BuzzMachine

Children, damnit, children as Saddam’s political prisoners
: Au Currant points us to this crime against humanity:

More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad…

Children!

Is is the wine? Be honest with me. Is it just the wine?
: Is it the wine that makes Alternet so damned amusing?

A specter haunts Las Vegas: organized strippers. Behind this nightmare vision lurks Andrea Hackett, a former male factory-worker turned nude dancer. And the headlines Hackett has been making have nothing to do with her sex change….

More post-wine humor
: I follow a link to an antiwar music site and come across this sublime popup:

We understand that there is some confusion between our group, Not In MY Name, and the new, anti-war group, Not In OUR Name.

You have reached the site of Not In My Name, which is a predominantly, though not exclusively Jewish group, based in Chicago, that is opposed the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

If you would like to continue on this site please click here.

If you are looking for the new anti-war group, Not In Our Name, please click here.

Or just have another glass of that fine Shiraz. And do it in MY name.

A dumb post
: I post this headline (after, I’ll admit, a few glasses of fine Australian wine) only to note that I think this is the only country on earth with no vowels:

Terrorists regrouping, Kyrgyz minister warns

Gossip
: I’m proud to have contributed this item to Gawker this morning.

The Geraldo handshake
: A report on soldiers meeting Geraldo:

“A handful of troops here wanted pictures with G and autographs. A few shook his hand. Others here wanted to harm him, were disgusted with him, thought he should have been sent home in a Humvee (a 40-hour drive south through the desert)

“We later found out a few who shook his hand had put those hands in unmentionable places prior. Army justice?”

[via Romenesko]

Why California is not American; it’s not Earth, either
: We make fun of Berkeley all the time. It’s fun to make fun of that other makefunnable California burg, West Hollywood, which just voted to outlaw the declawing of cats. This is the same town that passed a resolution decreeing that people can’t own pets (that would be pet slavery, you see); people can be pet “guardians.”

On the British front
: George Galloway, the renegade Labor MP, called Bush and Blair “wolves” and urged our soldiers to disobey “illegal orders” and also urged Arab countries to cut off our oil supply. The Sun called him a “traitor.” There’s talk of kicking him out of the party; he’s talking about running as an independent. He has been appearing on a Guardian forum and I went through to find some doozy quotes:

Britain at the moment effectively does not have a Labour party – and I don’t just refer to the war. We are setting Baghdad alight at the same time as extinguishing the firefighters’ rights, and crushing their lawful industrial dispute. We are building camps for asylum seekers, passing draconian legislation against immigrants and foreigners. we are burdening students with tens of thousands of pounds of debt. We are allowing the US, in the star wars programme, to use our country as Airstrip One. And we are systematically alienating our European hinterland as a Trojan horse for Bush. The Labour party has been hijacked, and the passengers must try to take back control of the plane or we are headed to destruction as a social democratic force.

From a liberal, I’m surprised to see such unPC language, George: At least here, we tend to find references to hijacked jets and passengers taking control to be awfully close to our 9/11 home. It’s not funny, mate.

we must find a way to arm ourselves with a media. The Guardian and the Independent, the Morning Star and Socialist Worker notwithstanding, we have been hopelessly outgunned on the media front. The BBC, paid for by us, has disgraced itself, being ready to squander even the precious resources of the World Service – the jewel in its crown – for the war party.

In the new technological age we must at least have a Europe-wide radio station linking up the anti-war and anti-globalisation movements around the continent. Radio Pacifica does this in the US and we must have the same. When things clear up a bit here, this is a project I intend to put my energies into.

Sounds like the U.S., eh, with liberals complaining about FoxNews. Radio Pacifica? Oh, yeah, that has a big impact on the public discourse… about as much as Phil Donahue had.

The patriotic thing would be to withdraw our soldiers from the occupation force. Otherwise they will descend into the kind of quagmire Sharon’s army is in in Palestine – a dismal cycle of occupation violence and counter-violence, a life of checkpoint shootings and suicide bombings.

It might be patriotic to support them.

…the last people in the world with the right to go around invading countries to change their regimes are the very colonial powers responsible for most of the trouble in the world in the first place.

Hmm. Well, we could include Britain on that list, you’re right. And France. And Germany. And Turkey. But us? Sorry, George. We’re the colonies, not the colonizers.

When I was a child, I told my father that the teacher had said Britain had an empire so vast that on it the sun never set. My father answered “that’s because God would never trust the British in the dark”.

A patriot just like you, he was.

Robin Cook told us in his resignation speech that Iraq “doesn’t have WMD”. Surely this is now abundantly clear, as the regime is now being overrun. This was the Goebbellian big lie on which all this has been based.

Hold on Herr Galloway: You might want to wait until we test of few more missiles.

Britain: You have my sympathy for having to endure this oaf. At least our loyal opposition in government is loyal.