To say that the civilian deaths from aerial bombardment are unintentional is sophistry, because if there is a probability that the bombs will hit civilian targets, then ipso facto the civilian deaths are not unintentional. This is tantamount to saying that a drunk driver who did not intend to kill someone in an "accident" should be set free for good motives; US law prosecutes drunk drivers regardless of whether they have been in an accident, because it recognizes that drunk driving is an inevitable accident. The same must be said of aerial bombardment. It always already intends to kill civilians, despite the best intentions of the military planners.

[At Nuremberg] the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on—those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defence a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved.

According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of argument in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886) that:
The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.

Every little helps says Tesco – especially now that they’re planning to reduce the number of plastic bags customers use. This global catastrophe-avoiding scheme will mean that only 75 billion bags will be used by their customers next year. If you’re thinking that 75,000,000,000 placcie bags is still quite a lot, Tesco is quick to point out that the bags will be sunlight-degradable (although not bio-degradable), so no worries there as they sit under mountains of landfill never seeing daylight.

Q: Why doesn’t Hamas recognise Israel’s right to exist?
A: The Israel that the UN created and the international community wishes Hamas to recognise is not recognised by Israel itself (Tel Aviv has a much larger Israel in mind). And the Israel that Israel itself recognises (the one that includes land grabbed through war) is not recognised by the international community. So why is Hamas being singled out for not recognising the UN drawn Israel (the one with the pre-1967 Green Line borders)? Couldn’t it mean that Hamas has learnt a thing or two from Israel?

...in addition to the much trumpeted $100 million Billg has donated to India's fight against HIV, he's funding the Microsoft jihad against Linux to the far more impressive tune of $421 million. That means that Linux is more than four times worse than AIDS to Billg and his happy Redmond family.

"How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis." [George Bush, December 2005]
As it happens, the White House has had something of a predilection for the pleasantly round number of 30,000. In 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, in the President's State of the Union Address, he used that very number for Saddam's mythical stock of "munitions capable of delivering chemical agents"; and, post-invasion, for police put back on patrol in the streets of Iraq. In 2005, that number was cited both for "new businesses" started in Iraq and new teachers trained since the fall of Baghdad. In 2006, in the President's "Strategy for Victory," that was the number of square miles Iraqi forces were by then primarily responsible for patrolling.

McDonalds is planning a campaign to remove the word ‘McJob’ from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The word has become synonymous for a job with little satisfaction and low wages. The official OED definition of a McJob (added to the dictionary in March 2001) is: "McJob (noun): An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector."

MP Richard Bacon: "Mr Wooley are you a chartered accountant ?"
Woolley: "I am not"
Bacon: "Are you a qualified financial person of any kind? do you have any financial qualifications ?"
Woolley: "I do not have any financial qualifications"
Bacon: "What is your job ?"
Woolley: "I am the Finance Director of the MOD"

Alicja Ziemowit, one resident of Lodz, Poland, arrived back home to discover that the local council had built a new road complete with traffic island in her back garden.
When she complained she was told that a change in the law meant that local council officials could now use private land for road building without consent or compensation. A council spokesman said, "I don't know why she is complaining, it is not a busy road, and she can still get to the back of her garden quite easily." She will surely enjoy relaxing on the hard shoulder and could now perhaps open a roadside stall to sell cappuccinos to workers at the new computer factory down the road.
Lodz council added, humourlessly, "She still owns the land, it just has a road on it now."

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

you have this business where TV won't show what we see, for reasons of so-called 'bad taste.' I remember once being on the phone to a TV editor in London when Al Jazeera were asked to feed some tape of children killed and wounded by British shell fire in Basra, and the guy started saying, 'there's no point feeding us this, we can't show this.'

"The first excuse was, 'people will be having their tea, so we can't put it on,' then it was, 'this is sort of pornography, we don't show this.' And ... the last thing was, 'we have to show respect for the dead.' So we don't show any respect for them when they are alive, we blow them to bits, and then we show respect for them.

Recently, I heard a rather sinister story, which sadly tends to be illustrative, about a project for health education for Romani children. This project, probably funded by European money, wanted to educate Romani children how to properly wash their hands and use soap. The only problem encountered in that project was the total absence of water supply in those settlements, the first pre-condition for Roma to be able to wash their hands.

A woman was threatened with arrest for wearing a T shirt which had pictures of Brian Haw’s banners on it, calling for an end to war. According to the police wearing the T Shirt near Downing St was an unauthorised protest. When she pointed out that the T Shirt advertised the Mark Wallinger exhibition of Brian’s placards in Tate Britain the police kindly deemed her T shirt legal.

On 25 October 2005, [Milan] Rai was arrested opposite Downing Street with vegan chef Maya Evans, after the pair read out the names of Iraqis and British service personnel who had been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Mr Rai was subsequently convicted of organising an "unauthorised" demonstration within 1km of Parliament, fined £350 and ordered to pay £150 in costs.
In May 2007 the pair were convicted again, this time for organising and participating in an "unauthorised" demonstration within 1km of Parliament, namely the "No More Fallujahs" weekend of nonviolent resistance marking the 2nd anniversary of the US/UK onslaught on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. At least 550 women and children are believed to have been killed during the latter attack, during which US forces used white phosphorus - a substance that burns down to the bone on contact with human flesh - as a weapon.

Many are quick to point out that we cannot inherit our ancestor’s sins. Indeed. But how then can we be entitled to the fruits of these sins: to our huge inherited advantage in power and wealth over the rest of the world?