Saturday, January 07, 2006
QUOTES OF 2005 - OCTOBER
* “All that is left is their head and feet.”—Indonesia’s Maj. Gen. Ansyaad Mbai locates Bali’s latest suicide bombers
* “In the wake of the second, awful – and yes, evil – round of bombings in Bali this past weekend, we need to ask a lot of questions. We’ve already started to answer some: who, what, when, where and how. But we still haven’t asked, at least not in any depth, the most important question: why?”—The Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew West, who hasn’t been paying attention
* “I think the East Timor thing is a lie by Osama bin Laden—I don’t think that’s what it is about.”—Robert Fisk dismisses bin Laden’s statement that Australians were targeted in Bali because they had intervened in East Timor
* “I never left the left. The left left me. The left I thought I was part of didn’t make common cause with fascists.”—The Age’s Pamela Bone abandons her old comrades
* ”If they wanted to help us, why are they not talking to us today—nine month, 10 month have past, there was no email, they haven’t even called us yet, they are sort of pretending that they don’t have our number.”—refugee applicant Alamdar Bakhtiari on the activists who ditched him and his brother
* “I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can’t play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it’s called.”—Howard Dean
* “I am personally uncomfortable with the style of intensely personal and subjective journalism practised by Kingston and that it is not my professional approach.”—Queensland journalist Wayne Sanderson, who overcame his objections when Kingston offered him a $50,000 job at Webdiary
* ”No doubt the core values of many terrorists would seem familiar and even praiseworthy if differently expressed, but they have been perverted and distorted by hatred. We have become the enemy.”—The Age’s Hugh MacKay
* “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …’ And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.’ And by God I’m gonna do it.”—George W. Bush, as quoted by Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath. The ridiculous, and widely-denied, comments were front-page news at The Independent and The Guardian
* “Don’t let war affect the lives of children.”—final frame of a UN-financed film depicting the massacre of Smurfs
* “The fact there was only one female Smurf always seemed to me to be vaguely sinister.”—commenter Susan Norton
* “Only one female Smurf? The UN peacekeepers are going to have to take turns.”—commenter Paul Zrimsek
* “You’re not going to believe the anti-Semitism that is about to hit you.”—Daily Mail chief foreign correspondent Ann Leslie to columnist Nick Cohen after the latter criticised the peace movement. Cohen subsequently reported: “I couldn’t believe the anti-Semitism that hit me.”
* “[Capitalism] is destroying the world. The world is in danger. Never has there been such disasters, hurricanes, droughts, torrential rains. Incredible! The world is dangerously off balance.”—Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
* ”Mohammed Atta spent his last hours on this earth in Las Vegas roaming amongst the gambling dens and strip clubs theoretically to further steel his resolve such was his loathing of the excesses of the West.”—John Doyle, unaware that Atta had left Vegas almost a month prior to September 11
* “If you prefer the clothing of the kafirs over the clothing of the Muslims, most of those names that’s on most of those clothings is faggots, homosexuals and lesbians.”—US-born Muslim leader Sheik Khalid Yasin, who wants to open an Islamic TV network in Australia, and who classifies himself as “not more radical than Mahatma Gandhi or John Pilger or Jesus Christ”
* “A truly remarkable phenomenon is how few presidents get assassinated, even in the US where a majority of the population is totally nuts and everyone is packing heat.”—The Australian’s Phillip Adams
“Alcohol, bikinis, that kind of thing makes Muslims angry. Don’t do that when visiting a country with a Muslim majority.”—Muhammed Khozin, younger brother of 2002 Bali bombers Amrozi and Mukhlas
* “Daddy, I want to be a martyr. Can you get me an explosive belt?”—the nine-year-old son of Iraqi suicide enabler Abu Qaqa al-Tamimi
* “Let me just think of a way to phrase that better.”—Australian Muslim spokesman Waleed Kadous after telling a television interviewer: “I’m sure that there are some in the community who are involved in terrorism”
* “We have tripled our real income since 1950, but surveys show we are no happier with our lives. Some studies show we are actually unhappier.”—playwright David Williamson discovers that the path to happiness lies in slashing wages
* “A bunch of whining, humourless, self-absorbed bores.”—The Daily Telegraph’s Malcolm Farr describes lefty bloggers
* “To witness the sobbing breakdown of Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard as he told Tim Russert on Meet the Press about the drowning death of an emergency worker’s elderly mother, who had waited four days for a rescue that never came—it was like removing a lid and and releasing the pent-up truth.”—Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott. Broussard’s claim was later revealed to be untrue
* “We honor Casey Sheehan and other fallen soldiers. Pass it on.”—a chain whisper conducted by Mother Sheehan supporters in Nashville
* “The 7/7 London bombing was next to impossible to conduct in the middle of high security without the intelligence and coordination of important people in Britain. Like the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 London bombing remains a mystery.”—Perth-based Ghali Hassan
* “The defeat of America and its allies in Iraq is vital.”—former trainee journalist Antony Loewenstein
* “Where are the good Jews today?”—playwright Henry di Suvero
* “The major speech I delivered yesterday has generated an amazing response.”—major speecher John Kerry
* ”I don’t regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.”—the section of a letter by Cpl. Jeffrey Starr cut by the New York Times
* “iddndeed ... Istambul ... strrange ... th ... poltcis ... Midsdle east ... oto ... nThe ... insifficent ... breedkiding ... fundamantalistas ... Regretably ... co0aliton pociesmin ... encoruages ... Chirstian ... uS ... Relagion ... degtree ... asa ... suitaces ... respinse ... considferable ...Yewltsin’s ... othe ... Represenatives ... somew ... on eof ... becaomes a relaity ... wrok.”—highlights from a letter transcribed by Margo Kingston
* "I was never convinced that war was the best system to bring democracy to the country and to get rid of a bloody dictatorship.”—Silvio Berlusconi finds reverse
* “My investigations of Galloway began in 2003 when I DEFENDED him on Channel 4 television. I sought additional material from Galloway and other sources to bolster that defense and to my surprise, found more that damned him than supported him.”—leftist Greg Palast
* ”If nothing else, spare a thought for the other inmates.”—Tony Parkinson argues against the jailing of John Pilger