Riverbend, the eloquent anonymous blogger from Baghdad, has just posted again. She and her family are leaving Iraq, to where they do not know.

There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

It’s difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.

May their escape be fast and safe, and may they soon find a place to call home. So too for all refugees of the war started by the imbecile.

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Urban Dictionary, “a slang dictionary with your definitions,” is a fun site

Some samples:

globfrag
Coined word from globalization and fragmentation; as the world becomes more globalized with increasing technology and knowledge, more fragmentation occurs among individuals and societies.

clicktease
When a website or website link leads you to believe you will be seeing pornography or some other sexual material, when in fact this offer is false or misleading.

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Thames Water and other privatized water companies in Scotland have “third world” equipment and are currently dumping 1000 liters per second of raw sewage into the water because darn it, something broke, and company execs are just too busy counting their massive profits to go fix it. This on top of massive leaks that occur constantly in the system.

Gus Abraham at 1820 has two posts and a video about this. He emails “Watch the video. Warning ***some bad sweary words are used*** do not watch this if you don’t want to hear bad sweary words.” (Click the picture to watch the video)

I’d be swearing too if huge amounts of sewage were flowing into waters near me as fat cats twiddled their thumbs. And for those who might call this vandalism, I say the real vandals are those running Thames Water.

This is what water privatization too often does. Quality and service become abysmal as the sole focus becomes profit. Water is too important and too basic to be left to the private sector and the profit motive. It belongs to the people and should be managed by the people.

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But the wheels of repression grind on, with neither party discussing the
“torture, repression of immigrants, the gathering of secret evidence by mass spying, and so on.”

On these abuses by the Attorney General and the government, the Democrats are as silent as the Republicans.

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