Tim Blair

PREDICTION TIME

List all your predictions for 2004 in comments. Categories: politics, sport, music, journalism, and whatever the hell else. Bets between readers are encouraged (a percentage of all gambled monies will be made payable to this website). I’m now going to turn off the computer, go downstairs, and sit in contemplative silence for two days like some kind of monk. Happy New Year!

BRING IT ON

The United Nations has declared 2004 to be the International Year of Condoleezza Rice.

BLOOD CHILLED

Consider, if you dare, the mindset of an individual able to form this thought, let alone decide to publish it under their own name:

Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean was a momentous event.

Paul Krugman is terrifying.

DRIVEN NUTS BY NUTS

James Lileks on the Great Divergence of '03:

We live in an era of non-contiguous information streams. I believe one thing; someone else believes another – and the bedrock assumptions are utterly contradictory. This is what drives me nuts about discussing current events with some people. It’s like discussing the Apollo program with people who think it was all faked, or discussing archeology with those who believe the world is six thousand years old. I think the Iraq Campaign was part of a broad war against Islamicist fascism and the states that enable it; others think it’s all about oil and Halliburton jerking the strings of a Jeebus puppet. No. Middle. Ground.

Read. Entire. Thing.

MAYBE SHE DIDN'T LOOK PERKY ENOUGH

Following a post here a couple of weeks ago anticipating Time’s selection of the American soldier as Person of the Year, reader Ron Hardin observed:

I can't tell if one of them is a woman. If not, it's not the real cover.

Ron (who was looking at a thumbnail image) knows well the rules of modern politically-correct magazine publishing. But even though there was a woman on the cover, Katie Couric didn’t notice.

"SACRIFACE" FORGOTTEN

Remember Warbloggerwatch? No? Well, it’s no big deal. Chief watcher Philip Shropshire doesn’t even remember if Australians fought in Iraq:

Didn't you guys not fight in Iraq? No contracts for you I guess. I guess your sacrifaces in Afghanistan were meaningless..

Genius.

STATISTIC OF THE YEAR

Reuters reports:

People with "Bush for President" bumper stickers were three times more likely to order meat-topped pizzas than "Dean for President" drivers.

JET LANDS, BUT WHINING CONTINUES

In the wake of certain incidents a couple of years ago, the US now treats visa irregularities seriously. You’d think most people -- especially journalists -- would anticipate this. Those who don’t may find themselves nightmarishly annoyed:

Sue Smethurst enjoys traveling. “It’s one of the things about my job that I absolutely love,” says the 30-year-old Australian, who works as an associate editor for the women’s magazine New Idea. She doesn’t even mind flying. “It’s one of the great pleasures of the world to be able to turn off your cell phone and be where no one can annoy you.”

But when her Qantas flight from Melbourne, Australia, touched down at LAX around 8 a.m. on Friday, November 14, Smethurst found herself nightmarishly annoyed — by the Department of Homeland Security.

A month and a half later, Smethurst is still going on about it.

(Via Brian)

BUY A CALENDAR, DOUG

Midway through his preview of The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion in this week’s Sydney Morning Herald TV guide (no link) SMH television writer Doug Anderson yields to one of the darker personalities shrieking inside his head:

All around us is abundant evidence of poisoned minds. The people who design landmines, those who concoct children’s cartoons, who sully the blue sky with corporate messages. The sickos who invent step ads and illuminated signs on taxis; freaks who put promotional messages on train tickets, postmarks, petrol pump nozzles and deface the grass at football stadiums; the stroppy little entrepreneurs who spray-paint the name of their fledgling dot-com outfits on the footpath; the spammers and mobile-phone spruikers clogging public space with their wares, jamming our mailboxes with fibs, drivel and flannel from the government ...

They will rot in hell, of course ...

I kind of get the feeling Doug doesn’t much like advertising. Funny, then, that on the facing page to this rant is an advertisement for, among other things, mobile phones. Those poisoned minds pay your wages, Doug!

Doug’s mind is worse than poisoned, by the way. He literally doesn’t know what day it is. The Dukes reunion airs on January 1, a date most of us know as “New Year’s Day.” Here’s another extract from Crazy Doug’s preview, published on the January 1 listings page:

Boxing Day is, after all, a day when the effects of massive self-indulgence are being felt and when many people are prepared to suspend all critical faculties and surrender to total passivity. What could be more appropriate for a such a day than The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion.

Boxing Day falls on December 26.

UPDATE. Iowahawk has a cure for Doug, in comments.

FREE THE BATSMEN

Latest column by me in The Australian is on cricket, socialism, and market-based economies. Non-cricketing US readers may find it slightly difficult to follow. Then again, it may be just as difficult for scholars of the game; I once ran some similar ideas by Richie Benaud, and he said, after a few amused moments of consideration: “Hmm. Wouldn’t know about that.”

UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS

John Weldon is a Melbourne writer. That is a known known. But there are many things John doesn’t know:

I heard a speech by a man that made me realise that my quest to discover how humankind - being so unsuited to the rigours of this world - had managed to survive and prosper, was pointless and irrelevant. That man was US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and what he said was this, in relation to his country's failing search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know."

When exposed to a mind like Mr Rumsfeld's the question of how we survived loses all import. In its stead looms the much more important and ultimately more troubling question of why.

John doesn’t know that the question asked of Rumsfeld was not about any search for WMD, but about evidence of any WMD sales by Iraq to terrorist organisations. I don’t know why Weldon doesn’t know how to conduct elementary research, and I don’t know why The Age doesn’t know how to find any people who do.

Another thing: Rumseld’s excellent formulation won him the the Plain English Campaign’s 2003 Foot in Mouth Award. But how come Rumsfeld won for a line from February 2002? Under the rules of plain English, wouldn’t such an award by definition be presented for something said in 2003? The same organisation’s 2002 award, for example, went to Richard Gere, for a comment made after Rumsfeld’s. Plain confusing.

DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND

The Quotes of 2003 are now available at a single link. Click and reminisce.

UPDATE. More 2003 quotey highlights from Gerard Henderson and the Media Research Center.

BLAME THE ILLEGAL EARTHQUAKE OF OCCUPATION

Where’s Robert Fisk when you need him?

Widespread looting is hampering international aid efforts in the Iranian city of Bam following the earthquake in which 30,000 people are feared dead.

Locals blamed the looting on villagers from surrounding areas unaffected by the quake hoping to cash in on the disaster.

(Via contributor J.F. Beck, last seen headed to Bam with a bag over his shoulder.)

YOU'RE A DOCTOR; PRESCRIBE SOMETHING

Pity the poor Howard Dean supporters. What will they do? Where will they go?

Howard Dean said Sunday that the hundreds of thousands of people drawn to politics by his campaign may stay home if he doesn't win the Democratic presidential nomination, dooming the Democratic Party in the fall campaign against President Bush.

"If I don't win the nomination, where do you think those million and a half people, half a million on the Internet, where do you think they're going to go?" he said during a meeting with reporters. "I don't know where they're going to go."

Back to work at the drive-thru, maybe. Meanwhile, John Kerry has his own problems:

That's one tightly-managed campaign Kerry is running. Here's a Dean Update, from the The LA Times:

When Howard Dean appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, the reviews were scathing, with most pundits calling the interview earlier this year a disaster. But others saw it differently. Traffic on Dean's Web site soared, and he collected more than $100,000 in the next 24 hours.

Stumbles, such as Dean's remark about Confederate flag-wavers, and factual misstatements, such as his assertion that no other candidate was discussing race before White audiences, have not only failed to slow his momentum but redoubled the commitment of Dean supporters.

Whenever he fumbles in the eyes of so-called experts, it makes him all the more attractive to disaffected Democrats scornful of institutions like the major media.

All of which spells certain doom. Nobody can win the Presidency on the power of the “disaffected Democrat” vote.

PRESS FREEDOM IN FRANCE

I believe this is commonly referred to as the crushing of dissent:

Alain Hertoghe believes that in covering the Iraq conflict, French newspapers recreated "the war they would have liked to have seen." That meant concentration on the Vietnams and Stalingrads that didn't take place, he said, and so many more accounts of U.S. difficulties rather than advances that it was "impossible to understand how the Americans won."

For making assertions like these in a book called "La Guerre à Outrances," subtitled "How the press disinformed us on Iraq" and published by Calmann Lévy, Hertoghe was fired this month from his post as deputy editor at the Web site of La Croix, a respected Roman Catholic daily newspaper.

The newspaper's management justified the dismissal, Hertoghe said in an interview, by contending that the book demonstrated his opposition to La Croix's editorial line, damaged the reputation of the newspaper and the authority of its chief editors and questioned the professional ethics of some of the paper's staff members.

The rest of the piece is fascinating. Turns out France is just like Australia! Well, media-wise, anyway.

UPDATE. Instapundit covers the German angle.

MARK OF THE YEAR

Mark Steyn reviews his punditry, predictions, and pokes-in-the-eye of 2003. Highlights abound, including this:

If we have to have an incoherent, self-loathing “peace” movement, then women showing off their hooters in support of a culture that would stone them to death for showing off their ankles is about as good as it’s gonna get.

MOLLY IVINS CAN'T STEAL THAT

In this Texas Observer column from September, leftoid Molly Ivins wrote:

One problem I have with Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts.

One problem I have with Molly Ivins is that she’s a goddamn joke thief. And not just once, but twice. In October the Texan gag bandit repeated her crime on CNN:

I went out to California to look at this race and came back saying, oh, Gray Davis makes Mr. Rogers look like he was on steroids, and Arnold Schwarzenegger looks exactly like a condom stuffed with walnuts. This was not the most profound observation I have ever made about serious public affairs, but it's irresistible.

Irresistible ... to steal! Ivins lifted “the observation she made” from Australian writer Clive James. It’s at least a decade old. Resign, you shameless, dishonest, joke-pinching she-beast!

Molly’s plagiarism -- first published, apparently, at AlterNet in August, and repeated all over the place since -- was noted earlier at Romanesko, which you can read about via Dog’s Life; it deserves wider reporting, because Sunday’s Below the Beltway column in the Washington Post again credits Ivins with the lifted line.

Oh, and by the way, Molly? Clive is a conservative. And he supported the war. The least you could do is limit your stealing to your own team.

UPDATE. As many are aware, this is not Molly’s first offence. She earlier lifted some material from writer Florence King. Salon described this episode tamely:

In a 1995 article for Mother Jones on Southern manners and mores, she extensively quoted, with affectionate attribution, statements from Florence King's book "Southern Ladies and Gentlemen." But for some careless reason Ivins still fails to comprehend, she left the attribution off a few King statements. In other words, she plagiarized. This, needless to say, is the ultimate no-no for a writer, and has cost many scribes their jobs. But considering the fact that Ivins' guilty passages were mixed in with many other cases that were attributed, her crime did not seem too horrible; she apologized to King and that was the end of it.

This report records a less conciliatory outcome:

The formidable Florence King has convincingly demonstrated that another Southern writer, Molly Ivins, has lifted her material without attribution, and changed material that she does attribute to Miss King. "If we had the right kind of laws in this country," said Miss King, "I'd challenge her to a duel over this." Miss Ivins, to her credit, has fessed up and apologized. Miss King is not entirely mollified.

She sure isn’t. And here’s yet another Ivins plagiarism claimant, although the reliability of this guy is open to question ...

TWO NEWSPAPERS, ONE IDEA

If it weren't for the fantastic diversity provided by the Fairfax media group, our nation would collapse. Or so we're told.

Let's take a look at that diversity. Here’s John Howard the Gollum in today’s Melbourne Age:

And here’s John Howard the Gollum in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

You can't ask for more diversity that that. Incidentally, both Fairfax newspapers regularly whine about Howard’s slavishness to the US. But where have we seen this brilliant Gollum idea before?

MANNE IN HIS PRIME

Fairfax circulation barrier Robert Manne likes to keep things simple, so he carefully limits the amount of information to which his readers are exposed:

While it proved relatively easy to remove Saddam Hussein, to introduce even the foundations of democracy proved a considerably more difficult task. With the abolition of the Iraqi army and police force, law and order simply broke down. Largely because of robbery, rape and murder, 94 per cent of Iraqis surveyed said they now felt less secure than they had under the gruesome regime of Saddam.

Manne cited that same figure in an earlier piece:

In a recent Gallup poll, 94 per cent of Iraqis said they felt more insecure now than under Saddam; 86 per cent said they or their families felt fearful about leaving their homes at night.

Gallup’s poll wasn’t all that recent when Manne first mentioned it on November 17; it had been conducted between August 28 and September 4. More significantly, it didn’t reflect the broad views of Iraqis, as Manne has twice claimed. This USA Today item explains:

The 1,178 in-home interviews were all in Baghdad, so the results are not a scientific glimpse of all Iraqis' opinions.

Omitted from Manne’s latest column is the same survey’s finding that “most Baghdad residents thought getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth the hardships they are enduring.” In fact, 67% of Baghdad residents surveyed thought Iraq will be in better condition five years from now than it was before the US-led invasion.

The number that expected things to get worse? Just eight per cent. Another early survey found a similarly tiny number wanting to return to life under Saddam:

We pressed the issue a little further: “If you HAD to choose, would you rather live under Saddam or the Americans?” The good news is that very few want Saddam back – just 7 per cent.

”Good news” is Manne’s least favourite phrase. He claimed in his November 17 piece that, according to the Gallup poll, “only 40% believe democracy can work in Iraq”. But that’s not what Gallup itself found:

Respondents were most supportive of those systems that would seemingly provide the most public participation: either a multiparty parliamentary democracy, or a system based on the Islamic concept of shura (whereby leaders work through a process of consultation and public consensus) ... A follow-up question asked respondents to identify the one form of government they would most like to see established in Iraq. There is no clear leader, but the largest segment, 39%, prefers multiparty parliamentary democracy. A system based on the Islamic concept of shura comes in second, with 29% in favor.

Manne seems to have interpreted “39% prefer multiparty parliamentary democracy” to mean “only 40% believe democracy can work in Iraq”. Moreover, Manne declined to mention that 53.1% of those surveyed would find a multiparty parliamentary democracy “acceptable”.

A broader, more up-to-date survey (involving 3,000 respondents across Iraq) reveals an even greater desire for democracy:

Asked to choose the form of government Iraq needed now, 90% of those interviewed - in their own homes - said an Iraqi democracy, and overwhelmingly rejected the idea that democracy was only for Westerners and would not work in Iraq.

Deal with it, Robert. People like democracy. They tend to prefer accurate information, too.

REALISM AND SAUL LANDAU

If people haven’t worked out by now that the turkey wasn’t plastic, it kind of disqualifies them from opining on more complex subjects, wouldn’t you say? Here’s Saul Landau writing about Realism and Fanaticism:

Almost ten months after Bush invaded Iraq, seven months after his "mission accomplished" speech-photo op on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and one month and many deaths after his Thanksgiving plastic turkey pose in Baghdad, the President faces serious problems.

A useful working definition of fanaticism might be the absolute refusal to believe this turkey is genuine. What roast conspiracy do Landau and the other plastic fanatics expect from Bush next Thanksgiving?

Professor Landau reveals Bush’s 2004 stealth turkey

UPDATE. Two-time offender W. David Jenkins writes:

Once again, just like the Lynch story or the plastic turkey stealth mission - things aren't always what they seem.

On the contrary, W. Dave. The turkey seemed real -- and it was. And from an unknown Charlotte Sun-Herald fact gobbler:

From his jumpsuit landing on an aircraft carrier to serving a plastic turkey to the troops in Baghdad, President Bush was never far from a photo-op.

IT DIVIDES

Display -- or conceal -- your punky Howard Dean endorsement with a Punk for Dean junior thong.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

AFP reports:

An Egyptian man has been jailed for seven years after being found guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of 353 boat people off Australia in 2001.

A Cairo criminal court sentenced Moataz Attiya Mohamed Hassan - also known as Abu Quassey - to five years for "homicide through negligence" and another two for aiding illegal migration, court officials said.

This will be deeply confusing to the propagandists who were convinced that the Australian government was responsible.

UPDATE. SIEV-X believer Tony Kevin writes in comments that he is “not confused at all” and asks: “The interesting question now is - will your website print this response?”

Well, I guess it already has, seeing as Tony’s already posted the same comments four times. No crushing of dissent! And here’s a link to Tony’s site, for what it’s worth.

IRAN

The death toll in Iran is impossible to quickly comprehend. As Michael Totten points out, the latest estimate (40,000) is equal to two-thirds the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. (To provide a local point of reference, Australia lost 40,000 in World War II.) Not that Iranians require any measure outside of their own tragic history -- an earthquake in 1990 killed 50,000.

QUICK RICK

Ricky Ponting is closing in on 200. If he can get twenty-five more runs, he would become only the eighth batsman to score two double-centuries in the same series. And, as the Nine commentators just mentioned, he’d be only the fifth to reach 200 in consecutive Tests, after South Africa’s Graeme Smith.

UPDATE. Got it.

AT LAST, A REASON TO DRINK BEER

Wha-hey! Sydney’s beer wenches are back:

(Via Gnu Hunter)

PREPARE THE SHREDDERS

Murray Waldron previews 2004’s worst books:

Conflict of more recent times disquiets Bob Ellis, whose Night Thoughts in a Time of War (Penguin, August) canvasses migration, refugees and international conflict.

Bob, of course, predicted Armageddon in Iraq, wrote that Osama bin Laden most likely didn’t cause 9/11, and claimed John Howard’s xenophobic bigotry led to the Bali bombings. Hey, maybe all of those were just stupid “day thoughts”, and Bob’s “night thoughts” will be completely accurate.

The web-blogging Margo Kingston gets down and dirty in a political way in Not Happy, John: What We Can Do to Save Our Democracy (Penguin, April).

Imagine being the tragic Penguin editor put in charge of this. Imagine the corrections, the fact-checking, the confusion. Imagine a typical email from the editor to the author: “Margo, could you make this chapter just a little bit less fucking insane?”

Denise Leith interviewed the likes of Robert Fisk, Monica Attard, John Pilger and Steve Brill for Bearing Witness: The Lives of Photojournalists and Foreign Correspondents (Random House, May).

At least the title is accurate. Oh, wait ... it says Lives. Didn’t see the ‘v’. My mistake.

Hans Blix details the search for weapons of mass destruction in Disarming Iraq (Bloomsbury, March).

Borders fun: hide all of Blix’s books, then tell the staff you can’t find any. Send them all on a storewide search. Repeatedly ask if they “need more time”. If they get close to your hiding place, deny them access.

Australian philosopher to the world Peter Singer scrutinises The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush (Text Publishing, May) via his policies and actions.

Singer’s main complaint: Bush didn’t kill enough retarded children.

Arundhati Roy deconstructs the US argument for war in The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (Flamingo, February), exposing "errors in its thesis, (and) the hypocrisy and false ideology behind the rhetoric".

You want some crap rhetoric, look no further. Roy is the master.

Acerbic commentator Kevin Phillips has The Bush Dynasty: How a Clan of Rich Boys, Oilmen, Fakes and Fat Cats Became the Most Powerful Family in America (Allen Lane, February).

Acerbic faux-conservative Phillips is best described here:

For more than 20 years, he has been writing books making the same tired argument about how the rich are running everything, getting richer by the day off the sweat of the working man's brow, and that they will soon be brought down by a populist revolt. Republicans are the handmaidens of the rich in Phillips' various diatribes, and will reap the whirlwind unless they become Democrats, he repeatedly asserts.

Looks like 2004 is another year we won’t have to bother buying books. Lucky I’ve already got my copy of Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken, the autobiography of British philosopher, linguist, and orator Murray Walker.

RECOUNT! RECOUNT!

Trust an anti-Australian Brit like Andrew Sullivan to relegate hard-working Aussie headcase John Pilger to a mere second place in his 2003 Sontag Awards. Beaten by Margaret Drabble? Oh, yeah. Right. Sure, she’s got the crazy eyes and the bowl haircut of the tragically concerned, but Drabble’s work in the fields of paranoia and delusion are as nothing compared to Pilger’s.

Admit it, Andrew. It’s because she was born in Scabsborough or Sewershire or some other upper-class British area, isn’t it? This sort of ugly prejudice makes me sick.

FINALLY, A DEMOCRAT WHO CAN BEAT KUCINICH

The Washington Post reports:

In less than three weeks, registered Democrats and Statehood Green Party members in the District will get a chance to cast their ballots in something called a Presidential Preference Primary Election.

The sample Democratic ballot, though reduced in size by no-shows, contains some names that should be familiar to local party members. FormerVermont governor Howard Dean's name is first on the list of 11 candidates. Democrats will also find the names of the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former senator and ambassador Carol Moseley Braun. Lyndon LaRouche, listed number nine, has chosen this year to run as a Democrat. The last name on the Democratic list is that of Vermin Supreme, a candidate about whom we have heard and know nothing.

One way to find out about people (or vermin) is to type their names into a search engine.

(Via contributor J.F. Beck, who hears and knows all.)

TWINS IN SPACE

Martian Professor Colin Pillinger (below, right) may have lost his space Beagle, but the rest of humanity is delighted to locate the best sidebeard since The Fast Show’s Bob Fleming:

ALL CLEAR

Howard Dean, the Great Clarifier, is at it again:

New Hampshire's Concord Monitor reported that Dean said he would not state his preference on a punishment for bin Laden before the al Qaeda leader was captured and put before a jury.

"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found," Dean said in the interview. "I will have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials."

Now comes Dean’s daily clarification:

Dean told the AP in a phone interview that sentiment doesn't mean he sympathizes in any way with the al Qaeda leader. "I'm just like every other American, I think the guy is outrageous," he said.

"As a president, I would have to defend the process of the rule of law. But as an American, I want to make sure he gets the death penalty he deserves," Dean told the AP.

Add that clarification to the rest of Dean’s bulging Clar-i-File:

Asked later how each candidate has reversed course, Dean clarified his remarks, saying only Kerry and Gephardt had changed their tunes.

Dean clarified Thursday that finding Saddam was a "good thing" because the former Iraqi dictator started wars with his neighbors and killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, including by chemical weapons attacks.

Dean came under fire recently for backing much tougher standards - U.S. labor standards. Lieberman said the country would fall into the "Dean depression" if that were to happen. Dean, however, quickly clarified that he supports only ILO standards.

Dean later clarified in a letter to the head of the Anti-Defamation League that he unequivocally supports Israel's right to be free from terror, and that he used the word"soldier" to justify the Israeli policy of assassinating Hamas leaders.

Dean’s clarification of his remarks stated that although he may have used bad analogies and judgment, he did sincerely attempt to reach out to disenfranchised conservative poor white Southerners to return to the Democratic Party fold.

Dean has come under fire for calling for an "evenhanded" approach in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a statement he clarified later by saying he meant that the United States must act as an honest broker in the peace process.

Country Store has more.

WISCONSIN'S SHAME

Is any fraud worse than Internet lobster fraud? I don’t think so.

ATTENTION, DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND

James Lileks has helpful New Year resolutions for Bush-haters:

I resolve to consider that not everything Bush says is a lie. Example: If Bush says that "two plus two equals four," I will not spit, "Oh, that's Enron math," and spend the rest of the day rebalancing my checkbook in Base Eight.

Likewise: I resolve to entertain the idea that he has his own ideas. He is not motivated by a Halliburton-built ankle bracelet that delivers powerful shocks when he strays from the Zionist-Oilman agenda.

I resolve to grasp the absurdity of appearing on national talk shows to insist that our freedom of speech has disappeared.

I resolve, as a purely abstract philosophical matter, to consider the possibility that France may not have America's best interests as the guiding principle of its foreign policy.

UPDATE. Democratic Underground ponders Bush’s involvement in the Iranian earthquake. Well, after pulling off that plastic turkey stunt, I wouldn't put it past him.

COURSE REVERSED

Australia’s fielding during the first day of the Third Test was widely condemned. Here’s Robert “Crash” Craddock in the Herald Sun:

Australia has been exposed as an occasionally ponderous fielding team that, at times, has to hide three or four players.

And from India’s News Today:

Uncharacteristic fielding lapses and indisciplined bowling let the hosts down badly while the Indian batsmen capitalised on them to move to a position of strength.

Trevor Marshallsea in the SMH agreed:

Waugh's hopes of scoring a victory here to save the series were looking as shabby as the half-demolished members' stand at Australia's biggest cricket ground.

Not after today, they weren’t. India fielded like amputees, and Australia ended the day in a position identical to one held by India yesterday: 3/317. This match is swinging Australia’s way -- for now.

UPDATE. Peter Roebuck in The Age now says the match is Australia’s to lose:

India played poor cricket on the second day of this match and will be hard pressed to avoid a heavy defeat. Faults hidden in Adelaide and on Boxing Day returned to haunt a side whose mood changed dramatically in the course of 24 hours.

Ever since Virender Sehwag's audacious innings ended with a boundary catch, the Indians have been falling back. At a crucial time the tourists lost their way. Reprieved, Australia has played stronger cricket and is well placed to square the series.

Mind you, that’s coming from the same man who predicted that Graeme Hick would be the player of the ‘90s and Abdul Qadir would be the last influential wrist-spinner. This game ain’t over. Tony the Teacher has lots more on what is becoming a brilliant, teasing contest.

SPACE CREATURE SNUBBED

Rolling Stone reports:

Bonnie Raitt and Tish Hinojosa have joined the lineup for the January 3rd fundraising concert for Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich in Austin.

What? No appearance from the freakish half-alien baby?

CLERIC v CHIRAC

Already excluded by the Americans, the French are now being shafted by the Shiites:

A Shiite cleric called Friday for an Iraqi boycott of French products in protest at France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious insignia from schools.

"We condemn the French government's decision prohibiting the Islamic veil and we demand the liberty that France says it embodies," Sayyed Amer al-Husseini told some 10,000 worshippers in the Shiite-populated Baghdad Sadr City district.

"We encourage a boycott of French products and call on Muslims in France to continue wearing the veil," he said in a sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers.

They lost the war, they lost the peace, and now -- to quote Kucinich-supporting Ms. Raitt -- they’re three time losers.

LIMP LEFT LINDSAY

In his John Halfpenny obituary (no link available) printed in Friday’s The Australian, Labor member of Parliament Lindsay Tanner attempts a brave historical revision:

Since the '50s, the wealth of our society has increased enormously. It is because of people such as Halfpenny that ordinary workers have managed to obtain a share of that increased wealth.

Halfpenny was a communist trade union official (he quit Australia’s Communist Party in 1979). If it had been up to him, Australia would never have seen the wealth increases subsequently obtained by so many. It is despite people such as Halfpenny (could Dickens himself have come up with a better name for a wealth-slicing commie grandstander?) that ordinary workers are no longer ordinary workers, but share market investors, home owners, and happy.

ADELE THE WEEPER

"In the midst of plenty," writes Sydney Morning Herald misery editor Adele Horin, "Australian children go hungry because their parents cannot afford enough food, a new survey shows." She continues: "Some children miss food for an entire day while their parents regularly skip meals, or do without themselves." And furthermore:

The survey is part of a continuing investigation into "food insecurity" in NSW. It showed two-thirds of respondents went hungry at least once a month because they could not afford enough food. Asked if their children had ever gone hungry, 40 per cent of parents said they had.

Almost one-quarter of the adults had gone without food for a whole day every month in the last year. As well, nearly 8 per cent reported their children had not eaten for at least an entire day within the past year because the household had run out of food.

To which survey does Adele (whose story ran at the top of page three in yesterday’s SMH) refer? This one:

The survey was conducted in October and November by Anglicare Sydney, the Anglican church's welfare arm. Interviews with 133 people were conducted at Anglicare's three emergency aid centres in Marrickville, Rooty Hill and Wollongong.

So out of 133 poorest-of-the-poor in some of NSW’s poorest areas seeking emergency aid over two months (evidence in itself of the extent of Australia's poverty "problem"), 60 per cent said their children had never gone hungry, three-quarters of adults hadn’t gone without food for a whole day every month, and 92 per cent reported their children had eaten every entire day within the past year because they hadn’t run out of food. Adele Horin doesn’t know good news when it’s standing right in front of her, screaming at her uncomprehending face.

CAN'T WIN, DON'T FIGHT

The purpose of the war against terrorism, Malcolm Knox seems to be saying, is to secure the re-election of conservative governments:

War against an abstract noun; war which cannot, by definition, be won or lost; war whose purpose is to convince the public that they must, in these dangerous times, stick with the devil they know.

It would be interesting to learn what Knox would propose to do about terrorism. Nothing, presumably.

BATTERED

Verandah Segway is destroying the Australian bowlers at the MCG. He’s now on 137 -- in an Indian total of 1/219. Rahul Dravid (who scored 300 in Adelaide) is now with him. Tendulkar still to bat. 600 may be a possibility.

UPDATE. Who said Segways were slow? With an hour to play, he was on 174 and India 2/282. If India does make it to 600, it’ll be only the 14th time this has been achieved against Australia, only the sixth time in Australia, and the first time in Melbourne. Here’s the complete list of 600+ scores by Australia's opponents:

England 903-7d 1938 The Oval
England 658-8d 1938 Nottingham
India 657-7d 2000/01 Kolkata
England 636 1928/29 Sydney
India 633-5d 1997/98 Kolkata
England 627-9d 1934 Manchester
Pakistan 624 1983/84 Adelaide
South Africa 622-9d 1969/70 Durban
South Africa 620 1966/67 Johannesburg
West Indies 616 1968/69 Adelaide
England 611 1964 Manchester
West Indies 606 1992/93 Sydney
India 600-4d 1985/86 Sydney

UPDATE II: On your bike, Segway! He's out (to a lame Katich full toss) for 195. India now 4/311, having lost three wickets in eight overs.

STUMPS UPDATE: 4/329.

SATURDAY MORNING UPDATE: Way to collapse, India. Three wickets down in 37 minutes, including two in two balls. 7/353.

FINAL UPDATE: All out for 366. Funny game, etc.

HER ROYAL COOLNESS

The Queen doesn’t go in for any of that politically-correct images of peace nonsense:

The Queen's annual Christmas Day message to the Commonwealth served as an uplifting reminder of all that is best in our national life. It was a paean of praise to the virtues of duty and service in the Armed Forces and in the voluntary sector — as was highlighted by the innovative choice of backdrop in the shape of armoured fighting vehicles at Combermere barracks in Windsor.

God bless her. You can view or listen to the message here. In other royal news, Her Majesty could have used one of those armoured fighting vehicles yesterday:

The royal family's Christmas has started disastrously with one of Princess Anne's dogs fatally savaging one of the Queen's favourite corgis.

Dotty, one of the princess's two bull terriers, launched the ferocious attack within moments of arriving at Sandringham in Norfolk, east England.

UPDATE. Peter Fray in the SMH sneers up a storm.

NEW YEAR, NEW BLOGS

Seasons greetings to the Gnu Hunter, Donnah’s Florida Cracker (“Wail on, Skydog!”), Mike Jericho, and z9.

They join Midwest Conservative Journal, Stephen Pollard, and Roger Bournival in the cumbersome, unwieldy, non-alphabetical list at left. Check ‘em all out.

IT'S ALL ABOUT TURKEYS

Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell is one hell of a bitter man. War didn’t work out the way you would’ve liked, Steve?

SUMMER COLUMN FUN TIME

Mentioned in my latest column for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph (actually, the first column I’ve done for the Telegraph in three years): Danny Green, Peter Beattie, Peter Batchelor, Mark Latham, Safety Dance Day, Phillip Adams, Alan Ramsey, George W. Bush, a plastic turkey, the baby Jesus, Kerry O'Brien, Saddam Hussein, Michelle Withers, Judy Finch, and Screaming Bloodshed Torture Mayhem Day.

There's more in the print edition, including: "Remember: a pet is for life, not just for Christmas. So go back to the lake and get those puppies out of that sack right now."

QUOTES OF 2003 - JANUARY

• "I say to Osama and the boys, bring it on." -- Rolling Stone Keith Richards pre-empts a Presidential one-liner

• "He completely lost the plot. He stormed around all day screaming at everyone, even the £5-an-hour bar staff, telling them how we were all conmen and useless. Then he went on stage and did it in public." -- a member of the stage crew at Michael Moore’s London show

• "He is the shambling, wide-eyed, compassionate person in all of us." -- James Norman in the Melbourne Age doesn’t share the crew member’s opinion

• "For me, I hope last year was the last when anger, frustration and despair ruled my professional psychology." -- Margo Kingston speaks too soon

• "As John Howard tours Canberra's charcoal suburbs, I wonder if the unsigned Kyoto agreement pricks his conscience." -- Sydney Morning Herald letter-writer Warren Tindall believes a global warming protocol would halt Australian fires

• "Why won't Labor and the Australian Left call for the removal of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on human rights grounds alone?" -- Jim Nolan questions his fellow leftists

• "My SUV, assuming Hummer comes out with a model for those who find the current ones too cramped, will look something like the Louisiana Superdome on wheels. It'll guzzle so much gas as I walk out to my driveway there will be squads of Saudi princes gaping and applauding. It'll come, when I buy it, with little Hondas and Mazdas already embedded in the front grillwork." -- David Brooks

• "With Australia and the UK standing beside my nation in times of trial, I neither need nor want anyone else." -- Stephen Den Beste

• "Heed that greatest of Middle East correspondents, Robert Fisk, who warns in The Independent of London that truth already lies adying." -- Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton

• "I really haven't researched him. He's not an interest of mine." -- Iraq-bound Australian human shield Gordon Sloane knows all he needs to know about Saddam Hussein

• "What has happened to the kind people of Australia that I knew and loved when I immigrated here eight years ago? Now all the Australian people seem to have for me is hatred and scorn and bigotry. By the way, I'm not a Muslim from the Middle East; I'm a Jew from the United States." -- SMH letter-writer John Burnett

• "We're not yet at a stage of cultural maturity where we even know what racism is." -- The Age’s Malcolm Knox

• "I never got the memo telling me that 'cowboy' is an insult. And if someone wants to try to convince me that being a cowboy is something to be ashamed of, I say, 'Let's take this discussion outside and settle it.'" -- reader Polly Bolton

"I am not anti-American." -- Margo Kingston

QUOTES OF 2003 - FEBRUARY

• "Idiots!" -- Ivory Coast rioters, to "ducking, crouching" French troops

• Get your tits out
Get your tits out
Get your tits out for Iraq
-- reader David Griffin composes a catchy tune for naked anti-war protesters

• "Last week's column about Osama Bin Laden's State of the Union address was one of the most pathetic, tacky, puerile and offensive bits of copy ever published in an Australian newspaper." -- Crikey.com.au takes exception to my mild opinions

• "I am eclectically left-leaning in politics, but I cannot comprehend how the left can blithely leave the Iraqi people in the hands of one of most monstrous regimes imaginable." -- The Age’s Pamela Bone

• "I hope the attempt by the French and German governments to find a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis will be successful in order to avoid senseless killing of humankind. I and many other Germans will never forget the American terror bombings of German cities during WWII and the mass slaughter of women, children and the elderly for years on end." -- Age letter-writer Karl-Heinz Walter forgets certain other events in wartime Germany

• "So Osama's voice is back, reminding us once again that the bloke the world bombed Afghanistan to get got away. He's the voice guaranteed to get world-wide coverage, and the voice says attack when the US attacks Iraq. Attack Saddam, and the enemy of Osama's enemy becomes his ally. Thanks, George." -- Margo Kingston

• "after reading your site for an hour even i could see you were a troubled young man..seek help tim buy a travel book or even take some heroin and watch a documentry on dolphins then you can come join us.your missing out tim,when your lying on your deathbed gasping for your final breath your gonnae think of all the things you never done and your gonna cry,your gonna cry like a baby tim,and your final words will be ‘can i start again please daddy’ then its lights out tim." -- reader Anne M.

• "In the few weeks of peace left to us, we are seeing a calamitous global failure of American diplomacy" -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton

• "This weekend could be one of those ‘turning points’, where suddenly the earth moves, the mood shifts, and politics is transformed in an instant ... Howard's very legitimacy could be at stake if he defies public opinion to join a unilateral strike." -- Margo Kingston gets excited about anti-war protests

• "Imagine my horror when I realised we were sharing our romantic evening with 100,000 angry extras from Mad Max II. Aside from the obvious annoyance of having dancing skeletons and filthy fat 'angels' outside our window all night, every time I opened my mouth to say 'I love you' in my most handsome tone, the words that appeared to come out were 'Peace in our time!', courtesy of some megaphone-fondling fuckwit a few yards away." -- Jack Marx’s attempt to celebrate Valentine's Day with his wife is ruined by protesters

• "We believe that in the wake of September 11, the only sane foreign policy for the US and all its allies to pursue is to examine just what caused that level of extreme hate, and act in a manner which will reduce it." -- SMH columnist Peter FitzSimons plans his Islamic conversion

• "It's not up to any head of state to bring a leader to fall, no matter who he is. It is the task of the people." -- human shield Judith Menson

• "My friends call drunken fast food 'thwapugh' because one guy was so loaded, he went into a Burger King and that was all he could say." -- Juan Gato

• "Dripping with Ivy League degrees in international relations, an accomplished classical pianist, speaking elegant French, monumentally self-assured, Condy knows everything and nothing." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton is unaware that Condi Rice has no Ivy League degrees

• "I have an uneasy feeling that many on the intellectual left are fearful that America will lose its next war amid massive casualties – but are even more fearful that America may win with minimal casualties." -- Robert Fisk, on his readers

• "We have NO mainstream newspaper to speak for the 40% of Australians who don't want any war at all. There is no paper here like the London Mirror." -- David Marr demands a circulation-shedding Pilger rag in Australia

• "Could anything be more pathetic than the Arab demonstration against war? What on earth is it with the Arabs? Of all people, they – and they alone – are likely to suffer in this American invasion of their homeland. Yet, faced with catastrophe, the Arabs are like mice." -- Robert Fisk urges resistance

• "The next time I'm tired of listening to my wife's crap, I'm going to tell her, 'you've lost a good opportunity to keep quiet.'" -- Howard Owens takes a cue from French diplomacy

• "I am unimpressed by the grandstanding of certain European leaders." -- Jose Ramos Horta, East Timor's minister of foreign affairs and cooperation

• "He smoked cigars, drank beer and ate greasy food. He was an amazing man." -- Lisa Saxton, granddaughter of Florida’s John McMorran, who died at 113

• "Wherever you are, Osama bin Laden, I love you, brother and I do it for you and I pray for you because to me you're just a spiritual warrior standing up for Islam and propagating freedom around the world." -- Khalid, an Aboriginal Muslim interviewed on SBS-TV

• "I wouldn't say I was part of an anti-war campaign." -- Robert Fisk

QUOTES OF 2003 - MARCH

• "I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them." -- ex-satirist Tom Lehrer

• "It's worse than you think. I believe in it." -- Tony Blair explains to peaceniks the terrible truth about his views on the war

• "May I just single out for salutations, on the ‘anti-war’ side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam." -- Guardian columnist Julie Burchill

• "I am ashamed to be leaving you at this time of need, but I'm going out of pure, cold fear." -- human shield Godfrey Maynell tells Iraqis he’s heading home

• "You want to really annoy the conservative warmongering powers that be? Work your ass off to pump up the vibration." -- SF Chronicle online columnist Mark Morford talking about ... well, who the hell knows?

• "It is too harsh. It is unacceptable. That's why we have released no pictures." -- General Amir Al-Saadi, special aide to Saddam Hussein, is saad about the destruction of Iraq’s Al Samoud missiles

• "Could you please let the president know that most Australians don't approve of his obsession with bombing the bejesus out of Iraq, and we think he should stop trying to boss the United Nations around like a schoolyard bully." -- Age columnist Sian Prior leaves a message at the White House

• "One has to wonder what the anti-American campaign to save Iraq from liberation really wants to achieve. Perhaps the baby boomers facing ageing and death just want to ensure that nothing better follows them." -- SMH columnist P.P. McGuinness

• "I'd like to say, Mr Howard please, please, please do what you can to stop a military attack on Iraq. These people do not deserve to be attacked. These are now people with names and faces. These are children I've played with." -- human shield Donna Mulhearn

• "Shut up you minion, you (U.S.) agent, you monkey. You are addressing Iraq. You are insolent. You are a traitor to the Islamic nation." -- Saddam aide Izzat Ibrahim to a Kuwaiti delegate at an Islamic summit

• "It would be unlikely France and Germany would come to our rescue." -- Portugal’s foreign minister Antonio Martins da Cruz explains why his country sides with the US

• "On each side of the war against war, hopes soar, hopes dive, hour by hour now. Resignations abound, timetables slip, and the world waits, mesmerised. I'm off to Melbourne to record an arts chat show." -- Margo Kingston

• "I'm a young actor in Hollywood. My few friends who agree with me that we should be going to war, and I, call Jessica Lange, and her ilk, the ‘syndicate.’ Of course, we do so in hushed tones, and in fear of reprisals." -- Anonymous, of Los Angeles

• "Watch how the propaganda unfolds once the bombing is over and the Americans are running Baghdad and their spin machine. There will be the ‘discovery of Saddam's secret arsenal,’ probably in the basement of one his palaces." -- John Pilger

• "We cannot create a gutter press, Anglo-Saxon style. French people are too well educated for there to be any readership for such a publication." -- French member of Parliament Olivier Dassault

• "To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war ... I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict." -- Hans Blix confirms doubts about his suitability as a weapons inspector

• "I've just puyblished a detaioled comments on his answers to the quesytions.Stadn d by my interpretation. etation." -- late night email from an opinionated Australian journalist

• "John Howard has lost it." -- Margo Kingston

• "I think he is so disturbed that it doesn't even enter his consciousness. Maybe he was abused as a child." -- antiwar campaigner Helen Caldicott analyses Paul Wolfowitz

• "There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this." -- Iraqi witness statement supplied to the organisation Indict

• "The blood of Australians, if and when it is spilt, is on this Prime Minister's shoulders." -- Greens leader Bob Brown

• "I am a conservative. I voted for George W. Bush and I simply agree with most everything he has said." -- Lenora Tomalin, mother of ultra-leftoid Susan Sarandon

• "A Frenchman built the Chevrolet." -- Michael Moore. Louis Chevrolet was Swiss

• "There are many questions that beg to be asked. Some are being asked rhetorically by many journalists, including a great writer at the New York Times by the name of Daniel Friedman." -- Sheryl Crow loves great writers, but can’t remember their names

• "There will come a time. A time when historians will look back on this day and try to gauge just what the mood of the Australian people was on the eve of the invasion. To those historians I say, 'Welcome to our nightmare'." -- SMH columnist Peter FitzSimons

• "This is the day you've been waiting for." -- Iraqi state radio, after US forces hacked into broadcasts at the commencement of bombing

• "I think these people don't understand what they are talking about. They are supporting Saddam emotionally." -- Gafoor Muhamad of the Australian Kurdish Community Association, on antiwar protesters

• "I wish we'd had politicians in the 1930s with the guts of Tony Blair and John Howard ... Because then I'd have a lot more relatives." -- talkback radio caller Jill, in tears

• "I think John 'Coward' should just grow up." -- actor Heath Ledger

• "I'm shaking my head in desperate sorrow for you, you pitiful creature." -- Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer to Labor leader Simon Crean

• "Your names will be recorded as heroes in the bright lists of history. You will help restore the weeping face of humanity with your good deeds." -- Iraqi refugee Hadi Kazwini sends a message to Australian troops

• "At Baalbek Nuts I bought pistachios from the Lebanese owners, who answered my request for their thoughts on the war with the typically Lebanese response of ‘no problem’. It's a lie, as we all knew." -- Robert Fisk

• "Well the Nazis used to call it ‘blitzkrieg’ when they did it prior to the Second World War, a softening up process. The Americans are calling it 'shock and awe'." -- the ABC’s John Highfield

• "The Mother of all Armageddons is waiting to tell him how wrong he is." -- Bob Ellis predicts disaster for George W. Bush

• "They would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler." -- former peacenik Kenneth Joseph admits a visit to Iraq "shocked me back to reality"

• "Yes, civilians will die. My cousins will die. Maybe. Allah forbid. But here is a certainty that you do not understand in your simplistic Nickelodeon diplomacy, is that you are guaranteed to have civilians die under Saddam. So now you try again to answer my question without playing the ping-pong: How does leaving Saddam in power promote peace and justice in Iraq?" -- Iraqi caller Mohammed confronts United For Peace and Justice spokesperson Andrea Buffa on US radio

• "How will the hate-filled zealots of the anti-war movement who bombard me daily with violent emails react to the joy of the liberated Iraqi people? With silence, most likely, having learned nothing." -- SMH columnist Miranda Devine

• "Support our Troops--but only those who Frag their commanding officer." -- poster at Indymedia

• "I can't comment on articles that appear in American newspapers. The information we give you here is factual." -- Australian air marshall Angus Houston responds to issues raised in The New York Times

• "The questions they ask usually in the polls is: do you support the President's attempt to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein? ... If you ask a question like: do you support the dropping of powerful explosives upon the heads of totally innocent men, women and children, demolishing their homes and their schools and their hospitals, are you in favour of that? That would change the answers, I think, quite a bit." -- US writer William Blum, interviewed on the ABC

• "Speak for yourselves, appeasers. Many Iraqis who dare to defy Saddam Hussein and his secret agents are trying to tell you they support this war." -- Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt

• "Hug the Fuck out of 'em Philippe!" -- Ray Smuckles

• "An American soldier, Saddam in his sights, has a picture of a naked, buxom woman on his dashboard, an obvious affront to Muslim sensibilities." -- Margo Kingston

• "I saw the entire place stand up and applaud." -- Michael Moore’s alternative history of the Academy Awards

• "A bombing with so many civilian casualties that Robert Fisk could personally visit them all." -- National Post columnist Andrew Coyne

• "'Open the doors of the chambers of your hearts'? Um, those would be valves. These people appear to be advocating bacterial endocarditis as part of the peace process." -- blogger Dr Alice dissects peacenik lyrics

• "American marines shot up a CNN television crew, killing at least one and most likely three journalists." -- SMH columnist Tom Ramsey gets CNN confused with ITV

• "I think the best way to answer that question would be to rip this podium out of the ground and then smash it over your head." -- Donald Rumsfeld, as imagined by Frank J.

• "I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true. Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite." -- Qatar-based BBC defence correspondent Paul Adams, in an memo to his London editors

• "With no sign that the regime will collapse it seems that, one way or another, slaughter is coming." -- Guy Rundle in the Melbourne Age

• "Do those who have written this tripe ever dare to go back and see how wrong they were last time?" -- Christopher Hitchens

• "The harassment, arrest, detention and frustration of those who are against the war is becoming routine." -- The Guardian’s Gary Younge describes life in Bush’s America

• "Don't you understand this is a peace rally?" -- screamed by an unknown girl at a Sydney antiwar demonstration, as the usual violence erupted

• "Just as Iraq was invaded by the viral Republican administration, I have been invaded by these viral Republican conditions." -- Bay Area peacenik Deborah Dashow Ruth blames Bush for her shingles, ulcer, and throbbing head

• "First we'll coax Saddam out of his bunker with a trail of delicious candy. Then, once his belly is full and he's all sleepy and happy, we'll calmly explain that we don't approve of what he's been doing and it's not very nice and we wish he'd stop. And he'll be like, ‘Whoa, I never thought of it that way. You guys are my friends! I like you!’ And then everybody will hug and cry, and then get a little embarrassed about crying, and then make some jokes to cover up being embarrassed. And then a beautiful rainbow will appear, and a shy unicorn will walk down it, and Saddam will ride it to the North Pole, and he'll spend the rest of his life helping Santa make wonderful toys for all the good little girls and boys, and there'll be hot chocolate, and, and, and nobody will ever ever die again for any reason ever." -- Jim Treacher

• "if i ever see someone so much as looking at my car in a funny way i will fuckin kill them i swear to god." -- blogger Snow Bunnie

• "No matter how scared and vulnerable our troops may be, their anxiety is nothing compared with the suffering of the Iraqi people terrorised by the bombing and shelling. The allied soldiers, though obliged to follow orders, have joined the military of their own free will, and are well paid and fed." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin

• "I'm the f***ing Prime Minister!" -- Tony Blair

• "Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here?" -- Guardian columnist Julie Burchill

• "I didn't see a single person booing." -- Michael Moore revisits Oscar night

QUOTES OF 2003 - APRIL

• "If Australia is attacked, it's no longer terrorism. We have invaded Iraq. Iraq, or its new allies, have every right to attack back." -- Margo Kingston

• "No country can hope to beat the Yanks off with conventional weapons - they've got air, sea and land completely covered. The only recourse is chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (the Yanks used them in Vietnam, and have not ruled out using them in this war)." -- Margo Kingston

• "Plastic shredders? We used to dream of 'aving plastic shredders. When I were a lad, we 'ad to get oop at three o'clock in t'morning and work 27-hour day at secret police headquarters, rending dissidents with ordinary garden rake. But tell that to yer yoong war protestors today, and they won't believe you." -- reader Paul Zrimsek reacts to news that Uday Hussein has a Yorkshire accent

• "Being against the war was yesterday's argument: today the only question is whether you are for or against victory." -- Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt

• "A too-swift and easy coalition victory may substantially increase the risk of future wars." -- Fairfax columnist Robert Manne

• "Please kill Saddam Hussein." -- Iranian-born cafe owner to US tourist Mike Gerhardt

• "I do believe this city is freakin' ours." -- Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Georgia, arrives in Baghdad

• "Rupert Murdoch's vast newspaper empire has waged a relentless pro-war propaganda war before and since the war began." -- Margo Kingston

• "Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad. How, I kept asking myself, could the Americans batter their way through these defenses?" -- Robert Fisk. With Fisk that day was SMH columnist Paul McGeough, who later reported: “Robert gets a bit windy from time to time."

• "That war can brutalise those left behind is an old lesson of history and we're getting worried about The Sydney Morning Herald's Miranda Devine, who's starting to write about humans as vermin." -- Media Watch’s David Marr complains about Devine describing terrorists as “cockroaches". Media Watch had earlier used the same word to describe Sydney radio commentators

• "So much is being lost and destroyed in this war. Lives. Ideals. Dreams." -- Margo Kingston laments the end of Saddam Hussein’s dreams

• "It is an appalling military adventure mounted by appalling people with the certainty of appalling consequences for years to come, not only for the Iraqi people." -- but also for SMH columnist Alan Ramsey

• "Imagine the damage being done to the children of Iraq. For those who escape physically will, inevitably, be mentally maimed, haunted for the rest of their lives." -- Phillip Adams

• "They stand, they fight, sometimes they run when we engage them. But often they run into our machine guns and we shoot them down like the morons they are." -- Brigadier-General John Kelly on non-Iraqi Muslims fighting outside Baghdad. He continued: "They appear willing to die. We are trying our best to help them out in that endeavour"

• "I have this delightful fantasy of left-wingers throughout the Western world putting their hands up and saying: ‘Well, actually we got that a little bit wrong.’" -- British columnist Janet Daley in Melbourne’s Age

• "Well, dawn has broken over Baghdad, welcoming day one of the new freedom, but if this is liberty, then it's far from perfect." -- the ABC’s John Highfield

• "The Americans ‘liberated’ Baghdad yesterday, destroyed the centre of Saddam Hussein's quarter-century of brutal dictatorial power but brought behind them an army of looters who unleashed upon the ancient city a reign of pillage and anarchy." -- Robert Fisk

• "I am happy to be wrong about the fall of Baghdad." -- John Quiggin

• "GO HOME HUMAN SHIELDS YOU U.S. WANKERS." -- banner carried through Baghdad by jubilant Iraqis

• "This is no time for gloating. Saddam has fallen. Many Iraqis are relieved. But the world is no safer." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin

• "One unpalatable consequence of victory in Iraq is that we are about to be offered a toxic brew of moral smugness and self-righteousness." -- Fairfax columnist Hugh Mackay

• "I am here now to tell you, we do not have any scud missiles and I don't know why they were fired into Kuwait." -- one of Iraqi information minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf’s greatest hits

• "Donna Mulhearn can't reconcile the images of cheering Iraqis greeting the toppling of President Saddam Hussein with the blood on the streets of Baghdad." -- Australian Associated Press reports a human shield’s confusion

• "This must have been Saddam's love shack." -- US Army sergeant Spencer Willardson locates a townhouse featuring a mirrored bedroom, lamps shaped like women, airbrushed paintings of a topless blonde woman and a moustached hero battling a crocodile

• "It is not just the vulgar, premature bawdiness of pro-war triumphalists which I find revolting. It is that they accuse anti-war people of being uncaring about the people of Iraq, and the lack of concern that these proponents of war show for the bodies of the killed and those maimed and injured by their invasion." -- The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

• "What we do not want is a situation of instability and the basis for terrorism off the back of this so-called victory, and it's the longer-term consequences, the humanitarian aid, how are we going to put in effect the new political system." -- Simon Crean, eloquent as ever

• "Make me dinner. Iron my shirt." -- sign carried by a representative of NO MA’AM during feminist protests at Augusta National

• "Although it would be foolish to predict what will happen in Iraq now, the apocalyptic predictions of as many as 500,000 civilian deaths (from a widely quoted leaked UN report) have so far proved exaggerated." -- The Age’s Gay Alcorn

• "Doctors at a Kuwaiti hospital on Wednesday began treating an Iraqi child who touched hearts around the world after he lost his arms." -- Reuters

• "Make no mistake, if the US can't find those chemical weapons in Iraq, it'll smuggle some in and plant them." -- Phillip Adams

• "The National Library and Archives - a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq - were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat." -- Robert Fisk. Readers were quick to point out that Fisk may have been out by as much as 2,000 degrees.

• "At the first moment, with support of other coalition forces, our people crossed the border into Iraq and made a significant dash by night to our operating area. On the way we encountered several dozen Iraqis, whom we dealt with." -- Australian General Peter Cosgrove

• "Media Watch is wrong, Media Watch knows that it is wrong, and Media Watch's viewers know that Media Watch is wrong." -- me getting it wrong, wrong, wrong

• "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." -- a contented reader

• "I was wrong about the war." -- Hardball host Chris Matthews

• "I was just following orders." -- Iraq air defence force commander Muzahim Sa'b Hassan al-Tikriti

• "It's not healthy." -- Ted Turner believes too few people own too many media organisations

• "He's my man; he was great." -- George W. Bush is a Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf fan

• "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'." -- Judy Lonchan Lopez, George Galloway’s Cuban love toy

• "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.'?" -- the Wogblogger on a Hartford Courant editor who banned a journalist from blogging

• "APRIL 28, IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY YOU LOSER!" -- a sign placed next to a donkey in Iraqi on Saddam Hussein's 66th birthday

• "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." -- the BBC’s Mark Damazar lays down the law

QUOTES OF 2003 - MAY

• "Twenty-five pieces is not the same as 170,000." -- Colonel Matthew F. Bogdanos corrects a certain "looted museum" rumour

• "I was wrong. The flag that was draped over the statue of Saddam did not come from the Pentagon." -- me, to Media Watch

• "There's only one solution to preventing him taking the civilised world down his own private S-bend - take him out immediately; one bullet through the forehead at point blank, and all of a sudden the gene pool will be that little bit cleaner." -- a contributor to The Sydney Morning Herald’s online forum

• "Only the state can buy the things that make people happiest.” -- The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee

• "Iraqis of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions were liberated by young men and women who came from the other side of the world -- from California and Wyoming, from New York, Glasgow, London, Sydney and Gdansk to risk their lives, and for some to die, so that my people can live in dignity." -- Iraqi poet Awad Nasir

• "We don't want biased news over here." -- editorial, The Guardian

• "Not so long ago, I dreaded this. And now, I have to admit, I was wrong." -- The Age’s Joanna Murray-Smith revises her opinion of the war

• "Fuckin' no-brainer, kid." -- Dennis Miller responds to a fan’s comment on his support for George W. Bush

• "Australians, Americans, whatever - they are all white people." -- Bali bombmaker Ali Imron on his intended victims

• "My favourite spectator sport is watching people who should know better searching for something (and often claiming to find it) where it never could be. Women claiming to find feminism in Islam is a good one." -- Julie Burchill

• "There was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking - how to put it? - really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly 'hot,' as in virile, sexy and powerful." -- the WSJ’s Lisa Schiffren

• "It's a huge black eye." -- Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, on a scandal involving a black reporter who may have been hired because he was black, promoted because he was black, and whose errors may have been overlooked because he was black

• "WHO the F-CK is that man? He's a f-cking traitor. Get his ass off the stage. Oh, F-CK him. Who IS that fat f-ck anyway?" -- Joan Collins critiques Michael Moore's Academy Award speech

• "Yesterday's budget continues the trend to turning Australia into a less caring and sharing society, into a country of individuals." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin

• "The Government should introduce programs to help all those unfortunate enough to possess arts degrees ... Re-education cafes could be set up with courses in basic psychology, science and economics. We need cheap, large-type anthologies of Adam Smith to show the baby boomers there is life after Noam Chomsky." -- The Daily Telegraph’s Michael Duffy

• "The other day they burned a Walgreens Drug store because the candy aisle had Pixie Stix. Why, you ask? Because they rhyme with Dixie Chicks! That's how bad it's gotten." -- James Lileks

• "Palestine, the home of the Jessica Lynch family, is not 'a hellish war-torn wasteland filled with a million stories of pain and suffering at the hands of murderous Zionists.' It is a small farming community in West Virginia." -- Randal Robinson tries his hand at a New York Times-style correction

• "The people who run the New York Times are insane. Really insane, like those bums who stagger down the street making chicken noises while their filthy pants slide ever downwards." -- Ken Layne

• "It has always been easy to oppose a war, but this time I realised that people were really suffering under [Saddam]. I've been in the German prison camps, and you could fit all of the combined concentration camps just into Abu Ghraib." -- former opponent of the war George Gittoes changes his mind after visiting Iraq

• "My first car was a doggy doo-doo brown 1972 Ford Pinto - the model US consumer advocate Ralph Nader infamously dubbed 'unsafe at any speed.'" -- The Australian’s Susan Maushart doesn’t know her Pintos from her Corvairs

• "Only last week George W. Bush was boasting that al-Qaeda was on the run, 'not a problem any more'." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton recycles Maureen Dowd

• "They come here, people such as Americans, the Jews and their allies. They want to colonise, not just to play. They want to control Muslim people. They make us weak and they take our people to bars." -- Bali bomber Amrozi

• "When OJ Simpson was chased through Los Angeles, it was in a Lincoln Navigator." -- The Guardian’s Gary Younge doesn’t know his Navigators from his Broncos

• "You tell the big lie by carefully selecting only the small, isolated truths, linking them in such a way that that advance the bigger lie by painting a picture inside the viewer's head. The Ascended High Master of this Dark Art is Noam Chomsky." -- Bill Whittle

• "Bin Laden's upbringing in Saudi Arabia as one of 50 children of a wealthy Yemeni builder, his brief dalliance with a western life, his discovery of piety, his growth as a leader and finally his turn to anti-western terrorism, all add up to a great story." -- the SMH’s Bernard Zuel

• "Surprised to see you crawl from under the debris so quickly." -- ever-charming Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy

• "Gun, gun for you. Don't forget (this is a) terrorist country. Life for life. Soul for soul. I am a killer for you.” -- Bali bomber Imam Samudra

• "I'm a symbol of is what's wrong with The New York Times. And what's been wrong with The New York Times for a long time." -- Jayson Blair

• "This eulogy owes nothing to artifice or chance. It has ripened inside me since childhood. From the bottom of my pockets, stuck to the back of my smock, hidden in the corner of abacuses, poetry gushed out." -- French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin

• "[Robert Byrd’s] admirable background stands in splendid contrast to the slippery neo-conservative spivs and silver-spooners who infest the Republican Administration of George W. Bush." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton, forgetting that Byrd’s admirable background includes membership of the KKK

• "When Amrozi himself explains he just wants Westerners ‘finished’ for something as trivial as drinking in a bar on a Hindu island, or for being Jewish, then it's time to stop negotiating and start shooting." -- the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt

• "Australia joined in separating East Timor from Indonesia." -- one reason why Bali bomber Imam Samudra hates Australia

• "I'm from Chicago." -- Donald Rumsfeld explains why he doesn’t get modern dance

• "I'd do Tim just to say thanks for all of his Margo Kingston posts." -- comment of the year, from Jackie D

• "The Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy." -- Bob Geldof

• "Dickhead. Next question?" -- The Mirror’s Sue Carroll, asked for her opinion on fellow Mirror columnist John Pilger

• "Now that you’ve tasted it, you’re one of them." -- SMH economics writer Ross Gittins, after I drank wine offered by the ABC’s Jennifer Byrne

QUOTES OF 2003 - JUNE

• "Britain and Australia have public broadcasters that enhance their nation's intellectual climate while the US, lacking a similar body, has hundreds of broadcasters and none worth tuppence." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin

• "I am going to a Regimental Reunion in Wagga Wagga in August - you might like to drop in and explain to the blokes of my Infantry Battalion what you mean by 'lying bastards'." -- Ken Gillett offers an invitation to ABC current affairs boss Max Uechtritz

• "Hatred and aggression and murderous ambitions are ... our friends." -- George W. Bush is put through the Dowdifier

• "The senator seems to think the media's duty in time of war is to fall meekly into line with the government of the day." -- Max Uechtritz and Martin Hirst fall meekly into line with each other, writing the same defence of the ABC

• "I think he should be just taken away, shot in the back of the head and buried in a ditch with just no mark and so basically just wipe him out of existence." -- Randall Lee, whose two brothers and sister-in-law were killed in the Bali bomb attack, on Imam Samudra

• "I know you are Irish, but what is your question?" -- Professor Niall Ferguson, to a "shamanistic poet" who interrupted his lecture

• "Just about the only person criticising Bush in the US media is Sean Penn." -- The Guardian’s Gary Younge

• "I subscribed to your newspaper for 22 years. I believed every word and then I learned the truth: that you hire retarded people because of the government programs, and these people are made to write things they did not write, for reasons they did not know. First there is the one boy, then the older man with diabetes, then the 'columnist' who jokes with lies about every little thing, and when would it end?" -- Larry Jonestowne, in a letter to the New York Times

• "George W. Bush, the US President, has used his weekly radio address to again steal his nation." -- ABC radio transcript

• "I was unaware that Byrd had indeed worn the pointy hood for two years from 1942. Plainly, that renders his background considerably less than admirable." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton

• "Associating with Arabs has brought us nothing but shame and heartache." -- Seyf al-Islam Kaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator

• "Hay Bush wepon masterucshin? Their it is weight no just Irak babie no leg." -- Puce

• "I do not see, in the light of those mass graves, how it is now possible to say this war should not have been fought." -- The Age’s Pamela Bone

• "I will not pay. I'll do the time." -- Danish pizzeria owner Aage Bjerre, fined $1200 for refusing to serve French and German tourists

• "People have no respect for bicycle riders." -- English professor and cyclist Luis Rodriguez, scared off the road by North Carolina drivers

• "I'm happy to eat crow." -- Phillip Adams, after museum looting stories were discounted

• "When a rock-tossing amateur athlete can spend less than 15 minutes on the web confirming a writer's humiliating legacy of bias, after reading one of his stories for the first time, then ya gotta know the jig is up." -- Olympic curler George Karrys

• "Media Watch is a program about the media and journalism that promotes a number of principles, including free speech. The phrase ‘nigger in the woodpile’ is a colloquialism, which means a hidden or unacknowledged problem. Some people may feel it's in bad taste, but we wouldn't pick up someone for using the term in context." -- Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy.

• "He’s the only client I ever fired in writing. He was the most difficult human being I’ve ever met. There was no one who even came close. Michael Moore would never withstand the scrutiny he lays on other people. You would think that he’s the ultimate common man. But he’s money-obsessed." -- Michael Moore’s former manager

• "They missed a good opportunity to shut up." -- Silvio Berlusconi, after French criticism of his refusal to meet Palestinian leaders

• "The culture and the values which they will force us to accept will be hedonism, unlimited quest for pleasure, the satisfaction of base desires, particularly sexual desires. Our way of life must be the same as their way of life. Asian values do not exist for them." -- Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad sticks it to the west

• "I was a walking contradiction. Was I a conquering capitalist or a socialist activist? I still don't know." -- deep-thinking Friends star David Schwimmer

• "Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." -- Paul Wolfowitz, as misquoted by Robert Fisk

• "Karl Marx was right: in the end, the politicians in a liberal, capitalist democracy are the messengers, couriers and enforcers for their corporate owners." -- The Age’s Terry