Emigre's diary

On bearing standards

2006-08-29T11:39:00.000+09:30

Whoever was popping over here by proxy to click the "flag this blog for objectionable content" button seems to have changed their mind and unflagged it.

Coincidentally I only noticed after I checked Fayrouz's google cache to see what she has published over the last three months as I have not bothered to read her diary since her post about migrants (the one where she proclaimed to be a good hardworking migrant and all other migrants are bludgers and wear the mark of Satan, which I challenged her on, and which she then threw a wobbly about and told me she was filing my IP to give to the FBI).

What I noticed, when I was looking at Fayrouz's google listing, is that, like my diary once was, her blog seems to now be flagged for objectionable content. Curious, I skim read her google cache and found she has completely flip-flopped from her former "yay the new democratic Iraq thank you America" stance and posted that "it's time to pull the troops out of Iraq". I guess some people might find it tempting to wave this around and announce the pro-war Iraqi blogger republican support base has withered away. But not me. Because frankly I don't trust her as far as I can throw her. She also seems to have turned off her comments completely.

Apart from the FBI threat incident (in which Fayrouz threatened me that I would be "the first to go to the prison jail" - for having merely been sarcastic) I am fairly critical of anyone too keen with the "troops out of Iraq" mantra. It's a cop-out for people who support some wars but not others and I am a pacifist against all wars including civil ones. Besides, it wasn't especially effective during the Vietnam war. People chanted "troops out" for 10 years over Vietnam, hardly a standout war-stopping success, I can't really say I'm keen about Iraq having to endure a whole decade of war just because a stubborn and un-imaginative faction couldn't come up with a better slogan.

My war update, redeclaration of boycott

2006-07-20T07:40:00.000+09:30

After some few drafts on the topic and lengthy thought, I have decided to withhold publishing and resume my strike against war.

I re-instate my passive boycott of blogging until I see time fit to return.

There is nothing I can do to make Israel stop and as far as I am concerned Hezbollah are being hypocritical in complaining about "zionist aggression" when Hezbollah provoked the current conflict and continue to launch rockets into Israel.

As usual, I am disappointed in everyone.

Note to Greg: Greg Felton, my reply to you shall have to wait. This blog is inoperable during my boycott resumption.

I anticipate this may be a shorter boycott then the last one.

Emigre, zionist against war.

Economy update

2006-07-09T00:05:00.000+09:30

My hair is almost long enough to tie back. So is a lot of other peoples. I have been looking around for short haircuts in the streets but I see fewer then I used to. Public transport in Sydney is full of women with shoulder length hair. Even cafes are full of women with low maintenance hairstyles and regrowth.

Hair is one of the first things to tell the tale, when people cut down on their grooming budgets. It could just be winter, but I'm not so sure.

My enquiry into Kovco and Sinanovic's head injuries

2006-07-08T15:26:00.000+09:30

It looks like the Australian government has accidentally revealed what it was trying to cover up. Apart from their bodies being accidentally swapped in a Kuwait mortuary, Kovco and Sinanovic both had head injuries. Head injuries that were being kept under wraps in a civilian mortuary instead of in the usual US military morgue.

What seems to have happened, so far:

A deliberate effort to prevent Private Kovco's death from making the headlines "at home" failed. Private Kovco's body was supposed to have arrived back in Australia, in a hurry, before the press heard about it. The use of a civilian mortuary for processing non-civilian bodies with head injuries may be off the record standard practice.

Brigadier Cosson found the army had tried to get the body home too quickly. read more

Normally, apparently, a foreign cadaver in Iraq would take eight days to return home. Australia, the defense force enquiry says, planned on having Private Kovco back within four. The enquiry line is that this was "to meet the wishes of Private Kovco's family".

Except that Private Kovco's family say they were complying with the army's wishes. Blaming the family for the Australian government's political desire to rush an Iraq war body home and there-by avoid the Anzac day press, is low. Military families rarely question the letter of the law and it seems the Australian defense force had been hoping to take advantage of just that.

A dog ate our tag

Defense association excuses get worse, and reveal more.

"It was a badly lit morgue, the digger in question was emotionally affected, the surname of both Private Kovco and the Bosnian fellow are not dissimilar, they both had head injuries".

An Australian defense association spokes-person explaining, to the ABC, how one rushed home body got mixed up with another rushed home body.

1. "It was a badly lit morgue".

Defense forces are armed with torches, are they not?

2. "The digger in question was emotionally affected".

The platoon sergeant in question was private Kovco's platoon sergeant. Emotional or otherwise, a platoon sergeant should be able to recognise his privates and a digger should be able to recognise his mate. Unless the platoon sergeant was not that familiar with his privates, and not that emotional. Or, unless the mate a digger is trying to recognise has died from a point blank shot in the head. A point blank shot in the head rendering facial features somewhat unrecognisable. Point blank shots in the head are generally self applied.

In any case, blaming "the digger" for a military stuff-up shows poor form on the part of the defense association.

3. "The surname of both Private Kovco and the Bosnian fellow are not dissimilar".

Private Kovco's surname is Kovco. The surname of the contractor he was mixed up with is Sinanovic. Suggesting the two names are not dissimilar is akin to suggesting Schmidt and Bernstein are similiar on the basis of being spelt with an s and a t. That "Kovco" and "Sinanovic" are supposed to be not dissimilar and therefore somehow are a contributing factor in a body mix-up makes the co-alition look very very stupid, very very racist, and very very bad at making up excuses. Kovco starts with a K. Sinanovic starts with an S. The only consonant these two names have in common is "v".

4. "They both had head injuries."

Kovco and Sinanovic both had head injuries. And therein lies one coincidence too many. Presumably Sinanovic's head injury was the cause of Sinanovic's death, as was Kovco's. I wonder, how did Sinanovic's head injury happen. Are privates and contractors wearing their helmets to work? Or was Sinanovic, like Kovco, shot in his room, when he had his head gear off.

The mortuary

The defense force enquiry seems to be suggesting that Australia used an independent civilian mortuary, instead of the usual military mortuary, to speed up the usual eight day return. As if this was some sort of deviation from standard practice. Yet there was another body from another country, of a man working as a contractor for Halliburton, also with a head injury, being kept in the same independent mortuary. Is this a mortuary that is regularly used, to speed home bodies of soldiers and contractors with head injuries?

Juso Sinanovic's head injury

The Australian defense force enquiry into the swapping of Private Kovco's body with Halliburton carpenter Juso Sinanovic's, states that Juso Sinanovic's body had a head injury and suggests that the similarity between Kovco and Sinanovic's injuries contributed to the mixing up of their bodies. Yet a May 12 ABC transcript states that Juso Sinanovic died of a "brain haemorrhage". A brain haemorrhage is sometimes used to refer to a type of stroke that accounts for less then 15 percent of stroke cases. A brain haemorrhage of this type rarely leaves visible outside lesions or marks on the head that might resemble a bullet hole. In it's simplest form, a haemorrhage is the rupturing of blood vessels. I guess at a stretch a bullet wound could be said to cause haemorrhaging, but it is a descriptive stretch in determining a cause of death. Questions remain, was Sinanovic's haemorrhage the same kind of haemorrhage as Kovco's, if it was then why was it not described as a gun-shot injury and if it wasn't then how could it have contributed to the bodies being mistaken one for the other.

Why the defense force tried to cover it up

Private Kovco died from a head-injury when his own gun discharged in his barracks during an unpopular war. The first known Australian Iraq War defense casualty, he couldn't have died in a less heroic manner.

"Private shot with own gun". A far cry from the usual national roll out, when Australia's Anzac day parade goes to print.

It doesn't take much of a conspiracy theorist to understand that getting Kovco's body back quickly to avoid the press as Anzac day approached, would be a pretty high priority. Unfortunately it was all just too rushed.

On April 27, two days after Anzac day, Private Kovco's mother told The Age that her son's body got mixed up on the way home from Iraq. At the time, she said, with justified anger; "I have shut up for the army... we have shut up and we let the army handle it".

Had the bodies not been accidentally swapped, everything may have passed quietly for the army as planned. Kovco's body would have been cremated or buried and another Anzac day parade would have passed without reality hanging over it to remind everyone that once apon a time, Anzac day was a reminder of how crap war is.

Archived articles
SMH
ABC
ABC transcript

The truth about Al Muthana

2006-07-02T12:46:00.000+09:30

Some time ago, in February 2005 actually, I wrote that I didn't think the world was being told the entire whole truth about what the co-alition "of the willing" were doing in Al Muthana. The claim, at the time, made through mainstream media outlets in highly questionable press releases, was that non-combatant Japanese forces, supported by Australian troops, were conducting civilian engineering projects in the province.

At the time, this seemed highly curious to me. Because Al Muthana is a rural area. Why the big deal about engineering projects in the restive province of Al Muthana, which at that time hadn't seen much of the bombing and things that were going on in other areas. Surely Baghdad would have been the engineering priority, with it's infrequent electricity supply, near non-existent telecommunications network, and water purification concerns. After all, there are a lot of people in Baghdad and we hear frequently how disgruntled it's bloggers are by lack of power and intermittent net connection.

Back then, a bit of a research told me everything I needed to know, but not quite everything I wanted to know. I found out relatively easily that Al Muthana was the site of one of Saddam's biggest weapons production plants. A factory that was built in 1975 and had been active through out the eighties, was severely bombed during the 1991 gulf war** and had produced nothing through out the nineties but a health hazard. No one need much of an imagination to picture the environmental mess a former weapons factory oozing chemicals would be after an allied bombing.

What were, I wondered, non-combatant Japanese troops assisted by Australian troops, up to. What were they up to in the place where Saddam had built his weapons.

I dropped the hints. But no-one in the mainstream seemed to pick it up. Paul McGeough ran a piece about there being oil in the south, and this he concluded might be a plausible explanation. I was not satisfied. True, there is oil in the south and every man and his grain merchant is interested in it. But Iraq's southern oil fields are to the east, and Al Muthana is south-south. The supergiant oil fields Paul talked about are in Basrah and in Maysan - not Al Muthana. I know, I think some of us went off on a tangent at the time. Perhaps we were imagining roads being built to truck oil from Basrah through Al Muthana in a detour around Kuwait to get to Saudi Arabia (we would not be without reason, in entertaining these ideas).

What I mean, is, the oil explanation didn't totally convince me, in this particular case. There must be some other reason and, I was fairly sure, it had something to do with a defunct and toxic weapons site. No, I did not think Japanese troops would be tidying up the place and doing an environmental clean-up. A cursory one had already been done, in 1992-94 according to some sources. Besides, had an environmental cleanup been the reason, it would have been all through our headlines and Bush, Blair, Koizumi and especially John Howard would have been hypocritically pillocking on about how green they were being and how green Saddam was not.

Something fishy was certainly going on.

But I didn't have enough information at the time to support my suspicions, I couldn't get into Iraq to check it out myself and all the independent journo's in Iraq were hanging about Baghdad avoiding car bombs and looking for "human interest" stories. As far as I could make out, there were no embeds with the Al Muthana coalition military team. At least, there are no mainstream news reports about Al Muthana from embedded reporters. Hmm.

So what has happened now is, I have just coincidentally read Rod Barton's book about his role in UN weapon's inspecting and am observing that Australian mainstream media is reporting that Australian forces are moving out of Al Muthana, and that the Japanese "engineering" non-combatant forces are moving out too (which is why Australian military support is no longer needed there).

I am also reading that a batch of "old" chemical weapons have been recently uncovered. Which the blogosphere loves of course - all the rightwingers can weakly rant "Saddam had WMD" and all the Scott Ritter fans can happily proclaim "they were OLD weapons and UN-USEABLE".

Sooo. Anyway. When I read Rod Barton's book, I got the impression that while UN weapons inspectors had thoroughly inspected quite a lot and gotten to basically riffle through all the files they could find, and had concluded that Saddam's weapons program was basically over and that there was no way he or anyone else could restart it as long as sanctions were imposed while weapons inpectors were present, I got the impression that there was more that intelligence wanted to know. (Intelligence, always wants to know everything). There was more intelligence wanted to know, specifically, there was more intelligence wanted to dig up. That is, there was more buried intelligence. Pre-war inspections fairly much came to an end in 1998, two short years after the oil for food program began, so no further digging could be done, None of much consequence anyway.

In 2005, the occupation provided the perfect cover to go and do the forensic excavations that could not of been done before. And now those excavations seem to be over, in Al Muthana anyway. Australian troops were deployed from about May 2005 for two rotations of six months (one year) in Al Muthana. And, almost as timetabled, they are now leaving the area. While the rest of Iraq is still full of troops.

Evidence is suggesting to me that Australian and Japanese troops were stationed in Muthana to check out an old inoperable weapons facility. And seeing as they are the only troops withdrawing from any area in Iraq at all, I would say there is nothing more to be found there.

What did they find in Al Muthana

The most, it seems, anyone could find was a bunch of old casings and some degraded chemicals. The most anyone could find, is exactly what a lot of people have been saying all along: Saddam had no WMD . The weapons that he did have, at one point, long ago, were fairly poor and supplemented by a lot of bluffing and pretending he had more cards in his pack then there actually were.

What they wanted to hear

What has come out of the war in Iraq is not what everyone who wanted war, wanted to know. Or hear.

A lot of Americans probably wanted to hear about liberation. Some Iraqis probably wanted to hear Saddam choking while he swung from a pole. Oil monopolies, would have liked the sound of oil gushing.

Intelligence wanted to hear (it does seem they rely on hear-say) about Iraq's history; weapons, dissidents, politics, how Iraq's military history connected with other histories. It seems, the war has been a fairly fruitless exercise for intelligence operatives. All there is to know was always fairly plain; the war was went to on a lie.

Nobody found any WMDs. Instead, what has been revealed by the war is a global network of extraordinary renditions, abduction and torture. A network in which western governments and their intelligence operatives collaborated with eastern governments and their mukharabat.

Is the war over it yet

Some press releases are being bandied about at the moment, plugging the withdrawal from Muthana as a "handover" to Iraqi forces. As I have mentioned before, Al Muthana is a low population area. There was no fighting there from the start. The area was declared, 16 months ago, by Howard, before his troops even got there, to be a "benign" area. The idea that a formerly benign area is now suddenly restive enough for a "handover" is ridiculous.

Anyway. What this also means is that while some sectors may take an Australian military exit from Muthana as a signal that Australia is backing out and the war might be over soon, no such thing, unfortunately, is really happening. Britain is certainly saying that British troops leaving Al Muthana may be redeployed in other areas rather then returning home.

Basically, Australian troops have now been freed up by some 450 (the 450 that were in Al Muthana) and those "spare" troops may shift to more populated areas now. There were, at the time those 450 troops were stationed in Al Muthana , 900 other known troops operating in Iraq. And there is no word, of any of them returning.

**Footnote. I won't call it gulf war one as others do in jest, because there are too many gulf wars that preceed 1991 to turn a blind eye on. Just because 1991's gulf war was the first our generation experienced, does not mean it was the first other generations had to endure.

Related links

My first article about it.

Navigate to here to read an archived copy of the February 2005 "rebuild" article that I referred to as dubious. In it, Howard says troops are to stay for about a year and are to "to assist Japanese forces engaged in the rebuilding process, such as constructing new roads and schools." Note he doesn't say they will actually be building roads and schools, only engaged in some sort of a building process "such as roads and schools". Which gives him the normal wriggle room he requires when he is telling a whopper. Anyway. One year sounds like a pretty good length of time to do some excavations and things, on an old weapons facility site.

Maps

Click here to see a map of Iraq and it's provinces.
Click here to see a map of Iraq and it's oil fields.
Click here, for a map of Iraq airports.

Other interesting facts: a new defense airbase was opened March 07, 2006 next to Iraq's international airport, it has been named "Al Muthana". It is miles away from the province Al Muthana. Two military "building" projects that were going on at the same time with the same name. HMM.

Revisiting the past

2006-06-27T20:27:00.000+09:30

I read the comments on Iraq Blog Count for the first time in ages today and was horrified to find Salam Adil fairly much confessing to be posting without focus. The purpose, Salam Adil stated, had been "lost in the mists of time".

Fortunately, Salam Adil’s description of what Salam Adil thought Salam Adil was doing seemed relatively accurate although I would say Salam Adil seems a bit staid about it all. Adil says Adil wouldn’t add military blogs or foreign contractor blogs, Adil may just mean Adil won't link to obviously false US representations. Which is a bit hypocritical.

Although I never actually "counted" blogs of a US military nature I did sometimes link to some soldiers blogs if they seemed to have seen something interesting. I would still certainly be keeping an eye out for that sort of thing although as usual I would treat it all with some considerable neutrality along the lines of this may or may not be so until such time as it was clearly one way or the other.

I have met ordinary people who have happened to be in the military and have said things that have the ring of reality about them. "Off the record - It's shit" one guy told me. And then looked uneasy and glum. Still, having to think about linking to military blogs shouldn't be too much of a problem for you Salam Adil, there seem to be fewer soldiers around with blogs these days. After the Abu Ghraib scandal and a few other incidences, their activities might be a bit more restricted now. Or perhaps PR up on high decided it didn't look so good that there were oodles of US soldier blogs and stuff all Iraq civilian blogs.

Fortunately, blogspot has archives and if anyone really wanted to have a look back at Iraq Blog Count’s formative stages and intent, all a person would need to do, would be to go back to the original first few posts.

About the recruitment drive. That will not be necessary. Iraq Blog Count was never about evangelism.

Jeffrey pledges to shut down his blog

2006-06-26T23:33:00.000+09:30

It is time for Jeffrey Schuster to close down his blog. By his own words he shall be deposed:

"While it lasted, Cry Me a Rubarb had been the only place where one could go to actually discuss and debate what had been written by the Jarrars and Riverbend.... ra ra ra... comments... importance of debate... email... blow blow blow...

The Jarrar family (Faiza, Raed, Khalid, and Majid) and Riverbend, however, do not have comments pages... etc etc etc

The day they enable their comments pages is the day that 'Jarrars up a River' terminates."

Jeffrey May 21, 2004

His remit is overdue. By about two years.

Majid has comments, Raed has had very popular comments (which Jeffrey and Bruno and all of their pseudonyms ruined) Khalid has had comments on at least three different blogs and has blogged with "the opposition" (an American and a secular Zionist) on at least two blogs and has many comments to this day on his own personal diary. Riverbend claims she had comments once. Faiza is out of Jeffrey's league.

Don't you think it's time Jeffrey, for you to pack up your kit.

In case Jeffrey decides to edit his own promise and pretend he never said he would shut down his site, I have taken a screenshot of his words for evidence and published it below. You will probably need to use a magnifying glass.

There is something to be said for reading the first few chapters in the book shop, before purchase

2006-06-26T12:36:00.000+09:30

Tariq Ali (who considers himself a leftist) might like to know that when I bought his book "Bush in Babylon" I was looking forward to something really good, but I threw it down and didn't bother reading past the intro when he started on with his anti-Zionist crap. And Phyllis Chesler (who also considers herself a leftist) might like to know that when I bought her book "The new anti-semitism" I was looking forward to something that might reflect what I felt when I tossed Tariq's book into the "read later - maybe next century" corner. But I threw her book down too, when she started on about being a proud American. At about the first page. I did pick it up again though, and persevere. And she certainly had some things to write which I would agree are saliant points, although her American bias was a turn-off. Perhaps I may pick up Tariq Ali's book again although his mania, Jungvolk, Jugend and anti-Zionism are certainly off-putting.

Sooner or later I'll get around to reading Andrew Wilkie's "Axis of deceit", but I shouldn't promise myself it will be any more edifying. Especially after I just finished Rod Barton's "The weapons detectives" in which Rod Barton, a weapons detective, remains puzzled up until almost the last minute when the American and United Kingdom leaderships are making public statements about weapons of mass destruction which do not match up with the intelligence he is writing for them. It's a thriller alright. Right at the very point when it's nearly too late and after thousands of Iraqis have already been imprisoned, tortured and killed and after a colleague of Barton's has died in circumstances that somewhat might suggest assassination, Rod Barton comes out of the shadows and declares "we went to war on a lie". I read the whole thing.

Australia declares end to war on terror

2006-06-16T11:02:00.000+09:30

DETAINEES captured by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan are not being given prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions, because the Federal Government says there has been no declaration of war and it is not an armed conflict more

In that case, the detainees had better be released immediately. If there is no war, then there is no war on terror and if there is no war on terror then there are no terrorists ergo the detainees are not terrorists ergo Australian soldiers are holding Afghan civilians captive. Not a good look.

At any rate, looks like the war on terror is over. Somebody must of won the war on semantics, I guess.

Junk news

2006-06-11T00:54:00.000+09:30

If I wanted to present a crude and inaccurate view of the world I might write “Christians mix their proteins, Jews mix their starches and Muslims mix their oil”.

And that would be that. Three simple gross inaccuracies, helpful and infinitely useful. I could apply them over and over again. Every time a world event happened I could just run it through the filter; if it smelt of rotten meat and rancid cheese the Christians must of done it, if it made someone fat the Jews did it and if it’s full of greasy lies the hands of Muslims must have been at work. What a happy content diarist I would be. Logging one misdemeanour after another and attributing it to one of these three causes by virtue of gastronomy. Or by casting aspersions on Saudi Arabian oil monopolies. But mainly with a nod to inedibility and bias.

It hasn’t stopped some writers. Crude inaccuracy. Only last week I read that falafel selling had been banned in Baghdad. Most likely, the writer implied to the world at large from behind a news column, the work of Jew-hating fascists (whether Christian or Islamist is anybodies guess). As falafels are the only thing that bring Jews and Muslims together (the writer knowingly assured the globe with the satisfaction of having investigatively passed on hearsay from inside sources) and because the only fast-food left to eat in Baghdad is pizza and burgers (now that falafel sellers have been forced underground) this must mean (the reader is left to deduce) the Jesus killers have been driven right out. Because everyone knows no Jew will touch pizza or go anywhere near the mac franchise that is sure to spring up any day now, in Iraq. A wedge, and not a potatoe one, has been neatly driven between Muslims and Jews in Baghdad (some fear) by the murder of falafel-sellers.

People mean well, I’m sure. I hope. I can’t quite find the words to describe right now the incredulity I would like to express about having read this sort of thing in the news in the world section. A pox on "investigative journalism" – a euphemism for repeating things that other people have said reliably and word for word no matter how speculative and untruthful.

ABC wedges Ruddock on David Hicks

2006-06-09T07:41:00.000+09:30

ABC national just did an excellent job of grilling Philip Ruddock, who came across like a stumbling liar full of bees-shit. Ruddock didn’t even sound like he bought his own lines.

Boycotting the war – how to not talk about it

2006-06-07T23:05:00.000+09:30

"I have been going around trying to film for this video blog for five days now and it has been a constant struggle. People do not want to talk..."

justzipit.blogspot.com

This hardly is surprising. Nobody wants to talk about anything unless there is something to be gained from it that does not include immediate death. I counted blogs for about three years and nobody in Iraq really wanted to talk. Well, maybe one or two.

Facts and figures to prove this mute point.

This time last year there were over 60 million blogs in the blogsphere and 151 of them were "Iraq" blogs. One month later there were 70 million blogs in the blogsphere. Virtual-Iraq today has 203 blogs. The rest of the blogsphere grows by at least 10million blogs per month and "Iraq" blogs grow by about 4 per month. Hullo-oh.

Anyway. I suppose you could always do with your filim what everybody else does – just make it up. Doesn’t stop the Whitehouse or the Pentagon and it doesn’t stop a good deal of diarists either. It certainly doesn’t stop John Howard in Australia. This week he is organising a two ~~faced~~ sided debate about nuclear power. First Howard tells us about how green it will be, and then he weighs up the cons and tells us how green it will be again.

Actually if you ask me, people not wanting to talk is a god send. People are notoriously biased and untruthful when given attention (just look at the blogsphere). In fact if I weren’t busy being silent over here, I would be busy being silent with a camera in Iraq. Probably with a noir fly on the wall approach. Half-empty glasses, long shots of unfocussed figures (silhouetted against crumbling dwellings or loitering near gaunt commercial shells) scavenging animals. Smoking ruins (this century's). That sort of thing. An occasional flap of my all concealing garments obscuring the edges, because it’s not always easy operating a camera in a tent. A silent video, set to the music of distant artillery. After all, the world has hurtled back several decades. In some aspects. Thinking Erich Von Stroheim, Cecil B. De Mille, King Vidor, Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. It was a man’s world then and nothing much has changed.

Evidence of human activity, can be so much more informative then interrogation.

Update on my boycott against the war

2006-05-31T20:20:00.000+09:30

My boycott against the war seems to be going fairly well. I haven’t mentioned it in months. Enough said.

PS, most of the blogs on Iraq Blog Count are fakes. Which makes the "Iraq Blogsphere" probably about as full of garbage as the rest of the web. I used to think most readers could spot a rort but seems like no. Just thought I'd mention it again. Seeing as some mainstream journalists seem to be not checking their source material. The AP might like to think it's being clever when it plants a wopper to see which bloggers just copy paste without fact checking but sadly many mainstream journos do not hold themselves to the same high standards they expect of everyone else.

More truth again

2006-05-30T11:44:00.000+09:30

Well another day and still no apologies. Not from Howard and not from "Firas Al Atraqchi" either. Or whatever other pseudonym he uses in the mainstream these days as a smalltime feature writer publishing his propaganda in what I now consider poorly substantiated outlets. Let me just say that his antics on the web do not lend a whole lot of credibility to any of the online publications he contributes to. In my eyes.

Meanwhile "Bruno" seems to have disappeared into the ether in shame after insulting a female commenter who disagreed with him. Once again, Bruno has come off the worse for wear by showing his true colours. No prizes for guessing which part of the anatomy he couldn't help himself from fixating on.

A short post about hypocracy

2006-05-28T12:24:00.000+09:30

Hilarious. Fayrouz Hancock "in Beaumont" has been hitting the "notify blogger about objectional content" flag on my blog. Talk about no backbone. First she reports me to the FBI for being flippant (on the web!) and now she's reporting me to blogger. Free speech, as far as Fayrouz Hancock goes, is something she seems to think only she should have. What a complete and incredible bore.

Well, here goes, more "objectionable content" - the war is wrong, Fayrouz Hancock acts like a Baathist and her husband is ex-mil (US). Oh dear, however did I guess.

I should point out once more, for Fayrouz, seeing as she can't seem to help herself from popping over here with a proxy (again, spineless) that I find her to be dull and somewhat repellant. Don't mind me, I just slipped a truth serum into my porridge this morning and can't bring myself to post any lying sweetness for her to read.

I suppose this is going to get a copy of my blog sent to the pentagon now. For them to read again. Seeing as my opinions are such a deathly threat. Ie that I believe all immigrants ought to be treated fairly and not put into camps behind razor wire or forced into illegal occupations and paid two cents an hour (or whatever the less then minimum wage is these days for unskilled workers with no "citizenship").

Gosh. I'm becoming a bit of a Latham here.

A near furious post about prejudice

2006-05-03T10:45:00.000+09:30

Formerly titled "Fayrouz Hancock hates migrants". This post was originally written in a near state of fury. It seems almost funny at this point (that I bothered writing about it to myself). Still, I am furious about several things and Fayrouz Hancock knows very well what they are now. Namely, I'm not a great fan of people running around drubbing others who don't even have internet access ie can't exactly answer for themselves (I am thinking of people held in immigration detention centres, for one thing).

Since my exchange with Fayrouz about migration and prejudice, more then one million people from Miami to Seattle (in Fayrouz's residential country of choice) have marched in support of migrants. I wonder how comfortable Fayrouz feels now, having sold out to the migrant-haters in previous episodes. Perhaps Fayrouz imagined hating migrants might have given her credence in some "assimilated national" way. As Fayrouz only ever bows to the status quo, or what she perceives it to be, I wonder how she feels now that Catholic Bishops are as concerned about the stereotyping of migratory peoples as I am. Will she change her tune? Or will she continue to post anti-migrant drivel during her happy-war downtimes.

Spokane Bishop William Skylstad, leader of U.S. Catholic bishops, is urging justice for legal and illegal immigrants in Washington state.

In a letter to parishioners, Skylstad noted that his father passed through Ellis Island in 1927, and that it is wrong to stereotype illegal immigrants read more

Note to "Cile". Seeing as I have mail asking me about Fayrouz Hancock's "emigre attacked me" post, I thought I might as well publish a public reply instead of sneaking around forwarding email behind everyone's backs like Fayrouz Hancock does. Yes I questioned Fayrouz, I questioned her prejudicial cow-towing and slimy grubbing and the way she frequently disses migrants in the hopes that she shall be rewarded with extra citizen chips. Much as Baath grubs betrayed friends and neighbours in return for paltry nest linings, so does Fayrouz Hancock besmear the migrant community in return for an imagined national acceptance. Yes I challenged the pitiful and gutless material Fayrouz Hancock produces. Because I think it's important. And because I am not afraid of speaking out or leading a case against Fayrouz Hancock's tunnel visioned view of the web and wider world.

More truth about Fayrouz Hancock

2006-04-26T17:39:00.000+09:30

Goodness. Fayrouz Hancock seems to have published another entry on her blog claiming I have been verbally "attacking" her. Ironically, after drubbing her readers for the sympathy vote she wrote me an email claiming that I am playing the victim by publishing her threats to report me to the FBI. I am being reported for creative writing. What a lot of fun the officers in the sedition department must be having, following up web log tizzys. There certainly must be a lot of material to work with. A whole internets full. I hope this isn't the sort of work that accounts for Germany's 24 kilometre long Nazi archive.

What happened: Fayrouz published another of her one-eyed opinion pieces about migrants. These generally run with the theme that although Fayrouz has migrated herself, she is somehow better then all the other immigrants who, she says, are bludgers and quote "queue-jumpers". There was a time when I would have patiently humored Fayrouz, and gently explained to her, probably with Christian thoughts, that the immigration detention system is a horror on earth in Australia and not as easy as it is for people like herself who married ex-military service men to gain green-cards. There was a time when I would have taken that tack. But those days are over. Fayrouz claims she has changed during the last three years. And perhaps she has. If that is so, it's time she learnt that sarcasm is warranted where sarcasm is due and in healthily democratic countries sarcasm is not a hanging offense. At least, that is what Fayrouz and other pro-Bush pro-war bloggers used to like to tell everyone as they busily filled the comments sections of pro-peace Iraqi blogs with rot and hate-filled sarcasm "America is a free country, we are free to be horrible" they chimed. "America is a free country", Fayrouz echoed.

I have seen too many people with a site more sense and compassion then Fayrouz Hancock go through hell online for being brave enough to do such things as speak out against war, film war as it really is, record civilian war casualties, raise money for hospital supplies in war torn districts and put their lives on the line to publish live without pay from Iraq. People who have done all these things have done so under a barrage of the most appalling smut ever written this century. So the very idea that three comments calling Fayrouz's prejudicial stance about immigration into question have prompted her to threaten me with imprisonment, is ludicrous. Yes really. I have been threatened with the FBI and prison for seditious behaviour on Fayrouz Hancock's blog. Fayrouz has informed me that she is saving my IP for the FBI and that I shall be "the first one to go to prison".

All my wishes have been granted at once. I am officially a seditious threat worthy of imprisonment. Of course, the moment I land there, Fayrouz will be publishing entries about what a heaven on earth prison is for migrants and that I shall be served three meals a day, have my own toilet, and not have to work in an office. I shall be one of those bludging migrants she so happily claims not be. Roll on Villawood.

Bibliography, selected threats from Fayrouz:

Fayrouz's first threat on her blog in which she announces I shall be imprisoned. Nay, I shall be "the first to get into the prison jail". I expect this means Fayrouz has been collecting other IPs as well and I am the orange alert. Goodness knows what the other terrors have done. Blogged in Comic Sans?

I'll continue to post your IP address so the FBI wouldn't have a problem finding you if something happens to me. Actually in this case, even if someone else harm me, you'll be the first to get into the prison jail.

April 23, 2006 10:01 AM

Fayrouz's email in which she threatens to report me to the FBI (condensed version, summarised part in italics):

From Fayrouz Hancock
Mon Apr 24 05:40:18 2006

Your posts will be safed in a separate directory and ready to be sent to the FBI (etc etc asylum etc re-education thought crime etc.)

After making threats to my physical person, Fayrouz later states she believes in verbal assault as well. At first I took this to mean she doesn't believe in verbal violence, but on a second reading she actually writes she believes in it. The hypocracy:

From Fayrouz Hancock
Mon Apr 24 18:29:17 2006

(Paragraph about saving all her emails for the FBI etc first place people look is an email etc etc it's in the news etc etc)

I'm one of those people that believe that abuse isn't only about physical violence. It's about verbal violence too.

(Victim etc etc credibility real Iraqi etc etc.)

Why people wants to know the truth Update

2006-04-25T10:55:00.000+09:30

Update. Fayrouz is reporting me to the FBI for disagreeing with her. Looks like I get to go to jail for being a deviated pacifist afterall.

Fayrouz Hancock's latest email to me:

Your posts will be safed in a separate directory and ready to be sent to the FBI when something happens to me. You're no difference than the canibbalist blogger... (etc etc something about a mental institution for thought reprocessing etc)...

BTW, even if you post as anonymous, your IP and all information are attacked to the message on the server. Have you heard of the Chinese blogger who was turned by google to the authorities? He was anonymous too.

I don't read your messages any more. I just safe them for the authorities to find you.

My crimes: thought ones. As usual. I admit it. I did it. I was seriously sarcastic and did an awful awful thing and now I am being turned over to the authorities for telling Fayrouz what I think. Uncensored (finally). Strangely, I told her she was a toady to authority. Tragically, it was not nearly as creative as what I would of told Truth About Iraqis (the fraudulant Austrian who is not, and not an Iraqi either) so as you can imagine this is somewhat of a god-send for me. But not much of a surprise.

It doesn't take much really, to get turned in to the authorities these days. Funnily enough, Fayrouz mentioned Anti-Jews. Which is just what TAI said (but having chosen different words). And most oddly of all, the time Stephen Whatsis name excommunicated me (from his Iraq elections purple fingers blog) was the same time as when I mentioned about how erm, how, much like, well, how much the whole neo-conservative ethic reminded me of early onset Nazism. And that I could see muslims being sent off to camps by the bucketload if we weren't careful. Heck look at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib I probably said, at the time. Gosh. I never thought it was so across the board though. It's just like the old days, in 1942. Everyone hates you bringing up the Jews. The right, the left, the centre - there is no place for it.

Oh well, here I go. A pacifist. Chalking up my third "Ye shall be exiled" experience. In conjunction with having said something Jewish probably. Which is odd. Seeing as how I don't have a religion, and have no idea what I should be doing that's so Jewish. I mean, if there were more Jews about I could probably ask one and find out. But alas, most of them were extinguished last time. And as far as I can make out, the Jew in me was largely bred down to a quarter (or something) under generally acceptable assimilation policies. I guess I got the quart that does all the bad things that ought to be nailed to the cross. I suppose I have no choice but to turn to passive extremism, being a pacifist but having made no impact thus far. I must get myself arrested, preferably for thought crimes.

Anyway, as it stands, so far as Fayrouz is concerned I now eat babies probably, and drink the blood of Aryan prima donnas.

Division

2006-01-10T12:18:00.000+10:30

Was just reading an article saying about how other articles are appearing saying that Al-Qaida is under attack from resisting insurgents (because of unnecessary civilian deaths attributed to Al Qaida) and that US strategists have been fomenting this division for some time now. No kidding. Anyway, it had me pause for thought.

No twentieth century "divide and conquer" exercise could be more successful then the rift plotted between Israel and Palestine. So successful has it been that many on the left have bought the bait hook line and sinking plumbline and have become by consequence the greatest ally imperialism could ever have hoped for. Israel was a sticky problem from the start, and not just because of all the usual stickiness tossed up around middle eastern politics - it was a sticky prob because no-one in the "free" world could afford to deny Zion and risk looking like little Hitlers (a name I can't say I have ever uttered out loud). Because of the shock everyone was still suffering after the bad publicity around Europe's deathcamps, no-one in the free (no point using inverted comers, the irony is too tiring to bother) world of capitalism could afford to knock Israel - and yet Israel was a socialist state practicing communism and full of politically aware laborers, the antithesis of capitalism. If Israel became successful as a communist state it would pose a threat to anti-communist capitalist propaganda post WWII. Think 1950's redscare and paranoia - a new state founded on communist principles and recognised globally for having been founded on those principles could only prove a counterpoint to anti-communist material being pumped out by the Joseph McCarthys of that time.

Meanwhile, in the 1950's, no-one (no-one much anyway) in the world espousing communality and socialist principle could afford to endorse Israel, because while Israel was founded on communal and social principles it veered away from the mantra "nothing to kill or do for and no religion too" by being a communist and religious state. Both at the same time. In apparent paradox, according to marxist doctrine. While the new Russian plutocracy was busy exiling and incarcerating all it's Christians and Jews (one spirit good, holy spirits bad) it could hardly be seen to support a whole country full of the practicing faithful. But like western capitalists, Soviet opportunists couldn't at that point afford to look like Hitlers either. So mostly, at that point, the USSR just pretended Israel didn't exist and withdrew assistance, having little more to do with the place except to send out spies, in case Trotsky was hiding out nearby in Jordan or something (until things started hotting up in the 60's and everyone who was anyone had some sort of militant spoke in the wheel).

In the end, the commercial world's hawks seized on the ideological division between Zionist communism and the rest of the other communists and sought to chafe sensitivities by providing money. Which Israel took, having none, being a country populated by people with little on their backs other then the rags they survived Europe's camps in and with no money forthcoming from their other non-religious communally inclined brothers and sisters. It's a miserable fact but not even Osama questions where his money comes from. Or Hezbollah. Or Hamas. Nobody does, if money is forthcoming and people are desperate they generally take it. And so the seeds were sewn and the divisions increased and the same old fearmongers intent on wiping out Judaism come out with the same old arguments. And still do. "Jews are rich" (they live off world bank fat). "Jews are gold-diggers" (check their teeth). "Jews steal" (land, homes). And even "Jews torture their own babies" (yes this too, anathema but people still buy it).

Oh what a feat in divisivity. Zion can never be socialism's poster child now, not a hope in hell, the kibbutz will never spread throughout the Mid East and into Europe, oil merchants can relax, Israel is cornered by war and that's all that matters.

UPDATE: I realise this was a contentious post, and I did it on purpose. The truth about Zion is hard for some left land intellectuals to accept. No I don't think war is the answer, yes I do think it's a tragedy what has happened in Israelistan/Palasrael - but let's get one thing straight, Israelis were provoked and they fought back. If socialists want to do some big rah-rah for Palestine by implying that Palestinians were provoked and have the right to fight for their homes then it's imperative to understand that fighting Israelis are doing exactly the same thing as fighting Palestinians for exactly the same reasons (and that Israel as a state actually sprung up to some extent out of socialism). I oppose the idea that some wars are wronger then others - they're all wrong to me, all armies (whether state or "peoples") are all fighting for the same thing and all army recruitment drives use the same propaganda (defend your land, your homes, your people). Someone suggested there might be less war and the world might be a better place if everyone critiqued their respective home lands. But I have no home land to critique. Unlike a Chompsky, who might for example choose to criticise just Israel, or a Faiza who might choose to just criticise Egypt, I am in the unfortunate position of having no real land to call my home or to criticise. This is why I sometimes criticise communists - I have no especial allegiance to soil to make my criticism seem especially powerful but I did grow up with alternative party voting parents. I grew up in a world with comparatively few borders (no Noam, you can't claim responsibility for fewer borders, the blurred borders I grew up with are a direct result of depressed economies, war and subsequent migration). This is why my generation do outrageously conservative and straight forward things like tell a Baathist when he is being a dork. Because he is. And why we also know that Bush is a dimwitted third rate pawn. We are unfortunately almost impossible to brainwash and infuriatingly naive in our simpleminded belief that people could share if they tried hard enough but first stop bossing us around ok - otherwise we will go and chat with the rightwingers.

With compliments

2006-01-09T12:14:00.000+10:30

Well it's my lunch break. My lunchbreak at the beginning of the week at the start of new year. I stayed up all last night planning a plan and I'm dead tired and look like - well never mind what I look like today, the important thing is that you can't see me and I can congratulate myself and anyone else who looks as haggard as I do after three years of waging peace against all odds. Because by god if there is one - we've done it. We've waged peace when there is absolutely no show on earth that we can stop the killing and the maiming and the torturing and the looting of loot and unearthing of oils and trodding down on rays of hope. Congratulations everyone, congratulations the dead dearly departed and living corpses wasting away on cell floors and in cargo holds. Congratulations the lot of you. Three years later, a lot of dead bodies, more kidnappings then I could count blogs (including all the fake ones) a mash of meaningless words and spent emotion and courageous courage and strawmen blown over in the wind - after all this futility we have made it. I have made it. I have made it thus far, and probably shall continue till I perish. Which is a comforting thought, for I know that all over the world people are waging peace, in their small ways, with their cups of tea and moments caught between word and reality.

And now, having congratulated myself and anyone else who passes by on our frailty and utterly utterly ridiculous task (might as well try spinning gold from hay) - I am going to go and eat my sandwich.

Today, is a day in which I look about me at my disrepair and feel satisfied, so satisfied with my unrelenting ineffectuality that I spread my imaginary arms wide and cheer on every one of you who achieve as little as I do while forfeiting sleep sanity and even frequent mealtimes, to following the war on terror and thwarting it in every way possible that is possible to creatures digging our own death pits with teaspoons. There is probably a better way, but it might not be as fun. I hope I wrote "fun" in the right intonation, you know, the weary but damned if I let on war is hell tone.

Iraq war, officially lost

2006-01-04T09:02:00.000+10:30

Nobody ever wins a war, but I'm not sure a war has been lost as many times as the war in Iraq has.

WMD - no comment. Intelligence lost, Bush lost.

Human Rights - Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and subsequent revelation of extraordinary rendition network. Civil liberties lost, Bush lost.

Democracy - patriot act, increased police powers, sedition legislation. Multiple democracies, Bush, Blair and Australia fair, lost.

Money - the one that matters most to men of war;

THE Bush Administration has scaled back its ambitions to rebuild Iraq after the devastation wrought by war and dictatorship and does not intend to seek more funds for reconstruction.

The decision signals the winding down of an $US18.4 billion ($25.1 billion) rebuilding effort (read more).

Many many dollars lost. The war for oil is failing, rebuilding Iraq costs too much. The damage dealt to Iraq by war and sanction is low priority. Securing oil (and a broader consumer base by default) is the goal and when money is tight all the trimmings are stripped away - exposing war's end aim. At this rate, it is likely the oil will eventually be lost as well. In just a few more years alternative fuels will probably be taken more seriously, when it dawns that developing alternative fuels probably costs less then war and that the market for pepsi and tim tams in the ME is hurt when the customer base is half dead.

A middle case scenario

The US will pull out of the ME badly burned and humiliated, and Saudi Arabia will be left sitting on cut-price oil fields when alternative fuels gain a marketable foothold. For a while ME oil tycoons might survive by establishing an ME market independent from the global one, ME environmental green damage will continue under internal pressure where external pressure left off. "Terrorism" as we now know it, a form of vengeance, will shift. "Terrorists" will become experienced mercenaries for hire, selling their experience. No longer required to quell western interests in the oil stakes "terrorists" will hire themselves out to parties with a greater vested interest in industrial sabotage then in civil unrest. The subway threat will ease in far western cities and the roadside IEDs ease in middle eastern cities. Industrial espionage will increase, especially where competitive alternative fuels are concerned. The world will reject war, like the world did post 1918 and 1945 and in the 1960-70's and in February 2003, and it will be a few decades before anyone decides to try it out again, which might happen if some desperado thinks he can swing it.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, at home. While Dow Jones bombs out on the Aus stock exchange (more loss attributed to the Iraq war) BHP and Woodside petroleum have profited. BHP has oil lots sewn up along the Iraq/Iran border between Basrah and Ammarah, including Missan and Al Hafaya (appears the marshlands are due only a short respite between regimes, no sooner have the marshes been re-irrigated then oil enterprises pop up). Woodside signed a deal in November 2004 with the Iraq Oil Ministry for oil and gas projects in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq and was posting "record" Aus stock prices by December 2005. It seems that those companies that are profiting in Iraq are doing so in regions less hard-hit. Ie, where there is less war there is more profit and where there is more war there is loss (BHP originally sunk when war broke out in march 2003 but appears to have "bounced back" by brokering deals in the relatively low-conflict south-east). Newcrest's fortunes also seem tied to Iraq, though how directly depends on my doing more searching and my lunch break is over now so I have to go.

Prove me wrong

2006-01-02T14:28:00.000+10:30

Well that was shortlived. My work with the American people appears to be over. It could just be that I ran out of impetus. Or it could be the heat wave hanging over Sydney last week just sucked any enthusiasm I had left out of me. Or it could just be that I find the American people an uninspiring and lost cause. There was a time when I might have allowed for you know, individuality or something, before coming to rash conclusions like this. But those times are over. Without exception the American people seem to me to be rude, loud, many other things my sensitivities preclude me from putting in words and convinced that their liberality is the only liberality. A lot like Australian socialists really, who I also consider a lost and degenerative folk.

I was going to make room for a sentence about Americans who don't feel especially American, and how it might be to feel about as American as I do Australian, and how I can relate to having a birth certificate and citizenship but there being, well, more to life then that. I was going to make up some kind of sentence like that, offering up the universality of souls in hope. But I just can't bring myself to do it - I am just reminded of that fink TAI who parades around pretending he is not American and sounding every minute more American then ever. And anyway, I would rather go and have a pot of tea and finish my mint slices then think anymore about Americans. I am uncertain if this means my own liberality has given out or whether I am turning into a witch or could this be early onset menopause or have I just finally had an absolute gutsfull and can I be bothered ticking off whoever is next on my smite list.

Unbelievable

2005-12-30T04:25:00.000+10:30

I cannot believe what some apparently serious publications will print without fact-checking. Come on people, don't you smell a rat? Or don't you care.

Ils ont changé ma chanson Ma.

Covert communications

2005-12-29T21:58:00.000+10:30

These are just some pictures I am posting so that I can re-post them over at Daily Kos (my new life's work with the American people, for as long as I can manage).

Woops! Anybody know wot this is?

2005-12-24T21:28:00.000+10:30

Was fluffing about cleaning and think I accidentally knocked something of my pc. Not being especially tech-literate you can understand my concern in wondering what the heck I have done and is something broken now. So far everything still seems to be working, but still wondering what this is and what it connects too.

Anybody can recognise it and tell me what it does?

Update: it's about 2-3cm long.

Update update: am I imagining things? Nope, scroll down for more.

Side view.

Top view.

Another side view (or maybe bottom).

UPDATE: Well it looks a bit like one of these, only with a case. Now the trouble is finding out what it fell off and how to plug it back in (kidding).

Further update: There formerly was a picture of a bug here, which I hot-linked from a website about surveillance devices, which looked curiously like my device but has been taken down off the web now.

or maybe one of these.

Never trust a writer

2005-12-22T15:32:00.000+10:30

Evidently TAI thinks that his identity is a hot topic. Enough to warrant emails behind my back anyway. And perhaps he is right, there does seem to be some uncertainty out there. I do keep asking everyone to stop writing me about it, but write people do, asking who is he, and what is he up to, and how have I come to my conclusion, and would I please share any information that may have fallen into my possession. Information? Read his blog. Read all "the" blogs. Here, read his latest post: truth-about-iraqis.blogspot.com/2005/12/iraqi-charity-iraqi-community.html

Yes TAI, racism is at work. And ego.

TAI thinks he can pull this off if he claims he is eloquent and educated. "I am eloquent and educated, therefore I must be Iraqi" is the sum of his entire argument. And anyone who suggests otherwise must therefore be ignorant and in-eloquent white trailer trash. As ever, a twisted mutation on borrowed phrase. He manages to warp everything other diarists write, this way. Never having his own experience to draw from he clips anecdotal evidence from other diaries. But does anyone have the memory to place where these things come from? How hollow another person's passion sounds between his teeth. How hollow, like an old man trying to whistle up war through gums and dental plates.

Like every arrogant self important self declared supremist, he thinks if he can manipulate other people's emotions he can have anyone believe anything.

He deliberately sets out to destroy truth by setting others against one another.

He claims Iraqis were demonized and ostracized by right wing radio post 9-11 and yet the inverse was true. Iraqis were championed by right wing radio, much as TAI purports to champion Iraq now. Oh the noble undertrod Iraqis in their fetters! Oh the brave hard workingclass Iraqi, going through the shredders! Tragedy! We must rally! Once and for all deposing their horrid pungent ruling class! WE must, cried rightwing radio, for if we do not assist these brave civilians in their hour of need (splice to sound archive - Iraqis preparing for war, nobly and unphased, locking down their shops, with nonchalant shrug and devil may care stoicism) we MUST remove Saddam, before he blows up the Iraqis and us all!

TAI no doubt reveled in planting rumour, in the feeding frenzy that was rightwing radio post 9-11. And now he lives, free, unmarked, to reap the rewards of his own war. The war he wanted. The war he thinks he can control. The civil war he craves.

TAI, full of it, full of himself, claiming Israeli intelligence wrote with pointed finger to unseat Saddam. Israeli back then, was he?

TAI, never consistent, with one token between his thumb and forefinger pointing at Israeli intelligence while all in the same gesture pointing his index finger at Israel.

He claims to believe Iraqis are right in fighting for land and their homes, and that Palestinians are right in fighting for land and their homes, and yet he cannot afford this same dignity to Israelis. Not while in character anyway, not as TAI.

TAI is racist and this is hardly surprising, considering he was raised in America.

He claims, as TAI, that his mother is Austrian, but he cannot tell us anything about her. He likes to tell us all about how Iraqi he is though, doesn't he. Although he can never tell us anything above generalities about Iraq, every time weedling his way out of it with some excuse about how "this is all about America" (as any American would) from behind his embarrassingly fair complexion.

TAI, Chathab. With a forked tongue, he splices his lies. Creating for himself an apprenticed nightmare - a mickey mouse mockery where he sweeps himself off his feet with multiple half truths and singular vanity. Almost as Tariq Ali might, I bet TAI is a big fan. Having modeled himself so appallingly on reality it's hardly surprising that he would have no room for any sense of inhibition in satirising other people's fictions.

TAI is a writer, not a truthteller. A brainwashed product of his own making. TAI is an American, an American, an American closeting himself in neverland because he never ever ever will be anything more then words on a page. Words where ostracise and demonise are spelt with a zee by an "educated and eloquent" anti(sure)American. Anyone can write. With a bit of research.

Does anyone have any idea how many times it would have been easy beyond TAI's wildest dream for me to claim I am Iraqi and have almost everyone believe it without so much as a nod? I have lost count of the number times I have explained to people I am not - it would be unfair, misleading, it would misrepresent real people's suffering, to let anyone believe otherwise. And even so, all the while, I am left with the nagging feeling that some people really wish I were Iraqi too. Indeed, that some people secretly believe I am and that I have deliberately chosen not to say so that my voice may not be inhibited by other people's preconceived notions.

If visitors can believe I, not Iraqi, am, then how easy it must be to believe that TAI is, just because he says so. Just because he says so.

Later note: to anyone, anyone at all, who might wonder what is going on. "Truth About Iraqis" follows same formula "Baghdad Mistress" did. Ie written by middle aged middle class middle income male with nothing to do but fantasise ("my life in a bordello" "my friend Nicholas Cage" "all the famous ambassadors I have met" "my educated and eloquent life as the child of an Iraqi diplomat" etc etc ad infinitum) use of blogspot (the pauper, miscreant, slumdweller, "rebel", imaginist and ghetto diarist's choice of blog) and reversion to slander when identity called into question("whoever says I am not a mistress is a sexist sexist man" or "whoever says I am not Iraqi is a racist racist racist").

Other note: commenter calling himself "Elie" owned up to being "Tai" during weak moment. Commenter "Elie" known to have frequented Raed's comments in days leading up to the closing thereoff. A known stirrer and "loose with the truth".

Does anyone care who "Tai" or "Truth About Iraqis" is in real life? No, I doubt it. But, I do care that his personality type is deadset on agitation and unethical transgression. Better that people know this then that people don't. I hope in mentioning these things he will be less able to cause harm.

Costello, fluffing it around

2005-12-20T13:13:00.000+10:30

Peter Costello, on air:

"I think racism can be easily whipped up in Australia".

Well he should know, being John Howards right hand arm.

Costello, on Cronulla:

"I don't think there's racism on the street, no, I think we're a very accepting country".

On the street, nooo... just at the beach. It's a holiday thing.

Asked if Alan Jones went too far...

"That's not what I mean by whipping up".

And Alan Jones, 2GB, Thursday 8 December:

"I'm the person that's led this charge here! Nobody wanted to know about North Cronulla! Now it's gathered to this!").

That must be cosy wool Peter Costello is pulling, willingly, over his own eyes, he must like curling up in it. I can only imagine, what he might mean by whipping it up.

Back in Kansas

2005-12-06T21:38:00.000+10:30

Australia's sedition laws were passed today. There is nothing more to say.

This morning

2005-11-26T17:17:00.000+10:30

This morning I listened to translations of Catullus and congratulated myself on my fortnight's self restraint. "What a foulmouthed poisonous hole he was" I thought, how fortunate that I am able to contain my falcer and not be remembered that way, immortalising peers in slander.

O greatest of thieves skulking about the bathouses,
The father, Vibennius, and Vibennius Junior, the catamite son
(For dad is the one with the more sordid thieving hand,
While sonny boy is busy peddling his voracious fundament):
Why don't you both get the hell out of here and go to the devil?
Since the thieveries of the father are common knowledge
And you, son, couldn't sell that hairy ass of yours for a penny.

- Catullus

Otho’s head is quite tiny,
and it’s owner’s legs loutishly unclean,
soft and delicate is Libo’s farting:
if not with all that, then let me displease you
with Sufficio, old age renewed...

- Catullus

Wonder not, Rufus, why none of the opposite sex
wishes to place her dainty thighs beneath you,
not even if you undermine her virtue with gifts of choice
silk or the enticement of a pellucid gem.
You are being hurt by an ugly rumour which asserts
that beneath your armpits dwells a ferocious goat.
This they fear, and no wonder; for it's a right rank
beast that no pretty girl will go to bed with.
So either get rid of this painful affront to the nostrils
or cease to wonder why the ladies flee.

- Catullus

Mentula is an adulterer. Why certainly he is. How could he be anything
else with a name such as his. It is as natural as for a pot to gather vegetables.

- Catullus

Notice

2005-11-15T09:31:00.000+10:30

In case anyone is wondering, Emigre has "withdrawn forces" from Iraq Blog Count. In an unforeseen twist of fate, the blog is now occupied by Iraqis. I am still available by email.

Dawn raids

2005-11-08T09:21:00.002+10:30

The purges have begun.

Neighbours woken by 'shock' raids
November 8, 2005 - 9:29AM

Residents in a south-western Sydney street have described the shock of being woken by an early morning anti-terrorism raid.

NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney confirmed federal and state police raided homes in Sydney and Melbourne today and foiled a "large-scale terrorist attack".

Nine people were arrested today in Melbourne and six in Sydney, with more arrests expected later this morning.

Residents of Renown Avenue, Wiley Park, described their shock at being woken by armed police raiding a single-storey brick home nearby.

The raid was still continuing with police still in the street.

Gabriella Beyrouthy, her husband and three children close to where the police activity was occurring.

Ms Beyrouthy said she believed several families lived in the raided home, and she had often seen them in the street.

"I am surprised (about the raid)," she said.

"I see a lot of people in there (and) they're very good people.

"We've never had any problems with them." read more

I didn't sleep last night.

Calling wolf

2005-11-04T07:32:00.000+10:30

This is getting so very nearly funny that I had to start a whole new post. John's storytelling (so many tall stories for such a little guy!) is well, apart from being dull, showing signs of no imagination. He just keeps telling the same whopper over and over again.

Just been listening to one of his dupes on the abc telling all about the "new evidence" and the "filming" and the "borrowed car" in the latest convenient terror scare which is putting Australia on be-aware alert even though there is "no need to panic". Good gawd. This evidence is nothing new. It's a rehashing of the Roche tale.

On June 12, 2000, Ahmed was driving and Roche was sitting in the back, filming embassies with a video camera borrowed from (choose name), a teacher at the Global Islamic Youth Centre in (choose suburb) NSW. He paid most attention to the (choose embassy name) embassy. A voice on the tape, believed to be Roche, urges Ahmed to go slow and comments on the security in the area. If they are questioned, one of them suggests that they say: "We are just trying to get to the mosque. We are lost."

But they were spotted by Jeffrey Harrison, an Australian Protective Service security guard on duty at the sentry box outside the (choose embassy name) embassy gate. He later logged an incident report about the Toyota (or other common car model) with three men taking pictures. Harrison also approached Roche, who by this time was out of the car trying to get better shots of the embassy. "Morning," says Roche, according to the video tape played in court. Roche, pretending to be a tourist, someone interested in architecture, adds: "How's it going . . . Fascinated with the layout of Canberra . . . A bit strange . . . very clean."

"Is that what it is?" responds Harrison. "I didn't think you were going to bomb the joint or anything." "Oh no," Roche says. rest of the tale

Meanwhile the smh are still pretending to be really freaked out by the whole thing and somebody's running around worried that Howard just blew the whistle on a secret operation to catch some mean people about to do bad things.

Oh, plus ASIO is recommending Australians go around filming each other. Good move ASIO, just the way to exacerbate national paranoia. If Howard sees ordinary people hanging about outside his offices with cameras he's really going to flip. Unless he thinks everyone's all lining up for his autograph.

Have to run. That's my schlok of spittle for the day.

Predictable to the point of absurdity

2005-11-02T12:29:00.000+10:30

This is one of those posts where my eyes rolled so far back into my head after reading Howard's latest proclamation that I could fair see my braincells throwing up their membranes in unison and shrugging their nuclei in pantomimic disbelief. Because really I am surprised less by the declaration then by the fact that one man's government can produce so many dull falsehoods.

"The government has received specific intelligence and police information this week which gives cause for serious concern about a potential terrorist threat," he told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Howard said he could not comment further about the information he received and would not say whether the intelligence advice had come from Australian or other authorities.

As a result Mr Howard said part of the new anti-terror laws will be introduced to parliament today. more

Thank you chicken little. And when the sky falls I will be greatful that it has fallen on a head curtailed of civil liberty because I can think of no better way to forfeit my conscience then by charging windmills.

Update: at this point my pupils, cast so permanently heavenward, might fool anyone into believing I suffered cataracts were it not that every second moment my iris (both) level at the latest fabrication before flicking beseechingly on god again (or where a god might dwell) giving me somewhat a mad appearance. I am certain that any moment now a more conscientious citizen will suspect I am not at all secure and report this behaviour. How very glad am I that soon laws will be in place to protect me from myself.

Targets 'filmed by suspects'
November 3, 2005 - 8:53AM

The new terrorist threat announced by the Government involved suspects filming... more

Mainstream finds more facts but the fakes remain unchallenged

2005-11-01T07:25:00.000+10:30

From David Hicks story transcript, four Corners last night:

After the fall of the Taliban stronghold, Mazar-e-Sharif, Hicks says he went to the frontline. But he says he never fired a shot. Within hours of him getting there, the front collapsed. The few hundred foreign fighters there ran away, chased by the Northern Alliance. About two weeks later, Hicks was picked up at a taxi station, trying to leave the country. The Northern Alliance sold him to the Americans for $1,000. more

Eh? When David Hicks first began appearing in Australian newspapers he was shown emerging from a bombed out building shell, or against a rubble strewn landscape dressed in a shabby black or deep brown outfit with overgrown hair and a beard. He looked pretty grubby. As though he'd been there for weeks. The whole "presentation" concept seemed to be that David had been cornered and ratted out of an underground cave (or basement) in the wilderness with a bunch of Taliban/Al Qaeda members where they'd been "resisting" for days on end. No taxi was mentioned. No moneychanging was reported.

There really was nothing much to suggest otherwise, unless you read cleverly between the very large spaces between the very short lines.

An old excerpt and AP pic typical of the time:

Australian Captured with Taliban Now in US Custody
Monday December 17 7:36 AM ET (via Yahoo)

Al Qaeda-Trained Australian Reportedly Handed to U.S.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man captured among al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan has been handed over to the U.S. military but there was no evidence to confirm reports a second Australian had been caught, officials said. more

"Australian captured" "Taliban" "Al Qaeda" "fighters"... ..."Reportedly" "no evidence" "to confirm". Hmm.

Reading on.

Australian Attorney General Daryl Williams said Northern Alliance
fighters handed over Adelaide-born David Hicks, a convert to Islam, to U.S. forces early Monday and that the 26-year-old had been transferred to a U.S. Navy ship.

That "handed over" phrase again. Which makes perfect sense. Now.

So, he was picked up at a taxi rank and on-sold eh. Well well well. So much for all those sensational images frontpaging our news publications back in December 2001. Wonder who set up the shots. I mean, look at that original picture up there of the would-be David Hicks having emerged from his dug-out as he was not photographed.

A completely fabricated image based on mass media fantasy. Nothing journalistic in it at all. A fairytale image, illustrating unavailable facts. And now that the facts have arrived? The image remains unchallenged. Planted in Australia's psyche, false as it may be. For crying out loud! Look at the nose job in that picture! David's nose? Nuh-uh.

Anyway. The Four Corners transcript last night:

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Now, for the first time, Four Corners can reveal those details. Soon after he was taken into custody, Hicks was held with a small group of detainees on a US warship in the Arabian Sea - the USS 'Peleliu'. Martin Mubanga - an Englishman - knew David Hicks in Guantanamo. Hicks told him about being taken from the warship by helicopter to an unidentified land base - most likely in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

MARTIN MUBANGA, FORMER GUANTANAMO DETAINEE: He was thrown onto the chopper. His hands were in shackles and chains. And basically they was taken to, by helicopter, to a place. They was blindfolded, and there they was beaten and spat upon, and he was abused and assaulted. Things like, "You Aussie kangaroo", and things like that. Yeah, while they were beating and spitting on him and things like that. So, he was called a traitor. And then basically they brought him back blindfolded, so he never saw his...his attackers or his abusers, basically. And then he was brought back to the ship.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: When Terry Hicks went to Guantanamo, he says those beatings were the very first thing his son told him about.

TERRY HICKS: David was full on, he was agitated, he was stressed. All he wanted to do is, he just told us, "Listen. Don't say anything, I'll get it out as quick as I can." He had two 10-hour beatings from the Americans. And I said to David, "Sure they were Americans?" - 'cause he said he had a bag over his head - and he said, "Oh look," he said, "I know their accents, they were definitely American." Some pretty horrific things that were done to him.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Are they... sexually embarrassing things?

TERRY HICKS: Yes.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: These sexually-related incidents... does this involve Americans?

TERRY HICKS: Yes.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: David Hicks told his father the Americans gave him injections and then penetrated him anally with various objects. Why does he believe he was taken off a ship by helicopter?

TERRY HICKS: Well, I mean, if they've taken him off... They're taking him off an American ship. So, I suppose if anything happens, the Americans would say, "Well, it didn't happen on our soil."

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Being taken off a warship, it's like a mini-rendition if you like, do you believe that did happen?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH, MOAZZAM BEGG'S LAWYER: Being taken off a warship is not a mini-rendition, it's a rendition, period. There were all sorts of renditions. There were American renditions to themselves from Pakistan to Afghanistan to torture people, from American ships to Afghanistan to torture people.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Hicks's lawyers believe it's unlikely detainees would be helicoptered off a warship without official authorisation.

Halloween meditations:

2005-10-31T10:24:00.000+10:30

A series of devastating cyclones convinces the leading elite that there may be something in climate change afterall.

What will it take to convince the same leaderships that there may be something in resolving conflict without war? Please don't tell me it has to be nuclear.

What will it take to convince the same leaderships that there may be something in unfettered communication rather then shutting down modes of free expression with "anti-terror laws". Please don't tell me we need suffer another social experiment.

What will it take to convince young impatient renegades that ordinary people can effect change without resorting to holocaustic extremes.

And what would a fabian do with only two minutes before midnight.

Plagiarism, NO

2005-10-28T13:47:00.000+09:30

Am without shame copying and pasting this whole story here. Because when Australia's new "anti-terror" laws go through (next tuesday, 1 November 2005, Melbourne Cup day) this story will be "illegal". Ie, journalists would be breaking the law for publishing about what happened and is happening to Bilal Daye and his family. If that isn't censorship what is.

I'm in a rush so here it all is, copied and pasted in case after the new laws get passed the Herald has to pull the article off its site:

Read all about it - soon it will be a crime
By Tom Allard
October 28, 2005

Bilal Daye and ASIO director-general Paul O'Sullivan have got at least one thing in common - they both went to school at Randwick's Marcellin college.

But for that footnote in their CVs, there is little to compare the two men. One is the head of Australia's domestic spy agency, the other was raided twice by federal authorities, suspected of being a terrorist. On Tuesday, Mr Daye will take Mr O'Sullivan and the Commonwealth Government to the District Court, seeking damages of up to $750,000 for a bungled swoop by ASIO agents and heavily armed police on his Mascot home.

It is a story that anyone interested in the subject should read now. Under the proposed anti-terrorism laws, stories like Mr Daye's could not be told.

For Mr Daye, it is an opportunity to seek redress for an incident that he says badly traumatised himself, his family and sullied his reputation in the community. It is also a cautionary tale about how intelligence on terrorism suspects can be wrong, and how security authorities can make the most elementary mistakes.

By coincidence, the case will be heard on the day the Federal Government had slated to introduce legislation for new anti-terrorism measures, including control orders and preventive detention based only on intelligence, as well as the secrecy provisions which could ban such stories being reported.

Mr Daye's home was raided weeks after the September 11 attack of 2001 while he was in bed with his wife, Fatma, who had arrived in Australia from Lebanon only four days earlier.

As he scrambled to get dressed, Mr Daye heard agents demand he open his bedroom door or "we're going to blow it off", according to his statement of claim. When he came out, there were guns pointed at his head. He was told to join other family members in the living room, kneel down and turn around.

His wife was refused permission to get dressed in the modest fashion that is the tradition for Muslim women in the presence of strangers, Mr Daye claims. "I thought it was a joke at first," he told the Herald. "I thought it was a dream. It couldn't be real. It turned out is was real and a nightmare."

As family members cowered and complained, an ASIO "technical team" began to film the premises and take photographs.

According to an account by the then Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Bill Blick, the senior ASIO officer then realised he had made a "serious" error. He had the wrong address on the search and seizure warrant. That should have been patently obvious because ASIO and police had earlier gone to the actual address on the warrant - Mr Daye's father's grocery shop - about 100 metres down the road.

Mr Daye says the ordeal took an hour. ASIO says it was less than 10 minutes. It will be difficult for the court to determine - ASIO immediately destroyed the only evidence, the video and photos, when the officer in charge realised the raid was unlawful. Two months later, Australian Federal Police officers returned with a proper warrant and "spent six hours going through the whole house from front to end", Mr Daye said. His wife claims the stress of this second raid prompted a miscarriage.

Four years after the raids, Mr Daye has no idea exactly what he was supposed to have done wrong, although he believes authorities had fingered him as a terrorist "sleeper".

Born in Australia, he strictly observes Islam and visited Pakistan a year or so before the raids, a month-long stopover on his way back from making the Haj, or pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. "I went to mosques, I went to a few restaurants. I got sick there on the curries. I threw up a lot and I couldn't wait to get back home."

He denies emphatically that he attended a terrorist training camp.

ASIO declined to comment yesterday, as did the AFP.

ASIO returned Mr Daye's passport to him more than two years ago, a sign that its intelligence was off-beam. It is understood ASIO has already offered compensation to Mr Daye, although it clearly hasn't satisfied him or his lawyer, Stephen Hopper. Mr Hopper says the saga could have been a lot worse had it occurred under the proposed anti-terrorism laws.

"He could have been taken away and detained for a couple of weeks and no-one could have told his wife and family what was going on. Or he could be put under indefinite house arrest even though the intelligence that put him there can't be tested or challenged … an innocent man caught up in innuendo, suspicion and hearsay. Nothing more."

Moreover, journalists would have been unable to report it.

Arrest me.

Update: the terror laws have been delayed by last minute palladiation, the complete package deal is supposed to be through by Christmas, at this point. Merry x-mas to me. Talk about grinch.

Flu

2005-10-24T16:41:00.000+09:30

Perhaps adversity suits me. I mean, I feel fantastic. No joke. My eyes are half sunken into my head and my nose would be running onto the space bar if I didn't have a wad of tissues in my lap to catch the drips - but I feel excellent. What a way to spend the day.

If I had a fever I might wonder if I were delirious.

Arrest me update

2005-10-20T08:24:00.000+09:30

No idea what I would think of this man in real life, but his press statements are making him my favourite imam. He's offering himself up for arrest as well.

I'll take rap: Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly

The prominent imam Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly has urged the Federal Government to scrap its proposed terrorism laws, saying he will personally guarantee there are no terrorist attacks here and happily go to jail if he is wrong...

He says:

"We have people in Australia who hold views that are extreme or radical. Just because they have extreme thoughts doesn't mean they will put them into action.

"And putting them in jail when they are innocent will breed hatred. That's why these laws are dangerous for Australia and Australian society."

Exactly.

And his pledge:

"My view is that there are no terrorists but there are extremists. If any act of terrorism does occur, I will be responsible and I'm ready to go to jail." more

Me too.

NZ update moan

2005-10-18T07:00:00.000+09:30

Crap. Peters got the foreign minister's portfolio. He's a neocon. The only thing worse would have been Don Brash with it.

Prime Minister Helen Clark has retained power in New Zealand with a deal clinched by making outspoken, anti-migrant populist Winston Peters her new foreign minister.

Clark today announced the formation of a new centrist government, one month after voters gave her Labour Party the most seats in parliament, but 11 short of a majority. more

A very short story with no real point, perhaps about excess

2005-10-01T00:20:00.000+09:30

Today I am reminded of excess. And about the story about a boy who never brushed his teeth and ended up with a mouth full of fillings. After vowing never to endure another filling the boy became fanatical and brushed his teeth so often that he brushed off all the enamel. I would like at this point to make an outrageous claim; by the (tender) age of seven the entire top row of the boy's teeth were crowned, to protect them.

But this is a true story and that would be a false claim. In real life, the school dental nurse consoled the boy's worried mother; they were only his milk teeth and the second set were still to come through.

Peace activist deported

2005-09-15T21:18:00.000+09:30

Well, Scott Parkinson was deported from Australia this morning. No-one seems to have been given any official reason yet. Probably because he is a pacifist and Howard thought he'd make an easy scape-goat in the absence of any other.

In a statement released by the organisation, Mr Parkin said he was "still baffled" as to why ASIO had given him an adverse security assessment.

"I find this entire experience incomprehensible and am still baffled as to why my visa has been cancelled," he said.

Mr Parkin, who had participated in protests against the Forbes CEO Conference in Sydney last month and was due to deliver a workshop on non-violent protests when he was detained, rejected Government assertions he was involved in violent political activity.

"I am a student of mass social movements in the tradition of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King jnr and I think that these movements have shown us the way to achieve positive social change," said Mr Parkin.

He said he hoped Australians in the US would not be treated as he had been in Australia.

"I hope that when Australians visit the US that they are allowed to voice their criticism of government and corporate policy without fear of reprisal, and that they are freely allowed to participate in peaceful protest."

AAP reports: Peace protesters gathered at Melbourne Airport early today waving signs saying "Thanks for your non-violence, Scott" and "Peace is the Word".

A supporter, Iain Murray, said it was ludicrous that Mr Parkin was considered a threat to Australia.

"The only threat that Scott could represent is a threat of embarrassment and exposure of a government that has supported the war on Iraq," Mr Murray told reporters.

Jano Gibson for the SMH read it all.

Fearful Australians

2005-09-12T07:36:00.000+09:30

In a free world, people have choice. In a free world all faiths and all secularities (diverse as any religion) together are an expression of greater human goodness.

The world is not free then. Because all over it people are being squeezed. Even out here on the edge of a world which seems to get flatter each day.

The Federal Government's proposed tough anti-terrorism laws are causing mounting concerns among Muslims that they will be unfairly targeted for detention without charge, tagged with tracking devices and even interned.

Melbourne was named as a purported terrorist target last night only hours after Islamic leaders met in Sydney expressing fears for Muslim Australians on the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

At the meeting, which condemned extremism, several Islamic leaders expressed fears that Australian Muslims were being vilified over terrorism. more

Peace activists are being singled out, and religious groups feel targeted. These "new" laws are not protecting anyone, they are making people feel insecure. Which is just what Howard wants, a paranoid little enclave - where citizen can be turned against citizen and fears are easily preyed on. Anything to destroy the peace, anything to validate Howard's part in the wargame. Anything, to justify Howard's army.

Oh brutha

2005-09-01T18:53:00.000+09:30

Gah. I knew this would happen. That blasted "mate" business in parliament. By now, the episode will have leaked out to overseas bloggers who will all have their innocent misconceptions about Australia reinforced, ie Australians are mostly descended from diggers and all live in little dry towns with no rain and cover their heads with corked hats and once a year ruminate over Ned Kelly, and call each other "mate" a lot.

The Truth About Australians: we do not call each other "mate" a lot. Not in the city, not in the country, and not within the three mile perimeter of "our" shore.

When you do hear "mate" over here it is in contrast to "our" (will discuss how Australian I feel further down) in contrast to our reputation for being all beery and "matey". It is most often used in instances which do not have much to do with being mates at all.

F'rxample.

Times when an Australian is most likely to hear or use the word mate:

When someone has done something stupid: "Ooh MATE" someone will say, and then laugh very loudly. (This is when you learn who your real friends are. Not).

When teens are speaking that backtofront language that means the opposite of what it means to everynormal one else and everything they say looks sarcastic "mATe".

When grownup teens are reliving their carefree teenhood angst, and making fun of the Australia that is not: "mate giv's a tinny, ta darl". This is somewhat subversive useage and a play on mythmaking with other peoples legends. Noting that "legend" is used in a similar manner too. "Legend!" one might say of something extremely ordinary, and dull.

As an insult "thanks MATE" accompanied by hand gesture (one of several). Note "thanks" means the opposite as well, as in teen use.

When someone else (usually a New Zealander) is making fun of Australians, and sez it in a wrong accent.

The laughable bit is that most Aus pollys (politicians) are so far removed from language outside of parliament that it's, almost, as if they refer to decades old volumes to find out "how to appeal to the people" and being slower then Dana and Mulder in repeat have not caughtup with generation X yet who write quite a bit and are getting ready to enter the retirement bracket in another thirty years or so and have "moved on" from the akubra set. So you can see how some ministers miss out on the subtleties. Sarcasm is utterly lost on them, while their jokes about eating cake are never lost on us. And this is why they address visiting foreign dignitaries "mate", to impress, while serving roo steaks (Howard says he calls Bush mate all the time).

Which brings me to the other Australia. The bush Australia, which really is shrimp shrubs and has almost nothing to do with the US except where various military tests have taken (are taking?) place. The hidden Australia, which faces it's unforgivable history anyway and is not afraid to speak with it's past in small ways, not afraid and not hiding it's head in other tamer variants. Where blackfella and whitefella are used by indigenous and non alike and mean more then "mateship" ever could in a land torn apart by home grown apartheid and the "white Australia" policy. These words are used by few but when they are, they are used with a certain awareness and with a sort of, well, with a sort of fellaship really. A sort of togetherness in spite of the segregation that tore parents hearts and mothers eyes out. "Mate" sounds hollow in comparison, a throwover. A phrase to hide mistakes with.

Suffice it too say, I never say "mate". And I think the two worst words in parliamentary lexicon are "mateship" (of which they show very little) and "larrikin" (which parliamentarians use as an excuse for pinching bottoms and gesticulating at each other but will not appreciate in fine young men who climb all the way up to the top off the Opera house with decorative tile paint).

For years, whenever I saw "mate" in writing I couldn't help but pronounce it in my mind "mahteh". Oh sure context tells what it's supposed to sound like, but when you have no place in particular and are born one zone, grow up another, move around, go to the city in your teens, chase your fleeting dreams all over the show and then end up back where you were born, you accumulate a whole lot of stuff and other meanings which don't fit into any particular "culture". Even when you stay static, your thoughts travel and mark you as different. So for example, where I grew up "mate" means "death" "kill" and "blood" (including menstrual and abortive) and any number off illnesses, including "AIDS" and "cancer". It is pronounced with a long(ish to medium) "a" and a short "e", unlike the "mate" Howard addresses Bush with which appears exactly the same way written down but is pronounced as in wait, late, skate, fate and eight, and according to anzac's reinvention means "comrade" or something like it.

I don't know, was a kinship for all things "matey" lost on me somehow. Was there a guidebook that I never read, telling immigrants and returned citizens how to integrate. Did it have "mate" in there? Along with how to conserve water and only flush the toilet once a day in the dry season?

Long'n short ofit, not only have Australia's government's politicians decided that a disgust for war is unpatriotic, they have decided also (also, another one of those incongruent word uses that doesn't "fit" anywhere but places a big tick over the "wog parents" box) that an aversion to "mate" as per stereotypical anglonised version, is "Un Australian". So where does this leave me? I never could stand the phrase, but I was born here, I feel a deep connection that I can't put into words with the gritty pavements (I think it's related to childhood memories when your nose is closer to the ground) and the dry grass and the nine month long summers and the smell of burning tarmac with fat rain landing on it and smoke stained skies and clear clear clear, skies, and eucalypt bushburning in the dry fire season on the city fringe. I don't love Australia. It is in my bones, or my bones are in it, and that is as it should be.

Economy post

2005-09-01T07:00:00.000+09:30

I was thinking about the new terror laws being introduced in the UK, but it all rendered down to one thing so I thought I’d spare us both the trouble of writing and reading the inevitable lead-up and just post the last line:

War is wrong.

Grey is the colour...

2005-08-28T17:26:00.000+09:30

When everyone who is in any way connected with your imprisonment - from the supervising procurator through to the censor and the doctor - persists in lying day in, day out , you begin to feel as though you are in some huge lunatic asylum. The only difference is that here it is the overseers who are the psychopaths. Who try to incorporate you into a hideous, contrived reality. Shalin's insistence that we do not exist is a case in point: "There are no political prisoners in this camp!" he would aver. Yet at the same time he and all his colleagues invariably referred to us as the "politicals". The pots in which our skilly was delivered from the kitchen had the words 'Polit. Zone' marked on them with brown paint. And Shalin himself, in an attempt to make us see reason would say: "Everyone in the men's political zone wears identity tags, so why can't you?"...

Is this any less bizarre, than, say, proclaiming 'I am a teapot', or 'There's a Martian in disguise among us'?

...They all lie, but in different ways. Some of them derive a perverted sense of pleasure from the process: the more cynical and barefaced the lie, the more they enjoy it. These will watch your face as they mouth their falsehoods, and their greatest achievement is to make you lose your temper. Their trick is to present an innocent front while provoking you into a state of stress.

Irina Ratushinskaya, Soviet physicist and poet sentenced to seven years of camps and five years exile for "the manufacture and dissemination" of poetry.

It's the same story. The same tools in any system, twisted in ever familiar contortions. You can tell, when a system is decaying, because craven practice is the last thing left of it - as if not even ants find those parts edible.

Even here, on the web. Supposedly "free" of regime. Still subject to the distortions and manipulative powertripping that warped broken minds can't contain themselves from playing out. And it is a play, a macabre theatre, it's wretched enactments, it's drooping props and embezzled scenery snuck through, crunched up sedatives in a spoonfull of gritty jam. And the weak, seeking sustenance, gulp it all down. Starved of any real kindness, unable to distinguish another suffering from the charade. Unable to tell light or levity from gravity and shadow from deceit. Unable to tell, let alone discern. Why post it? Why write out fate - a warning? Or witness. To humanity in all it's falibility. Even in words, one preying on another.

Solemnity mistaken for spite

and pastries, for sincerity.

Is this heartwarming? Or palatable? No these are the indigestable stones and bones lodged in my throat while I choke and you read, both of us secure in the knowledge that our countries and half a dozen ideologies are at war over half five thousand million minds. You see, there is very little else for me to eat. Truth, how nourishing it was. Before war opened it's maw.

A grim and entirely unwholesome way, imaginary or not.

Postmodern on the shelf, for half hour or so

2005-08-20T22:55:00.000+09:30

Nice, don't usually recreate other people's writings here, being content to lavish myself with my own mind unraveling, but was just taking a look about and:

It made me a little sad to be surrounded by it all, the secret desperation of people trying stand out and fit in both at once, when there are so many other worthwhile concerns in the world. And I imagined myself leaping up on one of the folding chairs and waxing theatrical with some "Woe!! Woe unto you who are the cutting edge of the Scene! The vanguard of postmodern irony! There is no new thing under the sun and your haircut will no longer be cool in 18 months!"

Because there is nothing enduring about cutting-edge. It is transient and illusory, and postmodern irony is just cleverness without heart.

The shelf-life of fashionable revolutions is short. I think we should just be cool to each other instead of for each other.

(Vanessa in imaginary soliloquy at a "thinking for ourselves" event).

No mate of mine

2005-08-19T16:04:00.000+09:30

What a lot of rot. All of Australians parliamentarians are hanging on to the vestages of any popular appeal they once may have had by clinging onto one little word. Pitiful.

These guys are not my mates, they are overpaid boys with no sense of comaraderie amoung their own (perpetually trying to trump and oust each other) let alone displaying any fidelity to wider Australia. Pretending to be "mates" is fraudulant. The word should be banned from use in parliament unless they can step down off their pedestools and work in the streets like the rest of us.

Asked if he minded being called mate in Parliament House, Mr Beazley replied "I insist on it". read about Beazley wanting to be mates

And I refuse, to call Kim Beazley "mate".

So there.

Update: even Bob Brown wants to mates! Cripes, never have I seen such unity. If only they could display this kind solidarity on other issues, like "no to war" for example.

Reflections

2005-08-19T14:25:00.000+09:30

It's odd really, all that angst people put themselves through. "Delving into themselves". I suppose, growing up with it made me more practical. Ho hum I say to me, another zealot restructuring himself with missionary zest. Another poet, strapping on his explosive undergarments and investing his every fibre in a bid to... I'm not even sure he really knows what he is doing. I sure hope he doesn't harm himself. Or anyone else.

I mean, it all sounds very eloquent and everything, and what stamina. But it doesn't sound entirely ethical. And I'm sure that's what's making him miserable, if he could just cut to the chase. If he could just cut to the chase - but of course he never will. Being all multi-layered, like an onion.

Howard says "mate" ban impractical

2005-08-19T12:34:00.000+09:30

Howard says he might use "mate" all the time and can't function, politically, without leaning on it.

"People will ring me up and I might start off saying 'yes sir' as a matter of courtesy, which I normally do, and then we lapse into it, we might say 'mate'."

Because he is such a happening with it in touch man of the people type dude. I suppose he guessed that some youths only use the word when no other profanity will do. Or when they are taking the p*ss. I guess he must of known that, and he must love it when ~~he gets laughed at behind his back~~ we laugh with him for making a mockery of Canberra. Keep going Howard, it is such fun to see a parliamentarian devaluing democracy so that other people don't need to. Imagine what a lot of money the ordinary bloke/ess could make by saying "mate" on talkback radio after getting elected. How insprieing, perhaps I could stand for election next time too. Maybe I will stand as "the conservative alternative" and help to split his vote some more. I mean help to support his cause. Gee I wonder if anyone else can tell what I'm on about today.

Word banned, censorship shoe on other foot

2005-08-19T09:13:00.000+09:30

"Mate" has been banned in parliament (Oz). Good. Next they can ban "mate-ship" and "larrikin". Maybe now politicians will become a bit more creative. I often wonder if the whole "dumbing it down" approach is not so much that politicians really think that we are dumb, as that they aren't really smart enough to speak as well as bloggers write.

Or maybe I am asking for a bit much;

Labor MPs labelled the ban un-Australian, while the Prime Minister, John Howard, who has used the term to describe the US President, said it was unworkable. read it all

Like there aren't enough other problems in the world already.

David Lange Dead post

2005-08-18T22:00:00.000+09:30

Waited a few days to post this. Seeing as this is just a personal spot, am just basically posting it, in case I ever look back on this, and then I can go - oh yes, that was the week David Lange passed on. Anyone can find out about him anywhere else, so I won't go into a long thing about who he was. It's what he did, that makes him memorable, and what he stood for. Because he really did take a stand, and one that really I can't say I've seen any politician in the world take since. Not an actual elected one I mean, one that gets elected into government. Pointing out that he was elected after running a no nukes election campaign. Basically, he just said no way to war, no nuke war ships in the NZ harbour - and that was that. It was right in the middle of the whole 80's nuclear (very real threat) paranoia episode. And he put his foot down, and stood by it. And lead the way, as it were, or more to the point, followed his people. Because nobody wanted war, or nukes, unless they saw money in it, which nobody in NZ really did. Except for Muldoon and whoever potted the rainbow warrior. It was really a formative moment for NZ, of course there have been many other formative moments, but that was a really crucial political time and Lange just trumped it, he smelt change in the air - or perhaps greenery, and made a decision that although it doesn't get a lot of pacific press coverage, actually has had a huge unspoken subtle effect on the southern hemisphere.

Anyway, out of all the obituaries floating around, this is the one that I liked, the actual passing moment. He passed away missing half a leg, and in middlemore hospital, which is also a maternity hospital, so that's kind of a nice cyclic wind-up.

Here's what his brother said;

"His breathing became quite peaceful and slightly different and he just stopped breathing and just stopped being conscious basically."

Mr Lange (brother) said his brother (Mr Lange) said nothing of real importance during his last conversation.

And you know, he didn't need to. He said it all already and we will always remember it.

A most unfortunate war

2005-08-16T18:34:00.000+09:30

And most misfortunate of all - the clever way war manages to blind even those who once may have been able to avert it.

Witness - another example of most regrettable scapegoating. Does this pattern have a term? It must do, I have seen it so many times in my ever so drawn out dull 35 years of life among artists, "educators", paragons of self empowerment, leaders in indigenous renaissance and god knows just about every damn radical liberal endeavor you can think of - I was there somewhere lurking in the background as a child thinking "great, I think I'll be a hermit when I grow up" while my extended family communally tore each other verbally to pieces or drunk each other under the table to liltingly slurred heroic prose.

Here it is, what shall it be called - the saliva effect? You know, that thing that happens when people are passionately proclaiming their cause and accidentally sputum all over the audience and it lands on the nearest, while the rest of world remains none the wiser. It is fashionable these days, to spray speech residue all over a nearby "comrade" because the real antagonist is too far away to spit at. Why aim a gob arc at the whitehouse, for example, when you could land one on that journalist who was here last week.

And how brave! Thunderous! Like shaking fists at Aunt Daisy in the front row of the nativity pageant. Oh what a powerful feeling that must be.

Wafaa' Al-Natheema tells it to another journalist! Breaking down barriers! Educating! Changing Prejudices! Tearing down walls! Releasing us all from our shackles!

Dear Robin:

I can not tell you how expected your article's content was and how much of a cliche coverage it had!

By the way, I had boycotted the NY Times years back; that is boycotting buying, writing in and reading it. Now you have given me another reason for making my boycott comprehensive, never to give permission to a journalist from the NY Times to interview me again, as your interview with me last week was the third disappointing in a row. Here is why: read the rest there is more

Wafaa' Al-Natheema

The journalist's crime? She actually interviewed the actual artist and QUOTED THE ACTUAL ARTIST instead of Wafaa' Al-Natheema, the knowledgeable educator. The knowledgeable founder of an organisation that educates and re-corrects and sets people straight day in day out, week after month after year after year... who founded an organisation that has at least one man who can facilitate an email exchange for a whole week and by the ninth message - is still doing things like calling a women who has as yet unspecified her gender "Sir" (shortly after announcing I was actually a woman, he informed me that would be his last reply. Is there a correlation I ask myself? Or was I just another figment of his imagination).

Oh what an evil wicked willful journo, basing her article about a musician on what the actual musician had to say - rather then on what a glowing notary like Wafaa' Al-Natheema might ! Unlearned media pawn, fancy consulting two sources and going with the vulnerable musician instead of academia.

How, can anyone in the wider world ever be expected to change their perceptions when few people in certain circles seem willing to take a very hard look at the insular "burn slash and hack the outsiders" approach that lecturers, diarists and their prodigy so often employ. Of course, it does not one bit of good ignoring them, they only become more insular, but then how CAN it be dealt with? Telling an academic (or mercy on us, blogger) they are being all shouty only makes them shoutier, shouting back only makes them more vindictive, and ironically, subtly repeating their style and reflecting it to them through strategically placed mirrors just goes over most of their heads - being narcissists, unless they are especially astute or you do it rather bluntly by only changing every third word. For the most part though - it's all "deny deny deny".

So, what was the central issue? The central issue it seems, that sparked the whole "lynch a journo today wake up feeling productive tomorrow" episode was unfortunately diluted by the focus on the journalist. Winding up looking, like little more then another mission to belittle another author. Which means, once again, that war won. War won, because it took the focus of the central issue - which was that frequent media references to Sunni and Shiite might give people the idea there is some kind of Islamic polarity ticking away. But why should these references give this impression? Why could not a comparison be made? A gentle simile, a bridge if you will, a reminder that Islam has various branches just as christianity does (local reference; "Sydney Anglican" - defined by sect and also by location. No I'm not one. Yes they do antagonise other Anglicans. From what I can make out. To some small extent. Not that I want to cause major schism or anything.)

Why is it, that people working in institutions "defending a cause" so often seem so, so, so... so very blind to the glaring obvious. Or perhaps, it is just another one of my hallucinations, and that spotlight that shines around an issue is there only for me to see. And this is where I get that faraway misty look in my eyes like, as if I were seeing marsh fairies on the horizon, before I am pelted by stones or fall into the trench while the firing squad drill the air with more hail. Just to make the point.

And then I wake up again and it was all a dream and Wafaa' Al-Natheema was just all a nasty CIA or communist plot. Thank god (non sect) for my imagination.

Restock; Eff has a point, which I might understand if I were to unravel it. I suppose, the one reliable thing about mainstream media is that at least some of it is easy enough for me to read. Oh god, I deserve a kick for that - but you wouldn't kick a strawlady, would you?

In sum: to be perfectly clear. The point. The point, is that too often self-declared "educators" create prejudices by making presumptions. Oh irony. In this case, an "educator" presumes that the journalist's audience are stupid, and looking for any reason at all to lynch a muslim.

The educator complains about references to Sunni and Shiite in an article:

"Why did you need to introduce Amir's father as an Iraqi Shiite Muslim? ...enough of this cheap secterianism!! ...I will save myself future disappointment and frustration and never deal with anyone from the NY Times again."

Expecting to read a gutter propaganda attempt to pit people against one another based on religion, I went on to read the journalist's actual article. And found, the references, in context, are actually inclusive ones, implying harmony and diversity; "both Sunnis and Shiites" writes the journalist, at one point, pointedly, in an expression of togetherness.

The educator assumes, that the journalist's reader is looking for sectarian conflict and is not smart enough to go "oh Islam has a few variants, wow, how like christianity. Gee wizz, they have half a dozen different branches too". The educator assumes that the audience cannot think at all. And at the end of the day, it seems the educationalist is the one looking for conflict, not the audience, or the journalist, and least of all the musician, who was probably just trying to give a human picture of himself to the world, to build a few bridges. Way to go academia, way to go for burning yours.

National and the farmers - a Green ally?

2005-08-10T18:49:00.000+09:30

John (Howard) has been freaking about the Nats. And considering he's been freaking about the greens as well, this may mean "interesting political sideshows ahead". Which is in keeping really, with Australia's global sideshow status.

This month, as mainstream press have dutifully been reminding us all for the last ten months but seem to have overlooked now that it's here, is a "turning point" in Australia (another one, Howard might be a straight but the road he's mapped is all twists and hair-pin back flips). This month, Howard's co-alition takes control of the senate. It has all been sworn in. For the first time since anyone can remember (apparently the political memory of the voting populace is only about two weeks long, this is why all John Howard's election campaigns are relatively mundane till the last two weeks before tarring and feathering whichever scape-goat is going to keep him on the throne begins) where was I, oh yes, for the first time ever since anyone can remember, "the govunmint" has a majority in both the senate and that other place they do power things in (excuse limited knowledge, am just a voter) and now Howard's even eviler wicked reign has begun. Essentially, he has a majority of seats in both the upper and lower houses and theoretically this means that he can pass whatever he damn well likes and do whatever he damn well wants and screw whoever he damn well - anyway that's what he thinks.

That's what he thinks, but that may not be what he gets. Because the co-alition making up his government majority is just that - a co-alition. And the "smaller" co-alition member, the Nationals, who represent basically farmers and rural districts, have been soaked up by the shadow of it's larger co-alition member for pretty much a decade now. And they have people of their own to represent, and an identity, and "roots" that not all of them seem real thrilled about loosing to Howardian neosimilation. And they might just kick in their heels you know, seeing as Howard has started all throwing around his weight now, they might just kick in their heels and stick to their own principals.

The Prime Minister has fired a warning shot at National Party rebels, telling a Coalition party meeting that nothing is more vital to the Government's success than unity.

With relations between the Coalition partners at their lowest ebb since 1996, John Howard pointedly reminded the Nationals yesterday that the Liberal Party was the senior partner read the rest

And this is where the greens come in. What, you may ask, common ground could the Nats and the greens possibly find - aren't they at "loggerheads"? Well no. The greens and the Nats aren't especially at loggerheads. It's a common misconception to think the two have fundamental shortfellings were trees are concerned, but actually most agricultural land clearing was at a peak a century or two ago and the bulk of land clearing that's gone on since is less in aid of farm landclearing and more in aid of exotic timber furnishings (Tasmanian).

It's the logging industry that the greens have been at loggerheads with, not the farmers. And the logging industry's employees, by extension, are the laboring woodsmen, which Labor represents. And which the logging industry always tries to scare away from the greens by singing "you would rather have an axe then a plow". Which is why the greens and Labor have not teed up together with a co-alition of their own (if they had, they would have won several elections off John Howard). And which is why, when friction is teasing the edges of Johno's co-alition, the greens and the Nats make plausible allies. Think about it - green policy is compatible with farm management. Farmers have a shocking time of it out here, it's dry as - the place is a desert. It's tough, and those guys know the landscape, they know the weather, they've been watching and living in it for decades, generations in some cases. They know the climate is causing them strife, and some of them are beginning to look at "other" land management practices. They are tired of squeezing water out of stones, and are willing to try anything to "get some green". The greens on the other handshake, are an environmentally conscious party, their concerns also revolve around water conservation, and power generation that is compatible with the landscape and maintaining peoples lives within it, and of course, planting and growing stuff. Just like farmers !

Of course, multinationals pushing genetically modified seed will go into smear campaign overdrive if they get even a whiff of this, they rely on desperate climate squeezed farmers handing over bucks for grain with no questions asked. Well, that could all change too. That could all change, because the Nationals are pretty strong on locally grown produce, whether it be telecommunications or linseed, and this is compatible with green policy - grow local, think diversity.

Oh you may laugh now.

(Read all the links if you want to find out how Australia "does it").

Update: The Nats crumpled on Telstra and sold out. Hmm, so. If the Nats do some more things like this to help disenfranchise their voters, maybe their voters will start looking to the greens. If you ask me, and I know you haven't, it maybe time the greens revisited their rural roots - because that's where a good deal of them come from.

Test

2005-08-09T21:51:00.000+09:30

And what it could look like on your blog (placement up to you);

kos

Test

2005-08-09T21:48:00.000+09:30

DIMIA riverside resort

2005-08-08T18:52:00.000+09:30

See Maribyrnong !!! Free visit with Google Maps !!! See aerial view of one of Australia's detention centres !!!

Tucked away in an Industrial precinct in the middle of residential Melbourne, a home away from home, Maribyrnong, you know you want to go there.

Maribyrnong Detention Centre
53 Hampstead Road
Maidstone VIC 3012

A converted warehousing complex replete with razor wire for the storage of refugees, the mentally ill and goodness knows how many political dissidents (not Australian dissidents off course, heaven forbid ! No. Only the ones who tried to escape from Iran and so forth).

Speak with your local immigration agent now, and book fares on the next Indonesian fishing vessel !!! Enjoy the relaxing slish slosh of churning ocean waves and pitter patter of rice granules upon the deck, as wraithlike and motion sick children churn up their last supper. Maribyrnong !!! The trip is worth it.

Thankfully, I was able to find directions to Maribyrnong from a locally traveling journalist;

To see the detention centre, you cross the Maribyrnong (river) and turn right after Franco Cozzo's. Franco's beds are the Cadillacs of sleeping vehicles. If they had horns, and some of them probably do, they'd play the Moonlight Sonata. Head towards Flemington racecourse, turn left at Ballarat Road. The detention centre is in Hampstead Road. It's a flat, hard western suburbs landscape. Lots of factories, some new, some closed down. It actually looks more prosperous than it did 10 years ago.

The detention centre is hidden from the road, although a sign plainly declares its presence. Opposite is a warehouse with brightly painted windows. On the right is student accommodation. The kids I see are Asian. There are a couple of beat-up cars in the car park, including one with "Courier" written on its side. It's sitting on blocks, its four wheels gone.

From the road all you see of the detention centre is a wire gate and the sign that also lists visiting hours. On your left is a large complex of fawn buildings which declare themselves bastions of private enterprise but are otherwise featureless.

Behind is a large communications tower with lots of dishes. You drive down a road with a high wall on one side and the university flats on the other. I am still in a place I recognise as Australia. Then the road bends slightly left and you meet a wall of stainless steel spikes topped with rolls of razor wire making a thin line of jagged zeroes across the sky. Drive by Maribyrnong

And with these instructions, a combination of street maps (not much help, Hampstead Road is un-numbered and Maribyrnong Detention centre somewhere among the surrounding pale yellow "unnamed" areas. Unnamed that is, apart from helpful fine print text reading "unnamed") and Google Maps, I was able to locate what I suspect must be Maribyrnong - from the air !!! Or at least, where Maribyrnong ought to be. I'm thinking it is either the tan rectangular area (size of football field?) or the sheds just below it. If you look carefully you can see the communications tower (north east corner of tan rectangle) and what I suppose is the wall, as described by Martin Flanagan, quite clearly.

Here it is;

And here it is as it appears nestled within the craddle of Melbournian civility (follow blue arrow);

It's one of those statements about 21st century Australian society. Right in the middle of the working class belt in Australia's second biggest population centre, a detention centre. Not a prison, a "detention centre". Where people who have committed no crime, are detained. Once upon a time, we called them "immigration detention centres". Because we were lead to believe only wandering migrants were kept there. But now Australia's public have learned the ugly bitter truth. These places are depots for storing live bodies in, migratory and local. These places, are 21st century concentration camps and at least one of them exists, camouflaged, in an industrial pocket, within one of our 21st century Australian cities.

On an "upper" note, DIMIA have announced they are removing some of the trimmings, on a somber note - Australia is still building centers offshore. Why? Who is Howard hoping to hold there? Banned religious brethren?

More disappearings, Lucas Heights

2005-08-08T16:42:00.000+09:30

See it while you can.

Australia's nuclear regulator has called on Google to censor high-quality satellite imagery of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor which is freely available on its website. read more

Going to search google maps for detention centers now...

The selfish blogger

2005-08-02T21:12:00.000+09:30

It is official. All blogs are boring. As a phenomena, fascinating. Individually, mundane. There is nothing new. The same complaints, the same small pleasures, the same dull boring human morass.

There is almost nothing I can read in a blog/web diary, that has not already been written, and published, at some time, in some way, on paper.

Most bloggers are petty, smallminded, self absorbed, privileged members of the vaguely techni-literate class. They can steer a keyboard and talk about themselves and that's about it. There is nothing that separates the bloggers central concern, self interest, from any other period of "written" activity.

Sure, what a historical time to be recording thoughts, to be casting prunes into the chutney, but on no account, are bloggers, although many seem to believe they act independently, on no account, are bloggers alone of any importance. Blogs are a simple expression of virtual domesticity, however outrageous the poster's claim. It is an interior activity, and one that, is more effective when a blogger stops being such an ingratiating slave to moribund rebellious sensationalism and insincere pleasantries and admits to fallibility without raising the conductors baton and rousing the orchestra. How refreshing it would be, to read a blog bereft of ego.

And how implausible.

Iemma left carrying an empty can

2005-08-02T12:42:00.000+09:30

Rats from a sinking ship, now Refshauge has resigned. Bummer. He really is a good politician. I hope he goes federal, the only decent ministers Labour ever had were all state MP's anyway.

"I've decided that the time is right to move on to other things"
~ Dr Refshauge. the rest about it

It is time. And the time is right. It is the right time for state MP's to shake up Canberra, in unexpected ways.

Predicting we have not heard the last of Refshauge yet.

Maybe he could join the Greens now?

UPDATE; Knowles quits. Michael Costa given finance portfolio (groan) oh well, at least he wasn't put in charge of treasury, the man is a walking cylcone, leaves a trail of destruction behind every portfolio he touches. Fine if a premier wants to shake things around briefly and then appoint someone sensible to fix it all up, but not the kind of man you want meddling with budgets.

Update; Not wanting to write this off as "what did I say". But. Costa, trail of destruction.

The NSW budget could be in deficit for the next two years, the state's new finance minister, Michael Costa, has admitted on his first day in the job... predicting a deficit this financial year even though the 2005-06 state budget in May forecast a $303 million surplus...

Mr Costa said the low level of state debt ensured that "if we run a small deficit this year and even the next year it is not going to put us in a negative position"...

he indicated there would be more asset sales and further public-private partnerships Costa in the red already

Could make tacky game of name, but no need.

Waging the war

2005-08-01T13:38:00.000+09:30

While war rages amoung militants and militia in the equatorial regions, far to the south in a small subtropical global city the war on terror is waged by it's alert and unalarmed population; a whoopee cushion is reported in downtown Sydney.

'Whoopee cushion' deactivated
July 31, 2005

A Sydney bus driver began wondering what he'd picked up when a suspicious popping sound drifted down from the back of his vehicle.

Luckily, the driver did not panic.

...he calmly went to investigate and found the source of the "pops" was ...a "whoopee cushion-style toy".

Phew.

The driver duly completed his run - picking up and setting down passengers as usual - and alerted the police only when he arrived at Circular Quay about 25 minutes later. read whole true story

Thank goodness. I feel altogether much safer today, knowing that Sydney's public transport system has been spared one less explosion.

If only the school children would stop planting garlic capsules. It is worrying that our youth are attracted to these improviso devices at such tender ages, more so that similar devices may be readily available over the internet.

OMG !!! This site sells by mail order and this site tells you how to build one !!! In chatrooms !!! Code putrify mephitis !!! ASIO !!! Where are the web police when people really need them !!!

Howard sore - IRA outshines him

2005-07-29T11:39:00.000+09:30

Howard is trying his best to stir up something. Who knows what. In any event, it's painfully evident the man has a chip on his shoulder because he can't "out-noble" the laying down of arms. Howard, having just returned from Iraq decked out in "Dad's army outfit" clearly cannot compete and so falls back on half-cooked public statements.
Howard;

"The IRA were terrorists and they murdered people and the reason that the British security forces and police are so effective in responding to terrorist attacks is the bitter 30 years' experience of dealing with the IRA." the rest

Praising the IRA with faint damnation? - IRA improved Britain's "anti-terror" response - IRA, effective?

Well whatever, deploring killings after so recently doning military garb in front of the press is more then a little hypocritical, at the very least blurring the borders of reason.

Update, nailing final nail in; I guess it's one of those weeks for Howard, everybody else is just so much more graceful.

Arrest me, I blog.

Vizard gets off hook - but only in real life

2005-07-28T13:14:00.000+09:30

Disgraced businessman Steve Vizard has been handed a $390,000 fine and a 10-year ban as a director for illegal share trading during his stint on the board of Telstra. more

Far too lenient.

Amended sentence (as I see fit);

Vizard banned forever from any sort of share trading at all, unless he donates all his share profits, past present and future, to bonafide street buskers. For which a street buskers distribution fund will be created, and regulated by the funding body of the Australia Council for the Arts. (Wow, I just created at least four new job vacancies).

A $390,000 fine is a pittance to this man. Vizard instead ordered to pay $100,000,000 or half his lifes saving, whichever is the greater, to the poorest public hospital in his state.

He shall be allowed to support himself by working as a telephone operator in a telstra callcentre.

Now that would be nearer justice.

Seeing through big brother

2005-07-27T06:43:00.000+09:30

If this is introduced, I may stop traveling. I expect others may too. I expect holiday air-travel will abate, and seeing as that's where airline companies make their buck I expect airline tickets will become more costly. And then, I expect air-travel may be relegated to business travel. And perhaps "elite" travellers" who, perhaps, are "waived" the indignation.

Sydney Airport says it is keeping a close eye on overseas trials of a machine that can see through your clothes and show whether you are carrying a bomb or a gun. The drawback is that in answering the question "Is that a gun in your pocket?", it removes the pocket - and the rest of your clothing, too, leaving security staff looking at an image of you naked on a screen.

The technology - millimetre-wave imaging, which detects radiation emitted by the body - is being trialled at airports in Britain and the United States. It is billed as an electronic strip search, but civil liberties groups have raised privacy concerns, as well as fears that images, particularly those of children, could be misused. more

And lastly, the third thing

2005-07-18T23:37:00.000+09:30

The third thing that bugs me about the web. Is not the silly games that people play, the hopeless subterfuge and second-guessing, the assumptions and overblown ego's, the jumping to conclusions and threshing about all valiant without noting the mote in a bloggers own eye (open it). The third thing that bugs me about the web, is none of these things.

The third thing that bugs me about the web, is the way I still have a mile high stack of paper left over from dash-boardless moments, which I will never get around to posting. And from past experience, will probably just burn when next I move home.

Self-emersion

2005-07-18T23:16:00.000+09:30

And you know the other thing that bugs me about the web? It stiffles your individuality. Yes, stiffles. It does. At times, everyone all ends up sounding the same. Anonymous. I swear, sometimes one comment thread will look as though it's composed all by the same person, having an elaborate and imaginary conversation with himself.

How very odd. How very very queer. And at the same time, how mundane and homogenous.

And you know, what is most annoying of all? When you start writing that formulaic net-speak. Dammit. I have to do enough of that at work as it is (formulaic that is). Sometimes, I would rather write a manual then write the tripe that genius would appear to demand.

On the other hand, who needs a manual when there is google.

See what I mean? You just can't escape the damn thing. The world wide web, for all it's altruism, could be the ruin of us all.

Self-censorship

2005-07-18T19:45:00.000+09:30

You know what ~~pisses me off most~~ annoys me a great deal about war and the web? The way it over-sensitises everybody.

I just banged up a two-minute snakebite and had to hug myself it was so funny. But then I thought, dammit, you can't post that. Someone's bound to take it the wrong way in light of recent events.

So much for freedom of speech eh.

At the end of day, it's not fear of abduction that keeps me from posting, it's the knowledge that I may hurt the feelings of a stranger who's safer then houses.

Non-political post (with blonde highlights)

2005-07-12T23:02:00.000+09:30

Just to make it clear again. In case anybody almost forgot.

I despise marxist theory almost as much as I loathe George Bush and Condoleeza Rice.

And I am not a centrist. I am just your ordinary everyday middle of the road undistinguished and gauche eccentric, leaning on fences (nonchalant) and regularly walking through walls.

All I want is for the world to be able to sip on Homo lights and chew rainbow coloured salads in peace, and twirl angels on pinheads. Because that's the sort of rotation that keeps the world spinning. Except that I just think Norway should sell it for free, otherwise, you know, 20 kroner kind of cheapens it and you might as well just go back to turning tricks for coke. Or something. See, you can tell I am naive and uninformed and that's all that matters at this stage, as I point out how run-of-the-mill I am. And how un-politically unmaligned and pure I am. How normal, and unswayed by elaborate political maneuver. That I, am just your regular plain-speaking crackpot diarist. And that I do not care or wonder that Norwegian Finance Minister Per-Kristian Foss is a conservative, even though I can't stand conservative foreign policy.

Oh look, this must be the Homo light promo material. And here it is again! How, peculiar.

Norwegian homosexuals are set to launch their own soda brand, Homo light, at an upcoming gastronomic festival, in the hope that it will help promote tolerance, one of the authors of the project said today.

"The goal is not for us to make money but to make us more visible and accepted," Oeystein Mauritzen say.

The soda... will be sold in half-litre bottles for 20 kroner.

more

"Spreading the word"

2005-07-10T23:49:00.000+09:30

Proof that all "right" identifying bloggers are spoofing George Bush - nobody can be that short sighted and manage to somehow type.

Today I read some 'merican rallying together supporters to "annoy a dictator today". I guess this's my contribution then.

lyrical in the AM

2005-07-08T07:51:00.000+09:30

Mary's flock
are all at sea
one thousand pea-green boats
or more

there is no snow white
or golden fleece in Olympia, Atlantis
only bleach
and fluid yellow stains

Latona, the Son
will nothing ever change
no
London is burning

L'Oreal world peace appeal

2005-07-07T01:01:00.000+09:30

Hm. I wonder if this will work. Had some "young man" advice today (from dear young man).

"if you stop talking politics and dye your hair shiney blonde you will have 200 chasing you."

Eeep. I don't really need 200 - on the other hand, this is valuable and interesting advice.

Deep breath;

"My name is Helga and I am from Scandanavia, I am Helsinki platinum (product code REC114W) and use colour-lock *insert brand* hot-oil hair treatment. Now my hair is silky smooth and swings maidenly (Marion, flaxen) as I hold aloft my workers emancipation placard (at flattering angle). I believe in world peace and an end to all poverty. My greatest desire is to live happily ever after and John Howard is a Curr. I will not be voting for him ever again. Excuse me while I go tend to my pedicure, I find *insert brand* foot cream a most satisfying moisturising experience and I hope to use it 3x weekly before my next appearance at the Lady Diana No More Landmines function. Bless her Queen of hearts. She lived her life like a candle in the wind (Amnesty).

I hope you will vote for me and I promise to be the kindest most loving beauty pageant princess the world (virtual) has ever seen. I ask that George, Bush and Blair stop bombing the poor brave people of Irak and Afghanistan and after I have finished buffing and painting my nails luminescent peach I personally will handpen a letter to the G8 conference committee recommending Chanel No 5. What the world needs is more loveliness and less capsicum spray."

The blogosphere is all awash with petulance, again.

2005-07-06T22:04:00.000+09:30

Second-rate grizzler deplores

"Public de-linkings, and other similar traffic-whoring stunts".

I abhor traffic whores and had to think twice before even linking the pixel-dry lemon flirt in return. Now. To get back on topic (yick I hate sticky fingers). Replying to my detractors is time consuming, yet evils must necessarily be dealt with and I cannot pretend to not hiss back when spat at (eventually).

Where was. Oh yes.

If you thought distinguishing myself from that lefty poser Delftsman was a traffic stunt then you are a sadly deluded blogger indeed.

And you should give up right now. Because nobody cares about "sides". Your miserably small bevy of communist right-whinger poseurs have reached the end of their lines. Their well has cracked. Their letters have unraveled. The web war is over. The moderate passives won. Your time is up. (Someone had better point this out to the small disconnected team of self-appointed undercover operatives still roaming about without direction, few laggers seem to have lost contact with command control. Unless of course that really is ASIO tapping my phoneline).

Final word on counter-cloning; That a post seeking to untangle myself from Delftsman's murky smear campaign became the scene of repeated telegraph-pole piddling could not have been forecast, and if ankle-high golden showers are all your ilk aspire to then I am shocked and horrified.

Solutions; (which I doubt you will want to hear, being a pissy moany run of the mill blog whore).

Stop whoring for links and start blogging for yourself instead of pandering to the misguided and two-dimensional perception that blogs have "sides".

Look behind your facade at your html and get back in touch with the three dimensions, Beth. Before you become an irredeemable socialist "all the world is against me" pawn.

I double-doubt you'll want to hear this, but you could fairly easily nip and tuck a blogger template to almost seamlessly match your page. It would load faster (blogger has improved even if Mamamontezz's strap-on hasn't) and it would be free so you wouldn't have to worry about all those one-way trackbackers hogging your bandwidth (playing by the rules indeed, next time before declaring "it's not fair" a self-branded "right-winger" might want to consider certain one-way liberties and oil-lines).

You may even be able to take your existing comment provider over to blogspot (or just use blogger's, it's remarkably glitch-free these days. Unless you're one of those precious blog-whores who likes to keep all her existing comments so that she can knotch them on her gaudy k-mart quality belt).

In short - blogger is undergoing "gentrification". Once the blog-squatter's virtual-warehouse of choice (large cheap and un-insulated) blogger is now a viable alternative for the dissatisfied "never can please" yuppie blog-wench. Unhappy with your lot? Go to blogger and have a template tutu (sigh, another word that'll go over sheltered northern hemispheric heads). Go to blogger and have a template fiddle. It's relaxing, like playing with leggo, or planning a holiday hut. You might even enjoy doing it again.

Update !!! Just googled "Mamamontez", em-im number one !!! Hah-ha. A list wringing link-whore might want to consider revising gripe No 23 in this respect. (Gutrumbles was number two and the fraudulant "every man should have a gun and a doberman" Rottweiler skank only number five, even after misspelling twice. Come to think of it, some outfit called "Blackfive" are there as well and so is combatarms - three times. Phoo, you righties are terrible spellers).

70 Australians detained. Seriously.

2005-07-06T20:14:00.000+09:30

No longer content waylaying men in robes/beards and detaining asylum seekers, Australian airport security are now cracking down on comedians.

travelers have been warned not to indulge in typical Aussie humour at airports, with jibes like "never mind the bomb in my bag" now likely to land jokers in hot water.

The Australian Federal Police said more than 70 people had been detained and questioned for making such comments since new aviation safety laws came into effect in March, with five convictions recorded.

-- The Sydney Morning Herald this afternoon.

Note to self; be more deadpan. Travel without red clown nose.

Sh*t !!!

There is really no need to point out what a waste of staff-time this is, or how stii-upid it makes air security look. But I will anyway. More then 70 harmless humourists detained in less then two months, while somehow mean-while pot is smuggled out by the boogie-bag full. Does "prioritise and organise" mean anything to airport management?

Am I glad I'm not an airport security clerk - imagine being asked by your employer to detain simple funloving folk and keep an eye on the x-ray scanner and listen out for the metallic objects bleeper and be on the alert for select passport holders and keep a straight face all at the same time.

Slaves to trade

2005-07-06T07:40:00.000+09:30

They sold us "War is Peace". And we let them. They sold us "Love is Hate". And we let them. They sold us nutrition with a packet of fries, a soulmate with a pill and beauty in a leaking silicon disk. And the consumer bought it all.

Will we let them sell us "Work is Freedom" ? Is this "the straw that broke the little pigs roof" ?

Or will we end up buying "industrial reform" too, chained to our wallets, forking out our weekly incomes for our weekly package deal of platitudes.

Sell your vision, bosses tell PM
By Nick O'Malley Workplace Reporter and Mark Metherell

Employers and the Federal Government have fallen out over the planned new era of industrial relations, blaming each other for failing to sell the reforms as polls reveal the public has turned against them.

Business leaders yesterday pressed the Government to launch immediately a publicity campaign to counter the ACTU's $8 million media blitz attacking the plan. But Government sources have expressed impatience at the failure of businesses to launch their own ad campaign.

SMH

Where will it end.

Will the Australian Labor party youth learn any lessons?

2005-07-05T07:42:00.000+09:30

"The most striking lesson to arise from the ashes of Labors defeat is the primacy of leadership credentials. Mark Latham, at the time an apparent antidote to Labor's electoral woes, must now bear responsibility for the result of 2004. Much like that other firebrand, Howard Dean, the novel and mercurial leadership qualities that initially made Latham an elusive target for conservatives ultimately became his greatest liability".

Sam Indyk and Tim Soutphommasane c&e

What a load of rot. Sam Indyk is a smarmy little self interested wart trying to cover his tracks. Why? Because not only was Sam Indyk a member of Labor's last election team, he also worked on US Democrat Howard Dean's failed presidential campaign. The guy is playing the blame game - it's easy for him to point the finger at Latham now that Latham's "out". It's easy because Latham no longer holds a key position in Sam Indyk's ambitious path of self styled self promotion, no, Latham is no longer at the helm and Sam Indyk panders instead to his new perceived promoter - that lumbering tug Beazley. What a cretin is Sam, trying to offload his failed part in two major election campaigns by pointing the bone at Latham before anyone points it at Sam.

What is really wrong with the Australian Labor party? It's pompous young weak-willed members like Sam Indyk. Apart from thankful anomalies like Julia Gillard, the Australian Labor party youth for the most part have the spine of single celled organisms and rely on a framework of promotion to prop up their aspirations to leadership. The guys are algae growing in a petri dish, they have little or no empathy for anyone outside the party - in fact are afraid to speak to anyone who is not a party member. How quickly Labor's youth become disconnected from voter sentiment, relying on party polls and received wisdom to try and work out what might make them prime minister/treasurer/deputy one day.

Why did Latham quit the leadership? With pulp like Sam Indyk squelching about it's hardly a question that need be asked.

What lessons can the Australian Labor party learn then? Well, for a start, Labor is most effective when it sets aside it's ambitious (and delusional) internal scramblings for power and focuses on issues that matter. Issues with a clear alternative position. Like this;

The latest Herald Poll shows John Howard has incurred the biggest single plunge in his personal approval since taking office after declaring his tough industrial relations changes as his top priority for a Senate now ruled by the Coalition.

Despite troubled times for the Opposition, support for Labor has surged ahead of the Coalition - 54 per cent to 46 per cent in two-party-preferred terms.

After a week of nationwide protests and an ACTU television advertising campaign against the changes, the poll shows 60 per cent of Australians who are aware of the plans oppose them, including 23 per cent of Coalition supporters.

The pollster ACNielsen says the dramatic upturn in sentiment for the labour movement is a significant pointer to the first clash in a long time between the Government and Opposition on an issue of importance to many voters.

Sigh. And this is why I vote for the greens. They are much nicer then Sam, and can follow an agenda without aspirations to prime ministerial office (with four seats in the senate they can hardly pretend to have any).

Opposition leader attends first big rally

2005-06-30T19:38:00.000+09:30

"I've spoken at many protests in Melbourne in the 25 years I've been in Parliament, I've never seen a crowd like this''.

- Kim Beazley today.

I guess he missed the Feb '03 ones then. Not that anyone's harping on.

Latham's disgruntlement

2005-06-30T07:48:00.000+09:30

"When maintaining factional power is put ahead of civility, decency, honesty, humanity or even legality, then bullying and thuggery become lazy substitutes for debate. Behaviour unacceptable outside NSW Labor is all too often rewarded within it."

Faulkner at Lagan's Latham Biography booklaunch.

Latham has been causing a stir again, perhaps more effectively from the "borders" then he could have ever from within the confines of the Australian Labor party.

Latham and Faulkner are right to criticise Labor/the ALP's "toxic culture". Because the ALP is. It's as simple as that. The ALP is poisoning itself, and as a result has diminished any impact it has as a viable "opposition".

The ALP's problem - it suppresses it's critics, rather then listening to them. This does not work very well in Australian political culture.

Australian political culture, I have learned, has a habit of "adoptive" politics. That is, a long standing party rarely has an original idea of it's own but instead keeps it's unwieldy structure afloat by hooking itself to the policies of more buoyant surrounding minor party rafts. Some of these minor parties are little more then air rafts, one puncture and pfft - but while the raft floats the posturing is loud and has impact (bit like 1970's greenpeace with loudspeakers). The major party silencer of choice is simply to adopt the minor parties policy and "drown them out" - neatly snaring the minor parties vessel and wiring it onto the composite body.

While I personally grimace at the unoriginality of this whole "stay afloat" solution, it is a great way of telling who the most effective opposition party really is - the one the incumbent is choosing to "emulate". Historic case in point, 1990's Hansonism. Oh yes, great cringe factor there. But really, she kicked up more dust on her own then the entire ALP did in the late 1990's. Current case in point - Howard's racking off at Bob Brown over Tasmanian rainforests, and Howard's subsequent "save the whales campaign", followed by the Downerian slot in the "Save Zimbabwe" boycott movement. Most forgotten case in point - Australia's incumbent government is not actually "a party" at all but a coalition. References to "The Coalition" grow thinner on the ground with each passing week, and when those references do appear a punter could almost be tricked into believing "the coalition" are a party - rather then a conglomerate consisting primarily of the Liberal and National parties. The National party absorbed, a minor party which rose to prominence after being tacked onto the bailing body of the former Liberal ferry. Fringe case in point - The Australian Socialist Alliance, an "alliance" of disparate groups who hire themselves out for free with tin-drums and placards to whatever's going "we have to represent the people" they cry as they sink into the morass of anti-semitism dressed up as "anti-zionism".

Traditionally, environmental issues, whale saving and human rights abuse lobbying existed almost solely in the realm of NGO's. It was only when Green parties grew from mid 20th century NGO's and rose to formidable third party status globally in the 80's, that the environment, whales and torture were ever petitioned by political parties. Splinter socialist and communist parties almost snared the human rights abuse spot, but unfortunately have been undermined by the abuses of their own former larger bodies.

The issues represented by the Green party are not represented to any major extent by the ALP, and yet those very Green party issues are forming a considerable part of current Howardian rhetoric.

That the Green party in Australian politics is more effective then the ALP is all the more significant for the Green's "centrist" appeal. I hear you baulk. Yes, The Australian Green Party is a "centrist" party. Again, witness "policy adoption". Not only have hard-right incumbent parties recently attempted to "absorb" Green impact by posing as whale savers, tree-huggers and Zimbabwean refugee advocates, but minor hard left parties identified the "Green threat" years ago and have pre-emptively been employing absorption tactics for several years with the publication of "The Green Left Weekly" - a publication by one of Australia's variant socialist organisations looking for all the forest as if it issued from the very press of greenpeace itself. Till you read past the header.

So, while absorption politics is unoriginal and insincere (yes it is) it does actually swing the dynamic away from two-party preferred politics. If you're a minor party with a threatening message, chances are, sooner or later you'll see a major party taking up your campaign out of shear vote fear. What this means; minor parties play a powerful role in Australian politics.

Which all points to Labor's ineffective hull. It has no distinguishing policy marking it in opposition to "The Coalition". The balance of power is not held by Labor with it's vast vote, but by the minor parties, with their clear and bell-like appeals to policy reformation.

Is Latham right to rock his ex-parties boat? You bet he is. He's onto something. Boatrocking is on the rise (and even Howards backbenchers know it).

Latham shouldn't just publish his diaries, he should damn well start a blog.

Spring Bok Tour - still making waves 24 years later !!!

2005-06-27T21:56:00.000+09:30

The Australian government is considering lobbying the International Cricket Council to ban Zimbabwe from world cricket amid international outrage over its demolition of squatter camps.
article.

Whatever. Like, first Johno tries to salvage his reputation over going to war by saving the whales, and now Downer tries to salvage his penchant for concentration camps by petitioning Zimbabwe.

Headline forecast;

Australian Liberal party stages Everglade sit-in
June 28, 2010

"We shall not be moved" announces foreign affairs minister and prime minister in waiting Alexander Downer.

Retired PM laments felling of Tasmanian Rainforest
June 28, 2015

"We did not know what the woodchippers were doing, nobody told us" - John Howard.

Reality show

2005-06-27T21:06:00.000+09:30

Channel Ten has made some pretty unfortunate investments in the past - shows such as The Resort and The X-Factor come to mind - but in terms of dollars-for-ratings-points, Douglas Wood would have to be among the worst of them.

Ten reportedly paid Wood up to $400,000 for an "exclusive" interview with Sandra Sully on Sunday. It didn't even reach the ratings top 10 for Sydney on the night.
- David Dale.

Why Wood didn't rate; because everybody smells a rat. Wood's tale is just too conveniently harrowing. Look, I have sympathy for anyone under duress but a lot isn't adding up here and Wood sensationalising his "survival" just, you know, like, smells of Denmark (Hamletian).

Put it this way, reality telly gets the ratings and the bb's (Backyard Blitz and Big Brother) trumped. Wood's story just sounds too made-up. There is only one kind of made-up that rates these days, and that's satire. If Wood had starred in a Roy & HG reconstruction of his whole "ordeal" everybody would have watched.

Incarcerations happen on the mundane level everyday. Wood has glaucoma? Well that's really too bad, but so did Mr Average and he spent 40 years of his working life looking at carcasses in a meatworks before dying of prostrate cancer. Woods imprisonment only lasted 47 days and is now over. Bully for him. If he really cared, he might donate his $400,000 dollar ransom from Channel ten to charity.

If there is one thing that reality entertainment has tuned the populace too, it's the knack for spotting posers.

Do I give a damn? Yes, yes I do. Do I trust Wood? No, no I don't.

Not understanding? Or understanding too much.

2005-06-25T20:33:00.000+09:30

Despite Federal Government claims that Sheik Hassan Zadaan had nothing to contribute to rescuing Douglas Wood, the Australian emergency response team in Baghdad devoted considerable resources to shutting down the tribal sheik's efforts on the engineer's behalf.

Big long article from Paul McGeough (during one of his more lucid moments - sorry Paul, but the boot-licking shows through in some of the other stuff. Well look, what else can you expect on a blog if not honesty). Read whole thing, it's actually pretty comprehensive.

Condensed emigre version (23 paragraphs in 32 words);

Sheik was giving Islam a negotiable name, the hostage takers were looking dangerously human and reasonable. Occupying psy-ops had to interfere before peace broke out and put an end to their jobs.

Who needs an animal farm

2005-06-25T20:13:00.000+09:30

"We did not have a revolution to have a democracy" - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's new president come August.
more

Gasp. And that's why I've never been keen on revolutions really.

On another hand - raises issue - what is a democracy now? Or what is one understood to be. Because frankly, a lot of them aren't displaying especially democratic traits. Between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and various patriot acts it's all a bit weird really. Is there one single democracy left, anywhere in the world?

The nasty cheap fix II

2005-06-24T12:43:00.000+09:30

Any blogger who writes all these wars are not about energy resources, specifically certain large consumer populations running out of them, is quite simply an intellectual fraud. There is no way that anyone can be that uninformed and keep a blog.

Observe, an oversized economy desperate to supplement it's dependence on fossil fuel;

Go for it, Bush tells nuclear industry

George Bush has made the first visit to a nuclear plant by a US president in 26 years and declared: "It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again."

...Mr Bush said that since the US stopped ordering reactors, France had built 56 of them; China, he said, is working on eight. He contrasted oil, whose consumption in the US grows even as the nation's production of it declines, with an energy source that he called "completely domestic", though in fact the business of designing new reactors, and making fuel for existing ones, is now mostly globalised.
more.

Imagining a horrid and alternative universe, where wars are fought not over oil, but over Uranium...

Australia has the largest supply of uranium, with 28 per cent of known recoverable resources, followed by Kazakhstan (15 per cent), Canada (14 per cent) and South Africa (10 per cent).

Stop the world, I want to get off.

Parliament ~ impotency cracks growing

2005-06-24T07:42:00.000+09:30

The "reformation" begins in ernest. Deputy prime minister John Anderson has quit, Mark Vaile is installed, Labour are "restructuring"... and Howard has the senate all to himself in a few weeks time. July 1, the beggining of the end.

Oh well, we can wait this one out. Every tide turns. We will have a prime minister in that green shirt with the rainbow sewn-on, some day.

Reforming John Howard

2005-06-22T22:54:00.000+09:30

Well somebody has to start somewhere.

OMG ! It's working !

Howard urges Japanese to give up whaling

Prime Minister John Howard has called on Japan to abandon its push for commercial whaling culls as the International Whaling Commission rebuffed pro-whaling nations for the third day.
read more.

Do dead whales float?

2005-06-21T22:21:00.000+09:30

Woke from a horrid dream this morning about whaling. During scenes of actual aftermath a dream "voice-over" described in a brief history of whaling practice how slaughtered whales were "sailed" back to shore, the carcass a sort of giant barge. I saw a vat rendering flesh on one and strips of flesh laid out on it's hide - it's own body the butchers work surface.

Won't describe the rest - very grotesque-Bosch. Would disturb gentle readers.

The first whale I saw slaughtered was small - an Orca. It was hunted for eating a seal. The body too small to form a barge.

Apologies, not much room for blogwarped humour on this one except that by 8:45 am on public transport while watching lady reading headlines ("Senate boss blasts PM's monarchy") wondered if it was all an analogy for John Howard's Australia.

The mother of all hoaxes

2005-06-16T23:00:00.000+09:30

MER has never before published this story, this 'conspiracy theory' if you will. Though under much pressure over the years to do so we always held back and never published anything about this 'possibility'...until today that is. But now the fact that a ranking former Bush Administration official, in fact the man who was the top government economist in the Labor Department on 11 September 2001, has now gone public saying 9/11 may have been a historic hoax and the World Trade Towers were 'most likely' destroyed by a 'controlled demolition', causes us to reconsider. Continue reading.

A thoughtful article written by flambouyant Oedipus syndrome individual with deconstructed metaphysical condition and warped semitic loyalties.

Nighty night now.

Blog warped

2005-06-16T21:50:00.000+09:30

Today in office at keyboard writing up meme for ~~mini~~ typing:

"The Minister for Emergency Services (New South Wales Fire Brigade) formerly the Board of Fire Commissioners of NSW."

pause

"A ~~bran min minister~~ pause ~~a pawn of the NSW Sta~~ pause ~~under the~~ pause.

Oh crap.

~~In the pay of~~

"A NSW State Government Minister."

God. And this is how it happens. The dumbing down. I am complicit.

Note; this entry was entirely fictional and not even remotely based on reality. In any way at all. God so help me.

Added on later bit: almost missed the part where (imaginarily) sit stunned for micro-second, wondering at the compression of the entire Board of Fire Commissioners and Emergency Services into a single minister.

Cutting slack

2005-06-16T21:23:00.000+09:30

I have had a good long think and have decided to cut Delftsman some slack. Afterall. He is my blogchild and whether I like it or not he grew up from out of my ideas. Which is a worry but I wouldn't want to ostracise him by disownership. He must spread his own wings and I can only hope that he lives life with treading respectfully where eggshells are concerned.

As a token I express my letting go-ness (Mother from strings) with this concession link.

http://www.delftsman.mu.nu

Tact on the gallows

2005-06-16T14:13:00.000+09:30

Been deliberating over this all day. Who is the bigger twit;

"This is a day of national rejoicing"

- Mr Beazley (read rest)

"The precise story never finally emerges for a little while"

"He (Douglas Wood) was certainly rescued as the result of a military operation"

- Mr Howard

You really have to read the whole thing. But in case you can't be bothered;

Keysar Trad, spokesman for Australia's most senior Muslim cleric Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, last night said the cleric had negotiated with Mr Wood's kidnappers to ensure he was dropped at a safehouse to be rescued by American and Iraqi troops.

And now what all three of you have bin waiting for; what emigre really thinks and waited all this time to say until the whole charade was over;

Douglas Wood has psy-op written all over him, John Howard is NOT wonkette (even if he does just "make shit up") and Beazley, while full of crap, is at least entertaining. Another unremarkable day in the nation it is. Tonight I may have cheese on toast to celebrate. I think I have a hardened stale peice left at the back of the fridge.

- Emigre

True lit?

2005-06-15T22:41:00.000+09:30

"True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and sceptics."

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Well that's some consolation, I suppose. Except that I am diligent and reliable dammit. Why cannot a madman/women, hermit, heretic, dreamer, rebel or skeptic be diligent and reliable. It's a sense of responsibility to conscience that motivates the ardent. Darn it Zamyatin, I don't know what the heck kind of blogger you think you are but I'm having my cake.

Open letter

2005-06-15T19:50:00.000+09:30

Dear Herald

I am sorry, none of these blogs are funny enough and they make too much sense. Bloggers should never blog for major mainstream publications especially ones connected to serious newspapers like the Sydney Morning Herald. It squelshes your inner schitstck.

webdiary.smh.com.au
radar.smh.com.au
blogs.smh.com.au/barkersbyte
blogs.smh.com.au/razor

And also, Miranda Devine is a leftwing hack trying to besmeech the reputations of Liberal Australians by posing as a ~~commun~~ as a ~~con~~ as a straight. She is doing a good job of making Howard look dumb, along with ~~Pauline~~ Sophie ~~Pauol~~ Panopoulos.

Yours sincerely

A Concerned ~~Pauper~~ ~~Battler~~ non political blog.

(Maybe too obvious? Well look, have to leak Divine plot out someway without every eye peering in on it.)

Sophie spits dummy

2005-06-15T13:02:00.000+09:30

Sophie P describes her Liberal colleagues as "political terrorists". And yes, she is quite right. The entire Australian Liberal party are in the pay of communists and terrorists and they should all be voted out immediately. A snap election must be called and these deviants at the head of Australian political spin must be hunted down and rooted out by ballot.

"If you spit the dummy because the vast majority of the people in your party won't agree with you and you in effect behave as a political terrorist, well I think you actually lose credibility, I don't think it's a bad sign for the party at all." more.

Who in there wrong mind would not agree that loosing credibility is not a bad sign for the Australian Liberal party.

Thank goodness for moderate up-and-comings like Julia Goddard. Because some kinds of green belong in the nursury, with other pliable illiberal sapplings waiting to be grafted onto John Howards warped and baulking hull.

{irl}picks up dummy, dusts of grit, pops back in Sophie's mouth.{/irl}

More expose' to come

2005-06-14T22:19:00.000+09:30

They are starting. The threats. Tonight I got home, there was a dead mouse on the stoop and a black cat in the letterbox (live). You cannot silence me. Innocents are being maimed and I for one will not stand by idly tutuing around in the makeup department pretending to be "Mother Troy" while babes suffer the consequences of war and warped marxist theory. I will not shut up.

Resuscitator Aphrodite.

Harking back

2005-06-14T21:27:00.000+09:30

One of those "look at this great old post that I found, by god I can't help having a chew on it" moments.

"I would argue it is possible to believe that both the Kosovo and Iraq wars were ultimately illegal, further that the Kosovo war was nevertheless morally legitimate, and that the Iraq war was not."

- Ostracised Emigre, preceded by lengthy comparisons.

I can't tell you how frustrating it is reading such well thought out analytical commentary that totally fails to grasp the space-time dynamic.

Basically, all war is always wrong. The whole point about why the Iraq War captured the worlds imagination is not that Milosevic was more/less evil then Saddam, or even that Serbia had less oil. No. Iraq captured the world's imagination because it was preceded by fairly recent shocking imagery from the Kosovo war at the close of the 20th century, at which point the world was dumbstruck gobsmacked when streams of refugees poured over the hills filling makeshift border camps to the brim. It was a humanitarian crisis that nobody had been prepared for and it happened on the borders of Europe. An ugly jerk backwards in time for Westerners to WWII mass evacuations which the Western part of the world thought they had left behind. So when the news and imagery leaked into the media the Western world's population were stricken. How could this have happened? Weren't our bombs smart enough?

It was, a wakeup call. Not to mention an end of century, end of millennia, event. Which tends to make it "stick" in collective memory.

Did people deliberate over the pro's and cons of Kosovo and Iraq before they took to the streets in February 2003 to rally against war? Nope, if they took anything from Kosovo with them it was the image of refugees pouring into the countryside with bundles on their backs and toddlers under their arms. Basically, nobody wanted to risk it again. Nobody cared about pro's and con's, we just knew war was wrong. And we had empathy, for the common folks like us.

Didn't we.

Revised;

"Iraq captured the world's imagination because it was preceded by fairly recent shocking imagery from the Kosovo war at the close of the 20th century, at which point the world was dumbstruck gobsmacked when streams of refugees poured over the hills filling makeshift border camps to the brim"

I should of added ",and by the jaw-dropping propaganda preceeding the still current war in Afghanistan."

and then skipped straight through to;

"Did people deliberate over the pro's and cons of Kosovo and Iraq before they took to the streets in February 2003 to rally against war? Nope, if they took anything from Kosovo with them it was the image of refugees pouring into the countryside with bundles on their backs and toddlers under their arms"

Followed by; "There was no bantering over moral legitimacy. Conscience was motivated, for many, by an aversion to all war, and by the eerily Yevgenian stories stacking up in our news stands."

Real Emigre's

2005-06-14T13:42:00.000+09:30

Thanks to fraudulant libertarians wasting their time mimicking others, stuff like this is slipping through the net with barely a word of encouragement to rebel MP's.

Pull your finger out delfts' - we need to work together on these things. Stop piddling around in the dress-ups box and get your street placards on the road. There are Bills to be lobbied and children to be released.

Rebel MP to present immigration bill

Rebel Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou will push ahead with his move to soften mandatory immigration detention laws after failing to reach an agreement with Prime Minister John Howard.

Mr Georgiou's private member's bills to release children and their families, as well as long-term detainees, could be introduced to parliament as early as next Monday despite Mr Howard's attempts to ward off a damaging government split. Read rest.

Update; Delfts still hasn't got his b into g. Sometimes I feel like I am just talking to myself. Delfts man, are your ears painted on? Can't you hear the children crying.

Untangling the web

2005-06-13T23:11:00.000+09:30

My God. I had no idea delftsman3's copycat blog would prove so scandal breaking. Exposing Delftsman's fraud has created an identity storm and it seems some barking sellouts are still attempting to piggyback on the rump of dissention. Is a bit icky must say. Bit like puppy jagging on leg. Others are still scratching heads. And with good reason.

First things first.

An explain for confused Munuvites. "The Rottweiler", as he is known by his on heat adherents (communist pawns all) is an undercover operative for the Communist Party who whiles away his intermediary hours (delusionally) creating duplicate blogs in the names of other honestly dissenting bloggers under the misguided notion that he is protecting "the people" from "the purges" by smearing individual identity into one big murky overmixed pallet in a grand obscurification network designed to; A. Make ordinary bloggers mad and angry and ripe for Socialist subversion; B. Make himself feel importantly protectionist (communist written all over) and; C. Hide himself from Rice's sense of smell.

Unfortunately for pixie, The Rottweiler has infiltrated Munuvia through Mamamontezz's backdoor and is posing as me under a false blog name which I shan't link to just yet (not wanting to cause more confusion).

So rest easy Munuvites, the "sleezy little outfit run by a handful of extremist communist parasites lacking in numbers and preying on the "anonymity" of the web etc" is not Munuvia. No. It is not even "The Rottie's" mangy pack of rabid hangers on. It is much bigger and I am not sure how to break it to you all right now except to say that Dean Esmay and Juan Cole are "involved".

More on that later.

In the meantime: a link exchange-update. Excuse paused response. Researching this whole messy affair takes time away from replying to your many overtures.

Emigre for Immigrants
Emigre with a Digital Cluespatula
Emigre with an e
Emigre with an Analog Cluebat

Am not sure really why these people are linking, except to guess they want exposure too. Thanks Vinnie for pointing them all out (but no "feeling". Just to be clear on that one).

Ps Vinnie, you have been duped. Your blogroll is full of Communist Fronts. And don't let that queen "Montezz" pull the wool over your eyes, that she gets off on spanking is a dead giveaway to "her" real orientation.

UPDATED link-exchange: Basil recommends dog's breakfast. Basil, please, if you are reading this, stay away from the Rottweiler. He is a bad influence on you. Do not believe a word he says - his site is a front for Marxist extremists. He and Montezz have delftsman under their thumb and they'll have you too if you carry on recommending material like that. And what the heck are you blogging from Vince's machine for? Are you crazy? Don't you know he's being watched?

Summary

2005-06-11T13:50:00.000+09:30

Emigre lures pseudo neo-cons onto blog and shows them up for the self-absorbed hateful possessive and jealous felons of the web they truly are. Motivated only by spite and pride.

The irony; had I postured a long and moderately thoughtful piece on intellectual property rights or sub-atlantic psi-operatives they wouldn't have touched it with an 85 hertz barge pole.

No. The only way to appeal to these deviants of communal activity is by exposing their oversized ego's.

Delftsman, you are an illusion. A figment of Rottwelian imagination.

Exposing the hate;

"in fact, as full of shit as the syphilitic whore whose suppurating twat he crawled out of,"

- Rottweiler, pseudo neo-con.

"The blood is in the water."

- Mamamontezz, Queen of indignation if nothing else.

"I've been a naturalized citizen of the US for longer than you've been alive" "YOUR the newby." "MY minions, dolt"

- Delftsman3, Dutch but can't handle double.

Update - Exposing the hate, more trumped up invective from Mike H;

"Another pocket prince of incredibly minute stature bleats his self-annoited importance to a cadre of true dyed-in-the-wool VRWC's who can give a flying f*ck in a rolling donut how long he's been whining to the world his spiritless and mundane opinion."

LC Mikenchi
Mike H
Chicago

Updated hate expose; Beth vies to be quoted. Well ok "Beth", but I'm not sure why you'd want anyone to hear you saying this. And why do you post with a girls name?

"Are you fucking serious?"

Beth

More "why did delftsman3 do it"?

2005-06-11T10:34:00.000+09:30

Because of new laws like this being sneaked into parliament. This is why Secretive miscreants like delftsman3, Rottweiler and Montezz misinapproproate other bloggers indentities in order to "cover their tracks".

In Sydney, Brendan Trembath reports.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: The New South Wales Government wants to give police the power to search any premises secretly so as not to tip-off suspected terrorists they're investigating.

The Government argues terrorist groups are especially secretive, more so than other criminals. Read it all.

Is it any wonder they covertly operate under fictitious neo-conservative facades.

UPDATE, Anon says;

"I have enough to do without making up fake websites to argue with a Leftist wanker"

LOL. But evidently enough time on your hands to come pissing around over here on a little blog like this eh.

Get a grip, Anon. Oh, woops, I mean, let go of it.

"References"

2005-06-10T22:46:00.000+09:30

Delftsman3 and his entourage have been going out of their ways to create and scrape together "old link references" to his "prior December 2004 Emigre" blog. The oldest anyone can come up with is March 2004.

Just a little point everyone seems to be missing, Emigre The True (moi) started a blog titled "emigre lucere" and url'd "lucere.blogspot.com" in July 2003, before any of the links "delftsman3" has supplied referencing his site. Blogger still records the registration date in it's user profile system ("on blogger since" etc) even though the original blog no longer exists. It had quite a bit of personal musing on it and I deleted it after this compilation of links accidentally became something unexpected after equally unexpected links from others including Rebecca Blood and The Guardian. It was a bit spooky at the time and I only started my personal musing up again later when I felt safely obscure again.

Oddly, someone, took up the old lucere url in December 2004 and created a blog about "Dyscalculia". Must be a hot topic. Looks like an extremist dabbling in marxist rage theory has "renovated" and is living there now. Oh well, if wants he to squat in a cheap rundown blog unit that's his business.

You can find my first ever emigre blog link here (very fondily remembered).

You can find another one of my first ever "emigre blog" references here (and here) shortly before I deleted the whole thing (was exploring invisible text at the time as suggested by Baldric). Oh sweet and naive days those were.

Just to repeat;

I have no prob sharing a name but I have every reason to conduct an expose when I see someone intentionally setting out to get my back up by posting content, in my name, that they know contradicts my whole "live and let live" outlook.

What this is about; socialist scum-mongering and communist manipulation. Delftsman3/Montezz/Rottweiler et all are convinced if they pretend hard enough to be wicked nasty corporate neo-cons they can raise the hackles of the ordinary peace loving individual and induce a backlash/revolt. Too bad, so sad, didn't work. Bummer for you all, few though your real numbers may be.

Answering Mamamontezz

2005-06-10T19:31:00.000+09:30

Mamamontezz says;

I did notice that you did not have the glandular fortitude to trackback to www.nicedoggie.net on your post. But of course, you know what that would cause.

Emigre (imagine) replies;

I wrote a special post especially for Rottweiler all of his own and trackedbacked him that one.

Then I wrote a second post especially for you and delftsman3, and trackbacked you on that.

"Individuals" such as yourselves require "individual" attention.

Mamamontezz says;

Kicking old ladies and cripples is more your speed. Your parents must be very proud, from wherever it is they can see you.

Emigre (imagine) replies;

Even if it were possible to deliver a "kick" virtually, I would find it deplorable. Little old ladies? LOL. Reminds me of my grandmother, a feisty woman. Yes, I suspect she is proud, from wherever it is that she can see me.

Mamamontezz says;

Oh, and before I go, is this the first attack of a Munuvian blogger, or have you done this to others? Someone told me you attempted to become a part of the Munvian community, but it did not work out for you. I understand your desire to leave Blogger, but this truly isn't the way. You may find better hosting on the free blogs at Blog-City.

Emigre (imagine) replies;

I have not attacked anyone. I pointed out delftsman3's spoof site and someone else unleashed the Rottweiler.

"Attempt" munuvia? Lol, hardly. I once mentioned to The Commissar (why pretend with "someone's", we're the only ones reading this stuff) that I was looking at other hosts for more comment manageability after seeing the way some other bloggers I was sharing another blogger site with were copping it (from unbecoming Rottweileresque commenters). Your Commissar actually kept urging me to try mu.nu, so in the end I wrote to them and pixie wrote back, and at some stage added me as a forum member. I think I replied with a thanks, logged in once, never commented and forgot about it. A short while later I noticed the new delftsman3 "Emigre" blog and it's mu.nu url and it actually kind of turned me off mu.nu as a host. I mean, it's kind of weird don't you think - that this blog just happens to turn up so soon after another blogger closely tied to you and delftsman3 was urging me to try mu.nu? Mu.nu is a very small community, and emigre is a very rare blog title. Don't you think the combined coincidence is a little too coincidental? And what's worse, you guys used pixie.

Look, this is not about "attacks" although the Rottweiler would seem to think so, as that's the only level he appears to operate on. It's about finally getting around to pointing out something I noticed a while ago and perhaps could have questioned earlier had I not been tied up blogging more important "real life" issues for The Commissar before he decided my posts were attracting unfavorable attention to his more serious blog.

I actually like blogger, you can do anything with it if you can be bothered - and some people can, and those people are generally fairly open and "un-possessive" in sharing their modifications. Unlike your counterpart - ironically, seeing as I am his muse.

My original reason for looking at alternatives too blogger was comment "irritability management" related - and more for another shared blog then for me. The funny thing is, I rarely delete abuse directed at me, except occasionally where co-bloggers (no, not Sir Gulag) have suggested cleaning up the trolls. Anyway, now that blogger comments are more "manageable" and they've fixed up a few glitches there is less reason to move.

I haven't thought about "migrating" from blogger in months, it's fine and has everything I need.

Again, I have no prob sharing a name - but I have every reason to conduct an expose when I see someone intentionally setting out to get my back up by posting content, in my name, that they know contradicts my whole "live and let live" outlook.

What this is about; Socialist scum-mongering and Communist manipulation. Delftsman3/Montezz/Rottweiler et all are convinced if they pretend hard enough to be wicked nasty corporate neo-cons they can raise the hackles of the ordinary peaceloving individual and induce a backlash/revolt. Too bad, so sad, didn't work. Bummer for you, Montezz.

The time has come

2005-06-09T21:43:00.000+09:30

To answer the big question everyone is not wanting to know. "Why did Delftsman3 do it?".

Because "delftsman3" is part of some sleezy little outfit run by a handful of extremist communist parasites lacking in numbers and preying on the "anonymity" of the web to wreak havoc on other people's blogs. Basically this ragged menagerie while away their hours creating blogs and posing as extremist bush rightwingers to try and get a rise out of innocent ordinary middle of the road peaceful not convinced by war and skeptical about everyone citizens (ie the vast majority of the global population, whether online or not).

And the delftsman3/montezz/rottweiler separatists do not like being called on their bluff. It scares them witless. Hence the extended three minute hate several of their (small and ineffectual) number have embarked on since Monday morning/evening (locality specific). In essence, these reprobates are so desperate and so blinded by their sitemeters that they seem to be begging for links.

Will emigre (the first) link them? "Nyet".

Not content to besmear other bloggers, these guys are literally red-baiting the unassuming passerby by posing as red-necked tech savvy trolls. What happens to trolls when the sun comes up? They turn to stone. What happens to red-eyed ranting pillocks when the sun comes up? Your guess is as good as mine.

Frankly, I'm not sure why they bother. The world is falling all apart anyway. Strange that pixie is so quiet on this, I guess he's just hoping no-one's going to trace anything to him. How very John Howard.

Update; "George Turner" defends "Rottweiler"; "BBC quoted". BBC quoted? No kidding, the "beeb" are worse pawns then I thought. Looks like they have swallowed the whole blog conspiracy hook line and... nevermind.

Seeing as 25 percent of bloggers are fustrated journo's anyway, it's only natural that they are in on the plot. An iceberg emerges.

Afternoon/evening Update (locale specific); Anti-enigmatic hoards continue to weakly feign outrage. Rottwelian proclamations grow fainter. Emigre (imagine) is reminded by frothing ex-patriot to check TTLB status; Flippery Fish !!! Pixie's final "Huh?" upstaged by nameless interlopper;

"Every single one of you, right and left, are getting so f*cking absurd".

And that's exactly what I said two years ago when I became emigre - plagiarist.