Revolution

i don't care anymore


there's blood on the walls
brains on the floor
it's a house of slaughter
no windows, no doors
they've shaved off my hair
there's a scream in my head
it's a swastika dream
and morality's dead
there's a rope in the hall
execusion of pride
torture, abuse
nowhere to hide
i see innocent youth
who die by the score
brown, black or white
i don't care anymore
f'uck the war



Endymion 2007

Welcome to 'Palestine'

By Robert Fisk

06/16/07 "The Independent" -- -- How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).

We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal.

We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror".

Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control.

For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?

It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other).

If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.

So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love.

How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?

************************************************************

Falklands ceremony is too late for 'abandoned' veterans
By Kim Sengupta
Published: 18 June 2007

The 25th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War was commemorated yesterday in front of thousands with a ceremony at Horse Guards Parade, a flypast of 50 aircraft over Buckingham Palace and a march by servicemen and women who took part in the conflict.

But 300 Falklands veterans were missing from the ceremonies yesterday - men who had returned home after the victorious campaign and then taken their own lives, often alone in their last days, receiving little or no official help to cope with their distress and despair.

The number of suicides of those who fought in the south Atlantic is now 45 more than those who were actually killed in combat, a still unfolding and disturbing toll largely unnoticed by a society which, their comrades say, seems not to comprehend or care about the scars left by the war on the lives of soldiers.

Among those at yesterday's commemorations were Prince Charles and the Duke of York, who served as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Baroness Thatcher. Prince Andrew said "It is very important those of us who were down there say 'thank you' to a great many people in this country who supported the action in the South Atlantic 25 years ago".

Yet the South Atlantic Medal Association, an aid group for the veterans, charges that successive governments, of whichever hue, including that of Baroness Thatcher, who arguably owed her political survival to the victorious war, of failing to look after the returning service personnel. As well as those who had committed suicide, hundreds more have been forced into life on the streets, huddled in doorways not far from yesterday's scenes of celebration, campaigners say,.

The Government announced last week that a medical assessment programme set up to help Gulf War veterans would be extended to those who fought in the Falklands. That was said to be a personal initiative of Derek Twigg, the recently appointed Veterans' Minister, who said: "It is my sincere hope that all military personnel who served since 1982 make use of this programme if they or their GPs have any concern that they are suffering from a medical condition or mental health issue linked to their military service".

But John McQue, who served as a 19-year-old Royal Marine in the Falklands, said: "Why did it take 25 years to do this? We are grateful that this gesture is being made now, but I am afraid that for 300 people it is simply too late. They took their lives because there was no help available. Lot of people felt simply abandoned. It is as if after benefiting from the victory the politicians simply lost interest in the men who made it possible.

"What is forgotten is that the Falklands War was very different from the hi-tech stuff you see today. It was basically trench warfare, a bit like the First World War. And, of course, many of those doing the fighting were very young and saw some terrible things. We have the dead but also many who survived are homeless, without a job or a home even now."

Dave MacCreedy, of the South Atlantic Medal Association, said "Officials basically did not want to accept that there is [post traumatic stress disorder]. This contributed to the suicides. We have taken veterans back to the Falklands, accompanied by doctors, and that seemed to have helped. It has given them a sort of closure. But that costs £1,200 a head."

Hero jumped to his death: Charles Bruce. Former SAS soldier

Charles "Nish" Bruce of the SAS was the first Special Forces soldier to parachute into the Falkland Islands during the South Atlantic war. His courage and leadership on the extremely hazardous mission won him the Queen's Gallantry Medal.

Bruce left the Army in 1988 to work in the security industry, and also wrote a book under the pen name Tom Read. A former member of the elite Red Devils parachute display team, he took part in regular skydiving displays. But despite his success and popularity, Bruce was deeply affected by his experience in the conflict. "In the Falklands, I saw dead men so deformed that their own mothers wouldn't recognise them,'' he said. "Boys of 18 who had tried to slit their own throats because they had been so badly burned.''

In 1994, Bruce had a breakdown and attacked his then girlfriend. He seemed to have recovered, but eight years later he jumped without a parachute from a Cessna over Oxford.

Corporal Les Standish, of the Parachute Regiment, a friend of Bruce, said: "I know more than a few Paras who had served in the Falklands and then killed themselves."


http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2669924.ece

War Foretold: Mark Twain and the Sins of Our Race

By Ramzy Baroud

0-6/17/07 " ICH" -- -- When I resorted to Mark Twain's writings I attempted to escape, at least temporarily from my often distressing readings on war, politics and terror. But his "The Mysterious Stranger", although published 1916, still left me with an eerie feel. The imaginative story calls into question beliefs that we hold as a "matter of course" - a favorite phrase of his. It summons the awful tendencies of "our race": our irrational drive for violence, be it burning 'witches' at the stake or engaging in wars that only serve the "little monarchs and the nobilities."

As the Iraq war rages on, Twain's words ring truer by the day. "The loud little handful will shout for war.Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will out shout them and presently the anti-war audiences will thin and lose popularity. Before long you will see the most curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men. And now the whole nation will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after the process of grotesque self-deception."

Twain, whose genius undoubtedly surpasses time and space, wrote the above passages nine decades before the world's leading statesmen, President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair forged their case for war, based on falsities and refused to examine any refutations; they rallied millions, investing on their ignorance and blind patriotism to carry out a war whose outcome is akin to genocide. The text was also written long before the thousands who stood for human rights, rallied and organized against the war, defended the constitution and civil liberties were "shouted out" and "stoned from the platform"; thousands of those "fair men" and women have endured such a fate, the latest being Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved American mother who lost her son, Casey, in Bush's war for oil, strategic repositioning of the empire and the neoconservatives' ceaseless hunt for Israel's illusive 'security'. She too was shouted out, and in a heart-wrenching letter, she reached the conclusion, most difficult for any mother to reach, that her son, Casey died for nothing.

But Bush is adamant to carry on with his costly endeavor that has espoused so many new chasms within his country, and in the world at large: religious contentions and political turmoil, damage that neither Mr. Bush, nor his most luminous advisors have the will nor the brains to remedy.

"But what does it amount to?" says Twain, using one of his story's characters, an angel to convey the idea: "nothing at all. You gain nothing. You always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously re-performing this dull nonsense - to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touches them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not shamed of it, but proud."

Sheehan couldn't get an answer for why Casey was killed; many more might want to live with the illusion that their loss didn't go in vain; but dead American bodies continue to arrive back to US soil only at night; the wounded are maltreated and hidden from the public eye, only occasional courageous reports manage to break the silence and the perfected propaganda. In Iraq, the sheer number of dead and dying defies belief; the entire country is now gripped in an endless strife that shall define the cultural and social disposition of future generations; it's often easy to comprehend and come to terms with a total number of deaths when they are presented in a neatly packaged chart or a website, no matter how harrowing; but once you learn of the individual stories, you wonder whether the days of burning witches at the stake were better times: a young girl raped before her own family and later killed with her own baby; entire families massacred in broad daylight; militants chopping off limbs and ears and noses under the watchful eye of the Iraqi police, for their victims belonged to the wrong sect and stood on the wrong side of the war.

"The Mysterious Stranger" ended up being a figment of a little boy's imagination - or was it? - its meaning is overreaching and very much real. The war is real and frightening and hurtful; it's not an intellectual argument; it cannot be reduced to a few images and captions and editorials; nothing can ever capture a moment where a mother receives the corpse of a son or the scene of a father kneeling before the shattered body of a daughter. It's all real, and it's all our own doing, whether by supporting, financing and fighting the war, or by staying silent as it rages on.

-Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com and can be contacted at [email protected]

The true story of a refugee in Britain

Immigration is one of the most highly charged political issues of our time. Yet how much do we know about the lives of those arriving in Britain as refugees? In the first of a series of extraordinary personal stories, 'Dog' describes the journey that brought him here - and his struggle to survive in a cruel and indifferent world
Interview by Carole Angier
Published: 18 June 2007

I I'll tell you my story, but I won't tell you my name. People say "it's a dog's life". You can call me Dog. I come from Africa. I won't say where. My father left my mother when I was very young. I don't remember him, he never took care of me. My mother did her best. She worked selling fruit in the market, but we were poor. In Africa, if you have no money, you get no schooling, so I never went to school. Sometimes my mother would go away for a long time and would leave me with friends. They didn't treat me well. Sometimes I didn't have enough to eat. I had to beg on the street. I was only five or six years old. Young.

So my life was rough from the start. Maybe God wanted to prepare me. But he prepared me well, because my mother is a good woman. She loved me and taught me good things: work hard, don't steal, trust in God. But one day she didn't come back. I asked and asked her friends, but they didn't tell me what had happened to her for a long time. Finally, they said she had died. I was about 10 years old. I don't even know where she is buried, or who paid for her grave.

I stayed with the friends, but I had to beg to survive. One day on the street a man called me to go and buy something for him. He was a black man, but French, not African - a French businessman. He asked me why I was not at school. I told him my situation. After that he employed me whenever he was in my country. He became a friend.

Two years passed. One day he told me, "You are a smart kid. You should go to school. I can send you to school, or I can take you to Europe." I had nothing in my country, so I went to Europe.

I don't know how he fixed documents for me. I never had any of my own. Maybe he said I was his son. Anyway, we had no problems. We came to France, to Paris. He took me to a friend's house, let's call him Paul. Paul's place was small. I slept on the floor. I only got to sleep in a bed when Paul was away. Every now and then the businessman would come to visit us. I asked when I could start work, when I could go to school, but nothing happened. Maybe he had problems getting papers for me. In Europe you have to have papers for everything.

I took care of Paul's place, like a servant, and he gave me food and clothes, but no money. Sometimes I went into cafés and asked people for money, and sometimes they gave it to me. But I wasn't so smart. Usually I can learn quickly, but I couldn't learn to speak French well. I don't know why, maybe I was scared. French people are very proud of their language - if you don't speak it good, they don't like you.

After a few years the businessman stopped coming to see us. Paul didn't want to keep me any more. He told me he was going away and I couldn't come with him. I stayed in his room alone. But then someone came and started asking questions. Who was I? Who did I stay with? I left the room and never went back. I was 16 years old.

****

For the next few years I slept rough on the streets, in Paris and other cities in Europe. I begged for money and food, I couldn't wash much. I slept in bus shelters, or in discos, which are free to go in after midnight. But I remembered my mother. I never committed a crime. I drank alcohol sometimes - I needed to drink sometimes - but I never touched drugs. I am not that kind of person.

By now, I was in my twenties. I knew my life might be half over and I could see the way things were going. I didn't want to be on the streets any more. I needed a proper plan for my life. I decided to go to England. I knew the language. I'd liked the English people I'd met, I like the football - the best team in the world is Man United. So I spoke to a friend of mine. He told me that England is not like the Continent, that I needed documents to get there, but once there, there would be good work. He helped me. He gave me a Netherlands ID and a plane ticket.

The ticket took me to Belfast. In Belfast they told me it was not my photograph on the ID card. I told them I wanted to claim asylum, but they told me I couldn't claim asylum in the UK. They put me in prison for four days and then sent me back to Holland.

I told my friend what had happened. He gave me a new ID card and a new ticket, train this time. This time, no problem. The UK immigration officers checked my ID on the train. They said safe journey, I said, thank you. And that was the last time I had a friendly chat with immigration. Hah!

When the train stopped I asked people where we were: London! I was happy. I didn't ask for asylum, because the Belfast man told me they didn't give it. And I didn't want asylum, I wanted work. My mission was not to go back on the streets again, but to support myself, to survive.

I went to an agency and asked for work. And it's true - there's plenty of work in England. And I'm a good worker, everywhere I worked they liked me. So, after a few weeks this company offered me a full-time job. I didn't have to sleep on the chair any more, I rented my own house and slept in my own bed. For the first time in my life, I was living on my own. Everything I had was mine alone. I couldn't believe it, I tell you. And now they were offering me full-time work. If I said no, maybe I'd lose everything. So I took the risk. I gave the job centre my ID card and asked for an NI number. They told me to come back in a week.

I went back a week later, but nothing. For four months I went back, but they told me they were still investigating my card. I worked every day, overtime, too. I bought good things, quality things, I could enjoy my life for the first time. I paid all my bills - rent, utilities, council tax - everything. The council tax was a big deal for me, but no problem. I was glad to pay it, proud to pay it. I kept all the receipts. I didn't owe a penny to anyone.

I was worried, but I figured I'm not doing any wrong. Finally, I got an appointment to collect my number. My friends told me not to go, that I might be arrested for working illegally. I didn't believe them. I didn't know that what I was doing was wrong. I didn't run away, I just waited for the appointment day. And then, that morning, the police came and arrested me. They charged me with deception, and said I had committed a crime.

****

From that day I became a criminal. But what did I do? I hadn't hurt anyone. I hadn't cheated anyone. I worked hard and paid my way. But they said I'd committed a crime.

Immigration officers came and interviewed me. One officer said I could wait at home for my trial, but I mustn't run away. I stayed at home for six weeks without going to work - lucky for me I paid my landlord a month in advance. When I reported to the officer, he was surprised. "You're a good guy," he said. "I never see people like you. I asked you not to run away and you didn't. You came."

I went to court and they sentenced me: 12 months in prison. It was hard. I don't like prison; prison spoils your record, and I knew myself I'm not a criminal. But I obeyed. I didn't fight, I didn't get into trouble. In the mornings I went to school, and studied English and computer studies. In the afternoons I worked - packing instruments and loading them in cars. When I finished my sentence I had earned £300. I worked so hard. The officers liked me and treated me well. They could see I wasn't a criminal.

In prison, a lady came from Croydon and told me to seek asylum. I said, "You won't give it to me, so why are you wasting my time?" She told me that this was the procedure. So I obeyed. I gave more interviews. Always interview, interview, interview. I swear to God I won't give another interview in my life.

I served six months; good behaviour. My sentence was done. And so it came to the day of my release. Every time I remember that day I cry. When I reached the gate they told me, "No. The Home Office says you have to go back." I asked them why? They wouldn't tell me, but later I heard it was because there was no room at the detention centre. Whose fault was that, the Home Office's or mine? Who served the extra month in prison? Home Office or me?

After a month they sent me to a detention centre. This was better. You could make phone calls, you could walk outside. But it wasn't all good. I couldn't make money there like in prison, and they took the money I had. A phone card outside cost £3.50, but they took £5. Mobile phones outside cost £15, they took £30, sometimes more. What's the difference between detention and prison? Nothing. People still monitor you, they decide for you, they take everything from you - your photographs, your fingerprints, your DNA, your independence. I had nothing left.

And some of the officers here were worse than in prison. Some were very good, kind and treated me well. But we were all foreigners there, and the British don't like foreigners. Some of the officers talked to us as though we were animals. If you are illegal, you are not a human being in Britain. That is the problem.

I stayed in the detention centre for six months. Every month I got a report from immigration. Wait for the document, wait for the document. All that changed was the date. I went a bit crazy - we all went crazy. In detention you don't know how long it will go on for; maybe you'll die there. You feel you're dying already.

And then came the worst thing. Lawyers.

****

The police had given me a lawyer already for my criminal case. He visited me in prison and I signed for legal aid. He kept saying he would come, but he didn't come. He said he would write to the Home Office for my case, that he would write to the court for bail, but I didn't hear a thing. Finally, I got a date for bail. A week before, he came and said: "I see from your case you will lose. So legal aid won't pay, and I can't represent you." I asked him why he hadn't told me before so that I could find someone else. He said if I paid him, he would represent me. That was his strategy - he told me so late, I had nowhere else to turn.

He asked for £3,000. I said, "You know my situation, how can I get £3,000?" I had a friend, maybe she could get £1,000. But he said, "No." I don't smoke, but that day I smoked nearly three packets of cigarettes. I lost hope. In fact, that day I nearly died.

When I got to the court, the lawyer didn't come, and he didn't send my friend's address, either. I spoke for myself. I could see the judge wanted to release me but without an address she couldn't. I didn't get bail.

I tried again. On that day I got up early, I showered, I dressed well. But they didn't come and pick me up. I asked them what happened, and they said, the van is gone. The van had gone without me.... Then the court wrote and asked why I hadn't shown up. What! What did they expect me to do? Should I have flown?

After that, the lawyer asked me for money again, but I finished with him. I found a new lawyer - but he was worse than the first! He came and took £200 from me, and then I heard nothing from him for a month. Every time I rang him he would say, "Hey, hey, Mr Dog, I'm a busy man, hang up the phone!" Once, I heard him tell his secretary to say he wasn't there. I could hear him on the phone. People think that if you are from Africa you don't have sense. They treat you like an idiot, but I am not an idiot. Hah!

Finally, I got a letter saying we had a court date, and that I needed £500 for a barrister. My friend got me £500, but how could I repay her? I had no choice. And then, when we got to court, no barrister. When she finally arrived she didn't know my case well at all. She spoke real quick, maybe for seven, eight minutes. That's all.

For a long time I heard nothing, and when I did, I wished I hadn't. The judge said my case was nonsense. Nonsense! He said I lived in a council house - not true! I lived privately. He said I had three bank accounts. Not true! I was fitted up. And I couldn't answer. The law abused me. Legal aid lawyers, private lawyers, they were all the same. They took £700 from me and represented me like that. I had another friend in detention, whose lawyer took £1,600 from him and didn't represent him at all. You're in detention, then you're deported, what can you do? Nothing. They know. That's what the Home Office should investigate. That's who the criminals are.

After my appeal was dismissed I had no hope, no money, nothing. But God was there for me. When I was at the very bottom he sent good people to me. I got a volunteer visitor, and I got BID - Bail for Immigration Detainees. They found a new lawyer for my case, they prepared a new bail application for me. I'll always thank them, and pray for them. I have no family. My friend, my visitor, BID - I take them as my family now.

But immigration are wicked - they try to frustrate you, they try to paralyse your life. As soon as you have a bail hearing they give you a removal date. I was nervous. I couldn't stand any more. I went to the immigration manager and told her they should release me. She told me to, "Go to Colnbrook and get a tag." I said, no, she should give me a tag from here. But she wouldn't agree. That day I was really annoyed. I was really worried. Some people were on hunger strike, and I joined them. For one day. And bang - they sent me to Colnbrook. Not for the tag - that's a lie. Because I joined the hunger strike, and they wanted to break us up.

****

I got to Colnbrook. I don't want to talk much about that. They put me in a wing you're only supposed to stay in for 72 hours max. Thinking about that room makes me cry. I could only go out for 15 minutes. Security watched me all the time. I was only allowed 10-minute phone calls... It was a punishment. But what did I do?

Colnbrook is a prison - no air, nothing. Everybody's frustrated, everybody's crazy. You remember what happened at Harmondsworth? Why you think they burnt that prison? Because of frustration. You think that someone would do that if they were in a good condition? If you put a person in a cage, you spoil his mind.

I stayed in Colnbrook for six weeks. Then came the day I never believed would arrive: I went to court with two sureties, my friend and my visitor. My lawyer sent me a good barrister, and I got released. The guards gave me my stuff in a big plastic bag. It was heavy, and it was made for criminals. But I didn't care. I was free.

****

That day was more than eight months ago. For eight months I have tried to keep up my spirits, to count my blessings. My lawyer has worked hard to get my case reviewed. I live with my friend in a nice house, I sleep in a soft bed, not on the street. She helps me a lot, and I help her with her house, with her children. I try to remember that this is good. I do remember. In fact, I take my life now as paradise, compared with before. But sometimes, I tell you - I can't help it, it's hard. I live in someone's house again, like a houseboy. I am not that type of person, but I don't have a choice. I can't work. I can't pay her back. I can't pay anything. I am dependent. Just for a bus ticket, a pint of Guinness - I have to ask her for everything. And she doesn't have much money either, sometimes she gets upset with me.

Sometimes we fight, and she says bad things to me. Then I feel she's like everybody else, she betrays me, too. Sometimes, I swear, I don't trust anyone in Britain any more - not my new lawyer, not you either - why do you want to know all this from me? Maybe you'll put me in problem, too.

I go to school, I'm learning English and maths. My teacher says I'm doing very well. But that is once a week, one hour or two. The rest of the time I am in the house. I sleep a lot. And I think about my case, about how to survive, and not to be in this mess. I think and think and think, around and around. I am not in prison any more, but this is prison, too.

I say this to the Home Office: "What are you looking for? Still, you are deporting me. Still you don't want me - what have I done? What about the things you did to me? You lied about me in a court of law, you treated me like a criminal - worse than a criminal. You treated me like a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist. I'm a foreigner, that's all. And because I am a foreigner, you can do what you like to me. Hah!"

What about the British lawyers that cheated me? What about the British company that cheated me, too? They still owe me my last salary - £1,200, £1,300. But when I was arrested they said that was not my name, and they took the money back. Who did the work, me or my name?

I say this to Home Office, and to anyone who reads my story: I was an orphan in Africa, and a street boy in France and Holland. The worst things in my life happened here. You came to my country first and took money away. I want to work and leave my money here. You can kill without a knife, without a gun. Sometimes I feel like you have killed me already.

I didn't come here for benefits, I didn't come here for a council house or a bank loan. My mission is to sweat and work and survive. If that is a crime, I've served my time for it, and more. And even now I am out, you punish me. I have to sign at that police station and every time I go I feel shame. Then you send me to sign 40 miles away. How can I get there when I don't work? Huh! Let me work! No benefit, just work. Even if you give me one year, I'll be happy. It would give me a chance. I could pay back my friend, I could be independent, I could hold up my head again.

That is the important thing I want to say. Let people work. If don't want criminals, let them work. If you stop them working, you make them criminals. What choice have they got? If you don't treat people like human beings, maybe they can't behave like human beings any more.

If you don't listen, I swear I don't know what I'll do. I am an honest person, but the way you treat people spoils their minds. If you provoke me, you'll make me do what I don't want to do... I pray hard that it won't happen. I pray hard to keep my conditions, that I won't betray anyone who has trusted me, that I won't run away. I'm prepared to die for my case, I swear. If they detain me again, I won't cooperate any more. Never in my life will I eat. Never in my life will I call anyone - no lawyers, no friends, no one. Let them kill me! But will my life end like this?

www.refugeeweek.org.uk

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2666951.ece

A New Iliad: The Fixation of Dubya or The Wrath of the American People?

Published on Sunday, June 17, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
by Caroline Arnold

"I sing the Wrath of Achilles" … proclaims the opening verse of the Iliad.Scholars generally agree that the Iliad originated in orally generated and transmitted stories, scenes and characters during the 500 years after the Trojan War (c. 1250 BC) until the "blind poet" Homer, (who some believe was a woman) wrote them down around 650 BC.

Though many think the Iliad is about the Greeks' war on Troy - battles, maneuvers, wife-stealing, the Trojan Horse - it isn't. It's about the Wrath of Achilles: "… that fatal wrath which, in fulfillment of the will of Zeus, brought the Achaeans [Greeks] so much suffering and sent the souls of many noble men to Hades …."

Achilles spent most of the Trojan War sitting in his tent sulking over a slave-girl Agamemnon stole. Eventually, after his friend Patroclus was killed by Hector, Achilles got really mad, went after Hector, and with the intervention of the gods, killed him.

Yet what strikes most modern readers is the formulaic language: "the fair Helen," "the swift-footed Achilles," "Hector of the shining helm," "the horse-taming Trojans", "the well-greaved Achaeans." Such repetitive epithets and stock phrases are apparently what made it possible for epic tales to be remembered and reconstructed improvisationally by generations of singers/performers in pre-literate oral societies.

Some 30-odd centuries after the fall of Troy we seem to be in a new age of orality I see it in letters- to-editors, blogs and on-line comments where common oral phrases are spelled in ways that change meaning: "tow the line," "feint of heart," "waived a handful of documents," "take the reigns," "in cynic with" (for: toe the line, faint of heart, waved documents, take the reins, in synch with)

Where's the sense, the meaning, the reality? in the sound of the words or in the spelling? And where are facts or truth when we are swamped with sloppy orthography, or the oral bravado of thousands of blind bards - PR people, newscasters, pundits, preachers, patriots, protestors and politicians who repeat the sound bites and urban legends they think portray reality?

Three thousand years - a hundred human generations - have passed since the Trojan War. Human population worldwide has grown from perhaps 50 million in 1000 BC to over 6 billion today. Human communication has gone from ephemeral oral/aural exchanges to semi-permanent visual modes of writing and printing; it has spread into broadcasting, computing, Internet, and cellphones, and been largely taken over by a corporatized "mainstream media" and professional spin-doctors.

Are we better off? The Greeks and Trojans had a pantheon of gods just barely nobler than the imaginations that produced them, and a body of oral, malleable myths to explain the world. We have imagined one great God who speaks directly, but orally, to selected prophets, (and latterly, presidents) and we justify our unimaginably destructive ideologies and technologies with oral, malleable myths.

"Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" is recited as the all-purpose justification of a cruel war. Cindy Sheehan is labeled an "Attention whore;" anti-war protestors are called "whiny, anti-US morons," or "idiot liberals." "All options are on the table for Iran" means "we can nuke Iran if we want to," and "support the troops" means giving Bush our money to pay Haliburton and Blackwater. Or does it mean "Bring the troops home now"?

I have been writing these columns for almost 10 years. I like to play with words and meanings, and explore ways to understand the natural world and our human place in it. I like to think I have done this in service to a less violent, more humane world.

I confess I'm running out of steam. The sheer quantity of information needed to understand what is going on in the world has become unmanageably large; the amount of noise in the system drowns out all sense. Even with good google-skills and a fast computer I can't keep up with issues like corporate crime, drug smuggling, health care, global economics and a myriad of other things that matter. Among other things, I suspect it is not a good idea to tell pension funds what they can't invest in, but how do I know?

Worse: it's getting too hard to offer hope to people. The illusions we have created out of sound bites and formulaic phrases are taking us all to hell. The Middle East is aflame with civil wars, the U.S. President is hated world-wide, global warming and proliferating nuclear weapons threaten all of us.

We the people aren't in control of our own government any more - nor of our our lives. We're trying to stop the use of torture and illegal detentions, to end a cruel war, or turn back the march of global warming, and it's not working.

We're mostly contributing to the construction of an epic we might as well call Oiliad ("I sing the Fixation of Dubya, that fatal fixation which, in fulfillment of the will of God, brought [the world] so much suffering and sent the souls of many noble ones to Hell ….")

We need an epic about "The Wrath of the American People" against the abuses of the Bush administration. Regrettably, six years of protests, speeches, op-ed essays, online blogs, and MoveOn.org haven't accomplished much.

And we need an epic that glorifies the worth and dignity of every human being and ends the use of deadly weapons, nuclear bombs, torture, and war.

Caroline Arnold ([email protected]) served 12 years on the staff of U.S. Senator John Glenn and is now active in community and environmental affairs in Kent, Ohio.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/17/1940/

Two words sum up why I cannot accept my MBE: Tony Blair
An exclusive report by Agent Provocateur co-founded Joseph Corre
Published: 21 June 2007

I am not a politician. I am not a political commentator. I have never been a Conservative, on one hand, or a hippie on the other. I have certainly never hated the Labour Party. I'm simply a businessman who co-founded a company called Agent Provocateur, which makes knickers and has had the good fortune to be successful.

Three weeks ago, I was sent a letter saying that I'd been nominated for an MBE. I thought it was a nice gesture and signed a form saying that I would be happy to accept. But after news of the MBE came out in the press, the idea began wrestling with my conscience. Yesterday, I decided that I cannot accept this honour.

My reason for turning down the MBE can be summed up in two words: Tony Blair. In 1997, I voted for Mr Blair. It was a time of hope and I was hopeful that he would be a good prime minister. To a degree, his party did good things in office. I agreed with the minimum wage, and I have admired his tax regime, which created an environment in which my business could thrive.

However, I believe that the way and the methods with which Tony Blair took Britain to war in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside George Bush were dishonest. They were based on a lie. We did not enter these conflicts for moral reasons; we entered them for economic ones. That much has now become clear.

I would have admired Tony Blair, or at least respected him, if he'd have told me that we were going to war because he thought it would be good for our economy, regardless of the human cost. I would have respected that honesty, even if I strongly disagreed with him. But instead, Mr Blair dreamt up this thing called spin, which is effectively organised lying, to convince the British public that his reasons were just.

The result has been that hundreds of thousands of people have now suffered intolerably. They have suffered death and torture, and they now live in hopeless situations as a direct result of Tony Blair's invasion. What is going on daily in Iraq is a tragedy. I have seen the death and the sheer human misery. I have seen pictures of whole families being blown to pieces. It is the greatest scandal of our time.

Someone has to be held responsible for that. Someone has to stand up and hold up their hand and say sorry for the lies, and sorry for that dodgy dossier. Instead, we have had silence. The UK has become a more dangerous place, and a bigger target for terrorists. Whole communities have been alienated and still nobody from Tony Blair's government has said sorry.

What happened to the old-fashioned concept of honour? What happened to people being prepared to accept they were wrong, and to apologise or resign? In London, a poor innocent commuter was shot seven times in the head, and not one person said sorry. In Parliament, Tony Blair has been like John Gotti, the Teflon Don: he has refused to allow anything to stick to him.

People are disillusioned with democracy. They feel helpless and powerless, and the reason has been Mr Blair. There was a huge march against his war. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, and he took no notice. No wonder people feel disenfranchised from the political process, when he will allow nothing to stick.

Mr Blair has caused many miserable deaths, and tortures. He has presided over extraordinary rendition, and has been happy to see people imprisoned without trial, on barely a scrap of evidence. In his Britain, habeas corpus is no longer sacrosanct, and at a personal level this means that I simply cannot accept this honour.

This is a personal decision. I must stress that. It is nothing to do with my company. Honours are, after all, personal awards. But in my heart of hearts, I felt that I couldn't accept an honour from a dishonest man. And Tony Blair is a dishonest man. This is also not a criticism of the Queen. I have always admired her patronage of British crafts. I think that for better or worse, the British royals are what they are, and I have grown to quite like them. But the MBE was not awarded by the Queen. It was awarded by a committee connected to No 10, and then sanctioned by Mr Blair.

I could have said all this differently. I could have sent Tony Blair a private letter. But I have chosen to make my feelings public because I want them to be known. If you are given an honour, you are given a chance to speak out. You are recognised as being of importance culturally, and this makes it important to speak your mind. I couldn't accept that I am part of Tony Blair's system. I would have felt that I was being untrue to myself.

That is why I have decided to reject this honour.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2686839.ece

Hillary Gets Booed for Blaming the War on Iraqis

Posted by Guest Blogger on June 20, 2007 at 9:10 AM.

This post, written by Andre Banks, originally appeared on Race Wire

Well, after her speech this morning, one thing is clear: Hilary Clinton is trying to win this election. Even if she rides to the White House on the white horse of racism.

**
Blaming the Iraqi's for the mess in their country is beyond ignorant. Our country, the U.S.A, has invested half a trillion dollars to turn that nation into an unmitigated disaster - completely undermining real local leadership, rendering the nation nearly unlivable for Iraqis and impossibly dangerous for the foot soldiers forced to patrol the occupation. But why? Why would an intelligent and informed Senator and Presidential candidate tell this story to a room full of (mostly) white progressives?


http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/#54786

Nihilism and Neoconservatism
Brothers under the skin[/color] June 20, 2007

by Justin Raimondo

The idea that we invaded and occupied Iraq and launched a bid to "transform" the Middle East because we wanted to install liberal, democratic societies in the region is just not believable on many levels, and certainly recent headlines about the Palestinian coup by Fatah against Hamas - and the president's endorsement of the Abbas putsch - underscore this point. One year after Hamas soundly defeated the old, corrupt Fatah movement at the polls, the former has been expelled from the government by the unilateral action of "President" Abbas and is outlawed in the West Bank - where the Fatah-Bush theory of the "unitary presidency" apparently holds sway.

"Democracy" in the Middle East marches on!

Elections in the Middle East are like those in the European Union - if the Powers-That-Be don't get the result they want, then the results are overturned and a new election is held… a process that continues until the people learn their lesson, i.e., that resistance is futile, and ratify what has already been decided.

From the occupied territories to the war-torn cities of Iraq, what was sold as an effort to export "democracy" has instead turned into an effort to import chaos, death, and universal destruction. The "liberation" of Iraq hasn't let the democratic genie out of the bottle, but it has unleashed sectarian demons that have engulfed the country in a vicious civil war. In Lebanon, our effort to aid the Sunnis as a counterbalance to the Shi'ite Hezbollah has boomeranged, with the Fatah al-Islam group rising up against the U.S.-supported government. In Afghanistan, the regime of "President" Karzai can barely claim control of the capital city of Kabul, while in Pakistan, our biggest and most important ally in the Muslim world, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is being buffeted by the tides of pro-Islamic, anti-American public opinion, and is not expected to last much longer.

By any rational measure, the results of our Middle Eastern policy of regime-change in Iraq and bullying intervention throughout the region have been an abysmal failure from beginning to end. By neoconservative Bizarro World standards, however, what we are witnessing is a smashing success.

Because, you see, smashing up the Middle East was and is the whole point. Every new day's headlines reminds me of a prescient piece by Joshua Marshall, published in the April 2003 issue of The Washington Monthly, entitled "Practice to Deceive," the subtitle of which was "Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario - it's their plan." Marshall pointed to:

"[T]he curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution."

Marshall's piece is a masterful analysis and refutation of the ostensible reasons we got into Iraq because it goes beyond the exoteric rationales and penetrates the esoteric, or inner, significance of the invasion and occupation. In the process, he gives us a concise history of the neocons and an account of their methodology, which, he rightly avers, is centered around the practice of deception. "Democracy," "weapons of mass destruction," Saddam's nonexistent "links" to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks - this was just the window dressing that lured us into the store, where we bought the Iraq war narrative, at least initially. Now that we're in so deep, with little hope of digging ourselves out, the real neocon agenda is becoming all too apparent. Iraq was only the dress rehearsal for a general conflagration that will replicate the Iraqi civil war on a regional level. Seymour Hersh wrote about some of the strategic implications of this in "The Redirection," and I've consistently warned in this space over the years that in getting involved in Iraq we were getting on the Middle East escalator and not stopping until we reached a whole new level of warfare - a conflict that could comfortably fit within the parameters of a new world war.

As the neocons marched America to war against Iraq, Marshall surveyed the tragic scene and foretold World War IV:

"The great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction - a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind."

Few liberals had the presence of mind at the time to see the larger picture and warn us of the impending disaster: almost none had a sense of the true significance of the decision to go to war, or any real inkling of the War Party's true agenda. Nowadays, at least some of Marshall's fellow liberals and "progressives" are waking up - now that it may be too late…

Iran is the next target on the neocons' timetable for regime-change in the Middle East, and growing indications that an attack is in the offing before President Bush's term of office ends underscore Marshall's point, which is that the worse things get the more the neocons revel in it. Theirs is a Bizarro World "morality," where evil is good, universal destruction is global peace, and a turn for the worse is, in effect, a turn for the better. Every "crisis" - various run-ins with the Iranians in the Gulf and on the Iraq-Iran border, Lebanon's refusal to surrender its sovereignty to a UN "tribunal," U.S. covert operations inside Iran - threatens to become the spark that sets the entire Middle East aflame.

Where will it all end? The goal of the neocons is a U.S.-Israeli-dominated region, patrolled by U.S. troops and divided into a large number of much smaller statelets. With both Iraq and Iran broken down into their constituent ethno-religious parts, the Middle East becomes Lebanon writ large: weak, vulnerable to attack, and easy to control.

A central premise of the "realist" critique of the neoconservative agenda is that it promotes a dangerous instability, which shows that the realists just don't get what neoconservatism in the foreign policy realm - and particularly when it comes to the Middle East - is all about. The idea is to create - and preside over - a condition of permanent instability. There is no better way to justify the permanent presence of U.S. troops and plenty of aid to U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes.

Nihilism and neoconservatism are brothers under the skin, and nothing illustrates this more starkly than the horror unfolding presently in Iraq. It is a war we were lured into by means of a massive and quite artful deception, and its true purpose remains hidden beneath layers of presidential rhetoric and "patriotic" posturing. Yet a big problem for the neocons is that the closer they get to achieving their objective, the more their real agenda is exposed to the light of day - and they run the risk of a major backlash, one that could take an unexpected - and quite ugly - turn. Quite ugly for them, that is, and quite a relief to the rest of us…

In the end, the War Party's foreign policy objectives are inextricably intertwined with their domestic agenda, which is authoritarianism, pure and simple. The red-state fascist mentality that promotes the doctrine of the "unitary presidency," i.e., the cult of the Leader, and seeks to establish a surveillance state in place of our constitutional form of government, is today the animating spirit of the GOP. As personified by Benito Giuliani, the Republican form of the new authoritarianism is no scarier, however, than the threat posed by Hillary Clinton, who, asked if online speech required regulation, proclaimed:

"Without any kind of editing function or gate-keeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation? I don't have any clue about what we're going to do legally, regulatorily, technologically - I don't have a clue. But I do think we always have to keep competing interests in balance. I'm a big pro-balance person. … Anytime an individual or an institution or an invention leaps so far out ahead of that balance and throws a system, whatever it might be - political, economic, technological - out of balance, you've got a problem, because then it can lead to the oppression [of] people's rights, it can lead to the manipulation of information, it can lead to all kinds of bad outcomes which we have seen historically. So we're going to have to deal with that."

Known for her vengefulness, Hillary, I'm sure, will know just how to "deal with" her online critics. The Republicans who voted for the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act [.pdf], and all the other licenses granted by a compliant Congress to spy on and harass American citizens engaged in peaceful, legal conduct will live to regret their hasty ratification of a police state. With Hillary at the helm of the U.S. government, you can bet that the secret police agencies will be run efficiently - while the war in the Middle East rages on without respite.

It's true that the more radical wing of the War Party currently favors the Republicans, but that could change in an instant, especially if the Democrats get on board the let's-attack-Iran bandwagon. As it is, the major Democratic presidential candidates have all refused to take war with Iran "off the table," and Hillary the Hawk, now and perhaps forever the front-runner for the nomination, is relentless on this score.

It's heads the War Party wins, tails the Peace Party loses. That's what "democracy" in America is all about.

The permanent crisis of perpetual war abroad and a state of siege on the home front - that's the neocon utopia, in a nutshell. Tragically, both parties seem irrevocably committed to this program, at least at the leadership level. Whatever opposition arises from the grassroots is quickly neutralized by big money, stacked primaries, and a media campaign that marginalizes mavericks like Ron Paul and anyone else who challenges the basic premise of our bipartisan foreign policy - which is the near-divinely inspired rightness of global intervention on the part of the U.S. government.

To question this is heresy, yet when asked what kind of foreign policy they would prefer, Americans answered that we ought to start minding our own business. That was a couple of years ago, and one imagines this tendency toward "isolationism," to use the neocon-inspired scare word, is even more pronounced these days, when the hard lessons of our Iraq misadventure are being absorbed by a war-weary public.

The ruling elites, however, have a different point of view, one shaped by their own Washington-centered perspective. They like to believe that they really are running the world, no matter what party they belong to, and they - the elites in government, media, and the corporate world - act accordingly. As for the American public at large - they are like children who can be manipulated this way and that according to the convenience of the moment. Ordinary Americans may be unruly at times, but, ultimately they can be controlled - or so the elites believe and hope. In their hubris, the War Party embarked on a large-scale military campaign in the Middle East, without considering the power and scope of the possible "blowback" - up to and including the political blowback here in the U.S.

With the presidential primaries of both parties effectively rigged against the possibility of a credible antiwar candidate arising to wrest the nomination from the pro-war front-runners, and the War Party's propaganda machine revving up its motors for another go, this time at Iran, we are in for a very explosive next couple of years. The reason is because the political system lacks any effective safety valves: there is no way for ordinary people to have any real impact, and therefore the special interests - and the War Party is just a collection of very special ideological and corporate interests - have taken over. That's why a radically unpopular war not only continues but is now being escalated in a "surge" of air strikes and major movements on the ground. We had an election in which the "antiwar" party won - and that's when the war got hotter, more violent, and started to spread. While it may be somewhat of an exaggeration to say that we no more have "democracy" here than the Palestinians have it in the West Bank and Gaza, it isn't all that much of one.

While we are not quite reduced to fighting it out in the streets, Palestinian-style, for the first time since the Civil War that possibility no longer seems quite so far-fetched. And if that doesn't scare you, then you'll do well in the dark age to come

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11163
(for ref and links)

Fatherhood, Muhammad Ali and Moral Courage

Posted on Jun 19, 2007



http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070619_fatherhood_muhammad_ali_and_moral_courage/

1914


2007

2 little boys had 2 little toys....

stonehenge celebrating first day of summer - if you're in Glastonbury - severe weather warnings for tomorrow

There is also a demo in Manchester tomorrow - for the labour leadership handover - if you're interested http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.htm

Iraqis to Bush: "You have left us with nothing"


By Mike Whitney

"Never had I fathomed, not even in my remotest imagination, that a day will come when God's houses will be attacked and destroyed. The way they are today, in Iraq...Never."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/index.html
Another brave journalist

Anyway, here's the news...
Soon there will be no more British troops in Basra - over the next few days, the last man will walk away.
Even as the US surge North, with a bit of luck, our troops will ALL be coming home very soon.
Enough is enough.

153 British dead
Thousands wounded or traumatised


Minds Run Black

The destruction, mutilation and desecration
Of a beautiful sovereign nation
Innocent Iraq
Turned back to the stone ages
By two men with two faces
Whose minds run black
As they cover over the traces
Of their motive for attack
And we can never take it back


Endymion 2007
(News of British withdrawal from Basra)


I feel some personal closure, seeing the back of Tony Blair
and our troops coming out - but what of the people of Iraq? and what of the US?
Not my revolution?

What's happening out there is a crime, no other word for it.
Well - it's over to you.
You are welcome to post here…

Whatever happens
Peace
E








peace march IRAQ (when there was still hope)


Iraqi Shiite men hold a banner that reads: "Islam is the religion of peace" as they march to the al-Rohman mosque for prayers in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, May 2, 2003.




Flt Lt Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith - refused to return to Iraq and was imprisoned


Iraq Vets Against War



NEVER AGAIN

Atleast, we hope so!

(yes, it's a crime...a terrible heinous, brutal, INHUMAN crime)

http://www.michaelmoore.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/55ABE840-AC30-41D2-BDC9-06BBE2A36665.htm
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/me-iraq.shtml
http://www.topia.net/kevinbenderman.html
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/new/involved/groups/santiwar.htm
http://iraqprofile.blogspot.com/2005/02/occupation.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/
http://www.reuters.com/
http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.counterpunch.org/

http://tomdegan.blogspot.com/
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=1
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/index.html
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9417
http://www.imemc.org/index.php
http://www.motherearth.org/lakenheathaction/
http://www.worldcantwait.org/
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
http://www.antiwar.com/
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/ex/examples/britain
http://www.mfso.org/article.php?id=960
http://www.truthdig.com/
http://www.mfaw.org.uk/
http://www.save-omar.org.uk/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotzone/221518906/in/photostream/
http://costofwar.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UKnb5zJbM


Awesome homeless drummer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QIpic5HuXo&mode=related&search=

this is too much



US raids on Sadr City condemned

Iraq's prime minister has condemned a US raid on Baghdad's Sadr City which left 26 people dead.

Nouri al-Maliki said the military operations were "conducted without prior approval from the Iraqi military command".

He has demanded an explanation from the US authorities and said anyone who breeches military orders will face an investigation.

Residents accused American troops of killing eight civilians in their homes and "firing wildly" during the raid in the mainly Shia district early on Saturday morning.

The US military in Iraq said it killed 26 people, all of them "gunmen" linked to "Iranian terror networks".

Coalition forces conducted two separate raids targeting suspected secret cell terrorists during pre-dawn hours Saturday in Sadr City," the statement said.

"It is believed that the suspected terrorists have close ties to Iranian terror networks and are responsible for facilitating the flow of lethal aid into Iraq.

Seventeen more people were detained, it said.

The statement said US soldiers faced "significant" resistance during the pre-dawn raids, including roadside bomb attacks as well as fire from rocket-propelled grenades and light weapons.

"Everyone who got shot was shooting at US troops at the time," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, "it was an intense firefight".

Civilian deaths

Residents said US attack helicopters fired missiles at targets in the densely-populated area of two million people in northeastern Baghdad.

"At about 4am, a big American convoy with tanks came and began to open fire on houses," said Bashir Ahmed, who lives in Sadr City's Habibya district. "We didn't even retaliate, there was no resistance."

"We are being hit while we are peacefully sleeping in our houses. Is that fair?", asked another woman as she watched a funeral procession in the Orfali district of Sadr City.

Several houses and shops, including a bakery were damaged by the tank fire while the civilian casualties included three members of one family according to Iraqi officials.

They also said several women and children, along with two policemen, were among those injured.

Sadr City is the stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shia leader who wants US forces to leave Iraq.

Sheikh Salah al-Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr condemned the raids: "The bombing only hurt innocent civilians," he said.

Murder charges

The US military also confirmed on Saturday that two of its soldiers have been charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis between April and June.

Michael Hensley, a staff sergeant, and Jorge Sandoval, a specialist, are accused of killing three Iraqis in separate incidents, then planting weapons on the victims' remains, the military said in a statement on Saturday.

Fellow soldiers reported the alleged crimes, which took place between April and the month of June in the vicinity of Iskandariyah, 50km south of Baghdad, it said.

Hensley is charged with three counts each of premeditated murder, obstructing justice and wrongfully placing weapons with the remains of deceased Iraqis, the military said.

He was placed in military confinement in Kuwait on Thursday.

Sandoval faces one count each of premeditated murder and placing a weapon with the remains of a dead Iraqi, a statement said.

He was taken into custody on Tuesday while at home in Texas, and was transferred to military confinement in Kuwait three days later, it said.

Baghdad bomber

In other violence in Iraq on Saturday at least 16 people were killed in a suicide attack targeting a crowd of police recruits in Muqdadiyah, a market area 90 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, police said on Saturday.

The bomber detonated his explosives belt outside a police station, a police officer said, confirming that all the victims were new police recruits.

US troops have also discovered a mass grave containing as many as 40 bodies near Fallujah in western Iraq.

A statement said that military officials are now investigating and confirmed many of the dead had gunshot wounds and had their limbs bound.


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Many Afghans killed in air strike

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/32AE0379-45BE-4B86-B41C-200D16735881.htm

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Israel launches deadly Gaza attacks

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/94D08027-0F99-46BD-B2EF-44192178479E.htm

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The attack in Glasgow is nothing - nothing that shouldn't be expected. Just lucky those guys weren't as capable as their counterparts in iraq, eh?
Didn't even have a bomb

While the US goes on murdering the middle east - what will Britain do?
Now comes the test of character - but i've got a nasty feeling we're just going to jump right on the bandwagon

There is only one way to defuse the situation and that is to bring our troops home and charge Blair and Reid with war crimes

Meanwhile...Blair causes more trouble tomorrow night on channel 4

Blair launches stinging attack on 'absurd' British Islamists
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblair/story/0,,2115932,00.html

the smoking ban today
who knows tomorrow
Rush out and buy a copy of 1984 now, while you still can
Wrap it in something waterproof and put it in a wooden chest and bury it somewhere safe -

U.S. Account of Afghan Deaths at Odds With Head of Rights Group
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/30/2211/

Anti-war Iraq veterans handcuffed and detained at Ft. Jackson

COLUMBIA, SC - Five members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) were handcuffed and detained by police at Ft. Jackson today after attempting to meet a fellow IVAW member who is stationed on the base for lunch. Ft. Jackson is the most recent stop of the group's bus tour of military bases in the Southeast to outreach to active duty troops and listen to their stories.

After checking in at the visitors entrance with civilian i.d.s and heading over to the Post Exchange at around 11:30 AM, a police officer approached the group of veterans and warned that they were not permitted to hand out any literature. Then, several officers detained the veterans outside. When asked why they were being held, the police answered that it was illegal for them to wear t-shirts that read, "Iraq Veterans Against the War." The veterans were then hand-cuffed and taken to the military police station.

Police later escorted the veterans off Ft. Jackson threatening them with criminal trespassing charges if they returned. "Frankly, it's insulting," said Steve Mortillo, who served as a Cavalry Scout with the First Infantry Division. "I served honorably, and to come home and have my 1st Amendment rights trampled is a disgrace."

http://www.ivaw.org/node/1125[size=7][/size]

http://www.worldcantwait.org/

wow - Olympia Dukakis
who is this woman? - she is something!

Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities

By Noam Chomsky

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17941.htm



"The crises we face are real and imminent, and in each case means are available to overcome them. The first step is understanding, then organization and appropriate action."