evacuate the city, while we still have a chance

Key words:

terror alert: a bad poll number politicians need to change by submersion.

terrorist training camps: anywhere in pakistan or afghansitan or paintball facilities throughout the known universe. Two Muslims playing Grand Theft Auto on a playstation in a room can also be classified as a terrorist training camp.

Links: six degrees of seperation taken as far as possible, if you once visited the same shopping centre as somebody else, you have a link. Be vigilant about where you place your feet, a terrorist may have stood in the exact same position. eg:

"No definite link with 7/7 has yet been established, but with this type of investigation you inevitably end up with cross-overs and indirect links. I would be amazed if at some point we don't find some links with these individuals and others, however indirect."
A police source added: "It is inevitable we will find some links, however tangential. We are prepared for that."

Pakistan: never go there, all terrorists go there, therefor if you go there, you are a terrorist.

Interogation: asking politely with a cheese grater and rubber hose to sign a form with the names of people you may (or may not) have met, or could possibly have met if you weren't being interogated. Known to induce the serious condition, "plots and links".

Believe: its what intelligence agencies do and politicians exploit.

intelligence agencies: people who believe anything that will get you arrested

items which could be used to make a bomb: a door handle, three balloons and matches.

bomb making equipment: a red balloon, household cleaner and a 1994 copy of Big Tits Parade.

a police source: a government scource of spin

Mastermind: a gameshow of the 70's, can also refer to anyone who can solve a rubics cube in under three days or a person who can make up the most outrageous shit while being tortured, sorry, interogated or aiding police in their inquiries. Should always be used with the words Alqueda in the same paragraph.

unconfirmed: made up shit to be believed from anonymouse government scource. eg

Since his arrest in Pakistan, the security services in that country have given a series of unconfirmed briefings claiming that al-Qa'ida's leadership sanctioned the alleged airliner plot, and that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the terrorist organisation's second-in-command, is likely to have approved the plan. These allegations have not been confirmed by British anti-terrorist sources, some of whom have suggested that the Pakistani authorities are making exaggerated claims.

confirmed: see unconfirmed, but retracted two days later eg:

A spokeswoman for the Boston FBI yesterday confirmed that Ms Mayo had been carrying hand lotion, a screwdriver, matches and an unspecified number of cigarette lighters in her hand luggage. (All later retracted as completely false, yet still reported in media as confirmed.)

alleged: the guilty, see also under Suspects

9/11: like 7/7 or 23 skiddo, random numbers possesed of the innate ability to prove guilt. Generally will also be in the same sentence or paragraph as links. Works a little like the proven scientific theory of numerology.

mass murder on an unbelievable scale: see unconfirmed, alleged, and Pakistan. Like the science of numerolgy, pick a population of scale (13 million) divide by an imaginary number of people who could die at any one moment from a single action (13 million) and make a head line that is aimed to ensure that you are the one who will die. Answer to equation: 1 (you), caution known to induce panic in an easily panicked population, so use no more than once every news cycle, unless on fox, where it should be main headline every hour, everyday.

Plot: mass murder on an unbelievable scale, prior to, but post visiting pakistan

Scepticism: definition unknown

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1852836,00.html
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From a while back but struck me as racial profiling at its commercial best, Helen Coonan in announcing her new media ownership laws was asked if this would mean that the Aljazeera network could buy into the Australian market.

TONY JONES: Yes, I just don't understand what the rules mean. I mean, for example, if al-Jazeera or al-Arabia wanted to buy a free-to-air commercial television station here, would that be ruled against our national interests?

SENATOR HELEN COONAN: Well, I mean, that's a very extreme example and I doubt very much that would pass the test, but it's entirely a hypothetical and there's nothing in the way in which the rules are normally applied which could give anyone concern that the national interest wouldn't be safeguarded if there were a proposal of that character.

When asked the same question on the steps of parliament, her statement ran along the lines of "we would never allow those sorts of people to buy into the market". Aljazeera refused simply because it is Arab owned and presents a well respected, differing voice to Rupert Murdoch's king making propoganda? The stock market is now offically racially profiling. Welcome to the new world, where Chinese and all Arabs are vetted at the door to the trading room.

28 days

So what do we know about the alleged, bigger than 9/11 plot currently being played out in the UK and splashed around the world?

So far:

John Howard has condemned as disgusting those arrested for planning on using a baby as a sheild for a bomb, does anyone recall the children overboard affair? Or story he told of Saddam's infamous Human Paper Shredder?

Dick Cheney and The Furry Bush have proclaimed a victory over these "islamofascists". I do believe that they have missed the word "alleged", and the ever diminishing foundation of UK/US/AUST law, innocent until proven guilty. Ah fuk it, mission accomplished, arrest is as good as guilt. The worst part is that the Bush regime were given an early warning of the arrests and made great political setups to undermine the Democrats when the raids went down, there is even the suggestion that the raids were held at the time they were through Bush Regime pressure. Ugly politics at its karl rove worst.

from cbs news:

Just two days ago, our Homeland Security Secretary made a highly-spun speech, hinting that new anti terror laws are on their way and that those who disagree with further limitations by this Government on our freedom, “just don’t get it”. Of course he knew about the story that was about to break and of course he knew about the threat to our safety and security that the police were about to reveal. And he couldn’t resist using that knowledge, so that a few hours later he would be able to say, “I told you so”.

It’s cynicism like that that makes this one of the most untrusted Governments we've ever had -- even at a time like this.

We have links to Al Qeda and the attacks of 9/11. All completely unproven, but all well publicised.

CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar says the trail begins in the rubble of last year's earthquake in Pakistan and bears the fingerprints of al Qaeda.

Intelligence sources say that beginning in February, the suspects — trying to avoid detection — transferred relatively small amounts of money; $1,000 here, a few thousand there, from Pakistan into various accounts in Britain. (or alternately, they transferred small amounts of money not to avoid detection but for perfectly legitimate reasons, to fly under the radar of reporting they could have transferred anything under $10,000. We also have no idea how much was transferred, was it $3000 over the last 8 months, which would make the plot so minor as to be laughable, or was it ...we wont know for at least another 28 days. The paranoia level of the media is at about the same level as the governments. Who can forget the doodles that convicted the Lackawannna 7, an government expert testified that they were the exact layout of a turkish US airbase, the prosecution then hid the photos of the airbase which demostrated that the doodles bore not even the slightest resemblance to anything other than random doodling)

We know that the original charges stem from the arrest in Pakistan of a man, who when "interogated" named names and confessed. Pakistan has a very well documented and consistent use of torture to extract confessions, could he simply be naming relatives because of such?

US homeland security chief Michael Chertoff, who said the plot was "suggestive" of al-Qaeda, claimed the planning was in its "final stages".

We know that the imminent and immediate threat was a lie. How? Many arrested members of the plot did not have passports, making boarding an international flight a bit difficult, and so far, the police have said that very few plane tickets had been purchased, and that no co-ordinated flights have been found. Going on holidays is not as yet a criminal offence.

We know that on the back of the arrests the Blair government is looking to increase its security powers (internment up to 90 days without charge plus a raft of other measures) and that the police and security forces are seeking increased powers. Does this have anything to do with the arrests?

Home Secretary John Reid, responding to questions on whether the government would once again push for a 90-day detention of terror suspects, the home secretary said the current situation did not represent "a good time" to look at such measures.

We know that the arrests have led to allegations of rampant extremism in the muslim community despite a lack of any proof of such. Muslims have become the new face for those in politics (and loopy, paranoid comentators like Melanie Phillips) who are forever making the easy, cheap "law and order" bids to buy votes. The problem is that any Muslim taking a critical line on issues such as Iraq or the conflict in Lebanon become targets and labeled as "extremist", when serious debate is genuinely, desperatly, needed and the government position is uniformly condemnded by broad popular concensus, not just by the muslim minority of the population. Criminalising dissent is a sure fire way to encourage real extremism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1850856,00.html

So who is currently being detained in the UK?

Amjad Sarwar said his brother had no link to terrorism. "They've got it all wrong," he told Channel 4 News. "He is an innocent guy. He's been helping the youth out considerably in the area. He condemns terrorism."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1219492.ece

Despite the British judicial system stating that a person is "innocent until proven guilty", the press seems to have a different stance. Is the innocence of a person not compromised by them being named and shamed? The reputation of a man is tarnished when he is named, even if he only stands accused - not convicted - of a crime.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1844721,00.html

the allegations are (?)

welcome to the new ice age: the climate of fear

Shape of things to come? A warehouse, under survellance for past three months, and raided as part of the current UK "blow up a thousand planes, bigger than 9/11" terror plot reveals: biscuits, box's and box's of them.

I feels safer, so much safer now. Never did trust those little packets the airlines handed out, could contain anything, anthrax or peanuts, now how would I ever know, until its too late and I am DEAD? its all so fiendish.

How do you question an unknown? For the next 28 days (or longer, 90 days if the Blair government rushes through new internment laws) we are all living in a vaccumm, as the British bobbies question thier subjects, for the next month we will be subjected to continuous leaks of the authorities case. What jury could fail to convict on the headlines alone so far? Patriotism medals should be handed out to any jury that automatically convicts anyone accused of terrorism charges, as Dik Cheney said, its better to convict a hundred innocent people than let one terrorist slip through. Wonder where he got that idea from, rings a few bells, but then my almanac doesnt stretch back to the late 1930's. Now the Big Dik is out hawking the UK terror plot as a reason not to vote democrat in November, declaring a vote for the man who beat the very unhinged Bush supporter Joe Leiberman, Ned Lamont, to be a vote for Al Qeda, but never let it be said that he is in any way using the war on terror for political gain (not when his financial gain is so much the better for it).

Will the UK terror plot outcome be 24 (oops we released one without further questioning), sorry 23, charged with the crime that is currently all over the media, or will we see the fate of the alleged terrorist's go the way of 95% of charges laid in the US and the UK, down graded to considerably lesser one's or thrown out altogether. Possessing pornography is the latest vogue. Will the current state of near universal panic be apologised for, and if the limits of free speech are marked by the famous definition of yelling "fire" in a crowded cinema, will our leaders be themselves charged with public affray? Just waiting for the vaccumm to be filled with reality, rather than the panic striken voices of a hundred "terrorism experts" whose lives are just one big bag of gruesome death plots, media interviews and advice on how to buy their advice.

Day one, 9 planes, day two 12 planes, day three 12 planes blown up over cities, day 4 12-15 planes crashing into london and new york.

Bigger than 9/11? Going back to day 1, the plot foiled had one slight hitch, it was going to be 9 planes spread over several days, overlooking the fact that after day one when presumably 3 planes would have crashed into either the atlantic or one of the above cities, it just might be noticed and hence tighten security, making the last 6-9 plane loads of terrorists a bit harder to achieve. Thank the good lord that terrorists have incredibly stupid travel agents.

other major plots foiled in the UK that didnt really exist (eg many arrested, multiple headlines, nobody jailed):

forest gate (one shot, but his crime, wearing pajamas at the top of a stairs in a threatening manner)
the ricin plot
the manchester stadium football plot

these are the few that come to mind immediately
...........................................
another day and the bullshit flows unabated from the worlds longest active civil war, the war on drugs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/11/AR2006081101524.html

welcome to the war on terror (lesson 1)

Here's how all good announcements about terrorism should be framed:

British police said on Thursday they have thwarted a plot to blow up aircraft in mid-flight, arresting a number of people in the London area.

Police said the aim of the plot was to detonate bombs smuggled on board aircraft in hand luggage.

"A major terrorist plot to allegedly blow up aircraft in mid-flight has been disrupted in a joint, pre-planned, intelligence-led operation by the metropolitan police anti-terrorist branch and security services," a police spokesman said.

He said police believes that the intention was particularly to target flights from Britain to the United States.

Police had arrested an unspecified number of people in London during the night. He gave no further details.

point one: All plots must be major, minor ones would just annoy the already easily annoyed public, no one would take you seriously if you arrest someone for trying to blow up a can of soup, no matter how delicious.

Point two: the plot must be thwarted, not stopped, nor desisted, nor should you get there just a bit afterwards and shout "ah ha! oh bugger." You can interupt a plot if no plot can be found and you suspect that they planning upon making a plot for you to thwart. Remember a thwart is not simply something that goes through your head and just because you were wrong about your intial reasons for arrest, you cant say a plot has been unthwarted.

Point three: make sure you explain what the plot that you thwarted was, go into graphic detail about theoutcome if possible, and give the worst case scenario, otherwise you may be dismissed as having thwarted a minor plot. If the plotter thwarted has plane tickets or travel brochures, this is a dead give away that they will blow up a plane, or hotel, or sauna, if they have a car or a scooter, its a bridge or a motorshow, a jumbo size tin of housebleach could easily blow up half of a nation if used just right

point four: dont forget to arrest a large, but totally unspecified number of people in and around the area of the arrest. The more the better, you have anything up to a month to realease them and they will be arrested for breach of national security if they even mention that they have been arrested, so have fun, you can do no wrong. Whatever you do, dont forget to make arrests and if the orginal charges are thrown out, look around for some playboy's or any embarressing porn, then charge them for that, better yet, charge them having kiddie porn, sure its a 1978 edition of Pure Tit Parade, but they have to then prove that all the models are over 18 and gave persission for their images to appear in the mag, and the "thwarted" terrorist will be way embarressed enough to not fight the charge that will appear in court 12 months to 5 years later.

point five: dont answer reporters questions, give no details beyond those you want to give, its all national sercurity, so the press can just go fuck themselves and get back to finding out wether Paris Hilton is wearing underwear which is what they do best.

point 6: remember that "intentions" are things that are lining the road to hell, and difficult to disprove. If the "thwarted" have ever thwart of anything bad, this is not good and can be covered by the security provisons of any good terrorist act snuck through parliment in the dead of night. "Have you ever thought of some object blowing up or watched a video in which you thought some object may be blown up with the express purpose of watching the object blow up and killing many, many innocent people? Just a yes or no answer, Mr Thwarted, or we shall have to close the court..oh the court is in camera, I thought that meant we were going to be on tv, damn I wore my best suit..."

point 7: always get a special branch of the police or army to do the raids, it makes the footage a hell of a lot more dramatic if two hundred heavily armed men in bio hazard uniforms with six machine guns strung from loaded bandoleers break drag semi naked people out of a building. The public assume guilt (and majorosity) by the number of teams doing the raid.

point 8: never mention that your previous six or seven pronouncements on "major Thwarts" were all shown to be complete bullshit, dont even hint at it, both press and public prefer it that way, makes them feel safer.

point 9: for gods sake, make sure that the proceedings in the court are held in secret with no nosey journalist around, and make sure that you let the defence know that thier comments on the proceedings would put them in breach of a provision in the law, which you would show them without a court warrant, but cant because court warrants to get the provison of court warrants to see the provions are a matter of national security. Here is a recent example of how not to do it:

Detective: I'm no terror expert
Age, August 10, 2006 - 12:13Pm

A detective involved in the prosecution of 13 accused terrorists has told a court he gleaned much of his knowledge of terrorism from the internet and admits he's no expert on the subject.

Under cross-examination, Det Snr Const Thomas said websites, a "basic" two-week course and conversations with others formed the basis of his knowledge on terrorism.

"The only knowledge that you've got into (the) thinking of an extremist is to browse websites?", asked Greg Barnes, the lawyer acting for one of the accused.

The witness replied: "Perusing websites yes ... I have done courses in counter-terrorism".
"By absolutely no means whatsoever do I call myself any type of expert on it," Det Snr Const Thomas said.

The witness said he had used internet resources like Google and Wikipedia to research terrorism and Muslim extremists.
He also searched the Islamic news website Al Jazeera.

"I keep a very open mind on any website I look at, I certainly don't take anything as gospel ... it's all knowledge gained, it's like any book you read, I suppose," Det Sen Const Thomas.

Without the intrusion of the press you could have easily walked outside and proclaimed that one of the worlds leading experts on terrorism, with many years of personal experience and a deep understanding of these issues, backed by worldwide research, has declared that a major plot has been thwarted. Now doesnt that read a lot better in the press than the truth.

point ten: where ever possible say the word "alqueda", seems to work like a charm, bit like abracadabra at a magic show, dont say "al squida" or "al squasha" these are a spanish delacacies and unlikely to scare anyone but skittish vegetarians.

point 11: facts are for a jury to decide, so feel free to make up anything you like and let 12 shitscared man and women, good and true decide what ever they feel is possible. 80% believe that the world has been visited by aliens and an unknown percentage think the tooth fairy is a practicing orthodontist, so you cannot look foolish no matter how stupid the "plot" you thwarted was. Hell they just arrested a bunch of loons in the US who never even been to the city the authorities claimed they were going to blow up and none of them even had the faintest idea of how to make explosives until an undercover cop showed them how, so go on, have fun, make your own day.

more bombs for whores

"Lebanon will be dark for a few years." IDF offical to Haaretz.

Well darkness and the ensueing paranoid fear of the dark have invade the far right of the world. Not since the glowing days of the Mccarthy era have we heard such ridiculously overblown claims eminating from what purports to be the intellectual backbone of the right.

Im not talking about Fox news, thats simply the alarmist network that sells fear as Dior sells perfume. (the latest example being the wonder, Suicide Drone, a drone launched probably by Hezzbollah and named by Fox)

What I am talking of is the incessant voices of the right, the robert kagans, the kristols, the michael ledbeedens, the melanie phillps, the barbara lerners, the anne coulters, the children of the neo con agenda that has captured the policies of the "free world."

Last night on Lateline a Canadian neo con supporter brought us into the world of the neo-con jihadist, a world of perpetual war leading to..well, its hard to say....lets just label it as Mark Steyn did, a creatively distablised place.

MARK STEYN: The reality is that Syria is at war with its neighbours anyway. Since 2003 it has sent large numbers of so-called insurgents over the Iraqi border. I was up on that border not long after the war. It is a line in the sand.

Its true, it is just a line in the sand, the border post is a lonely little outcrop in the midst of a searing desert, but the idea that "large numbers" are crossing to fight is simply a fantasy to justify and de-iraqify the ongoing war. We are not fighting Iraqi's, they greeted us "with chocolates and flowers", despite the fact that of all the "insurgents" killed, even the most optimistic, skewed US military report has stated that les than 5% are of foriegn birth, and the majority have come from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but lets not mention that we should perhaps be invading those country's, if the logic is to be followed.

MARK STEYN: "For one thing, Hezbollah is massively popular in Lebanon"

Lets still think of the Lebanese as Iranian or Syrian, despite their popularity. That way we can justify using them as human sheilds for our political ends.

MS: In a sense, the problem for Israel and for America and Australia and the United Kingdom and all of the countries involved in this present conflict is that we're not really very good at, as we see from the way Hezbollah manages to manipulate publicity in the West, we're not very good at fighting pinpoint targeted wars against terrorist groups. Actually knocking off a Syrian dictator with a regular army and Air Force would be much easier for Western powers to do.

Could it be that we are not very good at engaging peoples with different ideas from our own, and that because the chicken-hawks have led a successful coup against american foriegn policy that the only option considered is military. Lets just admit that the near complete failure of the far right to demonstrate that thier ideas have any practical validity, and a near universal failure in what they predict will happen to the reality of a situation, bankrupts their claims to predict future outcomes, especially when it comes to the folly of thier wars. If the best you can say is that creative instalibity will lead to "something other than what it is today", arent you just throwing your hands in the air and hoping that what you are saying will be, over the bodies of thousands of civilians, and be damned if their opinion on thier countries should clash with your right to a failed ideology. Should a radical experiment in political thought be allowed to be carried on with other peoples lives, didnt we condemn Mao for doing the same or Pol Pot?

MARK STEYN: The stakes in the world we live in are nuclear war. We're living with the fact of a nuclearised Middle East. That's the issue. The issue that has really been on the table since September 11th is that the so-called stable Middle East in which so many people have invested has been a disaster. It's been a disaster for the people in that region and it's been a disaster for people all over the world. You know, 3,000 people died in the United States because the so-called stability of the Middle East reached out and destabilised the twin towers in New York. The Middle East has to change.

Condi Rices mushroom cloud appears yet again to strain credibilty, we now have the attacks upon the world trade towers linked to Iran (wasnt it Iraq just a few short years ago), with an atomic bomb (but Israel are the only ones in the middle east with that weapon) and a new version of the long discredited domino theory, the Caliphate Theory.

MARK STEYN: the reality is the pan-Islamist identity is already on the rise in the Middle East. This is in a way Israel's first non-Arab war. It's not a war between Israel and Arabs. It's a war between Israel and Persian proxies and not just the Shiites in Lebanon, but Sunni young men in Jordan and Sunni young men in Egypt have decided that in fact the pan-Islamist identity promoted by Tehran - President Ahmadinejad is the new strong horse of the region, as Osama bin Laden put it - that that is actually more appealing to them. In effect, they already have the problem. They're already at war with this Islamist identity. I don't believe, by the way, that is the regime that would be the successor regime in Damascus, but it is still worth taking on.

throw in Osama bin Laden as a link to justify anything you like, if Osama made a pronouncement on milk, could we then kill cows for their links to world of terror, has a single man hiding in a cave inspired so much fear in such far flung places in history? Before the current Iraq fiasco, Saddam was the link to world wide terror, (before him Quaddafi, before him, Nasser, or Mao, or Kruschev or Noriega or the Sandinistas), the proxy to be found behind all terror from tibet to the west bank to Acheh to the basque counties of spain, now we just use the same language and ideas to paint whoever is the hitler of the day as the root cause of all that is wrong with others ideology, as ours is clearly one of utmost and unassailable perfection, so self evident that we should do everything to avoid looking at its outcomes lest it become less than self evident. It seems that now that the Pope has abdicated the role of infallibility, the neo-cons feel free to crown themselves with it, Gallileos of the world beware, Gitmo awaits.

The reality of the pan-islamist identity is that it has always been there, the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in 1928, and the same weasily excuse could have been used at any point since with as much truth. One fact overlooked is that each time a potential political victory could have been gained through the ballot box by groups claiming an Islamic identity, or even just a broad based popular identity thoughout the Arab world, we in the West have crushed and overthrown the government, from Tehran in 1954 (?) to algeria to to Eygpt to iraq (several times) and supported whoever could fulfil our polical wishes, surely this is the basis for the distrust of the wests motives today, not a few words from an Iranian president.

And why is everyone in each seperate country treated as though it were an amorphous mass, a congealed prism though which we transmit a Shiite leaders word across the gulf though a dozen different countries, regardless of religious base or ethnicity. Persians take great offence at being called arabs, and arabs do not in any sense consider themselves to be Persians, only we do that, and we do it on a daily basis in formulating complex foriegn policy actions.

"Iran has never been a conventional nation state, as we understand it. The Ayatollah Khamenei always saw the revolution as speaking for Muslims all over the world"

The domino theory as expressed as the Caliphate theory, it takes a fevered mind to believe this, a few marginal extemists in the muslim world use this theroy, yet we paint it as a world wide plot instigated by all muslims. Please, I know that the Protocols of Zion are forgeries, why cant we see this entire theory as equally as bogus, yet Rumsfeld and Cheny et al all push it as the basis for their actions. How many lies do you need to be told before you expose the liar. Melanie Phillips in the UK sells thousands of books telling dumbass brits that their country will soon be under sharia law? What the fuck? Will you believe anything without even the hint of a question? Fuck!!!

MARK STEYN: I think what you have to do - I think there are things that the Administration should be doing more seriously, and that is destabilising Iran from within. Everyone talks about Iraq - the Sunni triangle is this quarter of Iraq that's caused all of this trouble. It is full of bombs. American troops can't walk around there. Why is it not possible for the hyperpower to in effect give Iran a Sunni triangle of its own? There's a Sunni minority in that country, why can't you destabilise that part of Iran? Why can the administration not funnel huge amounts of money, just walking around money, to get the Iranian request discontent that the people have with their rulers, just to get that a bit more motivated and a bit better equipped? There are all sorts of things that can be done.

TONY JONES: That's like then doing what you are accusing Iran of, which is using proxies to fight a war?

MARK STEYN: Yes.

TONY JONES: The Iranians are using Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So the answer is the same one Regan used for Afghanistan, how did that work out? The Taliban, 9/11, a country in ruins, a thousand militias ruling a thousand mini-narco states and a war we are still fighting, and ignoring by turns, thirty years after the Russians were baited into invading by the US. The obvious answer to any question is simply to throw in lots of guns and hope that the outcome will distract us from any other course, the US perfected this style in Vietnam, it was known as "50 calibre recon", spray the area ahead of you with bullets and then pass through safely, listen to the reports coming from IDF troops in Lebanon, they do the same. Lets just say it doesnt endear you to the locals when you pass by, to see it in all its glory, watch Black Hawk Down and count the Somali dead, play a drinking game, one side has to sip a beer for each Somali Killed, the other has to down a double shot for each american, see who falls over first, bet its the Somali sided drinker.

MARK STEYN: The reality is this war is on. The fact of the matter is this war - the Iranians blew up a community centre in Buenos Aires 10 years ago. A couple of Iranian Cabinet ministers were directly indicted for that. You think about that. Cabinet ministers are directing the bombing of community centres in Buenos Aires on the other side of the world. With the best will in the world, even if you are sympathetic to the Palestinian problem as anyone. Buenos Aires doesn't have a lot to do with it. If you get up in the morning and go to a community centre in Buenos Aires, you don't expect to be blown up by Iranians. The fact of the matter is they have always acted ex-territorially and this crisis in Lebanon is just another example of that.

Utter crap, many years after the bombing an ex iranian diplomat was arrested in the UK and charged at the request of the Argentine government, his case was thrown out for lack of evidence, Hezzbollah have denied involvement and not one shred of proof has ever been given to link them to the crime. Israel and the US are the ones pressing the allegations, but conspiracy theorists belive that Argentian President Carlos Menhim was behind it, with as much proof to back them up. How much shit there is to these arguments can be measured in the tonnes of methane it produces. We go to war in the middle east, kill thousands, because of a bombing in 1994 in south america????? What the fuck?

MARK STEYN: We do have to brace ourselves for decades of violence anyway, so we might as well at least try and direct where and when it occurs because the present stability, another 25 years of the ayatollahs another 30 years of Mubarak and 70 years of the House of Saud. It's not a question of what the Middle East will look like after that, but what the world will look like after that.

We brace for the violence that we directly cause. Mubarak is our creature, the House of Saud is our invention from the last time we threw bombs up in the air in the Middle east and tried to figure out how and where they would land. How did that go? I know the fuckwit Steyn is a bit of a comedian, like that howlingly bad laugh riot Anne Coulter, but he is representing ideas that are found in the neo-cons world view and being acted upon by the hubris laden scum at Bush summer camp.

..................................................................................

Meanwhile to broaden the agenda, former Israeli Pm Netanyahu, gives the most paranoid expression of his countries wish list to the world on the ABC's PM last night

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1709948.htm

BN: I think a lot of people don't get it. Just the way they didn't get it in the '30s.
This isn't a war between Hezbollah and Israel alone. Hezbollah doesn't last two days without Iran and the waystation Syria, the other patron.

(thats funny, with all roads, bridges, airports either destroyed or cut off and the sea blockaded, after three weeks of constant IDF pounding Hezzbollah show no signs of even weakening. Remeber Olmert promised a nice two week war at the start.)

Why is Hezbollah attacking Israel? It is not attacking it for any demonstrable grievance. It is attacking it, so says it's chief Nasrallah, to eliminate the state of Israel - pure and simple.

I think in the 1930s when you saw build-up of German armaments by a mad ideology that seeks to conquer Europe, you should prepare for it. And if that didn't pre-empt it, and that was the worst mistake that was done. Six million of my people were burnt to death because… incinerated in the death camps because nobody prepared for the war, nobody pre-empted in time.

Clear blue sky theory combined with the Hitler Meter, the Appeasment Quantum of the Irrational and the Caliphate all in one.

Now how 6,000 Hezzbollah fighters are going to invade and conquer Israel, I am not sure, they must be bigger, taller and more terrifying than Saddams twenty metre tall Republican guards who threatened to invade down town Idaho in 2003 (same monsters whose giant footprints can be found all over Kuwait, these guys were feared just for breathing in the wrong direction, it was known to cause hurricanes) .

Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, who's the puppeteer here, says that he is building a nuclear weapons program. ....during the G8 conference, these kidnappings of soldiers were timed by Hamas, his other proxy, and Hezbollah, under his direct command

Oh god, now Hamas is Iranian and Iran is stating what it has continuously not stated.

BN: They're saying, "Israel is the first stop, we'll use Hezbollah part of the way, but we intend to launch nuclear weapons once we have them on Israel. We deny the Holocaust existed, but we're preparing the new Holocaust." And they're also saying, this is the first step in their reconquest or the reestablishment of a resurgent Islam under Shi'ite Iran.
Now you may dismiss that. Just the way people dismiss the funny little man in the 1930s, and they said, "Oh, it's not important. He's a little crazy." They're not a little crazy. They're a lot crazy.
But they mean what they say. They see this problem, this World War III that they are conducting on all of us in their madness. To see this is as a problem of prisoner swaps is ridiculous.

A fox news special, if the IDF bombs Lebanon and Gaza, the rest of the world should instantly bomb Tehran and Damascus. No question the hawks in Israel love their diplomacy US made and funded, laser guided and dropped from 3000 ft.

BN: But, I give my support for the Government for the goal of what they established, the goal that they set out to do, which is to remove this missile threat, as much as President Kennedy removed the missile threat from neighbouring Cuba. And that was a potential missile threat. Those missiles didn't actually rain down on American cities.

How did he remove the threat? Through diplomacy, sure backed up with threats, but firstly and foremost, with diplomacy. Not a single person was injured during the filming of the Cuban Crisis, not a single refugee was strafed escaping their home, not a single amublance had a missile punched through its roof. You see, Kennedy had a phoneline and direct communication with Kruschev and a political solution was found, the US pulled its nuclear missiles out of Turkey and the USSR pulled its out of Cuba. Perhaps Benjamin has found the answer, realistic compromise on basic issues, not high blown rhetorical bullshit, gross lies, distortion and bombs.

another death of a thousand cuts in the whitehouse:

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Condi4.htm

Ms. Rice's biggest supporter has been Brent Scowcroft, who served under the first Bush administration as national security advisor. Sources said Mr. Scowcroft, regarded as Ms. Rice's mentor, has been sending messages to his friends in Congress and the White House that U.S. support for the Israeli war could jeopardize relations with Gulf oil suppliers, particularly Saudi Arabia.
"A comprehensive peace settlement would not only defang the radicals in Lebanon and Palestine, and their supporters in other countries, it would also reduce the influence of Iran -- the country that, under its current ideology, poses the greatest potential threat to stability in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan," Mr. Scowcroft wrote in a column in the Washington Post on July 30.
The sources said Mr. Bush's position has been supported by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and to a lesser extent National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. They have urged the president to hold off international pressure and give Israel more time to cause strategic damage to Hezbollah as well as Iranian and Syrian interests in Lebanon.
"I think if you think of what's happening in Lebanon and Israel right now, you see the face of the beginning of the 21st century," Mr. Rumsfeld said in a radio interview on Aug. 2.

http://www.thebushagenda.net/

blood for soil

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2273111&page=1

big oil/republicans go low tech to breath life into bullshit.

the reason why the Israelis will reject the UN resolution:

OP3. Also reiterates its strong support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized borders, as contemplated by the Israeli-Lebanese General Armistice Agreement of 23 March 1949;

OP5. Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty and authority;

this means that the Lebanese will regain Shebaa Farms from the IDF.

Speaking of good farm land, the reason why Israel wont talk to Syria is because of Israel sitting on stolen land, of course Israel claims the lad for "self defense" reasons, but the truth of the steal is here:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745328.html

free the carringbush two

from all that is wonderful about our species

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5235894.stm

to all that is utter bullshit

http://www.thestranger.com/blog/2006/07/to_me_its_just_like.php

http://troubledwith.com/index.htm

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjM1OGMxZWU0YzQ4MTQwZGU5NGRkMzQzM2MzNzdiNDc=

http://michellemalkin.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/us/02protest.html?ref=us

and the saddness and insanity of one conflict

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1211295.ece

"The obscene score-card for death in this latest war now stands as follows: 508 Lebanese civilians, 46 Hizbollah guerrillas, 26 Lebanese soldiers, 36 Israeli soldiers and 19 Israeli civilians. In other words, Hizbollah is killing more Israeli soldiers than civilians and the Israelis are killing far more Lebanese civilians than they are guerrillas."

...........................................................................

Our PM Little J on reclassifying Hezzbollah as a terrorist organisation:

"No chance, full stop. No chance at all"

What chance peace in the middle east when two of the major players in Hezzbollah and Hamas can simply be dismissed as terrorist organisations.

For many years the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned thoughout the muslim world and villified as a terrorist organisation, despite the acknowledged good and despite the acknowedgement that in free and fair elections it would win a majority of seats thoughout the region. The term terrorist is a blanket application for suppression and repression, how could anyone object to the killing and destruction of anything or anyone that is labelled a terrorist. You can justify anything these days, just add "terrorist" before their names and bingo, you have a free pass to slaughter.

This ridiculous state of affairs has hampered democratic progress througout the world, the Algerians saved "democracy" from the duly elected brotherhood by cancelling thier victory on the grounds that they were terrorists, Eygpt has banned the brotherhood from standing candidates in even thier sham elections on the grounds that they were a "terrorist" organisation. All this has ultimately achieved is the radicalisation and marginalisation of moderate of voices, forcing many to admit that if your voice is silenced, their needs to be another way to speak.

Throughout the muslim world, the true voice of the people will ultimately need to be heard through the power of the ballot, and this in turn does mean that non-secular voices such as Hamas and Hezzbollah, will win elections, with all that that entails. This will also mean that much like failed secular, authoritarian governments, they will fail, and succed, in turn and they should be completely allowed to do so, not hunted down like the leaders of Hamas or like Hamas again, shunned politicly and financially, for doing that which the world wishes them to do, be democratically elected.

We should learn from the use and abuse of the Muslim Brotherhood since its foundation in 1928 and remember that an organisation cannot gain legitimacy if we brand all its actions illegitimate on a flimsy pretext like the "war on terror".

from wikipedia: Consistent with popular belief in the West, the Muslim Brotherhood normally pursues its goals through acts of terror.

a blatantly false accusation, but like our perceptions of Hamas and Hezzbollah, one which allows us to perpetrate any evil, without acknowledging the consequences of our actions.

we regret the incident and we will regret the next - 8 to 1

So we now know that the defintion of a massacre is 50 civilians and above, not 35, not 25, nor 15. The well overused platitude, "every civilian death is a tragedy" can be used to mask the deaths of 35 villagers because it is not a massacre asnd therefor simply melts into the background of what is acceptable in war, it changes no course, alters no perceptions, causes no one to reconsider their actions. "Every civilian death is a tragedy" is the line used when nothing is going to occur that is any different from the action that caused the tragedy and leads to the inevitable use of the line "every civilian death is a tragedy", when the next smart bomb falls on dumb flesh.
.........................................

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153292032964&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

In a replay of the Suez Crisis, with the US now in the place of the UK and France, will the Bush Admin use the current fiasco as a cover for yet another fiasco, an attack upon Syria. An incident will of course be easy to manufacture, a border vioaltion by Israel can quickly be portrayed as an open attack by Syrian forces, leading to an invasion based on the "right of self defense".

idf spokesman: "We are continuing with our message that we are not interested in fighting with Syria," the officer said, "But we are fully prepared for a Syrian attack, in the case of which we will strike back extremely hard."

Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

I feel safer already.

Robert Fisk on SBS news last night in his final comment said that his reading of the level of hate being generated by the Israeli attacks and the civilian casualties will lead to a repeat of 9/11. Polls taken in Lebanon have revealed that unlike the stated intentions of the IDF in destroying the support for Hezzbollah, it has increased markedly, up from around a consistent 30% in the druze and christian communites, to a staggering 80%, the level of destruction caused by the "precison, pinpoint, surgical" bombing has once again elevated the leadership and rank and file of Hezzbollah to the status of heros. We clearly are not seeing what they are seeing, the steady stream of broken, bloody children's corpses pulled from the rubble of destroyed "terrorist infrastructure" (read houses). After so many years of fighting, the Lebanese had imagined that they had seen the last of their children die beneath the rubble of their cities, now a new generation will be forced to dig their bothers graves, and in their digging, will they be thinking of who supplied the bomb as much as who delivered it?

From the uber-pro israeli, Itamar Marcus, Director of the Palestinian Media Watch on foxnews:
Well, the Israeli soldiers know that they are doing absolutely what has to be done. They know they wouldn't dare just for their own conscious consider killing civilians. Israeli soldiers can go as long as they have to because their conscious is clear and I think the Israeli governments conscious is also completely clear.

http://www.pmw.org.il/home.htm

http://asiapacific.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/33436


James Heffernan:

Is it sheer folly to think or hope that one day Israel might be willing to talk to Hamas or Hezbollah? And if you ask how Israel could even consider talking to an organization that denies its right to exist, don't you think Hamas and Hezbollah could ask exactly themselves the same question? How many more innocent people on both sides will have to die-in Lebanon and Israel-before we stop fighting each other, stop denying each other's right to exist, and start fighting the plague of war itself?

the walnut and the sledgehammer

"The recession we had to have" - Paul Keating

Much play has been made of these famous words from ex PM Keating, will they now be echoed by our erstwhile PM in waiting, the bottleless Peter Costello. I heard on the radio this morning the representative of the australian business council imploring the Reserve Bank to consider all factors in deciding an interst rate rise, neglecting to mention that the Reserve has been stripped of such power or at the very least has, like the American reserve, refused to look beyond their very narrow scope for a very long time. If the reserve were to look at the thousand other factors that make up our economy, then surely the housing bubble of sydney and melbourne would have been factored in, the dot-com bubble would have been factored in, the much overlooked renovation bubble would have been factored in and a thousand other economy distorting influences would have forced the Reserve to act on raising interst rates.

The facts are that we have a timid, narrowly focused, central bank, and thats the way our government likes it in the good times, it wants the central bank to ignore bubbles, to ignore excessive consumer credit demand, poor lending practices, hyper inflation in the housing sector and unsustainable growth. Short term political considerations take precedence over long term planning. The reserve has only one instrument to curtail a thousand ills and the fact is that the blunt interest rate tool is used in response to such a narrow band of objects that go to make up the underlying inflation rate, that it will inevitably cause more pain to a wider market sector than it ever was meant to. Inflation is measured over such a ludicrisly small basket, it excludes volatile commodities, so the banana led rise is a myth, it excludes rents, housing prices, excessive health care rises and remains pegged to only those items the government deems fit in order to lower the cost of living raises that flow to social service payment recipients. Artificial means to an artificial end.

Now we are faced with complaints that flowed from the west during the sydney/melbourne booms being reversed, the west booms now flow through to the easts stagnation. The mining boom in the west feeds the need for a rate rise in the east, despite a near recession in sydney.

I know I am being cruel to house owners, but the reserve has been way to lienient, to driven by political demands to keep the ecomomy in check and truly balanced, like Alan Greenspan, it has overseen a debt bubble that will in the long term lead to many more problems, with some talking of depression, long term, not simply, a short term recession. Will the market simply eat itself to death with debt growing from 20% in the 1950's to over 140% today, and what will this do to our forced savings plan, superanuation, the stock market has been driven by compulsorily aquired funds, hardly a free market driven ecology.

In order for the australian business council to demand that the reserve take into acount the thousand factors it wants taken on board, it must demand the reserve serve the interests of the nation as a whole, not its narrow interests at a time of its choosing. The Plasma Boom we are currently living in, is being paid for by our nations lack of investment in infrastrusture, health and education and while the Reserve has certainly talked of this exact thing, it has only one way to force the government of the day to do anything, interest rates. This does lead to the problem of an un elected body setting and deciding policy, and in that regard it can only advise where it see's problems, however, where it see's obvious problems, it also needs to see obvious solutions within its domain, no matter how painful and unpopular, thats why its independent, to do these very things. Innvoation requires years to come to fruition, monetary policy can only ever work in monthly terms, we need a reserve with a broader scope, just as we need to press our political overlords to overcome the limitations of the political cycle and talk of the real future, not that which encompasses the next tax cut.