Who is this bleating about breaches of the Geneva convention? That's the multi - lateral agreement Geneva convention. The one the yanks ignore in Guantanamo Bay, just like they ignore all the others these days.

The war gets bloodier and will become bloodier still. Dead civilians in a Baghdad shopping centre, a sitting duck convoy outside Basra bringing back memories of the turkey shoot of 1991. And some more reminders of history - how 50,000 died in the last uprising while the Allies turned their backs.

And they wonder why there are no ecstatic Iraqis on the streets welcoming our boys with open arms and garlands.

The more I hear Bush sliming his way through his speeches, the more I want to throw up.

No good guys? Well, only about 25 million or so. Of whom this is one.

Makes it all a bit more real and personal. Just reading a few posts makes me feel I know the guy, makes me feel I'd like him. Now my government, while not actually wanting to kill him, may well do so and then shrug their shoulders and mutter about the inevitable consequences of war.

As the war goes on, public opinion is swinging behind Blair - mine is hardening in the opposite direction with every sanitised bomb flash on the news.

Talking of terrorist reprisals, they found Ricin in the Gare de Lyons on Monday.

I was there that day, with wife and daughter, going to Disneyland.

Feel sick.

So, what is the position to hold in a situation where there are no good guys?

Now the bombs are going off, the missiles are raining in, the argument and posturing is finished, what's to think?

Who to admire?

The peacenicks? The ordinary protesters who don't want anyone to die? In Iraq they die anyway, have done for decades and the peacenicks have no argument about what might be done to stop it. Very good on the West's inglorious history regarding Iraq and exposing the vapid twists and turns of the warmongers' logic, but nothing to say except not in my name.

The French? Nice how they appear to be high and mighty and moralistic about all this, when the main reason they have to oppose the war is economic, or so it is claimed. They sold Saddam Hussein his nuclear capability years ago and always seemed eager to do business with him.
But if they were so against this war, why did they tell the world they would use their UN veto, thus giving Bush an excuse not to go for a second resolution?

The Russians? Plenty of Chechens would raise a hollow laugh at the thought of Putin the humanitarian.

The UN? Hoist by the petard of their own weakness, vacillation and general uselessness.

The Bush Administration? Where to start? Won't go over the peacenick arguments, but most of them are true. All I can say is, if this war was about what the yanks tell us it is about - liberating Iraq, making the world a safer place, yader, yader, yader, at least some dialogue with the various exiled Iraqi opposition parties would have taken place, but they seem to be out of the loop altogether, which rather suggests that US interests are the driving force here. Which, of course, is all of a piece with US Foreign policy since before WW2.

Blair and Co. A puzzle. Delusions of mattering a shit defines them, I suppose.

The Iraqi opposition? Haven't heard enough from them. Spineless and divided is the image I have, unfair as that may seem.

So what's to think in this new world order? Pray (lol) that it's over quickly and wait for the terrorist reprisals.

Been watching the Commons debate on the war. Blair got his majority with only a small increase in the number of rebels. Still the biggest ever backbench revolt, of course, and Ministers resigning all over the shop, with the notable exception of Clare Short.

Nice to see Jack Straw smirking and joking his way though the summing up, mocking those wrestling with their consciences who lack the certainties of those afforded a clearer view from George Bush's back passage. And good to see he can be so chipper in the sure and certain knowledge that in the next few days flesh will start to burn.

Still, it won't be his, will it?

Another wimpy liberal link , this one explaining the mindset of the terrorist.

Don't buy it, myself.

Here we have an Algerian, a devout, decent upstanding sort of bloke. Managed to escape from the tyranny of the worst imaginable sort, now living illegally in this country. His deepest hatred, we are assured in the article, is for the Algerian Government that tortures and kills innocent children, women, families.

So why kill other innocent children, women, families?

Not much ranting today. Maybe another time.

Shameless Excuse to Recycle Old Joke

Been browsing some of the blogs of note and came across this one.

Now, this lady can write. Sentences tumble out of her effortlessly - or not, of course, she might graft for hours for all I know, but they seem effortless. She writes a particularly lyrical piece about painfully sloughing off depression, using a scene in the movie Silkwood as a metaphor.

Funny how movies can have resonance for people. They don't have the same effect on me. All I remember about Silkwood is the joke about the Indian brave who asks the old man who names the papooses how he comes by the names. "Well," he replies,"I sit outside the teepee of the squaw and at the moment of birth I look and I listen, and if I see the moon across the clouds, then I call the papoose 'Moon Across the Clouds' and if I hear a coyote call in the night, then I call the papoose, 'Coyote Calls in the Night.' But tell me, 'Two Dogs F*****g' why do you ask?"

I Thang you.

Just checked the wifeblog, she's not posting - not surprising, she's been posting to my ears for the last couple of weeks. Don't tell anyone I've told you, but she's at that age. You know what I mean, that age where life is just one long bout of PMT.

I must admit I'm not very good with all this hormone related women's stuff. It was bad enough when it really was just plain old PMT, it still managed to catch me out every month. She'd change on cue every twenty eight days from the adorable, vivacious woman I fell in love with to a vicious harridan with not a good word to say about anyone or anything, least of all me. Instead of just shrugging my shoulders and being extra supportive with the poor woman at these difficult times, taking everything she said with a fistful of salt, I'd react with my own moodies, which didn't help much.

Actually, thinking about it, it probably did help, in that it gave her something to focus on while the hormone monsters took over. Without me to blame, she tends to cast her net far and wide, becoming convinced that her whole life is worth shit.

Anyway, now the hormone monsters can attack at any time, which makes for an interesting life, I can tell you. All of my faults, which are many and varied, become magnified for her (or maybe they just assume their natural proportions - the times when she actually likes me she is probably vigorously supressing them) at a moment's notice and we lurch from row to row.

She had a real good shout at me yesterday - she stood right in front of me and yelled so loud I swear plaster fell off the ceiling. And that was when I agreed with her. It was just that the way I agreed with her was wrong.

The ways of the world are strange, but the ways of the woman are stranger still.

Just read on Lessig's Blog about a Japanese Company offering ADSL at 12Mbs (yes 12) for $26 a month.

What are our choices here? BT Openshite clogging up to crawl now that people are actually using it. NTL Cable - 1Mbs for £35 a month, but you can't use it because of bandwidth capping, or some smaller company whose service flies along nicely until more than half a dozen people sign up. That, of course, is if you are lucky enough to live in an urban area. If you can see fields, the assumption is you can't possibly want this tinternet mullarkey.

Wished I'd seen this - I know, I know, 2 Guardian links on one page, what sort of curmudgeon is this then? Less random ranting, more wimpy bleeding heart liberal. Hey ho, guilty as charged.

Anyway, maybe if the guy had just blogged his third novel he could have saved himself some angst. Someone somewhere would have told him it was rubbish without him having to go through the publisher rejection seven times.

I held a fond delusion for 15 years that I was an author waiting to be discovered, and I can tell you, it was a blessed relief to cast it off. Don't get me wrong, I love writing and when my life becomes less hectic, I may well turn my hand to it again. But I shan't go through the humiliation of submitting to the slush piles for some literary lovey to read a couple of lines and tell me it's a pile of cack, if they bother to tell me anything at all. Ho no. It's publishing in blogworld for me, and if no one ever reads it, that's fine by me.

You just have to let your fond fantasies go at some stage.

Years ago I played guitar in a band. As well as being a best selling author I was going to be a rock superstar, too. Well, the band were pretty crap and after a couple of years we went our separate ways, although I did keep in touch with the lead singer. He'd been mate from school and we'd been drinking friends before the band. I tell you, he never gave up the dream. He's now 45, and although I've not seen him for a while, I'm sure he's still cutting demos in his front room. With wife and kids to support, he lived his life as if writing songs and making demos were his main job. I couldn't see him without him badgering me to play on his next demo, which was going to be the one like, because he'd had some interest from this A&R guy in Spain.

The thing is, he wrote some decent songs, had a way with words in his lyrics and is an intelligent, funny guy. He could have done somehing else with his life and been successful, too.

As it is, he's a sad twat.

Okay, so Bush and Rumsfeld are offering a way for Blair to withdraw with a modicum of face, and what happens?

This does.

Who does Blair think he's kidding? The whole world and his dog knows that the war is going to happen with or without the UN. The British people don't want it. The rest of the world, virtually, doesn't want it. All Blair's posturing makes no difference whatsoever to Bush. So why not step back now and leave Bush to get on with it? What's with the mad scramble to be in on it?

"Please, George, let us join in your war that nobody wants. Let us kill people, too. Please, please."

Strange.

Thatcher got re-elected by fighting her unjust war. I hope at least we've moved on enough to throw Blair out for fighting his.

Okay. Got something.

Nah. Just some crap about the war. You've seen it before.

Bush, oil, Blair, poodle, innocent children, death, smart bombs (not), innocent children, death, fomenting terrorism, what about all the other evil regimes in the world, what about North Korea, innocent children, death.

44 years of bile, prejudice and invective just waiting to spew forth from eager fingers.

Guess what?

Nothing.

Don't you hate it when that happens?