oh those arabs...and a boring englishman

Now Im not one to court controversy, my moderate, populist views on most subjects are instantly agreed upon by sane, sensible, rational, inteligent people, and when there not, well the other side are just plain batshit nuts or misinformed, filthy, liars, so I say this with some degree of trepidation.

Nicholas Stern, UK climate guru, is just dull, deadly dull and ever so buearacratically sodden that I find reading his report just reminds me of how fucking excruciatingly dull he really is. A montone flatness set on the plateau of shimmeringly endless boredom unreleaved by even a hint of what some laughingly refer to as humanity. He is the eptitome of the modern politician and/or public servant. I would personally not follow him into the most expensive bordello in all the world for a nights pleasure with eva green soaked in pheremones, cause I would know at the end of the night and for the rest of my life, I would not remember eva, it would be Nicholas's droning bray that would resonate. Now I would probably think very hard on it, but Ive made my choice and Im sticking to it. Sure he may be right, he may even be a bit bloody clever n all that, but fuck...I mean fuck..no I have done enough damage to the enviromental movement as is with my wanton attack, but I speak the truth and the world be damned if it cant handle me flying off it, the handle that is. If you agree with my call, place a vote on our voteline, if you disagree, try and find the voteline.

Our aging PM, agrees with me, in essence and probably substance, he like I, is a climate realist, I realise that there is an enviroment, I know I try to get rid of it with the aircondtioning. While couching his loathing of being bothered by "climate" in lovingly crafted and test marketed phrases, like "practical action", "encourage sustainable forest management and support reforestation" or "effective, coordinated and global approach", he is of course, saying, fuck you that i have to make up some shit until we win the next election. This phrase tested very poorly in focus groups, many found it to be only marginally better than the blow upon nethers by a spiked wooden plank, which has consistently polled poorly. The world clearly doesnt need more forests, weve spent most of the past 10 millenia getting the fuckers out of the way of our pristine views and into more manageble areas like pots where we can arrange them in a more pleasing form, not the unruly hedonism of that pagan whore, natures unkempt fossil pile. Nature has clearly never heard of feng shui or interior decorating (have you ever looked inside a cave, messy, unkempt and shits everywhere like my place on a sunday morning, one word, disgusting), and yet we are meant to believe that we are apart of it, no, its is ours as god intended to do whatever the fuck it is that you sick twisted individuals want to do with it. Dont take my word, read your bible, then tell me how it ends, its one long boring book, which brings us right back to where we started, with the word and the word is Stern.

"When it comes to the decisions of the Government, uppermost in our mind will be the national interest, not the views of any one individual, however eminent he may be regarded by some," Our PM said, reverting to the time tested and focus pulled, Mr Angry mode. "I believe, if implemented, literally would do great damage to the Australian economy," Take that nature, you slovenly whore.

I can also whole heartedly agree with the new government policy of growing trees in foriegn countries, let those others who are less experienced with all the terror that can be found hiding in a forest deal with it in a corrupt and entertaining manner. With all of our close neighbours more than willing, in fact in most cases very insistant upon taking wads of cash for almost anything, throwing stacks of it at them to cure our "problems" is imminently sensible and as long as we dont look to closely at the outcomes, an outcome for our income.

Its not often that I find myself agreeing with anything the Saudi Royal Family say, unless its to do with women drivers or the enduring national shame of us giving them the vote (women, not Saudis, Saudis know thier place in the pantheon of democracy, hide in the cupboard until the mood passes), so its was good to see that the "peace plan" mooted by the Saudis some five or six years ago and rejected out of hand by the then Sharon Government is finally getting a look in.

The plan is a simple one on the face of it, every Arab country would formally recognise Israel in return for a withdrawal from all the land captured in the war of 1967. Its not quite as comprehensive in the fine detail, with Jerusalem being petitioned and the east being the new Palestinian capital, so the 1967 borders would be somewhat different, but in essence it is, and was then when first proposed, a geniune breakthrough of many magnitudes, if accepted. And that is the big, impossible, if.

Some will look at the Saudis words "It has never been proven that reaching out to Israel achieves anything. Other Arab countries have recognised Israel and what has that achieved?" as needlessly agressive, but there is an enormous amount of truth in them. The PLO recognised Israel many, many years back and the best you can say for thier efforts was an increase in settlement building and a thousand broken promises on the Israeli's part.

"The largest Arab country, Egypt, recognised Israel and what was the result? Not one iota of change happened in the attitude of Israel towards peace."

The Israeli governement have an instant answer which has nothing to do with the offer

It fears any hint that Palestinian refugees would have the right to return to their homes in the event of a peace settlement.

The if that seems like a glance sideways at something not in the agreement just for the sake of derailing even the idea of considering it, they can always look at their impasse on Hama's as a further reason to reject it, even though Hama's will be apart of the eventual state of Palestien, wether Israel wishes it to be or not.

When I first heard of the Saudi offer in 2002, my first thoughts were of how incredibly niave, yet incredibly sensible and brave from the Saudi's, a comprhensive peace with all Arab states for Israel in exchange for what they have promised will eventually happen. No, the plan was orginally just dismissed out of hand by the Sharon hardliners and a another great moment in history seemingly passed into that great maw of perpetual conflict. Will Israel ever truly get serious about wanting peace, or are the power plays within its own scandal ridden democracy to be forever subsumed beneath the boots of fundementalists and the settler movement.

Now Condi Rice has been told to pack her bags and leave by the Isreali's, the Greater Isreal lobby has once again proven to be as powerful as the neo-cons and the evangalical movement has been in steering anything sensible in the US. The lords of war will always win in the present enviroment, a flower is easily broken beneath a tanks treads.

you have NEVER had it so good, u ungrateful pig

Be grateful, be very grateful, even if your not sure why, just be it. Why, well we wont really ever know until some time after the federal election when its safe to know why you are being so forcefully made to feel grateful, but then thats what elections are for, retrospective collective gasps of fine print gratefullness.

Lets look at the world, we should be grateful that we are not in living in the stunning success of Iraq, where US presedential hopeful John McCain wanders the streets blissfully plucking tomatoes out of the hands of liberated shopkeepers who whisper thank you and slip chocolates in his pockets between truck bombs. Thats one thing we should be grateful for, we are far enough away from the Bush Whitehouse to not have to live on a daily basis with its successes, we can watch them on tv, like terry hicks does with his son, if he were not in solitary 22 hours a day. Im personally very grateful not to have been ever liberated by the Bush Whitehouse, thier track record of competency, planning and lack of corruption, can turn minor issues into major fuckups in the blink of an armed militias payday pickup.

We should be grateful for the strength Israeli Pm Edward Olmert exhibits when he loudly proclaims during a visit by No 3 Bush Fuckeruperer, Condi Rice (u cant say condi without a con) "We have no intention of reoccupying settlements," Mr Olmert said. "We are not now in the process of creating new unauthorised outposts at a time when we want to dismantle the existing unauthorised outposts." While 2000 settlers march past police lines and army garrisons into Jenin to re-mantel a settlement that was dismantled over a year ago. We should be grateful that his strength is so easily brushed aside by facts, it makes for equitable peace when we know that no side is even bothering to try anything other than dueling PR pamphlet diplomacy.

No, lets all be grateful for the fact that our wages are now a mere percentage point below inflation in growth, and by this we are all so much better off, we are all winners and we have never, ever had it so good. Thats what the PM and his workplace relations minister, joe hockey insist you believe, and they have the stats they refuse to release to prove it. Joe hockey stood in front of parliament waving our new found prosperity in all our faces, 1.6% growth in wages, a small fortune to someone on several million dollars a year, as so many of us currently are, and only lagging inflation which sits at the top of the RBA range at 2.9%, and will certainly guarantee us a little more joy next week when the RBA does its hammer in glove routine and lifts the rate another .25% to teach us to love Howard in our own way.

Joe, in refusing to release any other of the myriad accumalated data on AWA's, tells us that it just cant be done, we would be comparing apples to oranges, but still wont divulge what apple pickers are compared to apple pickers, or orangers to orangers. Which is fair enough, what would happen if one year an apple picker picked an orange, chaos, statistical chaos. And how does one measure the happiness level of a shop assistant who has had their wages slashed by a few hundred per week, when clearly they themselves have asked to have their wages slashed and by extension must be happy about it, otherwise why would they have agreed to sign the happyness form. And how does one computate the near orgasmic pleasure one has from the flexibilty of working any old hours one wants, including public holidays and weekends without the bother of needing to cut into valuable family time working out those pesky overtime or penalty rates. Thank big hearted Joe for that incaculable joy, and then sit back and let him bask in your knowing just how good you really got it.

But one thing troubles me, not a big matter, but troubling none the less. If the mining sector is booming, paying workers enormous sums just to sign on and increasing their wages at somewhere around 9-20% per year, just to keep their workers satisfied. And if they are the biggest sector with AWA's, doesnt that mean that the rest of us are in fact most likely slipping backwards at an astonishing rate, having our pay slashed markedly, to achieve a wages growth figure of a measley 1.6%. Doesn't it mean that on my own secret scale, the GGP Scale (good german porn scale) that if we exclude miners and take into account record corporte profits, we are being given a GGP of 1.254 with a shiezen smack of .305. On a close approximation of the GGP in real language, this means that we are being bent over a splintery barrel of watered down schnapps, rogered till we cant stand, then having our boss, loosen his or hers trousers and laying a big sloppy brown carpet of crap over our face. But then its so hard to translate GGP into anything like real language, it is purely a statistical device I use to get my dvd's past the boys and girls at customs without those annoying checks or revealing facts. Much like Joe Hockey and the Howard government, an easy 2.622 GGP's.

So be grateful that those in charge are not so easily swayed by facts or checks or balances or inquiry or interest. Any group that can be so wrong on so many matters over such a large period deserve the chance to finally get it right without the harsh and unfair glare of scrutiny. Iraq would be the democratic paradise we all know in our hearts that it really is, if only nobody looked, if a country descends into chaos and nobody reports it, is it really in chaos, ask the congo.

We should also be so grateful that all of our hard earned tax dollars that helped start nascent renewable energy projects are now paying off, well paying off in terms of the companies are now earning big money and investing big money in China and Europe and Calafornia and ...the list goes on...and on..and on. Without the climate realists in our present government, we may well have had 20% renewable energy right now, sure a few less yellow bellied parrots (and I would sleep sounder knowing that godless killing machine was extinct), and be exporting our technology to the world, rather than doing as we normally do, import our homegrown technologies from countries that can see a good thing when it bites them repeatedly on the arse over a period of eleven (count those wasted years again, 11, 77 in dog years) wasted years of dead and dieing r and d.

We should be grateful, Im just not sure that anyone can see the reason why. So I shall wait till Joe tells me and the PM nods in my humble direction as he feeds off my nascent grateful urges at the next election. Scew Flanders.

hicks and the rest of life

Adelaide lawyer Stephen Kenny, who represented Hicks for three years from 2002, said although he was surprised by the guilty plea, he could understand the circumstances that may have led to the outcome.

"My first reaction was, and I was talking about it moments before I heard of it, was that if I was in Guantanamo Bay and I could get out by pleading guilty after five years, I probably personally would have pleaded guilty," he said.

Whats to be read into the David Hicks guilty plea. That he did indeed spy on an embassy that had been abandoned ten years earlier, that he did meet the grand fool of terrorism, Richard Ried, that he met Osama Bin Laden, that he did be in Afghanistan around the time of september 11, 2001, that he expressed approval of the 9/11 attacks ....none of the charges matter, they are retrospective fits on actions that were not illegal at the time of commisson, and some parts so silly, such as fleeing US airforce bombs, while at the same time being charged with standing underneath those same bombs in a threatening manner, or fleeing the Northern Alliance or selling his weapon so that he could flee, the litany becomes foolish.

He is charged with both being a terrorist aiming to attack and for fleeing for his life. For having a weapon in a threatening stance and for selling that weapon to escape the fight he was supposedly threatening. He was essentially on trial for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the US was doling out huge sums of cash to any poor goatherder who handed over a foreigner in Afghanistan and then ensnared within a system that could not let him go lest the systems lies were exposed to the world. "Worst of the worst", what a fucking joke that oft quoted line is.

And as if to underscore the "fairness" of the system, in the minutes before he was due to face the court, the presiding judge dismisses half his legal team and bars them from participating in the proceedings. How does that "ad hoc" approach, when the trial judge had months to disqualify Hicks lawyers, cast the light of "fairness" upon the proceedings, one lawyer dismissed for failing to sign a legal agreement which was not due to be discussed until the trial started, the other for failing to upgrade her military status. Even the appearance of justice had dissolved in that black hole, turned to high farce, so what do we make of the Hicks trial?

“I’m shocked because I just lost another lawyer,” said Hicks when the judge said Dratel could not sit as counsel until he had signed a letter of agreement to comply with commission procedure. “One is gone and now another. What’s the point of him sitting here if he is not going to represent me? Now I’m left with poor Mr Mori,” he said, referring to his US Military counsel Major Michael Mori.

Colonel Davis was demanding 20 years jail time for Hicks, he now apparently says that time served would suffice plus a few months more, so long as the system itself does not have to be placed in the public spotlight. So long as the nooks and cranies of an illegal set of practices and circumstances do not get to see the light of day, so long as he did not have to fight to preserve the methods by which he obtained confessions such as the hearsay that Hicks applauding the 9/11 attacks.

TONY JONES: And we'll return now to Minneapolis and Dr Steven Miles.
You heard, I imagine, some of what Colonel Davis was saying there. He's basically saying in the 18 months he was there he's never seen any of the things you've been describing, and yet you say they were in government documents.
STEVEN MILES: Well, I would ask Major Davis to release the interrogation log, which they have not done, to release the pre and post interrogation physicals and also the medical log of the Hicks' interrogation. None of those documents have been released. Furthermore, in the trial, the only thing that's permitted is the evidence, often unsourced. And the trial rules prohibit introducing any material about the conditions of the interrogation itself. So that Major Davis actually was not correct in a number of his statements and, furthermore, the military has refused to provide the very documents which would allow this question to be answered.

So what do we make of the guilty plea? In light of the facts on offer, in light of the potential miscariage of justice on offer, in light of a system designed to acheive a guilty verdict, neither justice has been served nor fairness upheld, the only thing we can make of it all is a desperate man willing to pursue a desperate bid for his freedom in the face of a monumental unwillingness to uphold any of the principles we are meant to be fighting for.

Justice and truth be damned, just give me freedom, is all we can make of this fools parade. Now what becomes of all those still trapped inside who aren't white.

TONY JONES: Now, you also say that the sort of intelligence gained from interrogations like this and even worse interrogations has proven itself to be tantamount to useless, and you name one specific case about a man who was taken to Egypt and whose evidence was actually used as part of the argument to go to war against Iraq. Can you explain that to us?

STEVEN MILES: Right. Yeah, there's huge amounts of data that shows that interrogation produces bad information. One guy, al-Libi, was basically taken on this CIA rendition program, taken to Egypt and then he was interrogated and tortured on our behalf, and he produced the information that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were cooperating on bio weapons. That information was entirely false and he's since recanted and says that it was produced by torture.
You know, torture's been shown to produce bad information. It radicalises the population against which it's directed. It makes it impossible to recruit informants. Information obtained by torture has sent coalition soldiers, and I presume that includes Australian soldiers, out on missions, or essentially wild goose chases. This is a technique which the world has abandoned and indeed which senior intelligence officials and senior FBI agents vigorously protested to no avail, because it was set up as a romp operation with Rumsfeld Defense Department.

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

Speaking of Justice, American style, the current scandal engulfing the ever scandaling Bushies has a key Justice Department official involved in the firings of U.S. prosecutors (for what is looking increasingly like purely political reasons), is pleading that beautiful old chestnut, The Fifth, rather than answer questions about numerous dubious answers her bosses gave. Gonzales, the US attorney general, has had a bad dose of the Santo Santoro's for the past few weeks.

Even solid republicans like chuck hagel are starting to hint at impeachment for the increasingly isolated and scandal plagued master of incompetence, GW Bush.

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

suprise, suprise, the grand mufti of poonce has ruled another line (his fifth or sixth) beneath the corpse of Santo Santorum.

Mr Pyne said he was satisfied the report reached the correct conclusions.
"As I said last week, we have no reason to believe that anything untoward had occurred with respect to the allocation of beds," Mr Pyne told reporters in Canberra.
"There is no evidence that's been deduced of any wrongdoing on behalf of the former minister and this report exonerates him entirely.
"As far as I'm concerned and the government is concerned, we draw the line under this controversy, and we can now get back on with the business of governing for ageing Australians."

The correct conclusions being the one that suits the government which once again used the hackiest of party hacks to investigate itself and guess what. Nothing to see here, well nothing we will release. The aging australians, the man who wears his pants tucked into his collar, later went onto say, were the PM and his morals.

So in typical Santo fashion, look forward to much more coming out next week, leaked courtsy of the Queensland Liberal Faactions. I can already see an out for when this happens:

Ageing Minister Christopher Pyne said an investigation found no evidence Senator Santoro attempted to exert influence over the department's allocation of places.

Thats not the same as saying that there is no wrong doing here, just that the convicted liar has had nothing shown against him. The definitions here are all important.

santo watch

For a man who finds nothing unusual or wrong in lying to the public (especially on the ABC) nor attacking 11 year olds, there is something truly spine tinglingly creepy about Tony Abbots latest velvet glove approach to increasingly disgraced Senator Santo "rouge trader" Santoro.

Mr Abbott made the comments after addressing a conference on suicide prevention.
He says when politicians fall, they fall hard and Senator Santoro deserves sympathy.
"This is a spectacular fall from grace," he said.
"He hasn't committed any crime, his only offence was to fail to comply with the ministerial disclosure guidelines.
"Santo should now be left alone to get on with his life and his friends should continue to extend the hand of friendship to him and his political enemies should lay off."

His freinds in the Liberal Party call him a dope, a disgrace, incompetent and a grade A fool, so who is Tony asking to lay off. Surely its not Rudds Labor, they have centred their attacks on what the PM knows, so he can only be refering to his own side?

Yesterday, amid jockeying within the Queensland Liberal Party over who would replace him, a senior federal political figure said Senator Santoro was "called in" at 7pm on Tuesday and told he had to go. "There is a whole new pile of share tradings under Mrs Santoro's name that have not been declared and he had to go," the source said. "Until then, Santo was going to fight on."

So now Tony is on suicide watch in case his own side drive the hapless, factional slime to an early grave, so will he be having a word in his protegee's ear, C. Pyne, the man who cheerfully climbed across Santo's bleeding corpse to get his smiling pooncy face on the minisiterial list after 14 years of lobbying, to go easy on the "Jackpot Beds For Mates" deal that he is meant to be investigating. And will the Grand Mufti of Poonce, C Pyne, make his deliberations public. Apparently not if Santo's feelings will be hurt, or he has to answer for any deals he did in his wifes name or he has to add to the multitude of shady deals.

But then Tony seems to be asserting that Santo did nothing wrong, so why did he not only quit his Ministry, but also the entire game, rather than face a few questions on his ever so transparent dealings. Why? Perhaps we shall hear the reason why delivered as a eulogy by Tony himself or one of those in the Queensland Libs who are dripfeeding the world just how filthy Santo's laundry really is. He just need to be honest from day one and in the elastic world of Howards Ministerial Code of Conduct, he most likely would have gotten away with it, instead, each and every day has just brought a new set of lies and justifications that turn out to be as slippery as the facts given the day before. Santo does not deserve the benefit of any doubt in regards to just how self serving his concoction of lies has been, and its his Liberal colleagues who are the ones doing the muck raking through the sunshine states mire of factional sleaze.

But then as our ever consistent, very elderly statesman, Mr Experience, PM Puffy Nipples so succinctly puts it he, felt sorry Senator Santoro but was totally unsympathetic. Nice one Puffy, strap on the strap on and get back to work of not hearing what the opinion polls are telling you. Meanwhile I shall watch with revulsion as tony abbot buttons up that sleeve length velvet glove and waves it about menacingly in C. Pynes direction.

"you'll take it and you'll feel it all the way"

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21425144-601,00.html

dry

anniversary 4th - I monster

Written a few years back, before the 2nd aniversary of the two month war

I, monster

Watching the American news on sbs, I see something terrible and deeply ugly, and its me.

Nightly they parade a silent brigade of the dead, the photos of US soldiers killed in Iraq as their names and photos are released by the military, and as I gaze over the myriad faces, a sense of righteous pleasure falls upon my soul. The more names, the greater the feeling.

By the end of the American phase of the Vietnam war nearly 200 US soldiers were dying per week, it had taken over ten years of constant warfare to rise to such numbers, in the first years of involvement in that civil war, the number of dead was below that currently occuring in Iraq. Before we and our allies departed, eight hundred deaths a month for over five years with not a single sideways step towards peace in reality, and rarely a consideration of the thousands of Vietnamese civilian dead, unless it was to underscore the weakness of the “insurgency” through the infamous body count. What is the weight in body bags a nation can bear before it wakes and seeks a new way to carry a burden. Is it lessened when the cause is one mans political folly, a war of choice, not in any way necessity, no matter what may now tumble out on the shifting sands of rationale.

I wait for that moment when we are swept into the maelstrom of grief, when our first soldier is struck down by the freedom fighters of Babylon, and I shall experience that same emotion. Australia has so far had it easy, a token force, forgotten, neglected by the world as part of the ongoing occupying force, patrolling the calmer streets, safe behind the sturdy barricades of Baghdad airport, secure in the off country bases training the puppet army to put down its own restive populace. We declared that we were no longer responsible for anything which occurrs within the borders, that we were not there as occupiers, as peace keepers, as anything, let alone a source of morality to the poorly trained, over weaponed, US military machine set upon the peoples of Iraq. We are cowards of the highest order.

I feel a sense of rejoice with the rising toll of American dead mainly because it is the only real pressure that preys upon the mind of the american populace. A debt burden which will cripple a dozen future generations doesn't seem to faze them, coupled with the nations most irresponsible tax cuts since the Regan years, fueling the worlds bond markets and placing the crumbling infrastructure of the solitary super power on a one track super train to oblivion (ok, i can argue on this one, but i am allowed poetic license, I’ve earned the crumpled yellowing sheath, so i might as well get some use out of it).

Lessons in history are easy to come by, and when paired with bad hollywood, perpetually fatal. Black Hawk Down is the simplified morality tale of 18 american deaths in somalia, yet another US political and military failure, however the lesson that was taught to the post vietnam syndrome generation, was that the excursion was failure due to the government fear of the consequences of war, death, the death of ones own countrymen. Accusations of foreign policy cowardice on the part of the US has led to the ability of the voters to absorb a hundred times more casualties in an equally futile expression of internal politics played out upon a foreign soil. Many still believe Iraq was behind the world trade centre attack. Many still believe it was the media which cost them the vietnam war, no matter what the reality of the situation, poor history combined with unquestioning patriotism is a sure fire hit movie, not good policy.And so i feel pleasure at anothers suffering, knowing that eventually that suffering of the other will become unbearable and lead to the end of a vast imperial experiment. Its just a matter of waiting until the scales, balanced in torn flesh, tip. So does that mean i, an atheist who despises fundamentalists of all colours, am for the fundamentalist forces within Iraq, yes and no, and in there is my pain, my hypocrisy.

I support the freedom fighters of iraq, the nationalists who are fighting to free themselves of the yoke of being occupied by an imperial adventure brought to you by the fox network and the craven vitality of politicians, using the deaths of innocent iraqis caught in the cross fire, to bolster their ideological credentials before the polls. But those same freedom fighters are themselves governed by a crude regime of islamic fundamentalism, or so i am led to believe by our curiously obsequious, generously accepting media. Yet each snippet of information i am given from the lips of the "insurgents", "terrorists" and "evildoers" or "baathist remnants" is veiled as much in the rhetoric of nationalism as it is in islamic fundamentalism, leading me to the conclusion that the principle desire is simply self determination, more than the wish to impose monotheism upon a non compliant people. Polls showing that only 2% of the iraqis see our forces as liberators, while over 60% would welcome the instant withdrawal of all foreign forces, no matter what the outcome, strengthen this thought.

A year ago, the mere mentioning of a civil war within iraq, was seen as tantamount to talking treason, now it is used as a justification for our hanging on till the bitter end. Prior to the invasion, one of the scenarios scornfully rebuked in justifying our indecent rush to war, was the fear of civil war, the complete disintegration of the country. The break away of the kurds, and then an invasion of northern iraq by the turks in an attempt to quell internal kurdish dissent, of shia against sunni, of kurds against muslim, of sunni against shia, all backed by sympathetic neighbors turning their own hands at macro politics 101 for the mid east.

There has never been a civil war within iraq, despite it being as cobbled together by the colonial powers, as most other arab nations were after W.W.1. Now our aim is to provide the Iraq with a strong man to bind the country together beneath his/her iron fist, much like Saddam, only with better taste than to slaughter his own people in numbers that can be categorised under the banner headline "massacre" on CNN. Though as our strong allies in the war on terror, Russia have shown us in Chechnia, this can be an awful lot of mass graves before anyone broadcasts footage of the newly dug earth seeping a strange red oooze.

But for any complexities, real and imagined, reigning in that climate of perpetual turmoil, i am drawn back to my desire to see death, knowing that it is the ultimate answer to the equation, knowing that a thousand iraqi deaths will not equal one australian death in determining our role in this charade of decency, knowing that 10, 000 american deaths may equate to an answer, and knowing that 50, 000 iraqi deaths will barely register in the fine print running beneath the headlines on Fox.

We are demanding democracy of an enemy we proclaim as our joyful friend through force of arms, somehow pretending we are not fighting for peace through the fog of history as distorted as the intelligence we used to justify embracing the bullet clearing a pathway to a poisoned ballot box.

Cheny rules Bush rules John Negroponti rules Allawi rules the Green Zone.

Who rules Iraq?

The lottery of the dead.

Screw Flanders.

I am a great lover of sleaze, I take it lightly dusted with extreme german porn and lashings of substances, it feels like moral victory even when I am forced to bury my head in shame at the depravity of my own thought processes. It is one of my saving graces when televison has so little to offer.

However, I am not one to take suicide lightly, it is a deadly serious business, involving hastily scrawled notes of a either a self serving nature or a general declaration of hate and self loathing on hotel note paper and should at the very least contain some hint as to what music you would like played at your funeral. It should be remembered, it is final and that the leap into the vast void of blackness will forever stain whatever good you may have done, unless you have done vast amounts of evil, when it will redeem you somewhat in the eyes of a bunch of barren, wan youths in goth clothes that you probably would not be seen dead with in any case.

So is this the fate that Alexander Downer is predicting for sleazebag and poster boy of the disengenuous, Santo Santoro, does Alex have some news that we dont know about yet. Does Alex have a few answers to those myriad questions that Santo has refused to answer, or is Santo just waving a pill bottle in the air in the hope of distracting the world so that his shady dealings need never see the light. Does Santo really want to be on the walls of goth teenagers next to posters of marilyn manson, espcially as he still maintains that he has done absolutely nothing wrong, that its all just a figment of someone elses imagining of wrongfullness. Would Bruce Lee agree? If Bruce Lee is dead, we must remember that it is because he wanted to be dead or didnt want to be alive enough. Thats the beauty of the power of positive thought, you are only wrong, or dead, or a complete sleazebag, because you either wanted it that way or didnt want it enough to not be that way.

He insisted that at no time had he acted with "dishonesty, deceit or deliberate intent to withhold information". Nor had he ever held assets which provided a conflict of interest with his role as a minister or senator.

Except the shares he orginally declared and potentialy several other shares he did not declare until forced to by disclosures from factional slime rising within his own party. Now he is threatening our foreign minister with suicide if he has to answer a few questions he doesnt feel comfortable or competent answering. Questions of character are rarely so clearly stated from a minister of the incumbent government. And now the slime has oozed out the backdoor, he will not have to answer a single question on record.

Downer: "Does the Labor Party want him to go out and do something even worse. Leave him alone now. He has resigned. Think about him as a human being."

Can this ploy work for the ever multiplying list of scandals being unearthed regarding the governments elected representatives. Should parliament now have a special watch room where coalition members can be kept under observation any time a hiccup is detected in their electoral allowances or their mates get preferential "jackpot" deals or they just dont feel like answering a few simple questions about what they havent done wrong. These watch rooms must allow the provision of no questions being raised about the occupants, just being in the room quarantines the occupant until they feel safe again in the hostile "real" world.

Of course this plea for the life of Santo Clause would be a hell of a lot easier without the members of his own party questioning his character:

"Santo Santoro behaved like a dope, he's paid the ultimate price," Mr Hockey said.

PM Puffy Nipples: "I feel sorry that he got himself into that position, I am totally unsympathetic though"

Meanwhile one of the other members of that poisoned chalice, the Coalition of the Willing, GW Bush is mired in a another scandal and refuses to allow any of his highly prized team to testify unless there is no transcript, no oath and behind completely closed doors. But there is nothing to hide here, trust us, were all christians, so swearing on a bible is just abhorent, an anathema to all that we hold sacred like the truth. Or the truth as we would like it to be seen.

If it all seems like a good put up to steer the conversation clear of the 4th aniversary of the Two Month War, it isnt, its just the usual shit pumped out by a whitehouse which violates every principle it is meant to uphold, then when its duplicity is unveiled, throws it hands in the air and demands to be trusted, no matter what the evidence points to in the opposite direction. Its all just political point scoring is the catchcry of our government and the bushies, its all just incompetence and coverups comes the reply. Such as this on a seperate topic, but one that has so many uncomfortable precedents:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1600678,00.html

leaping joyfully into the abyss

PM Puffy Nipples, our ragin stallion of porn and war, let out a bellow as the viagra kicked in, he began to hump the closest object, a box of flares. Predictable results, an emergency landing and his raging erection is camoflaged by his ever present detail of SAS minders, all of whom knew the drill and had more than once had to sheild a clearly fatigued Mrs PM Puffy Nipples from the prying eyes of the media after a torid session as her hubbys limpid lovebag.

This is what happens when your closest freinds are porn merchants and giant sized sleaze bags, it rubs off in the most peculiar of ways, when PM PN vacates the lodge, the empty pill packets and giant dildos will need to be retrieved from all those secret nooks and cranies. Rudd will need a detail of a least a dozen undercover black bag types who specialise in keeping secrets until death to avoid the international scandal that would ensue if all the dirt were to emerge in one big sodden lump.

Those odd rings bolted into the walls and floor of all Puffy's offical apartments will require a major refit, and the one way mirrors where the ugly couplings of Pyne and Abbot have been secretly filmed, these will have concrete poured into them to obliterate all evidence of a less than moral majority inspired relationship. A pity, I have seen some of the excerpts and they make for an interesting chapter in the secret mens business of high government jockeying for position, I could not count the number of times that young Mr Pyne had to be revived during one torid session, but I have bought a defribulator and a swag of clear plastic bags in the unlikely event that he should decide to do a little door to door politiking in my area. Oh and a ten litre jar of lubricant, you can never be to careful when he hikes those pants up around his neck and does the duck waddle, but i digress as you will never get to see what is offically known as "commercial in confidence" footage, unless you live for the next 99 years when all shall become public. and immortality a true curse.

What does any this have to do with the anniversary of the blossoming of freedom that could be valiantly described as Iraq (or mutilated parts therein). Many, many things, some so shameful that I would be obliged to burn the entire internet if I had the words to clearly articulate them. Sufice to say, keeping ones eye on the ball is an old football adage that takes on a new and more disturbing meaning with the present incumbents of the lodge. Is it enough to simply mouth the exact same words, year after year, in the hope that no one notices that you havent been anywhere near your office in over twelve months, and that you are simply recycling speeches given to apathetic audiences for so long that a hologram could do your job equally as well. Probably not, but thats what we have, words which were clearly wrong and not applicable to the current "situation" in Iraq are about to be uttered in all seriousness, yet again and no doubt will be muttered adnasuem as the anniversary cake is cut with the dismembered orphans hand PM Puffy went to Iraq to retrieve just for this special purpose.

"if we dont fight them there, we will need to fight them here" as though the Iraqi swimming team had a swimming pool to practice in, or their navy didnt consist of the US Gulf fleet.

"things are going ever so well over there", was used once in 2003 during the war and has become a staple of these speeches, espcially when coupled with the lines about "democracy flourishing" and the several million bewildered Iraqi's who "bravely voted" for some people they had never heard of before they were forced into those booths on the pretext that they contained Kinder Suprises (unlike Iraqi versions which explode and the suprise is getting your legs sewn back on).

"The Americans wont like us anymore" plays well at the National Party meetings, but is getting less and less laughs at Puffy's usual standup gigs since the Americans in the guise of Spiro Agnew impersonator, Roarpascious Dumpin Dick Cheny, let the cat out of the bag and said "we would love ya, no matter what (conditions apply, see Tiawan/china), me little jumbuck digger mates". Admmitedly he did bite the head off a seal while saying that, but I have been assured that is just his "way".

"We are commited" means the same as, we havent been in the office for a long while, so see no reason to pick up the mail and you cant get me on the phone if I refuse to answer. It just means that whatever they were doing three years ago, they will keep on doing, whatever it was, Im sure its good otherwise, why would we have done it three years ago. I congratulate anyone, who regardless of the outcome, does the exact same thing, year in, year out, I learnt chinese by rote and can still only talk in concrete sentences of painful exactatude when ordering at resturants, by this means I have come to adore sweet and sour bulls testicles.

"we may see some real hope emerging" of the Iraqi's "fending for themselves", of course we may not and that should be completly ignored, but we "cant stand down, til the Iraqis stand up" but then when the Iraqi's do stand up they get shot by americans who refuse to kneel unless in a goodly christian church or when in line at a greenzone burger king, so despite the hopelessness, there is a glimmer that hope may be reinserted into the Arabic dictionary without the upside down smiley emoticon that currently fills that space.

As for the orginal estimate that our presence in Iraq would be over in a few months, well think about it, those few months did not have a year attached, nor is it possible to be in tomorrow, so it is still a truth, a Freidmanesque styled truth, to these oft repeated words. Puffy knows this, so why dont you? You will when you reach tomorrow knowing that tomrrow never comes, so you will never really know, except he does, because as the PM he has access to all manner of classified equipment that makes time travel as easy as making bullshit pronouncements about the future. Like watching the bizzarre heavily lubricated contorions of the Pyne/Abbot trysts through the safetly of two way mirrors, its all part of the perks of being PM.

So far the only new word inserted into Puffy's speeches is "Iran", and this was done in the last few months when one of the PM's staffers noticed that it was indeed in the general vicinty of Iraq, all part of the newly updated library of parliament where they have replaced the pre-1923 atlas with a globe bought on ebay for the bargain price of $25.00 and fully functional as long as you dont try and twirl if too hard. Surveys and focus groups have acknowledged that many, if not a majority of citzens know what the word "embolden" means, so you just need to add it to "Iran" and then point at the map, works wonders. Change does not come easily to the "electorate", they hate it with a passion focus groups have decided, they hate being called the "electorate" and much prefer their first names at least be used, which they rarely changed, unless in focus groups, when they like being refered to by number. This says so much about "people", but less about what "focus" groups are really focused on.

So with the 4th aniversary of the two month war, we should be thankful, not for what reality holds for us, but for the steadfastness with which our porn king PM holds to ideas that made little sense when he first concreted them into the national psyche, he may not be the brightest star in this new world drenched in smut, but he is by far the man most would prefer not to be locked in a room with while he downs a bottle of viagra. This is his legacy to the world, meaning without consequence and action without apparel.

For Abbot and Pyne, it means more, not less, but who am I to judge when the mirror steams up and the film runs out in the camera.

slime ahoy..and away

Santoro resigns over shares

Federal Minister for Ageing Santo Santoro

has resigned from the Howard ministry over a share scandal.

now for PM Puffy Nipples...

drumbeats..and the inevitable headache

Perhaps John Ashcroft was right when in his "retirement" speech after being booted out of power said that "we have won the war on terror and the war on drugs". Most just thought that it was another sign of the ultra fundementalists slip into the abyss of madness, another sign pointing towards a mind that was already planning to quietly slip into the bunker where the "saved" would gather and start to write memoirs al la The Book of Revelations. But today we have proof that maybe, just maybe, he was right, batshit crazy, but somehow right.

In Sydney, the tight circle of terrorism is emphasised by a man who pleaded guilty to terrorism in the US, identifies one of the accused as having been in his circle. Ignore the fact that in 2003 he had no idea who the "alleged terrorist" was and only remembered in 2005 after having his sentence reduced, also ignore the fact that the terrorist was convicted of basically playing paintball and his arrest was part of an FBI operation that resembled entrapment, as so many US terrorism convictions do.

(see john delorean for a good example of what entrapment is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_DeLorean )

In France, Willie Brigette is sentenced to 9 years for a plot in Australia on the back of evidence gathered from those who pled guilty and further evidence gained through "coercion". He is charged with a "crime" commited in Australia, yet wasnt prosecuted in Australia?

Meanwhile, the man who really did it all, and I mean all, is sort of paraded before the "court", ecluding the fact that is what not a court and what we recieved was a redacted statement read out by his prosecutor. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed has confessed to every major and minor terrorist attack since 1993, so all we needed to do was invade him and the Iraq/Afghan wars would have been rendered invalid. And since he has been in custody since 2003 that just proves that John Ashcroft was right all along, the war on terror has been won, in as little as 2 minutes.

"CIA officers told ABC News that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted the longest under water boarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk."

Now what does this say about the techiques for judging the War on Terror and all those who have pled guilty, or hung by their own words or hung others on the evidence of those words?

One moment Sheikh Mohammed is the brilliant mastermind of 9/11, the next he is the utter dunce who recruited and instructed Richard Reid, the shoebomber, who failed miserably to the point of forgetting to pack a match and is clearly a loon of the lowest order of merit .

Our government and the US government love to point to guilty verdicts and "confessions" as reasons to continue prosecuting the long war, as reasons to continue to scare old ladies as they walk down to the shops, yet so few of the guilty verdicts are untainted by torture, false evidence, paid informants, suspect deals and just plain proscector malfeasance and paranoia that it is hard to credit them for anything like what they appear to be. When Bush stands before the US congress and touts in his state of the union address "successes" in the war on terror that turn out to be utter shit, each and every one, (look up his "successes" and trace thier level of bullshit) and our own transvestite foriegn minister, Downer, ties such claptrap to his own parties success in steering a course of action, can anyone wonder why the public and media are starting to seriously question the entire premise of this intergenerational struggle. So much of it is just hogwash from start to finish.

Thats not to say that terrorism doesnt exist, its just to point out that conflating random acts into global policy and then using it for purely party political reasons is a truly absurd. Acts of violence in Kashmir have a completely different basis to acts performed in indonesia, chechnia or iraq, yet we are constantly bombarded with reasoning based upon the idea that all are intricately intertwined. There is something so grubby about this supposedly "war of civilisation as we know it" that it will take a thousand scholars a thousand years of throwing monkeys at typewriters just to sort plain everday bullshit into a semblance of truth.

Like the war on drugs, the cures proscibed are so much more deadly than the disease, the cures all involve blanket deprivation of individual and societal liberty, invasions of nations on flimsy or false pretexts, torture, assasinations, lowering the standards of evidence to obtain guilty verdicts, undermining our court systems and blatant politicisation of national security (see cheney et al for that) and corruption on a massive scale. In fighting this war of ideas we have proven ourselves bankrupt by forgetting that ideas do not flow from the barrel of a gun, and yet that appears to be the basis of all we do.

Can you fight for freedom with shackles, internment without trial, torture, assination and the corruption of our laws and just plain old fashioned corruption as your main weapons?

Unfortunately all major parties have succumbed to the disease, with few prepared to call the war on terror what it is, bullshit. On the ABC on tuesday night, an ex-sas man Peter Tinley, standing for pre-selection for the ALP, was brave enough to say exactly that, to call out those in power in the hope that the direction we are currently heading in will change. Change is more than overdue, I suspect that a major part of the world sufered a nervous breakdown after the 9/11 attacks, and people durring a breakdown are not the most rational ones to turn for credible answers. Or any answers, just a lot of flailing, moaning and calls for help. Thats why we have laws which resemble pre-emptive strikes, you dont need to prove a crime has been committed, just that there was a possiblity of a crime being committed and then conflate the idea into lives saved (and votes gathered). This futhers the notion at later trials and makes it easier for juries to jail a man for downloading images from google, sending teams of "terrorists" to jail for playing paintball, convicting on the basis of a doodle not even scribled by the accused, giving six people 20 years jail for daring to video a holiday to disneyland or coercing any and all into pleading guilty on the basis that they will either be sent to gitmo forever or get sentences of forever if they dont. The war on terror feeds on these supposed threats and most are just paranoid lies, yet feed the appetite for the next "plot" brought before a soften up public.

John Ashcroft was right, the war on terror was won three years ago, but the damn thing just plays so well on so many levels for so many people to profit, that it would be a shame to waste any dollars or sense on a victory parade, after all that would be seen as a victory for the terrorists.

eg: France's anti-terror tsar Jean-Louis Bruguiere - who led the investigation into Brigitte's activities - announced that he would stand in France's legislative elections in May for the conservative UMP party of presidential aspirant Nicholas Sarkozy.

or ask any indonesian police chief who benefitted most from the Bali bombings, follow the millions in new equipment, uniforms, prestige, greenbacks and you may get closer to the truth.

or ask the seven innocent pakistani's gunned down in one of the Stans and the billions that brought in......

the sound of shit hitting the fan

Two for one scandals
Shadow treasurer Wayne Swan said that if "Mr Howard wants to attend a meeting with a porn king, (At the time he was facing charges of torture and grievous bodily harm; he has since been jailed) that's entirely up to him". I love porn and I vote, PM Puff Nipples has one right up him from me, now.

The fund-raiser was for candidate Andrew Laming, now being investigated over allegations of misusing his printing allowance. Phillips was invited to the lunch, for which guests paid about $2000 a head, because the partner of Ross Vasta, another MP recently raided by federal police, had invited a girlfriend, who asked Phillips.

Meawhile: In what should be the easiest election win of the year, the NSW liberals concede defeat two weeks out from the election

The Opposition Leader used a hastily called media conference in his Sydney office this morning to plead with voters for support.
Appearing shaken, he said: “All I say to the people of NSW is if you're about to elect Labor, that is very bad news.”

Perhaps climbing into bed with bizarre christian cults, being terminally stupid and without a single redeeming feature or policy could be the reason. Declaring that public transport is hardly a priority, then scrambling to say the exact opposite two days later, points to the deeper malaise inside the state liberal parties, the extreme right has hijacked the party and requires a complete rethink on every issue. Better luck in 2011 or a few decades later.

Furthermore: DUMPED federal minister Gary Hardgrave has claimed a free trip to Taiwan with his former private secretary just a week after denying she was his partner.

"If you print this story wrong, baby, I will see you in court. There is absolutely nothing incorrect."said the philandering, Mr Hardgrave, adding "bugger off" to underline the moral certanties.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21390681-2702,00.html

distractions on a windy day

PM Puffy Nipples and the porn star.

How delicious are the current spate of headlines, our morally high minded PM caught in bed with a "violent Brisbane pornographer" while the ever so catholic dog ball sniffer, the lying Tony Abbot admits "I've just had breakfast with 60 drug dealers".

"The Prime Minister, once again, has been exposed for his double standards." claims Wayne Swan and lets hope that it is all he exposed.

Meanwhile serial anti-feminist, Santo Santoro, new minister for dodgy deals refuses to answer anymore questions on his own dodgy deals until he can get his story straight. Sure he is "technically" in breach of ministerial guidelines, in the same way Saddam was technically in breach of UN sanctions, sure he cant get his own story straight and only confesses when confronted with evidence, sure he does dirty dealings for cash favours in his own portfolio and then lies about giving the money to "charity", but hell, its all just one more day in the life of fun at PM Puffy Nipples House of Bondage, but defintely no discipline.

Adding to this layer of intrigue are the pending charges against the three (count em 3) sitting federal liberals for rorting their printing expenses and you can see why the present government are throwing as much mud as they can at Kevin Rudd, they have just so much dripping off them they can afford to spread it around in the hope the electorate doesnt notice where that stink is coming from.

For whom does that rancid blocked sewer flush, I fear it doth splash and gurgle for thee Puffy.

friday

melanie phillips, mainstreaming of an extremist

There is a persistent refusal to accept that we are in the throes of a holy war waged upon the western world for more than 25 years without our even recognising it because it doesn’t fit our definition of war. It is a world war being fought in many disparate theatres with many proximate causes, but all with one single coherent aim: to defeat western civilisation, establish Islam as the dominant power in the world and restore the medieval Islamic caliphate.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/

People are rightly concerned not to tar all Muslims with the brush of Islamist conquest. But at same time, it is false to deny that Islamism is the dominant force in the Muslim and Arab world.

How have we survived so many years in the face of our eminent extermination by radical muslims and the continued survival of the Iranian nation? And what about muslims in general, dont they just by their very existance, threaten us? Dont they as a whole, homogenised group make our lives just impossible?

And if we cant blow up and invade Iran, what hope do we really have?

All these questions are answered in typical melanie phillips fashion, and if you answer no to any of the above you are simply playing into Osamas hands and dooming your children to a life of brutal sharia law, no matter what part of Hawthorn you live in.

Melanie bemoans the "fact" that the Bush administration cant find evidence of Irans direct involvment in Iraq.

This is hopeless. How can the west be defended when America is not even able to present a coherent case for the involvement of Iran in Iraq? The evidence of this involvement has been known for years. This was finally rammed home when a group on Iranian officers was captured in Iraq, whose documents left the Americans aghast at the vast extent of Iran’s involvement in Iraq — which these officers apparently said had been sanctioned at the highest level.

If by coherent you mean fact based and if by fact you mean fabrication, then you are set.

The Iranian Officers were consular staff in the free Kurdish city of Erbil, in the full knowledge of the Kurdish President and with his complete blessing as the Kurdish area trades freely with Iran. Not only that the Kurdish PM lambasted the Americans for the raid, calling it a blatant mistake and just foolish. The documents that Melanie refers to have never been made public and do you doubt that if they did as Melanie suggested, the Bushies wouldnt have plastered them all over the news? In fact all American officals, even the anonymouse scources have all said the exact opposite, that their is no evidence of anything "sanctioned at the highest levels".

"Meanwhile, Iran speeds towards genocide"

"Meanwhile, we plunge ever deeper into total irrationality"

Meanwhile the irrationality that we are plunging deeper into is our inability to fabricate evidence against Iran without it being held to any account. Surely the same people who gave us the slam dunk of evidence against Iraq can be trusted to never fabricate or conflate anything. Why should we need proof when we can just accept any old shit as "proof", sure the documents aren't available, just trust us they say what we want them to say. Sure the consular officals were there at the behest of the legitimate elected government and spent their days writing out visas, that is surely proof enough that they were in fact highly trained commandos deep undercover. They had a fax machine for gods sake? A fax machine! This is a highly specialised piece of military hardware designed purely with offensive capabilites to tranfer secret documents, secretly. A fax machine! When will you people wake up and stop this destruction of all that the west holds dear.

After the Obama/Democratic Party smear by our sleazy PM Brianburke Brianburke, Ms Phillips applauded

Way to go, John! Not for the first time, I mourn the fact that John Howard can’t run for US President himself.

Just what we need, another president who plays ugly party politics with national security, she then turns to justifying the "stupidist fucking guy on the face of the earth" Doug Fieth with more utter facile bullshit from the uber rightwing Weekly Standard, rehashing the same 1% possibly true claims of those who justifyied the Iraq War.

If you only ever watch fox news or read the Weekly Standard, you should be aware that your knowledge of the world is decreased, not increased as studies have shown, and this is where Melanie gets all her facts and hysteria from, the same base of paranoid nutbags. Its not that she is trapped in a past that has been thouroughly discredited, its that even when a particular point has been thoroughly debunked, she will keep on saying it as though it were undisputed fact. This is pure Cheney territory, no matter what the facts are, just hope the other person has no idea what you are talking about and repeat ad nasuem. Cheney, to this day still spreads the completely debunked crap about Mohamed Atta meeting with Iraqi agents in Europe, despite the CIA and the FBI pointing to the fact that Atta was in America at the time, and they have more than enough genuine proof for their side of the argument. But here is where the rub lies, if one person other than yourself believes in the lie, then your lie is backed up by others, thereby making it in some way true. And if you read such uber right trash as Frontpagemag, then any and all of your paranoid fantasies will find some sympathy, and this you can use as evidence to turn your shit into "fact".

Because so many Muslims genuinely believe they are under attack by the west, which is a giant conspiracy to destroy Islam. So they perceive their own aggression as legitimate self-defence, and the west’s defence as aggression.

melanie, you are saying the exact same thing, just reverse muslims and west, and you have your argument in a nutshell.

The police are still struggling with the paralysis of political correctness. They have now realised they are up against an enemy with a sophisticated strategy of dissimulation and entrapment, ever since a sting in which a fruitless raid resulted in a non-fatal shooting with the Islamists milking the incident for all they were worth.

Melanie, forgets the shooting of an innocent Brazilian, forgets that of all the arrests for "terrorism" in the UK, less than 4% have resulted in charges of terrorism being brought and then she wonders why Muslims complain that they are being unfairly targeted. But once more facts should never get in the way of a good theory, ask doug fieth about that one.

It is only if we act against the ideology that is spreading such falsehood and hatred, and stop its advance under the umbrella of minority rights, that we have any chance of defending the free world. ...It also means facing down in public the lies spread about the west. Only if we stop deluding ourselves and take such action necessary for our survival will we stop sleepwalking to defeat.

Melanie, couldnt agree more, facts, reason and truth, not falsehoods, irrationality and hatred are the key, but when you are the one pushing the falsehoods, irrationality and hatred, and people listen to your repetition ad nasuem and internalise them as though they were the be all and end of the conversation, then all shall go on repeating as if history and facts have no place in our lives.

Surely they have no place in your hysterical rantings.

SCOOOOOOOTER

The coalition of the willing is slowly being whittled down, not by the terrorists who threaten the very fabric of our society, making it unsafe to walk to the local shops (c pyne), but by their suicidal leap into the chasm of personal corruption and malfeasance.

Excluding Iraq, Blair is drowning in a cash for peerages scandal and has squandered a seemingly unassaible majority to a conservative party that has adopted the classical low profile strategy, letting its labor opponents bleed to death beneath the wieght of its own self inflicted wounds.

Howards stuttering brian burke brian burke while three of his own MP's are raided by the federal police over sleazing their printing allowances and he smears the minister who takes over the portfolio of the man who resigns for having less contact with BB than the man he replaced, who "did nothing wrong" in the first place..meanwhile back at the polls, panic sets in and accountability reigns. So tell me PM, if you knew of the raids on thursday, why did you spend all day friday trying to smear Kevin Rudd rather than looking into Printgate. Diversions, diversions...

Spains PM has long been booted from high office for lying to the public over the madrid bombings...

Bush, well, under which slimy rock would you start to look?

Lets start with Scooter, The Decider proclaimed boldly when Valerie Plames covert status was leaked to that "douchebag of freedom" Robert Novak, that anyone who leaked that name would be fired. Ok, he lied, coz Dik Cheney, Karl Rove et al are still with us and Richard Armitage left of his own accord to spriuk for the whitehouse's record and enjoy his own status as the rat who didnt go down with the ship.

The level of mendacity apparent in Cheneys self serving "unclassifying" of a covert CIA operatives status is bordering on treason and to do it for purely political gain is beyond the pale must surely be ranked up thier with any crime commited by Nixon, including the covert slaughter of neutral Cambodians durring the Vietnam war. In a time of war, a war upon which they say the future of all western democracy is at stake, can a greater crime be commited by one who holds such high office? But of course all we get is one fall guy guilty of lying to save the skins of his superiors, the al capone defence, he is not a bootlegging mass murderer, just a tax cheat.

And why no other charges for those who put Libby up to it? Thats what the jury themselves are asking. Well, he is guilty of "obstructing" the very investigation that would have revealed the truth, so is it suprising that they only reached into one portion of the highest office of the whitehouse when the whitehouse itself is convicted by default of standing in the way of the investigation.

The scars of the rush into a war of choice are deep and still, even after all these years, no less murky, tainting all of the coalition partners with a circular tortured logic that defined the Plamegate affair. Bush and Howard pinned the Nigerian inteligence on Blair who in turn blamed Bush who in turn pointed to the UK, and so it goes round, Howard blames Bush and Blair for the inteligence failure as he was relying on thier inteligence. yet none have ever backed away from the justification for war, just weaselled around the fingers pointed directly at them and shifted the rationale with each falling lie.

Despite what you may hear from the uber conservative american right, Scooter Libby is a patriot in the same way that Tokyo Rose was a great patriot, and she was pardoned by President Ford, so look forward to the next chapter after sentencing.

how quickly the lies begin:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21339756-601,00.html

bbbbburke..LTS..liberal tourettes syndrome

How many times did our treasurer say "Brian Burke" durring a 12 minute interview on lateline lastnight: twenty seven (27), this includes twice when he said "Brian Burke, Brian Burke"

Couple this with the PM trying to get a sentence out that didnt include BB and you have a government that no longer governs, just hangs around street corners muttering BB, BB, BB. even the wind seems to be whispering BB.

Are the Liberal heavy weights having some form of tourettes inspired breakdown. Dont they have a country to run at some point, or is this the way to our future, just say BB and all will magically fall into place. So good to see in the middle of a stockmarket meltdown that the Treasurer didnt once take the time to bother with economics. Oh I am gonna need a large box of tissues and a court order to get through to the date when the election is announced, then I will get seriously excited and my neighbours will once again apply for those pesky restraining orders...

News from the North
Oh the delicious stench wafting from the north, while Howard grants $2.9 billion dollars of pure pork to marginal electorates in Queensland for road projects that the state government doesn't want and claims should go to areas in much greater need (but not so marginal for the Libs), the barely sitting members offices are being raided by the AFP over rorting of his electoral allowance.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers raided the offices of the three Liberal MPs - member for Moreton Gary Hardgrave, member for Bowman Andrew Laming and member for Bonner Ross Vasta

The less than honorable, Mr Hardgrave:

"It's got nothing to do with me," he said. "I've done nothing wrong. They were simply trying to verify some things. It is absolutely nothing I've done or nothing my office has done."

If it works for a few ministers before a royal commission, its gotta work in front of a few television cameras, dont it?

say it again Mr Howard, BBBBBBBBBurke, bbbbbbburke.

Skuzzball news: all thats fit to be printed about
The right dishourable, Christopher Pyne, Grand Mufti of Poonce

what do we know about Abbotts mini-me, Chrisopher Pyne? Here are some of his own words:

we know that he reads exotic pornography "They have more positions than the karma sutra!"

we know he favours "Turning Australia into an international nuclear waste dump" and knows it"is a hard-sell policy" and that "The Australian Government is now looking at building the facility in one of three potential locations in the Northern Territory."

We also know that he is against using australia as a toxic waste dump as "it is currently illegal, and the Australian Government has already indicated that we will not be making any changes to the law to allow it. While we may make a few quick dollars in the short term, by prostituting our wonderful land, our international reputation would be sullied as we became branded as the waste dump of the world." So good to see a man of such principles who studies exotic pornography can hold utterly contradictory positions with such aplomb.

We know he wants us to "recognise that the ABC must find an additional revenue source, by introducing "between-program" advertising."

We know that he equates harm minimumisation with "Vladimir Lenin’s “useful fools” (aristocrats who supported the revolution) unknowingly aided and abetted the Communists slaughter and mass dispossession in Russia, so too are drug testers unwittingly aiding drugs tsars by wanting to test drugs at “rave” parties."

Despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, he implies only losers take drugs, "because unless we work together the only winners will be the drug dealers." Tell that to GW Bush, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, John Lennon, Anthony Eden, Elvis Presley, Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, Tony Blair, the pakistan cricket team and all the boys of the old East German Womens Swimming team.

We know that the people in his electorate are fuckwits because "Every three years my constituents are given the choice to re-elect me or choose someone else" and so far they havent chosen the sensible alternative.

He thinks that the Therapeutic Goods Administration should be in jail because they have allowed RU-486 "it is worse than a crime of omission – it is a crime of commission."

He thinks that the attacks on the world trade centre were just like a broadway show, "the unforgettable attack in New York ." and doesnt want to alarm you but "the thought that you might not survive a trip to the supermarket is unthinkable", even though he just thought it.

We know he endorses gassing small animals "Miners would use a caged canary in the mine shaft to indicate whether any toxic gases were in the air as an early warning system"

He goes further and wants to gass the middle east, "For many of us, is the canary in the coal mine in the Middle East , and in the war against terror", such sophisticated understandoing of the worlds problems leads one to want him as our Foreign Minister.

When John Howard calls the election he has threaten to roger all and sundry while possibly on a crystal meth bender, "no-one in politics will get much sleep on this year’s election night."

We know that he is a shameless self promoter, "Pyning for the front benches" a snippet from his very own website, which states "we are seeing a political star in the ascendant". We also find out that he has been hawking others speeches, "publishes $1 regular series of essays, including contributions by ministers" in what is surely a grand scamm of Nigerian Prince proportions, as all these speeches are on the public register and completely free.

We know that he himself has indulged in flagrant abuses such as "Schoolies week isn’t a new idea, I remember heading down" where he acknowledges "News reports of drunkenness and violence at schoolies" and his involvement at first hand , but thats ok its just "students would be looking to blow off some steam after the exams are over" and that the drug taking and excessive drinking"would define the future for the rest of my life, and I suspect little has changed for students today."

For all his blatant hypocrisy I label him as many do, "poonce" or maybe a more apt title is Grand Mufti of Poonce"

Meanwhile in a prison far, far away..the angry delusion continues.

PM Fairly Floss gets angry about a delay that he has so far ignored for five years, "I am angry" he shouts to no one in particular. His January deadline, that was also a cause of his anger in january, came and went without anyone in a position to calm him down, noticing just how "angry" he was, so March rolls around, and his anger management course has still not begun. He is of course "angry" that his AngerManagement Program 101 is delayed and not due to start until, as the doctor said "the man calms down a little and he stops muttering Brian Burke".

A little to the right of PM FF, sits Colonel Davis, who one day while picking tulips in a green tropical field on a little conservative island surrounded by a socialist paradise, suggests that the man charged with defending someone will be charged himself for defending that someone. He, of course, gets angry that anyone would suggest that he suggested what he said was in any way what he said, it was only a suggestion and not in any way what he said, he suggested.

A little further to the right again, a serious man in a serious uniform informs his freinds that wounded soldiers love to sleep in their own urine, blaming the press for "yellow journalism". This was the same serious man who investigated the utterly untrue stories about Anger Islands residents, "they love abuse, you only hurt the ones you love, and I love em, ever so much." Besides, as is always the case, it had nothing to do with them, it was the "junior officers". On Anger Island, like the rest of the world, if you are in charge, it means you look down for direction and up for love. No care and no responsibilty (until it hits the press and they have photos), the new management credo of Anger Island.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/05/kiley-abuse/

Stay tuned for more from Anger Island, a happy place where angry people learn to love thier anger and embrace the defence of the indefensible.

smell the finger of desperate election smears

Who could not love politics in the run up to an election, a minister gets sacked for "doing nothing wrong", the news is filled for days with the PM's dubious assertions and braying of his tired attack dogs. Sense in an election year, be damned, bring on the tops and let them spin.

FORMER MINISTER IAN CAMPBELL : I have just in the last hour tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister. The reason for that is that I want to ensure that the Government is re-elected.

No politics here people, just look away

Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has also bought into the debate with his customary panache:

"Have a look at all the bag men in Liberal Party for God's sake," he said. "I mean if you applied a sanitary test to those guys, I mean no minister would do any business in this country."

Treasurer Peter Costello as "all tip and no iceberg"

Hurdling corpses...with attack dogs

TONY ABBOTT (Monday in parliment): The only socialist thing about him was his haircut, Mr Speaker. His depression era haircut. Whether it's Dr Death or Pol Pot, don't trust him with the health system.

How kindly of our catholic (this means nominally christian) health minister, a man who thinks lying to the ABC is perfectly justified, who finds lying and distorting about the drugs administered under his portfolio, absolutley fine, a man whose own campaign director, Ian MacDonald, "was jailed for a $7 million embezzlement" and who "visited him in the Kirkconnel jail." Forgiveness is divine to a christian Mr Abbot.

FRAN KELLY: Minister, 40 to 50 companies seek Brian Burke's services including Geoff Prosser, a Liberal MP, seeks Brian Burke's service. Many of these people are your supporters. Are they morally compromised from this contact?

FRAN KELLY: Is everyone in contact with him morally compromised?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I think that certainly they have questions to answer because of the modus operandi that this gentleman has consistently been using.

From the Australian: Mr Burke's corporate clients have included Macquarie Bank and Fortescue Metals whose chief executive, Andrew Forrest, is a close friend of Mr Howard and who attended the 2005 dinner with Mr Rudd that has embroiled the Opposition Leader in the biggest furore of his leadership.

So will Mr Howard now cut off all contact with anyone who has ever dealt with Mr Burke, as his Minister has suggested would be right and proper? No of course not, as the PM said they are not seeking election to higher office, just a slice of the public purse and Mr howards ear in thier "questionable" dealings.

I am loving the fact that this stoush is more likely to ensare the PM more than it will Rudd, just by virtue of the ludicris, blanket claims that stink of that very special desperation that surrounds drowning politicians. The PM's scattergun approach to this minor political hiccup will bite his everwidening arse the next time he is photographed meeting with a prominent business head who has met with Mr Burke. After all his own governments ministers have all declared them tainted. This could bring the Liberals governing to a dead stop.

Will Mr Howard call upon Andrew Forrest his close freind to answer and back up those wild accusations he is now thowing about like pink confetti at a gay wedding, the man was at the dinner and presumably will be able to give a full and frank disclosure of all his dealings with Burke and of the dinner he and Rudd attended. What are freinds for, just ask our next high commissioner to London or the US, Ian Campbell.

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Meanwhile the goverment in that shining beacon of democracy, Iraq is just about to fall over:

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/1737/Iraqi_Papers_Monday_Maliki_Threatens_Changes

while ex-cia stooge Allawi, a man who admitted to planting car bombs in Bagdhad prior to the US invasion, quietly gathers his forces for another shot at that poisoned chalic, PM.
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Return of slavery in the "compassionate" US of A under GW.

As migrant laborers flee Colorado because of tough new immigration restrictions, worried farmers are looking to prisoners to fill their places in the fields.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/us/04prisoners.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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For anyone suffering from the governments (lack of) information about Iraq, heres a neat little primer

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_101.html