It will be artistic and it will involve body paint

A couple of days ago, the NYT reported Ariel Sharon as threatening to block elections in Palestine (scheduled for January) if Hamas was allowed to take part. “I don’t think they can have elections without our help,” he said. In fact, he went further. Ha’aretz has him also demanding that Hamas be disarmed and that it revise its charter and declare that “Yentl” didn’t suck.

New Zealand MP Keith Locke (Green Party) made a campaign pledge to run naked through the streets of Epsom, a suburb of Auckland, if the leader of the right-wing Act party was re-elected for the constituency. Which he was. Locke intends to keep his pledge, as soon he’s worked out the... choreography. He says his streaking “will be artistic and it will involve body paint.”

There was a wee incident in Basra today involving two undercover British soldiers. Let’s pause there, because the concept of undercover soldiers is a bit... faulty, and in fact violates international law. If they’re not in uniform, they are not soldiers but spies. I don’t imagine we’ll ever know what they were actually up to. When Iraqi police tried to stop their car at a checkpoint, they fired at the police, killing one of them. When they were captured, the British army effected a jail break using tanks, which are very handy during a jail break. The BBC calls this a “daring rescue operation” but honestly how daring do you have to be IN A FUCKING TANK, I mean that show on Fox would have a much shorter season IF THEY HAD A FUCKING TANK. The pissed-off civilians had sling shots.


Oh ok, one of the tanks was set on fire, I admit, but still.






The Brits killed a couple of civilians and let out a few prisoners during the jail break. By the way, the BBC link above shows the undercover soldiers with their faces disguised, as per British government request. That would be these guys.


Headlines in the British press: “Rioters Attack British Troops” (Daily Telegraph); “Army Storms Jail to Free Seized Soldiers” (The Times); “British Tanks Storm Basra Jail” (Guardian); “Under Fire: British Soldiers Attacked in Basra” (Independent); “UK Soldiers ‘Storm’ Basra Prison” (BBC). No mention of the soldiers shooting the Iraqi policemen.

In fairness, I must add that the Basra police are known to be a partly or wholly owned subsidiary of the insurgency, and may have intended to hold the soldiers in order to exchange them for captured militia leaders. In other words, the Brits didn’t trust the Basra police enough to leave their soldiers in their hands, but evidently they are willing to leave the entire population of Basra in their hands.