Monday, May 29, 2006
FAT BEARS
Philip Gailey of the St. Petersburg Times—in fact, the newspaper’s Editor of Editorials—reviews Al Gore’s An Unwatchable Movie:
Gore’s horror show gives his view of what we can look forward to on Planet Earth if we don’t embrace environmental sanity before it is too late - melting glaciers, drowning polar bears, the spread of disease, rising ocean levels and freaky weather patterns. It’s enough to give children under 12 nightmares.
Older and smarter viewers—people of voting age—won’t be so disturbed. Speaking of polar bears, columnist Bill Press recommends a diet:
Polar bears are falling through the ice and drowning.
Try the lo-cal seal pups, chubsters!
ABDUL THE UNEMPLOYABLE
More Australian intolerance:
Australia’s 22 terror suspects and their families receive more than $1 million a year in taxpayer-funded welfare and legal aid.
And simply because the men were locked up, their families received a social security pay rise of as much as $1700 a year.
One of the jailed Melbourne men, Abdul Nacer Benbrika—leader of a radical group of Islamists—has been in Australia for 10 years and has never had a job.
Taxpayers provide his wife with almost $50,000 a year in welfare.
As Mark Steyn wrote in 2001: “If you’re looking for ‘root causes’ for terrorism, European-sized welfare programs are a good place to start.”
Sunday, May 28, 2006
ALCOHOL THREAT TO CHILDREN REDUCED
Enjoy the beerless taste of defeat, students!
Voluntary student unionism is about to hit students where it will really hurt them—at the bar.
While most do not need the childcare and agitprop funded by compulsory unionism, students are in line for the first attack by the Howard Government on an ancient rite of passage—drinking absurdly subsidised booze.
The University of South Australia will close two of its five bars—at Adelaide’s City West and Whyalla—on July 1, the day the Howard Government’s ban on the compulsorily levying of student union fees comes into effect.
Consider it a helpful lesson in economics.
HAT OWNERSHIP ASSERTED
The magic hat returns:
“They gave me a hat,” Mr. Kerry says. “I have the hat to this day,” he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. “I have the hat.”
He has the hat.
INDON QUAKE
Terrible stories emerge from Indonesia, where thousands are dead following Saturday’s earthquake:
Subarjo, a 70-year-old food vendor, sobbed next to his dead wife, his house destroyed.
“I couldn’t help my wife ... I was trying to rescue my children, one with a broken leg, and then the house collapsed,” he said. “I have to accept this as our destiny, as God’s will.”
In Jakarta, Agustinus Widodo woke to this text message:
Your mother died in the quake. She was trapped under the debris of her home.
Australia has pledged $3 million in emergency aid. Also contributing: the US, China, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Canada, the EU, the city of London, Belgium, and Greece. Images of the disaster and aftermath here.
TREE GANG IGNORED
John Howard avoids a creepy peace tree:
Members of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, along with prominent Iraq war opponent American Cindy Sheehan, have tried unsuccessfully to hand the tree over at John Howard’s Sydney residence, Kirribilli House.
According to the riff-raff, that tree is going to spend the rest of its life unplanted:
“We’ll be keeping the peace tree until we do have a Prime Minister who will accept it and plant it in commemoration for the people who have died in the illegal Iraq war,” he said.
I demand constant updates on the peace tree’s welfare.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
MEDAL REMOVED
Sgt. Phillip Trackey discards his medal. But not in the manner of John Kerry.
PETA REACHES OUT
A package arrives from PETA headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia:
Dear Mr. Blair,
In the hope that you weren’t born without a mirror neuron but are just having fun at your job, I am enclosing this video apropos your column Demo Therapy.
Please know that “over-proteinization” as we call it here, like animal fat, causes and clogging of the arteries to all your organs, including your heart.
I am hoping you can reverse the effects.
Kind regards (yes, honestly)
Ingrid Newkirk
PETA co-founder and president Newkirk isn’t all bad. A review of the video—Meet Your Meat, narrated by Alec Baldwin (!!!)—will be posted as soon as I’m done installing the batteries in all my battery chickens.
RESISTANCE DOING A GOOD JOB
From a 2004 interview with John Pilger:
A story that doesn’t appear in the papers is that Iraqi oil, in fact, has almost stopped. The resistance are doing such a good job of blowing up the main oil lines, particularly the one that runs down to the Turkish Mediterranean and the refining in the south, that it’s a trickle.
Remember this the next time some peacenik imbecile is drowning in crocodile tears over the tragic destruction of Iraq’s economy and services. Point one: the destruction is caused by the so-called “resistance”, not by the US or any coalition partners. Point two: the likes of Pilger consider this a good thing. Point three: Antony Loewenstein conducted that tongue-bath interview with Pilger, who seems to be the root cause of Antony’s imperial obsession:
“... the carnage of imperial wars ... ”
“... British imperial power ... ”
“ ... western imperial power ... ”
“ ... American imperial violence ... ”
“ ... their imperial dispossession ... ”
“ ... Washington’s imperial ambitions ... ”
“ ... our imperial leaders ... ”
“ ... the imperial west ... ”
“ ... the imperial historian ... ”
“ ... the imperial prerogative ... ”
“ ... imperial relationships ... ”
“ ... modern imperial racism ... ”
“ ... the imperial courtier ... ”
“ ... America’s imperial game ... ”
“ ... the 500-year western imperial crusade ... ”
Ant aims to become Pilger Lite. Dave S. puts it best:
It’s apparent from Ant’s example that the best way for a sub-mediocrity like him to make a living is to “speak truth to power.”
The guy has a blog nobody reads, a resume that apparently consists of being an intern, a fifth-grader’s command of the English language - and he apparently has a book contract.
Actually, two book contracts. Random House will, according to Antony, next year publish a book of his thoughts on Australia’s media. Should be quite a read, considering Ant’s extensive media experience.
STRAY BOMB FINDS HOME
Headline in the Gulf Daily News:
Four killed by Zionists
On reading the accompanying story, however, it becomes clear only one killing might be pinned on the Zionists. The other three took care of themselves:
Three men died and five other were wounded in a house when a family member brought in and accidentally set off an unexploded Israeli shell that landed near the area, Palestinian security sources said.
In other regional developments, it turns out the Palestinian dictionary needs updating:
Palestinian officials, from both the PA and government, say emphatically that they will not allow a civil war to materialise. Haniyeh, speaking to reporters in Gaza on Tuesday, said: “Civil war is a repugnant term no Palestinian likes. The term doesn’t exist in the Palestinian dictionary. I assure you that these incidents can be overcome.”
Now, if only they can work on that picking-up-ordnance-and-taking-it-home problem ...
(Via Ixnay)
SEYMOUR SKINNER? WARD REILLY? JOHN KERRY?
Cindy Sheehan finds a new man:
I am seeing a Vietnam vet right now.
UPDATE. Sheehan’s Australian visit remains underwhelming:
Ms Sheehan was speaking at a protest rally outside the Liberal Party offices in Exhibition street.
She told about 200 people the war on terror was immoral and eroded basic civil and human rights.
Not much Australian coverage lately. Sheehan fever might be cooling down.
MEGHDAD SIGNS UP
The phrase “I signed up for all three” isn’t usually associated with suicidal insanity. Except in the case of Iran’s Meghdad Hamedinia.
GOING GETS TOUGH, UN GETS OUT
Many dead in chaotic East Timor, where Australian forces are seeking to halt the bloodshed. Their aid hasn’t come quickly enough for some:
Among the crowd near the American compound, one man complained there were not enough Australian troops on the streets.
“Where are the Australians?” asked the man, who identified himself only as Constantine. “They promised to save us.”
Maybe we should colonise the place. In fact, Australian troops will be at their peak number shortly:
Vice chief of the defence force Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie said the full forces of 1300 troops would be in place by early tomorrow morning.
They’ll be joined by New Zealand troops, finally deployed following days of Clarkish dithering:
The soldiers have been on stand-by to go for more than a week, but were only given notice of the trip last night.
Forces from Malaysia and Portugal are also soon to arrive. As for the United Nations ...
The UN is planning to evacuate the majority of its 300 to 400 staff in East Timor, possibly from today.
Friday, May 26, 2006
ATTACK JUST DOESN’T MAKE SENSE
Inexplicable mayhem in Germany:
A knife-wielding man attacked people streaming out of a gala ceremony for Berlin’s new central rail station on Friday night, injuring up to 20 before being arrested, police said.
“A crazy man ran down the street stabbing people arbitrarily,” a policeman at the scene said. Police said some of the injured were in serious condition.
The attacker was identified as a 17-year old German man from Neukoelln, a southern Berlin district with a large immigrant population. Police said he did not have a far-right background.
It’s a Reuters piece, of course. Speaking of Reuters, one of the agency’s employees is under investigation after apparently sending this note to LGF’s Charles Johnson: “I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut.” It is not known if the employee has a far-right background.
NUMBERS LOW AT MO SHOW
Doublethink drops in on Cindy Sheehan’s Melbourne Motherfest, and discovers empty seats galore:
Further pictures and excellent reporting here, here, and here. You learn some fascinating things at these Cindypalooza shows. For example:
* Sheehan has “spent a lot of money, sacrificed so much, and have troubled far and wide to do so.”
* John Lennon’s Imagine was banned in the US after 9/11.
* Sheehan believes that John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr were “assassinated by the war machine in my country, because they were talking about peace.”
This weekend will witness the majesty of Camp Sydney:
On Sunday, I’m gonna go to John Howard’s residence in Sydney, we’re gonna have a demonstration there. We’re gonna ask to meet with him ...
Stand by for the coffee table book: Places I Have Been Outside Of, Looking Stupid.
UPDATE. Cathy Seipp:
The most idiotic statement in Sheehan’s new book, Dear President Bush, comes not from Sheehan herself but from Howard Zinn, who writes in the introduction: “A box-cutter can bring down a tower. A poem can build up a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution.”
A box-cutter can bring down a tower. By now, I suppose, we should be used to the hard Left’s extending underdog status to the worst of mass murderers; still, the sheer gall of beginning a series of David-and-Goliath metaphors with that one is breathtaking.