LINKS are working again. However, a couple of people are having trouble loading this site, for reasons unknown to me. I'll have the tech staff look into things.
AS SOMEONE of Scots ancestry, I deeply resent George Galloway reinforcing the stereotype of my people as miserly, cash-grafting, never-put-our-hands-in-our-pockets penny-mooching scum:
George Galloway yesterday launched an appeal to fund his high court libel battle against two newspapers that claimed he received money from Saddam Hussein's regime.
The beleaguered Labour MP urged supporters and sympathisers to back his court action.
"I expect we will raise a significant fund and we will need it, because it is a daunting undertaking, as I have discovered all over again," he said.
Galloway earns about $US110,000 per year for a weekly newspaper column, nearly $90,000 annually as a member of Parliament, and has previously scored more than $300,000 in lawsuit victories. And don't forget his Mariam Appeal, which raised $160,000 for the sick Iraqi kid but spent more ($200,000) on hiring inner-London offices. Almost $30,000 went to Galloway's wife, while George himself unloaded more than $400,000 of the appeal's funds on self-serving publicity visits (if that's all they were) to Baghdad.
And now he's playing poor and begging for cash. The man is unbelievable. My tartan blood boils.
WITH THE war safely over, The Daily Mirror has decided to retrospectively support British troops:
Two British special forces soldiers were held prisoner in Syria after yomping almost 100 miles in three days.
Pursued by Saddam Hussein's troops, the men from an SAS-SBS team raced to safety when ambushed on a secret mission in Northern Iraq.
Their extraordinary escape was a race against time to sanctuary - and the greatest escape of the Iraq war.
The story, run on the front page of today's Mirror, is one month old. When the extraordinary escape was taking place, the Mirror was running front-page stories like these.
MAYBE misguided peace protesters are simply victims of tainted travel sickness tablets. Sufferers report an array of paranoid peacenik symptoms:
"You get images constantly being bombarded into your brain."
"You get nightmares but you're awake. It's non-stop. It's nightmarish, ghoulish, spiders and other things. You are almost clawing at your head to get them out of it."
"You don't have any control about what's coming into your mind."
"I was in ga-ga land. I sat up on a park bench getting these images coming at me."
"I was acting like a crazy man."
"She was very disorientated and had no balance ... next minute she was seeing things, asking crazy questions and couldn't walk straight."
"You don't get much control over them. You get thousands of images at one time. You would have to sit up all night and battle it. You get so tired."
JOE QUEENAN writes that the main victims of New York's smoking ban are non-smokers:
The immediate effect was to force legions of angry, drunken smokers out into the streets where they could congregate in large angry circles and keep everybody in the neighbourhood awake until three o’clock in the morning complaining about not being able to smoke inside any more. New York City used to have a lot of bars. Now it is a bar.
Anyone unfortunate to live anywhere near a bar or a restaurant - in other words, every other resident of Manhattan - has been plagued by the late-night carcinogenic clatches outside the city’s 13,000 bars and restaurants.
All of them should march down to the Mayor's house and, as the saying goes, smoke him out. Then, as another saying goes, beat him up. And, to quote yet another, less well-known saying, attach him to a medievel catapult and fling him into Jersey.
FOLLOWING REPORTS that Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf is alive, Andrew Sullivan wonders: "Will Roger Ailes offer him a talk show before the military nabs him?" The Fox boss would face a bidding war for Mo's services, however. Reuters reports:
An Arab television network said on Tuesday it wants to give a job to former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, whose colorful daily briefings during the U.S.-led invasion won him a cult following.
Ali al-Hadethi, supervisor of the Dubai-based al-Arabiya satellite channel, told Reuters that Sahaf, who does not figure on Washington's list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, was welcome to join the network immediately as a commentator and analyst.
Hadethi said he did not know the former minister's whereabouts and asked him to contact Arabiya to take up his job.
"We want to benefit from the experience of Mr Sahaf and his analysis of the current situation and the future of Iraq," Hadethi said, without giving details of the job package.
He'd make a brilliant sportscaster.
NZ PUNDIT reports that the New Zealand government spent $899,650.00 purchasing a domain name.
THE BUNYIP compares Sydney Morning Herald reporting with actual reporting. Highly instructive.
PHILLIP ADAMS is angry at Kim Beazley's failure to fawn over Phil and his wealthy commie pals:
In one of our few long conversations, I tried to remind Beazley that he was alienating people for whom politics isn't the one day of an election year but a lifetime of involvement. To my astonishment, the nice Kim Beazley wasn't nice at all. He dismissed them as the "chattering classes", using that contemptuous and contemptible expression beloved of Paddy McGuinness.
Poor Phil. Nobody listens to his radio show. His column is read only for mocking fun. And Labor leaders don't want to talk to him.
MOHAMMAD SAID AL-SAHHAF IS ALIVE! The US must rescue him!
Iraq's former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, who denied to the end the presence of US forces in Baghdad, was turned down by US troops after trying to turn himself in, said the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, citing a Kurdish official.
Sahhaf had been at his aunt's house in Baghdad for the past four days and wanted US troops to arrest him so that "they can protect him" but they refused since he was not on their "most wanted" deck of playing cards, said the paper, citing Adel Murad of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
Mr Murad said Sahhaf was in Mosul before going to Baghdad and that some PUK partisans saw him in the northern city and that he even asked some of them to intervene on his behalf with US troops, but "we told him that we didn't want to be party to this matter", the paper added.
"Negotiations are still going on to hand him over to them," said Mr Murad.
Please, let it be soon. The world wants mo' of Mo.
JOURNALISM 101, with guest lecturer Dr. Malcolm Bollard, a recognised expert*:
"Hello, students! Selective use of vernacular terminology is an easy way to add some 'zing' to dull copy. Allow me to demonstrate, using this dismal article as a starting point.
"Now read on as I improve the article by deftly replacing a few of the more boring phrases with colourful everyday words and such. The key is to not go overboard - in fact, unless you pay close attention, you may not notice any changes at all!"
NORTHAMPTON - Smith College students earlier this month made a decision some might find mystifying: Although Smith is a skirt college, the chicks voted to change the language of their student constitution so that the pronouns "she" and "her" would be replaced with dickless, unbreasted terms.
The student government vote is an indication of a deeper issue facing Smith College, and other girl-on-girl institutions, which is that a growing number of students identify themselves as she-males, and say they feel uncomfortable with hot femme pronouns.
"Smith College is a college for broads, and within that there is a place for all kinds of ass," said Brenda Allen, director of institutional diversity.
In addition to the issue of gender identity, within the girly-man movement there is also the matter of sex-reassignment surgery, formerly known as "marrying Liza Minelli".
"See? See how with a bare minimum of alterations that terrible article has suddenly become Pulitzer material? See?"
*Dr. Malcolm Bollard is the world's foremost authority.
(Link via Tonguetied.)
PETER KERR has done moved on over to Blogger - and Sarge is back!
A NEW group, the International Academic Friends of Israel, has been formed to fight anti-Israel bigotry in institutes of higher learning worldwide. There is as yet no Australian branch. There needs to be.
BIAS by stealth: reader John Softly writes to point out that in this week's Sydney Morning Herald TV Guide, a piece on rear-projection televisions contains three pictures of said viewing devices - one of them displaying an image of anti-war Susan Sarandon, one showing anti-war Peter Garrett, and one with anti-war Nelson Mandela.
THIS WEEK'S Continuing Crisis column in The Bulletin mentions Simon Crean, Kim Beazley, John Howard, Smiths, Browns, Joneses, Nguyens, Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones, David Marr, US Marine Corporal Ed Chin, Robert Fisk, Phillip Adams, Richard Ackland, and Eric Bogle.
Plus there is an appalling SARS joke.
GEORGE GALLOWAY may not find it easy to win his threatened lawsuit, writes media lawyer Dan Tench:
The proper course, the court may consider, was for the story to be published fairly and with balance and for Galloway to be given an opportunity to respond. Arguably, this is what happened.
The problem for Galloway is that he now appears committed to a libel action. If he were to decline to bring or withdraw such an action or if he were to lose it even on the qualified privilege defence (which would not legally give any credence to the allegations), he may - perhaps unfairly - be widely seen to be culpable of the charges against him. Not only would this damage his reputation, but it is likely to be very costly for him.
The law now recognises much more than before that important matters and allegations should be ventilated in the press. Provided this is done fairly - with a moderate tone, balanced coverage and a right to reply - no action in defamation is likely to succeed. Galloway may come to learn, as fellow politicians Archer, Aitken and Hamilton did before him, to beware of the libel courts.
THE ENTIRE "crushing of free speech" debate in the US may be summarised as follows:
Some wealthy people in the entertainment industry said some stupid things. Folks criticised them for this. Then the entertainers resumed their careers without suffering any losses at all.
The End.
(Jonah Goldberg has more on this, but, hey, I don't get paid by the word here.)
BBC executive Mark Damazar said last month that the BBC had erred in its coverage of the war:
"If we have used the word 'liberate' in our own journalism, as in 'such and such a place had been liberated by allied forces', that's a mistake," he said.
"That is the wrong language to use without evidence of Iraqi people feeling as though they have been liberated," Mr Damazer added.
Here's your
evidence, pal (if more were needed):
In the two weeks since Kirkuk fell to a mix of Kurdish and US forces, free media outlets have been busting out all over: An Internet cafe opened its doors; a radio station called the Voice of Kirkuk started broadcasting part time; a newspaper called New Kurdistan, published in the autonomous northern city of Sulaymaniyah, started circulating here; and people are tuning into several Kurdish television channels broadcasting from the self-rule zone, an offense which in the past could have landed a person in jail, at best.
The race to let new voices be heard is also on in Baghdad, where a new newspaper began its first run on Tuesday.
And the people's choice of television network?
Still desperate for war news, they tune to CNN, BBC, and what appears to be a local favorite, Fox. They like it, people here say, because it has been the most supportive of the war.
For many here, the only foreign channels they can understand are in Arabic, and they are deeply resentful of the most prominent one, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera.
Abu Bakr Mohammed Amin, an elderly man in a red-checkered headdress visiting Salih's television shop, gives them a dismissive flick of the wrist: "They only knew how to support Saddam," he says.
So much for Western voices who hailed Al-Jazeera as the voice of balance and freedom. The battle for liberation continues; Iraq may have Fox, but New Zealand still doesn't.
BANNED CHEMICAL WEAPONS found in Sydney!
THE PHRASE "all jokes aside" usefully functions to indicate that the preceding wasn't a joke (or at least wasn't a funny joke) and that the speaker is probably incapable of making or even recognising a joke. Humourless (yet strangely self-amused) media scold David Marr proves my point.
GERARD HENDERSON on the problems facing the Australian Labor Party:
If the ALP wants to work out what went wrong, it should spend some time reassessing the contemporary meaning of the Anzac legend. Here John Faulkner and Robert Ray, watching the Test cricket in the West Indies on a privately funded holiday, may provide some assistance. The Labor senators could report how Steve Waugh and his team participated in a ceremony to mark Anzac Day. It is unlikely that members of a touring Australian cricket team would have involved themselves in such a ritual a decade or more ago.
It's not that previous Test teams were uninterested in Anzac, but that Australians are now more outwardly patriotic than at any time since the Pacific War. For the first time in many years, the Chief of the Defence Force, Peter Cosgrove, is a well-known and popular figure. Indeed, the military has seldom been so admired.
GERHARD SCHRODER is hinting that he may quit. So is
Robert Mugabe.
EVERYONE should stop taking all non-essential vitamin and mineral supplements. Why? Because tainted vitamins are making people sick. According to an Australian government spokeswoman:
"Some people were very, very ill. They tried to jump out of planes, off ships and things like that because of the hallucinatory effect."
The blotter paper should have been a hint that these "vitamins" weren't exactly the regular kind. And the "chewable O'Learys" for children were just plain wrong.
DON'T HAVE a cow, Naomi! Vice-presidential image wrecker Naomi Wolf has been in Australia for maybe three hours or so, and she's already decided that we treat our mothers like common breeding ruminants:
Celebrity feminist Naomi Wolf says Australian mothers are being reduced to a kind of solitary servitude by society's "contempt" for motherhood.
"We need to shower them (mothers) with affirmation, we need to give them money, we need to not act like motherhood is some natural thing you just do like a cow."
Well, guess I'd better take cud off this year's Mother's Day gift list. Australia, as it happens, does give money to mothers. It's a secret we only reveal to visitors after they've been here longer than one day. As for this "contempt" Wolf mentions:
As evidence of the "contempt" in which motherhood is held, Ms Wolf cited "the fact that medical procedures in Australia, as well as the US, tend to treat birth as an emergency rather than a natural process".
So we shouldn't treat motherhood as natural and we should treat motherhood as natural. Stupid mother.
UPDATE. Gareth Parker e-mails to point out that Wolf isn't even in Australia - the interview was a pre-emptive strike via satellite to publicise an upcoming book tour or somesuch. Be warned, Wolf! We hold mothers in contempt!
"APRIL 28, IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY YOU LOSER!"
-- sign placed next to a donkey during Iraqi celebrations marking Saddam Hussein's 66th birthday. Said Sadr resident Ali, 24: "For the first time in my life, I won't be forced to attend Saddam's birthday ceremonies. He was a dictator, he was nothing but a donkey ruling over Iraq."
WHO IS Noah Feldman, and why should you care? The BBC explains:
Noah Feldman, a law professor from New York University, will be advising the future Iraqi interim authority on how to design a new constitution.
He will be working for retired US general Jay Garner - Iraq's interim leader - in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
He told BBC News Online that in his view the US should support democracy in Iraq even if it was a not a secular democracy.
Judging by some of Colin Powell's recent remarks on "democratic Islam", Feldman may have some influence among the influential. Which is a concern, as retired blogger Diana Moon points out via e-mail, because Feldman is ... well, let's allow his opinions to speak for themselves:
Feldman laughs at the cliché that Islamists are medievalists. On the contrary, he argues, Islamic parties stress clean government, social welfare and economic equality.
And from his book, After Jihad:
In nearly every Muslim country, however, there are voices today calling for greater democracy. Remarkably, the loudest voices are often those of Islamists, activists who believe that "Islam is the solution" to all problems in politics and private life alike. The Islamists' call for democratic change in the Muslim world marks a fundamental shift in their strategy.
This guy merits close observation.
TAKE the Wonderlic intelligence test (used by NFL scouts to rate possible recruits) and discover if you are smarter than an offensive tackle or dumber than a halfback. Sample question:
These things in front of you, written on the page and composed of letters. What are they called?
a. Me is hungry
b. Blood? Blood for oil?
c. Contract
I exaggerate slightly. Dave Francis has more details, including the information that someone called Javon Walker, out of Florida, scored only nine - out of a possible 50.
MANY YEARS from now somebody will type "snub wobblers" into a search engine. Possibly that person will be drunk. Anyway, this story will appear.
ALL THIS terrible wartime looting! And nobody is doing anything about it:
The United Nations (UN) has extended to May 31 the deadline for senior Zimbabwe and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) officials to respond to allegations that they looted diamonds and other natural resources during the four-year DRC war.
A UN official said the deadline had been extended from March 31 to give all those implicated by a UN report issued at the end of last year time to meet with the world body's investigating panel and compile their responses to the allegations.
The official, Amin Mohsen, said the UN would publish the responses of those implicated in last year's report on June 20. "There was need to give everyone a chance to dialogue with the investigating panel, exchange views and have adequate time to make detailed responses," Mohsen, the UN official assigned to the DRC, told the Financial Gazette from New York.
Give 'em the full dialogue treatment. That'll show those looters.
NEW ZEALAND MUST BE LIBERATED.
I MEANT to link to this Anzac Day message from Bryon Scott days ago. Also to this John B. Dwyer piece in the Washington Times:
As April 25th approaches, let us remember the tremendous contribution of the Australian military to the success of Operation Iraqi Freedom: In the air, its FA-18 Squadron; at sea, the ANZAC and the DARWIN, along with Navy divers; on land, its elite SAS, an Army Commando Task Group and other units.
A component of coalition special-operations forces, the SAS, for instance, captured 60 senior Iraqi officials trying to leave the country with $600,000 in U.S. currency and, more recently, discovered a huge armaments cache that included 51 MIG jets, or half the Iraqi air force. They participated in western Iraq operations that neutralized potential use of SCUD missiles. With their air force and navy counterparts, they will observe Anzac Day thousands of miles from home, but only 900 miles southeast of the site where that day was born.
(Oh, and while you're at Bryon's site, check out his discovery of Sprint's new Vulcan hiring policy.)
WHAT ARE the penalties for lying to the UN? Do they make you stand in a corner?
A leading Iraqi scientist who worked in the country's biological weapons program in the 1980s said he and his colleagues lied to UN inspectors about biological and chemical weapons, The New York Times reported.
The stories he gave the inspectors "were all lies," Nissar Hindawi told the paper.
Iraq "produced huge quantities" of liquid anthrax and botulinum toxin, he said.
So it's little wonder that ...
Only a minority within the Bush administration want UN inspectors to return to Iraq.
"Forget it. On principle, we don't want the United Nations running around Iraq," one official told the paper.
Good.
GEORGE GALLOWAY could go away for two years if he's convicted.
TONY BLAIR warns the crows during his latest press conference:
The BBC's Andrew Marr, as always, is given the first question, rather puncturing Mr Blair's domestic electioneering by demanding to know when WMD will be found in Iraq.
Mr Blair says a thousand sites have now been identified, and he is confident such weapons will be found.
Mark Mardell asks why the UN are not invited back into Iraq to independently verify WMD finds.
The prime minister insists there is "no doubt" that Iraq had WMD, and that "people who crow" about their absence now should "wait a little bit".
IF SARS doesn't get you, the vitamins will:
Australians have been warned against taking herbal, vitamin or nutritional supplements following the biggest recall of medical products in the country's history.
The national medicines watchdog, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), today suspended the licence of Pan Pharmaceuticals for six months and ordered the immediate withdrawal of 219 of its products following a series of grave safety and quality breaches.
Pan represents 70 per cent of the Australian complementary medicine market and exports to dozens of countries.
Here's a list of the recalled products. I've taken the precaution of removing all vitamins from the house and replacing them with harmless cigarettes. You can't be too careful, you know.
VIA the Bunyip, this March 31 war commentary from the Australian Financial Review's Michael Pascoe (subscription required for AFR link):
It looks like a little dose of reality has finally been allowed into George Junior's war party. It will be rather lonely there by itself but before long it should be joined by its friend, disillusionment.
Together they will stand against a wall, casting dark looks around the room, asking each other in voices growing steadily louder: "How did we get into this mess?"
The rest of the party will try hard to ignore them, then to disparage them, but they won't be silenced. The party will begin to break down as arguments start about who let "them" in. Eventually most will give up and depart, with the remainder left to bickering and finger-pointing, until finally agreeing with the question. "Yeah, how did we get into this mess?"
By the end of the party Tony Blair and John Howard will have lost or resigned their jobs. George Junior will remain in denial, locked like Macbeth into a course where he is so steeped in blood it's as easy to go on as to turn back. He will have guaranteed an escalation and extension of terrorism against the west, destabilised the Middle East further and made sure that, just like his Dad, he's a one-term president.
It's possible to see only one person happy as the party dissolves - the tall skinny guy, smiling broadly under his beard and answering to the name of Osama.
With the Pentagon now admitting publicly what it tried to tell George Junior privately, that this Iraq war will take months, not weeks, there are terrible implications to be thought through. This war so far is going to Saddam's plan, not George's.
The last time I checked, both Tony Blair and John Howard still had their jobs. So does Pascoe, oddly enough.
CHARITY BEGINS at home. Specifically, at
George Galloway's home:
The appeal set up by George Galloway to treat a sick Iraqi child spent more than 800,000 pounds on political campaigns and expenses, including a direct salary payment to his wife, the MP admitted yesterday.
Dr Amineh Abu Zayyad, Mr Galloway's Palestinian wife, was paid around 18,000 pounds by the appeal fund to "look after" Mariam Hamza, the girl who received treatment for leukaemia in Britain and America.
The charity spent £860,000 on anti-sanctions campaigns, expenses and administration, and only £100,000 on the kid. She was effectively used as a front for a propaganda operation.
Interesting to note, too, that Appalling George is still only threatening to sue the Telegraph:
He is threatening to sue The Daily Telegraph for libel and said last week that, if he discovered from his own records that he was not in Iraq at Christmas 1999, "the Telegraph will come down in flames". He has denied ever knowingly meeting Iraqi agents. But confirmation of his presence in Baghdad at the time of the alleged meeting has emerged.
It's not looking good for George. Then again, it never was.
FORMULA ONE garage area in 1973. Note the chap with the oily rag, a mandatory requirement of the era.
And a Formula One garage area today. The surgical-quality lighting gantry probably costs as much as did a team's entire stock of trackside mechanical equipment 30 years earlier. Here's another comparison.
(By the way, the car in the first image is a Shadow, proof that despite the excesses of the 1970s - "the decade that taste forgot" - some beautiful designs were nonetheless achieved.)
THIS JUST IN: Tribble weighs 820 grams. Developing.
In related news, Acidman reports:
I had a dog named "Wiggles" that could put a whole Krystal hamburger in his mouth, chew it, swallow the burger and spit out the pickle every time.
ACTOR Mike Farrell - well, he was an actor, sometime back in the 1970s - on the brave Hollywood dissidents:
"The Dixie Chicks are back on the air and their record is number one again," he said. "Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are not going to stop making movies for a long time. Janeane Garofalo has a (TV) pilot going forward. These ugly-mouthed people like to think they are more powerful than they are."
They sure do. By the way, what exactly are the qualifications of the Bush-hating intellectual elite?
Cher: Dropped out of school in 9th grade. Career: Singing and acting
Martin Sheen: Flunked exam to enter University of Dayton. Career: Acting
Jessica Lange: Dropped out college mid-freshman year. Career: Acting
Julia Roberts: Completed High School. Career: Acting
George Clooney: Dropped out of University of Kentucky. Career: Acting
Michael Moore: Dropped out first year at University of Michigan. Career: Movie Director
Sarah Jessica Parker: Completed High School. Career: Acting
Jennifer Anniston: Completed High School. Career: Acting
Janeane Garofalo: Dropped out of College. Career: Stand up comedienne
HOORAY for the foamy friar, foe of fanatics:
The Pope yesterday beatified a 17th-century friar credited with halting a Muslim invasion of Europe and in the process gave the world cappuccino coffee.
TARIQ AZIZ wants to live in England, but The Sun sez:
He should still be punished as a war criminal, not made to feel like a Lottery winner.
Why not force him to stay with George Galloway?
That would teach him.
PHILLIP ADAMS suffers from insomnia. He should try reading his own columns. How does he stay awake while he composes them?
WHOA! Coolest Emmanuelle photograph yet! Emmanuelle and Matt lately visited the regal Layne-Crane estate in Reno. Songs were sung and the gambling precinct invaded. Speaking of songs, Ken's nü metal outfit has been trumped by a Sydney band whose promo flyer I caught a glimpse of last week. It had the umlaut goin' on and the German title and everything.
The band's name?
Strüdel.
SOMETHING strange and wrong is happening at the New York Post, and Mickey Kaus is on to it. Editor Col Allan isn't expected in the office today - I just spoke to the city desk - but I'll try to get hold of him at home or tomorrow. Conversations with Col are always entertaining, although I expect on this subject he may be somewhat circumspect. We'll see.
DIANE SAWYER is one interviewer you don't want to mess with.
THANKS FOR calling that one in, Tariq:
The favourable surrender terms agreed between coalition commanders and Tariq Aziz has prompted speculation that Saddam Hussein's trusted foreign policy adviser provided the intelligence responsible for the cruise missile attack on the Iraqi dictator's bunker.
BECOME a Face For Peace! Just like Tough Josh and this pretending-to-be-dead chick and
Kaushalya catalyst for change! You can even be severely retarded or an elderly dictator and still be a Face For Peace! (Fidel's appearance courtesy of this prankster.) EVERYBODY must become a Peace Face! Especially now that the war is over, and we have - peace!
UPDATE. Joe adds his face!
And Lee contributes his peaceful image!
I WONDER how many lives have been altered by blogs?
Reading blogs has changed my world. Lileks is a nightly ritual before I go to sleep and the lack of Bleat will put a small dent in my day. This goes along with the fact that I sprinkle my conversation with references to what Michele has said and the fact that thanks to Tim Blair I know a bit too much about Australian politics. I keep sending friends strips from Day by Day and I insist on referring to George Clooney as an "Asshat" because of Rachel Lucas. Kim Du Toit has convinced me that I need to buy a gun or ten and Pave France has supplied me with a seemingly endless source of frog bashing ammo. Add to that the fact that I have felt an even greater connection to the war in Iraq because of reading Where is Raed and all the military blogs I list to the left (Lt. Smash, Sgt. Stryker, Will, and Primary Main Objective). I have made a greater effort than I normally would have to keep up to date on the events of the war because of my contributions to Command Post.
FROM Randy Robinson's Top Five Signs Your MP May Be On The Take:
3. His face is on the Five of Clubs
THE WOGBLOGGER has this take on the Hartford Courant editor who banned a journalist from blogging:
Dyareckon he would take that view if the personal blog was filled with "My boss is God. He is the bestest boss. Lovelove for Boss."?
"Lovelove for Boss". Journalists used to send me notes like that all the time back when I worked in offices. Also from Wogblog - a multicultural solution to the looting of Baghdad:
Someone do a stocktake of what's left in the museum, and from the museum but elsewhere in Iraq, so we can work out what stuff has to be recovered from the plunderers.
I am thinking a team of Italian and Spanish shopkeepers can do this job in a weekend.
KINKY FRIEDMAN is hanging with a bad crowd. And not for the first time - in '96 we met Kinky at Austin's Driskill Hotel, and a few days later caught up with him at home (Clinton sign in the yard, natch) to watch baseball on TV and haul down a few cigars. By the way, you think Kinky's wise and funny? You should have met his late father, Tom. Extraordinary, wonderful family.
THE CONCEPT of supply and demand eludes the Daily Mirror. Which is what you'd expect from a paper that thought hiring John Pilger would increase sales.
GEORGE GALLOWAY'S Cuban love toy tells all:
Judy Lonchan Lopez said last night: "George was very important in Cuba. I'm not surprised he was friends with Saddam, because he was close to Fidel Castro.
"He desired me and I respected him. He was very passionate. He had learned some Spanish and he would say things like, 'I adore your body', and, 'You make me fly like a bird when I touch you'."
Here's a few other Spanish phrases George might have learned:
Amo a dictadores
Deme más dinero
Tráigame por favor mi sombrero la cima y monóculo inmediatamente
Saddam Hussein will be 66 on 28 April - that is, if he is still alive. Traditionally his birthday has been a day of great celebration, but who knows where, how, or if he will celebrate this year? What is certain, is that it will be unlike the spectacles of previous years.
Yep. No games of "pin the electrode on the peasant" this year. Maybe Jacques won't even send a card!
LIKE many dissenters, Lahib Nouman demonstrated against her government. She tore up images of government officials. She chanted slogans.
The difference was, she did it in Baghdad.
Time's Aparisim Ghosh tells how her dissent was never quite crushed, despite years of brutality. And Ghosh - with whom I collaborated years ago on sports stories - has also turned up something terrible in Uday Hussein's backyard. Stunning reporting.
EVEN crazy leftie junkie Will Self has his limits:
Shortly before British and American forces began rolling towards Baghdad, I was asked to appear at a Stop the War benefit at the Shepherds Bush Empire.
I had several reasons for declining, but not least of them was that George Galloway MP was to be one of the speakers. In fact, I made it a condition of my support for Stop the War that I wouldn't share a platform with the man.
Anyone who had paid attention to Galloway's pro-Saddam statements should have realised his motives for meddling in Iraqi politics were far from humanitarian.
No humanitarian could ever have sang hymns to the Butcher of Baghdad the way he did. Nor did Galloway's background in the Tammany Hall of Scottish Labour politics lead one to expect a character unsullied by greed.
NOW that The Independent is charging Net users for the privilege of reading Robert Fisk, I suppose I should start charging for Fiskings. Two bucks per fact-checked ass!
A FINE IDEA from Mark Steyn:
John Pilger can keep boring on about Vietnam until he's driven away every last Mirror reader, but to any sentient columnist the analogy is irrelevant: indeed, a canny newspaper would design a software programme that crashed a columnist's computer every time he typed in the word.
Of course, some columnists will require crash-words tailored to their specific needs:
Maureen Dowd: Alpha
Phillip Adams: John Howard
Hugh Mackay: Values
Adele Horin: Children
Peter Roebuck: Hamlet
Mike Carlton: Me, myself, I
Margo Kingston: Core values
Robert Manne: Let me explain
UPDATE: The Observer has obviously put Steyn's idea into practice. This US-bashing Terry Jones column contains not one single mention of oil - unlike most earlier Jones pieces. Now if they could just install software to make the lame bastard funny ...
WE ALREADY know George Galloway is a traitor. The question is, will he be tried as one?
In other George news, his links to various unfriendly people continue to be explored, and David Aaronovitch points out some interesting George history:
Galloway was once a genuine critic of Saddam's. In the mid-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Baath regime, and those in the West who traded with and encouraged it. By 1994, however, he was in Baghdad famously saluting Saddam's courage and indefatigability. He was soon a frequent flyer to Baghdad, and a reveller at Tariq Aziz's Yuletide festivities in 1999 (a fact which Galloway seemed to have forgotten last week, despite my having reminded him of it personally on a television programme in October 2001).
So why did George change? One of the reasons that I ended up supporting this war was that I agreed with Galloway back in the 1980s, and Saddam never got any nicer, or less murderous. What happened?
Leaving aside unproved accusations of personal gain, there are other explanations that might cover George's sudden blindness on the road to Baghdad. And the most obvious is that sin of the committed, the belief that my enemy's enemy is my friend. Or, in the context of the modern world, any anti-American will do. When Iraq stopped being a friend of the West it became a friend of George's.
Aaronovitch's column is quite devastating. Read whole thing.
YAY! GM food in Australia!
LOTS of interesting documents are surfacing in Iraq. The Daily Telegraph reports:
Papers found yesterday in the bombed headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's intelligence service, reveal that an al-Qa'eda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad in March 1998.
And from the Toronto Sars ... er, Star:
The documents were found by correspondent Mitch Potter, the Star's Jerusalem bureau chief. Potter, who has been in and out of Iraq since the war began, was digging through the rubble of the Mukhabarat's Baghdad headquarters with his translator Amir when they uncovered the intelligence treasure trove.
Bin Laden's name appears three times in the handwritten Iraqi file, but each of the references was clumsily concealed with White-Out and then blackened with ink, "presumably by agents of the Mukhabarat," writes Potter, who was travelling with Amir and Inigo Gilmore of London's Sunday Telegraph.
How come Robert Fisk isn't digging through the rubble? Is he frightened by what he might find?
CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON has your gift-giving needs covered. Make mine a Drug Enforcement Agency travel mug!
SPOT the lone voice of reason at this feminist protest.
PERSONALLY, I prefer veal:
The leader of a prominent U.S.-based animal rights group said she had drawn up a will directing that her flesh be barbecued ... Ingrid Newkirk, 53, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said on Thursday she had chosen to donate her body to her organization for use in a variety of startling protests.
But one body part listed in the will is not protest or animal related. It says a small part of her heart should be buried near the Hockenheim Formula One racing circuit in Germany, preferably near the Ferrari pits.
"I love Formula One. I love Michael Schumacher, and I thought I would have a little bit of personal indulgence there," she said.
What, she doesn't like baseball?
OH, this is great. It's 5am, I’ve just finished working on a column, and now I'm under spider attack. A huntsman spider about the span of a child's hand has just skittered across the ceiling above me.
Go get Spider Death Gas. Remind self of relative Tim-spider mass difference. Stop spidey panic.
UPDATE. Gassed and death-bound, my nemesis seeks shelter behind the owl portrait on the wall opposite.
UPDATE UPDATE. And ... then ... it ... reappears ... on ... the ... stairway .. next ... to ... my ... desk ...
UPDATE 3. More death gas. Where is air support? I called in air support, dammit!
UPDATE 4. A thought: What if stairway spider isn't owl portrait spider? What if ... there are more than one?
What if I pass out, say, five seconds from now?
UPDATE 5. The monster, having lunged towards me in a crazed bid for matyrdom, has fallen to the stairs below. He's twitching with resentment. And I am trapped! He's claimed the crucial stair exit point.
To hell with gas. I need a book.
UPDATE 6. May I recommend Media Virus by Douglas Rushkoff? It is beautifully balanced, aerodynamically sound, and lands with murderous accuracy when launched from my third-floor home office. The stairway is liberated. Now I sleep.
THE DAILY Telegraph's David Penberthy becomes the first Australian* journalist to use the phrases "stuttering alcoholic dwarf" and "blistering wedgie" in the same column:
We had some sensational government-sponsored misfits in our street.
The most spectacular was a stuttering alcoholic dwarf who every day would walk though the park to buy an armful of longnecks from the local and on one occasion became so enraged while drunkenly trying to build a rabbit hutch for his kids in the front yard that he threw a hammer through his own front window ...
To the adage about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps we can add: and Canberra will stand behind you giving you a blistering wedgie.
Can any other local match Penbo's achievement? Will any dare try?
* Several international writers have accomplished this feat, including William Shakespeare ("If you wedgie us, do we not blister?" - The Stuttering Alcoholic Dwarf of Venice, act III, scene I) and Robert Fisk ("My blistering wedgie is a symbol of this filthy war ... if I was a stuttering alcoholic dwarf, I would have attacked Robert Fisk").
(Via Peter Kerr)
TIM DUNLOP wants pro-war commentators to apologise for getting everything wrong.
Try not to laugh.
VIA RIGHT-THINKING comes news that the Raelians have honored the delusional leader of another absurd cult:
Remember those Raelians, the pro-cloning sect that believes the truth was bestowed on their mystical leader by aliens in a spaceship? It turns out that they also hand out awards of various kinds. Their latest recipient? According to a press release this week, it's none other than Michael Moore!
Way to boost your credibility, Raelians. Meanwhile the campaign to revoke Moore's Oscar continues. He's got his prestigious Raelian prize; what's he need a stinking Oscar for?
GEORGE W. BUSH joins the Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf fan club:
In describing the war from his perspective, Mr. Bush combined acknowledgments of doubts and pressures with accounts of dramatic moments and humor, including his fascination with the relentlessly upbeat accounts of heroic Iraqi resistance provided by the information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf.
"He's my man; he was great," said a laughing Mr. Bush. "Somebody accused us of hiring him and putting him there. He was a classic."
BARGARZ writes movingly of Anzac Day:
I haven't checked the news yet but the crowds at the dawn service and the march seemed bigger this year. The crowds lining the length of the march were very deep and it seems that as the numbers of older veterans dwindle, the crowds get bigger and bigger. For the march, we bagged a great perch on a pedestrian overpass overlooking Adelaide St (it soon filled up). We had an excellent view of the entire length of the march and the experience of seeing the servicemen and womens' faces light up and wave up at us was unforgettable. Of course, we all waved, cheered and thanked them back.
And if that wasn't prize enough, I copped quite a few air kisses from some old nurses, God bless 'em. Mrs Bargarz and I, along with many others in our area, cheered and yelled ourselves hoarse thanking and geeing up the marchers and they lapped it up, even the oldest and frailest diggers. For awhile, the barriers seemed to go away and all marchers received rousing cheers. Aussies, Poms, Yanks, Vietnamese, Serbs, Greeks, Poles, Dutch and yes, even the French got some cheers. One particular stand out moment for me was when I gave my Aussie flag to a child next to me who was perched on his dad's shoulders. They were both delighted and the kid was soon waving that flag like a manic mini semophorist. They were Chinese-Aussies and they were just as enthusiastic as any white-bread Aussie could be because that's exactly what they were - Aussies.
Fantastic. And at Samizdata, this fine Anzac tribute.
TED TURNER, the vice chairman of AOL Time Warner CNN Sports Illustrated People Entertainment Weekly Fortune Money In Style Real Simple Time For Kids Sports Illustrated For Kids Teen People People en Español Fortune Small Business Business 2.0 Southern Living Progressive Farmer Southern Accents Sunset Cooking Light Coastal Living For the Love of Cross Stitch For the Love of Quilting Parenting Baby Talk Health In Style U.K. In Style Australia In Style Germany Time Asia Time Canada Time Atlantic Time Latin America Time South Pacific Wallpaper* Who Weekly Popular Science Outdoor Life Field & Stream Golf Magazine Yachting Motor Boating Salt Water Sportsman Ski Skiing Freeze This Old House TransWorld Stance TransWorld Surf TransWorld Skateboarding TransWorld Snowboarding TransWorld Motocross TransWorld Surf BMX Ride BMX Skiing Trade News TransWorld Skateboarding Business TransWorld Snowboarding Business TransWorld Surf Business BMX Business News Amateur Gardening Amateur Photographer Angler's Mail Cage & Aviary Birds Chat Country Life Cycling Weekly Horse & Hound NME Now Shooting Times & Country Magazine Woman Woman's Own Woman's Weekly Woman's Feelgood Series Woman's Own Lifestyle Series Woman's Weekly Home Series TV & Satellite Week TVTimes What's On TV Mizz Mizz Specials Webuser Caravan Magazine The Guitar Magazine VolksWorld World Soccer Beautiful Homes Bird Keeper Cars & Car Conversions Chat Passion Series Classic Boat Country Homes & Interiors Creating Beautiful Homes Cycle Sport Decanter Essentials Eventing Family Circle Golf Monthly Hi-Fi News Homes & Gardens Horse Ideal Home Land Rover World Livingetc Loaded Marie Claire MBR-Mountain Bike Rider MiniWorld Model Collector Motor Caravan Motor Boat & Yachting Motor Boats Monthly Muzik 19 Now Style Series 4x4 Park Home & Holiday Caravan Practical Boat Owner Practical Parenting Prediction Racecar Engineering The Railway Magazine Rugby World Ships Monthly Soaplife Sporting Gun Stamp Magazine The Field The Golf Uncut
What Digital Camera Woman & Home Yachting Monthly Yachting World Aeroplane Monthly Superbike Women & Golf Shoot Monthly Hair Wedding & Home Women's Weekly Fiction Special International Boat Industry Farm Holiday Guides Jets Time Life Inc. Oxmoor House Lesiure Arts Sunset Books Media Networks, Inc. First Moments Targeted Media Inc. Time Inc, Custom Publishing Synapse Time Distribution Services Time Inc. Home Entertainment Time Customer Service Warner Publishing Services This Old House Ventures, Inc. TimePix Essence Communications Partners European Magazines Limited Avantages S.A. CompuServe ICQ MapQuest Moviefone Netscape AOL Music Little, Brown and Company Adult Trade Books Warner Books Little, Brown and Company Children's Publishing Bulfinch Press Warner Faith Time Warner AudioBooks Time Warner Books UK HBO Cinemax Comedy Central HBO Asia HBO Brasil HBO Czech HBO Hungary HBO India HBO Korea HBO Ole HBO Poland HBO Romania A&E Mundo E! Latin America SET Latin America WBTV Latin America Latin America History Channel New Line Cinema Fine Line Features Bay News 9, Tampa, FL Central Florida News 13, Orlando, FL News 8 Austin, TX NY1 News, New York, NY R/News, New York, NY News 14, Carolina Time Warner Telecom, Inc. inDemand Kansas City Cable Partners Texas Cable Partners
TBS Superstation Turner Network Television Cartoon Network Turner Classic Movies Turner South Boomerang TCM Europe Cartoon Network Europe TNT Latin America Cartoon Network Latin America TCM & Cartoon Newtwork Asia Pacific CNN International CNNfn CNN en Español CNNRadio CNN Newsource CNNMoney.com CNN Student News CNNSI.com Cartoon Network Japan Court TV
CETV Castle Rock Entertainment Telepictures Productions Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Consumer Products Warner Bros. International Theatre Looney Tunes Hanna-Barbera DC Comics MAD Magazine The Atlantic Recording Corporation Elektra Entertainment Group Inc. Warner Bros. Records Inc. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Alternative Distribution Alliance Giant Merchandising Rhino Entertainment WMG Soundtracks Ivy Hill Corporation, claims that too few people own too many media organisations.
"It's not healthy," Turner added.
DAVID USBORNE locates pockets of resistance in New York:
Don't say it out loud, but there are still places where you can go and light up along with your beer. I will be trying a couple of them in the Lower East Side this evening. Just as in the days of prohibition, when liquor was the devil, word of these smoke-easies has slowly spread. But it is hard to know how much longer even they will be available for the refugees from Michael's law. This is because the Health Department allowed one month's grace before the inspectors actually begin to issue the summonses that will bring the fines. That runs out on 1 May, after which it is possible that even the deepest of dives will start to toe the line.
IS THERE a single document in Iraq that doesn't have George Galloway's name on it?
A fresh set of documents uncovered in a Baghdad house used by Saddam Hussein's son Qusay to hide top-secret files detail multimillion dollar payments to an outspoken British member of parliament, George Galloway.
The most recent - and possibly most revealing - documents were obtained earlier this week by the Monitor. The papers include direct orders from the Hussein regime to issue Mr. Galloway six individual payments, starting in July 1992 and ending in January 2003.
The three most recent payment authorizations, beginning on April 4, 2000, and ending on January 14, 2003 are for $3 million each. All three authorizations include statements that show the Iraqi leadership's strong political motivation in paying Galloway for his vociferous opposition to US and British plans to invade Iraq.
George is having a little SARS crisis of his own:
An Iraqi general attached to Hussein's Republican Guard discovered the documents in a house in the Baghdad suburbs used by Qusay, who is chief of Iraq's elite Guard units.
The general, whose initials are "S.A.R.," asked not to be named for fear of retribution from Hussein's assassins. He said he raided the suburban home on April 8 with armed fighters in an effort to secure deeds to property that the regime had confiscated from him years ago. He said he found the new Galloway papers amid documents discussing Kuwaiti prisoners and Hussein's chemical warfare experts, and information about the president's most trusted Republican Guard commanders.
Meanwhile the Telegraph reports that George has lately changed his tune on the original documents, and also runs a friendly Q & A with Saddam's Scottish suckboy. He faces many more Qs in coming days.
One year after their humiliating defeat in the presidential election, the French Socialists are more divided than ever and facing a national conference next month that could split and even destroy them.
THE DOWNUNDER adventures continue for Andrew Lloyd, currently depleting Australian beer reserves in anticipation of tonight's Sydney-Melbourne AFL match at the SCG. Andrew and wife Karen will attend with Teacher Tony, one of several bloggers who joined us for an evening of mayhem with Andrew on Tuesday night. Those excesses may well be repeated when we catch up after the game. Expect weekend posting to be light and painful.
Talk about your class acts; Andrew brought us a bottle of Junipero to mark this occasion of Anglospheric togetherness. It's sitting menacingly on my desk, awaiting olive and vermouth deployment. Our gift to him in return - he doesn't yet know what it is - will startle and amaze.
A Segway has been spotted making a bakery run in Manhattan. Remain alert for further outbreaks.
A WHILE ago I received an e-mail from a young Hollywood actor who told how he had to conceal his pro-war views in order to avoid blacklisting by liberal McCarthyites. Now Matthew McConaughey reveals that he, too, is a dissenter:
McConaughey sees himself as a proud, patriotic American. He is glad the fighting in Iraq is over, is glad America went in there and got rid of Saddam Hussein. The hard, patient work is ahead, and "it's going to take a decade at least to reform, rebuild and stabilise that place.
"If the hard part's over as far as the fighting goes then this has been, in my mind, extremely efficient, and I believe that our commander-in-chief, George Bush junior, had his heart in the right place."
Susan Sarandon will have his legs broken for this. And Streisand will destroy his bongo drums.
A TRUSTED AUTHORITY on Iraqi affairs comes to the aid of George Galloway.
CATCHY PHRASE ALERT:
US forces have seized four of Saddam Hussein's top officials, including his air defence force commander.
Muzahim Sa'b Hassan al-Tikriti was the highest-ranked of the four captured - number 10 on the American list of the 55 most wanted leaders of the toppled regime.
"I was just following orders," he told the Times.
SAY IT LOUD - I'm wrong and proud:
Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball," began his keynote speech at the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting Tuesday with an admission.
"I was wrong about the war," Matthews said in a booming voice, immediately gaining the attention of 600 people at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale.
Matthews, who described himself as a liberal, said he thought the Iraqi people would fight American troops, there would be a worldwide Arab uprising, and terrorist groups such as al-Qaida would see "massive" recruitment.
"I thought there would be an Arab revolt, a tremendous uproar," he said. "Nothing happened. I hate being wrong, but I'm glad."
He also said he thinks that more antiwar critics should admit they were wrong.
SPEAKING of wrong, here's a couple of questions for Media Watch:
Was Media Watch aware when it broadcast the flag item that only the matter of location was in doubt? If so, why didn't Media Watch point that out, instead of casting doubt upon the entire flag story?
And here's Media Watch's non-answer:
What we said was clear. The Telegraph made a specific claim about the origin of the flag. That claim was incredible and untrue.
Shameful and gutless.
RUG-BOOSTING PALACE MONKEYS!
Bernadette Chirac, wife of the French president, Jacques Chirac, has been accused in court of illegally taking a 17th century rug from Paris' city hall to the Elysée Palace.
JANEANE GAROFALO complains about tractor Nazis, the "C word" (calliope? cordite? cumulonimbus? Help me out here, intense midget lady), and awful vicious hate mail:
"There are boycotts and guys driving tractors over their CDs - that's Nazi stuff. If you are a woman with the temerity to speak out, then it's 'Burn the witch!' 'How dare you!' The C word comes up a lot in my hate mail. But that's more misogyny than politics. There's a lot of men who come out and yell at the women because they just love the idea of yelling at women - they hate women in general and will attack your looks and sexuality."
Janeane and I must share the same critics. Here are three recent inbox highlights:
"I hope you die you c---. I notice you daily blather of bile and shite gob right wing evil crap has disappeared. I hope it is because you are terminally ill with a painful debilitating disease which will kill you slowly and spread to all those dear to you."
"It looks you and your cadre of filthy war faggots will lose the peace if not the war! Fuck you very much, for getting us into this mess."
"You fucking arrogant c---."
That pesky C-word appears again and again! When will these witch-burning misogynists stop attacking my looks and sexuality?
UPDATE. Frank J. has more quality hate.
"AN AUSTRALIAN flag now flies over al-Asad air base." Tom Allard of the SMH reports on the SAS's war:
The 57 Soviet-made MiGs, helicopters, anti-aircraft batteries, helicopters and 7.9 million kilograms of munitions and ordnance captured will form the basis of the "free Iraq air force" and it is a matter of considerable pride for men who never doubted the value of their mission.
According to the regiment's operational commander, who cannot be named or photographed and is surprisingly young, probably in his late 20s or early 30s, "we are very, very proud we have made Iraq a viable nation state".
Even during conflict, the Australian soldiers never lost sight of crucial national priorities:
In their final act of the campaign, the entire squadron - who usually operate in patrols of five of six members that are widely dispersed - came together with commandos from the 4RAR battalion to take the al-Asad airfield.
Australian F/A18 bombers helped with air support. "It was nice to listen to an Aussie voice on the other end of the radio," the commander says. "It was even better when they told us we had won the World Cup."
BUY your "Galloway Is Innocent" t-shirts here! You get a discount if you pay with money from the oil for food program.
UPDATE. Now an alternative t-shirt - much more appealing - is also offered.
HOT ECONOMIST ACTION! XXX!!
ON APRIL 14 I wrote that American soldiers weren't looting anything. WRONG! Turns out quite a few of them were. And over at Fox News, it's a case of we remove, you decide:
Benjamin James Johnson - an engineer for Fox news - stands accused of bringing into the US 12 paintings taken from a palace belonging to Saddam Hussein's son Uday and also of making false statements to the police.
The correct punishment: Johnson should be forced to display the horrible paintings in his house for 20 years.
THE Dixie Chicks have launched a nude protest against the crushing of their dissent. Pray that Michael Moore doesn't follow suit.
I'LL BE on Richard Glover's ABC radio show at 5.30pm to review the week in news with
Helen Dalley and
Quentin Dempster. No violence is expected.
IT'S ELITE REPUBLICAN GEORGE!
MARK STEYN on Iraqi looting:
Am I sorry it happened? Yes, because it has given the naysayers, who were wrong about the millions of dead civilians, humanitarian catastrophe, environmental devastation, regional conflagration, etc., one solitary surviving itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny twig from their petrified forest with which to whack Rumsfeld and Co. The retrospective armchair generals are now complaining the generals didn't devote enough thought to saving armchairs from the early Calcholithic age. It isn't enough for America to kill hardly any civilians or even terribly many enemy combatants or bomb any buildings or unduly disrupt the water or electric supply, it also has to protect Iraq's heritage from Iraqis.
As a devoted right-wing "conservative reader", I feel obliged to come to Tim Blair's defence ... Unlike many leftist hippies, he possesses the wit and intellect to contrive an informed, interesting and humorous column — which I look forward to reading each week.
Is Tim Blair a real person, related to Tony Blair or even just a caricature of a stupid person?
For several weeks I've been trying to work out why a page each issue is devoted to Tim Blair, but I'm no closer to an answer.
Where in the hell did you dredge up Tim Blair? ... this bloke is neither interesting nor funny. He sounds like Alan Jones' idiot son.
Alan Jones has a son?
He already has his own talking doll, countless T-shirts and websites; now Iraq's infamous information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, is to launch an ad campaign for ski trips to Thredbo.
HEALTH EXPERTS say I should avoid Beijing and Toronto.
Consider it done.
GEORGE GALLOWAY says others may have profited from Iraq, but never he:
George Galloway conceded last night that intermediaries in his fund-raising activities could have siphoned off money from Saddam Hussein - but insisted he had never done so.
In The Independent, defiant George offers this spirited defence:
The Telegraph says I traded in oil and food under the oil-for-food programme. To whom did I sell this oil (which, incidentally, is done through the United Nations Sanctions Committee and subject to the most forensic scrutiny)? And what happened to the proceeds? In other words, where is the money? From whom did I buy the food that I allegedly sold to Iraq? Which food? When? Where?
I am genuinely surprised that lawyers on a major national newspaper appear not to have asked these basic questions. Does anyone seriously believe that I, one of the most observed and scrutinised political figures in Britain, could have been in receipt of such sums of money without attracting the attention of the security services?
The Telegraph has yet more George-Iraq news:
Saddam Hussein sought to protect George Galloway by severing the Iraqi intelligence service's contacts with the Labour backbencher, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.
This letter, found in the files of the Iraqi foreign ministry, explained that any disclosure of Mr Galloway's "relationship" with the Mukhabarat, which operated as both secret police and intelligence service, would do great harm to his political career.
And The Independent analyses George's earlier evasions:
He claims he has "never seen a barrel of oil, let alone owned, bought or sold one". Anyone receiving commission would not necessarily have to have done so. He later tells the Telegraph: "I have never solicited nor received money from Iraq for our campaign against war and sanctions." That, in itself, does not address any personal benefit.
"WE'RE down at the old Hitchens place probably twice a month at least."
SADDAM HUSSEIN couldn't buy George Galloway! Er, actually, Saddam couldn't afford him:
Saddam Hussein rejected a request from George Galloway for more money, saying that the Labour backbencher's "exceptional" demands were not affordable, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.
The letter from Saddam's most senior aide was sent in response to Mr Galloway's reported demand for additional funds. This was outlined in a memorandum from the Iraqi intelligence chief disclosed yesterday in The Daily Telegraph.
THE LATEST Continuing Crisis column in The Bulletin mentions Sir Paul Getty, Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone, Mick Jagger, Bianca Jagger, John Paul Getty III, Keith Miller, Mohammed Said al-Sahaf, Piers Morgan, Rupert Murdoch, Bernard Slattery, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Beazley, Simon Crean, Philip Clark, Deke Wiggins, John Quiggin, and Peter Roebuck.
JOHN PILGER is promoted off the Daily Mirror's front page, although Pilger's last piece ran on April 5 and he's recently been writing for The Independent. What's the deal? Has the Heroic Crusader been pushed aside? Is Dissent being Crushed?
THE Australian Labor Party is in meltdown, which is a stunning achievement for something already molten and ruined:
Federal Opposition Leader Simon Crean today accused former Labor leader Kim Beazley of destabilising the party.
Mr Crean said his predecessor had failed to show him the respect he offered Mr Beazley as deputy ALP leader.
"I don't think he's shown respect ... when I was his deputy I was totally loyal and showed him respect when there were times when I disagreed with his judgment," Mr Crean told Melbourne radio station 3AW.
"I got behind him. That's what deputies do."
The latest division was sparked by the most recent edition of The Bulletin, which included these thoughts from Graham Richardson:
During his travails in the 1980s there was a front page of The Bulletin emblazoned with the headline "Mr 18%". This was a reference to Howard's abysmal performance in the úpreferred-PM poll. The whole world knew that at this level of support his leadership was dead in the water. Last week, the Newspoll reported Crean's ratings had sunk even lower. He has finally set a record that even his most timid colleagues can't ignore. A figure of 16% compared with Howard's thumping 62% is just plain horrible.
ALL THE LATEST ON BRITISH BAGHDADDY GEORGE GALLOWAY.
His lawyers have been mobilised, and at least one Labour MP offers support:
George Galloway, the Labour backbench MP, was locked in a battle to save his controversial political career as he launched a libel action against the Daily Telegraph last night.
Mr Galloway's lawyers acted as the paper accused him of taking as much as 370,000 pounds a year from Saddam Hussein in return for support for the fallen dictator.
"I think it's a miraculous set of circumstances that the Daily Telegraph walks through all the rubble of Baghdad and manages to find a file on George Galloway," said anti-war MP Jeremy Corbyn.
The same question is raised by intelligence experts:
Most intelligence experts claimed yesterday that the documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph are probably the real thing.
However, eyebrows were raised at the fact that they were unearthed with relative ease by a reporter for a British broadsheet which would naturally be critical of George Galloway.
The Guardian has a
