Regarding the stupid Gonzalez boy, who decades from now might still be apologising for his vile article, reader Geezer writes:
Thank God there wasn’t a net around when some of us was spoutin’ off way back when ...
Ain’t that the truth. My own childhood leftism involved the standard “destroy the state” yowling, as well as loathsome, almost Gonzalez-like opinions about anyone in uniform -- indeed, about anyone not on the Left. It’s time to confess, people! Reveal in comments your hideous pre-Internet statements or ideas. Anonymity, obviously, is encouraged ...
Via half the Internet, it’s the latest crazy random words game:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Okie dokie:
Fred Offenhauser was made head of Miller’s engine shop with the power to hire and fire workmen, though, as Myron Stevens later wryly remarked, that authority did not extend to the body and chassis shop.
That Myron -- always with the wryness! From Offenhauser, by Gordon Eliot White. Other page 23 fifth-sentence action may be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
How will the Al-Aqsa Tiger Brigades react if Richmond loses tonight against Hawthorn?
Plank-gobbed Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir is to be charged over the Bali bombings:
Renegade Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has been arrested and will be charged with masterminding the Bali bombings that killed 202 people including 88 Australians, according to reports.
Associated Press reported this morning that Bashir, who until now has claimed ignorance of operations by terror network Jemaah Islamiah, would be charged with the Bali atrocity and other bombings by the group.
In another regional idiot development, Sydney’s Iznar Ul-Haque doesn’t like animals:
When Izhar Ul-Haque enrolled in a terrorist training camp in Pakistan last year, he was fed up with Westerners and their "animal type of lifestyle", a court heard yesterday.
In a letter to his parents, Mr Ul-Haque says he wanted to undergo weapons and combat training and eventually expected to die a martyr for a Pakistani terrorist group.
When he returned to Sydney after the camp, Customs officials found 30 books in his luggage including handwritten notes about rocket launchers, landmines, tanks and multi-purpose machineguns.
Grrrr! These things anger us animalistic Westerners.
Margo Kingston’s brain is starved of vital oxygen:
I'm still trying to breathe after seeing on Lateline the photos of American soldiers smiling as they pose with tortured Iraqi prisoners, if torture is the word for the horror. The images are out of a Caligula movie. The world has gone to hell. George Bush's war on Iraq will haunt all our lives. I recant my objections to Latham's policy. Out now! There must be a better way, there must be. We must find leaders fast, real fast.
If those images are causing Margo some respiratory problems, these must have turned her lungs inside out. In the same Webdiary screed, highly-strung Webdiarist Jack Robertson seeks to expose the source of a report obtained by the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt:
Bolt declined to comment about his source for the report. Asked if he was prepared to exclude the Prime Minister’s and the Foreign Minister’s offices as his source, he responded:
"Don’t insult my intelligence and yours. If you claim to be a journalist, these questions are just so preposterous...they’re an insult. You would not put them to anyone else that had revealed documents that supported a thesis with which you whole-heartedly agreed. The only reason you’re asking me is that you want to elevate Andrew Wilkie against the evidence."
There’s an ethical issue here. Margo writes that she is “bound by the code of ethics of the Media Alliance union, of which I am a member.” And here is part of that code, linked to by Webdiary:
Aim to attribute information to its source. Where a source seeks anonymity, do not agree without first considering the sources motives and any alternative attributable source. Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances.
Bolt is respecting the confidence of his source. Webdiary -- casting aside the MEAA code -- wants him to identify that source, and presumably would have published the source had Bolt named whoever it was. It’s like something out of a Caligula movie!
Terrorists demanded a demonstration, and they’ve got what they wanted:
The families of three Italians held hostage in Iraq led a march near St. Peter's Square on Thursday after the abductors threatened to kill the captives unless Italians carried out a "huge demonstration" against the war.
Not that anyone at the march admitted they were reacting to the terrorists’ demands; oh, no. This demonstration was entirely unrelated to any threat:
The relatives described the march as a peace rally and said they were not giving in to the captors.
"This protest is for peace and nothing else," said Patrizia Oliano, of Pompeii, who brought her family to the march. "We're not giving in to blackmail."
"Obviously, nobody likes to be told what to do," said [Jane Reynolds]. "But we don't consider this giving in to blackmail."
So don’t demonstrate at all. Even better, march against terrorism. Or does that idea only ever occur to Iraqis?
Take a look at University of Massachusetts undergraduate Rene Gonzalez. Seems a nice kid, doesn’t he? Quite possibly he was, back in 2001, during his undergrad days.
Rene is now a graduate student. He’s active in politics, he’s interested in all the big issues, he’s maybe thinking about a political career, and he’s just written something he’ll deeply regret:
I've been mystified at the absolute nonsense of being in "awe" of Tillman's "sacrifice" that has been the American response. Mystified, but not surprised. True, it's not everyday that you forgo a $3.6 million contract for joining the military. And, not just the regular army, but the elite Army Rangers. You know he was a real Rambo, who wanted to be in the "real" thick of things. I could tell he was that type of macho guy, from his scowling, beefy face on the CNN pictures. Well, he got his wish. Even Rambo got shot in the third movie, but in real life, you die as a result of being shot. They should call Pat Tillman's army life "Rambo 4: Rambo Attempts to Strike Back at His Former Rambo 3 Taliban Friends, and Gets Killed."
In my neighborhood in Puerto Rico, Tillman would have been called a "pendejo," an idiot. Tillman, in the absurd belief that he was defending or serving his all-powerful country from a seventh-rate, Third World nation devastated by the previous conflicts it had endured, decided to give up a comfortable life to place himself in a combat situation that cost him his life. This was not "Ramon or Tyrone," who joined the military out of financial necessity, or to have a chance at education. This was a "G.I. Joe" guy who got what was coming to him. That was not heroism, it was prophetic idiocy.
Rene will get what’s coming to him. Picture him a couple of decades from now, struggling to explain his youthful extremism to party officials or journalists or voters. It isn’t easy; just ask John Kerry.
(Via J.F. Beck)
UPDATE. Rene begins his lifetime of regret:
A University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduate student is apologizing to Pat Tillman's family.
Rene Gonzalez had written a column for the campus paper saying the football player-turned-soldier who died in combat in Afghanistan wasn't a hero -- but a "G.I. Joe guy who got what was coming to him."
Gonzalez said in an e-mail to a Boston TV station that he was trying to say Tillman's celebrity had factored into his being labeled a hero.
He admits he tried to prove his point in an "insensitive way" and that the article wasn't worth publishing.
UMass president Jack Wilson has meanwhile described Rene’s article as "a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country", and the Chicago Sports Review’s Jack Barley writes:
I want Gonzalez to look Marie Tillman, Pat’s wife, in the eyes and read the portion of his editorial, "He was acting out his macho, patriotic crap and I guess someone with a bigger gun did him in."
The Associated Press has more. And Conspiracy Planet believes Rene is the victim of PC thugs:
Gonzalez is in big trouble with the politically correct crowd.
It’s worse than that. He’s in trouble with the non-politically correct crowd.
The US news program Nightline will broadcast this Friday the names and faces of every soldier killed by enemy fire since the war began, reports the New York Times:
Ted Koppel, the program's anchor, will deliver a brief introduction before reading the more than 530 names, as photographs and captions with the ages and hometowns of the dead appear on the screen. "Nightline" will not include those who died by accident and other causes because of time constraints; Mr. Koppel will barely have two seconds for each name.
Interesting that Nightline’s principled and non-political decision -- Koppel claims it is a “tribute” to the dead -- doesn’t extend to adding 30 minutes of airtime so all the names could be included. Jeff Jarvis nails the list manoeuvre as a journalistic cliche:
How many times have we seen such roll calls of death called out: war deaths; drug deaths; AIDS deaths; 9/11 deaths. It has been used so often that to pull it out now is a very conscious effort, a journalistic conceit with a clear purpose and a history that cannot be ignored. It means: Let's hit the people over the head with what we think they're ignoring; let's add it up for them; let's rub their noses in the enormity of it; let's remind them of a story nearly ignored.
But the Iraq war is hardly ignored. We don't need Koppel to bring our attention to the danger and death there.
It’s also lazy. Nightline is presenting nothing but a video version of the Washington Post’s excellent faces of the fallen series. And check this Koppel quote:
"I have always felt, and I said it when I was in Iraq last year, that the most important thing a journalist can do is remind people of the cost of war."
Hint to Koppel: people already know this. More important than reminding us about things we’re entirely clear on (“Next week on Nightline: humans just can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet oxygen!”) is telling us what we don’t know -- for example, we’d have been interested in all the details of Saddam’s Iraq that CNN withheld. When Scott Ritter said he wasn’t going to describe what he saw in Iraq’s kiddie prisons “because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace”, well, we would’ve appreciated some deeper inquiries. And this whole UNSCAM deal? Tell us more.
*The headline is based on Koppel's reported $6 million annual salary, and assumes he presents 200 programs per year. Another way to look at things: Koppel is pulling down $56 for every dead soldier he names.
Initially, "Nightline" was going to air the names of the 500 Americans who died in combat, but Thursday the program announced plan to expand the Friday broadcast so it could include the 200 Americans who died in non-combat situations.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Alan Ramsey, another Vietnam-fixated correspondent whose quagmired views should disqualify him from covering more recent conflicts, wrote a couple of days ago about Reverend Brigadier (ret) Gerald Anthony Cudmore, who died last week. Cudmore held masses for troops in Vietnam, among his other religious duties.
Ramsey gives the impression -- supported by quotes Cudmore is obviously unable to confirm -- that Cudmore would have opposed the current war. Professor Bunyip presents evidence to the contrary, and asks:
If any reader attended the debate at St. John's and can provide a summary of Cudmore's speech and arguments, please drop the Billabong a line.
Read the Prof's post for details of this speech.
• Good news out of Iraq? That’s crazy talk! Yet somehow Andrew Bolt discovers information worth celebrating:
Last week, the president of Iraq's National Olympics Committee, Ahmed al-Sammarai, gave a radio interview that, being inspiring news from Iraq, got as little attention as you'd expect.
• Media Whores Online is out to pasture. Warblogger watch has only posted a handful of items this year. Margo has been minimalised by her own newspaper. Indymedia is attracting unwanted scrutiny. It’s like some kind of mass vote-off on Loser Survivor.
• New Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff points out that veteran leftoid Phillip Knightley (“the poor man's John Pilger’) still requires adult supervision, and new Canadian blogger Cicada has some advice for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad:
A septuagenarian Frenchman flush with Viagra is less likely to shorten your lifespan than the angry youths oiling their AK-47s throughout Damascus.
• Fun for the entire family! It’s a DIE-IN at Adelaide’s Parliament House:
We want people to wear clothing that looks as though it is blood splattered. Wear white T-shirts and put anything red on them. We are going to have a "DIE-IN" on the steps. We will ask you to lie down there. If you think it is OK, please ask your children to come to represent the many children who have been murdered in Fallujah this past week.
They could always re-use the blood-decorated shirts they wore to protest Saddam Hussein’s murderous reign. Oh, wait ...
Another point of difference between Iraq and Vietnam: defense officials no longer speak in evasive euphemisms. Here’s Donald Rumsfeld discussing Fallujah:
"What's going on are some terrorists and regime elements have been attacking our forces. And our forces have been going out and killing them."
Rumseld also mocked hypersensitive press coverage of attacks on mosques:
He showed reporters a color photo of weapons-toting insurgents gathered in a Najaf mosque and said sarcastically: "As you can see they have all kinds of religious instruments, called rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s. That's what they do in their mosques."
Are Muslims permitted to donate via Paypal? The Imam says yes!
The redesigned Sydney Morning Herald site is zippier, better organised, and cleaner-looking. Major loser in the remake is Margo Kingston, whose Webdiary -- formerly prominent on the old site's opinion page -- is now reduced to a small lower-case listing among the various index links.
Underneath “cartoons”.
Next, the SMH should redesign Margo’s copy. Today the paranoid media-rights defender describes broadcaster Alan Jones as a substantial shareholder in Sydney radio station 2UE -- which Jones left two years ago. He’s a shareholder in 2GB, the station he joined. Better media “compnaies” (Margo’s word) than Fairfax would scrap Webdiary completely.
We know that the “oil” part of the UN’s oil-for-food program is deeply suspect -- but what about the food part?
The Australian Wheat Board's long and lucrative relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq will be examined as part of a United Nations investigation into the discredited and defunct oil-for-food program.
The UN will consider whether any of the money Iraq paid Australia for wheat was "kicked back" illegally to Saddam's regime by third parties who helped facilitate the deals - in Australia's case, by a Jordanian trucking company.
An AWB spokesman in Melbourne, Peter McBride, said the Wheat Board was "completely unaware of any corruption. Our contracts were completely under the terms provided by the UN."
Completely under the terms provided by the UN? Uh-oh. Meanwhile, on the oil side of the ledger, Kofi Annan says the UN’s hands were tied somehow:
On the $5.7 billion that the GAO estimates Saddam pocketed through smuggling, Annan said "there was no way the U.N. could have stopped it" but he suggested the United States and Britain could have.
"We had no mandate to stop oil smuggling," he said.
No mandate, no responsibility. The Voice of America reports:
Many lawmakers fault the Bush administration and key countries such as Russia, France and China for not sounding sufficient alarms about abuses, such as overcharges on oil contracts.
Why wasn’t the media sounding these alarms? Why aren’t they sounding them more loudly now?
(Via Zem)
The Australian should pay closer attention to former Reagan staffer Doug Bandow’s opinion pieces. He keeps making mistakes. Here’s Doug’s latest:
The US really doesn't need a "deputy sheriff", as Howard reportedly once put it.
No, he didn’t. Who will be the first opinionista to include our deputy sheriff status, Bush’s plastic turkey, and the Pentagon’s report on global warming in the one article?
(Via Alex Robson)
Tim Dunlop deals with a fantasically disingenuous article by Greg Barns and Jane Rankin-Reid that includes this wide-eyed thought:
Since September 11, whenever Islam is highlighted in Western media, it is somehow inextricably linked with acts of terror.
As Tim writes:
"Somehow inextricably linked"? Can't imagine why that would be.
SUV collector John Kerry endorses the latest addition to his fleet.
"Whole language" is a stupid educational method that still holds considerable sway in Australia. Labor leader Mark Latham’s literacy policy is apparently driven by whole language fan Mem Fox, as Janet Albrechtsen reports:
In drafting his $80 million Read Aloud Australia program, Latham would not have needed to dig very deep to discover that Fox describes herself as "a passionate advocate of whole language" – a faddish method of teaching children how to read. It's there on her online diary. If he dug deeper, he would also have learned that science debunked that theory long ago. Had he dug deeper again, he would have learned that too many teachers, our learned learning professionals, have ignored that science. And so, appointing Fox as his new reading ambassador will be eagerly greeted as affirmation of a teaching method that is supported more by ideology than evidence.
A couple of schools in Sydney specialise in undoing the damage caused by whole language. Latham should cut Fox loose.
Thomas Sowell has some sound advice for those dicked around by agenda-shifting media types:
A few years ago, a conservative TV interviewer told me, while we were waiting to go on the air and a microphone was being attached to my jacket, that he had not read the book that I had come to discuss but that he would interview me about something in the news that day.
I immediately removed the microphone that had just been put on me, gave him a few well chosen words, and walked out.
Why don't more people do that?
Good call.
Stand by for -- hopefully -- some lids to be lifted:
A former manager in the scandal-scarred oil for food program will tell Congress today how top U.N. officials running the program deliberately looked the other way, congressional officials said last night.
Frenchman Michael Soussan, a former program coordinator for the $100 billion fund, is expected to be the star witness of a House International Relations Committee hearing looking into Saddam's gigantic $10.1 billion rip-off.
Committee sources said Soussan, now a New York-area writer, is expected to give the first, under oath, public account from an insider about how top U.N. officials were aware of Saddam's oil smuggling and kickback schemes but chose to let him get away with it.
A Google news search for Soussan so far only provides four results. Let’s see if this increases following his testimony.
"I don't own an SUV," claims John Kerry. And he’s right! The famous tosser doesn’t own an SUV; he owns four of them (five, if you count the Audi Allroad), and a whole bunch of other vehicles besides:
At last count, there were eight "family" cars and SUVs, including the 1995 Suburban (15 mpg highway, 12 mpg city), a 1993 Land Rover Defender (12 mpg highway, 10 mpg city), a 1989 Jeep Cherokee (20 mpg highway, 16 mpg city), a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee (20 mpg highway, 15 mpg city), a 2001 Audi Allroad (21 mpg highway, 15 mpg city), a 2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser (25 mpg highway, 20 mpg city), a 1985 Dodge 600 Convertible (26 mpg highway, 23 mpg city), and a 2002 Chrysler 300M (26 mpg highway, 18 mpg city). Kerry, however, only owns up to the latter two.
Then there's the 2002 Harley Davidson (his), two powerboats (one his, one hers), a power inflatable 2001 Novurania (his), and a Gulfstream II private jet (hers).
Via Randall Robinson, who supplies an image of Kerry’s latest purchase: a sturdy 2005 Ford Nuance. Obviously, this is just more blatant RNC media manipulation:
Kerry appeared on [Good Morning America] from the mine site, scrapping tensely with interviewer Charlie Gibson, who at one point intimated that the medals controversy might derail Kerry's presidential bid. When the segment was over, Kerry turned to two aides and complained, ''God, they're doing the bidding of the Republican National Committee."
Mentioned in this week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin are Tom Allard, Deborah Cameron, Andrew Stevenson, Robert Wainwright, Rachel Bennett, Simon Crean, Mark Latham, Bill Clinton, Dick Adams, David Letterman, John Kerry, Paris Hilton, Saddam Hussein, Benon Sevan, David Beckham, Michael Moore, George W. Bush, Peter Williamson, and Dick Johnson. Also in The Bulletin, Annita Keating reflects on the reaction to her separation disclosures of last week:
"People come up to me in the street. They smile, they say, 'Good on you'. Everywhere I walk, just this morning, they looked at me and smiled and said: 'Well done'," she said late last week. "The message has come across and I feel good, I feel good."
And Patrick Cook writes:
The nation is divided between those who believe there are WMDs in Iraq, and those who do not. Terrorists have now been discovered in Jordan with WMDs which they obtained from Iraq, via Syria. Technically, therefore, both sides of the argument are correct. This could be a win-win situation.
Twenty years from now, when Balloon Hockey is a major Olympic sport, Sheila O'Malley will be able to say: "I was there when it all began."
Someone had a birthday party at work, and there are balloons floating about on the floor. One wandered into our area. 4 of us work back here, 2 of us are women, and 2 are men. Everyone is very cool, I like them all.
The female co-worker and I started batting the balloon back and forth, as though we were at a volleyball game. It was all rather desultory, the two of us bored, talking to each other about other things, as we batted it back and forth.
Then the two guys got involved, and within literally THREE SECONDS, an entire game, with a complicated rule system emerged. A point-system blossomed forth, and disqualifications were discussed - all of this seemed to happen immediatley, like flowers opening up on speeded-up film. The game just MANIFESTED.
The finest office sport in which I participated was called Run Away From Gary, which involved a former heavyweight boxer, his unpredictable temper, and frantic attempts to avoid beatings.
The Ombudsgod discovers yet another ombudsman who deserves an ombudslap.
Also: According to the Gnu Hunter’s analysis, the events in Iraq reported by happy kidnapee Donna Mulhearn are bullshit.
James Morrow in The Australian:
ABC viewers were shocked to learn last week that the man who spent six years administering the UN's Iraqi oil-for-food program stood accused of receiving millions of dollars in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime. The official, Benon Sevan, had conveniently slipped off to a Queensland resort as the scandal broke and gave reporters who showed up on his hotel doorstep a brusque "no comment" before retreating to the comforts within.
But the ABC that aired the story and tracked Sevan down in Noosa Heads was not Australia's taxpayer-financed broadcaster but the American television network. Meanwhile, Australia's ABC has remained virtually silent on the story, choosing to run little more than a couple of newswire stories on Sevan's trip on their website.
It’s almost as if they wish this story would, like Sevan himself, simply go away. Perhaps the ABC is still following UN guidelines.
Attacked by street bandits, a proud citizen fights back rather than surrender his valuable possessions:
A Hamas suicide bomber blew up two armed Palestinians who tried to rob him at gun point in the Gaza Strip.
Rather than give up his explosives, the bomber detonated them, killing himself and the two robbers near the border fence between Gaza and Israel.
Hamas said the bomber was on his way to try to infiltrate into Israel, accompanied by another Hamas member and a guide, when they were stopped by the armed men.
The robbers forced the bomber to lie on the ground and tried to steal the bomb, but the militant detonated it, killing all three. The other Hamas man and the guide escaped.
Hamas says the dopey thieves worked for Israeli intelligence. Not likely.
(Via J.F. Beck)
Some guy, says he's from al Qaeda, describes Australian Prime Minister John Howard as wicked. Foreign minister Alexander Downer’s response:
"The feeling is entirely mutual."
In other Australian political news, NSW premier Bob Carr isn’t as smart as he thinks he is:
"A Pentagon report on global warming, recently leaked, describes how abrupt climate change could destabilise the geopolitical environment. Wars. Food shortages. Fights over fresh water. Disrupted energy supplies."
Carr is a sucker for enviro-doom stories. So, evidently, is the SMH’s Paul Sheehan, who doesn’t point out that the leaked Pentagon report isn’t a Pentagon report and wasn’t leaked.
The death in Iraq of US Marine Chance Phelps was mentioned earlier here. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Strobl now writes of returning Chance to his family in Wyoming. It’s a wonderful piece. Strobl begins:
Chance Phelps was wearing his Saint Christopher medal when he was killed on Good Friday. Eight days later, I handed the medallion to his mother.
I probably don’t have to say this, but read the whole thing.
Bill Clinton’s Presidential memoir, My Life, promises lots of hot lusty nuance:
The initial print run is 1.5 million, and Knopf president Sonny Mehta called it "the fullest and most nuanced account of a presidency ever written".
Nuance! People love nuance. The current “John Kerry” + “nuance” count at Google is running at 7,130, and just look at how well he’s doing in the polls.
Months after the fabled creature first attracted world attention, George W. Bush’s fake turkey appears in Margo Kingston’s Webdiary, via Margo reader Antonio Yegles:
Good to see Howard is following his master Bush’s stunt by secretly turning up in Iraq; as any loyal lapdog should of course. He forgot the fake turkey though.
As for Margo herself, she now seems to have reversed her opposition to Australian involvement:
More partisan political photo opportunities, more abuse of our troops for his personal advantage. Yuk. This bloke wants to single handedly destroy our one day of the year as a unifying moment for Australians. No shame, John. No shame.
He pulled out most of our forces after Saddam’s statue fell and organised fake ‘victory’ parades while our hapless soldiers’ colleagues from Britain and the US were dying in Iraq trying to create a peace.
Send more troops, Prime Minister! Margo has spoken!
The Australian Labor Party is concerned about our mere symbolic presence in Iraq. Here’s the beginning of an ABC report on these deep concerns:
The Federal Opposition says many of the Australian troops in Iraq should be brought home because they are not performing essential services and are getting bogged down.
We’re subject to 657 further words, mostly on the doomed state of Australia’s role, before we reach the final paragraph:
A planned visit by the Prime Minister to the Australian Frigate, HMAS Stuart was cancelled after the ship became involved in a rescue operation after a suicide attack.
Great timing, ALP! (and great underplayed reporting, ABC). Clearly this was just a symbolic rescue operation:
An Australian navy frigate has carried out an emergency mission in the Persian Gulf, rescuing Americans wounded in a suicide bombing which killed two members of the coalition forces.
A Seahawk helicopter and inflatable boat, known as a RHIB, were dispatched from HMAS Stuart to rescue members of a boarding party injured in the bomb attack near an Iraqi oil terminal.
A Defence Department spokesman could not confirm the number of people rescued by the Royal Australian Navy or the nature of their wounds but said all United States personnel were returned to HMAS Stuart for medical treatment.
(Via contributor J.F. Beck)
Glenn Milne reports the strangest tactic yet from an increasingly dippy Latham-led Labor Party:
In a move that will only serve to emphasise the growing divide between Mark Latham and his one-time idol Tony Blair over the issue of troops in Iraq, the British Prime Minister has refused an invitation to come to Australia to effectively launch the Opposition Leader's election campaign.
In what you'd have to describe as a bizarre initiative, interests close to Latham have sent an email to large corporations in Australia advertising a visit by not only Blair but Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt (an Australian by birth) and influential Labour backbencher Peter Mandelson.
An email obtained by Milne, sent to various corporations by an ALP-linked consultancy firm, reads:
"Attendees have not been finalised but are likely to include federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, Minister Patricia Hewitt, Peter Mandelson, MP and academic, and architect of third-way politics Tony Giddens. Discussions between these high-level political and policy leaders are likely to produce both immediate and long-term outcomes of great importance. It is intended that the three-day seminar provide the launch point for the policies Mark Latham will take to the electorate in the election."
Trouble is, Blair’s office says Blair won't be involved at all:
Despite it being Saturday in London, a spokesman for Blair got back within the hour, saying although 10 Downing Street never commented directly on the Prime Minister's travel plans for security reasons, he was authorised to give the following response to the summit proposal: "The Prime Minister doesn't engage in domestic political campaigns in other countries. It is a matter for the people of those countries to elect who they want to lead them."
Milne concludes:
If you think the Blair Government is in any way prepared to excuse Latham for his position on Iraq, you should have been in Berlin 3 1/2 weeks ago when Foreign Minister Alexander Downer met his British counterpart, Jack Straw. Downer was attending an international conference on rebuilding Afghanistan – which, in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings, coincided with concerted efforts to keep the coalition of the willing together in Iraq. Downer has told colleagues that Latham's position was well known, from the NATO Secretary-General to Straw.
Asked for his response to any potential Blair visit yesterday, Downer went right to the heart of the lunacy of the Hawker Britton proposal: "Mr Blair is always very welcome to come to Australia. And it would be an opportunity for him to explain to Mr Latham why it is not right to cut and run in Iraq."
On "cut and run", the Wall Street Journal has this to say about Latham’s views, and his recent Clinton sampling:
Mr. Latham's promises are longer -- or "more ambitious" as he insisted on radio late last week as he denied the charges of plagiarism -- though they are also somewhat less grammatical by consistently conjugating "every" in the plural. Less convincing was the argument by parliamentarians in Mr. Latham's Labor Party that when Mr. Howard and his ministers use the phrase "cut and run" about governments pulling troops out of Iraq, they are plagiarizing U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
Believe us -- cut and run predates Mr. Armitage. And everyone will know that's exactly what Mr. Latham intends when he promises to pull Australia's 2,000 troops out of Iraq.
Iraqi communist Salam Ali -- no fan of coalition occupation, to say the least -- nonetheless rejects the Pilger/Fisk/Moore notion of a "national resistance":
He addresses the nature of violent forces in Iraq other than Sadr's militia: "Yes, there is a patriotic element, we fully understand that. But, on the other hand, there are forces carrying out sabotage simply to destabilise the situation and to maintain the privileged position that they had before.
"There are remnants of the old regime. The dictatorship at the time had a sophisticated system of repression. They didn't just vanish," says Ali.
"They carry out operations in return for money paid by leading figures of the old regime, as well as tribal elements. Certain stratas thrived under the sanctions through the smuggling of oil."
Ali has strong words for those on the left here who have hailed the current upsurge in violence as a sign of a "national resistance."
"What is the agenda of these political groups?" he asks. "What alternative are they putting forward for Iraq and the region as a whole apart from violence and destabilisation and turning Iraq into a battlefield to fight their own wars against America?
"Anybody can go to Baghdad and they can detect straight away that the people simply are not part of it. They've had enough wars and killing.
"These people who are advocating support for ‘national resistance’ have to convince us - how will this in any way advance the causes of peace, democracy and social progress?"
It won't. But that's not their aim.
(Via Jim Nolan)
AIEEEEEE! Tipsy Australian Democrat Andrew Bartlett wants to start blogging:
Senator Bartlett said he was looking at new ways of using the site, such as making it more interactive through a "blog", or online journal to which website visitors could contribute.
"It's important because politics is about communicating ideas," Senator Bartlett said.
Bartlett is a big fan of interactively communicating ideas.
The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan is out by a decade -- and in his very first paragraph, too:
John Howard is expected to attend a de facto world summit on Iraq in Paris on June 5, where European heads of state and leaders of coalition forces will be meeting ahead of the 50th anniversary of D-Day.
June 6 is the tenth anniversary of the 50th anniversary of D-Day.
Frank Devine, leader of the shadowy Sydney-based Devine cabal, responds to Phillip Adams’ frightened shrieking:
His yearnings for collectivism led Phillip Adams into the egregious error of denouncing the published comments of "the Devines". No such entity exists in Australian journalism. Including me, three members of our family practise the profession but none of us wields influence over nor takes responsibility for the work of the others. We are, in fact, actively unco-operative and secretive, there being limited room at the top.
One way to make more room: remove Adams.
Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder doesn’t even draw the strip these days. The street-talkin’ honky-hater just sits around thinking up great jokes which he then hands over to an underling:
He passed the sketching and inking duties to a Boston-based artist, Jennifer Seng, around the time of the Condoleezza Rice flap, last fall. “If something had to give, it was going to be the art,” he told me. “I think I’m a better writer than artist.”
Too close to call, Aaron.
(Via New Criterion)
Fascinating article by Fairfax feature writer Andrew Rule on Korean War sniper Ian Robertson, now 77:
In all of modern warfare, few were more fatally efficient than this kindly grandfather. No one knows just how many dozen enemy soldiers he killed in eight bone-chilling months in Korea, except the man himself. And he's not saying much.
Far from it; Rule gently encourages Robertson -- who "could group 15 rounds in a space smaller than his fist at 300 metres, hit a target the size of a man's head at 600 metres, and was confident of hitting a man from 800 to 1000 metres if conditions were right" -- to say a great deal. Rule is one of Australia’s best.
Via Clear and Present:
Democrats are furious about a statement by Republicans saying that comparing one of their candidates to presidential candidate John Kerry would be worse than comparing someone to the Ku Klux Klan.
The dispute started when The New York Times inadvertently published a photo of Republican Senate candidate Pete Coors above a story about a KKK member who murdered a black sharecropper. The Times published a correction Saturday.
Cinnamon Watson, spokeswoman for Coors, said the error was "so outrageous it's kind of funny. It could have been worse. Pete could have been identified as John Kerry."
Lots of other fun newsy links over at C&P. Speaking of Kerry, Mark Steyn asks:
Do Americans want to hand over responsibility for Iraq to someone who won't even take responsibility for the car in his driveway?
Kerry lately seems to have forgotten the First Rule of politics: be nice to children:
Bored with the political speechmaking in Harlem's Alhambra Ballroom, 6-year-old Iris Kerry Kaler reached out with both arms for her uncle, Sen. John Kerry, to pick her up.
The Massachusetts senator, however, ignored his niece's entreaty, offering Iris only an awkward pat on the stomach despite the array of television cameras poised to record the potentially precious moment.
Look, I know the guy’s still recovering from shoulder surgery, but a pat on the stomach was all he could manage? Another rule of politics: remember what the hell you’re meant to be doing:
Mrs. Kerry asked Rep. Bob Brady, master of ceremonies at the event, whether she could introduce Gov. Edward Rendell (who in turn would introduce the prospective Democratic presidential nominee). The candidate's wife then launched into a 10-minute speech about her early life in Mozambique and on the iniquities of George W. Bush, but forgot to introduce Rendell.
After the event concluded, Brady told a Kerry aide: "Next time you come to Philadelphia, leave her in Pittsburgh."
Paris blogger Karibu points out that I’m wrong to characterise strong French tactics against terrorism as anything new:
France ... was one of the first Western countries to fight against Islamic terrorism. In December 1994, the Groupe Islamiste Armé (GIA or AIG in English) hijacked an Air France plane in Algiers; following long negociations, the plane was allowed to fly to Marseilles. Meanwhile, a paid informant told to the French embassy in Algiers that the objective of the terrorists was the crash the plane in the middle of Paris. Back in Marseilles, the terrorist asked for 27 tons of fuel to fly to Paris, which confirmed to the French authorities that the GIA wanted to hit Paris. A few hours later, the GIGN (French SWAT forces) stormed the plane, killing all the bad boys.
A few months later, bombs started to explode in Paris subway killing twelve people (the worst attack was at the St Michel station in July 1995, killing ten and wounding a hundred people). Once again, the GIA was behind this and Khaled Kelkal (a 24 years old Algerian), the supposed mastermind, was killed by the police later in September 1995. The GIA is supposed to have links with al-Qaeda.
Karibu's point is well made. These terrorist-killing experts would be useful in Iraq.
"Armed with guns, tanks and military helicopters, Action Man represented plucky British soldiering to a generation of boys," reports The Guardian. Not any more he doesn’t:
Industry experts accuse manufacturer Hasbro of ignoring children's wishes in a politically correct quest to move Action Man away from gung-ho fighting in the wake of the 11 September attacks.
Marcello Rossi, manager of Toymaster in Bournemouth, said: 'Our customers want the old Action Man. Kids want to play out battles. We get them in the shop saying: "I want a helicopter, I want a tank."'
Ronnie Dungan, editor of Toy News magazine, added: 'When I was a kid he was in Second World War regalia and a fighting man. Now he's in cycling shorts.'
Yikes! Sounds like Action Man has morphed into Kerry Person.
Those Japanese hostages have received the homecoming they deserve:
The young Japanese civilians taken hostage in Iraq returned home this week, not to the warmth of a yellow-ribbon embrace but to a disapproving nation’s cold stare.
The first three hostages, including a woman who helped street children on the streets of Baghdad, first appeared on television two weeks ago as their knife-brandishing kidnappers threatened to slit their throats. A few days after their release, they landed here on Sunday, in the eye of a peculiarly Japanese storm.
“You got what you deserve!” read one hand-written sign at the airport where they landed. “You are Japan’s shame,” another wrote on the Web site of one of the former hostages. They had “caused trouble” for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced it would bill the former hostages $6,000 for air fare.
In other cheery news, George Galloway has been the target of a wonderful newspaper stunt:
Saddam-supporting MP George Galloway blew his top yesterday after The Sun sent him a barrel of OIL.
Mr Galloway claims he has never seen one — so we arranged for him to have his own 200-litre drum.
It sat in his drive for three hours before he dragged it away and hid it from view in an 8ft privet hedge.
Can we trust Robert Fisk's reporting of complex events in the Middle East? Even his most devoted supporters might question Fisk's reliability after reading this:
Last Sunday, I was invited to talk on Irish television's TV3 lunchtime programme on Iraq and President Bush's support for Sharon's new wall on the West Bank. Towards the end of the programme, Tom Cooney, a law lecturer at University College, Dublin, suddenly claimed that I had called an Israeli army unit a "rabble" (absolutely correct - they are) and that I reported they had committed a massacre in Jenin in 2002.
I did not say they committed a massacre. But I should have. A subsequent investigation showed that Israeli troops had knowingly shot down innocent civilians, killed a female nurse and driven a vehicle over a paraplegic in a wheelchair. "Blood libel!" Cooney screamed.
Check the tape and you'll discover that Fisk can't even report his own television appearances accurately. Cooney never screams -- and it is Fisk, rather than Cooney, who uses the term "rabble". Fisk claims not to have accused the Israeli army of committing a massacre; he actually went further, writing that the Israeli army "has not yet finished filling the mass graves of Jenin".
Fisk lies.
(Via Damian Penny)
"Why is international public opinion not outraged at the treatment of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies?" asks Pamela Bone. "Why is it easier for millions of people around the world to see America as the great evil, rather than the countries in which governments ignore such horrific abuses of women?"
Hilariously, these questions are asked in, of all places, The Age.
Noticed a decline in the quality of The Spectator lately? Mark Steyn has:
Last week's Spec was the absolute worst in all the time I've been writing for it.
Steyn's view isn't a solitary one.
The environment -- capricious bitch-freak that it is -- tries to take out some Boston environmentalists:
A gust of wind knocked over scaffolding at an Earth Day concert Saturday, injuring nine people, police said.
Just the band Third Eye Blind was scheduled to take the stage at the band shell on the Charles River, witnesses said wind caught a banner that was attached to the sound tower, knocking it into the VIP section of the audience.
The VIP section of an Earth Day concert; what a fun crowd that would be. A while ago I wrote a column about the declining influence of the extreme greens (no longer online -- here’s an extract). Looks like the decline is continuing:
Gallup's annual Earth Day poll has found that the environment is near the bottom of the nation's concerns, outranking only worries about race relations.
Thirty-five percent of Americans fret over the quality of the environment, according to the poll of 1,005 randomly selected adults conducted March 8-11 and released yesterday. It is "not a pressing concern," said Gallup Organization analyst Lydia Saad.
Australia’s foreign minister says Madeleine Albright was gunning for war five years before Bush invaded:
In 1998, then US secretary of state Madeleine Albright wanted to take military action to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Mr Downer said.
"That was her view in 1998," he told Channel 10.
But Mr Downer said the focus shifted once George W. Bush took over as US president.
"In 2001, I don't recall there being too much focus in our conversations with the Americans about Iraq," he said.
• Canada’s Damian Penny is currently en route to Edinburgh, thereby avoiding his country’s deadly health care system. He will, however, be glassed as soon as he gets off the train, in accordance with local custom.
• Chase Me Ladies reveals the tomato method of seduction.
• The women behind last week’s release of photographs depicting the dead returning from Iraq have an interesting Halliburton history, as Jim Miller points out.
• You think I’m hot for the Michael Moore fat jokes? Check out this fantastic Mikey fat fest from Ace of Spades. It’s supersized!
• Excellent Saudi blogger Alhamedi Alanezi presents his ten-point plan to improve public executions, and also writes: “When the Saudi people finally rise up in revolt and throw out the House of Saud, it won't be for democratic reform, and it won't be for an islamic republic. It'll be about mobile phones.”
• Mark Steyn and Glenn Reynolds have all your UNSCAM needs completely covered.
• Powerline continues its chilling study of John Kerry’s fashion sense.
• Australia’s finest blogger? Well, maybe, if you don’t count this guy.
• Kerry Dupont, a creative friend of liberation, has sent loads of computer equipment to Iraqi bloggers. (Via Jeff Jarvis.)
• No reason for posting this, other than it’s pretty.
Folks (and Tim), I apologize for breaking in here, but I have to say something. Please, please, please, when you comment, don't do this. I mean it. I offer this webspace to Tim Blair to post entries as long as he wants, not everyone in the entire universe. If you have something so important to say that it takes up several screens, get your own website and put it there, and give us the url.
Anti-war leftoids cry when cartoon soldiers lose a leg and laugh when a real soldier loses his life.
UPDATE. The Chicago Boyz have more on the tragedy of limbless drawings, and those who are moved by them.
Incoming! John Howard hits Iraq:
Prime Minister John Howard today made a surprise visit to Baghdad for Anzac Day services as around Australia tens of thousands of people honoured the Anzac spirit.
Under extraordinary security arrangements, Mr Howard flew to Iraq for his first visit since Australia sent troops as part of the US-led invasion force in March last year.
He was to attend a dawn service and spend some time talking to troops and other Australian representatives on the ground in the capital.
Australia has 90 air traffic controllers in Baghdad, plus a detachment of about 90 Army personnel and 53 soldiers who are in Iraq to assist in the training of the Iraqi armed forces.
The media will hate this. Especially once Howard tries to serve troops a plastic wallaby.
Just when the George W. Bush fake turkey fantasy seemed to have been completely played out, along comes Mark Lawson -- the pale pundit who began the whole fakeness debacle in the first place -- to revive it:
George Bush has so far struggled to locate his chosen photo: the turkey he was pictured serving in Iraq proved embarrassingly to be fake ...
Once again: the turkey was decorative, but real. Bush was pictured holding it, not serving it. Mark Lawson is a 100-kilogram albino axolotl, not a journalist. Pray continue, axo-dude:
President Bush's handlers might have consoled themselves that there was at least no risk of a bimbo picture coming out but, this week, there was much worse. America started to see the photographs Bush was dedicated to suppressing.
In a development which must have made Bush wish he lived under the British system of state secrecy, 350 of these censored images of the dead have been released to an internet lobbyist under freedom of information legislation.
Lawson himself is free of information. Those photographs included many images associated with the Columbia disaster.
The White House has claimed that they were protecting the dignity of the dead and the privacy of their families, but many families were desperate for their lost to have their moment on the evening news.
Name them.
Although John Kerry remains dangerously silent and vague for a man who plans to be in the White House in less than nine months, this may be seen as the week when George Bush lost control of his photograph album. The publication of the cadaver montage - in which Bush's face is made up of squares containing smiles and stares of military men and women who are now all dust - threatens to become one of the most powerful propaganda images in history.
It won’t. Besides which, it isn’t a cadaver montage; that would be a montage composed of pictures of cadavers. Lawson is incredibly stupid.
And now the coffin shots are out. Forced to explain how it can simultaneously be heroic to die for your country, but necessary to be shipped back in a silence and secrecy generally associated with shame, Bush may be on the way to becoming a president whose administration was snapped by photographs.
Lawson thinks Americans didn’t know people were dying in Iraq until they saw these photographs, and that this sudden realisation will shock them into voting Bush out. Memo to sad bastard Mark: they already knew, and Bush’s numbers keep climbing:
With large areas of Iraq in chaos, more than 700 US troops dead, and intense criticism of his failure to do more against al-Qa'ida in the first months of his presidency, George W. Bush might have expected to see his re-election campaign take at least a temporary hit.
Instead, Bush appears to have weathered one of the worst periods of his presidency with aplomb, and even increased his margin over Democrat challenger Senator John Kerry, according to two polls this week.
Imagine the reaction if Bush had exploited the return of flag-draped coffins for patriotic Presidential photo-ops; the anti-war Left would have condemned him. As it is, the clueless anti-warriors have thrust these images before a public largely committed to their troops, and who will most likely react by pushing Bush’s polling even higher.
(Via Peter Briffa, Michael Pollard, and reader Andrew Morton)
Phillip Adams lashes out at those who would question or criticise him:
There is a new sort of Australian in public life who, accusing fellow Australians of being unAustralian, expresses his or her patriotism by singing Hail To The Chief rather than Waltzing Matilda. These whackers, hereinafter known as Bushwhackers, congregate in right-wing politics, shock-jockery and both tabloid and broadsheet punditry. They worship George Bush Jr.
Why would Bushwhackers -- whackers of Bush -- worship him? In fact, they don’t.
To them, Dubya is no mere president but the Messiah. As such, he’s the second coming, sharing the name and intensifying the ideological proclivities of George Bush Snr. So devout are the Bushwhackers, they see even his lies as sacred texts. The Bushwhackers’ president, their burning Bush, is transcendent, and God help anyone who blasphemes with questioning or criticism.
Phil imagines that his shallowness, distortions, mistakes, idiocies, blindness, confusion, and incompetence amount to “questioning” and “criticism”. God help him.
Such is the passion of Australia’s Bushwhackers that their patriotism is not directed at the Australian flag they profess to love, but at the Stars and Stripes. To them, the United States is truly the land of the brave, the home of the free, and, yes, has a manifest destiny to dominate and democratise the entire planet, according to the dogmas of their omniscient and omnipresent prophet – and his hyperactive disciples, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
Sounds like Phil is accusing us right-wingers of being ... traitors.
Having wrapped themselves in both flags, any previous and primary allegiance to our country is sublimated in a rapturous acquiescence to theirs.
Excuse me, Phil, but it isn’t us US suckups who keep rewriting articles from America.
The likes of Tim Blair and Imre Salusinszky, of Gerard Henderson and Andrew Bolt, ignore Bush’s long history of mediocrity and mendacity. They and their ilk turn deaf ears to documented accounts of his sleazy business affairs and seem indifferent to the fact that, as governor of Texas ("all Stetson, no cattle"), he set an all-time record by approving the executions of 150 people.
Indifferent? Hey, I applaud it.
Bush’s business connections with big oil, indeed with the bin Laden family, with many of the worst sleazes in American corporate life (up to and including the grand larcenists of Exxon), mean nothing to his grovelling acolytes in Australia who fill their speeches, their broadcasts or their newspaper columns with uncritical drivel and bunkum. Week after week they try to out-twaddle and out-bunkum each other, their styles recalling the obeisances of palace eunuchs or the propagandists of Kim Il Sung. And they don’t hesitate to produce snarling slanders on anyone who sees Bush for what he is.
You want snarling slander? Here’s a fine example.
This is the most intriguing and ominous aspect of their behaviour – their tendency to brand dissidents as traitors. To criticise Bush’s brand of hegemony is anti-American. (Of course, if that’s true, at least 50 per cent of Americans are guilty of this heresy.) Moreover, Australian critics of Bush are deemed, by extension, to be anti-Australian.
According to Phil, the “most intriguing and ominous aspect” of our behaviour is our “tendency” to brand the anti-Bush crowd as traitors. Got stacks of evidence to back this up, Phil? I mean, if it’s a tendency, you must have reams of quotes from me and Imre and Henderson and Bolt repeatedly slamming people who disagree with Bush as “traitors”, right?
Consider former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill’s simultaneously hilarious and horrifying revelations about Bush. His verdict on meetings between Bush and his senior people? Like "a blind man in a roomful of the deaf". Now former White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke has revealed that the Bush Administration downplayed terrorism as an issue – and that national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, when briefed on the emergency and immensity of the threat, seemed not to have heard of al-Qa’ida.
Adams hasn’t heard of research.
Joe McCarthy’s body lies mouldering in the grave but his nasty little soul goes marching on. But do not despair. This too shall pass. The Bushfires will be extinguished and, after a while, we’ll see a regrowth in American democracy. And in ours?
Those who disagree with Adams are McCarthyites. This just might count as another “snarling slander”.
UPDATE. Reader MB points out that Phil doesn’t know his Exxons from his Enrons.
UPDATE II. More on the moron from Professor Bunyip, Bernie Slattery, and the Gnu Hunter.
To celebrate Earth Day, this week I picked up a Volkswagen Touareg. Five litres. Ten diesel-fired cylinders. Two turbochargers. Seven hundred and fifty Newton metres of torque.
What does it mean, this “torque” word? It’s a technical term for pulling or towing power; as a point of comparison, the 3.8 litre V6 used in popular General Motors vehicles here and in the US generates less than half that amount. In practical terms, 750Nm means that if you’ve always believed Tasmania should be hauled closer to the mainland, now you can do something about it.
Yesterday, using steel towing cables, I re-routed some train lines and extended the front of the house all the way to the street. Torque is fun! Full review shortly. Also to come: storming Lakemba in a Chrysler Crossfire -- an exclusive, web-only report.
Mike Carlton incorporates Churchill, Lincoln, King, Kennedy, and Whitlam in this Latham speech parody:
In the course of human events, four score and seven years ago, a date which will live in infamy, I had a dream that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. But now the torch has been passed to a new generation of Aussies. Blessed are the peacemakers. We shall never surrender. This was their finest hour. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. It's time.
Beating him to the joke, commenter CurrencyLad earlier posted his own Latham speech -- incorporating King, Churchill, Nixon, Lincoln, Kennedy, and Whitlam. Unlike Carlton's lazy, disjointed effort, this actually flows:
I have a dream that never before in the field of human history have the better angels of my nature let me down like this. People need to know whether their Opposition Leader is a copycat. Well, I'm not a copycat! Nevertheless, I choose to apologise in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard. It is my melancholy duty. Without any inhibitions of any kind I make it quite clear that I look to originality, free of any pangs as to my traditional links or kinship with plagiarism. It's time.
Better jokes, faster: it’s the Internet way! (Given Carlton’s deadline for today’s column, it would have been impossible for him to read CurrencyLad’s gag before filing; still, I’m told Mike sometimes drops by. Hi, Mike! Donations at left! Thank you!)
Robert Fisk often publishes ... well, let’s call it “inaccurate information”, as in this piece, in which Fisk refers to “the mass graves of Jenin.” So it’s fun to see how Fisk reacts when he believes he’s been described inaccurately.
(Via LGF)
Peaceniks are alarmed by sinister mil-bears:
A project to provide children in Iraq with teddy bears has been criticised by peace campaigners, as the toys are made from military uniforms.
Volunteers at the US RAF Lakenheath base in Suffolk have been producing the soft toys from old and torn uniforms which were found in an attic.
These camo-clad Halliteddies will traumatise Iraqi toddlers, claim the peaceful:
Annie Wimbush, of Suffolk 4 Peace, said the material being used was inappropriate.
"The camouflage material, the uniform material that's being used could in fact trigger trauma symptoms in a child as well as relieve them," she said.
Reports that RAF volunteers were planning to ship depleted-uranium Lego blocks are yet to be confirmed.
Jeff Jarvis alerts the President of the Tribune media group to the power of blogs.
UNSCAM is finally receiving notice in the Australian media, albeit via UK-sourced reports. As for Benon Sevan -- who is either the guy at the centre of the scam, or a planet located deep within the Abell 1835 galaxy cluster -- the chase continues; Sevan has now left Australia and is ducking reporters in New York.
UPDATE. Having earlier ignored UNSCAM, The Guardian hires an expert insider to explain the deal to its readers.
Two years ago Pat Tillman turned his back on a $3.6 million NFL contract to become a US Army Ranger -- for $1,000 per month.
Tillman is now reported to have been killed during fighting in Afghanistan:
Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety who left football to become an Army Ranger, was killed in southeastern Afghanistan, according to published reports.
Tillman, who attended Arizona State University, returned from his honeymoon in 2002 having decided to give up his seven-figure NFL salary to join the Army with his brother.
He was with the Army Special Forces in Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have been trying to chase down Osama bin Laden and members of his al-Qaeda terrorist group. During major combat in war with Iraq, Tillman was reportedly stationed with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in northern Iraq.
The Army has refused to confirm Tillman's death. He was 27.
Further to Thursday’s news of Sydney’s culturally-distinct gang rapists, here’s another report:
After their sentences were handed down, one said in court: "We did not commit this crime, the crime was committed against us. The police set us up because we are Muslims, your honour."
A man in the public gallery yelled out: "F---in' dickhead."
And here’s an update, from Jon Lauck, to this post by Ryne McClaren.
Hey, agitators! You’ll be the toast of the next anti-Israel, anti-Bush, anti-everything rally in this exclusive range of Arabic-language apparel. So chic, so now, so Palestinian solidarity! Just don’t tell anyone what the cool script actually says ...
Kerry rocks! Well, let’s be accurate; perhaps it’s only his family that rocks. We’re yet to hear John Kerry’s nuanced explanation of his rockness. On SUVs, however, Kerry sets the record straight:
Does John Kerry, who supports higher automobile fuel economy standards, own a gas-guzzling SUV? He does, but says it belongs to the family, not to him.
Kerry thought for a second when asked whether his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had a Suburban at their Ketchum, Idaho, home. Kerry said he owns and drives a Dodge 600 and recently bought a Chrysler 300M. He said his wife owns the Chevrolet SUV.
"The family has it. I don't have it," he said.
Maybe Mrs. Heinz Kerry should be the Democratic candidate. Compare John Kerry’s blathering answers to an Iranian activist’s questions in this report to Teresa’s direct, waffle-free response:
I think the only engagement will be to end the regime, to collapse the regime.
Well said, soup lady!
Liberation hasn’t worked. We idealists who imagined a safe, peaceful nation emerging from decades of tyranny were wrong, and we should admit that our bid to impose Western-style democracy has led to shocking lawlessness. Everything is worse now than it was under a government that treated the majority of its citizens as worthless non-people.
Maybe South Africa was better off during apartheid:
In reading articles marking 10 years since the end of South Africa apartheid, I was struck by the similarities between that country’s struggle since liberation and the current struggle since the liberation of Iraq. Likewise, I was struck by the relative silence of the left on the real problems South Africa has faced in the past 10 years.
In the early 1990’s, the movement against apartheid was one of the most passionate cause of the American left. The struggle for freedom is South Africa ended on April 27th 1994 when over 90% of the people of that country went to the polls to elect the first democratic government the country had ever seen. Since that time, South Africa has been one of the most, if not the most, dangerous place to live on the planet.
Read the rest, from a reader at Andrew Sullivan's site. South Africa is a freakin' quagmire.
Who is going to police this? Crack squads?
John Pilger writes:
Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St Matthew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad, and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country.
Well, of course. Who’s going to mess with the Great Leader’s beloved spokesboy?
Once, in the Edwardian colonnade of Baghdad's book market, a young man shouted something at me about the hardship his family had been forced to endure under the embargo imposed by America and Britain.
Memo to JP: Saddam is no longer in power. You don’t have to keep repeating the sanctions lie.
Were I to undertake the same journey in Iraq today, I might not return alive.
Only one way to find out. You need some help with the airfare, John?
With the most lethal weapons that billions of dollars can buy, and the threats of their cowboy generals and the panic-stricken brutality of their foot soldiers, more than 120,000 of these invaders have ripped up the fabric of a nation that survived the years of Saddam Hussein, just as they oversaw the destruction of its artefacts.
On the contrary: the invaders have overseen the restoration of artefacts.
They have brought to Iraq a daily, murderous violence which surpasses that of a tyrant who never promised a fake democracy.
Actually, he did.
Even now, as the uprising spreads, there is only cryptic gesturing at the obvious: that this is a war of national liberation and that the enemy is "us". The pro-invasion Sydney Morning Herald is typical.
The Sydney Morning Herald opposed the war. Oh, no -- my FactChecker 5000 just exploded! Guess I'll spend the rest of the afternoon eating tacos.
Oily United Nations fundraiser Benon Sevan and pompous Australian economy-wrecker Gough Whitlam.
Attention, conservative politicians! Are there any lefties on your staff? Perhaps you employ them to write speeches. Well, beware! They cannot be trusted, as former speechwriter Christopher Sheil indicates:
I remember once amusing myself back in the late '80s by burying little phrases from Gorbachev's speeches in screeds I used to serve up to a National Party minister. There was nothing included that the minister didn't support, of course, but I enjoyed my secret insider's chuckle as I read hansard, knowing he would have been appalled about the source. And then there was the time I actually did rifle a stack of Clinton's stuff on family policy for a Liberal minister's speech, which he was very happy with, because he was trying to convince the community sector of his bona fides in the area.
If the press had discovered these little stunts, the politicians Sheil worked for would have been humiliated. Fire all lefties now, lest their pranks undermine you!
Ryne McClaren spells things out to Sioux Falls Argus Leader editor Randell Beck. Brilliant work.
Conspiracy merchant Tony Kevin runs a semi-literate eye over Bob Woodward’s new book, and announces:
It appears that our SAS was the first coalition force to take up arms inside Iraq.
Tony? We knew this a whole year ago.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Caroline Overington reports:
Last Sunday a newspaper in Seattle, Washington, published a rare photograph of soldiers' coffins, each of them containing the body of an American who had died in Iraq.
The coffins, each draped with the Stars and Stripes, had been loaded into the back of a cargo aircraft for a final journey to the US, where they would be buried. There were at least 18 of them in the picture, which was taken by a 50-year-old civilian contractor, Tami Silicio.
Why did Silicio take the photograph? A friend says she "wanted to share the image with the American people." Silicio says "the families would be proud to see their sons and daughters saluted like that."
On Wednesday Ms Silicio engaged an agent, who offered her photograph to newspaper outlets for $1400 for one-time, non-exclusive use.
UPDATE. Incredibly, the Melbourne Age’s version of Overington’s story omits the crucial detail of Silicio's sales deal, and presents her as a free-speech martyr. HELLO, AGE? HELLO? WE HAVE THE INTERNET! WE KNOW WHEN YOU'RE TWISTING THINGS!
It's Earth Day! (Or it was, yesterday, in futuristic Australia!) So plant a tree!
Have a tree planted in your behalf in an Israeli Air Force base and help strengthen Israel + Israel satellite map which is composed of three satellite images that were acquired by Landsat 7 at an altitude of 705 kilometers and were processed by computer.
Why stop at one? Plant ten trees!
Have 10 Trees planted in your behalf in an Israeli Air Force base + receive an Israel satellite map which is composed of three satellite images + receive a flag of Israel + 3 Israel-USA Lapel Pins + Israel Flag Cap.
The green movement always claims to be apolitical. Let’s see them support this bold environmental initiative!
The ABC’s North American correspondent Lisa Millar mentioned in a news report yesterday (no link available) that George W. Bush was “struggling to maintain support” among the US electorate. Really, Lisa?
It is hard to imagine a worse month of news for President Bush's re- election efforts than the past four weeks: 100 Americans killed in Iraq, chaos in Fallujah and wrenching public questions about the administration's pre-Sept. 11, 2001, intelligence failures.
Yet during that same time frame, Bush's approval rating has remained steady with voters, and his standing against John Kerry has actually improved, leaving Democrats to wonder: If that was a bad month for Bush, what would a good month look like?
A good month? For Bush? The ABC won’t hear of it. Peggy Noonan and Richard Cohen further examine the inexplicable Bush popularity syndrome, while Hugh Hewitt studies Bush’s opponent, whose supporters believe has enjoyed a very good month indeed:
Over at JohnKerry.com's campaign blog, they're referring to Kerry's appearance on Meet the Press as a "home run." If that was a home run, I'd hate to see Kerry strike out. On question after question, Kerry managed to turn under-armed softballs into high and tight strikes, and the damage from his reflexive parsing and dodging are just beginning to be recognized.
The Weekly World News reports: EUROPE TO BECOME GIANT THEME PARK!
Member nations of the European Union have announced plans to discontinue their status as individual countries in order to merge into one giant theme park!
The new park will be called EuroWorld and will cover the entire continent of what is now known as Europe. The decision was made by the EU countries in response to their collective realization that no one in Europe has had an innovative idea in well over a century.
With nothing new to offer visitors, the European countries decided to stop pretending they were still relevant, and to start celebrating their colorful pasts.
"Our stagnant continent has been a virtual museum for decades," explains an unnamed EU representative. "Many could argue that we already were nothing more than an amusement park. The decision to legally become a large theme park is really only a formality."
There’s more. Read the whole thing, especially for news of planned prostitute races in Amsterdam.
(Via Combustible Boy)
Yasser’s getting jumpy:
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat expelled a group of 21 members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades from his West Bank headquarters overnight, a leader of the militant faction said.
"Yasser Arafat forced me and 20 of my comrades from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to leave the Muqataa," Ali Barghuti, one of the leaders of the organisation in theWest Bank, told AFP.
"Arafat has abandoned us. It's a crime, because we are above all members of Fatah and he should protect us.
"He has also caved into Israel which has threatened to attack the Muqataa."
The IDF's attacks seem to be working on a whole bunch of levels.
Zem writes: "There's a curious turn of phrase in this BBC piece on Spielberg's plan to make a film about the '72 Olympic assassinations. It seems the Israeli athletes were kidnapped by activists, not terrorists; and their deaths, while chronologically subsequent to the abduction, were of unspecified causes":
The Israelis died after being taken hostage by Palestinian activists at the 1972 summer games in Munich.
The item also mentions “murder” and “killings”, but not in the same paragraph as the only mention of the actual murderers. Perhaps the BBC needs to get some new instructors at its impartiality seminars:
BBC reporters are receiving training
