we discussed the merits of the MLMB the other day and today an interesting little success in the war against BBC 'propaganda' or 'inaccuracy':

This morning upon reading the headline "Rice seeks speedy Mid-East truce" prominently displayed on the BBC news website I posted this message on the board at 10:29 am (British time):

"Rice", "speedy" and "truce" all mentioned in same scentence: BBC in parallel universe

Isn't the BBC's Headline on the first story of their News Website glaringly inaccurate:
"Rice seeks speedy Mid-East truce"

given that "hostilities began on July the 12th" how is taking two or three weeks while people are dying to get a ceasefire "speedy" in any way?

(note to BBC ... it is now almost August)
Link to story

soon afterwards, two other contributors to the MLMB sent e-mails to the BBC news Online team:

"Dear Mr Herrmann, Ms Boaden,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5230192.stm

What, exactly, is speedy about Ms Rice's seeking of a UN security council resolution. It has been 20 days since Israel began bombing civilians in Lebanon, longer for its bombing and destruction of civilians and infrastructure in the Gaza strip.

The US (along with the UK) has so far refused to call for an immediate ceasefire. How is this interpreted by the BBC as 'speedy'?

If your house were burning down with your children inside, would you label the fire-brigade's response as 'speedy' if it turned up two weeks later?

Kind Regards,"

At 11:51 am (British Time) a message was posted reporting that the headline of the article had been changed to "Israel 'not ready for truce yet'" which at the time of writing was still the title of the article in question...

37 children, 4 UN staff, countless others slaughtered from the safety of the air-conditioned F-16.. and counting!

Lebanon described the bombing as a "heinous crime"

Lebanon's prime minister denounced "Israeli war criminals" and cancelled talks with the US secretary of state. Israel said it regretted the incident - but added that civilians had been warned to flee the village.

Several countries have condemned the attack and renewed their calls for an immediate ceasefire - opposed by Israel, the US and UK. [aka the league for peace]

Several thousand protesters chanted "Death to Israel, Death to America" outside the United Nations headquarters in downtown Beirut. [solving the terrorism problem once and for all]

oh dear!

apparently this isnt the first time this happened either- ten years ago, 1996, same place, 106 civilians dead, 2 UN soldiers injured.. looking like a dangerous season for the UN this time round..

"Amnesty International conducted an on-site investigation of the incident in collaboration with military experts, using interviews with UNIFIL staff and civilians in the compound, and posing questions to the IDF, who did not reply. Amnesty concluded, "the IDF intentionally attacked the UN compound, although the motives for doing so remain unclear. The IDF have failed to substantiate their claim that the attack was a mistake. Even if they were to do so they would still bear responsibility for killing so many civilians by taking the risk to launch an attack so close to the UN compound."

these people have no idea what happened at stalingrad..

chinese activist beating self up - silly really

chinese journalist talking too much

Google censorship China: Search tiananmen square on

google.com


google.cn

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

Four United Nations peacekeepers have been killed in an Israeli air strike on an observation post in southern Lebanon, the UN has said.

Israeli bomb kills UN observers

More than 380 Lebanese and 42 Israelis have died in nearly two weeks of conflict [war on civilians?]

they don't call it precision bombin' for nothing!

American indoctrination/initiation ceremony

Hezbollah indoctination/initiation ceremony

...Who really lies behind the horror, destruction and killing occurring in Lebanon as we write, think and curse; the Bush administartion is rushing a new shipment of precison guided missiles to Israel. With virtually no debate the devices are being shipped to the middle east to maintain the bombardment. ( begging the scary and bemusing question; has Israel bombed Lebanon so much that there enormous arsenal is running out!!!???)
Actions such as these confirms Israels 'puppet state(us)' and make the prospect of a world war or of wider conflict ever more likely. The use of Israel to attack Syrian and perhaps Iranian targets also looks like a conceivable prospect at the current time. If Vietnam was the 'land that God forgot' what the hell is the Holy land?

War crimes could have been committed in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza, a senior UN official has said.

Ms Arbour expressed "grave concern over the continued killing and maiming of civilians in Lebanon, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory".

Without pointing to specific individuals, she suggested that [world] leaders could bear personal responsibility.

country not a limited liability company?

Washington, DC, 26 May 2006 - Today the National Security Archive announces the publication of the most comprehensive collection ever assembled of the memoranda of conversations (memcons) involving Henry Kissinger, one of the most acclaimed and controversial U.S. diplomats of the second half of the 20th century.

..who was never elected by anyone

An apartheid society existed in early Anglo-Saxon Britain, research suggests. Scientists believe a small population of migrants from Germany, Holland and Denmark established a segregated society when they arrived in England.

The researchers think the incomers changed the local gene pool by using their economic advantage to out-breed the native population. The team tells a Royal Society journal that this may explain the abundance of Germanic genes in England today.

Modern-day England has a population of largely Germanic genetic origin, speaking a principally German language.

Friedrich Engels analysed Bachofen's views as follows:

(1) That originally man lived in a state of sexual promiscuity, to describe which Bachofen uses the mistaken term "hetaerism";

(2) that such promiscuity excludes any certainty of paternity, and that descent could therefore be reckoned only in the female line, according to mother-right, and that this was originally the case amongst all the peoples of antiquity;

(3) that since women, as mothers, were the only parents of the younger generation that were known with certainty, they held a position of such high respect and honor that it became the foundation, in Bachofen's conception, of a regular rule of women (gynaecocracy);

(4) that the transition to monogamy, where the woman belonged to one man exclusively, involved a violation of a primitive religious law (that is, actually a violation of the traditional right of the other men to this woman), and that in order to expiate this violation or to purchase indulgence for it the woman had to surrender herself for a limited period.

(Friedrich Engels, 1891: see link)

We needed a breath of fresh air, an adventure. We knew there were others hoisting the same pirate flag as we did and that we had a mighty fleet. This is why we started the Pro Piracy Lobby.

If there really was a God somewhere, I suspect he'd be most bemused by all this. "I gave you all dopes sexual organs," he'd say, "and off you go killing other people. WTF?",

I will be trying to update my blog more regularly now that I am in India...

I've just posted a roundup of news on the Mumbai bombings and some other articles about migration and India.

Mumbai - 11-7


Madrid - 11-3

60th birthday of the bikini!

Brazilian waxing is a type of waxing involving the bikini area. This procedure involves the complete removal of hair from the buttocks and adjacent to the anus, perineum and vulva (labia majora and mons pubis). It can be thought of as an extreme form of bikini waxing. Most forms of Brazilian waxing leave a small line of pubic hair above the vulva, commonly known as the "landing strip". Waxes that completely remove the pubic hair are either termed 'Hollywood' or 'Sphynx' depending on the salon visited. Sometimes the term Full Bikini Wax or FBW is used.

now that explains everything!! hehe