The geese on Sermon Lane

They were filming a commercial.

I hope I'm not in it. I resent being in a commercial just because I'm walking down a street.

The impending atrocity against Marjah

Another major war crime by western imperialism is imminent, with echoes of Fallujah.

Yes, Fallujah, where thanks to the corporate media

while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign

The crime will be committed against the town of Marjah, which has a population greater than that of Bath.

As is normal, in a tradition which goes as far back as the Indian mutiny, the British corporate media is playing its part as imperial terror’s cheerleader and truth-twister.

The BBC is happy to convey the news that the military motives behind this "operation" are of the very purest variety:

to maintain security for the local population.

In the Mail on Sunday we have a heart-warming photo:

Corporal Tony Duncan gives sweets to Afghan children.

But sadly the enemy is coldly indifferent to the kiddies.

Boys as young as 12 are being used by the Taliban to plant bombs designed to kill and maim British troops in Afghanistan.

If these little kiddies end up getting killed obviously it won’t be anything to do with Britain or the USA, although an old Afghan hand warns us that

The offensive is expected to see heavy casualties on both sides, with civilian casualties "inevitable".

Or to put it another way:

US Marines, frustrated and enraged over casualties suffered at the hands of an unseen enemy who is able to attack and then blend back into the local population, will be unleashed against the town in a violent military assault, with predictable results.

Our lads are also raring to go:

Lance Corporal Nick Richards, 22, from Llanelli said: 'People are saying that this is the biggest assault of this kind since Vietnam, so everyone wants to be a part of it.

Vietnam! What a fabulous war that was!

Indeed Anything that they saw was deemed to be hostile in Fallujah. It reminds you of the free-fire zones in Vietnam

Back to Lance Corporal Richards:

'We are proud to be part of the big picture of change in Afghanistan. It's definitely going to have a big impact on Helmand in getting rid of the Taliban and bringing stability to the area.

A loyal soldier of the Third Reich would have framed his war effort in much the same terms.

Britain is an expert in peacemaking and bringing stability.

What is about to happen is a terrorist attack by the west, which is seeking to terrorise the population of the town into fleeing. Some are, some aren’t.

Many people were afraid to leave their fields and brave the bad winter roads, villagers said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said there was no way to count the number of people who have left Marjah.

But, hey, let's focus our attention not on those pesky Afghans but on this cute dawg:

Treo, an eight-year-old black labrador, has spent the past five years sniffing out bombs and weapons hidden by the Taliban.

Yet as a puppy he was a badly behaved rebel in danger of being put down until intensive Army training turned him into the gutsy canine described by his handler, Sergeant Dave Heyhoe, as the best military dog he has served alongside.

The sub-text of this is clear. If only we could get our badly behaved young people into uniform and pack them off to an outpost of empire, how much better everything would be for everybody.

Meanwhile

a Marjah resident, an elder reached by phone, who was not prepared to give his name, said he had evacuated his family a week ago because he feared "the worst attack ever".

"Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban," he said.

Currently reading Jacques Roubaud's The Loop.

I knew, although without knowing, and today I can’t remember how I knew, that the people whom the Vichy radio and newspapers were calling “terrorists” were, by a mysterious alchemy, our friends.

What literary critics call point of view.

Dick head

Whittington, Lord Mayor of London

The Bookshop

unique opportunity

Watling Street, London EC4

Revolutionary and regicide

Oliver Cromwell

Simon Tisdall: apologist for imperialism

Another Guardian imperialist liberal is Simon Tisdall. Hearken unto this:

But if Obama, the self-styled champion of change, is extending and escalating the weapons buildup begun by his bellicose predecessor, it's because he has an ever more persuasive reason to do so. That reason is Iran or, more specifically, the increasingly threatening regime headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his pugnacious sidekick, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Perusasive? Jeez. Unlike serial aggressor the USA, Iran is a nation which has never invaded anyone. It has, however, suffered occupation and the mass killing of its population by western imperialism. Not an aspect of twentieth-century history the corporate mass media will ever remind anyone about. Still less the USA’s sponsorship of torture and repression in Iran under its puppet dictator the Shah.

Iran's execution last week of two pro-democracy activists, and its new accusations against German diplomats who it accuses of fomenting political unrest, are but the latest manifestations of a mood of aggressive defiance of international opinion that has taken hold in Tehran since last June's bitterly disputed elections

Ah, love that ‘international opinion’. What’s that add up to? What the freedom loving USA, China and the torture-complicit EU happen to agree on?

The collateral charge sheet against Iran meanwhile lengthens steadily. It already includes its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, for rejectionist groups opposed to an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Hezbollah is a perfectly legitimate organisation. It’s also very effective at self-defence, which is an unforgivable crime from the perspective of western imperialism, which thinks it owns the Middle East.

As for the notion that ‘Israeli-Palestinian peace’ is threatened by ‘rejectionist groups’. Tisdall doesn’t seem to grasp even the most rudimentary reality about Zionism. It’s a land hungry colonialist sectarian project interested only in expelling the native population of Palestine. There is no greater rejectionist entity than the state of Israel, which is interested only in smashing every last vestige of Palestinian identity, through assassination, mass murder, expulsion and ruthless repression which has been going on for 62 years.

Or as someone else on the Guardian understands, Israel is intent on maintaining its domination of all Israel/Palestine.