Calm as a Belgian

The 46 killed yesterday are now 54, except there are no actual bodies, they just made it up based on what US soldiers said they’d done. Locals say 8. The commander opines that the remaining guerillas must have carried off the 54 dead bodies. Oh yeah, that’s believable: under heavy fire, they carried 54 corpses (plus presumably all of their wounded), in, what, wheelbarrows? stretchers? and got them right out of the area, so that none could be found.

And of course most of the dead “guerillas” turned out to include an awful lot of civilians, whoever was around when US soldiers started shooting in all directions. Who says Iraq isn’t like Vietnam?

And in this way too: “Sgt Jones said when the two convoys had driven into Samarra on Sunday, the city centre was a virtual ghost town, suggesting that the civilian population knew the ambushes were about to happen.”

There was a tribute to the victims of Franco (still dead) in Spain’s parliament building. The right-wing ruling party boycotted the event because it reopened old wounds and “smelt of mothballs.”

Haven’t seen it, but there is a film of Cincinnati police beating a black man to death. They say it was self-defense. He was 400 pounds. Says the head of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP!!), "In that video, what did these officers do wrong?" Uh, beat a guy to death? Beat a guy after he was lying on the ground? And why were they equipped with steel clubs, anyway?

The Lithuanian parliament is about to impeach the president, who evidently has Russian mafia ties. He says he won’t leave even if impeached, adding “I am as calm as a Belgian.”

Which is pretty fucking calm.

George Monbiot gives an outline of how badly we’re screwed, given the taboo fact that oil is running out.

Alessandra Mussolini, Benito’s granddaughter and former stripper, quit the neo-post-fascist party after its leader said bad things about the Upside Down One, and has formed her own party, called
Freedom of Action. It will be“futuristic and feminist”.

And the White House evidently made up a story about a BA pilot recognizing Air Force One.