Terry Hicks, father of Wahabbist wombat David Hicks, sure has changed his tune during his son’s Guantanamo holiday. Currently posing for the cameras in New York, the evermore outraged Daddy Hicks was initially seriously reasonable about Dave’s fate:
"We don’t support him on the fact that he was fighting … I don’t believe in it and I told him what I thought of what he was doing. He’s 26 years of age. He’s his own man … He’s so adventurous, it’s only the latter part that wasn’t too bright. Now it looks as though he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison."
Then the human rights lawyers got to him, I guess, and convinced him that his kid wasn't 26 years of age and wasn't his own man.
Muslim extremists are “preaching social disharmony and intolerance” to young followers of Islam, and should be vetted by Immigration Department authorities.
Who says so? You might be surprised ...
Last night’s speech went surprisingly well. About 100 or so people turned up, which is about the same as Quadrant drew for speeches from Theodore Dalrymple and Daniel Pipes. A full house, in other words. Much thanks to Peter Kelly for inviting me, and Miranda Devine for introducing my talk.
Greg Hywood covers a few points I made about the ABC in this opinion piece in today’s SMH, except without the bitterness and the juvenile slurs. Meanwhile Mark Day says stop with all the ABC-bashing, already. Hey -- we’re only getting warmed up!
Mark Steyn’s predictions for 2003 are collapsing like the Lowell Spinners. Mine, however, are holding up 100%.
From Barwick to Bolt: Professor Bunyip examines David Marr’s history of bias.
This week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin mentions John Donne, Uday Hussein, Qusay Hussein, Matthew Jeffery, Justin Fleming, James Zala, James Oakes, Peter Bradley, Saddam Hussein, Alaa Hamed, Anne Summers, Gina Wilkinson, Nick Grimm, Ralph Peters, John Howard, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Marianne Faithfull, George W. Bush, Chris Jagger, Bob Howard, Keith Richards, Peter Costello, and Janette Howard.
Janet Albrechtsen on the new fundamentalism:
Often couched in the language of religion, it is in fact deeply rooted in politics. Its adherents, like all fundamentalists, keep their politics of hate simple. Rejecting nuance, ignoring the complex, they present us with the world according to them. If we disagree with them on issues such as Iraq, illegal immigration, a republic or indigenous affairs, our motives are impugned or, worse, we are evil, shameful, depraved. And because there are so many of us who disagree with them, they preach that Australia is an evil, shameful, depraved place.
Silvio Berlusconi has banned spiders. Arachno-Italians are furious.
In other animal news, Oky Pinoky has finally been banished. Berlusconi’s involvement in the Pinoky scandal is unknown.
A gigantic weapon of mass destruction has been found! Turns out it was right in front of us the whole time. Or above us.
(Except you can’t really see it or anything, so maybe it hasn’t been “found” in the sense that weapons inspectors "find" things. And it probably doesn’t even exist. But hey! WMD!)
Australian cultural supremacist Andrew Mason would have us believe that his latest film, Deckchair Danny, bravely protects “the Australian identity” from evil foreign influence:
Mason promotes home content wholeheartedly, fearing that through free-trade agreements Australia is at "most risk of giving up our culture", surrendering our uniqueness to a flood of American and British productions.
"It's one of my main hobbyhorses," Mason said. "It is important for Australian identity that we produce our own content. It's important for our children to shape their identity from local dramas and comedies, not just sport and television news, and it's also important to create impressions of Australia internationally."
Man, what a load. Hanson's ... er, Mason’s new film is plainly inspired by an American’s deckchair flight above Los Angeles, which led to the creation of this US-based air sport. All of which I’m fine with; just so long as Mason quits his nationalist culture-pleading.
Where are they? Maybe they never existed. Possibly they’re buried in the desert. Perhaps they were destroyed. In any case, they are unlikely ever to be found.
Not weapons of mass destruction. Andy Capp’s eyes.
Presenting, for your education and entertainment, a wholesome selection of contrary views.
Mark Steyn’s latest:
At the BBC and Le Monde and the Sydney Morning Herald, anti-Americanism is the New Universal Theory: It explains everything; it's the prism through which every event is viewed. But it's an unlikely strategy for American electioneering. One anti-Bush Democrat at a protest the other day carried a sign reading ''FRANCE WAS RIGHT!'' That's not a winning slogan, even in Vermont.
It’d be a winning slogan in a contest for the slogan most guaranteed to get you laughed out of slogan college. Here’s a much better rallying cry: RAISINS, NOT VIRGINS! Well, if you want to win yourself a big fat fatwa, that is:
Arguing that today’s version of the Qur’an has been mistranscribed from the original text, scholar Christoph Luxenberg says that what are described as “houris” with “swelling breasts” refer to nothing more than “white raisins” and “juicy fruits.”
That’s from Newsweek, now banned in Pakistan, and comes to you via Opinion Journal. Coming to you via billabongs unknown is Professor Bunyip, who writes of David Marr:
What is there to be said of the man? The holes in his first attack on Bolt have been pointed out at some length by the victim, yet when Marr turned again to the subject last night, the only response was a dismissive "apology" followed by this snide advice to Bolt: "If you want to convince your readers you're a fair and truthful commentator, put your energies into your column." At Media Watch, truth is whatever Marr and the boys choose to make it.
Media Watch is looking kinda train-wreckish. Maybe I’ll talk a little about Dave and his Marrtians at 1.45 today when I’m on James Valentine’s show. Or maybe I’ll skip the show, buy myself a Uday Hussein Go-Pack, and hit the road:
What does a psychopathic dictator’s son pack when he’s on the run? According to CNN, found in Uday Hussein’s briefcase (in addition to US $400,000): Viagra, a condom, packaged underwear (first thing he reached for when the 101st rang the doorbell), cologne and a "tacky tie".
Visit Alan R. M. Jones for quality condom, cologne, and tacky tie links in the above piece. And for quality cartooning, check it out: Day By Day is back.
Mike Marshall, editor of Alabama’s Mobile Register, has been debating Maureen Dowd’s evasiveness with NYT editorial page editor Gail Collins:
Dear Ms. Collins:
Now that the Times is settling in with a new editor, I need clarification on a matter that came up during all the post-Jayson Blair newsroom tumult.
As editor of the Mobile Register, I subscribe to The New York Times Wire Service. Until earlier this summer, we printed Maureen Dowd's columns on our op-ed pages. We stopped running her column after publishing the following correction:
An opinion column by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, published in the May 15 Mobile Register, should have quoted President Bush as saying, "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaida operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore." Dowd's column changed the president's meaning by omitting the quote's second sentence and the opening words of the third sentence: "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated ... They're not a problem anymore."
A reply (one of two) from Gail Collins:
After Maureen received complaints about the editing of the quote she decided to reprint it in full in a later column, which ran on May 28. We're confident it was never her intention to distort the meaning.
This (rightly) wasn’t good enough for Marshall, who fired off another e-mail:
I was aware that Ms. Dowd used the president's full quote in a subsequent column, but that column makes no reference to the earlier blunder. That would not qualify as a correction or clarification in any editor's book.
And that, as Marshall writes, is where the matter stands. No correction. Hit the above link for unabbreviated exchanges.
(Via hyper-alert reader H.J. Farmer, of Dothan, Alabama.)
A photoshop lesson: never crop and post.
(Possibly not work safe.)
The Centre for Political Song just couldn’t work out a way to fit “bulldozer” into this Rachel Corrie anthem:
I wish I could look into your hardened eyes,
who drove that tractor as young Rachel diesIs there love in your tractor, of fifty-two tons
is hope and desire in your tanks or your gunsIf she could be with us, Rachel Corrie would say ...
Umm ... “If you see a bulldozer, get out of the way”?
Gerard Henderson questions the ABC’s independent review of Senator Richard Alston’s complaints. Which is fair enough, because the review wasn’t independent.
Wave your hands in the air like a boat is sinking:
Dannii Minogue sparked a new dance trend at an outdoor concert when she tried to alert the crowd to a capsized boat in the lake behind them.
The Australian pop star began pointing frantically over the heads of the audience as she saw the boat overturn at the water park in Warwickshire, England.
But the fans thought it was a new dance move and began joining in, pointing back at her, British newspaper the Daily Star said yesterday.
Robert Manne should try telling this to the families of 300,000 dead Iraqis:
As we now know, almost everything we were told about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was false.
Except the part about him being a “threat”. Reined in by UN inspections, he would have remained a menace to his own people. Free of inspections, once the UN’s jelly-like will dissolved ... well, who knows? Anyway, problem fixed. No more Unky Saddam. Turn that frown upside down, Robert.
This is cool. Age writer Nathan Cochrane has picked up a sweet half a million bucks in a quiz show. And he’s sticking with his day job, among Australia’s most complainy, leftoid, anti-wealth journalists, who generally only inherit that kind of dough. Man, the hostile looks he’ll get!
If Osama bin Laden was captured, how would proof be delivered that it was he? CIA veteran Cofer Black knows:
“You’d need some DNA. There’s a good way to do it. Take a machete, and whack off his head, and you’ll get a bucketful of DNA, so you can see it and test it.”
Leslie Townes Hope leaves the stage. I wonder how many people who named him in their celebrity death pools died before Bob did.
Is New Zealand’s pre-match rugby union war cry the greatest ritual in sports?
Well, it sure is terrifying -- I’ve seen it a few times, and always feel like fleeing -- but the greatest?
Some other contenders:
”Gentlemen, start your engines!” The annual call at the Indianapolis 500, an event which has seen a competitor, spectator, or crew member killed for almost every year it’s been run. Chilling.
”Play”. A simple instruction issued by a Test cricket umpire to signal the beginning of an Ashes series. Or any Test match.
”Racing!” Invariably the first word shrieked by the trackside caller of the Melbourne Cup.
”Bink”. An approximation of the sound made as the red lights are extinguished at the commencement of a Formula One Grand Prix. Not that anybody can hear it.
”???????” The train-like siren blast that begins an AFL Grand Final. Come up with your own approximation.
There’ll be not much bloggin’ from me in coming days. Tax bills are due, and money work must be done.
While I'm gone, go check out all the recommended sites to your left. Or, if you’re reading this page upside down as a radical means of combatting your dyslexia, to your right.
According to a report in today’s Sun-Herald (no link available) Media Watch host David Marr has phoned Melissa Doyle and David Koch to apologise for his bizarre insult issued last week. Doesn’t mean much unless he also apologises on his show, of course.
Peaceniks howl about “sanitized war” when they don’t see all the bloody gore and bitch about “human dignity” when they do. (Jim Treacher is particularly outraged.) Maybe the images of U-Haul and Queersy should’ve been photoshopped first. You know, with all flowers sticking out of the bullet holes and cartoon elves sewing up Udag’s chest cavity.
We now join Mark Steyn in a live cross to the scene of another dictator’s demise:
Good evening. Reports that the former Italian leader Benito Mussolini is "dead" and "hanging" "upside down" at a petrol station were received with scepticism in Rome today. Our "reporter" - whoops, scrub the inverted commas round "reporter", the scare-quotes key on the typewriter's jammed again. Anyway our reporter Andrew "Gilligan" is "on" the scene "in" Milan. Andrew...
Australia’s conservative government remains popular, despite all the “lies” that led to war in Iraq. Hugh Mackay blames this on a population that has become:
... disengaged from the political, social and economic agenda ... we have taken our eye off the big picture. We don't want to know. We've shifted our gaze to the things we can understand and control - the minutiae of our personal lives ... we prefer TV programs about backyards to news and current affairs ... we have become more self-absorbed; we are obsessed with the idea of security ... we're more prejudiced and, correspondingly, less interested in information that might challenge those prejudices ... we have been destabilised by too many changes coming too quickly; we're tired of "issues", disappointed in our leaders and disturbed by our own sense of powerlessness ... we have taken refuge in the celebration of our ordinariness, our normality, our domesticity ... we're scared, so we've switched off.
Switched off what, Hugh? The television? The lights? The oven? Is that why we’re scared -- because all of us have left the oven on? Best that we all check, then. Mine seems to be OK.
The status of Gary Sauer-Thompson’s oven is unclear, although his mind is currently a little overheated. Yours may become so too, if you attempt to work out how someone with Gary’s literary skills became a university lecturer and published author. This apparent impossibility is known as The Sauer-Thompson Paradox. Pray for his students. Weep for his editors.
Who’s editing SBS news these days? An arch-sceptic, apparently. The Special Broadcasting Service is not yet convinced about recent events in Iraq:
Photographs of what are said to be the dead bodies of Saddam Hussein's two sons Uday and Qusay have been released by the United states.
Maybe I’ll send the news director an Achewood t-shirt.
My sister writes from Ireland:
As soon as you finish reading this e-mail, pick up the phone and book your trip. You won't regret it. I mean you could just fly over and talk to people in the pub for a week and not be bored. They are all very gifted storytellers, or full of crap. Depends on how you look at it ...
Blixt fisks Modo. In which a Weekly Standard intern sets the Pulitzer winner straight.
Read the newspapers, Phillip. You might learn something. In a column mocking Australia’s “influence on American life”, Adams writes:
Every day, on my way to the theatre, I pass the General Motors headquarters in Fifth Avenue. There’s another Australian company doing really well here but, for some reason, you can’t buy a Holden.
He’s wrong. The rest of the column is unremarkable, except for Phillip’s 1,000,000th mention of “reversed baseball caps”.
Sitting on a cactus when you’ve got no pants
Losing all your money in a game of chance
Michael Moore performing an erotic dance
CPR inside a moving ambulance
David Marr getting snippy about arts grants
There’s an E320 Merc getting around Sydney with the personalised number plate “TARDIS”. Which I suppose indicates a Doctor Who fan. Trouble is, the spacing between a couple of the letters is wrong, so it looks more like “TARD IS”.
Which I suppose indicates a Doctor Who fan.
”Come on, gobble, gobble.”
Taking a lead from the BBC, Kim Myong-Chol is sexing up his North Korean crazytalk:
Most Americans deny that they are in love with the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il. However, sooner or later Uncle Sam will find himself left with no other option than to accept a shot-gun marriage with the North Korean girl and eventually desert his long-standing South Korean mistress. Once married, the American man will be totally fascinated by the feudalisticly loyal, sexy North Korean wife. No additional extramarital relationships will be tolerated.
Not even a holiday fling with Cuba? Jeez ...
Reuters correspondent Deanna Wrenn disowns Reuters:
This is from a story that Reuters news service ran this week with my byline:
"Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday . . . Media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters."
Got problems with that?
I do, especially since I didn't write it.
Way to go, Reuters. Way to go to hell.
(Via Chuck Simmins.)
Check this headline at Islam Online:
Iraqis Irked By, Jubilant At Death of Qusay, Uday
Confusion reigns! And here’s Islam Online’s entry for Scare Quotes Usage of The Year:
Other Iraqis in Baghdad “celebrated” the killing of Uday and Qusay, both widely hated by the Iraqi people for their cruel treatment of dozens of persons, with firing thousands of bullets in the air all through Tuesday night and early on Wednesday.
Only dozens? Maybe Islam Online has a exchange staffer working at Sydney’s Daily Telegraph:
The man who led US troops to Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay was last night paid a $US30 million ($46 million) reward for his act of betrayal.
Ask the celebrating Iraqis how much of a “betrayal” this was.
(Thanks again to reader Zsa Zsa, who’s gotta start his own blog.)
Real ER. Not like the TV show. Funnier and cleverer, and with faucet-based sex advice.
He’s bigger than Rush, has more fans than O’Reilly, and sells books faster than Coulter. Followers plead with this “folk hero for the American people” to run for president. Reviewers compare him to Twain, Voltaire, and Swift. Unlike Rush and company, the appeal of this blue-collar megastar extends far beyond the hoi polloi. Hollywood and Manhattan agents wave gazillion-dollar contracts in front of his face. He wins prestigious awards that will never grace the Limbaugh or O’Reilly dens—Oscars, Emmys, Writer’s Guild Awards, and jury prizes at Cannes (where his latest movie received a record 13-minute standing ovation). People stop him on the streets of Berlin, Paris, and London—where, according to Andrew Collins of the Guardian, they consider him “the people’s filmmaker.”
Kay S. Hymowitz’s article on Michael Moore does not continue in this cheery vein. Go read.
So now we know why he called the band Wings:
Pop icon Paul McCartney today fired a salvo for chicken rights, accusing fast food giant KFC of condoning cruelty to the "remarkable" birds that end up as take-away meals.
McCartney's band also featured drumsticks. The whole deal was nothing but a clandestine chicken tribute from start to finish.
US restaurant chain Arby’s has adopted the Australian Naming Rules.
Why is John Howard so popular? Miranda Devine writes:
The secret of Howard's success is, as always, his enemies. No one likes a bully, and the cowardly, unimaginative pack-bullying practised by what passes for intelligentsia in urban Australia, whether they are writers, artists, academics, journalists, John Hewson or Paddington wives, whether you call them the left, or elites, as David Flint has in his new book, is particularly repugnant.
As the former Howard adviser turned spin doctor Grahame Morris said yesterday: "I do think some opponents, almost by default, galvanise support for the PM. Australians will always back an individual having a go against the system."
Who needs an Opposition when you have Phillip Adams? Howard is "a deeply suspicious man, filled with ... resentment", "bitterness and bigotry, cunning and vengefulness" "devoid of glamour", "utterly joyless" , with an "insatiable, unapologetic need for power [which] sublimates the sexual". He is "far and away the worst prime minister in living memory", Adams has written so far this year in The Australian. Howard is a "willing dupe" guilty of "pious hypocrisy" (Mike Carlton). Howard's Government "runs on little else but prejudice", and "I don't know a charity that would hire him, and I don't believe, if they did, he could manage it" (Hewson). He was a "tired, soiled leader with a tired, soiled message" who "should get out of public life" (Alan Ramsey). I could go on, but you get the idea.
Adams, Carlton, Hewson & Ramsey. The Prime Minister's PR factory.
UPDATE. New York reader Kim H. sent John Howard an e-mail earlier this year thanking him for his support of the U.S. In response, Kim received this letter:
Thank you for your recent correspondence concerning Iraq. I very much appreciate your words of support.
There has always been a special bond between the people of Australia and the people of the United States. We share a common love of freedom and respect for democracy.
The decisive victory of the American-led coalition reflects great credit on the strength and determination of President Bush's leadership. Through its action the coalition has sent a clear signal to other rogue states and terrorists groups alike - the world is prepared to take a stand.
The Australian Government does not for one moment regret the decision to join the coalition of the willing. Australian military forces have participated with just cause, in an action properly based in international law, which resulted in the liberation of an oppressed people.
We are enormously proud of the magnificent job done by our defence personnel but we also pay tribute to the contributions of the American and British forces. They have behaved and conducted themselves with great honor and distinction and set new standards of integrity and ethical behavior in military conflict.
All the coalition partners are now focussing their efforts on rehabilitating Iraq's dilapidated infrastructure and renewing its social, economic and political framework. I am deeply moved to think that for the first time in my lifetime the people of Iraq have a real and genuine opportunity to have a free, open and democratic society. I am confident that with our support and assistance they will achieve this objective.
Again, thank you for taking the time to write me and for your support.
Yours sincerely
John Howard
Several US readers have received similar letters after contacting Howard. As Kim writes: “Mr. Howard has class. At some point, this New Yorker needs to buy beers for my friends from Down Under.”
Australian actors are so talentless and unpopular that they’ll all be out of work unless government regulations protect them, Claudia Karvan admits:
The regulations that we have in place for our industry are totally crucial. I mean, they're just not something that can be negotiated in any degree whatsoever, because the fact of the matter is, I don't think we would have… we almost wouldn't have an industry if we didn't have the regulations we have and I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't be earning a living.
Karvan’s grandfather migrated to Australia from Greece, and once here immediately set about taking jobs away from Australians in our local food industry. No regulations protected them. And his grand-daughter is now stealing the acting work that rightfully belongs to others. Damn free trade! Damn all foreigners!
The peaceniks don’t want another Vietnam in Iraq. And, as James Morrow explains, that’s exactly what they’re getting:
Those who continue to try to play the quagmire card should look at, and recall, the facts. US involvement in Vietnam lasted a decade and cost more than 50,000 US lives. So far, it has been barely four months since US troops first crossed into Iraq, and since the end of major combat on May 2, just 33 US soldiers have been killed by the so-called "Iraqi resistance".
Robert Fisk will probably sue for this unauthorised use of his “so-called” sig line.
Kofi Annan wants unilateral action, and he wants it now:
The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has urged the United States and West African nations to take decisive action to stop the war in Liberia.
Why doesn’t he ask France or Germany?
Mentioned in this week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin: Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Al Gore, the Australian Naming Rules, Andrew Wilkie, Phillip Adams, and Stephen Crittenden.
A friend once concluded a tale of adolescent sexual misadventure with the line: “And then he jizzed all over the television screen!” Now cartoon advice cat Ray Smuckles takes things even further:
Are you trying to relive your first clumsy sexual experience and make up for shooting all over her stuffed animals the second you got out of your pants? Ten bucks says that your subconscious mind is still trying to compensate for a bukakke’d-up Snoopy.
That’s an image that just won’t quit. Ray also has this advice for Goths:
Basically, it seems that the Goth phase tends to naturally end in the late teens. This is because Goths get tired of constantly being told that they "look like idiots" and "are annoying" and "can't work the Drive-Thru if they keep dressing like Dracula's Knob-wipe."
Ray gets better every damn week. He knows stuff.
Mark Steyn on the Unremarkable Hulk and shrinking female leads:
As Bruce Banner, Eric Bana (no relation) is not just nerdy but utterly unmemorable: unlike Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker in Spider-Man, he can’t hold his own with his alter-ego. As Betty, Jennifer Connelly spends most of the movie lost in passively impassive reaction shots. I dunno what she’s thinking about, but I found myself pining for the zaftig Jennifer of old. A few years ago, she looked fabulous: a 1950s starlet for the 21st century, all curves and what Ian Fleming used to call “insolent breasts”. She and her She-Hulk-sized bosom seem to have shrunk in inverse proportion to the Hulk: her incredible bulk has shriveled away to a dolorous cadaver with a cute l’il freckle on her upper lip. What a tragedy.
Steyn ain’t wrong. Compare new Jennifer with former Jennifer. Sad.
The phrase “mixed feelings” always seems to appear in stories about the reaction of expats to events in Iraq. Here’s an example from the ABC after Saddam’s statue was brought down:
For many, those images were a powerful symbol of the end of a regime that had driven them from their homeland.
Yet their joy at the prospect of a new freedom in Iraq is tempered by apprehension for friends and family lost in the chaos.
You get the idea. Saddam is bad, but so is war bad too! A story in today’s Sydney Morning Herald also refers to mixed feelings, but these feelings are a mixture of delight that Uboy and Quasar are dead and bitter regret that the pair of death-dealing Saddam spawn aren’t alive so they can be tortured like common lab rabbits and then killed:
Death came too quickly to Saddam Hussein's sons - Ameen Kherasani wanted to see them punished first.
"They were lucky," he said. "I wanted them alive. I wanted to tie them in a square in Baghdad for everyone to come along in a line and beat them. All Iraqis suffered because of these dictators."
Mr Kherasani, 33, working in the Dijlah corner shop on Auburn Road, Auburn, battled mixed feelings yesterday. Four of his brothers were killed during Saddam's reign. He was happy that Uday and Qusay Hussein were dead but felt cheated that their end came in a shoot-out with United States soldiers.
Down the road in the Sinbad Restaurant, Hani Hadedi, 32, was disappointed that Saddam's sons were not captured and tried. "I wanted to see them in court so they could be punished before they die. It is very, very easy to die like this," he said.
Other Iraqis in Sydney were delighted at the news. Razak Ruda, the secretary of the Iraqi Australian Cultural Association, heard reports of the deaths on television late on Tuesday night. "I was jumping and dancing and I woke up all my family. Then I started to laugh and cry at the same time," he said.
Everybody’s happy! Killing them Hussein boys has brought multicultural Australia together. When Saddam eventually gets it in the neck, the Sinbad Restaurant will be the place to be; in fact, customers would like to see him on the menu:
At the Sinbad restaurant in Auburn Road, Saddam Hussein had few friends. "I want to eat him," said Ali Albuswelim who has had no news of his father and brother, jailed since 1991.
A bunch of us got together the other night to celebrate the arrival in Sydney of Sasha Castel. Very funny, very sweet Sasha. Much talking took place. I remember this exchange:
Me: “1977 was the finest year in history.”
Jack Strocchi: “Yes. Yes, it was.”
Others: (indistinct)
That’s about it. Alcohol was involved.
Jessica Lynch has been released from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But was the story of her daring release true, or was it a stage-managed Pentagon propaganda exercise? Next week, in a hard-hitting BBC documentary, veteran broadcaster John Kampfner will claim that:
•Officials knew there were no Iraqi forces at the medical center when Lynch was released;
•Her release involved Hollywood-style theatrics, including television cameras;
•No hostile fire was encountered during the release;
•No actual bullets were fired;
•And, for that matter, no blanks were fired either.
Commenting in advance of the documentary’s screening, Harper's magazine publisher John MacArthur said: "It no longer matters in America whether something is true or false. The population has been conditioned to accept anything: sentimental stories, lies, atomic bomb threats."
Eoghan Harris knows that when he’s inside the BBC, he’s behind enemy lines:
Politically, I would call myself a conservative social democrat in Irish terms: I loathe the IRA, have a lot of time for David Trimble, and wanted to smash Saddam Hussein's regime. Yet I am forced to approach any appearance on current affairs programmes for the BBC as an appearance before a hanging judge. From start to finish I know the only way to survive is to accept that I am among enemies.
As I am usually going on to attack a terrorist organisation, defend a decent man like Trimble, or to support a war against a gangster like Saddam, you would think I could feel myself among people who, though they might want to put tough questions, basically shared my assumption that the IRA is morally delinquent, that Trimble is trying to do his best, and that Saddam should be shot on sight.
You would be wrong. By and large, the researchers and reporters I will meet in any branch of the BBC find these beliefs revolting.
Same general deal at Australia’s ABC. Public funding attracts those sort of people.
(Via the vigilant Zsa Zsa)
So they are dead. Or are they? Even Baghdad exploded in celebratory, deafening automatic rifle fire at the news.
Who else could it be but superjournalist Robert Fisk, master of the “What the hell?” introductory paragraph. “Even Baghdad” might be celebrating the news that Uday and Qusay Hussein are (or are not!) dead, but Robert is far from happy:
The burned, bullet-splashed villa in Mosul, the four bullet-ridden corpses, America's hopes - however vain - that the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, will break the guerrilla resistance to Iraq's US occupation troops, all conspired to produce an illusion last night: that the unidentified bodies found after a four-hour gun battle between Iraqi gunmen and US forces must be those of the former dictator's sons - because the world wants them to be.
It’s not looking like much of an illusion now.
Of course, they might be dead. The two men are said to bear an impressive resemblance to the brothers. A 14-year-old child killed by the Americans - one of the four dead - might be one of Saddam's grandsons.
Or it might be one of the thousands of kids Saddam had killed over the years, just left lying around the house for laughs. Fisk doesn’t mention those kids very often.
Qusay was a leader of the Special Republican Guard, a special target of the Americans. The two men obviously fought fiercely against the 200 American troops who surrounded the house.
Brave little guys! Battling overwhelming odds! My heroes! Swoon!
The Americans used their so-called Task Force 20 to storm the pseudo-Palladian villa on a main highway through Mosul. Task Force 20 combines both special forces and CIA agents. But this is the same Task Force 20 that blasted to death the occupants of a convoy heading for the Syrian border earlier this month, a convoy whose travellers were meant to include Saddam himself and even the two sons supposedly killed yesterday. The victims turned out to be only smugglers.
Were they smuggling antiquities? You know, from the musuem that was totally looted and everything?
And American intelligence - the organisation that failed to predict events of 11 September, 2001 - was also responsible for the air raid on a Saddam villa on 20 March, which was supposed to kill Saddam. And the far crueller air raid on the Mansour district of Baghdad at the end of the air bombardment in April which was supposed to kill Saddam and his sons but only succeeded in slaughtering 16 innocent civilians. All proved to be miserable failures.
Like practically every one of Fisk’s predictions since September 11. Quagmire in Afghanistan! Quagmire in Iraq! Muslim uprisings! Gophers winning spelling bees! Edible magnets! Underpants that teach you first aid!
And in a family obsessed, with good reason, with their own personal security, would Uday and Qusay really be together? Would they allow themselves to be trapped. The two so-called "lions of Iraq" (this courtesy of Saddam) in the very same cage?
Robert’s careful acknowledgement kept him out of Baghdad’s infamous plagiarist torture cells.
Saddam's early life was spent on the run. But he always travelled alone. In adversity, the family had learned to stay apart ...
I hope Kenny Rogers never reads this. He’ll have a song composed in minutes.
Even if DNA testing proves that the corpses are those of Saddam's sons, will Iraqis believe it?
They might, if The Great Fisk deigns to tell them.
Though Uday was both a cruel man and a psychopath ...
A cruel man and a psychopath? What are the the odds of that?
... they were appendages to the king, mere assistants in the monster's cave. Saddam lives. And his voice is still heard on tape throughout Iraq. It is his fate of which Iraqis are waiting to hear.
They seemed happy enough to hear about Queasy and eBay. The celebrations for Saddam’s death will probably be audible in Alaska.
Secondly, and far more importantly, there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the American occupation authorities in Iraq and the people whose country they are occupying. The United States believes that the entire resistance to America's proconsulship of Iraq is composed of "remnants" of Saddam's followers, "dead-enders", "bitter-enders" - they have other phrases to describe them. Their theory is that once the Hussein family is decapitated, the resistance will end.
The only way to prove a theory is to test it.
But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist Sunni movement which never had any love for Saddam. Much more importantly, many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator.
Prepare now for some Advanced Fisk Logic:
If he and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? One minute everybody is celebrating the deaths of the tyrant family that enslaved them, and the next minute they’re thinking: “Hey, you know what would be really cool? Killing the Americans who killed Ubie and Quozy! Let’s rock!”
Now I've got my own personal Tim Blair tribute blog!
UPDATE. And even as my enemies completely destroy me, they themselves now have a tribute to their tribute.
Saddam’s murdering sons are dead, oil prices are down ... and this AFP piece makes it all sound like bad news.
The Coulter Klassic is the US equivalent of the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops a nation. Traditionally the event is followed by a wedding.
Congrats to Coulter. GO BABY GO!
Just as Carmen Lawrence warned, families in Iraq have been smashed by the evil war for oil.
A bus. Several ducklings. And a fateful decision:
A Brisbane bus driver has been sacked for running over four ducklings.
Tony Campbell said he made a decision to run over the ducklings rather than brake hard and risk the safety of his passengers.
Mr Campbell was a part-time driver with Brisbane Bus Lines for 15 months until July 10 when he was sacked.
A Brisbane Bus Lines director said there had been other issues with the driver before the duckling incident.
Professor Bunyip has uncovered the Marr-Broinowski connection. Why was this not disclosed on Media Watch? Perhaps the ABC should investigate. Or maybe that would be a waste of time.
Jeff Jarvis predicted the other day that “before you know it, we'll see Jayson Blair and Andrew Gilligan weblogging... because they'll have nothing else to do.” Well, turns out Gilligan has already tried his hand at the blogging game. David Steven presents an analysis of Gilligan the warblogger.
Point 8 is especially worth noting.
Former Director of the CIA James Woolsey spells it out:
America and the western world are at war with 'fascist' Middle East governments and totalitarian Islamists. The freedoms we stand for are loathed and our vulnerable systems under attack. Liberty and security will be in conflict as we line up behind the new march of democracy.
We and you are cordially loathed for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, open economies, equal - or almost equal - treatment of women, and so on. It is not what we have done wrong that is creating the problem; it is what we do right.
If that is true, then this is not a war that will end with an Al Qaeda Gorbachev; it will not end with an arms control agreement. It is a war to the death, like the war with the Nazis, and we should understand that it will have to be fought that way.
Or we could just sit around like idiots and argue about African uranium.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but Sunrise presenter (and Media Watch target) Melissa Doyle is blogger Tim Dunlop’s sister-in-law. Which means Tim’s kid can now call her Aunty Fuckwit.
The Sydney Morning Herald, today:
The Pentagon doesn't want to admit it, but this is guerilla war.
Associated Press, last week:
The former administrator of the U-S reconstruction team in Iraq acknowledges American troops are engaged in a guerrilla war.
Sydney Morning Herald readers think that the ABC’s war coverage was “never biased”. VOTE!
Media Watch presenter David Marr last night deemed the hosts of Channel Seven’s Sunrise program -- a typically light, goofy, early-morning commercial TV show -- to be fuckwits.
It’s difficult to work out why. Their crime seemed to be that they quickly removed from the program a guest who used that word, and followed it up with a chat about inappropriate language.
What’s Marr’s fucking problem? The fucker got all fucked up when Miranda Devine described fuckwad terrorists as "cockroaches". And now he’s calling people fuckwits? Fuck him.
Marr also defended Alison Broinowski, the woman who believes that beer caused the Bali bombing:
She's not saying we deserved this atrocity. She's saying bigots and xenophobes in Asia THINK we deserve it. There's a difference ...
And there’s a BIG difference between Marr’s belief and Broinowski’s reported statements:
Her view is that the Bali bombing that killed more than 200 people, 89 of them Australians, on October 12 last year was Indonesia's response to Ockerism and the bossy, all-the-way-with-Dubya tone of John Howard's foreign policy. The book, About Face, does not say Australians deserved what they got in Bali but suggests, as Broinowski makes clear, Australia "invites the region's contempt".
She puts it this way: "The dead and injured in Bali may have been the victims of Canberra's ventriloquistic mouthing of Washington's world view, or of their Western appearance and lifestyle, or of the longstanding hostility of many Indonesians towards Australia, or of all these." At the end of 230 pages, mostly a history of Australia's links with its northern neighbours, the conclusion is: "Certainly, those Australians who didn't know or care about how their country was perceived in Asian countries were brutally reminded that it mattered."
According to Broinowski, beer-swilling (seen as eccentricity when Bazza McKenzie got on the turps in London in the '60s) is an insult likely to provoke violence when Australians hit the bars of some Asian countries. She quotes a syndicated Malaysian journalist, Rashid Rehman. After Bali, he described the targeted Sari Club as filthy and reeking of beer, sweat, drunken foreigners, and smoky air "jagged with Strine".
All that may be true, but was it the reason the club was bombed and so many Australians killed and maimed? Broinowski suspects so.
Where’s her condemnation of Indonesia’s "bigots and xenophobes"?
Diversity is cool! And homeless people are cute! Sydney Greens politician Silvia Hale wants to keep the cute homeless folks in Darlinghurst, because that’s what people want. She’s arguing here with Stateline reporter Janice Petersen and St John’s church rector Greg Thompson, who plans to build apartment blocks on church land:
SILVIA HALE: They will do nothing to add to the diversity and they will certainly do everything to drive out the homeless from this community.
GREG THOMPSON: You have never been interested in this church until this. It's all about your political aspirations on the back of homeless people, and you are prepared to align yourself with wealthy people who do not care for our work.
JANICE PETERSEN: St John's has allowed development to happen before. In the 1960s, its school was demolished and the land leased. But what does the local community want?
SILVIA HALE: They want the park, they want open space, they want homeless people, they want community facilities. What they don't want is 6-storey high-rise apartments that cater only for the wealthy, and that's what you're proposing here.
JANICE PETERSEN: Local resident Jo Holder agrees and says the development also threatens the characteristic diversity of the neighbourhood.
JO HOLDER, DARLINGHURST RESIDENT: This is designed to be an ecclesiastical -- essentially a 12th century monastic estate. They're really turning it into a sort of 2000 equivalent of a Westfield shopping mall.
Jo Holder isn’t just a “local resident”. She’s an anti-development activist who has organised protests against the proposed apartments. The ABC forgot to mention this.
The ABC isn’t biased, according to an investigation of the ABC by the ABC:
The ABC today said it upheld two of the government's complaints about its war coverage, but denied it was evidence of bias.
The ABC today handed Communications Minister Richard Alston its response to his complaint of alleged bias about the Iraq war coverage.
ABC managing director Russell Balding today said the national broadcaster's Complaints Review Executive (CRE) upheld two of the minister's 68 complaints.
A privatised ABC could be as biased as it likes, with no government complaints at all. I’m surprised that ABC types don’t urge that the broadcaster be sold.
It looks like The Australian sexed up its coverage of the Blair-BBC-suicide story:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, facing the worst crisis of his political career, has been accused by the family of Iraqi weapons expert David Kelly of hounding him to his death.
His family made clear it wanted someone to shoulder the blame for his despair.
"Events over recent weeks have made David's life intolerable and all of those involved should reflect long and hard over that fact," they said in a statement on Saturday.
The final paragraph of that extract doesn’t really support the first, does it? The Age only saw trouble for Blair arising from the controversy:
At issue is whether Mr Blair's office or the Ministry of Defence leaked Dr Kelly's name to defuse the increasingly potent scandal over whether Britain exaggerated Iraq's weapons capacity to justify the war.
In fact, as a global wrap-up in The Scotsman indicates, the media were in complete herd-mode on this. It took a day or so before the idea filtered through that, hey, this might be worse news for the BBC than it is for the Prime Minister.
Which is what Jeff Jarvis realised almost immediately.
Posting will be light 'n' low while I take care of a few paying jobs. Exploit my absence by swamping the comments with your stories and opinions on:
•'70s album cover art;
•Unusual addictions;
•Traumatic childhood incidents;
•Passive-aggressive relatives and co-workers;
•Inexplicable celebrity crushes.
I've programmed the comments to automatically delete all entries not concerning these subjects. Back soon.
Tony Parkinson continues using reason and sense in his campaign to alienate Melbourne Age readers:
Critics of military intervention in Iraq got much of their pre-war intelligence wrong. The 250,000 deaths predicted did not happen. Nor the refugee crisis. Nor the cholera epidemic. Baghdad did not become a replay of Stalingrad, nor was the Arab world set aflame.
To make this point is not to accuse opponents of the war of lies, deception or propaganda. Doubtless, many of these same people would be greatly relieved that some of the more exaggerated pre-war fears were to prove unfounded.
For others, however, the war over Iraq is far from over. Just as Saddam's "bitter-enders" are mounting a ferocious guerilla campaign against US forces in an effort to sabotage moves towards economic reconstruction and political reform, so too are revisionists on the march in the US, Britain and Australia. Their aim? To discredit the war in Iraq as unjustified and immoral.
William Shatner is involved in another one of those typical Hollywood horse semen disputes.
MYONGWATCH! has a Myong update, including an actual photograph of the Myong himself. Myong on!
The Age’s Annabel Crabb reports a significant development in Australian politics:
A major indigenous community has lobbied John Howard to stay on indefinitely as Prime Minister, dismissing the left of politics as "clueless" and calling for a new alliance between Aborigines and conservatives.
In a letter written to Mr Howard on the day before he announced his intention to fight the next election, influential Cape York Land Council chairman Richie Ah Mat begged him not to retire.
"Many people in media and politics promote a set of attitudes that are supposed to be 'moderate' and 'progressive': republicanism, harm minimisation, the elusive ideal of reconciliation and so on," Mr Ah Mat wrote.
"We fear that if you go, there will be a shift in public discussion.
"Otherwise the whole project will regress back to progressivist platitudes about symbolic reconciliation and walking bridges.
"On behalf of many people in Cape York Peninsula including Noel Pearson, I urge you to stay as Prime Minister."
The letter is dated June 2.
On June 3, Mr Howard gathered Coalition MPs together to announce that he had decided to stay on as leader for as long as the party continued to require him.
I wonder if Ah Mat’s letter influenced Howard’s decision. According to Google news this story has been up at The Age’s site for about 24 hours, yet nobody seems to have pursued that possibility. In fact, nobody else, so far as I can tell, has even reported Ah Mat’s letter. Not the Sydney Morning Herald, not the ABC, not News Ltd ... nobody. Here’s more:
"Many of the conclusions we have arrived at in Cape York Peninsula are regarded as backward conservatism by the urban elites," Mr Ah Mat reports in his four-page letter.
"They believe in harm minimisation and social engineering as the solutions to the indigenous crisis.
"They can afford to adhere to their orthodox ideological prejudice, because they are far away from the suffering in remote areas and in the segregated underclass lives of many urban indigenous people."
The solution proposed by Mr Ah Mat is a new alliance with the right of politics.
"Conservative people at least have a relationship with indigenous people because of their closer relationship with the regional and remote Australia and with the primary industries," he says.
"There are many conflicts between us and the political right, but it is pointless to advance our cause as a 'progressive cause' in opposition to the right.
"Progressive people are clueless and can't get a majority."
But they can stop an important story getting wide mainstream coverage.
(Via Melbourne reader Huddo.)
Stephen Pollard used to write book reviews for the leftist New Statesman. Not any more:
Three articles and an editorial push the line that [Tony Blair] is essentially deranged. I was sickened this morning when I saw that my review of Mark Steel's book appeared alongside these Goebbels-like smears. It's one thing disagreeing with the PM on Iraq and other issues - we are all entitled to our view. That's something some of us want to fight to protect, of course. But a concerted campaign to brand him a psychopath is, to my mind, not merely gutter journalism but contemptible. And how can I carry on writing for a publication I view as contemptible? The answer is that I can't, and I've written to tell them so.
Good move, Stephen. Here’s Blair’s speech, by the way. If anyone has an audio link -- you really need to hear this -- post it in the comments.
(Via Zsa Zsa, finder of linkables.)
UPDATE. Blair’s speech is the most-watched video at C-SPAN, indicating that some US outlets may have underestimated interest in what he had to say. The speech was widely covered in Australia, by the way.
Millionaire Phillip Adams advises:
In a toss-up between love and money, go for the love. Money can’t buy it. The BRW Rich List fails to inform you that many of our wealthiest people are among our loneliest and least loved. So if the choice presents itself, or it’s a toss-up, go for love. It’s a better investment in the long term and pays more generous dividends.
Speaking of money, it would be interesting to find out how all the donations to the Australians for Just Refugee Program have been spent (Phillip is one of many AJRP board members). Mostly on anti-Howard propaganda, I suspect. In April 2002 Adams reported that the organisation had received $250,000; despite this, they don’t seem to have done much in the area of continuing achievements. Nice website, though.
Mike Carlton is all crybabyish about being described as anti-American:
Frank Devine recently offered me this hoary insult in Paddy McGuinness's Quadrant magazine and again in The Australian - an unsurprising coupling - along with the baseless libel that I had plagiarised a column from Maureen Dowd of The New York Times. There is no gutter too mucky for these chickenhawk warriors to roll in.
What a pansy. Note that he’s yet to correct his Dowdesque error.
I can’t be bothered checking, but Indymedia’s conspiracy meter must be redlining at the moment.
UPDATE. It begins:
So it could be that the Blair government and its agencies is now following the example of the Bush family, government and agencies in simply murdering people who represent a threat to the regime Dicounting the British Marconi scientists and virologists who have mysteriously died in the past, is this to be the first of many?
Blair is frontman for the hidden government
He puts out the required propaganda and will do until his public demise (quite soon it would appear)
Dr Kelly may well have been doing an unpleasant job at the service of this agenda.
He was also accused of leaking - perhaps he had a fragment of conscience.
He maybe proved himself a threat with too much knowledge
And he suddenly appears deadYou can bet HM security services won't hesitate to murder any british citizen who poses an embarrassment to powerful brit establishment and government figures such as tinpot totalitarian tony blair.
It seems mightily coincendental that the one man who might be able to lend some serious weight to the BBC's assertions concerning the Iraq dossier is now found dead lying in the woods.
If it is found that he was murdered then it will show that Blairs government is increasingly becoming more desperate in its bid to clear its name of war crimes, so deperate that it is willing kill its own citizens.
Spin Ali and Holls Hoon are directly responsible for the disappearance of Dr. Kelly.
Andrew Lloyd finds a Peace 'n' Luv Professor who demands that US troops get out of Iraq as soon as possible -- just like they did in Japan. Winds of Change and the affiliated Winds of Change War Watch have lots of solid opinion and researchy goodness. TVs Henry has moved. Welcome Bangladeshi blogger Rezwanul. And Corsair reports:
I got this Google hit in my referrer log. "Tim Blair" + hunk? You seem to have groupies! Maybe you should post some pictures.
I have, once or twice. Tends to kill the "hunk" searches, that's for sure.
Amir Taheri reports from Baghdad:
There are two Iraqs today: One as portrayed by those in America and Europe who wish to use it as a means of damaging Bush and Blair, and the other as it really exists, home to 24 million people with many hopes and aspirations and, naturally, some anxiety about the future.
"After we have aired our grievances we remember the essential point: Saddam is gone," says Mohsen Saleh, a geologist in Baghdad. "A man who is cured of cancer does not complain about a common cold."
Australian actress Delta Goodrem is 18 years old. Last week she was diagnosed with cancer.
Lefty blogger Matt, at A Bright Cold Day, wasn’t interested. He was so uninterested he had to write about it:
There needs to be a word for the almost total disinterest I have when a celebrity contracts a fatal disease or suffers a tragic loss.
I have a sneaking suspicion the Germans already do. The word would be distantly related to schadenfreude - in the sense that it concerns the misfortunes of others - but with bemusement in place of malice. Of the 400 people who will get Hodgkin's Disease this year in Australia, we will choose to care passionately (using column inches as a proxy) about Delta Goodrem.
This word's definition would need to leavened, however, by pity. Pity that a millions women's mags and newspapers will be sold with Ms Goodrem's sallow, bandana-clad head on the cover. Pity that Ms Goodrem can pose for that photo willingly or a paparazzo can take it for her.
Hmmm. Matt is usually more civilised than this. Tim Dunlop -- who recently accused right-wingers of a lack of compassion for arguing with the views of Brian Deegan, father of one of the Bali dead -- responded to Matt’s post:
Does "ennui" fit the bill?
Several other lefties left their suggested words (including “apathy” and “anomie”) in the comments to that post. The fun -- and the evasions, and the changing of subjects, and the denials -- began when I added this line:
Bet none of you would say this if Cathy Freeman developed cancer.
Freeman is an Aboriginal celebrity. Go read the rest of the comments. They are instructive of a certain mindset.
Australia’s national cricket team plays Bangladesh in a Darwin Test match beginning this morning. List your match predictions here in the case of a) Bangladesh batting first, and b) Australia batting first. Nominate your top scorer and wicket-taker.
Note: To restore his Test average to 50, Steve Waugh requires 35 runs without being dismissed; 85 runs if dismissed once; and 135 runs if dismissed twice.
Jared Keller has all the latest from "everyone’s favourite crack-smokin’ commie", Kim Myong-Chol. Including sports tips.
Paul Johnson identifies anti-Americanism as the prevailing disease of intellectuals today:
Like other diseases, it doesn't have to be logical or rational. But, like other diseases, it has a syndrome -- a concurrent set of underlying symptoms that are also causes.
Melbourne Age cartoonist Michael Leunig is in the tertiary stage of the dread illness.
Visit any town in Australia and you’ll find a memorial to those killed in World War I. We lost more than 58,000 from a population of only four million.
Hundreds of the dead may have been located in France:
A mass grave containing the remains of 250 missing Australian soldiers is believed to have been found in a French field, 87 years after they were killed in the battle of Fromelles - one of the bloodiest encounters of World War I.
(Via reader Zsa Zsa.)
Through clenched teeth, The Guardian reports:
A majority of Baghdad residents feel US and British troops should stay in Iraq for at least a year, according to the first attempt at an opinion poll.
The poll said 31% wanted troops to stay "a few years", while 25% said "about a year."
Only 13% said they should leave now, while 20% said they should go "within 12 months".
The survey also found that half thought the US-led coalition was right to invade.
Via alert reader Irene A. Meanwhile Australian troops aboard the HMAS Kanimbla have returned home to happy families. One serviceman told Network Ten news: “I’ve never felt so proud. I’d do it again.”
The freakazoid Left continues trying to pin the entire cause of war on a claim that Saddam sought uranium from Niger -- even though, as Mark Steyn points out, us Right Wing Death Beasts™ never even heard about the place often enough to pronounce its name correctly:
I wrote a gazillion pieces urging war with Iraq, and never found the time to let the word Niger pass my lips. And, if it had passed, my lips would have said ‘Ny-juh’ and not ‘Nee-zhaire’. But here’s what the President had to say, when he ‘LIED OVER NIGER URANIUM CLAIMS!!!!!!!!!!!’ back in the State of the Union address in January: ‘The British government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.’
That’s it: 16 words. Where’s the lie? Though the CIA director George Tenet now says his boys shouldn’t have approved that sentence, Tony Blair is standing by it. The unusual attribution to Her Majesty’s Government might have been because Bush was only mired in all this multilateral justification-shopping as a favour to Blair and his wobbly Cabinet. Or it might have been because of the source: under the rules governing intelligence-sharing, the British were unable to pass the direct evidence on to the Americans because they got it from the French, and the French wouldn’t let them give it to Washington. Niger’s uranium operations are under the supervision of the French Atomic Energy Commission.
But, whether or not that’s true, I repeat: where’s the lie?
Way to lose the peace as well as the war, Leftoids.
Some child-destroying pervert was arrested after he left a tape of his crimes inside a VCR he delivered to a repair shop. Prosecutor Sal Vasta is gentle in his description of police procedure after the tapes were located:
Mr Vasta said in going to lengths to identify the girls, a "very bad decision" was made by police to allow some parents to view the videos to try and identify the children.
Incredible.
Check this tard-style hack on Australia’s National Archives website. USA can do nothing? Damn!
Reader Danielle writes:
Wandering through Martin Place on my lunch break yesterday, I noticed a crowd of people holding placards and chanting something about "Korea" and "Law." I thought it might have been about the plight of starving North Korean children, or perhaps regional security issues, but no.
These protesters had a far more serious mission than that.
They were raising attention to the plight of dogs and cats that are eaten in that haven of terror, South Korea, as part of the "bok (dog) days of summer"
I managed to get a flyer off them whilst accusing them of communist vegetarian sympathies (in their defence, they did deny the vegetarianism), so I can direct you here for pearls of wisdom like "Loving animals is loving ourselves." (And hey, who can wait to hear what the Imam has to say about that?)
The Imam doesn’t have much to say about loving dogs, but he is clear on the subjects of stunned chicken meat and wives who cook too much and keep their husbands happy with sexual items.
And Allah Tim'mah Knows Best.
Whacking Tex and Sasha Castel-Dodge will be in town this Saturday night. It’s the perfect opportunity to wear my brand new knitted Elvis wig.
On the subject of festive activities: latest word on the upcoming Jake Ryan Beer Blast should be arriving shortly. A webcam may be involved.
Ken Park screenings are happening all over the place. How steamy and libidinous is Ken Park? See for yourself.
In which the Imam hands down his long-awaited ruling on man boobs:
Q: Is it permissible to fondle with one's own chest? Also if water is used to satisfy one desires is it allowed?
A: It is not permissible for one to awaken one's carnal desires and fondle with any part of his/her body to satisfy his/her desires. That is similar to masturbation.
Mufti Ebrahim Desai
FATWA DEPT.
Fatwa department?
If hockey players and Rugby League players and baseball players and AFL players all take it "one game at a time", how do National Geographic World Championship competitors take it?
Gianna is calling for donations to help the Opera House peace vandals pay for their witless stunt. Professor Bunyip is happy to contribute:
This may come as a surprise, but the Professor has already written a cheque: an unsigned one for the generous sum of two cents. Readers might care to do likewise. A deluge of worthless donations will disabuse our two heroes of any misconceptions that they speak for anyone other than their fellow sprout-eaters. And if enough paltry contributions turn up, the bank might even decline to play its assigned part in the appeal, since the price of the stamps required to inform "donors" that their cheques are invalid will make the cost of administering the account unacceptably high. With any luck, the next marks Burgess and Saunders make on a wall will be an array of little vertical lines indicating how many long days of incarceration have yet to be served.
My cheque is in the mail.
What is it with Marines and underage girls and Internet chat rooms?
Magnus Linklater of The Times discovers something that Merde in France learned quite a while ago:
The issue was debated many times, but it took shape, for me, in the course of a lengthy and brilliant discourse on the future of the market economy, from a French speaker. While outlining thoughts on financial regulation that would have sat perfectly well on this page, he devoted one section of his speech to the “symbolism” of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre. It was of course, he said, an evil act, but the twin towers, as symbols of Western capitalism, had become an almost inevitable target for terrorists; their collapse had something of the Old Testament about it — the razing of a monument to untrammelled power. If we were to counter future threats, we should create different symbols — a form of capitalism that would be less divisive than the American version.
It slipped in so neatly, so rationally, that no one, not even the Americans, listening intently through their earphones, thought to challenge it. Indeed, it was only as I considered it afterwards that I realised what had been said. The implication, not openly stated, was that US economic power was, in itself, a justification for terrorism ...
“Cheney under pressure to quit over false war evidence,” reports The Independent:
Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war.
The allegations against Mr Cheney have come most vocally from a group of senior former intelligence officials who believe that information from the intelligence community was selectively used to support a war fought for political reasons. In an open letter to President George Bush, the group have asked that he demand Mr Cheney's resignation.
The article is co-written by Andrew Buncombe.
Don’t ask the Imam how to avoid prostate cancer.
Just add local references and you too can write a Richard Ingrams column:
I have developed a habit when confronted by letters to the editor in support of ATSIC to look at the signature to see if the writer has an Aboriginal name. If so, I tend not to read it.
Too few people in this modern world are prepared to declare an interest when it comes to this kind of thing. It would be enormously helpful, for example, if those clerics and journalists who have been defending David Hicks, the so-called Australian Taliban terrorist, were to tell us whether they themselves are terrorists. Some do, but more don't.
The issue arises partly because, in both cases, these people are often accusing the other side of being prejudiced and biased - we are either Islamophobic or anti-Aboriginal.
