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ARCHIVES: 22 February - 28 February 2003 SATURDAY SCRAPS22 February 2003 You wouldn't have wanted to own a TV bigger than 68 cm if you were watching Lateline the other night. George Brandis' large head filled it completely. He appears to be his own man (as much as any Illiberal can be given their hive mentality). If so, why has he arranged his entire skull to be a John Howard look-alike? For all that, he's easier to look at than Puffy John. If you saw "Austin Power's Goldmember," you will recall that every other character was repulsive in the extreme. Little Johnny would have fitted right in. == You may have already come across this Bushism: On the 14th of June, 2001, George W. Bush was in conversation with the Swedish Prime Minister, unaware a live TV camera was still running. "It's amazing I won," said the daffy Prez. "I was running against peace, prosperity and incumbency." == For a poem using from some of Bush's loopier remarks, see Make the Pie Higher. == Anyone who reads this journal and others like it, should hie to the nearest video shop for a copy of Tim Robbins' film, Cradle Will Rock. A joyous hymn to humanity with cutthroat satire on the wheelers and dealers of the 1930s. == After the opinion pieces, the best items in our newspapers are the letters to the editor. I've tried to set aside time to study them, but one thing leads to another... However, a few caught my eye this morning. From The Age, Peter Mitchell writes: Back in the '80s there was a British TV series about a boat yard that was always on the brink of making boats that invariably sank, run by people who were morally drowning. And what was the name of this series? Howard's Way (of course). Brendon Wickham says:John Howard has accused the millions of people who marched against war of providing comfort to Saddam Hussein. No doubt Howard would probably like to describe the down-under protesters as "un-Australian", but he is clever enough to realise the dangers of overuse. And Howard may be right in assuming that Saddam is chuckling way in his palace bunker. But I am not so sure Saddam would ignore the symbolism that the marches represent to his people. As one of the hundreds of thousands accused by John Howard of giving comfort to Saddam Hussein, I reply that my protest was directed against Howard's disastrously incompetent direction of foreign policy for some years past. JOHN HOWARD'S HYPOCRITICAL HAMLET AN ALL-ORIFICE PURGATIVE 24 February 2003 Tony Parkinson (a Howard cheerleader) and Louise Dodson (doing her best to remain objective in these polarised times), published an article on John Howard's ruminations about the coming war. Here's an extract: Howard cited a report by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the squalid conditions inside a Baghdad jail. The oldest inmate was 12 years of age. Some were toddlers. Their only crime was to be a child of Saddam's political enemies. Howard is that fragmented that locking 120 children behind razor wire in his own concentration camps, many of whom might even know the 12-year-old Iraqi Ritter mentioned, would not have entered his mind as his eyes went moist over this chilling solution. It is a solution being pandered by the Chicken Hawks of the Coalition of the Willing. That of liberation through incineration. What will the survivors of decimated families have to say about it? On the conflagration he proposes: "I try to visualise how horrific it would be, so anybody who thinks I am enjoying this in some vicarious fashion would be completely wrong. I wish I was arguing Commonwealth-state relations, or tax reform, or industrial relations reform. Something else." But having disposed of the thought before it could find a seat in his consciousness, he goes on to speak in the same breath of the only things that really interest him. He's a failure at those too. As to Howard's moral correctness, Colleen Papadopoulos writes on the same day: How can we trust Howard's moral assertion when those Iraqis subject to his rule of law are little better off than they were under Saddam? It's a real gagger, this article, and John must have felt unconsciously nauseated himself. To relieve the pangs of moral hypocrisy he no doubt made another visit to another retirement home. There he can always count on the dementing old dears to give him the unconditional love that even Janette must be withdrawing these days.Here is what Leunig thinks. WE COULD DO A VIRTUAL MARCH ON CANBERRA 25 February 2003 Here's what's going to happen tomorrow, 26 February in Umeruhca: On February 26th, every Senate office will receive a call every minute from a constituent, as they receive a simultaneous flood of faxes and e-mail. Hundreds of thousands of people from across the country will send the collective message: Don't Attack Iraq. Every Senate switchboard will be lit up throughout the day with our message -- a powerful reminder of the breadth and depth of opposition to a war in Iraq. And on that day, "antiwar rooms" in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles will highlight the day's progress for the national media, while local media can visit the "antiwar room" online to monitor this constituent march throughout the day. Us Aussies can't join in, but we could plan one of our own.I'M GONNA WATCH THE WAR ON BBC WORLD. HOW ABOUT YOU? 26 February 2003 Robert Fisk has confirmed what we mostly suspect, that CNN is nothing more than the media outlet for the Pentagon. They've come up with a document for CNN staff, Reminder of Script Approval Policy, insuring that all reporting going to air will be thoroughly vetted in accordance with the standards of Umeruhca's Mighty War Propaganda. What the hell, I long ago decided to kick back and watch the first innings of world's end on BBC World, mainly because all those CNN readers, with their big teeth, their monocle-or crossed eyes, and their pancake-flat vowels drive me bats. Now I don't even have to worry about switching. LINKS DU JOUR: George Monbiot: Out of the wreckage. By tearing up the global rulebook, the US is in fact undermining its own imperial ruleMatthew Engel: Not even in the midwest. Americans want to believe Bush knows best, and that their pension plans are being wrecked for a good reason. [But] he has not won the argument in the midwest, any more than he has anywhere else. BUSH'S RIGHT WING COUP: WHERE HAS THE OUTRAGE GONE? 28 February 2003 Entry-level humans who comprise the Right have only a few goals in life. Apart from amassing profit at any cost, keeping the masses ignorant and poor, one of its prime objectives is to discourage people on the Left from voting. In Florida at the 2000 election, they succeeded dramatically. The worldwide media is chock-a-block with information and commentary about the fomenter of the upcoming war to end all civilisations, but nary a word about his illegitimacy. Why?True, the 2000 American election is over and done with and, in the current political climate, quite irreversible. But that is no excuse to drop the ball, to refrain from inserting at least one line in every commentary to the effect that we are rushing headlong into chaos at the behest of a man who should not be president. George W. Bush joins Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein and, to a lesser extent, John W. Howard (who merely lied to retain power) as rogues who participated in a coup to capture their respective governments. Information on the intrigues surrounding the theft of Florida's electoral votes has been on the Internet for some time, but very little was ever published by mainstream media, apart from The Guardian in Britain. With the release of the documentary film Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election, everyone can now see for themselves how the Republican Party systematically denied thousands of Florida voters their so-called democratic right to vote. "What emerges is a disturbing picture of an election marred by suspicious irregularities, electoral injustices, and sinister voter purges in a state governed by the winning candidate's brother. George W. Bush stole the presidency of the United States...and got away with it." |
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Published in Melbourne, Australia by the Political Prisoners of the Future.