Enlightenment:
A note to the non-ravers out there: codshit is
NOT a derogatory or insulting term and bears no relation in offensiveness to its four-letter
cousin, it's a word used to describe the nonsense that people sometimes talk
when they're off their heads.
Wisdom:
So there, we have figured it out, go back to bed America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed America, here's American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their fuckin skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America, you are free... to do as we tell you.
.: Bill Hicks :.
Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift'...they say 'President', we say 'stupid psychopathic git'....
.: Alexi Sayle :.
If you confront the Universe with good intentions in your heart it will reflect that and reward your intent. It just doesn't always do it in the way you expect.
.: G'kar :.
Dr David Kelly is the first British citizen whose sudden, unexpected and violent death has been denied an inquest. Three weeks after Dr Kelly's body was found, Lord Falconer ordered that the inquest into his death be adjourned indefinitely and subsumed into a public inquiry by invoking section 17a of the Coroner's Act 1988.
The section is designed to avoid duplication of inquiry in cases of multiple deaths where the cause of death can, to some extent, be assumed from the outset. But Dr Kelly's was a solitary death coming amid a political storm concerning doubts over the government's case for war with Iraq, and its cause required rigorous investigation. The Hutton inquiry had no power to call a jury, subpoena witnesses or cross-examine them under oath.
Disquiet expressed recently by paramedics over finding very little blood at the scene of Dr Kelly's death gives credence to our view that it is highly improbable Dr Kelly died of haemorrhage from a transected ulnar artery. From such a wound he would have lost only about a pint of blood, and for death to occur he would need to have lost some five pints. And co-proxamol levels in his blood were one-third of what is normally regarded as a fatal dose.
Margolis is one of the very few journalists left in the world entitled to use that term. The rest are whores and corrupt capitalist bitches, if you believe anything that comes out of their putrid, ignorant, lying mouths then you're an idiot.
by Eric Margolis
Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq?
If your answer was Saddam Hussein's cousin, the notorious "Chemical Ali" -- aka Ali Hassan al-Majid -- you're wrong.
The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India's northwest frontier.
Iraq's U.S.-installed regime has just announced al-Majid, one of Saddam's most brutal henchmen, will stand trial next week for war crimes.
Al-Majid is accused of ordering the 1988 gassing of Kurds at Halabja that killed over 5,000 civilians. He led the bloody suppression of Iraq's Shias, killing tens of thousands. These were the same Shias whom former U.S. president George Bush called to rebel against Saddam's regime, then sat back and did nothing while they were crushed.
The Halabja atrocity remains murky. The CIA's former Iraq desk chief claims Kurds who died at Halabja were killed by cyanide gas, not nerve gas, as is generally believed.
At the time, Iraq and Iran were locked in the ferocious last battles of their eight-year war. Halabja was caught between the two armies that were exchanging salvos of regular and chemical munitions. Only Iran had cyanide gas. If the CIA official is correct, the Kurds were accidentally killed by Iran, not Iraq.
We were taught at school that Franz Kafka�s The Trial was a dark satire on bureaucracy. No disrespect to the teacher in question, temporarily standing in for our regular grand dame of English who would never have made such an error, but The Trial is considerably more than that
In fact Kafka�s tale of Joseph K, a bank clerk charged with an unspecified crime, arrested and eventually executed without ever knowing the reason why, is one of the most chilling horror stories of the 20th century. But its horror lies not in the simple mocking of opaque, bureaucratic obstinacy, but in the nightmare vision of a society where morality and logic, the keystones that build civilisation, have been replaced by an authority exercising feckless whims and displaying insane, dangerous inconsistencies.
It�s not just Joseph K�s execution that horrifies, since injustice is commonplace in history, but also the fact that K, living in a dreamscape anarchy he has failed to notice, still believes in the rule of law, and refuses to accept that a power obeyed by public consensus could possibly make such an error. Hence Kafka�s vision still resonates with the atrocities around the globe, carried out by people simply because they can get away with it.
Kafka�s feverish bad dreams come readily to mind on reading the comments by Lord Scott, one of the law lords who last week ruled that the government�s 2001 legislation that permits indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects without trial or explanation is an atrocious breach of human rights. Lord Scott described the current regime, which permits the Home Secretary to lock up untried suspects for as long as it pleases him, as being �the stuff of nightmares, associated with France before and after the revolution, with soviet Russia in the Stalinist era, and now associated, as a result of section 23 of the 2001 Act, with the United Kingdom�.
Indeed. Well said. So now what happens? One might imagine the government, sufficiently shamed, will take immediate steps to repeal this disgusting and thoroughly uncivilised piece of legislation, and, in the process, make some attempt to explain themselves. Perhaps they could plead temporary insanity due to the horrors of September 11. What else could have possessed those claiming to fight the enemies of civilisation to have begun a process of dismantling the very justice and freedom upon which our own is based?
But no, the government has not issued an apology or excuse. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has pronounced the law lords to be �simply wrong�. In response to Lord Nicholls, who said that �indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial is anathema in any country which observes the rule of law�, Straw counters that the right to life is �the most important liberty� and that the government has a duty to protect people from terrorism.
Precisely what part of Lord Nicholls�s statement contradicts this in Jack�s confused mind is not made clear, but what is crystal clear is that the government�s intention is to try to expand the legislation from allowing them just to lock up Johnny Foreigner and throw away the key, to be able to do the same to British citizens they don�t much like the look of.
Even the Thatcher government, a motley crew who gave the impression of believing that liberty and justice should be available only to those who could afford it, managed to suffer the decades of Irish terrorism without recourse to imprisonment without trial.
The excuse that non-negotiating suicide bombers are quite a different matter from Irishmen who favour blowing people up from a comfortable distance is not good enough. Surveillance technology and international intelligence sharing has improved rapidly since the dark days of the troubles, and if the authorities can identify someone so accurately as being a threat that they require detention, then surely those individuals can be brought to trial with the evidence that makes the intelligence agencies believe this to be so?
Like the authority in The Trial, the Kafkaesque nightmare is that our government seems to be displaying signs not of irrationality, but of insanity. Nice guys one day, fascists the next. How are we supposed to negotiate our way through the terrifying contradictions that New Labour constantly presents us with? If a foreign country were to be guilty of imposing indefinite imprisonment without trial, we would at the very least be calling for sanctions and boycotts. That Tony and his chums can do this in our name, at the same time as trying to eradicate poverty and undo social injustices that were crushed under Conservative boots, is Pavlovian in the extreme.
It almost makes one nostalgic for the good old days of Thatcher, when at least we could be certain that the government was one big self-serving, greedy, duplicitous, immoral lump that required opposing at every turn. The difficulty now is that there are still good people in the Labour administration, struggling to make changes and improve lives, and yet they share the stage with a gaggle of sleazy, lying, undemocratic and dangerous, ulterior motive-driven sharks.
Since we now know that the Iraq war was not to save us from oblivion but instead to fulfil some self-interested Blair political agenda, we must also assume that neither ID cards nor detention without trial are to protect us either. Yet to remove Blair and his party from power will set back domestic politics at a time when we can least afford it, there being no current effective or viable opposition available to fill the void. The coup has to come from within. Surely those in the party who can see that Blair has gone quite mad, can find the impetus and means to remove him and his team of increasingly fiendish allies from power?
Of course it�s our own fault. Like Joseph K, we�ve been sleepwalking towards this for years, but when the Prime Minister and his Cabinet can choose to ignore and undermine the most senior law makers in the land, it�s difficult to imagine what effect the mere electorate can have on this gradual creep towards the loss of justice, liberty and plain decency.
Students immediately knew something was very wrong when they showed up for class at the al-Bu Faraj Association of Girls� Secondary Schools north of ar-Ramadi early Sunday (In Iraq, an Islamic country, schools have Friday off. Transator�s note.) Students in the fourth class of secondary school found their teachers in tears and noticed that the chair usually occupied by their classmate, Bushra, was empty. �Where is Bushra Khalid?� they all were asking.
It wasn�t five minutes before the girls were all in tears along with their teachers.
Eyewitnesses told the correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam that at 5:45am Sunday morning American troops stormed into Bushra�s home looking for her brother whom the US accuses of being a member of the Resistance. The brother was not home, but as American troops ransacked their living quarters, Bushra noticed one of the soldiers staring at her and smiling.
Bushra�s mother said the girl shuddered as she was convulsed with fear. The Americans intended to take her with them as a prisoner. Panicked, she ran out into the street where one of the soldiers shot and killed her.
The family began mourning right in that area. They raised white flags in commemoration of their daughter who died fighting for her honor. It is customary only to raise white flags over a martyr.
The Resistance responded quickly to this American outrage. After only 45 minutes they launched seventeen 120mm mortar rounds at the US checkpoint set up at the entrance to the American al-Warrar base in ar-Ramadi, killing at least 11 American invaders before the eyes and ears of the local people.
Iraqi Resistance forces, meanwhile, killed an American contractor profiteer in ar-Ramadi. They hung his body on one of the old buildings in the city that belongs to the Security Directorate in the city. The body was still hanging there at 3:10pm Sunday when the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent filed his report, the Americans having been unable to get near it.
Peace seems a very long way away this Christmas...
The Mountain and the Mouse
By Uri Avnery
Ariel Sharon's speech at the "Herzliya Conference", an annual gathering of Israel's financial, political and academic aristocracy, proved again his wondrous ability to conjure up an imaginary world and divert attention away from the real one. Like every successful con-man, he knows that the audience desperately wants to believe good tidings and will be happy to ignore bad ones.
It was an optimistic message, as the bewitched commentators proclaimed. According to him, we are on our way to paradise, 2005 will be a year of tremendous progress in all fields and all our problems will be solved.
Most of the speech was devoted to his fabulous achievements since he launched, at the same conference a year ago, the "Unilateral Disengagement Plan".
This (in my own free translation) is what he said: America is in our pocket. President Bush supports all of Sharon's positions, including those that are diametrically opposed to Bush's own former positions. Europe has resigned itself to him. The Great of the World are standing in line to visit us, starting with Tony Blair. Egypt and the other Arab states are cosying up to us. Our international position has improved beyond recognition. The economy is advancing by leaps and bounds, our society is flourishing. Apart from the right-wing lunatic fringe, there is no opposition left. The Labor Party is joining the government and will support all its steps. (He somehow forgot to mention Yossi Beilin's Yahad party, which, too, has promised him an "iron bridge".)
Sharon has achieved all this solely by talking. His words have not been accompanied, up to now, by even one single action on the ground. There is no certainty that Sharon really intends to implement the "disengagement" at all. His intentions can be defined as follows:
* If it is possible to avoid the implementation of the plan altogether, especially the evacuation of settlements, without losing the sympathy of the world and the Israeli public, fine.
* If there is no alternative and implementation must start - everything must be done to drag out the matter, and especially the evacuation of settlements, for as long as possible. Evacuate one settlement and rest. Evacuate another one and rest again. It should take years.
* Either way, the disengagement should not change the plans concerning the West Bank.
And in the meantime: In the Gaza Strip, from which Sharon is supposed to "disengage", the Israeli army is in action every single day and night, killing from three to ten Palestinians every 24 hours. Houses are being destroyed wholesale. Some of the atrocities committed by the army have shocked the Israeli public. Not one single settler has been removed. On the contrary, new settlers have still been arriving.
All this does not point to any real determination to implement the promised disengagement. Sharon's actions on the West Bank, on the other hand, show a solid determination to implement his plan there.
In the West Bank, the occupation has intensified . The cruel checkpoints continue to prevent any possibility of normal life. The photo showing a Palestinian violinist compelled to play for the soldiers at a roadblock has evoked terrible memories in the minds of many Israelis. The building of the annexation-wall goes on, with a few changes of the route to placate the Israeli court, while disregarding the decision of the International Court. The settlers uproot Palestinian olive groves in order to build new neighborhoods in their place. Settlements are being expanded all over the West Bank, a network of "Jews Only" roads is being built, more "illegal" outposts come into being under army protection and with the tacit help of all relevant ministries. Plenty of money flows into these projects, while pensions are being cut and sick people lie around in the corridors of the hospitals.
Is this how a statesman with a vision of peace acts? He behaves more like a doctor who treats the hand of a patient while sticking a knife into his belly.
All this is happening while the world gives Sharon enthusiastic support, solely on the strength of his talking. As long as he holds forth on the "disengagement", he can pretty much do on the ground whatever he fancies.
David Ben-Gurion once said: "It is not important what the Gentiles say, what is important is what the Jews do." Sharon's version is: "It is not important what we say, what is important is what we do."
The most important part of the speech was the part that was not there. There was no peace offer to the Palestinians. He did not talk about peace at all.
Throughout the world, the conviction is spreading that there now exists a "window of opportunity", that this is the time for a new, redeeming peace initiative. Indeed, Sharon mentioned with great satisfaction that Yasser Arafat is dead and that there is now a chance for the emergence of a "moderate Palestinian leadership". So what did he offer this moderate leadership in his speech?
Dr David Kelly is the first British citizen whose sudden, unexpected and violent death has been denied an inquest. Three weeks after Dr Kelly's body was found, Lord Falconer ordered that the inquest into his death be adjourned indefinitely and subsumed into a public inquiry by invoking section 17a of the Coroner's Act 1988. 
Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq?
