Little things / that you do / make me feel / I’m in love with you. Love reigns supreme in Sukhdev Sandhu’s review of Under the Bombs in the Telegraph. The film is “a striking and often very moving work of guerilla filmmaking about the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a 33-day siege that left 1,189 men and women dead and created a million refugees.” Sandhu writes:

…As much as it dramatises the two characters’ own struggles to come to terms with the present blighted situation, the film highlights with revelatory force the extent of the misery wreaked on the Palestinian people by the Israeli forces. The pair’s journey is constantly hampered by collapsed roads, bombed bridges, wrecked petrol stations.

The very preconditions of civil society have been obliterated. As they pass by the homeless and the orphaned, they see, as we do, billboards featuring the images of Iranian ayatollahs or bearing the defiant slogans: “You have destroyed the bridge. We have mended their hearts - Hizbollah.”

Some may feel that the film focuses on personal grief at the expense of political analysis or denunciation.

God forbid anyone should feel that. Especially since Lebanon is now the Palestinian people. In the meantime thank God for Hizbollah who so faithfully represent the entire Lebanese people and who take such care to position their military away from the civilian population thereby mending broken Lebanese hearts.

In an attempt to tackle his country’s epidemic of intemperate blogging, First Minister Alex Fish-Heid’s government is said to be considering proposals to raise from 18 to 60 the minimum age at which alcohol can be purchased in Scotland.

Health Minister Shona McHaggard says that nothing has been ruled in or out of the government’s attempt to curb problem blogging, and adds:

“We all know that Scotland as a nation has an attitude problem, and the implications of this are very serious - not least for our sanity.”

But the development is meeting with stiff opposition from bloggers north of the border. Edinburgh resident William Rubbish is clearly unimpressed:

“Fish-Heid can go boil his fucking head, the cunt! I’d like to take those fucking nationalist scum and shoot the fucking lot of them. It’s the only fucking language they fucking understand. The cunts.”

Mr Rubbish is on the shady side of 40.

These men plotting to save the planet will make you happy.

Or drive you to a killing rage. It is quite possible the killing rage scenario is more likely for me.

(Trilby doffed to Flea for tipping point)

The situation in Iraq seems to be improving, finally.

The focus of the clashes is now Mosul, on which there is a very good article in the NY times yesterday.

When American military officials talk about “Iraqis in the lead,” Colonel Zibari is an example of what they mean: Iraqis operating their own checkpoints, doing their own patrols, using their own intelligence. American officials acknowledge that Iraqi methods often deviate from standard military doctrine but say that even rough-hewn tactics are more acceptable than the prospect of an indefinite, if more professional, occupying force.

The Bush administration says that an Iraqi Army capable of fighting on its own is a crucial prerequisite for the eventual withdrawal of American troops. But since its disbandment in 2003 by Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 2, the Iraqi Army has struggled to regain its footing. For years, Iraqi troops have been hampered by poor training, corruption, equipment shortages and a determined insurgency that has killed twice as many Iraqi soldiers and police officers as American troops.

Now, five years into the war, American commanders say that the reborn force is coming into its own. And Mosul, an ethnically mixed city that has been under stepped-up assault by insurgents and where Iraqi Army units far outnumber their American counterparts, offers a possible glimpse into the future. But the Iraqi Army’s performance in Mosul so far suggests that while the Iraqi forces are taking on more responsibility and have made strides, there are still troubling gaps.

This was also revealing… ‘Sadrists welcome approving provinces law”

The Sadrist bloc on Thursday welcomed the recent decision taken by the presidential council to approve a draft law to hold provincial elections, asserting the decision was taken because of political and popular pressures.

It seems that finally the central government has approved the Provinces Law which paves the way for provincial elections.

This is the first step towards an armistice. Just like the Sadrists, many other armed bourgeois factions will be brought into the electoral game and give up their weapons. The conservatives and elements connected to them — ie. the pseudo-left and their accomplices on the right - have hardly blinked when the Sadrists gave up their weapons, and there has been almost zero press about the Provinces Law getting passed. Perhaps no one wants to hear it because it only strengthens scumbags like McCain/Republicans et al, but it’s true all the same. The Iraqis have had enough of mayhem. Now they can struggle as a class to seize the great wealth that Iraq is capable of producing for them.

Long live the people of Iraq — fuck imperialism and fuck those at the service of the established order right from the start.

Christopher Hitchens takes on a LaRouche heckler during a book tour some time in 99/00. This footage was taken from a documentary broadcast on Channel 4 in 2000/1 — I have been trying to locate the said documentary myself for fucking years now - ever since watching it in fact — C4 — repeat the fucker you fuckers.

From what I remember of it, Hitchens also took the piss something rotten out of thicko liberal filth — you know the sort — like what posts at Harry’s pit of Shit Place.

Post dedicated to my mate Aleksi - who will especially know what I am on about.