So many times my life becomes just unmanageable for me, and I fall into a hole. It's nothing I can talk about, and so I like to pretend I am different, but sometimes I canny do it. 'Tis probably why I post so many pretty pictures. I like to imagine. If you think of me, imagine me in the sunlight and the blue sky please.




There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more

--Lennon/McCartney

When would-be president Ingrid Betancourt was rescued last month, Colombia's Marxist guerrillas lost their most treasured hostage. But morale in the jungle was already low, with hunger, executions and forced abortions among Farc's female troops. Alice O'Keeffe meets the women who have given up the revolution

Alice O'Keeffe
The Observer
Sunday August 24 2008



Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) parade in the main square of San Vicente del Caguan. (Photograph: Ricardo Mazalan/AP)

Lina grips her face with her hands and lets out a groan of pain. Her uncle is standing over her, his hands forming the shape of a pistol and pointing down at an imaginary body on the floor. 'They had him on the ground, like this,' he says. 'They fired two shots into his head from here.'

'They humiliated him before killing him?' wails Lina, tears running down her face. Her body is bent double at the news of her brother's death. Gunned down aged 27 in her home town of Florencia, southern Colombia, he was murdered, she believes, by her former 'boss' - her commandant in the ruthless guerrilla army, Farc.

Lina was a member of Farc - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - for seven years. Last December, exhausted and demoralised, she deserted, handing herself in to the army. Farc does not take such betrayal lightly. A terrible revenge has been exacted upon her family.

( >>Continued )

From February, there is a news story of how the Secret Service ordered Dallas police to quit searching people for weapons at a Barack Obama rally. The police were aghast at how many people got in without even a cursory check.

Do you recall the stories of John Kennedy's assassination - in Dallas?

Do you think you live in a democracy where you elect the people who run the country? How do you feel about the stories concerning all the so-called glitches in the voting machines? Did they throw away your last vote in the presidential election--or just forget to count it. Do you think your vote counts at all? Do you think you really have a choice here in a two mega-party system?

If you are high in government or even just have a lot of money, do you have to live by the same laws as others? For example, if you run the government, do you have to worry that the war in Iraq is a conflict of interest when your associates profit greatly from it?

There are some who call religion the opiate of the masses. I say you might add this thing they call 'democracy' to that as well.