June 23, 2004
OVER TO YOU
I'm too busy to post, what with my frantic loping-around-the-house schedule and all. (Actually, I've got a ton of work to finish. Loping time is limited.) Meanwhile, readers are invited to hammer on any articles from the Sydney Morning Herald.
OVER TO YOU, PART 2
Don’t leave the News Ltd papers out of it! Attack!
OVER TO YOU, PART 3
And here, beat up on Melbourne's The Age.
THE COLUMN AFTER TOMORROW
This week’s Continuing Crisis column in The Bulletin mentions John Howard, Mark Latham, Noam Chomsky, Wayne Carey, the host of Media Watch, Amway, Hezbollah, Ruud Lubbers, Merlin Luck, Mohammad Rafique, Robert Mugabe, Neil Mann, Richard Stremski, Margo Kingston, Jon Faine, Terry Lane, Wayne Sanderson, and Phillip Adams.
June 22, 2004
LABOR'S TERROR POLICY: CLOSE EYES, HUM LOUDLY
Labor appeasement spokesman Kevin Rudd wants out of the war against terror:
Howard argued from the outset that the Iraq war was necessary to reduce the overall threat of terrorism to Australia. Barely a week before major hostilities in Iraq began, he argued: "I see disarming Iraq as being part of the wider war against terrorism."
And everybody, repeat everybody, knew the "war against terrorism" meant the "war against al-Qa'ida," as Howard deliberately conflated the two.
The Prime Minister's problem is that this entire argument came apart last week when the September 11 inquiry concluded there was "no credible evidence" that Iraq was involved with al-Qa'ida's September 11 attacks on the US.
Howard spoke of Iraq in the context of a "wider war" against terrorism. Rudd seeks to undermine him by narrowing Iraq's role to a possible involvement in September 11 -- which nobody asserted in the first place. Rudd, you get the feeling, doesn’t read much beyond headlines.
Here in our own region, the Howard Government has had even greater difficultly sustaining the political fiction that the Government's participation in the Iraq war has had no impact on the JI threat.
The head of Indonesia's intelligence service Ahmad Hendropriyono confirmed only last month that the Iraq war has further stimulated JI activity in Indonesia. Tracking down JI is Hendropriyono's main job. You would think he would know what JI is up to.
And you’d think the Rudd would know that the Bali attack preceded our involvement in Iraq. Terrorists wanted us dead before Iraq, and they want us dead now. This is because they are terrorists.
The Iraq war and our involvement in it makes it easier for JI to recruit in Indonesia – just as it also contributes to the increasing Middle Easternisation of Islamic politics in South-East Asia. And for Australia, lying next door to the largest Islamic country in the world, it is not helpful for our national security.
We certainly will be lying if Rudd has his way. Face-down and pleading; not exactly a position of strength. Rudd deserves to be run out of Parliament for these achingly empty lines:
This is John Howard at his Orwellian worst. Trying desperately to convince people that black is white – and that white is black.
When he's got nothing to say, Kevin says it twice.
THRESHOLD CROSSED
Popular commenting identity Andjam joins the world of blog. Go visit -- and leave a comment.
FACILE CROWD-PLEASER TAUNTED
Looks like Christopher Hitchens wants to be the first to attract a Michael Moore defamation suit:
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
He’s only getting warmed up. Another 4,000 words follow.
(Via reader Brain Dalton)
ADAMS ADAMSED
Phillip Adams is angry at being the target of a venomous fiction:
Like any right-minded reader, I was outraged by a letter to the editor published in The Weekend Australian. From a Michael Galak of Melbourne, it described the treasonable behaviour of that left-wing loony, Phillip Adams.
"Aah, the ABC!" he wrote. "I won't forget Phillip Adams coming on to one of the TV talk shows, wearing a green Mao cap with the big red star on it. It was just before Tiananmen. We had just fled from the USSR. To see that symbol of hate-filled propaganda worn by a man who should have known better was a painful reminder of an incurable fascination of publicly financed intelligentsia with totalitarianism."
I could see why Galak was angry. But I was even angrier. Why? Because his letter is a fabrication. It is utterly, totally, entirely and slanderously untrue.
Now Phillip knows how Charles Krauthammer feels. Speaking of utterly, totally, entirely and slanderously untrue, check this pre-emptive strike from Phil the Aggrieved:
This story will be recycled on hate pages and will be repeated as gospel in the columns of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Terry McCrann.
I doubt it, Phillip. Not while we’ve still got your plastic turkey to kick around.
UPDATE. Adams writes: "I've always appeared bare headed, never worn a cap or, for that matter, any other form of headgear." Really? Here’s Phillip in an old byline shot. The hat-wearing freak.
STRUCK OUT
Muttiah Muralitharan won’t be joining his Sri Lankan team mates during their upcoming tour of Australia. He’ll be in America instead.
BAN TRAINS
Public transport is disgusting. It’s also inefficient:
Encouraging travellers to switch from cars and airlines to inter-city trains brings no benefits for the environment, new research has concluded.
Challenging assumptions about railways' green superiority, the study finds that the weight and fuel requirements of trains have increased to the point where rail could become the least energy-efficient form of transport.
The UK Daily Telegraph editorialises: "Save the planet. Jump into your car." To that end, Toyota is supplying me with a freaky petrol/electric hybrid Prius for a couple of days. Due to religious reasons (I’m an orthodox fossil fuelite) I’ve never before driven such a thing. I hope Pope Mario never finds out. Review next week.
UPDATE. I should point out that PR for National Tree Day, which Toyota supports, contacted me to organise this test. Kudos to them for blog-awareness.
GREAT WIDE NORTH
Canadians have tasted US economic imperialism -- and they like it:
Recently, Budweiser -- America's "King of Beers" -- usurped the Canadian lager throne, outselling both Molson Canadian and Labatt Blue in this country for the first time ever.
Perhaps Michael Moore’s recent appearance in Toronto will remind Canadians of American beer’s embiggening effects and scare them away from US products.
WELL-MEANING WAR OPPONENTS SOUGHT
David Horowitz asks a simple question:
As wars go, the conflict in Iraq was (and is) as good as it gets. A three week military campaign with minimal casualties, 25 million people liberated from one of the most sadistic tyrants of modern times, the establishment of a military and intelligence base in the heart of the terrorist world. What well-meaning person could oppose this?
On a related topic, this from James Lileks:
I ask my Democrat friends what they’d rather see happen – Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They’re all honest: they’d rather see Bush defeated.