far as England, and all of Wales has joined Atlantis under the waves. What about the people? Dear God! Urgent: Feargal, can you check that booking with Irish Ferries for me, please. Ed

Sowing the wind*

Guardian Unlimited Special reports 50,000 trapped by Israeli assault on Gaza: "Over the past three years the army has levelled 60% of Beit Hanoun's agricultural land, destroying its wealth and the main source of citrus fruit and olives in the Gaza Strip."

*This is not very funny. Delete it Feargal. Ed

The Great Escape - amazing dog exploits

Secret cameras set up to find out who was raiding the supply room nightly, caught Red the lurcher letting himself out of his kennel and then unbolting the cages of other dogs to join him for a midnight beanfeast, in the Battersea Dogs and Cats home: Pictures. (Skynews)

Skynews update: Hundreds of offers of homes. Red pictured, back in pokey.

King Blear

A Long Goodbye (Independent): "However 'liberated' Mr Blair may feel by Thursday's cathartic announcement, he could quickly become a prisoner of political circumstance."

Blear: "We have divided
In three our kingdom, while we
Unburdened crawl toward death
Or a pension fit for a tyrant, say."

Beckett: "Tis the infirmity of his age, yet he hath
Ever but slenderly known himself."

Blear: "Dost thou call me fool, boy?"

Brown: "All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
Bambi, Stalin, Mummy's boy..."

Blear: "I am a man more sinned against than sinning.
And I do have the scars upon my back for proof."

Harman: "Alack, 'tis he. Why, he was met even now
As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud
Scaramouche, Scaramouche will you do the fandango!"

Blear: "You unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
Excoriate in memoirs your misdeeds"

Paxman: "Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o'er men's faults light on thy successors
While from the bloody field you would abscond"

Blear: "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have an ungrateful media."

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit
of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star!

(King Lear quotes)

Election fever

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | The anger and hurt of Brown: "Tory warnings that No 10 may now try to stage a snap election in November found some echo among Labour MPs anxious that the Lib Dems will use the available time to nibble away at targeted marginal seats. Most MPs still expect a May or June election."

You heard it first in the Herald, several times, including in this article from February of this year.

The Widening Web of Digital Lit

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: The Widening Web of Digital Lit: "...the Web is home to hundreds of sites that talk about, pick on, poke at and generally mull over books, writers and writing. It would be impossible to list, much less describe, all of these destinations, but the following guide should provide you with an introduction to literary life on the Web..."



Pity they never heard about us.

Ossian

Brief encounters

"Anton Chekhov reinvented the short story: a century on, the form is enjoying another renaissance. William Boyd explores its attraction for writers - and proposes a new system of classification." (Guardian Online)

Ossian

Before the Fall

The river Brent at Wembley today.

Oni Mbeke

The Dressmaker's Child

The New Yorker: Fiction



A humdinger of a new story from William Trevor. It combines a number of elements to produce a tense account of the how an instantaneous lapse can develop in ways that affect whole lives.

Ossian

How's a person supposed to get any golf in?

Newsday.com - Jimmy Breslin: "George Bush reiterated time and again last night that it was hard work to run this government. It was hard work to lead a country out of tyranny and into democracy. It was hard work to read casualty reports. The war was hard work. And he made it plain that talking with somebody about his record as president was the grueling, hardest work you could want."