blessed britons

The clock sounds five. Then follows the catastrophe, brutal, horrible, implacable. A deluge of steel and fire descended on Royan; a wave of 350 planes lets go 800 tons of bombs on the town. Some seconds later, the survivors are calling for aid to the wounded. Cries, death rattles... A woman appeals for help, her head appears alone, her body crushed under an enormous beam.
A whole family is imprisoned in a cave, the water mounts. The rescuers lift their heads - this humming, yet, it is another wave of planes. This achieves the complete destruction of Royan and its inhabitants. Royan has gone down with the civilised world, by the error, the bestiality, the folly of man.

A Royan citizen, quoted in Howard Zinn's 'The Bombing of Royan' (in On War) According to Zinn, about 2,000 people died that night under British bombs.

mad world

... estimates using International Panel on Climate Change assumptions show that stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at 1990 levels would have implied a global, equal carbon entitlement of about 0.43 tons per person. Yet in 2000, actual per capita emissions in the rich countries were about 3.4 tons, meaning that each person in the rich world was over the limit by approximately 3 tons. According to the UK government, the damage cost of carbon emissions is US$56 to US$223 per ton of carbon. Using a mid range estimate of US$140, each person in the rich world owes US$420 annually through excessive use of carbon. In total, this results in a South-North flow of around US$400 billion.

— Action Aid

Real Aid

gagging on the stench

Submitted by antarchi on July 30, 2007 - 04:46.

Smoke billowed over the city. Houses were heaps of rubble, flames leaping from their roofs. Twisted metal, beams and lumps of plaster smouldered in the streets. So many corpses lay decomposing in the streets that the checkpoint soldiers wore handkerchiefs over their faces to block the smell...
I stood before the Presidential Palace, gagging on the stench, unable to move. Scores of burned-out tanks, army personnel carriers and jeeps belonging to the Russians littered the street. Under them lay rotting bodies.

mostly nuggets

blessed britons

mad world

gagging on the stench