:: Wog Blog ::

:: WHAT AM I THINKING ABOUT? ::

:: Friday, 30 April 2004 ::

Spittin'

You know you're winning when Riverbend is in serious flipout mode.

She hates the flag and is appalled at Chalabi's mere existence on the planet.

But she really spits with rage over US soldiers' maltreatment and psychological abuse of members of her beloved Brave Iraqi Mafia who those US soldiers have captured - the maltreatment and psychological abuse having taken place last year, and having been investigated by US Armed Forces with the result that 17 of those soldiers involved in the maltreatment and psychological abuse have been relieved from duty. 6 courtmartialled. Condemnation from everyone in the US and internationally, but most importantly from US Armed Forces.

Maltreatment is making a bunch of naked guys do a prolonged 'stacks on the mill'.

Psychological abuse is telling a hooded man that he is connected to electrodes (just cords) which will be set off if he moves an inch from the platform he is standing on.

Why so much rage for that? Riverbend has nothing good to controbute to her new country.

Nothing.



:: WB 1:11 pm [link+] ::

The What Brigade?

The May Day demonstrations are coming on Saturday. Maybe they will release the three alive Italian hostages (query what has become of the body of the one hostage they murdered so gruesomely even Al Jazeera's stomach was turned so much that that disgusting jihadi propaganda outfit decided against airing it) after the scenes of marchers in Rome appear - in the idiot belief their terrorist kidnapping demands for Rome demonstrations have been met.

I loathe these pigs and I have not got a lot of time for folks who equivocate in their loathing.

There are some bottom lines in life, dontcha reckon? And one of them is: do not kidnap people and do not support folks who kidnap people. And do not slaughter any of the people that you kidnap.

Urgh.


:: WB 2:34 pm [link+] ::

Top Quotes

Victor Davis Hanson on the Palestinians:

The Palestinians will, in fact, get their de facto state, though one that may be now cut off entirely from Israeli commerce and cultural intercourse. This is an apparently terrifying thought: Palestinian men can no longer blow up Jews on Monday, seek dialysis from them on Tuesday, get an Israeli paycheck on Wednesday, demonstrate to CNN cameras about the injustice of it all on Thursday — and then go back to tunneling under Gaza and three-hour, all-male, conspiracy-mongering sessions in coffee-houses on Friday. Beware of getting what you bomb for.

Alla on Al Qaeda:

You murder children and don’t even have some remnant of decency left to at least keep quiet, but have to blame it on others, to shelter the true criminals. But let me just tell you this: Every little drop of blood from a severed limb of a child going to school, every school bag with their books and pencils strewn on the scene of the crime, the little poor shoes soaked in blood with bloodied remains of little feet still inside them; these before anything else spell your eternal damnation. You have no God. I mean you may think that you have a God, but it is some terrible bloodthirsty figure of hate and rage, a figment of your insane imagination; most certainly not the Compassionate the Merciful Allah we believe in. Your filthy beards and turbans are covered with blood and excrement forever, rabid dogs, unbelievable monsters, misanthropes.

Later.


:: WB 1:24 am [link+] ::

What a Skippy Arse, eh?

Bated by Blair I make the following comment:

Michael Darragh is at the very least part Irishman, a Celtic jackass, and therefore a drunkard who cannot drive and cannot dance, who loves his mother, potato, potato.

Jeebus wept. What is the man's point? Once he men a blonde hostie whose tits were not pointing heavenward and she gave him an upgrade to business class on a flight when the Bali bombing happened but he did not like her tone.

Gi Fa, you imbecile turd.

I do not approve of your tone. You thinks wogs are victims of skippies? You think we cannot take it? You think we do not think in racist terms ourselves? You think we do not know our art and food is superior in every way to anything that has ever come out of skippy Oz?

Get Far Away.

Sure, some Oz folks are racist, skippies and wogs alike.

G'uh.

Your point being?

Talk to me about racism. I am Italian. Everything below Rome is just a bunch of Greeks. Everything above Modena is just a bunch of Austrians.

And neither of those is a good thing.

You want racism, you talk to me.

Urgh. Too early.




:: WB 3:21 pm [link+] ::

Here is the case against Moqtada al Sadr

Prepared by an Iraqi judge.

Seems the Pest of Najaf is a fat jackass embezzler and murderer.

But he is holed up in a Mosque, of course, abusing his faith by treating a holy place as a hideout for him and his cronies. He is a disgrace as many of the Iraqi bloggers have pointed out (excluding Riverbend of course who cannot bring herself to criticise al Sadr cos she is on the side of anyone even thugs and criminal scum, who is not an Englishman, an Italian, a Spaniard, an American, a Japanese, a Polish person working with the coalition etc etc).

al Sadr is a disgrace and it seems the Iranians are having no luck convincing him to give himself up peacefully from Najaf. Civilian deaths may follow because him and his Madhi Mafia insist on fighting from inside the city where Iraqi civlians are, using them as cover.

Urgh.

:: WB 6:20 am [link+] ::

Top post from Norm Geras
:: WB 4:35 pm [link+] ::

Critical of the US but not anti-American

Here is a Libyan blog.

Yip.

Libyan.

And he is a Guardianista and Chomsky-quoting Libyan which is tragic for the clumsy propaganda that gets peddled - I mean he quotes Seamus Milne the digusting wanker who wrote within days of Sept 11 "They do not know how much they are hated" about Americans. As if the victim of disgusting Islamofascist treachery and murder has to apologise because she deserved it. She deserved that rape. Milne is a jackass.

Anyhoo, this Libyan fellow has lived a long time in the West and he is mighty critical.

But his tone is reasonable. It is not just bitchy Riverbendness making no point except to support violent murderous thugs. Nope.

This guy is critical but he writes like he knows that we know the truth about the violent murderous thuggery that his country has inflincted on innocents in the past. He writes like he knows that we know about Iraq too.

Anyhoo, he has a long post up that is pretty harrowing, all about the US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi that killed 31 Libyans on 14 April 1986.

A bombing done in direct retaliation for Libya's direct or sponsored terrorism in March 1986:
- the attack on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon
- the bombing of the USO club in Naples, Italy
- the bombing of a German disco in West Berlin frequented by US soldiers stationed

March.

Is it any wonder Tripoli got bombed in April.

Any why March? Because sanctions started in January, if I remember right, and Gaddafi was very unhappy about that. And what does an unhappy terrorist leader do?

Well he does more terrorism.

G'uh.

And why were the sanctions even imposed in the first place?

Cos of goddamed Libyan involvement in terrorism before that time, through the Red Brigades, the Abu Nidal Organisation, the PLO, the IRA.

So the start is terrorism. Followed by sanctions, and the reaction? More terrorism.

Then the bombing. And the reaction?

Well, Lockerbie 1988. Nice, huh? A passenger plane.

More terrorism.

And since then? Libya was well and truly shut out of Western society but good. No trade, no deals, no nothing.

And Gaddafi grew not to like that shutting out.

Good for him. It is never too late for a nation to give up terror. Gaddafi can see which way the world is heading - no more toleration of terrorism.

No more.

Now this blogger does sloppily call the bombing 'US state sponsored terrorism' but we all amemba the news.

We all remember the 80's, and the correct name is 'US military action in response to disgraceful Libyan thuggery and terrorism'.

I am figuring he and I may not see eye to eye about this, but maybe we could.

Maybe that is why the whole tone of his post is sad. Cos he knows that we know.

He does write:
Anyway a couple of days later and after nagging my dad took me to visit the Ben Ashur area where we had heard that horrible blast , I was utterly shocked that such a sight would be possible in my own country , it was my ground zero . One always think it happens to others .. but no sometimes it does happen to you as well, and you live to tell about it . One of the young girls who died that night used to go to school with me. The saddest part was her brother was calling from America when he was watching the news, and the phone was reverberating in a destroyed house full of dead people.

In order to survive, we put behind those sad memories and try to become pragmatic about this , maybe we even follow the proverb which says wisely ?when you can?t beat them ..join them?.

This was just one or two nights, so imagine what it is like in Iraq with endless nights like these in sight. No one who has not experienced this first hand can even come near to comprehending. My heart goes out to all the victims and their families in Iraq.

The majority of the Libyan people do not hold a grudge against America, they are very philosophical that this is now America?s turn to build an empire, so let them enjoy the heady feeling of power, but we have to remember that empires are not eternal and everything has a cycle - a beginning and an end.

The post is worth a read cos this is a voice that is not kneejerk anti-US. 'Most Libyans are not anti-American. They know the US won't lead the world forever.'

How very white or you not to hold grudges. I can imagine there are some folks in Beirut, Naples, Berlin and Lockerbie who rather do. But that is neither here nor there. Whatever, man.

The real key here is the sound of a man's voice from Libya - the voice of a person pained by a godawful memory of military might used against his nation, and the damage that it caused to people and homes and families and memory and why it ever happened in the first place.

His heart goes out to all the victims in Iraq. 'One man's terrorist...' can't you just hear it? 'All the victims.'

Well they are not all victims.

Some of them are pigs, Mafiosi scum.

My heart does not go out to kidnappers and thugs. Or blokes in the middle of the street firing their guns and their colleagues firing rocket propelled launchers from civilian areas.

It does not go out to people who coddle them, harbor them, give them shelter, or cower in fear of them.

It goes out only to people who have never committed a terrorist act in their lives and who have never once thought or believed that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'.

One man's gamey is another man's rotten.

Etcetera. Etcetera until it means no one at all is a terrorist, which is just bullshit.

Libyans were terrorists in the 80's. With everything that that entailed - danger for their citizens from angered victims. Economic deprivation for the absurd marxist rambligs of the despot in charge.

Now they are not terrorists. Now they do not earn reprisals.

About bloody time.

And this blogger knows it.

Which is terrific cos he is a rare voice. A good man from a formerly bad country.

:: WB 9:25 am [link+] ::

An impenetrable and unscaleable wall of prejudice.

Iraqi blogger Riverbend writes:

To lessen the feelings of anti-Americanism, might I make a few suggestions? Stop the collective punishment. When Mark Kimmett stutters through a press conference babbling about "precision weapons" and "military targets" in Falloojeh, who is he kidding? Falloojeh is a small city made up of low, simple houses, little shops and mosques. Is he implying that the 600 civilians who died during the bombing and the thousands injured and maimed were all "insurgents"? Are houses, shops and mosques now military targets?

Gi Fa, patrol. To lessen the deaths stop the shooting at the military. You suggesting all 600 are not insurgents? You suggesting that the Brave Iraqi Mafia in Fallujah does not give guns to kids, does not hide out in civilian areas and does not use women as shields? You suggesting that Iraqi women and children cannot possibly be part of the Brave Iraqi Mafia?

Gi Fa two times, you patrol.

Then she writes this:
What I'm trying to say is that we don't need news networks to make us angry or frustrated. All you need to do is talk to one of the Falloojeh refugees making their way tentatively into Baghdad; look at the tear-stained faces, the eyes glazed over with something like shock. In our neighborhood alone there are at least 4 families from Falloojeh who have come to stay with family and friends in Baghdad. The stories they tell are terrible and grim and it's hard to believe that they've gone through so much.

Wha'?

You see Iraqi's leaving Falluhjah and you get angry at the US? Why, you daft cunt, can you not get sensible and start getting angry at the Brave Iraqi Mafia in Falluhjah who is stupidly fighting against the US military, viciously using children and women as their shields and even recruiting them into their fighting - we all watch the news, Riverbend, we can see the Brave Iraqi Mafia waving their guns in the air and wearing their stupid teatowels all over their faces, we can tell by their bodyshapes they are mostly young, some of the very young, stupid Iraqi men and boys.

Why is this woman the only Iraqi blogger who can not write a single word that recognises that the Brave Iraqi Mafia is just a bunch of pig blokes who do more harm than good to a country, who put Iraqi civlians in danger by carrying out their attacks on coalition troops from civlian areas?

It is embarrassing for girlies everywhere when women act as deliberately foolish as this one.

And get this:
There has been a lot of criticism about the way Al-Arabia and Al-Jazeera were covering the riots and fighting in Falloojeh and the south this last week. Some American spokesman for the military was ranting about the "spread of anti-Americanism" through networks like the abovementioned.

Actually, both networks did a phenomenal job of covering the attacks on Falloojeh and the southern provinces. Al-Jazeera had their reporter literally embedded in the middle of the chaos- and I don't mean the lame embedded western journalists type of thing they had going at the beginning of the war (you know- embedded in the Green Zone and embedded in Kuwait, etc.). Ahmed Mansur, I believe his name was, was actually standing there, in the middle of the bombing, shouting to be heard over the F-16s and helicopters blasting away at houses and buildings. It brought back the days of 'shock and awe'...

Christ almighty here we go again.

The bombing and the shooting and the killing in Falluhjah is caused by the Brave Iraqi Mafia who keep shooting from civlian areas in Falluhjah at military forces lined up outside of Falluhjah. Stop shooting and the bombing stops.

Start capturing the Brave Iraqi Mafia and hand them over to the military. Start cleaning up your Falluhjah pigsty and the bombing will stop.

She is impressed by propagandists. Anti-Americxan propagandists, natch.

Sheesh.

And this too:
I think western news networks are far too tame. They show the Hollywood version of war- strong troops in uniform, hostile Iraqis being captured and made to face "justice" and the White House turkey posing with the Thanksgiving turkey... which is just fine. But what about the destruction that comes with war and occupation? What about the death? I don't mean just the images of dead Iraqis scattered all over, but dead Americans too. People should *have* to see those images. Why is it not ok to show dead Iraqis and American troops in Iraq, but it's fine to show the catastrophe of September 11 over and over again? I wish every person who emails me supporting the war, safe behind their computer, secure in their narrow mind and fixed views, could actually come and experience the war live. I wish they could spend just 24 hours in Baghdad today and hear Mark Kimmett talk about the death of 700 "insurgents" like it was a proud day for Americans everywhere...

Incredibile, eh?

She just loves Al Jazeera when it shows all the carnage inflicted by her Brave Iraqi Mafia which she comfortably from behind her computer blames entirely on the military without ever blaming once, not even a little bit, her Brave Iraqi Mafia.

But Al Jazeera will not show her Brave Iraqi Mafia murdering an Italian civilian worker, because it is too bloody, apparently. Her Brave Propagandists for the Brave Iraqi Mafia will not show that Mafia behaving like the pigs they are - that would not fit the propaganda.

Riverbend actually thinks none of us are watching.

She thinks none of us can imagine the horror if life in a country where pyschotic Mafia thugs turn everything they touch into shit and corrupt and lazy spinless locals like herself cannot even bring themselves to recognise that they are the problem and the military is not the problem.

Root causes, Riverbend, and the root cause is you and your Brave Iraqi Resistance and your Brave Propagandists for the Brave Iraqi Resistance.

Just once you should criticise the thugs who kidnap and murder. Till you do you are an idiot.

And she closes with this:
Still, when I hear talk about "anti-Americanism" it angers me. Why does American identify itself with its military and government? Why is does being anti-Bush and anti-occupation have to mean that a person is anti-American? We watch American movies, listen to everything from Britney Spears to Nirvana and refer to every single brown, fizzy drink as "Pepsi".

I hate American foreign policy and its constant meddling in the region... I hate American tanks in Baghdad and American soldiers on our streets and in our homes on occasion... why does that mean that I hate America and Americans? Are tanks, troops and violence the only face of America? If the Pentagon, Department of Defense and Condi are "America", then yes- I hate America.

Milo, give me strength. I mean, how does one deal with this sort of intellectually gymnastic rubbish?

Why does being anti-Bush and anti-occupation mean being anti-America? Probably because, in your case, all you ever do is complain about the Americans. If you were pro-something, Riverbend, then maybe it wouold be possible for you to be characterisable as something other than just another Iraqi anti-US crank with nothing to offer her country except sniping from behind the safety of your computer. You are anti-American because you cannot help yourself.
I mean really, she cannot have been thinking when she wrote that.

But I think it might be a helpful exercise for me to exorcise some of the palpitations I have had since reading that last bit of her post. Let us address her in the same manner, then eh?

I hate Iraq's foreign policy of annexing Kuwait and its constant meddling in the region by paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers...I hate the Brave Iraqi Mafia kidnapping foreign civilian workers and murdering one Italian civilian and threatening three others...I hate Saddam's brutal oppression and the stupid UN oil-for-palaces sanctions that caused Iraqis to flee their country...and I hate those fleeing Iraqis when they arrive uninvited into my country demanding I treat them as refugees after they have bypassed perfectly safe countries on their way down to Oz

...does that mean I hate Iraq and Iraqi people?

Are brutal dictatorship, kidnapping murdering scum pigs and illegal Iraqi immigrants the only face of Iraq? If so, I hate Iraq.

Zif they are the only faces. There are dentists, for goodness sake, like Zeyad. And there are booksellers, and school teachers, and architects and lawyers and engineers and athletes. I know Iraq is more than just the Brave Iraqi Mafia and sniping pessimists like Riverbend. I know it so I know I am not anti-Iraqi.

She however cannot bring herself to write what is good about America. The best she can do to disguise her anti-Americanism is to phrase her question as if the only things she hates about America are tanks in her area.

But when the tanks are gone, she will find something else to bitch about.

Riverbend is like the person decribed here in this new blog The Joy of Knitting

An impenetrable and unscaleable wall of prejudice.

Good thing she is in the minority.

:: WB 8:00 pm [link+] ::

The pigs have killed one of the four kidnapped Italians

Pieces of shit, pigs.

Murderous criminal scum.

Imbeciles.

Kill a hostage and threaten the remaining three because Italian troops are in Iraq.

Lord, please, please let Berli stand firm. Four Italian citizens are quite likely to die - having killed one, what is to stop the maniacal psychotic pigs who kidnapped them from just shooting the rest? It is not as if the pigs have any sense of right and wrong, of their hopeless cause, to stop themselves from behaving likely the wild boars they are.

Scum. Filthy scum. Pigs.


:: WB 5:21 pm [link+] ::

Dubya firms up 30 June for the handover to Iraq authority.

He is doing his talking thing before his press conference thing. Firming up the date is good and he has also reinforced the election for no later than January 2005.

I approve of this. I am with Kaus (see Sunday 11 Apr post).

Hmm. I am getting impressed. I'll try to parse:

Now is the time and Iraq is the place in which the enemies of the civilised world are attacking the forces of civilized world. A roadside bomb in Baghdad serves the same purpose as bombs on trains in Madrid, as bombs in a nightclub in Bali, as slitting the throat of a reporter. Terror. Famatical ideology. They seek to persecute women, kill Jews.

Over the last couple decades we have seen that any concession to these people only invites more terror.

For the first time the civilized world is uniting to fight terror. Terrorists have lost an ally in Baghdad.

In this conflict there is no safe alternative to resolute action. If we are not resolute, killers will be invigorated.

Okay, so now questions:
How do you answer the Vietnam comparison?
It is a false analogy and it sends the wrong message to our troops. It is a hard effort. It has been a year and it feels a long time for troops and families but it is is not that long a time really and there is progress. This is a big deal. It will change that whole region and the world wih it. To talk about Vietnam is to look to the past to work out how to decide now. I don't make decisions that way.

Do you need more troops and how long will you stay?
We will stay as long as necessary and if Snachez asks for more troops he can have them. Once we pass sovereignty we will need to stay to secure the joint. And we need to train the Iraqi troops. Some of them have worked brilliantly and others have not eprformed well at all and we need to work out why they did not perform.

How do you answer your critics who ask where the WMD are, who feel they have been misled into the war?
I made assessments. I have had to review our thinking at the time. We knew his history. We knew he was a threat to his neigbours, he coddled terrorists, he funded suiciders, he was a threat to America and we went to the UN, you might recall. I went and I said, if you will not do something America will. And having said that we had to be prepared to follow it up. So we had to be prepared for the action. Everybody had the same intelligence on WMD. Everybody.

Do you feel personally responsible for September 11, 2001?
I did not have the sense of outrage before Sept 11. On that day I was angry and sad. I grieve for the families. I do. Hindsight is easy and I do wish other things had happened - Homeland Security and Patriot Act for example - and I regret that we were not on a war footing and yet the enemy was at war with us. The lesson is that we must deal with gathering threats. That is part of the reason we have dealt with Iraq the way we have.

You never admit a mistake - is it a fair thing to say? Whether WMD, post-war planning in Iraq or Sept 11.
We were not on a war footing. We knew Bin Laden had designs but not us and not the previous administration imagined or knew that planes would be flown in to buildings.

The Aug 6 2001 memo re Bin Laden - did it trigger reactions in the administrations?
I asked for the briefing because there had been a lot of intelligence that was troubling over seas, I had been focussed on Genoa G8 conference and I needed to get a focus on domestic safety. I did not think there was anything new in Bin Laden's interest in the UN, we knew that already. What was interesting was the FBI field investigations. Had there been a threat that we could respond to we would have acted. I have been asked, do I think about it, of course I do, of course I wonder if there was anything we could have done to prevent Sept 11. We did not get warning of it.

Richard Clarke apologised unequivocally for failing Americans on Sept 11. Will you make an apology?
The person responsible for Sept 11 is Bin Laden. He is responsible. We would have moved heaven and earth to prevent Sept 11 if we could have.

US troops and British troops are in Iraq but the other largest contingent is contractors, hired gunds. Your opponents criticise this as a fake coalition. How do you respond?
I do not believe we should decry the efforts of folks who are engaged in improving Iraq. Berlusconi understands that, the Polish guy [oops did not catch it], Blair gets it, Koizumi gets it. I was talking to Koizumi and it dawned on me as we spoke that we would not be talking about Iraq if Japan had not had folks staying the course to rebuild Japan. Iraq is important, critical. Some folks believe that if you are brown skinned and Muslim then you cannot run a civilized society and I reject that.

You have been accused of letting the Sept 11 threat mature too far and of not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough, how do you respond? How can you justify any other pre-emptive question?
Had the US acted unilaterally in dealing with Afghanistan the mood of the world simply would not have tolerated it. Plus it would have been hard because Pakistan was not yet on board. Sept 11 was a shock and changed everything. We had thought oursleves safe because we were protected by seas. But that is not correct. To the second part of the quesiton, we have had some successes and maybe military action, which is always a last resport anyway, will not be so necessary. Libya has come clean. By the way they found 30 tonnes of mustard gas at a turkey farm and we only found it cos it was disclosed to us. We use everything, diplomacy and military. We are at war. Iraq is part of the war on terror. It is not the war on terror. It is a theatre in the war on terror.

This is an election year. What if you do not win?
I plan to win. Democracy is the key and I believe the people will agree with me but we are free and the fighters, lost loved ones, are engaged in a war. The campaign will allow us to address these arguments better for why I should be re-elected but right now we are dealing with Iraq.

What is your biggest regret post Sept 11, and what have you learned from it?
This is a difficult question. I don't wanna say I have not made mistakes. I am confident I have done. But I guess I am not so quick on my feet coming up with one now.

What is the status of the intelligence services, the American MI-5?
I have not made any decision yet. But we have to understand this is a war so I will address the matters as they come up. But we have to understand this first and foremost. We are at war. War. With people who kills at a moment's notice. They do not care. Freedom is not this country's gift to the world. It is the Almighty's gift to every person in the world. We do have an obligation to take freedom to the world, to feed folks, to assist with AIDS. We can win the war on terror and we will do.

NPR guy - with public support for you on Iraq plummetting do you feel you are ineffective communicator, do you feel you have failed in any way to win confidence?
This is what elections are for, it is for the voters to decide. If I tried to finetune my message based on polls I would not be very true. I hope today you have a sense on my conviction about this. My campaign is something I look forward to. But this is a big question - what is the purpose of American power. But I will say this - one thing you can say about me, when I say something. I mean it.


Well.

There you are.

On song and not taking a step back.

:: WB 6:34 pm [link+] ::

Brave Iraqi Mafia

I have not posted on this whole Iraq stuff cos others are covering it plenty better than me. Plus I got other stuff to do that's keeping me busy busy busy. There'll be infrequent stuff from me for some time I reckon.

But on Iraq, for cying outta loud, we are seeing mafia, not brave resistance fighters, not honourable insurgents.

Mafia.

That is what we have with the Shia Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, threatening Iraqi police if they dare to do their jobs and arrest some mafia scum.

That is what we have with the ongoing Sunni attacks on the Coalition supply lines.

That is what we have with the Shia and Sunni kidnappers of non-military foreign nationals.

Stinking mafia.

I could go on and on about this, and others have cottonned on to the similarities. Kidnapping? Ordering the police not to arrest Iraqi citizens (...silence as we wonder who the hell else Iraqi coppers are s'posed to arrest....people from Chad?), threatening shopkeepers to close their shops so a 'general stike' can be called.

No links cos I cannot be asked. Visit the Iraqi bloggers as left and get up to speed on bunches of stuff and check news wires to stay up to date on the latest embarrassing backdown by these thugs.

Absolute mafia. Irrational criminal scum who cannot imagine that some folks might just want their power and phones on 24x7 and be able to work and play without fear or favour.

All hail the brave Iraqi mafia.

urgh.

:: WB 1:53 am [link+] ::

Ooh Oooh. I just heard on the BBC World

that the World Health Organisation has just released a report that says that traffic accidents....traffic accidents...are now so serious that they rival AIDS for their serousness, fatality and threat to world health.

Traffic accidents.

What on earth is the WHO going to do about it? I mean, wha? Put on their dungarees and paint some lines on some roads?


:: WB 9:20 pm [link+] ::

Fathead is making his Foreign Policy Speech - Paul Keating lite, New Zealand all over

Labor's foreign policy has three pillars:
- Oz will not be conciliatory to the US, we will not be a Deputy to US, we will just be ourselves. (Kinda like Howard has been himself and has seen good opportunities while Clinton was in office and now that Bush is in office too. Kinda like the Free Trade Agreement (no mention of it by the way).)

- Oz will re-engage with Asia because Asia is so important now at a time of real growth and it is our backyard. (Kinda like Howard and our Bilateral Trade Agreement with China (no mention of it by the way), and our engagement in the Solomons and in PNG and our complete financing of Nauru, and our refusal to cave in to the bullying from Indonesia and Malasia (no mention of these either).)

- Oz will be conciliatory to the UN, because multilateral diplomacy matters (Unlike Howard, the UN matters more to Labor than sovereignty matters, Labor won't be telling the Human Rights Commission to Gi Fa whenever it wastes our time trying to paint us as genocidal maniacs over the Aboriginals or the illegal entrants.)

And on Iraq, these gems:

A war conducted for a reason that was not true.

A debacle.

Diverted resources from the real war against terror. Had Bin Laden bin captured the world would be safer.

Most surprising is the lack of remorse. No sense of apology for the error that was made.

Troops home by Christmas.

We had no business in being there.

Not a word about Saddam. Not a word about removing a dictator.

So there you have it. Latham's foreign policy.

We should be ashamed of removing Saddam. We should be ashamed that the French derailed the UN and we did not back them up. We should have let the UN be derailed and do nothing to Saddam. So also we should be ashamed of our East Timor 'adventure' because Howard did that and it upset Indonesia and the UN did not approve it. Our engagement in the region viz our bilateral trade relationship with China means nothing. Our support of the Solomons and PNG mean nothing. Our payments to Nauru and offer to help their sinking population mean nothing. And the US matters no more than Latham deems necessary - and he deems the President 'the most dangerous president ever' or something immoderate like that.

New Zealand here we come. Irrelevant and thoroughly compliant to the UN and with a big ol'd streak of anti-US bias running through everything.

That is Fathead's foreign policy.

God help us, eh? Play nice to Indonesia. It is not like some Indonesians want to kill us or anything. Nooo.

Just a bunch of half-baked ideas.

Wonder how the press will spin it.

Urgh. No I don't.

:: WB 8:53 pm [link+] ::

The fat turd is a liar to boot.

I bin thinking about creating a soft toy - of Lardhead with his fat feet stuck in his mouth.

Reckon it'd sell?.


:: WB 4:09 pm [link+] ::