70,000 march against the occupation of Iraq

Antiwar, War on Iraq
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The Guardian reports about the anti-war and anti-occupation march in London yesterday, which was held as the closing
demonstration of the European Social Forum. Amongst the
demonstrators were also the parents of British soldiers killed in Iraq:

Rose Gentle and Reginald Keys – parents of two soldiers killed in Iraq – were helping to launch a new organisation supporting former service personnel.

Mrs Gentle’s son, Private Gordon Gentle, 19, from Glasgow was serving with the Royal Highland Fusiliers when he was killed in a roadside blast in Basra in June this year. Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, 20, from Llanuwchllyn, near Bala in north Wales, was one of six Red Caps killed by a mob while manning a police station 120 miles north of Basra in June last year.

The parents are supporting the UK Veterans and Families for Peace organisation, which aims to tackle the welfare issues soldiers face after leaving the forces, as well as taking an anti-war stance.

Acording to the Guardian, some 70,000 people marched. Far less then before the war, but still a respectable figure, especially considering how little attention the media has paid to this demo. It shows that the issue is still alive in the UK and won’t blow over soon.

And that’s why I don’t watch Newsnight more often…

Numpties, War Lies, War on Iraq
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Because I get so godddamn aggresive from those stupid, deeply venal Labour pricks who come on and lie and lie about the war on Iraq. For fucks sake, you did not go to war because Saddam was a bad man or because he might think about starting up a WMD program in the next century or so, certainly not because he was so rude to the UN. And don’t think we don’t know the UN arms inspectors weren’t kicked out but recalled, both in 1998 and in 2003.

No, you went to war because you said he was a menace to your country, he had weapons of mass destruction and missiles that could hit the UK within 45 minutes. You said he had ties with Al Quaida and might hand over nuclear bombs to them. You knew at the time, as we suspected all along, that you lied. Now that everybody knowns these reasons were lies it behooves you to be a fucking bit less smug and stop lying.

But it is so easy to lie when nobody takes you to account. Your political opponents for the most part won’t, because they were either stupid enough to believe you or complicit enough to collued in your lies. The media won’t because they have to work with you and they like their cozy little jobs too much. The people can’t, because you made it abundantly clear you have nothing but disdain for them. But don’t be too fucking secure. Someday, you will get what’s coming to you.

Hopefully, it will be soon.

Aaron is gone

Meta
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I didn’t really know Aaron Hawkins other than through his weblog, but I always liked him. He had a wicked sense of humour, a nicely biting, sarcastic way of writing I sometimes tried to emulate but never succeeded in bettering. He was one of the bloggers I looked up to, somebody who wrote equally well about serious issues and trivialities.

Last Friday I got the news he had passed away.

I’ll miss him.

Dutch supermarkets

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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One of the things that shocked my partner S— the most after she moved over to Amsterdam were the supermarkets, which just couldn’t hold a candle to the ones she was used at home. Even our “national pride”, Albert Heijn, she found to be second rate. She is not the only one, it seems:

Freshness, novelty, seasonal – these concepts have no meaning here, where goedkoop!
(cheap) is the only the battle cry. The stores are staffed by rowdy teenage boys stocking the shelves
between chatting up the cheese girls, with nasty middle-aged women working the cash registers.

Just try getting bread after 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. You didn’t plan ahead for bread? Well, then, you probably don’t deserve it. At the Swine, things like coffee, cola and crackers can suddenly take on the mystique of rare goods. It’s like Poland, circa 1975.

How can a supermarket run out of Coke? Ask Albert Heijn, the market leader in this bizarre off-the-shelf stocking technique.

Plentiful, however, is the produce, a rapidly decaying mass offering little more selection than your corner store back home. You wanted that kind of lettuce? Too bad. The Swine must be the last stop on the banana boat — stuff goes off as you’re leaving the store, if not sooner.

A very British coverup

funny
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NO one likes a cover-up, but Sharron Davies fans are going to be particularly miffed at this one.

Embarrassed BBC chiefs have ordered cameramen to close in on her head and shoulders during her Olympic TV swimming reports – to cut out her chest.

NIPPLEGATE.. THE BIG COVER-UP, Daily Mirror 21 August 2004
(Via Bertram Online)

Apparantely they want to avoid images like the following:

Sharron Davies showing nippleage

No, I don’t need to boost my hitcount, why do you ask?