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QUOTES OF 2005 - FEBRUARY
* “We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia.”—John Kerry, reporting for duty
* “The shish kebab in my least-favourite Baghdad restaurant tastes like cardboard.”—Robert Fisk is sour about Iraq’s first free elections
* “After watching Sunday’s election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?”—a terrible thought crosses Chicago Sun-Times’ columnist Mark Browne’s mind
* “Last night the insurgents came back to punish the people of al-Mudhariya, but instead of metering out that punishment the villagers fought back and they killed five of the insurgents and wounded eight. They then burnt the insurgents’ car.”—the ABC’s Mark Willacy reports. Insurgents had earlier warned the villagers not to vote, but were ignored
* “I know that your prime minister is very much in bed with our president. Oh, I know all about that. It’s all going to come crashing down fairly soon, too. I’m feeling good about that.”—Jagger-mouthed half-camel Sandra Bernhard has been studying Australian politics
* “WAR WILL REINSCRIBE RIGID GENDER ROLES.”—Stanford Ph.D. candidate Sima Shakhsari’s main reason to avoid military action against Iran
* “Brawls, gunshot wounds, a broken arm, vandalised shops, a bomb scare and death threats led Sheik Haydar Naji, 37, of Auburn’s Ahl Albait Islamic Centre, to advise voters to scrub their fingers clean of blue ink, as he had done … at about 11am, 20 to 25 men, said by locals to be from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon, but not Iraq, arrived and began to intimidate voters. They unfurled a banner which declared in Arabic: ‘You vote You die.’”—Miranda Devine reports on the problems faced by Iraqi voters in Sydney, Australia
* “We have freedom now, we have human rights, we have democracy. We will invite the insurgents to take part in our system. If they do, we will welcome them. If they don’t, we will kill them.”—Iraqi voter Rashid Majid, 80
* “People everywhere wanted to talk to us and thank us. This is what it must have been like when the Allies liberated Paris.”—Maj. Scott Stanger, operations officer in the 153rd Infantry, 39th Infantry Brigade
* “US apologists hate Vietnam comparisons, but here’s a sobering report from The New York Times of September 4, 1967 ...”—a 38-year-old NYT piece on successful South Vietnamese elections, unearthed by Daily Kos, encourages the Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul McGeough to believe Iraq may still end in disaster
* “You get some interesting stuff on the internet, such as this excerpt from a story published in The New York Times back in 1967 ...”—a 38-year-old NYT piece on successful South Vietnamese elections, unearthed by Daily Kos, encourages the Sydney Morning Herald’s Mike Carlton to believe Iraq may still end in disaster
* “Before Bush’s supporters become too intoxicated by the historical significance of the January 30 ballot in Iraq, and assume that legitimacy has been conferred upon a new Iraqi polity, they might reflect on the following New York Times report from September 4, 1967 …”—a 38-year-old NYT piece on successful South Vietnamese elections, unearthed by Daily Kos, encourages the Melbourne Age’s Scott Burchill to believe Iraq may still end in disaster
* “One of the most satisfying aspects of the Government’s re-election was that it infuriated the right people.”—Australian health minister Tony Abbott
* “You are a liability!”—New York Post editor Col Allan to blogger and New York Post (ex)staffer Dawn Eden
* “Last year, for the first time, it ran more items on ‘climate change’ than on ‘global warming.’”—Andrew Bolt notes a changing climate at The Age
* “The women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively.”—testimony of eight Guantanamo Bay detainees; also, testimony of anyone who ever walked in on a Rolling Stones dressing room
* “Officials found there was a fine line between forced and willing sex.”—a Reuters report on UN peacekeepers pillaging the Congo; what part of “stop raping me” is so difficult to understand?
* “A more anarchic, spoiled and self-important mob I have not encountered before or since and trust I never will.”—former Fairfax CEO Stephen Mulholland fondly remembers SMH and Age journalists
* “The righty blogs have taken down Dan Rather and Eason Jordan. That is big game. The lefty blogs got this Talon news guy.”—Jonah Goldberg
* “Some in the traditional media are growing alarmed as they watch careers being destroyed by what they see as the growing power of rampant, unedited dialogue.”—the rampantly edited New York Times
* “You think the RNC could get this many people of color into a single room? Maybe if they got the hotel staff in there.”—Howard Dean, who in 12 years as Vermont’s governor didn’t hire even one “person of color”
* “They take me in, like a jail and they have a roll, a concrete roll. They have a wire in the inside and lift me up and put me in the top of it and ah, they put electric shock on it and they make me run on it.”—Mamdouh Habib describes Guantanamo Bay’s Electrified Treadmill of Tormentulation
* “Franken’s liberal radio is really taking off. I own a conch shell with more listeners.”—Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
* “No, they don’t.”—UK Minister for Northern Ireland John Spellar’s reply to ABC presenter Stephen Crittenden’s confident claim that “chattering classes win elections”
* “Would the Syrians dream of doing anything so crude and vicious as this?”—Middle East expert Robert Fisk in the wake of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s murder
* “Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush’s risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.”—New York magazine’s Kurt Anderson
* “If a member of the Model UN molested little kids, just like they do in the real UN, what would be the criminal charge that they wouldn’t imagine themselves subject to?”—Jim Treacher
* “Sod off, Swampy!”—a trader at London’s International Petroleum Exchange, where 35 invading Greenpeace protesters were kicked and punched back on to the pavement. Said one: “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view”
* “The American left’s relationship with the internet has been disastrous. The internet has sunk a knife into Bill Clinton’s moderate Democratic party ... The dailykos.com site of a Democratic consultant gets 500,000 hits a day. That site’s memorial to four American contractors murdered in Iraq was ‘screw them.’”—former British conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith
* “It involved a cleaning business.”—Mamdouh Habib’s lawyer explains why his client (while on a disability pension for severe depression) happened to be in the Middle East
* “Some people will argue that these blogs are used by conservative vigilante partisans I guess bent on discrediting and destroying what they perceive as left-wing controlled media outlets, particularly in the US. Would you agree with that?”—fair and balanced question from the ABC’s Stephen Crittenden
* “Even though we’d met only once—one long, sunny San Diego poolside afternoon that affected me deeply and permanently—and even though I was just another young punk writer wanting a little wisdom from the Good Doctor, Hunter S. Thompson was kind and generous to me, and he will always be one of the great pillars of my life.”—Ken Layne on Hunter S. Thompson
* “I am the culmination of all those who have been before. I carry within me their experience, their knowledge. I have inherited tiredness from their battle and a quiet desperation deep inside, one that taunts me with the possibility that all they achieved was a deferral, a ‘putting off’ for another day, that which we will ignorantly stumble towards.”—Webdiary wordchurner Andrew Stretton
* “Heil Howard.”—Margo Kingston
* “I discovered that my soul could not be denied and that my thoughts needed to be expressed. I moved to Ballarat and took up a position with the local Chamber of Commerce.”—Andrew Stretton continues his quest for meaning
* “It doesn’t take an awful lot of imagination if you’re thinking about who it is that might have produced these false documents to try to mislead people in this very cynical way.”—Democrat congressman Maurice Hinchey sees Rove’s hand in Rathergate
* “Bush’s reckless adventure is near collapse. America’s power is waning fast.”—Margo Kingston describes her own career
* “I have eaten hippo meat in the past and I know how sweet it is. Let us have the meat.”—a man heads towards Thika Road, where Phillip Adams is broadcasting live on Radio National
* “There has been something wilful about the bad reporting of this story. It is weirdly personal: Iraq must fail.”—US correspondent in Iraq Bartle Bull
“Some people will argue that these blogs are used by conservative vigilante partisans I guess bent on discrediting and destroying what they perceive as left-wing controlled media outlets, particularly in the US. Would you agree with that?”Stephen Crittenden
Now let’s see. That would be Hannie Rayson’s partner - who was, in her play “Two Brothers” intent on portraying our government in general, and Peter Costello in particular, in a most poisonous fashion. Even The Age did not like it.“Some people will argue that these blogs are used by conservative vigilante partisans I guess bent on discrediting and destroying what they perceive as left-wing controlled media outlets, particularly in the US. Would you agree with that?”Stephen Crittenden
to which the correct response should have been ” Well considering their incredible success in exposing media falsehoods there may actually be some truth to these claims. What do you think Stevo?”
Eighty year old Rashid Majid shows the youngsters the way…age before beauty..
Meanwhile sbs Mary (someone stole my eyebrows)Kostakidis introduces the subject of the Haj again,it was on last night.
Rightly it was introduced with solemnity and in the right spirit.
Unfortunately last night she read a news piece on a survey of the effects of prayer(Christian predominantly in the U.S.) and how the effects of prayer (according to her expert ) couldn’t possibly be measured etc etc.She finished the piece by PULLING A FACE AND SHAKING HER HEAD SADLY, indicating that anyone who believed that little story was a nut case…
ALL RELIGIONS ARE NOT EQUAL OBVIOUSLY ON SBS -forget their protestations on interfaith dialogue etc.One religion and only one is treated with dignity,politeness and respect- and it sure ain’t Christianity.* “There has been something wilful about the bad reporting of this story. It is weirdly personal: Iraq must fail.”—US correspondent in Iraq Bartle Bull
He called it like he saw it. And nothing has given more amusement than to watch the Talking Heads struggle to explain away the continuing successes.
“Officials found there was a fine line between forced and willing sex.”
It depends on if the woman is wearing a headscarf and is modestly dressed or not.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 01 10 at 11:28 AM • permalink“The women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively.”
It sounds like a Webdiary staff meeting.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 01 10 at 11:30 AM • permalink“I discovered that my soul could not be denied and that my thoughts needed to be expressed. I moved to Ballarat and took up a position with the local Chamber of Commerce.”
When he finds his navel, he intends to gaze at it.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 01 10 at 11:34 AM • permalinkMystery Meat — Also know as, “Dude… you stuck your head up the wrong hole — again.”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 10 at 11:40 AM • permalinkLove the quotefest! The gang’s all here: John Kerry and his magical mystery tour, Magog and her dyslexia (political and clinical), Boob Ellis doing his marxist jumping-jacks, that legendary trader at the Petroleum Exchange and his Anti-Green manifesto. I suppose that the threshing of political discourse inevitably generates a lot of chaff, but these are kernels of pure gold!
” ...where 35 invading Greenpeace protesters were kicked and punched back on to the pavement. Said one: “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view”
Oh yeah? He should try being a participant on a panel discussion at a neocon continuing education conference with the likes of Richard McEnroe, Stoop Davy Dave, and Iowahawk.
(curls fingers in a wriggly motion)
never ... ever .... again
Posted by wronwright on 2006 01 10 at 01:38 PM • permalink“People everywhere wanted to talk to us and thank us. This is what it must have been like when the Allies liberated Paris.” — Maj. Scott Stanger, operations officer in the 153rd Infantry, 39th Infantry Brigade
Except that the Iraqis had never stopped rebelling against a cruel and tyrannical regime. On D-Day -1, it has been said, 99% of Frenchmen were pro-Vichy.
On D-Day +1, they were Gaullists.
The Iraqis were never blessed with such a flexible attitude toward their oppressors.
Posted by Mike Jericho on 2006 01 10 at 04:43 PM • permalink#4 - all religions are certainly not treated equally by the arty-left news selectors and rewriters.
Many of them awoke in fright when the christian based party Family First did well in the last election. There was, thereafter, a raft of interviewers trying to put FF members on the spot about having hidden christian agenda.
You would think that an obsessive, death-bot employing religion would attract some worried approbrium too. It does all suggest that when it comes to reasoned argument versus threats of physical violence or death, the latter wins. You gotta have some respect, as the Italian Mafia always knew. If you want an ongoing debating society, based on free speech, just watch who you ally yourself with.You would think that an obsessive, death-bot employing religion would attract some worried approbrium too.
But apparently not enough, as evidenced by the Christian right in America and their religion based politics.
It does all suggest that when it comes to reasoned argument versus threats of physical violence or death, the latter wins.
It does… reasoned discussion was not even an option for the Bush government…
Terrific rebuttal, Thalesian! Plus, there’s the plastic turkey, man! Keep fighting the good fight, oh peerless
crusaderuh, guy who fights for truth!Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 01 10 at 07:27 PM • permalinkwronwright—Iowahawk e’d me his notes on your thesis. Not pretty.
Not pretty at all.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 10 at 08:44 PM • permalinkThalesian
Ahhh, Looks like we got a lefty knight from some fantasy novel.I dub thee Sir Ulath.
AKA Ulath-of-Thalesia; A tall Genidian Knight. Communicates with the trolls.
Thesis? What thesis?
Are you referring to my my Post-Operation report on my walk through Tim Blair’s house last month during the “Tim is Gone, Gone, Gone, and So Is His Beer, Beer, Beer” impromptu party? I just wrote what I saw.
Obviously Iowahawk (curls fingers in wriggling motion) saw the photos of the Human Pyramid that some of the neocon minions were trying to form. They’re shocking! I’m just glad they didn’t find their way to Mary Mapes.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 01 10 at 09:07 PM • permalinkAre those the photos, sent in a plain brown envelope, that my agent at the New York Times intercepted, Wronwright? The return address said “Richard McEnroe” but I don’t believe that for a minute. Mister Karl will be very disappointed.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 01 11 at 12:26 AM • permalinkThey weren’t sent from my office in the Victorian Ministry of Finance, were they?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 11 at 02:16 AM • permalinkGood God, Thalesian, that’s got to be one of the most moronic comments left here in some time. You know, I wish new moonbats would start off their visits here with some new stupidity, instead of the same tired old garbage.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 11 at 08:06 AM • permalink
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Aaahh memories. Who could possibly forget “Sod Off Swampy”.
I’m hoping this memorable line can be repeated at the climate change summit in Sydney this week.
Has to be up there with the quotes of the year.