TSUNAMI UPDATE

The toll now stands at 125,282. More than 80,000 Indonesians are reported killed. Sri Lanka has lost 27,268.

About 6,000 foreign tourists are missing, including 2,000 Scandinavians, 1,000 Germans, 1,000 Australians and 600 Italians. More than 2,000 tourists have died. The official British toll is 26, but fears are held for more than 100. Sweden's government has been criticised for the slowness of its response; 54 Swedes were killed, and foreign minister Laila Freivalds admits "we didn't fully understand the scale of how many people would be injured and dead."

Few did. Australia's aid contribution has been increased to $60 million, and many Australian companies have made substantial donations:

Visy Industries and the Pratt family: $1 million to CARE Australia.

BHP Billiton: $641,000 (the company will also match staff donations)

Lonely Planet publications: $500,000

Woolworths: $500,000

ANZ Bank: $260,000

Commonwealth Bank: $250,000

Australia Post: $250,000

Wesfarmers: $250,000

Rio Tinto Australia: $154,000

Westpac: $100,000 (plus matching staff donations)

National Australia Bank: $100,000

The Red Cross has established a website to help trace missing people. Several other search-and-assist sites are listed here. Colorado's Mike Weatherford e-mails:

If there's anyone in the disaster area from Colorado, and if they can find a blogger where they are (there seem to be a handful in every city in Asia), they can email me, and I'll call and let people know they're ok. I think there are hundreds of other bloggers that would assist. We need someone to coordinate names and contact points for survivors.

We have a huge number of Christian relief groups in Colorado Springs. If any reputable blogger will email me with specific needs, I'll try to contact local charities to fill them. We also have a Reserve airlift unit here, so we may even be able to speed things up a bit. I've commented about this kind of help on my website.

Goths care. The pale and solemn guys at Enmore Station are organising a goth/industrial/darkwave tsunami fundraiser at Sydney's Club 77 next Wednesday. All power to Enmore Station and their Dark Master. Robert Corr urges Perth readers to donate non-perishable food, milk powder and medicine at the Ceylon Style Cafe in East Victoria Park, and tsunami video archivist Pundit Guy will contribute 50% of donations to his site to the Red Cross.

UPDATE. Bryan Chaffin reports that Apple Computer has dedicated its home page to disaster relief for tsunami victims. Meanwhile, Amazon's Red Cross appeal - helped along by an early Instaboost - has now raised more than SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS.

UPDATE II. Stories of Thai heroism emerge: "One Australian survivor spoke of a small Thai man on a water tower who saved several people by snatching them as they swept by him out to sea. With impossible strength, and at great personal risk, he dragged them from the torrent and certain death."

UPDATE III. More than 500 French citizens are missing and 22 are listed as dead. France has now increased its aid to $57 million. Britain's contribution has tripled, now set at $95 million, and Sweden is in for $75.5 million. Earlier misreporting of France's contribution led to unfair comparisons.

UPDATE IV. The Americans are coming:

A US carrier battle group headed for Indonesia's Aceh province today to spearhead an unprecedented multinational military effort to assist the survivors of last weekend's quake and tsunami.

A second US Marine strike group from the Pacific territory of Guam was on its way to Sri Lanka with water, food and medical supplies.

The Nimitz class nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and four other ships will take up position off Aceh tonight, US navy officials said.

The Guam group, headed by the USS Bonhomme Richard, - specially designed to carry land men and equipment under difficult conditions - will arrive off Sri Lanka within a week, they added.

UPDATE V. British swamp hog Clare Short wants the Americans to go away:

"I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up," she said.

UPDATE VI. Finland, a nation of only five million, has raised four million dollars. Italians have donated $17 million via a mobile phone texting system. A British charity group hoovered in $39 million within 24 hours. As of noon Thursday, the US Red Cross had collected $18 million.

UPDATE VII. Americans have privately contributed more than $127 million. The ABC's Leigh Sales - who two days ago complained that "while the US Government is so far giving $44 million to the tsunami victims, the National Retail Federation here predicts Americans will spend more than $200 billion on presents, food and holiday sales this Christmas" - remains unimpressed:

The United States gives more cash than any other nation, but isn't particularly generous when you look at its contributions as a percentage of its Gross National Product.

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BUSH ADMIRED/DESPISED

Robert Crum in the London Observer, earlier this year: "Today, by some margin, George W. Bush is the most despised figure in America."

Gallup survey, this week: "President George W. Bush tops Gallup's annual survey of the 'most admired man' for the fourth year in a row."

Speaking of Dubya, he's apparently bound for a heart attack, if you believe the latest IndyMedia theory.

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TSUNAMI SMACKDOWN ATTEMPTED

You think Muslims versus Christians is a major feud? Or Linux vs. Microsoft? Red state vs. Blue state? Well, friends, these disputes are as nothing compared to the ferocious rivalry between Hurricane Rooters and their hated opponents, the Tsunami Buddies. Leading hurricane advocate James Wolcott disses the Buddies in his latest post:

I was pleased to see the President of the United States put down the frigging rake long enough to put on his best Sunday-go-to-meetin' suit and issue a public statement regarding the catastrophic tsunami.

Tsunami fans will no doubt claim Wolcott is simply jealous his beloved twisters ("Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke") couldn't achieve such an outstanding body count.

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KERRY FANS RALLY AT ONE OF HIS FIVE HOUSES

Wonkette on the now-concluded Ohio recount:

We lost, everybody. L-O-S-T. Just concentrate on your Canadian visa applications; if you screw that up, you can't blame Deibold.

Presumably she's addressing the likes of Boston's John Kerry Six, a proud mini-collective who'll never surrender:

About a half dozen supporters of John Kerry are holding vigil in front of his house, still hoping for a Kerry presidency.

The little knot of demonstrators, calling themselves the Coalition Against Election Fraud, stood shivering in the cold yesterday, hoisting signs and pressing fliers into the hands of bewildered passersby. Taxi drivers, neighbors digging cars out of the snow, and Beacon Hill residents who happened to be strolling by were subjected to earnest pleas to join the cause.

''Who knows? Maybe we'll overturn the election," said Sheila Parks, a vigil organizer.

In any case, Kerry wasn't home to take notice of yesterday's demonstrators. A woman answered the door and promised to deliver a message when he returns from vacation.

Kerry's old high school band had twice as many members.

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UNICEF: NO WAR IS JUSTIFIED, EVER

ABC host Emma Alberici finds common ground with UNICEF peace-at-all-coster Carol Bellamy:

EMMA ALBERICI: The Australian, British and US governments were willing to spend billions of dollars waging a war in Iraq after the death of 3,000 mainly Americans on September 11. A letter to the editor in one of our major newspapers this morning points out that now that 60,000 Asians have been killed, those same countries have only been prepared to spend millions to help.

CAROL BELLAMY: Well, frankly, we at UNICEF think that money spent on war is wasted money in the first place, wherever that war is; that war is not good for children in any forum at all. So those kinds of resources, wherever it is - whether it's in the Middle East or whether it's in Columbia or whether it's in Sri Lanka itself - is money badly spent and ought to be spent on human development, not on war.

Pair of idiots. Meanwhile, Miranda Devine highlights a more entertaining conversation:

Listen to Neill Wright, the new UNHCR regional representative, speaking to Phillip Adams this month on Radio National: "Australia is particularly generous in offering what we call resettlement - that's an opportunity to start again in a third country."

Adams replies, sarcastically: "Well, I suppose you could describe it as generosity."

He just did, Phillip.

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USELESS INFORMATION

The International Herald Tribune reports:

Early on Sunday morning, powerful computers in a Vienna office building received seismic data on the earthquake that spawned the devastating tsunamis across south Asia - information that might have saved lives in the hours between the quake and the waves hitting the coasts of Sri Lanka, India and several other countries.

But the data streaming into the computers of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization served no purpose Sunday.

The 300 staff are on vacation until Jan. 4.

There were other barriers to using that information, as you'll find if you read the entire piece. Nevertheless, it's a little surprising to read of such a large organisation - with an annual budget of $100 million, by the way - closing down entirely over Christmas/New Year.

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GOING HOME

The Bakhtiaris have been booted:

Australia's highest profile asylum seekers, the Bakhtiari family, are being deported, a federal government spokeswoman says.

"I can confirm that the removal is currently underway," a Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) spokeswoman said.

Ali and Roqia Bakhtiari and their six children are being deported to Pakistan, after failing in legal bids over four years to secure refugee status in Australia.

The family claims to be Afghani, but the government says they are from Pakistan.

It isn't quite the straighforward he says/she says as described by the SMH. Ali Bakhtiari's claims have repeatedly been revealed as bogus. Final proof that the family is, in fact, from Pakistan: Bob Ellis says they aren't.

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E-PREDATORS ATTACK

This e-mail arrived a few minutes ago:

Dear Sir/Madam,

With sympathy and heavy laden hearts, we hereby appeal to your sense of generosity to assist by donating any amount you can afford towards The "TSUNAMIS DISASTER HELP FUNDS", which is aimed at assisting the victims of the Asians Tsunamis which took place on Sunday the 26TH December, 2004 .

We are a non- governmental charity organisation with offices and members across 5 continents namely Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Our goal is to assist poor, innocent survivals of both man-made and natural disasters. Our officials and members are scattered in places in needs of human and material relief as seen in cases of Sudan ( Darfur ) and Haiti etc.

We would appreciate it, if you can send us an email. For further enquiries on how to make donations towards the Tsunamis Disaster Help Funds ( T D H F )

Yours Sincerely
Mr. Cedric Hyzy
Chief Coordinator

It's a scam, obviously. You'd be better off donating to the Human Fund.

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BLOGS USEFUL

Der Spiegel hails blog speediness during times of crisis:

If you want to find out more information about this week's tsunami of biblical proportions in Southeast Asia and how you can help the victims, the best place to go is a new blog in the Indian Ocean region that's compiling everything from requests by organizations seeking donations to victim lists.

Blogs are at the forefront of the tsunami recovery effort. While traditional media drags awaiting publication, and government hotlines jam or go unanswered, bloggers have hopped into the fray, providing needed information to relatives desperate to find loved ones and those hoping to join the rescue efforts. One of the best sites out there is the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog set up by students from New Delhi, a Sri Lankan TV producer and Internet junkies in the region. It offers everything from fascinating tsunami facts to emergency contact numbers to humanitarian relief organizations. Plus it tells you how to donate money from wherever you are.

Speaking of which, the Instapundit-assisted Amazon donation site has now raised more than two million dollars.

UPDATE. Make that three million.

UPDATE II. More on tsunami aid in an excellent piece at Red State.

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TSUNAMI LATEST

The death toll has increased to 80,000; that's ten times the number reported early Monday. Here's a nation-by-nation analysis from a few hours ago:

Indonesia: 36,268

Sri Lanka: 22,493

India: 10,850

Thailand: 1657

Burma: 90

Malaysia: 65

Maldives: 55

Bangladesh: 2

Somalia 100

Tanzania 10

Kenya 1

One Swedish tour company can't account for 600 people. In all, more than 1,000 Swedes and Germans are missing. A Swedish volunteer support centre worker tells the SMH: "I don't think they [the Swedish Government] understood how big it was. At first they said the Government can't do anything. It's the travel agencies' job."

Nine Australians are dead, and twenty-seven in hospital. Only 3,000 of the 8,000 Australians believed to have been in the region are accounted for; of those, however, only seven are currently listed as being "of concern".

One of blogger Kathy Kinsley's friends survived the tsunami. Another was killed.

Rapid reaction by Kenyan officials may have saved hundreds of lives:

"Our marine specialists were monitoring satellite images from the Indian Ocean so we knew we were likely to feel the after-effects," said a spokesman for the Kenyan navy. "We were then able to co-ordinate with the police, and the ports and harbours."

George W. Bush has announced a coalition of the helping, including Australia, Japan and India, to lead relief efforts.

Terrible images from Sri Lanka; this is particularly heartbreaking.

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BITTER LOSERS

The Sydney Morning Herald's online forums attract the nicest people:

I cant help but wonder, how as a country can we justify the hundreds of millions spent on the Iraq war, yet our Government allocates a meagre ten million to such a disaster, shows you where our priorities are. - John Smith

Why is our military off mucking about in a token war when we REALLY need them here? - Cathy Bannister

We are shocked and sad at such needless loss of life, yet we ignore the fact we spend $b's so that we can kill just as many in the pursuit of a new world order. - Rubens Camejo

Feel that I have just woken from a dream. Iraq never really happened and 100000 thousand Iraqi people havn't died .The Coalition of the willing didn't kill them and we dont have to send them aid after all. - john g

Nice folks in the letters pages, too (archived link to yesterday's letters not yet available):

Almost 3000 people died as a results of events in the United States on September 11, 2001, and our Government was willing to spend billions to do something about it - even go to war, and not ask any embarrassing questions about the evidence for or legality of doing so.

Tens of thousands of Asians die and all our Government can spare to help them is $10 million.

I guess it makes sense. We all know an American's life is worth millions but Asians' lives are worth only a few hundred. I'm surprised there's even a body count. Dead Iraqis don't get counted. - Gordon Drennan, Burton (SA)

It would be a tangible mark of the true greatness of the man were the Prime Minister to devote as many resources to this overwhelming disaster as he has to the Iraqi disaster and its aftermath. - Severino Milazzo, Maroubra

Today's SMH letters include a couple of winners, however:

I wonder if multimillionaire Osama bin Laden will donate anything to help his fellow Muslims in their terrible distress caused by the tsunami. - David Blackburn, Hawkesbury Heights

Quick. Hurry Osama. Before you lose the initiative. Spend some of your millions. Send some of your obscene followers. Get in and help those suffering so much from the tsunami before the US-led Forces of Evil send in their tents, doctors, nurses and clean water.

Oh! Too late, they've beaten you again. Next time, perhaps. - John Colebatch, North Epping

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AUSTRALIA SPENDS BIG

Various contributions to the tsunami aid effort. All figures in Australian dollars:

Australia: $35 million

New South Wales: $2 million

Western Australia: $2 million

Queensland: $1.5 million

Victoria: $1.5 million

Australian Capital Territory: $500,000

South Australia: $500,000

France: $177,000

UPDATE. That French figure seems impossibly low, but it checks out here and here (100,000 euros = $A177,000 = $US135,400). France is also sending rescue workers to Thailand and humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka, but please ... $177,000? Andrew Sullivan probably makes more during his Pledge Week.

In other charity news, the Australian cricket team has donated its prize money from the Second Test and is promising further fund-raising; and Stephen Frost reports from Hong Kong on Indonesian maids who've raised $10,000 so far for victims back home:

There are around 85,000 Indonesian domestic helpers in Hong Kong (the second largest group after Filipinas). Despite their low pay (they are often paid well under the minimum wage) and being denied a day off on Monday (Boxing Day Holiday in Hong Kong), the community has started to raise money for relief efforts back home. This has been difficult because usually they only meet on Sundays, so the drive to raise funds has been conducted by SMS and other means. However, as of this morning they have raised $HK10,000 and organisers expect that on Sunday they will add to this amount considerably. All cash is being collected by a well known human rights activist from Aceh living in Hong Kong, and will be deposited with an international agency. Many of these women will have lost entire networks of families and friends and can do nothing but sit and wait for news to filter through or donate whatever they can from their small wages.

UPDATE II. Tasmania only has the population of Melbourne's western suburbs, but you beat them, France! They've donated just $150,000!

UPDATE III. Jeff Jarvis writes:

The NY Times headline this morning says: "Irate Over 'Stingy' Remark, U.S. Adds $20 Million to Disaster Aid."

Now that makes a direct cause-and-effect relationship; the headline says we added $20 million because of the U.N. "stingy" crack.

The story does not back that up. I don't believe the facts back that up.

Hey, it could be true; maybe 'stingy' is the magic word that unlocks US government money! Yo, US government! You are STINGY because you haven't given me any PayPal money! Stingy stingy stingy!

That ought to do it.

UPDATE IV. The Sydney Morning Herald repeats that $170,000 figure. I've driven more expensive cars.

UPDATE V. Australian charities have raised nearly $3 million. Says Red Cross volunteer Jenny Patterson: "It's been really hectic. You put down the phone and it rings again ... people are being very generous."

UPDATE VI. US readers can donate at Amazon (current total: $1,587,261.99) or by calling the WorldVision.org number: 888-562-4453 (via Hugh Hewitt).

UPDATE VII. I thought that French total sounded impossibly low. Reader Heiko points to these two articles, and writes:

100,000 Euros is what cities and departements (somewhat comparable to US counties) in France are quoted as giving in the above links. Dijon for example is giving 150,000 Euros.

France is giving 15 million Euros, Germany 20 million Euros.

As with the US, these are sums given for immediate disaster relief. More is to be expected later.

Good.

UPDATE VIII. More from Heiko, in comments:

It's kind of funny to read the comment section of this article: A French reader being happy at finally hearing that other nations are also providing help.

I suppose a lot of this is due to delays in reporting donations in other countries, without your listing I wouldn't be aware of all the details with regards to Australia and would only know the total pledged by the Australian government.

According to this German source, more than 100 million euros have been pledged in total so far, with the European Union and Japan giving the most (30 million euros each), followed by the US (25 million euros) and Australia (20 million euros).

The total seems to be rising quickly, and it's clearly very difficult to provide an up-to-date and accurate listing with so many people and organisations giving.

UPDATE IX. Reuters earlier:

FRANCE: Foreign Minister Michel Barnier in Sri Lanka, then Thailand. Has earmarked 100,000 euros for relief, sent 16 rescuers to Thailand, 10 tonnes aid to Sri Lanka.

Reuters now:

FRANCE: 15 million euros pledged to affected states in Southeast Asia. French authorities and aid groups decide to send 110 tonnes of aid

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THOSE BEACHES WILL BE OPEN FOR THIS WEEKEND

Via Wizbang, an astonishing report translated from Expressen.se:

Just minutes after the earthquake in the Indian Ocean on Sunday morning, Thailand's foremost meteorological experts were sitting together in a crisis meeting. But they decided not to warn about the tsunami "out of courtesy to the tourist industry", writes the Thailand daily newspaper The Nation.

The experts got the news around 8:00 am on Sunday morning local time. An hour later, the first massive wave struck. But the experts started to discuss the economic impacts when they were discussing if a tsunami warning should be made. The main argument against such a warning was that there have not been any floods in 300 years. Also, the experts believed the Indonesian island Sumatra would be a "cushion" for the southern coast of Thailand. The experts also had bad information; they thought the tremor was 8.1. A similar earthquake occurred in the same area in 2002 with no flooding at all.

The report - which the Washington Post cautions has not been independently confirmed - contains this quote:

"We finally decided not to do anything because the tourist season was in full swing. The hotels were 100% booked full. What if we issued a warning, which would have led to an evacuation, and nothing had happened. What would be the outcome? The tourist industry would be immediately hurt. Our department would not be able to endure a lawsuit ..."

We need more information on this.

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COURAGE

Susan Sontag has died aged 71. We'll remember her for these words, written after September 11:

Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): Whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.

BBC posters mourn the yawning vacuum left by this departed admirer of courage:

Derrida and Sontag, that's too big of a loss for one year. And I am sad to say, I don't see a hopeful new generation to replace such geniuses ... - Karoly Aliotti, New York, NY

She will be greatly missed. I agree with Karoly. The loss of Derrida and Sontag within a few months has left a yawning vacuum which looks like it won't be filled. The "intellectuals" of the 21st Century are more focused on building search engines than writing books. Sad. - Nadeem Azam, London, UK

I am devastated. Susan Sontag was a heroine to me. I've read every book she's written except for The Benefactor, and it's in the queue. I wish I could have met her, and talked to her about things like punk rock, and needing an erotics of art. - Josh Humphries, Roanoke, Virginia, USA

James Wolcott pens a 50-word tribute:

One by one the lights go out. First, Edward Said and now Susan Sontag, dead at 71. Both were engaged intellectuals and cosmopolitan sensibilities, committed to art and justice with consciences that seldom slept, and with their loss the cultural life of the city becomes even more pallid and gray.

That's 50 more words than Wolcott has written about the tsunami disaster. Of course, after writing this, I doubt Wolcott has the ... what's the word? ... courage to go near that particular subject.

UPDATE. Trevino at Red State aims to be fair. Nice essay.

UPDATE II. James Taranto takes another look at Sontag: "On rereading this brief essay, what most struck us was that Sontag actually saw a connection between Iraq and Sept. 11, something her fellow travelers on the left have been at pains to deny."

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CHRISTMAS SALES

The ABC's Leigh Sales sneers:

In 2003, the US gave $19 billion in official development assistance - more than the next two largest givers combined, according to the Organisation for Economic Coordination and Development.

But when you look at what nations give as a percentage of their Gross National Product, the US is way behind. The most generous nations - Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands - give almost one per cent of their GNP to aid. The US gives 0.1 per cent, coming in at 22nd place, when nations are ranked according to their generosity.

Like percentage of GNP makes a damn bit of difference to the people receiving the aid. As Colin Powell notes, the US will likely contribute more than $1 billion to the tsunami aid effort. And USAID chief Andrew Natsios makes this point about GNP measures:

"That's a European standard, this percentage that's used," Natsios said. "The United States, for 40 years, has never accepted these standards that it should be based on the gross national product. We base it on the actual dollars that we spent.

"The reason is that our gross national product is so enormous. And our growth rates are so much higher than the other wealthy nations."

Ignored in GNP calculations are private contributions. According to a study mentioned in the above-linked piece, Americans last year gave an estimated $241 billion to charitable causes, up from $234 billion in 2002. And look what's happening over at Amazon, where donations towards tsunami aid have now reached $841,335. (Via Instapundit, where a reader earlier observed 1,000 Amazon contributions arriving within five minutes.)

That won't impress Leigh Sales:

While the US Government is so far giving $44 million to the tsunami victims, the National Retail Federation here predicts Americans will spend more than $200 billion on presents, food and holiday sales this Christmas.

Picture Sales congratulating herself for landing a telling blow against the Great Satan.

(Via reader Tony Le Bas and contributor Alan R.M. Jones)

UPDATE. The Amazon appeal has now gone above one million dollars.

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"NO POINT IN LIVING"

The confirmed tsunami death toll now stands at 55,000. Indonesia has lost 27,174; Sri Lanka more than 17,600; India, more than 8,500. It's shortly expected that the toll will reach 60,000.

Eight Australians are confirmed dead; another eleven are missing, including Melbourne AFL player Troy Broadbridge.

"This was the worst day in our history," says Sri Lankan businessman YP Wickramsinghe. "I wish I had died. There is no point in living."

On general disaster issues, The Age's John Schauble believes he has a solution:

Predicting the occurrence of earthquakes, tsunamis, drought, heatwaves, volcanic eruptions and even lesser events such as bushfires, tropical cyclones and localised flooding is an inexact business. But there is much that can be done in terms of hazard mitigation and even prevention. This can occur at both a national and multinational level. But harnessing the political, social and economic will to achieve this - as ratification of the Kyoto Protocol has shown - is far easier said than done.

Sure, John. Meanwhile, The Australian publishes this list of charities to which you may donate. Look again at the numbers at the top of this post, and please contribute.

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TSUNAMI TOLL NEARS 40,000

The South-East Asian tsunami death toll is now estimated at 36,954. Consider that for a second or so, and then consider this: it's feared the toll could rise to 57,000.

Reuters (hit the above link) provides a nation-by-nation count, which it cautions is preliminary:

Bangladesh: 2

India: 9,499

Indonesia: 7,072

Kenya: 1

Malaysia: 65

Maldives: 52

Myanmar: 36

Somalia: 38

Sri Lanka: 18,706

Tanzania: 10

Thailand: 1,473

That count includes 5,000 dead on islands off India. Reuters also supplies projected totals, which one prays are exaggerated:

Indonesia said its toll could hit 25,000, while Sri Lankan officials warned up to 25,000 people may have died there. Thailand said its toll may exceed 2000.

Only 112 dead foreigners had been identified. They included 22 French people, 13 Norwegians, 12 Britons, 11 Italians and 10 Swedes, 9 Japanese and 8 Americans, as well as tourists from Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and Taiwan.

UPDATE. Perth reporter (and former blogger) Gareth Parker e-mails an account of the disaster:

Michael Hynes, a British tourist, arrived at Perth International Airport early Tuesday morning, dazed, clutching two carry-on bags, and lucky to be alive.

The London resident was staying in a bungalow at Phuket's Patong Beach just metres from the shore. Hundreds of people around Thailand's major beach resorts have been killed.

Mr Hynes escaped with only bruising to his arms where a couple of Thai men had tried to drag him up on to a roof. At a nearby hospital though the scene resembled a war zone.

"The hospital was totally covered in blood," he said. "They were rolling in dead bodies on pick-up trucks all the time. I saw at least 20 bodies come in."

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ISLANDS SAVED FROM MYTHICAL THREAT

Reuters environment correspondent Alister Doyle reports:

A creeping rise in sea levels tied to global warming, pollution and damage to coral reefs may make coastlines even more vulnerable to disasters like tsunamis or storms in future, experts said Monday.

Cheer up, experts! The quake that caused these tsunamis may actually combat increased sea levels:

Stuart Sipkin, of the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre in Golden Colorado, said it was more likely that the islands off Sumatra had risen higher out of the sea than they had moved laterally.

"In this case, the Indian plate dived below the Burma plate, causing uplift, so most of the motion to the islands would have been vertical, not horizontal."

So now they're safe from global warming. Which must be a great comfort.

UPDATE. Jeff McNeely, chief scientist of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union, blames shrimp eating and other destructive 'human activities" for the tsunami toll:

"What has made this a disaster is that people have started to occupy part of the landscape that they shouldn't have occupied," he told AFP in a telephone interview from Paris.

"What has also happened over the last several decades is that many mangroves have been cleared to grow shrimp ponds so that we, here in Europe, can have cheap shrimp," he added.

The shrimps and prawns are sold to Europeans and other foreigners "at a price that does not include the environmental cost which is being paid today," McNeely said.

Thousands of dead people is not an "environmental cost", Mr Science Guy. In fact, the environment came out of this relatively unscathed, as McNeely admits:

On the other hand, Sunday's quake would not have been a disaster for local wildlife still left in the affected areas, he added.

"Those living along the coast are seldom particularly rare, that's not a rare habitat, the mangroves are not particularly rich in species, the species that live there are used to typhoons, to storms and all that.

"Animals are smart enough to move."

McNeely isn't smart enough to shut up. Via Donnah.

UPDATE II. Iowahawk has breaking scientific news:

Washington, DC - Pointing to the devastating weekend Indian Ocean tsunami that left over 24,000 dead, a international blue ribbon committee of climatologists and ecoscientists today issued a stark warning that man-made pollutants have increasingly "make water spirits angry."

The blunt conclusion prefaced a 2300 page meta-analysis of hundreds of scientific studies and computer models detailing links between human industrial activity and wrathful eco-deities. Entitled "Fire Bad: Fire Very Bad," the report warns that the planet faces additional catastrophies unless drastic regulatory action is taken to appease Earthen-furies.

"Unclean money devils anger sacred water spirit Tai-Waku," explained Martin Knudson of Scripps Oceanic Institute. "He now call angry to son the whale, 'make slap with anger-tails! Bring vengeance-surf to villagers!'"

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WHINERS

"Tsunami survivors criticise Aust rescue effort," claims the ABC:

Some Australians returning from the tsunami-devastated region of Phuket say they are surprised the Australian Government has failed to help survivors leave the island.

Sydney couple Dave and Joanne Ali were on their honeymoon at Phutong Beach and were just getting out of bed when the first wave hit.

Joanne Ali says they felt abandoned because many other countries were evacuating their nationals from the devastated region.

"The Germans ... their country cared enough about them to send extra planes just to get them out," she said.

"[There was the] same thing you know, buses were coming by saying 'are you from Hong Kong, are you from here, are you from there?'

"[There were] people going 'yeah, yeah, yeah' and they just picked them up and we were left just standing ... and we got this SMS saying, 'Alexander Downer is sending you water and blankets'.

"We all just went 'oh great, that's going to do a lot for us', we just want to get out of here."

The pair -- who, unlike 24,000 others, are not dead -- were able to leave on their scheduled flight home. As J.F. Beck notes: "It wouldn't have had the same impact if the headline read: 'Sydney couple criticise Aust rescue effort.'"

UPDATE. Reader Raff finds another quote from poor David Ali: "I just got the feeling if it wasn't something to do with terrorism and if (Prime Minister) John Howard couldn't get political mileage out of it, then why bother." Seven thousand Australians were in the affected areas; the Alis are two of them.

UPDATE II. Not all Australians trapped on Thailand are so self-obsessed. Take 55-year-old Bill Strahmer, for example:

Mr Strahmer had been listed among the missing, feared dead along with hundreds of Thai and foreign nationals.

But his son Matt said his father was found working at a local hospital unaware of his family's fears.

UPDATE III. Morquendi, one of the SE Asian bloggers running Tsunami Help, reports genuine hardship:

I just got back from the Southern city of Galle, in Sri Lanka, I'm not going to go into what I saw there. The one thing that i discovered in speaking to the displaced people there who're living in the temples and churches and schools is that they needs clothes as much as food and water. I guess this is something a lot of us tend to overlook. And (I'm not kidding) there is a severe shortage of undergarments. Not a joke. Specially for the women. I guess no one thinks of it as a need but a lot of people are finding it very very difficult. I don't know if this is something particular to the displaced people of Sri Lanka. Maybe you guys doing aid work in other countries should also look into it.

I'm also looking for 2 friends and their 4 year old son who were on Phuket. Kumudhinee Samuel, and Chandraguptha Thenuwara and their son Charudatta Thenuwara. If there's any news of any Sri Lankans in Phuket anyone please drop me a word at sanjaythelostboy@gmail.com

Visit the site for a comprehensive round-up of international donation points.

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INDON UPDATE

Reader Geoffrey Gold reports from Jakarta:

Aceh is suffering tremendously from the massive earthquake and tsunamis but there is relief, at least temporarily, from the 30-year separatist war within the province.

The Free Aceh Movement (known as GAM) has accepted the suggestion by national military commander, General Endriartono Sutarto, for a ceasefire in the conflict which has cost nearly 3,000 lives over the past four years alone.

The army is reassigning most of its 15,000  troops in the region to relief efforts and GAM has ordered its guerillas to cease hostilities and focus on humanitarian work.

 However Vice President Jusuf Kalla admitted that security forces had also been overwhelmed by the disaster with some 400 soldiers missing and presumed dead and 300 police were killed when their barracks were destroyed by the sea.

During his visit yesterday to the devastated area, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared three days of national mourning and announced the relaxation of martial law security restrictions to allow international relief agencies to directly fly in medicines, food and other basic necessities.

Indonesian media reports that thousands of homeless families are huddled together in mosques and schools in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, only about 210 km from the earthquake's epicenter. The city's only shopping mall is reportedly a pile of rubble and the minaret of the city's 150-year-old mosque is leaning dangerously.

Remote coastal villages on both coasts were washed away in the province, home to about 4.3 million Indonesians. Local casualties are estimated at 3,000, about 60% of the national toll.

However officials now fear that the number of deaths could total more than 25,000 once information is received from isolated areas.

Ironically, the head of Aceh's civil administration, Governor Abdullah Puteh, is required in Jakarta where he went on trial for corruption yesterday.

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TSUNAMI LATEST

The death toll has now increased to 24,000. Earlier tonight, it hit 20,000; the number is growing by 9/11 amounts every few hours, and won't be final for weeks.

Indonesia is reporting 4,725 dead. One hundred have died in the Maldives, and another hundred in Somalia.

Three Australians died in Thailand, including infant Melina Heppell, torn from her father's arms. Among missing Australians is Paul Giardina, a teenager with Down syndrome. His family is concerned that Paul, if alive, hasn't the capacity to alert anybody to his plight.

Australians who've survived tell their stories here and here. A Canadian survived by clinging to the body of a drowned fisherman, miles out to sea.

The Australian media, as you'll note from the above links, has covered this magnificently, with incredible depth and care. Last night's Nine news devoted 14 minutes to the Asian disaster; the only other news story it ran was to do with the Ukrainian elections. SBS broadcast the most haunting footage: several Indonesian children, dead, in a makeshift morgue. Today the Sydney Morning Herald runs a piece directing Australian readers to various major charities:

* CARE Australia. Go to the website or call 1800 020 046.

* The Australian Red Cross. Hit the link, call 1800 811 700, or post a cheque to GPO Box 9949 in your capital city.

* Oxfam; 1800 034 034.

* UNICEF; 1300 884 233.

* and World Vision; 13 32 40.

If you can't decide on a particular charity, I suggest World Vision. Blogger Dan Gillmor provides a link for US readers who want to donate through the American Red Cross (via Giles). Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs has two help lines: call 1800 002 214 for information on relatives or friends in the disaster area, or call +61 1300 555 135 if you're in the area and need help.

Images of the destruction are shattering.

UPDATE. Malaysian blogger Larry Martin, originally from Texas, e-mails: "Death toll for Malaysia currently stands at 53 with 34 missing." Lots more info at Larry's site.

UPDATE II. Glenn Reynolds writes:

This weekend's deaths were as much a result of poverty and inattention as of earth movement ... the best protection against catastrophes, whether foreseen or unforeseen, is a society that is rich enough, and diverse enough, to be well-prepared for all sorts of contingencies. Which means that economic growth, and the freedom that produces it, may be the best guarantor of safety for us all. A rich society can afford to worry about things that a poorer one wouldn't have the resources to think about.

Good point. While we worry about "global warming", the poor are killed in their thousands by an actual menace. Meanwhile various entities campaign against the free trade that would make the poor richer ... and safer.

UPDATE III. SE Asian bloggers, please post links and updates in comments. Australia needs to know as much as possible about this.

UPDATE IV. Six Australians are now confirmed dead, including Paul Giardina.

World Vision hopes to raise $15 million in donations. I'm in for fifty bucks.

Every stock market open for trading in Asia was down last night.

Sri Lankan cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan avoided a tsunami in Galle by minutes.

UPDATE V. The US has prepared an initial $15 million aid package, and sent three surveillance aircraft from Japan. Eight Americans died in the disaster. Israel has dispatched an emergency medical team to Sri Lanka, and is sending food and medicine to other countries.

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CRAWFISH DE TRIOMPHE

Hail the Louisiana Red Swamp crawfish, conquerer of France!

The prolific Louisiana Red Swamp crawfish, which can lay up to 750 eggs at one time and can reproduce nine months of the year, is thought to have escaped into wetland areas of France in 1976. It's been downhill from there.

"The Louisiana crawfish eats all the aquatic plants in the marsh," said Jean-Marc Thirion, scientific adviser to Nature Environnement 17, an environmental group based in Charente-Maritime, a department on France's central Atlantic coast. "Without the aquatic plants, the water of the marsh is opaque and the sunlight can't pass through," making it difficult for aquatic life to survive.

According to Thirion, local critters have ... well ... surrendered to the exoskeletal American invader:

"When the Louisiana crawfish population is established after a few years in the same site, we note the extinction of amphibian species."

Racist Eurobirds that eat the crawfish can't cope with resultant colour issues:

Scientists in Spain have reported that astaxanthin, the reddish-orange pigment in the shell and body that gives the Louisiana crawfish its name, is turning the skin of baby white storks an orange color that could be disturbing to their parents.

One solution to the crawfish problem that Europe seems not to have considered, at least not very deeply: eat them.

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GEORGE & TONY & FRANKLIN & WINSTON

Historian Martin Gilbert looks into the future:

Although it can easily be argued that George W. Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did - that the war on terror is not a third world war - they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill. Their societies are too divided today to deliver a calm judgment, and many of their achievements may be in the future: when Iraq has a stable democracy, with al-Qaeda neutralised, and when Israel and the Palestinian Authority are independent democracies, living side by side in constructive economic cooperation.

Speaking of the future ... Donald Rumsfeld at 96!

(Via contributor J.F. Beck)

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GENUINE GLOBAL THREAT

Guest post by contributor Alan R.M. Jones:

Back in September, NSW Premier Bob Carr was sounding the alarm:

The news is worse for countries dependent on subsistence agriculture, such as Sudan, or countries susceptible to flooding, such as Bangladesh and our Pacific Island neighbours. Indeed, recent floods in Bangladesh caused losses totalling more than $8 billion, a staggering bill for a developing economy.

No mention of any connection of the floods to Australia's emissions. But apparently we were responsible. Indeed, to my knowledge, not a soul has died as a result of "global warming".

Yesterday, more than 14,000 people died due to the results of a regular - if infrequent - seismological event. Most of them could have been saved if the governments of the countries, where those people lost their lives and property, had spent a paltry sum of money to install a tsunami warning system such as exists among the Pacific Rim countries.

Instead, Australians and Americans are lectured ad nauseam by the likes of Carr about the consequences of a global warming. Millions of dollars is spent on research. Politicians travel to far-off places to gas on at UN conferences - spending millions more.

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NEIGHBOURS KILLED

Eight thousand dead across South-East Asia following an earthquake and subsequent tsunamis. The scale of this is almost beyond understanding. Check the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian and the SE Asian bloggers listed here by Instapundit for further news. Australia is quickly arranging aid; any donation points will be posted as soon as they are announced.

UPDATE. Jay Manifold has a list of aid organisations you can donate to. So does Indian blogger Chanakya, who links to reports of 3,500 Indian casualties.

UPDATE II. Command Post reports 3,000 dead in the Aceh region of Indonesia. Six Australians are missing; three Americans are reported dead.

UPDATE III. The death toll is now 12,300. Australia's initial aid contribution is $10 million; Australian readers can contact Care Australia or call 1800 020 046 to donate.

UPDATE IV. The Age lists casualties by nation:

Indonesia: 4,442

Sri Lanka: 3,500

India: 3,000

Thailand: 310

Malaysia: 36

Maldives: 32

Burma: Ten

Somalia: Nine

UPDATE V. The Australian's Kimina Lyall and a friend of Alan E. Brain's supply personal stories. And here's the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, in Sri Lanka:

As the water rushed out of the bay, I scrambled onto the main road. Screams were coming from the houses beyond the road, many of which were still half full of water that had trapped the inhabitants inside. Villagers were walking, stunned, along the road, unable to comprehend what had taken place.

I was worried about my wife, who was on the beach when I went for my swim. I eventually found her walking along the road, dazed but happy to be alive. She had been trying to wade back to our island when the water carried her across the road and into someone's back yard. At one point she was underwater, struggling for breath. She finally grabbed onto a rope and climbed into a tree, escaping the waters that raged beneath her.

UPDATE VI. Survivor Kevin Aldrich tells the BBC from Thailand:

I woke up to what I thought was banging on our hotel door - it blew open and we were tossed from our bed by the surge of tide into the room. It broke out the back windows and we were carried out. We scrambled on to walls and rooftops but within minutes the tide surged higher and 15 to 20 feet was not high enough. The buildings around me collapsed and I was thrown into the surge. When I came up there was a branch I grabbed on and held. Surviving the receding tides was hardest. Pinned against a tree by the water, debris and bodies started to pile up against me and it felt like I was being crushed. In the end, the whole resort was gone.

UPDATE VII. The earthquake that caused these tsunamis has been upgraded to magnitude 9.0: "This is now the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and is the largest since the 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska earthquake."

UPDATE VIII. The death toll in India alone has now reached 4,000. Up to four are believed dead in Kenya.

UPDATE IX. Sydney Morning Herald readers have their say:

A pity our army is busy fighting America's immoral war when they should be providing assistance to the affected areas. - Shane Arnold

These divine winds show that the Gods are displeased with the world's state of affairs. - Tomoyuki Yamashita

An opportunity for western governments to divert some funds to aid assistance projects rather than their billion dollar war obsessions. - Mother Nature strikes

This latest tragic disaster should open all our eyes to the fact that the world seems to already have its "hands full" coping with seemingly ongoing natural disasters rather than creating such man made disasters as we have contributed to in Iraq. - wayne gregory

Dont expect a genuinely compassionate response from the U.S. Government, as a "war on earthquakes" will not be as profitable as good ol' terrorism - Nick Loveday

UPDATE X. A useful graphic of the region.

UPDATE XI. CBC News is now reporting 14,000 dead.

UPDATE XII. Compare the ABC website to the BBC website. Note which regards the death of thousands in SE Asia as bigger news, despite being on the other side of the planet. (UPDATE. My mistake; that comparison is completely unfair, since it pits the ABC homepage against the BBC news page. For the record, here is the BBC homepage, and here is the ABC news page. Via Tubagooba.)

UPDATE XIII. About 5,500 Australians were in the disaster zones; five are feared dead. The total is now at 14,400.

UPDATE XIV. Michele Catalano reports that US newscasts gave equal time to the Michael Jackson trial:

Is it because the dead aren't Americans? Or is it because the networks think no one will care? Or do they just really believe that we are all more interested in who was hot or not in 2004 than 11,000 fellow humans dying in one day?

More from Michele at Command Post. Australian networks have performed brilliantly; we're 14 minutes into Nine's evening news, and it's all tsunami.

UPDATE XV. From Sri Lankan blog Extra Extra:

The sheer brute violence of that single wave is staggering. Every house and fishing boat has been smashed, the entire length of the east coast. People who know and respect the sea well now talk of it in shock, dismay and fear. Some work to do this week.

Another Sri Lankan blog, Ceneus:

It's always the case of humans destructing nature. But when nature has its turn, it sure ain't gonna think twice.

(Via The Moderate Voice and Instapundit, where you'll find many other related links.)

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MODOPIA

If only the war had been fought in Ethiopia. If only, instead of oil, Iraq held vast reserves of Fruitopia! Then Maureen Dowd's year would have been perfect ...

Dowd, April '04: " ... the 9/11 commission's staff, which faults the [CIA] for management miasma and Al Qaeda myopia ... "

Dowd, May '04: "When a beaming Mr. Wolfowitz stopped at my table to greet an admiring Republican, I wanted to snap, 'Get back to your desk, Mr. Myopia from Utopia!'"

Dowd, August '04: "I would sum it up by saying that the neocons wanted a utopia in Iraq. But because of their myopia, we've ended up with a dystopia in the Middle East."

Dowd, September '04: "Faced with their dystopia, the utopians are scaling back their grand visions for Iraq's glorious future."

Dowd, December '04: "His disgraceful admission that his condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq were signed by machine ... is redolent of the myopia that has led to the dystopia."

I bet a machine is writing Dowd's columns. No human would persist with this myopia/dystopia/utopia line.

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NEWS BRIEFLETS

* Via Diplomadic: "The Islamic Commission of Spain has asked the parliamentary panel probing the Madrid train bombings to refrain from referring to terrorists as 'Islamic' or 'Islamist'".

* Andrea Harris remarks of a certain above-his-station East Coaster: "In a politer, if more restricted age, Wolcott's blitherings would have been brought to a dead halt by some elder statesman rising up indignantly and saying 'Sir, do you realize that you are in public?'"

* We sure are in public; even Lynne Cheney is watching.

* It's the tiny, touching details in Steve Bell's cartoons that so impress; note here, for example, where an angry dog in the form of Tony Blair is shown gnawing on an Iraqi infant.

* "America's MoveOn.org is probably the most successful example of web activism," claims The Guardian. As Mark Steyn has already observed, however: "Nobody ever seems to point to any examples of what they're spectacularly successful at."

* Commenter Jeff S., a regular here and at other quality sites, is in Kuwait on active duty. He sends Currency Lad some shots of David Letterman's Camp Arifjan performance -- featuring Grinder Girl!

* International educator Harry Hutton is this week's Normblog profile subject.

* Drooble calls for change: "Please, can we not talk about 'the War on Terror'? Could we perhaps cut to the chase, and call it the liberation of Iraq?"

* The Joplin Globe's Joseph Perkins writes: "A new Gallup survey is rather disquieting for those of us in the media. It finds that not even a quarter of Americans perceive either television or newspaper reporters to have 'very high' or 'high' standards of ethics and honesty.

* Loads of excellent news links now up at the Postmodern Hegemon. Please visit.

* And don't miss the quotes of 2004, arranged in monthly order for easy readin'.

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WALKING LESSONS

BBC staff know how to romanticise terrorists, but more difficult tasks require instruction: "BBC shows staff how to walk through door".

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FIGHT GLOBAL FREEZING

Canadian reader Jack Linard pleads for environmental justice:

It was -28 degrees Celsius in Montreal last night. There must be something we can do about this. Perhaps a UN-sponsored conference or something. I know there's not a lot we humans can do to raise global temperatures, but a symbolic effort would certainly be appreciated by those of us who suffer year after year from these inhumane conditions. There must be something we can do to raise the temperature of the earth by 0.1 or 0.2 degrees. Perhaps burn a bit more coal, drive a bigger car, cut down some trees. Heck, I don't know. We should turn this one over to the experts.

I know it's a sacrifice, but just think how much the solidarity of the rest of the world will resonate with those of us condemned to spend our lives in northern climes.

Jack's e-mail arrived a few days ago, so his weather report isn't current. Still, who could deny that action must be taken, and urgently? Do your part by screaming around the block this afternoon in an environmentally-proactive climate improvement device.

UPDATE. The New York Times reports that the freeze is spreading:

Residents of Victoria, Tex., just off the Gulf Coast, were not dreaming yesterday when they woke up to a white Christmas.

They had one - the first in 86 years.

The NYT should have run this on the front page, as it does when things melt.

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TEEN NOT IMPREGNATED, NOT KILLED

The Daily Telegraph puts two reporters on the case of a teacher alleged to be in a relationship with a teenage student:

The Daily Telegraph has learned the teacher, Robert Drummond, 52, is married with five children. The student, Melanie Docwra, 17, has just finished her HSC exams.

Note that the student is above the age of consent. Contrast this story with the Telegraph's treatment of Natasha Schyf, whose pregnancy at 15 (to a 33-year-old) was applauded in the Telegraph's opinion pages by Luke McIlveen:

We should be praising Natasha Schyf for committing to one of life's biggest challenges at such a young age.

Why the difference? Well, Schyf was loaded into a fast car by her idiot boyfriend and driven to her death by a joyriding 20-year-old, therefore becoming a Telegraph symbol in its campaign for more restrictive road rules. To avoid further censure from the Telegraph, Robert Drummond knows what he has to do.

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ANTI-CLAUSITES ATTACK

France is protecting homosexuals and women from verbal violence, while a much smaller minority faces physical violence:

A candy-giving exercise by a Santa Claus in southern France turned sour when a group of greedy teenagers kicked him to the ground and beat him up for not handing over his sack of sweets, police said on Tuesday.

I bet they called him names, too. Santaphobe bastards.

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INDIVIDUALISM, GENEROSITY CO-EXIST

"In these hedonistic and self-focused times, broader issues of community interest, equity and minority rights are sidelined or given lower priority," wrote the Sydney Morning Herald's Geoff Kitney last January. "While individualism has flourished we, in our debt-laden castles and our fear of the unknown which the new world order of global terrorism has created, have become more selfish and less tolerant ... I also believe that the power of individualism is breaking down a sense of community and community responsibility which will have long-term consequences for cohesion and ethical standards."

So much for what Kitney believes. Here are some facts:

Many charities are reporting unprecedented levels of generosity this year, with a late surge of donations boosting their Christmas coffers.

Children's hospitals also said they were overflowing with gifts. A record number of presents arrived at the Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick.

Spokeswoman Jan Forrester said "thousands" had poured in, with deliveries being made right up until Christmas Eve.

Donations to the Salvation Army are up 10 per cent on last year. And donations to overseas charities have increased as well, according to Tim Costello. The likes of Kitney (and Hugh Mackay, whose wayward views may be read at the Costello link) should be kept in pits and doused with lye until they appreciate the kindness of their fellow Australians.

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GLOBES IN THE NEWS

"Where is the global blogger?" asks George Miller. Hey, pal, I've got all your global news right here! (cue Benny Hill music, etc)

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YEAR OF RAGE

Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt review the year in abuse. A highlight from Miranda's mailbox: "You can kiss my ass, you socialist faggot."

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SAD MARTINIS

Delightfully cruel piece from Cathy Seipp about unpopular LA-area bloggers Martini Republic:

"As most habitual readers are well aware," they noted huffily, "Martini Republic does not accept political advertisements." I remarked in their comments that I wasn't aware Martini Republic didn't accept political ads, just assumed they didn't get any, which I suppose was kind of nasty but also maybe a good deed; the MR folks work themselves into a lather pretty regularly about me and other L.A. bloggers they deem too far right -- including, absurdly, disappointed Kerry-voter Mickey Kaus -- but they obviously put a lot of effort into the enterprise and almost never get comments, which always makes me feel a little sad.

Read the whole piece to discover why the Martini gang deserved a slap. And check out this wounded reply.

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CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS! MERRY MERRY MERRY!

Pray that Santa escapes this hungry Death Ball, otherwise he'll be replaced by filthy Tramp o Claus. Merry Christmas to all readers, lurkers, commenters, contributors, linkers, and flamers, whether you be of the hawk or moonbat tribes; enjoy today with your families.

(Image via b3ta)

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QUOTES OF 2004 - JANUARY

* "The Letters Editor at the SMH or The Age will publish a 'I feel ashamed to be an Australian' or 'I have never been so ashamed to be an Australian' letter." -- prediction from reader J. Softly, posted January 1

* "Our detention centres give me cause to feel utter shame to be called Australian." -- Melbourne Age reader Claire Nailer, in a letter published January 2

* "I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis." -- Brazilian Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva calmly responds to US plans that will require visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed

* "The question is, what have we seen in the aftermath of the capture of Saddam Hussein; have attacks gone up or gone down? Absolutely gone down." -- Brigadier General Martin E. Dempsey, commanding general of the 1st Armored Division

* "The Osama bin Laden thing is going to hurt him. There's no -- there's no excusing this ... there's something -- let's put it this way. He seems to -- he seems to not appreciate, as I said earlier, the glory of the unspoken thought ... I'm scared to death that this guy just says anything. And it just -- it feels like he's undergone some kind of a political lobotomy here." -- James Carville on Howard Dean

* "CAFTA not only rhymes with NAFTA, but will extend the economic 'disasta' that Ohio knows something about." -- Dennis Kucinich launches a second career as a rappin' rhyme masta

* "They even took our nuts." -- Baghdad resident Sabah Al-Kaisey complains about the thoroughness of US searches

* "I'VE PUSHED THE CAPS LOCK KEY DOWN. ARE THEY FREE YET?" -- reader Bruce participates in Guantanamo Bay Lock-Up Day, "a special event designed to allow anyone in the world to protest against the illegal detention of hundreds of people in Guantanamo Bay in an independent, yet collective fashion"

* "He knows the lyrics to Outkast songs and, man, can that dude dance." -- a 16-year-old Howard Dean supporter supplies yet another reason to vote for the Vermont governor

* "You will never see a Jerry Springer or Cristina show on Cuban television. Or a commercial, for that matter. That alone proves socialism's superiority over capitalism." -- Gloria La Riva puts all those complaints about mass death and poverty in perspective

* "The people I'm referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They're perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don't have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all -- far above all -- they don't think." -- the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Neal Starkman identifies the pro-Bush "stupid factor"

* "Post the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there was an expectation that Australians would become more isolated. We were told people would turn inward, they would care less about global issues and instead focus on their families and close circle of friends. There is now evidence that for scores of Australians nothing could be further from the truth. World Vision has found that since September 11 there has been a surge in giving to overseas aid organisations." -- the Rev.Tim Costello on Australian generosity

* "While individualism has flourished we, in our debt-laden castles and our fear of the unknown which the new world order of global terrorism has created, have become more selfish and less tolerant." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Geoff Kitney disagrees with Costello's facts

* "What is important once Hutton is published is that if the BBC is criticised we learn from whatever is written - assuming of course that we agree with what is said." -- BBC director general Greg Dyke keeps an open mind

* "On Mars the Stars and Stripes flies -- the Red Planet, how appropriate, red with the blood of workers poisoned by the toxic byproducts of the imperialist war machines march on the high frontier of space in its phallic symbols of globalised corporate power. Did you know that every rocket that takes off from Cape Canavaral kills 73 seabirds (on average) and has led to nervous conditions amongst neighbouring manatees." -- interplanetary political commentator Ogram N'otsgnik frees her mind

* "I am supporting General Wesley Clark for President. Not only as a 'celebrity' but as an American citizen and as a mother. I want my children to grow up with the same opportunities that I had to know and understand what's going on in the world and to travel that world safely and with pride." -- Madonna, an endless source of pride to her own parents, endorses crazy Wes

* "Truly, it isn't third-rate dictators like Saddam Hussein that pose a threat to the West. It's moral primitives such as yourself." -- reader Joseph de Bonald on the author of this website

* "The wahabi/salafi axis has been exposed and will be crushed. No, not by the Americans, but by the very society they're living in. People are fed up of their in-bred hatred. They're fed up of these proponents of darkness and minute-minds. They're fed up of being ostracised and pushed out of the world because of these animals. They're fed up of having their religion defiled and hated because of these in-breeds." -- Bahrain's Mahmood Al-Yousif has had enough

* "Is there anything more annoying than argyle?" -- Maureen Dowd tackles the big issues

* "The Moon's Ass Belongs to the US. So Don't Be Landing Your Skanky Rocket on It. Don't Even Be Looking at the Moon." -- bumper sticker suggestion from Vanity Fair

* "I think they made a mistake in going to a war on Iraq. Whatever the reason or motivation was I think it was a mistake." -- Australian Labor leader Mark Latham adopts the French position

* "You sit down. You've had your say and now I'm going to have my say." -- Howard Dean silences Iowa retiree Dale Ungerer's dissent

* "So Tim 500 dead kids from the mid west and where's your sorry ass. Guess you are at lunch practising being a legend in your own lunch time. Come on Tim, get down to that recruiting office and sign up for the big foreign adventure you so crave for all us to be on. Guess not. Now don't choke on your afternoon latte you yellow belly coward." -- popular website commenter crock of tim

* "I learn via The Weekly Standard that I owe credit for a line I've used about Arnold Schwarzenegger -- 'looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts'-- to an Australian journalist named Clive James. I first heard the line from a civil libertarian in Vermont and had no idea it had come from James, or I would have given him credit. My apologies." --columnist Molly Ivins, who in earlier media appearances had failed to even give credit to that civil libertarian

* "This president is not interested in being a good president. He's interested in some complicated psychological situation that he has with his father." -- Howard Dean puts George W. Bush on the couch

* "I think we're at risk with our democracy. I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame." -- Wesley Clark, who voted for Nixon. Twice

* "Wait ... you can't own a gun there but you can use your baby as a squeak toy for your pet crocodile? This is what happens when a country is upside-down." -- Jim Treacher ponders Australian firearm regulations

* "I will vote for a Republican for the first time in my life. I will be voting for George W. Bush in the next election." -- feminist Phyllis Chesler

* "For a week I managed to persist in the happy belief that I was not living in a brutal police state. I fled home the next week, leaving all my illusions of the Arab world in my Cairo flat. I couldn't wait to be in America again. On the long flight home, I promised myself I would never accept anything less than full democracy for my fellow Muslims in the Arab world or apologize for the tyranny that now masquerades as Islam." -- US-born Muslim Murad Kalam

* "How are we supposed to find hidden and buried WMDs in Iraq if, wherever one digs there, we just keep finding mass graves?" -- poet Nelson Ascher

* "The march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe." -- Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar dreams big

* "We have an embarrassment of riches in this Democratic primary this year." -- Michael Moore gets it partially correct

* "Margo will be back on deck at the end of January." -- promises, promises from the Sydney Morning Herald

* "Australians are, I have found, ready to laugh at themselves if they think that the joke is funny and the humour not ill-directed. And the ability to be self-deprecating is the mark of confidence; it is, as much as anything else, the yardstick by which a society measures how tolerant and self-assured it is." -- Indian journalist Soumya Bhattacharya

* "Not only are we going to New Hampshire, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico! We're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington, D.C.. To take back the White House! YEEEAAARGH!!" -- Howard Dean hits the self-destruct button.

(Readers quickly seized on the chance to produce local and international variants of Dean's rant. Several follow)

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Cataluna, we're going to Andalusia and Galicia and Extremadura and Valencia and Castilla-Leon! We're going to Cantabria and Asturias and Castilla-La Mancha! And we're going to Navarra and The Basque Country and Ceuta and Melilla! And then we're going to Madrid. To take back the Palacio de la Moncloa! OLEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Space Mountain, we're going to the tea cups and Mr. Toads Wild Ride and the Pirates of the Carribbean and the Jungle Adventure and the Matterhorn! We're going to the Haunted Mansion and Main Street and It's a Small World! And we're going to the Tiki Room and the Coutry Bear Jamboree and the Luau and a character breakfast! And then we're going to the Electric Light Parade. To take back Cinderella's Castle! YEEEAAARGH!!

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Kabul, we're going to Kandahar and Bamiyan and Hindukush and Peshawar and Kashmir! We're going to Fallujah and Tikrit and Baghdad! And we're going to Timor and Chechnya and Yemen and Andalusia! And then we're going to the Land of the Two Holy Places. To take back Mecca! Alllllaaaahu Akbar!

Oh, yah, yah. An' ya know somethin? Ya know somethin? Not only are we goin ta Stoughton, we're going ta Hayward an' Ashland an' Lac Du Flambeau an' Appleton an' Sturgeon Bay! We're going ta the Dells an' Prairie Du Chien an' Spring Green! An' we're going ta New Glarus an' Mount Horeb an' Portage an' Stevens Point! And then we're going to Green Bay! Ta take back Lambeau Field! YAAAH HEEEEY DERRRRR!!

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Jogeva, we're going to Marjamaa and Haapsalu and and Saare and Hiiu and Tartu! We're going to Paide and Rapla and Viljandi! And we're going to Parnu and Abja-Paluoja and Kivioli and Sillamae! And then we're going to Tallinn. To take back the Riigikogu! Eeaaaaiiiiiaaaaa!

And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Tenochtitlan, we're going to Tlatelolco and Atotonilco and Coatepec and Tehuantepec and Oaxaca! We're going to Tzintzuntzan and Xochimilco and Iztaccihuatl! And we're going to Huehuetla and Zacualco and Acaxochitlan and Cihuatlan! And then we're going to Popocatepetl. To take back The Temple of The Moon God! YEEEAAARGH!!

* "Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean was a momentous event." -- New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

* "We have done ourselves a great disservice." -- ABC national editor John Cameron in a memo to staff after his network ignored or downplayed the death of cricketer David Hookes

* "Is it too early to open a bottle?" -- UK Home Secretary David Blunkett responds to news of mass killer Harold Shipman's suicide

* "Allowing women to mix with men is the root of every evil and catastrophe. It is highly punishable. Mixing of men and women is a reason for greater decadence and adultery. This is prohibited for all. I severely condemn this matter and warn of grave consequences." -- Saudi Arabian cleric Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh

* "I am proud to say I used my position as a teacher educator to influence the content of social science curricula and to champion peace and environmental education in schools as well as more democratic school environments and teaching practices." -- Greens candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane Drew Hutton reveals why so many parents are removing their children from the state system

* "Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?" -- can you believe Maureen Dowd is still employed by the New York Times?

* "You've got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?" -- George W. Bush to reporters during an appearance at the Nuthin' Fancy restaurant in Roswell, New Mexico

* "His political analysis is a joke." -- The Australian's Stephen Romei on Mark Steyn. Here's Romei's own political analysis, from the same article: "The Democratic campaign, led by the uncompromising doctor from Vermont, may have started out as a Bush-hating contest, but it's now a Bush-beating one. The hot competition between Dean, Kerry, Clark and John Edwards is forging a nominee who will shake the Shrub come November 2."

* "If little things like this worried you, you'd never get anything done." -- 78-year-old Australian farmer John Stratford, after lying injured in a field for two days following a tractor crash

* "Howard Dean's bark was missing its bite. And his socks were missing their warp. Not to mention their woof." -- New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, missing her medication

* "If we ignore the jarring chasm between the wealthy, who own a lot of the country's assets, and the rest of us ..." -- millionaire rock star and future ALP candidate Peter Garrett, pretending to be poor

* "We are becoming defensive, inward-looking. As a country, we are more inclined to protect our wicket, to go for the draw, rather than seek the victory. We're not after the glorious outcome, we're content to rejoice in mediocrity. We don't think big any more." -- The Melbourne Age's Geoff Slattery isn't aware of Australia seeking victory in East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq

* "I think a slight majority will vote to throw Bush out." -- George McGovern, who has no personal experience of "slight majorities"

* "It's the most depressing thing in the world to be called Saddam Hussein." -- Saddam Hussein Karim, one of thousands of similarly-titled Iraqis now changing their names

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QUOTES OF 2004 - FEBRUARY

* "Margo will be back on deck by the middle of February." -- the Sydney Morning Herald, sounding a lot like the former Iraqi information minister

* "We're going to tell all those white boys who run the Republican Party to stay out of our bedrooms." -- Howard Dean slams whitey

* "Regarding Boris Johnson's comments, I asked the editors of the Op-Ed page for a reaction. They replied, 'The Op-Ed staff has a very different memory of the editing experience.'" -- New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent, after Johnson accused the NYT of meddling with his column

* "The Tories say it's a sin to represent working people." -- Labor leader Mark Latham. Invited to provide an example of such a comment (in exchange for which he would have received an entire free page in The Bulletin), Latham was silent

* "The Gov had to catch a huge fish that was thrown at him by one of the workers at the fish market. The Gov dropped the fish the first time, but caught it on his second try. The fish was huge and slimely so I was surprised that he caught it at all!" -- Howard Dean supporter Kate O'Connor

* "Dubya's secret commandos Michael Moore & Al Franken have done such a good job since 2000, making sure the sane voter tunes out all the 'Bush = Hitler' crap. I hope Karl Rove is paying those boys well, because Christ knows they're earning it." -- Ken Layne

* "The bomb made the paedophile problem worse. It was a simple matter of economics; people got thrown out of work, they needed the money, and there were accommodating European men to help them." -- volunteer social worker Gloria Goodwin on Bali's continuing tragedy

* "A transparent sun cream sold in Australia contains macro particles of titanium oxide, which have the capacity to penetrate the skin, the blood stream and even our organs. Blue Lizard sun cream boasts that its Baby Formulation contains 'only nano-micronized titanium dioxide and zinc oxide and no other active ingredients'. There is zero regulation in this emerging industry, in which a major investor is the Pentagon." -- Richard Neville exposes the military/industrial/tanning complex

* "I don't blame him a bit for sexing things up. I would too if I were trapped on an island with Ginger and Mary Ann." -- Randal Robinson on the BBC's Gilligan crisis

* "The Baath is the party of pimps. Come out, you Baath, and let the hate wash over you." -- Baghdad graffiti

* "A guardsman from Utah named Paul Holton has described seeing an Iraqi girl crying and decided then and there to help that child and others like her. By enlisting aid through the Internet, Chief Warrant Officer Holton had arranged the shipment of more than 1,600 aid packages from overseas." -- blogger Chief Wiggles earns presidential recognition

* "In general, I'm pro-life -- excuse me, I'm pro-abortion rights." -- Wesley Clark explains his position. Other Clark comments on the subject included 'I don't believe in abortion' and 'I have always been and always will be pro-choice'

* "Clark is simply too crazy to be president of the U.S." -- Andrew Sullivan

* "I think the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein. I actually think this may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought." -- chief WMD inspector Dr David Kay

* "I'm increasingly convinced this WMD thing is a mega-disaster. Notice how all the Usual Suspects are totally on the front foot, while we are now on the defensive? I also think it could do for Bush, probably for Blair, and maybe Howard." -- an anonymous right-wing columnist sends a gloomy e-mail

*"When I was young, my mum used to tell me there were two types of people in our street -- the slackers and the hard workers." -- Labor leader Mark Latham. It was later revealed that Latham's mother actually said "no-hopers" rather than "slackers", and that the word was altered in Latham's speech by former Labor leader Simon Crean

* "I knew this would be a mistake." -- human rights campaigner Joe as guest speaker Rosie O'Donnell persisted with a ruinous fundraising speech

* "John Kerry will be the next President of the United States. And what is really beautiful is that George Bush, who has posed for so long as a hard man, is about to get his clock cleaned by the real thing. Kerry fought in Vietnam as a young man, and fought prostate cancer as a grown man." -- Daily Mirror columnist Tony Parsons

* "F*** YOU ALL. GWB MADE THE RIGHT DECISION AND AMERICA DID THE RIGHT THING AND WE ARE FREEEEEEEEEE!" -- Iraqi blogger Ali

* "I'm afraid of Americans" -- T-shirt marketed by Australian advertising executive Jonathan Pease. Who lives in New York

* "I guess most of 'em just have a lot of common sense." -- racer Terry Labonte explains why NASCAR drivers support George W. Bush

* "I donated $250 awhile back when there was a premium offered for that amount of a signed picture of Gen. Clark. I never received the picture." -- a Clark fan wants her signed picture, damn it

* "Tim, you are a disgrace ... you are very sloppy, utterly stupid, or a scurrilous liar ... you are a disgrace to your ostensible profession ... I'm stunned at such misrepresentation ... you're dead wrong ... dead wrong ... you are dead wrong on the facts. Face up to it ... Dead Wrong ... Dead wrong ... you are wrong on the facts Tim ... you are dead wrong ... Tim is dead wrong on the facts ... Tim is dead wrong on the facts ... If you're not dead wrong; you're completely incoherent. Your choice: are you a liar or a fool? ... You were dead wrong in the Bulletin article, and you are dead wrong now ... Very poor form. You should be ashamed ... Tim has published erroneous material ... You are and were dead wrong ... You made a mistake Tim. You were dead wrong ... Tim Blair is dead wrong. There is no room for discretion on the matter ... That's why Tim Blair is dead wrong ... You are dead wrong ..." -- academic Christopher Sheil has a favourite saying. Can you guess what it is?

* "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." -- Wesley Clark in an off-the-record conversation with reporters, as quoted by Matt Drudge

* "What is that whooshing sound that you hear? It is all the hot air escaping from the self-styled 'blogosphere.'" -- The Boston Globe's Alex Beam. Ask Dan Rather about it, Alex

* "John Howard lost it two days ago. His cool, his direction, his command of his party, his control of national politics, his image as the 'man of steel'... By week's end [Mark Latham] had all but killed off Howard's prime ministership." -- The Sydney Morning Herald's Alan Ramsey

* "You think that an absurd rush to judgement?" -- Alan Ramsey, digging himself even deeper

* "What we saw two nights ago could not have been a more humiliating, more devastating political white flag for any prime minister. Howard's surrender to Latham is that catastrophic." -- Ramsey again, somewhere near the earth's molten core

* "This is not the kind of humour that is healthy for the country." -- Canadian communications specialist John Parisella slams Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, whose visit to Quebec was the year's cross-cultural highlight

* "You are one of my heroes." -- Howard Dean to Helen Caldicott ... according to Helen Caldicott

* "Terrorists murder 3,000 people on 9/11, and the New Democrats ask for calm and say we have to understand the 'root causes'. But a puppet insulting Quebeckers? Unleash the dogs of war!" -- Damian Penny on the Triumph backlash

* "We have lived through, been part of, party to, one of the greatest acts of mass deception in history." -- Phillip Adams in a column so riddled with deceit and inaccuracy that it was even cited by his friends at Media Watch

* "Margo will be back on deck very soon." -- the Sydney Morning Herald keeps the world informed

* "Government is the only tool there is. In the right hands it can transform society. It is a force for progress, for redistribution, for putting right wrongs, for redressing the injustices of the market ..." -- The Guardian's Polly Toynbee, whose newspaper is one of the UK's lowest-selling. Curse those market injustices

* "For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged Right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion." -- pop star and political strategist Moby

* "At no stage did he challenge the claim of WMDs. Suddenly, he is a champion of the they-were-never-there cause, a retrospective expert on the absence of arms. The man postures shamelessly." -- e-mail from a Canberra-based journalist regarding Andrew Wilkie, whom the writer interviewed shortly after Wilkie announced his reasons for quitting the ONA

* "We suspect Ramil S. of having committed murder with unusual cruelty. We say 'unusual cruelty' because beside a number of knife wounds on his chest, the victim's head was practically severed from his body." -- Budapest Police Maj.Valter Fulop. Ramil S. and his victim had been attending a NATO Partnership for Peace program

* "Why don't you do the work to investigate this turkey yourself, and publish the results in your column?" -- Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy declines to pursue bogus turkey claims from left-wing columnists

* "If you want to debate the Vietnam era, and the impact of our experiences on our approaches to presidential leadership, I am prepared to do so." -- John Kerry in a letter to George W. Bush. In 1992, defending Vietnam war draft-dodger Bill Clinton, Kerry had said: "We do not need to divide America over who served and how"

* "There's a tremendous initiative in law enforcement [that] may be reversed if Bush is not re-elected. Let this administration finish this war and this fight against terrorism." -- actor Dan Aykroyd, who pledges a return to the Democrats in 2008

* "A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world ... The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration ..." -- the London Observer on a "secret Pentagon report" that wasn't secret and wasn't a Pentagon report. Greenpeace, The Australian, AFP, SBS, the ABC, and The Sydney Morning Herald (among others) fell for it

* "With a couple of exceptions, such as Olympic sprinter Cathy Freeman and actor Deborah Mailman, it is hard to think of any famous Aboriginal Australians." -- The Guardian's David Fickling has never heard of Albert Namatjira, Evonne Goolagong, Eddie Mabo, Lionel Rose, Mandawuy Yunupingu, Neville Bonner, Michael Long, Pat O'Shane, Nova Peris Kneebone, Aden Ridgeway, Polly Farmer, Sally Morgan, Charles Perkins, Anthony Mundine, Lowitja O'Donaghue, Kyle van der Kuyp, Jason Gillespie ...

* "I think I finally understand why Kerry underwent the botox treatments. It's so he could say all the things he does with a straight face." -- reader Dan G.

* "After completing his father's unfinished business - going on to Baghdad to topple the Iraqi regime and finally capturing the family nemesis - President George W Bush is also facing the prospect of a stunning military victory followed by electoral defeat." --introduction to an ABC interview with Christopher Hitchens. A quickly-discarded headline to the interview read: "Bush to face father's fate: Hitchens"

* "The costs of shutting down a national organization are costly." -- Wesley Clark begs for cash following the end of his Presidential campaign

* "These people always complain. They want it both ways: their way and our way. They want to live in our society and be respected, yet they won't work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don't respect the laws." -- Australian psychiatrist Graham Thorn discusses Aboriginal issues in an interview with The Chicago Tribune's Uli Schmetzer

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QUOTES OF 2004 - MARCH

* "Twenty years ago, my journalistic colleague left the industry rather than continue to endure the humiliation. Her harasser, while no longer an editor, is today a rich, powerful and famous man." -- in the Sydney Morning Herald, Anne Summers accuses a former editor of harrassing a young female staffer. A hasty re-write appeared in subsequent editions

* "Don't know what you're talking about." -- Michael Moore, asked if rumours that he'd built on protected wetlands were true. State records revealed that he had, in fact, partially filled a wetland to improve his beach

* "That may be the most lethal endorsement since Al Gore leapt on the Howard Dean bandwagon and sent it careering into the ravine." -- Mark Steyn on the NYT's endoresement of John Kerry

* "What Mike Moore does for the US, Margo Kingston does for Australia." -- Penguin books is right; both of them keep conservatives in office

* "Some people like paintings, or cars. I like lobsters." -- Don Bramich, owner of Tasmania's Flowerdale Lobster Haven

* "I hope that during one of your commutes between Quebec and Vermont, you have one of those fantastically horrific car crashes that make all the headlines. You know the type: where you are decapitated and the head is never found." -- hate mail sent to Mark Steyn

* "His first cousin is a French mayor. His father was a diplomat. He spent school years in Switzerland, among other countries, and now and then vacationed in Brittany ... He thinks the death-penalty is bad and thinks the Kyoto Protocol, intended to protect the global climate, is good." -- Germany's Financial Times goes negative on John Kerry. Except they think they're going positive

* "I don't think we ever really got a clear explanation of why. He was just rueful and regretful and kept saying it was an act of stupidity." -- Chicago Tribune ombudsman Don Wycliff on Uli Schmetzer's termination for inventing "Australian psychiatrist Graham Thorne"

* "Arms Are For Hugging." -- bumper sticker attached to an old Subaru that almost caused a multi-car pile-up on the Hume Highway

* "We are such a hidden group in society." -- Mardi Gras parade leader Monica Hingston, after 300,000 people had turned out for the annual event

* "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer - or an American soldier." -- teenage former Guantanamo Bay inmate Asadullah. As The Guardian's James Astill wrote: "This might seem to jar with the prevailing opinion of Guantanamo among human rights groups"

* "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that." -- John Kerry, making stuff up

* "I don't think that I'll ever try to work in newspapers again." -- Khalil Abdullah, fired by the Macon Telegraph for plagiarism, after having earlier been fired by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for the same thing

* "Well, he ain't suffering blood pressure now." -- J. F. Beck on the death of Achille Lauro hijacker Abu Abbas, who according to the PLF had been denied blood pressure medicine by his American captors

* "I would say that I am a dark, insidious force pushing Bush toward war and confrontation." -- Dick Cheney describes his role

* "Ah, the Zeitgeist! Everywhere you look the rules change before your eyes as new patterns seem to emerge then mutate." -- Margo Kingston goes psychedelic

* "They're legitimate targets. They're illegally occupying a country." -- John Pilger compares Australian troops in Iraq to German troops invading France. Blogger Paolo from Italy, whose uncle was freed from Buchenwald by Allied soldiers, replies: "Vaffanculo to the John Pilger men of every country"

* "There are so many great lines in it. 'Do I dare to eat a peach?' 'Should I wear my trousers rolled?'" -- John Kerry misquotes T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." As Hal G. P. Colebatch notes: "It seems Kerry is even less decisive than Prufrock, who at least knew he was going to roll his trousers."

* "I think we still over-estimate the danger of terror." -- former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix

* "A woman who survived the blast has lost her husband, her two sons, and her grandsons. The radio reported this morning that she was so overwhelmed with the loss that she later tried to kill herself. In one of the destroyed trains they rescued a seven month old baby. They haven’t been able to find his parents and he has just died while in the ICU. The attack has killed people from eleven different nationalities." -- Golan and Franco Aleman from HispaLibertas report on the Madrid bombing

* "You could sometimes see the guards tampering with the shower heads to make water squirt all over the inmate's clothes." -- former Guatanamo Bay resident Jamal al-Harith reveals the horrors of Bush's death camp

* "Hollywood disaster film set to turn heat on Bush. Movie depicting horrors of global warming could boost votes for Democrat challenger." -- hopeful headline in The Guardian

* "The highest position in heaven is to go fighting in the way of God against the friends of Satan." -- David Hicks, now safely confined

* "If she did not know it yet, she knows it now: Europe is part of the battlefield of hyper-terrorism ... Nothing, evidently, no cause, no context, no supposedly political objective, justifies this kind of terrorism ... If the trail back to Al-Qaida is confirmed, Europeans should rethink the war against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, as did the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001." -- Le Monde, following the attacks on Madrid

* "I was a bit scared of him, really." -- Gabrielle Gwyther, ex-wife of Labor leader Mark Latham

* "We will not surrender, we will rise to this challenge and we will combat our enemies. This is not a war we started. But we must end it. And we will prevail." -- Golan

* "They should hang them by their feet until they die." -- 92-year-old civil war veteran Luis Martinez-Gile on the Madrid attackers

* "From now on, the bad guys know they can win, and how to do it." -- Franco Aleman following Spain's election

* "You love life and we love death." -- an al-Qaeda idiot claims responsibility for the Madrid attacks

* "Iraq war opponents march to White House." -- a CNN report. Only 60 people turned up; CNN's piece contained about six times as many words

* "I hope they build so many skyscrapers I can't even see the sun." -- Sam Ward is pro-development

* "When I was serving on a swiftboat in Vietnam, my crewmates and I had a dog we called VC ... One day as our swiftboat was heading up a river, a mine exploded hard under our boat. After picking ourselves up, we discovered VC was MIA. Several minutes of frantic search followed after which we thought we'd lost him. We were relieved when another boat called asking if we were missing a dog. It turns out VC was catapulted from the deck of our boat and landed confused, but unhurt, on the deck of another boat in our patrol." -- John Kerry, asked if he had "any pets that have made an impact on you personally"

* "Turning Iraq into an unstable allied protectorate garrisoned by the US and allied states created both a new battleground with, and a new grievance for, terrorists. Blow-back to America's friends as well as the US seemed inevitable. Australia was the first target, with the Bali bombing." -- Doug Bandow doesn't know that Iraq came AFTER Bali

* "The tables of perception have been turned, and those who have fixed there colours to the mast of tunnel vision will be blown away by the resurgence of UN multilateralism." -- Sam Guthrie, who has a masters degree in Political Science and International Relations

* "This Saturday's LIVE talk on Paltalk will discuss one of the greatest forgotten obligations in Islaam - Hating false religions. Allaah (swt) orders the believers to hate all other religions, way of lives, creeds, doctrines and beliefs that contradict with Islaam, and one cannot be Muslim without to declare animosity and hatred towards kufr, bid'ah, shirk and nifaaq (Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Democracy, Freedom etc.)" -- promotion for a British radio broadcast by Abu Muwahhid

* "Is terrorism ever justified?" -- poll question at Australian multicultural broadcaster SBS. Thirty-five percent of respondents said yes

* "I don't fall down. That son of a bitch knocked me over." -- John Kerry blames a Secret Service agent for a tumble in the snow

* "Why do you drink?" -- question demanded of diners in Bahrain by a knife-wielding gang of Islamists. One diner reacted by stabbing his interrogator

* "DOWN WITH AHMAD CHALABI, MAN OF CATS!"

"SADDAM IS A PIMP; ASK YOUR SISTER!"

"KILL AND CRUSH THE STINKY HEAD OF EVERY BAATHIST CRIMINAL COWARD TRAITOR AND BEGIN WITH THE HEAD OF SADDAM"

"IS IT REASONABLE THAT THE GREAT AMERICAN CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT THE ELECTRICITY? OR ARE THEY DOING IT INTENTIONALLY FOR SOME REASON GOD ONLY KNOWS?" -- Baghdad graffiti

* "They are the Klan without the sheets. Worse: they don't have the inbred moonshine-addled mah-pappy-hated-nigras-an-I-hate-'em-too dense-as-a-neutron-star stupidity of your average Kluxer. They didn't come to this level of stupidity naturally. They had to work at it." -- James Lileks on the extreme anti-liberation, anti-Bush Left

* "It doesn't take an awful lot of courage to murder a paraplegic in a wheelchair." -- Robert Fisk on the removal of crippled Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin

* "Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the 56-year-old pediatrician who has stepped into Yassin's shoes as leader of Hamas ..." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough reports the transfer of some as-new shoes

* "You are following in the footsteps of murdered Sheikh Ahmed Yassin at a critical time ..." -- Der Spiegel's interview with new Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi begins awkwardly

* "The current threat of attacks in countries whose governments have close alliances with Washington is the latest stage in a long struggle against the empires of the west, their rapacious crusades and domination. The motivation of those who plant bombs in railway carriages derives directly from this truth." -- John Pilger

* "I don't support the things Hamas has done in the future." -- Labor leader Mark Latham expects more of the same

* "People in the more civilized sectors of the world (what we call 'the third world,' or the 'developing countries') often burst out laughing when they witness an election in which the choices are two men from very wealthy families." -- Noam Chomsky, who is yet to announce his departure for one of "the more civilized sectors of the world"

* "The survey the BBC conducted recently in Iraq is shocking to those of us who opposed the war. Most respondents say life is now better than it was before the invasion." -- George Monbiot is genuinely surprised

* "The Times badly needs to raise the level of its journalism and to do so quickly in order to survive." -- former NYT executive editor Howell Raines

* "Bush - in an election year going as badly for him as it is for Howard in this country - is under immense pressure on the economy." -- Sydney Morning Herald reverse-indicator Alan Ramsey

* "'Shock and awe' lasted an hour-and-a-half, rather than the promised three days. And with only a few ghastly exceptions, the targeting, in the capital at least, was very precise. Colleagues who arrived after the war was over kept asking us where all the destroyed buildings were. There never was a military stalemate, a refugee crisis, 100,000 civilian dead ..." -- anti-war hero Andrew Gilligan

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QUOTES OF 2004 - APRIL

* "Speaking of Kerry's speech, it wasn't so hot. Applause lines fell flat, and his voice trailed off randomly at times." -- Daily Kos begins to realise that John Kerry might not be the perfect candidate

* "It's certainly a misconception that Democrats are eloquent, sophisticated, sensitive, and therefore beyond the knavish dirt commonly attributed to the 'right-wing attack dog.' Last week, I found no difference between the two." -- the Village Voice's George Smith, subject to abuse from Right and Left following renewed attention to a year-old piece on temporary peacenik hero Richard Clarke

* "Pilger has evidence that the Bush Administration was MOVING BEFORE 9/11/01 TO ACT AGAINST THE TALIBAN. Pilger, without knowing it, counters Clarke's charges that the Bush Administration didn't take Al Qaeda seriously enough!" -- blogger For Now notes this December 2001 item from John Pilger: "Pakistan's former foreign minister Niaz Naik has revealed that he was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was then travelling in central Asia, already gathering support for an anti-Afghanistan war 'coalition'".

* "I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them." -- Daily Kos contemplates the murder of contractors rebuilding Iraq

* "Something has gone terribly wrong." -- the Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt covers black resentment of Air America, which took over many minority-run radio stations

* "There is only one reason Prime Minister Blair/the UK is so high on the hit list, and that is their support for the US." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's ReaderLink staff ("Nerida, Penny, Josh & Miranda") explain a Peter Fray piece that claimed an al-Qaeda assault on Heathrow Airport scheduled mere days after September 11 was "to punish Tony Blair for his support of the US"

* "The man is highly creative. He is, beyond his full ability yet to control it, a man given to the creative spirit. That he cannot fully control it is not to be critical of him because the control of the creative act requires ultimately mastery, and the journey of total mastery, if anyone's finally to obtain it, is one demanding decades ... The creative spirit drives him. Because the creative spirit is driving him, empowers him, guides him, loves him - yes - for his commitment to it, this creative spirit holds him. He is so given to it he appears born unto it, and once on the journey he cannot step away ... We have here a man who feels things first, as an intuitive knowingness. This is the same intuitive knowingness once spoken of as being a woman's knowingness or intuition, before we better understood the forces at play in each of us. It is a sensing; a sense. To the woman reading this, may this be at least another small step in our shared understanding. For the man reading this, just to be sure, know that when the footballer is about to cut through and score it is this sense he first feels ...That sense is an energy. It brings written into it the nuts and bolts of what is required to make it happen, but the nuts and bolts flow much later. First, comes the sense. Being highly creative, Latham knows only the sense, the feeling, the energy, the absolute empowerment of it, before anything else." -- artist Robert Bosler on Mark Latham, whom he's probably never met; in the Sydney Morning Herald

* "While supposedly supporting Democratic Party ideals, many treat underlings no better than serfs, they wangle obscenely huge payments for their work that so deplete budgets that supporting actors find their rates cut, and they have an unofficial 'black list' that works against anyone in the industry who dares voice an alternative opinion. So much for them writing and complaining about 'attacks on freedom of expression'. -- veteran Australian showbiz correspondent John-Michael Howson on Hollywood leftoids

* "In August 2001, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, determined to halt what had become a flood of boat people trying to reach his country's shores, turned away a leaking refugee boat called the Tampa." -- the New York Times has remedial fact-checking issues when it comes to Australia

* "Every time we discover a cell, we eliminate it as a pre-emptive measure." -- a senior French official on his nation's admirable anti-terrorism measures

* "The difference is joy." -- Baghdad resident Najid Hamid tells Le Monde of the difference between pre- and post-liberation Iraq

* "My immediate reaction was to charge at these bastards and try to smash thier placards and hurt them as much as possible." -- a peace activist's reaction to pro-liberation groups joining their demonstration. He continued: "In the ideal situation Young Liberals should be left bruised, bashed and bleeding if they dare show thier face at a rally like that. That way they will be more hesitant about coming next time, and if they do the police will be more likely to quickly move them on." Peace. Out

* "I really don't care; they're all gonna die." -- US Lance Cpl. Ryan Christiansen, asked if he was concerned that a ceasefire would allow Saddamite forces to regroup

* "I have just watched President Bush at his press conference, live on TV. He places long pauses throughout and before his replies to questions. I have a theory that he may be wearing a radio ear-phone and someone outside the room is dictating his answers to him. If you watch carefully these pauses almost match the length of his reply and his eyes often glance down as though he is listening to something during these pauses. Who is actually answering the questions? I have no proof of this. -- SMH Webdiary reader Phil Smith is an early adopter of the Bush-electronic-device theory

* "Now I'll show you how an Italian dies." -- hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi refuses to yield to his Saddamite captors. Al-Jazeera declines to run footage of his murder, declaring it "too gruesome"

* "The interrogation turned out to be a moving, profound experience." -- former human shield and claimed Fallujah kidnap victim Donna Mulhearn: "I told them I was a member of the Labor Party and that we were working to get John Howard out of office at the coming election"

* "If bin Laden is proved to be alive at this point, I'll take out a year-long subscription to the SMH." -- me, wrong again

* "I have never seen a head so far up a Presidential ass (pardon my Falluja) than the one I saw last night at the 'news conference' given by George W. Bush. He's still talking about finding 'weapons of mass destruction' -- this time on Saddam's 'turkey farm.'" -- Michael Moore. The farm to which Bush referred was in Libya

* "They were so angry I thought they were going to turn the tables over." -- anti-Democrat reaction of a focus group to a Democrat campaign ad accusing George W. Bush of negligence for failing to stop the 9/11 attacks

* "An Islamic rite of revenge." -- Spanish interior ministry description of the incineration and desecration of a Spanish policeman's corpse. Francisco Javier Torronteras died when Islamic terrorists blew themselves up during the hunt for perpetrators of the Madrid bombing; his body was subsequently exhumed, set alight, and speared with a shovel and pick

* "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." -- Michael Moore, who said the same thing about Wesley Clark and John Kerry

* "As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better. I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day." -- Luton social worker Abdul Haq

* "Our stagnant continent has been a virtual museum for decades. Many could argue that we already were nothing more than an amusement park. The decision to legally become a large theme park is really only a formality." -- an 'unnamed EU representative' in the Weekly World News

* "Struggling to maintain support." -- the ABC's North American correspondent Lisa Millar rates Bush's chances in a week that saw his polling improve

* "Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St Matthew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad, and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country." -- John Pilger, who might not have felt as safe if he was Kurdish, or an attractive woman who'd caught Uday's raping eye, or supportive of Iraqi democracy

* "The family has it. I don't have it." -- John Kerry's nuanced explanation of his SUV ownership

* "F---in' dickhead." -- a spectator in court during the sentencing of gang rapists, one of whom claimed: "We did not commit this crime, the crime was committed against us. The police set us up because we are Muslims, your honour"

* "The uniform material that's being used could in fact trigger trauma symptoms in a child." -- Annie Wimbush, member of Suffolk 4 Peace, opposing a plan to supply Iraqi children with teddy bears made from military uniforms.

* "The publication of the cadaver montage - in which Bush's face is made up of squares containing smiles and stares of military men and women who are now all dust - threatens to become one of the most powerful propaganda images in history." -- The Guardian's Mark Lawson, unaware that a "cadaver montage" would feature actual cadavers

* "The feeling is entirely mutual." -- Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer's response to an al Qaeda representative's description of John Howard as "wicked"

* "Since September 11, whenever Islam is highlighted in Western media, it is somehow inextricably linked with acts of terror." -- Greg Barns and Jane Rankin-Reid are wide-eyed with astonishment

* "In my neighborhood in Puerto Rico, Tillman would have been called a 'pendejo,' an idiot. Tillman, in the absurd belief that he was defending or serving his all-powerful country from a seventh-rate, Third World nation devastated by the previous conflicts it had endured, decided to give up a comfortable life to place himself in a combat situation that cost him his life ... this was a 'G.I. Joe' guy who got what was coming to him." -- University of Massachusetts undergraduate Rene Gonzalez

* "I'm still trying to breathe after seeing on Lateline the photos of American soldiers smiling as they pose with tortured Iraqi prisoners, if torture is the word for the horror. The images are out of a Caligula movie. The world has gone to hell. George Bush's war on Iraq will haunt all our lives." -- Margo Kingston, who presumably didn't inhale a single atom of oxygen during Saddam's reign

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QUOTES OF 2004 - MAY

* "General Janice Karpinski is a disgrace to the uniform. With friends like her, we don't need enemies. What a disgusting business. I want the whole lot of them busting rocks in Leavenworth. I bet the guards there know how to conduct themselves like professionals." -- Florida Cracker

* "Mr. Moore should be flown to Iraq and strapped to the side of convoy Humvees. That way, when a roadside bomb goes off, everyone is happy. Soldiers are shielded from the blast by Moore's largeness, and we are spared any future idiotic and disingenuous pontificating by Moore." -- commenter CCinCali

* "The anniversary of Bush's declaration of victory looks as good a time as any to date what seems increasingly certain to be a defeat." --Professor John Quiggin again foresees disaster

* "The US under its present government is a force for evil and perpetual war ... The ugly side of being American, the side incapable of empathy with any other culture, has eaten alive any chance of nurturing democracy in Iraq." -- Margo Kingston wonders why so many consider her unbalanced

* "I never saw Tom Brokaw humping an M-60 down the Rio Hato runway next to me." -- anti-Bush cartoonist Micah Ian Wright in a 2002 interview that came to light following his confession that he'd never served, as previously claimed, as an Army Ranger

* "Anyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq [as a soldier] is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief. "-- Ted Rall (who went to Afghanistan as a cartoonist and is therefore non-evil)

* "I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief." -- Swift vet John O'Neill

* "I'm just a good liberal Democrat." -- Ted Rall

* "It seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout." -- Chuck Todd, editor in chief of National Journal's Hotline

* "When a beaming Mr. Wolfowitz stopped at my table to greet an admiring Republican, I wanted to snap, 'Get back to your desk, Mr. Myopia from Utopia!'" -- Maureen Dowd. Why doesn't the New York Times have a drug-testing policy?

* "Bitch Juice." -- Dr. Alice's suggested name for Wal-Mart's budget wine label. Among others: 'Chateau Traileur Doublewide', 'Big Red Gulp', and 'I Can't Believe It's Not Vinegar!'

* "In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie [England] smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash." -- Robert Fisk, doing some tugging of his own

* "Saddam was a good guy and we were the bad guys and we heart him, and he was treating us kindly." -- Iraqi Sarmad Zangna's sarcastic rejoinder to those more concerned about Abu Ghraib than Saddam's murderous reign

* "Most Australians are unaware of the good that occurred under Saddam." -- Yvonee Brent in a letter to the Newcastle Herald. So are most Iraqis

* "Perhaps the inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison should count themselves lucky that in the days after last year's US-led invasion, one of my press colleagues souvenired the noose from the gallows in the prison west of Baghdad." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough reveals that looting has a different name when committed by journalists

* "You'd think a former paratrooper would know not to keep kicking his legs on the way down... oh, right. Forgot." -- Jim Treacher on fake Army Ranger Micah Wright's pathetic excuse-making

* "New allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, accompanied by some of the worst images so far, are overwhelming the White House's efforts to contain a scandal that is swamping President George Bush's re-election campaign." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough

* "Bottom line is, mate, we're trying to make a profit here." -- staffer Bilal at Lakemba's Islamic Bookstore, which stocks such titles as 'Crucifixion - or Cruci-FICTION?' and 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'

* "What drives American civilians to risk death in Iraq? In this economy, it may be, for some, the only job they can find." -- Dan Rather, who should be looking for a job himself

* "Whenever John Howard is on his feet, answering a question, Latham just trains his yellow-brown cattle dog eyes on him and stares. Utterly motionless, utterly intent, a picture of concentrated aggression. Through the whole of question time, Latham sat impassively, not interjecting as the government punched away to no end, just smiling a little at John Howard. As if to say, 'Is that the best you can do - old man?'" -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Mike Seccombe praises Mark Latham for doing exactly nothing

* "They don't know how to talk to real people. In fact, they don't really like real people, a lot of them." -- Michael Moore on the modern Left

* "I am sure that the one who wielded the knife felt Nick's breath on his hand and knew that he had a real human being there ... I am sure that these murderers, for just a brief moment, did not like what they were doing." -- Michael Berg gives considerable benefit of the doubt to the killers of his son Nicholas

* "Not one person knew of Australia's involvement [in Iraq]." -- Tim Dunlop encounters stunning ignorance at a Democrat fund raiser in Washington

* "I was teaching a class on imperialism, and I was delivering all this material that was kind of new and upsetting, and everyone was getting all worked up and upset, and I was getting all worked up and upset, and all of a sudden, all I wanted to do was flash my underwear! It was crazy." -- history professor Elizabeth Eve reveals the moment that inspired an anti-Bush flashing collective

* "Tommy Rodningsby volunteered to make life better in a country far away, in a conflict he could have stayed out of. That was brave, and worth our respect and admiration. Our politicians and pundits are soft and confused, but our professional soldiers stand comparison to anyone." -- Bjorn Staerk on Norway's first casualty in Afghanistan

* "Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and, to the cheers of his military audience, defiantly called himself 'a survivor' (a word traditionally reserved for those who have lived through the Holocaust or cancer, not for someone enduring political difficulties)." -- Time magazine's Mary Corliss. Other Time writers had previously referred to Bill Clinton as "the ultimate political survivor" and asked: "What makes Clinton a survivor?"

* "In some instances, some are so partisan -- even though they're right in many instances -- they're immediately discredited within the newsroom because of their partisanship. -- New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent on those who consider sources rather than facts

* "The war has got to me big time and I need to clear my head." -- Margo Kingston takes a break

* "Using artificial insemination to get pregnant, lesbians are four times more likely to have children than gay men." -- Reuters uncovers a shocking statistic

* "America rapes Islam." -- statement in Arabic from an Imam preaching in Sweden. His interpreter's translation: "We condemn USA's torture of Iraqi prisoners"

* "Are you Muslim or Christian? -- question asked by al-Qaeda goons as they rampaged through Khobar, killing 25

* "Do not put the champagne on ice yet - there are, after all, five months to go before the election - but it is beginning to look as if Senator John Kerry may have the beating of President George Bush in November." -- editorial in The Guardian

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QUOTES OF 2004 - JUNE

* "There are no excuses for speeding. I was fortunate that neither myself or anyone else was injured." -- humiliating apology forced out of Collingwood footballer Cameron Cloke after he was caught driving 44 km/h (26 mph) above the speed limit

* "I think we are much closer to Germany now than we ever were to America or Britain." -- teenage French gal Annalise Laguiller, whose nation would have been even closer to Germany had Allied forces not intervened in WWII

* "Please don't tell me what the Spanish did. So what? Do you seriously think that it will save them from further attacks? No. The weak just get punched in the head. Pacifism lost a long time ago." -- Marek Edelman, the last surviving military leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising

* "I will guarantee you that John Kerry will be president of the United States." -- House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi

* "How sad most the mainstream media is these days." -- Margo Kingston

* "I know you don't want to be here anymore." -- John Kerry during an underwhelming appearance in Tampa, Florida

* "It would be a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say that we're pulling out." -- George W. Bush responds to Mark Latham's "out by Christmas" plan

* "God is great." -- a lunatic's scream in Paris as the second Jewish victim is stabbed within a week

* "When the old fella said 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' I laughed at his blustery naivete, as I did whenever he uttered the phrase 'Evil Empire.' Needless to say, I was wrong about that, and he was right, and I'm still ashamed about it." -- Matt Welch

* "Eight years after Mr Reagan left the White House in 1988 he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and his mind deteriorated rapidly." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Marian Wilkinson. Reagan was in fact diagnosed in 1994, six years after leaving the White House

* "I'm a Muslim, help me, I'm a Muslim, help me." -- BBC Middle East reporter Frank Gardner, shot in Riyadh

* "John Howard can't believe his luck." -- former Labor minister Barry Cohen on the ALP's offer to provide a guaranteed seat to Peter Garrett

* "I'm hoping that [Garrett] will take up Labor's offer to join our team. He's got convictions." -- Mark Latham. Other Labor identities with convictions include Rex Jackson, Andrew Theophanous, Keith Wright, Brian Burke, and Bill D'Arcy.

* "Make a conscious decision to not break the law for a day." -- the Australian Prisoners Union calls for a strike to protest abuses inside Abu Ghraib. The Gweilo writes: "How utterly diabolical. In retaliation for the abuse of Iraqi detainees, criminals worldwide are threatening to deprive us of ... crime."

* "It's string time." -- slogan on a British billboard promoting G-strings criticised for being located too close to local mosques

* "If I could, I would vote for Bush. He has done what needed to be done because if Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden had their way, none of us would be around in 10 years." -- New Zealand-born, LA-based model and el primo MILF Rachel Hunter

* "Whether he is right or wrong, George W. Bush is a bummer." -- there's no pleasing Maureen Dowd

* "I don't agree with the policies of Republican presidents." -- Peter Garrett would, if only Mark Latham told him so

* "I don't practise that sort of journalism -- at least I hope I don't." -- Robert Fisk, asked if he belongs in the same club as John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore

* "Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road." --the New York Times

* "I think you're on to something, Bernie." -- CNN's Wolf Blitzer responds to Bernard Shaw's observation that the media "failed to thoroughly cover and communicate the very essences we're talking about, possessed by Ronald Reagan. What I've been reading and what I've been hearing, I did not get during his two terms in office. Or did I miss something?"

* "I'm not that intelligent, mate, let me tell you." -- Australian Formula One driver Mark Webber, to a New York Times reporter

* "I've had people drive by my home and shout things out. I think that they question my patriotism because I decided to stand up and have a voice. And I stood up to have a voice because I think that's the most American thing that you can do." -- Kerry supporter Jon Bon Jovi

* "In Berlin there used to be, like, a communist country and there used to be a big wall between East Berlin and West Berlin, where, like, the people on the West, I suppose, couldn't come to the East, or was it the other way around, because the East was where the rich people lived and the West was where the poor people lived." -- Australian reality TV contestant Wesley

* "He has no idea of limits or boundaries or decency." -- Joe Conason on Mark Steyn

* "Is this the horror that will finally undo George Bush's presidency?" -- the Independent's Andrew Gumbel looks on the bright side following US hostage Paul Johnson's decapitation

* "The way out of the predicament in which we find ourselves, I suggest - guilty inheritors of a land usurped by our deluded, desperate forefathers - is the simple admission that ours is an Aboriginal country. All of it. Every single bit. Try saying it to yourself in the mirror. 'I live in an Aboriginal country.' -- Germaine Greer, who lives in England (Tuscany during winter)

* "One punter put $10,000 on the Coalition the moment he heard Garrett had joined Labor." -- Gerard Duffy of online gambling agency Centrebet

* "Margo reminds me of the Erasmus of Rotterdam during his 'Basel years'". -- Kingston acolyte Harry Heidelberg. Reader Donna V.'s reply: "Margo reminds me a lot of Crazy Aunt Mabel of Cedar Rapids during her menopause years"

* "It's hard for such a big man to jump a shark, but he did." -- Jeff Jarvis, after Mike Moore threatened widepread libel suits against critics of his dishonest lying totally worthless film

* "Save the planet. Jump into your car." -- Daily Telegraph editorial following revelations that rail travel was environmentally inefficient

* "If you say anything against what is happening in Iraq for example, you can be arrested. You can't speak openly on the street anymore. I tell you, everyone is afraid." -- NYC-based immigration lawyer Ihab Tabir, interviewed by the BBC

* "I get a bit worried about certain heavily veiled ladies driving because they have no peripheral vision at all. You can understand why in some countries they are not allowed to drive." -- Germaine Greer's safety-related defence of Muslim driving bans for women

* "Ashton Kutcher's no stranger to that predicament." -- Mark Steyn on Lindsay Lohan's Freaky Friday role, "in which she played a hip young thing who wakes up in a 40-year old's body"

* "THEY'RE LYING -
WHILE THE GLOBE IS FRYING -
AND THE FISHES ARE DYING IN THE WORLD" -- Barbra Streisand's re-write of People for a John Kerry benefit

* "You're crazy, Phyllis, you're just absolutely bonkers." -- president of Washington's Centre for Strategic Policy Frank Gaffney to Institute for Policy Studies director Phyllis Bennis

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QUOTES OF 2004 - JULY

* "The speech was impressive and you could hear the sound of a needle if one had dropped it at that time. The most sensational moment was the end of the speech when Mr. Bremer used a famous Arab emotional poem." -- Ali at Iraq the Model on Paul Bremer's farewell speech

* "There was no farewell address to the Iraqi people." -- Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Washington Post

* "I am ashamed to admit that there have been times when I wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson. On Monday I found myself again hoping that this handover proves a failure because it has been orchestrated by the Americans." -- peace-loving UK columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. By "more chaos, more shocks, more disorder" she means "more deaths"

* "Go fuck yourself." -- Dick Cheney to Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy, leading to a scolding from The Guardian: "Nothing will persuade the president to drop his mentor from the team, not even an explosion of expletives"

* "I'm just posing a question." -- Michael Moore, after hinting that Bush invaded Afghanistan so his cronies could build an oil pipeline there

* "We don't want anything in depth before the election." -- Mark Latham advisor Vivienne Schenker declines a Latham interview request from Nine's Sunday show

* "Unjust war ... international law ... unilateral aggression ... no WMDs ... Afghanistan was bad enough, but Iraq ... blahdee, blahdee, blah ... These are good people. These are smart people. On many levels, these are very thoughtful people. And, it seems to me that they are very much like a group of folks that most of them despise. They are very much like fundamentalist Christians." -- at his 25th-year college reunion, Royce Dunbar discovers that his old friends have become Berkleyite Moore followers

* "He was clean-shaven - the fugitive's beard of December had been sculpted back to his customary moustache." -- who the hell was the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough looking at? During his court appearance, Saddam had the best beard since New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey

* "When John Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia, said Muttiah Muralitharan was a chucker, he was only saying what the rest of us were thinking – but it did the job. Murali withdrew from the present Sri Lanka tour of Australia ... The Prime Minister of Australia knows about sport. Ours neither knows nor cares." -- British television presenter Michael Parkinson

* "He came off second best. He went down like the Titanic." -- Don Nelson describes his 1989 bout with Mark Latham, younger by 30 years

* "Could it be this awful man -- albeit given less chance to be heard than the Nazis at the first Nuremberg hearings -- actually knew less than we thought? Could it be that his apparatchiks and grovelling generals, even his own sons, kept from this man the iniquities of his regime?" -- Robert Fisk devises a way out for Saddam Hussein that sounds very similar to David Irving's Hitler defence

* "Viewers may come away from Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true." -- but that doesn't matter, according to Paul Krugman, because the film tells "essential truths"

* "At least he's got balls." -- Mark Latham fan Tomina Brown isn't aware of Latham's testicular cancer surgery

* "My parents, when we lived in Massachusetts, we lived on a farm, and I learned my first cuss word sitting on a tractor with the guy who was driving it." -- John Kerry reminisces about his first chauffeur

* "I had a pre-conceived notion they would all be rednecks who were only there because their daddies had been in the army. But I was wrong and I met the most amazing people over there ... they had so much perspective on it, they were really deep and smart and had a lot of opinions." -- actress Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who grew up in Berkeley, meets US troops in Iraq

* "When William F. Buckley Jr, who is to American conservatism what the Pope is to Rome, joins in the growing unease about the war in Iraq, you know that Bush is whacked." -- whatever you say, Phillip Adams

* "We don't want Australian kids to grow up with American accents." -- actress Toni Collette, who this year bought a $5 million Sydney property after using an American accent in at least five of her movies

* "I hope that Australians that see this film will say to themselves, we need some regime change here in our country." -- Michael Moore, who hasn't backed a winner since forever

* "People like you make me sick ... You are panicking because your greedy, corrupt, controlling, manipulating regime is over. enjoy your time in those hot fires of hell !!! Reap as you shall sow." -- satisfied reader Jennifer M. Lynch

* "Latham has a ball." -- must the Sydney Morning Herald be so cruel?

* "Well, if Mark Latham thinks it's a good idea and that's what the party view is, then there's merit in it. We'd accept it." -- Peter Garrett changes his opinion on US troops training in Australia after seconds earlier condemning the move: "The merits or otherwise of those issues need to be fully discussed by people, not simply unilaterally announced and then dumped on people in the middle of an election campaign, following on from comments from American foreign policy or defence officials"

* "Lap-dog?" -- Adele Horin's helpful suggestion to Eurotrash visitors seeking a description of Australia's relationship with the US

* "This is a disgrace to our great country and this has come from none other than US President George W. Bush. This is nothing but an insult." -- Thiruvananthapuram-area youth M.A. Latheef, outraged that George W. Bush named his cat India

* "We're reaching really encouraging numbers for a book that has, tellingly, received little mainstream press coverage. In other words, the message has entirely bypassed the old ways of communicating and succeeded in getting people excited and active. We reckon the mainstream press are a little scared that something, anything, can sell without their promotions, so maybe NHJ is a taste of much to come." -- Not Happy, John contributor Antony Loewenstein lauds the bypassing of "old ways of communicating". Meanwhile the book's author, Margo Kingston, was scheduled for interviews on TWENTY-ONE mainstream radio stations within five days

* "Michael Moore has been making some claims - mentioning me by name - which I believe distort the truth." -- Pete Townshend won't get fooled again

* "The Diddler." -- John Kerry's Yale nickname, arising from a soccer coach's description of his diddling, non-advancing, extremely nuanced ball skills

* "He's managed to distil reality and come up with something more powerful." -- Blur bassist Alex James reviews Fahrenheit 9/11

* "Its global stance has been one, quite explicitly, of advancing Australia's national interests." -- Professor Peter Singer thinks the Australian government's pursuit of Australian interests is a bad thing

* "Even then he had clearly awesome social skills." -- Garry Trudeau recalls his time at Yale with George W. Bush

* "It's pure propaganda, and I fully support it because I oppose the war." -- 60 Minutes reporter Richard Carleton reviews Fahrenheit 9/11

* "Another widespread and preposterous rumour is that Ayad Allawi has been showing up at IP stations and executing criminals himself, and I have heard this one from a very large number of people." -- Zeyad at Healing Iraq, July 1

* "Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings." -- Paul McGeough in the Sydney Morning Herald, July 17

* "Look at the lines at the Michael Moore movie! Look at Bush's approval rating slip below 50 percent! Listen to the respected Democratic congressman who, when I asked how he thought the election was shaping up, said: 'It's over.'" -- the Philadelphia Inquirer's Matthew Miller rounds up Democrat optimism

* "She praised him and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose." -- Aladdin casino president Bill Timmins describes events following singer Linda Rondstadt's mention of Mike Moore

* "Mr President, allow me to start with a vote of thanks. Thank God that the fate of Israel and of the Jewish people is not decided in this hall." -- Israeli UN ambassador Dan Gillerman, following the UN's vote against Israel's security barrier. Australia was one of only six countries to support Israel

* "The fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia." -- Margo Kingston

* "Kerry has to be moved much further to the left ... We've got to drag this whole country out of these intellectual dark ages." -- actress and Air America Marxette Janeane Garofalo

* "It's like being inside a really bad TV show." -- Harry Shearer, voice of Monty Burns, at the Democratic National Convention. Dave Barry defined the theme of the convention as "strong strength through strongness"

* "Wow. I hope that doesn't get out in the media." -- young DNC campaigner, on being told that John Kerry may be the wealthiest person to ever run for President

* "Teddy came a close second." -- Ethel Kennedy rates Bill Clinton's speech as the highlight of DNC 2004

* "My name is John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty!" -- some guy in Boston

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QUOTES OF 2004 - AUGUST

* "Obviously, I did not mean what many people believed I meant. I am not anti-semitic, and I thought what I wrote was a statement of fact. Is there a language problem here?" -- Margo Kingston, dazed and confused

* "You have to enervate the base." -- no wonder Ben Affleck is a Kerry supporter. Consider that base well and truly enervated

* "Mark Latham has not collapsed the energy built up among citizens ... The energy you are speaking of is a latent energy. You and your readers will find in him more of what you are seeking at that moment." -- artist Robert Bosler calms Latham cultists in the Sydney Morning Herald

* "He's fighting hard, our Mark, against powerful interests few would take on, for us, the people." -- Margo Kingston costs Latham another few thousand votes

* "My good luck hat. Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia." -- John Kerry in a year-old Washington Post interview linked at the official Kerry website. Didn't turn out to be so lucky, did it?

* "It seems that if you have Washington's backing, you can get away with murder." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough, bravely sticking to his Allawi murder story

* "Truly, America is the most bloodthirsty nation on the face of post Stalin earth. It's military, it's government, its corporate carpetbaggers are sinking into such a swamp of deceit, denial and depravity that fair minded people the world over, including its own better informed citizens, can but recoil in horror." -- constant ABC and Fairfax presence Richard Neville

* "I assume Saddam, a ruthless, ambitious fan of Stalin, did bad things and killed a lot of people in his time. But kill them pointlessly? I don't think so." -- pointless ALP fetishist Bob Ellis

* "We angered everybody in the world." -- John Kerry delivers a nuanced view of global events

* "It looks like the swift boat ad is working." -- left-leaning Electoral-Vote.com perceives that which the Kerry campaign missed

* "I have never seen the Cats Picture. I have no idea whats hes or she name is. Show more of the Cat. I am a Cat Lover." -- e-mail from Trish, of Portage, IN, to Barney the dog's official White House site. White House Internet Director Jimmy Orr replied: "Willie is elusive and far harder to capture on film (kind of like the Loch Ness monster)"

* "You wanna go in gladiator-style?" -- NYC police discuss riot-stopping tactics

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QUOTES OF 2004 - SEPTEMBER

* "Where is he? Is he gone?" -- star-struck Manhattan shoe store guy after collecting a load of shoes for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnie had already left

* "The angriest man at the convention turns out to be a Democrat: who'd have thunk. He's brutal. He's hammering Kerry like a blacksmith; if Kerry was a horseshoe he'd be thinner than aluminum foil." -- James Lileks on Zell Miller

* "Maybe that same person is still around, writing editorials." -- George W. Bush notes that a 1946 New York Times piece expressed doubts on post-WWII progress

* "More fascinating repressed psychodrama it would be harder to imagine ... there was none of the warmth and giddiness one saw with the Kerry and Edwards clans. His hugs of his father and mother were equally perfunctory. Everyone looked ill at ease." -- James Wolcott rates the Bush clan's hugging skills

* "I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own." -- Wolcott again. More fascinating repressed psychopathy it would be harder to imagine

* "Today, by some margin, George W Bush is the most despised figure in America." -- only because the London Sunday Observer's Robert McCrum isn't as well-known

* "By God, I did not shoot." -- the New York Times alters the line as spoken by a Beslan terrorist: "By Allah, I did not shoot"

* "He looks scary." -- a year six student offers his opinion on Mark Latham to Peter Garrett. Garrett's reply: "I think he's a terrific leader and he cares a lot about education"

* "I live in Hong Kong and I've already had several Indonesian friends on the phone to apologise. One was crying, asking why people would target Australia. Australia, she said, why Australia?! This is madness! She is, by the way, a human rights activist in Aceh and knows more than a little about atrocities, bomb blasts and death. I'm also getting text messages from Indonesia that express complete and utter disbelief." -- reader Hanyu, following the terrorist attack on Australia's embassy in Jakarta

* "This is not a nation that is going to intimidated by acts of terrorism." -- Prime Minister John Howard

* "The terrorists responsible for this attack are evil and barbaric and must be dealt with as harshly as possible." -- Labor leader Mark Latham

* "Who will benefit more from the terror attack?" -- quickly-abandoned poll question at the Sydney Morning Herald's site

* "We're beyond angry. I want to kill those who did this." -- Jakarta housewife Ibu Martono

* "Later today the Boston Globe, the A.P. and Dan Rather all present new and damning information about how George W. Bush got moved to the front of the line to get in the Texas Air National Guard, and how he then went AWOL. I am putting every ounce of trust I have in my fellow Americans that a majority of them get this, get the injustice of it all, and get the sad, sick twisted irony of how it relates very, very much to our precious Election 2004." -- Michael Moore was so looking foward to Bush getting nailed on 60 Minutes II

* "Tomorrow morning, dinosaur media across the country will be headlining the 60 Minutes 'scoop' as a blow to the Bush campaign." -- Powerline, one of the prime Rathergate blogs, makes an accurate call

* "Now it's Bush's turn to squirm." -- headline in The Guardian

* "Evidence of the president's fudged war record emerged in time to undermine the Republicans' triumphal march" -- Sid Blumenthal in The Guardian

* "George W. Bush's cover story on his National Guard service is rapidly unraveling." -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe

* "These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people. Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles." -- a CBS News official

* "Why dismiss what Jemaah Islamiah says? What they say is rational." -- Meg Lees staffer Gary Sauer-Thompson

* "If we are at some kind of war, then we should negotiate. He (Mr Downer) should speak to the head of JI and ask him: 'Why? What's the problem?'" -- Brian Deegan, whose son Joshua died in the 2002 Bali bombings

* "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims." -- Abdel Rahman al-Rashed in The Arab News

* "The media is buzzing with the possibility that the Killian memos broadcast on 60 Minutes are forgeries. The truth hangs on whether any commonly-used typewriters in the 60's-70's had proportional spacing. If you HAVE a typewriter like that, please type out a replica of Killian's first memo and see if your typewriter matches his." -- a poster at Democrats.com seeks a magical typewriter to get Dan Rather off the hook

* "I know that this story is true." -- Dan Rather

* "I worked for IBM from 1967 to 2003 in Field Engineering -- we maintained Computers and their associated input/output devices. Modified Selectric typewriters were used by operators to enter commands and respond to system messages and Selectrics were also used on communication terminals. These typewriters were never intended to have pretty fonts and typesetting qualities. Office Products Division worked on office machines -- typewriters (typebar and Selectrics) and dictation equipment. There was a Selectric model called a Composer. It was used to prepare text for photo typesetting, it had all the bells and whistles: proportional spacing, justified right margin etc -- very expensive machine for its time. Regular Selectrics were mechanically complex, but the Composer was orders of magnitude fiendishly complex ( I am thankful I didn't have to work on that monster.) LGF, et al. has it right -- those 'documents' are a fraud." -- former IBM engineer Bill Rouse

* "I can unequivocally say that no one involved here at the Democratic National Committee had anything at all to do with any of those documents. If I were an aspiring young journalist, I think I would ask Karl Rove that question." -- Terry McAuliffe, rapidly unraveling

* "Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not [authentic], I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill." -- Dan Rather

* "Okay, I'm no Howard Kurtz or anything, but I've seen one or two episodes of Law & Order in my day, and ... isn't the burden of proof on the accuser? It is? Okay. And isn't this crewcutted septuagenarian fadebrain the one who made the really big serious accusation? He is? Check. So ... isn't he sort of, you know, under the obligation to verify his claims? And not in a position to sit back and demand that everybody else prove to his satisfaction that it's not clearly bullshit? Is it out of line for me to ask this stuff? Sorry. Sorry. But I mean, if these memos were scribbled in burnt sienna crayon on the back of a Denny's placemat and somebody had the unmitigated gall to say something about it, would that be part of the 'professional rumor mill'? I'm just asking here, no big deal." -- Jim Treacher

* "The breathless debate over typewriter fonts last week shifted the debate away from Bush's questionable record." -- Time magazine's Amanda Ripley

* "To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation. Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes." -- Abu Mujahed, one of Michael Moore's brave Iraqi minutemen

* "The winning energy is not on Howard. It is on Mark Latham." -- energy-detection specialist Robert Bosler in the Sydney Morning Herald

* "Document expert." -- CBS description of Bill Glennon, who'd come to the network's defence. A more accurate title: typewriter repairman

* "Within 24 hours the documents were being challenged - raising suspicions that CBS had fallen victim to a hoax by Bush supporters to discredit critics of the President's military record." -- the Independent explains Rathergate to its Bush-hating audience

* "I don't know." -- a young DNC canvasser, after James Lileks asked why he should vote for John Kerry

* "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story." -- Dan Rather

* "I was just back in my office banging my head on the jukebox. This is my candidate, and ... I don't know what he's talking about." -- Don Imus, following an interview with John Kerry

* "The fear I have is: How do you know who's doing the Web logs? And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the '60 Minutes' documents were perfectly legitimate?" -- Emerson College professor Jeffrey Seglin

* "Three full days after the CBS Rathergate fraud regarding Bush's military records was revealed, two days after it was confirmed, and one day after CBS itself had started to hedge and fudge just a little bit ('Yeah, well you know, we stand by the story, but we might have been fooled, too'), Andrew Jaspan's paper repeated in explicit detail every single, discredited charge and dismantled piece of evidence that CBS had broadcast." -- Professor Bunyip notes the Melbourne Age's remarkable slowness

* "The political impact of Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9-11 on this year's presidential election appears to be overestimated." -- McLaughlinOnline

* "Lately I'm thinking Mark Latham will win ... I'm not exactly sure why I think Latham will win. The polls certainly don't support me." -- me, getting it wrong

* "I have never been more confident of a story in my life." -- Dan Rather

* "Australia has kept faith with the US and we are endangering the Australians now by this wanton disregard for international law and multilateral channels." -- Diana Kerry, sister of John, helps "restore America’s respect and leadership"

* "I've been shooting people, didn't you know?" -- Ayad Allawi confirms those terrible rumours spread by Sydney Morning Herald writer Paul McGeough

* "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret." -- CBS News President Andrew Heyward

* "There are these bizarre moments that make you shudder." -- a Kerry advisor on Teresa Heinz Kerry, who'd earlier described herself as "African-American" to black audiences, called opponents of her husband's healthcare plan "idiots", and told a television interviewer that her detractors were "scumbags"

* "It looks like he got into some TBT with the solution a few percentage points too strong." -- an online fake-tanning expert judges John Kerry's new orange look

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QUOTES OF 2004 - OCTOBER

* "Here's what really makes bloggers mad: I know stuff." -- the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Nick Coleman, who boasts that he has "reported from almost every county in the state"

* "That's not a grand coalition." -- John Kerry disses the nations united in liberating Iraq

* "About 80 republicans showed up to picket the event. I was so happy to see them. Every minute they spend protesting me is another minute I've kept them away from getting out the Republican vote." -- Michael Moore, whose Slacker Uprising Tour kept tens of thousands from getting out the Democrat vote

* "Nature is celebrating last night's presidential debate. The trees are alive with the sound of Kerry." -- Vanity Fair's James Wolcott

* "He was a cruel dictator. We helped to prop him up. We started him off in the first place. But if the alternative is carnage on the scale we're now seeing, what do you think that the Iraqis want? I mean, history shows that what Bush did, and what Kerry thinks he might be able to do, cannot work, especially in Iraq." -- Robert Fisk opposes Iraqi democracy ... during an interview with Democracy Now!

* "It's quite obvious to us that they are prepared to sell out Tasmanian jobs to get a few votes in CBD Melbourne and Sydney." -- Tasmanian Forestry Industry Association boss Terry Edwards on the ALP's tree-saving, vote-losing environmental policy

* "America's most decorated soldier, Colonel David Hackworth, has repeated the claim that the US has no option but to re-introduce the draft in 2005: How long before a re-elected Coalition government follows suit?" -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Antony Loewenstein, whose pledge is to "unload the bias" -- buckets of it, all over his readers

* "There was no trace of the scowling, growling candidate who scared children during last week's presidential debate when he faced his rival John Kerry and came off second best." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Marian Wilkinson maintains her usual standards

* "Only two of President Hamid Karzai's 30 ministers are women; only about 20 public management posts are filled by women." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough notes the lack of progress in Afghanistan, where women were previously arrested for leaving the house unaccompanied

* "Vote Howard and bid your children farewell!" -- fear-mongering draft cartoon in the Byron Bay Echo

* "I was tired of Sudan being on the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. I was tired of dictators with Swiss bank accounts, like Castro and Arafat and Mugabe, masquerading as men of the people. I was tired of Europeans picking on cowboys, everybody picking on the Jews, and the whole supposedly civilized world of gutless wonders, including the dinosaur graveyard called Berkeley, picking on America and Israel. As I write this, 1.2 million black Christian and Muslim Sudanese are starving to death thanks to the Arab government in Khartoum and the worldwide mafia of France, Germany, China, Russia, and practically every Islamic country on the face of the earth. What happened to the little boy who cried when Adlai Stevenson lost? He died in Darfur." -- lifelong Democrat Kinky Friedman explains why the Democrats lost his vote in 2004

* "Cross ytour fingers the voters of Bennelong gewt risd of him on Saturday. -- Sydney Morning Herald columnist Typo Kingston

* "I'M CHANGING THE CLIMATE!" -- delightful bumper sticker on a twin-turbo Porsche Cayenne

* "Dear God, don't let Howard get re-elected." -- athiest Phillip Adams appeals to a non-existent power on the morning of Australia's election

* "It's over at 1820 EST." -- commenter TT calls the Australian election correctly just 20 minutes after polls closed on the East coast

* "Can Latham survive? 2004 was certainly not a re-run of 1969, when Gough led Labor to the brink of victory before truiumphing in 1975." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Margo Kingston, whose grief caused her to forget that Gough Whitlam didn't 'truiumph' in 1975

* "On Saturday night the giant, lumbering road train known as the will of the people, aka the democratic process, smashed through the pretensions, delusions and manipulations of the unelected and unaccountable who presume to tell Australians what to think and who to be." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Sheehan

* "How on earth could we have put this scheming, mendacious little man and his miserable claque back in office for another three years? Worse, how could we have brought them to the very brink of absolute control of the nation's entire parliamentary process and authority?" -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Alan Ramsey

* "The decision of Australians to return Mr. Howard to office is a strong statement that Australian voters cannot be intimidated by terrorist acts." -- editorial in the New York Sun

* "Writing to a Clark County voter is a chance to explain how US policies effect you personally, and the rest of the world more generally, and who you hope they will send to the White House. It may even persuade someone to use their vote at all." -- The Guardian launches Operation Clark County

* "Cancer claims snowy-haired philosopher." -- AOL headine announces the death of Jacques Derrida

* "When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." -- Democrat VP candidate John Edwards gets all Pentecostal

* "Tell the police immediately if your estranged husband is coming to murder you. They can give you 'advice and support' until you are killed." -- British legal help from Natalie Solent

* "He looks like he shops at Wal-Mart. That’s not what the president is supposed to be." -- Oliver Stone wants George W. Bush to dress all fancy-like

* "France is that way!" -- an anti-Moore demonstrator's response to the plus-sized director's fans

* "Our hearts overflow with tears for the suffering of Iraqui prisoners." -- a sign held by members of America's most pitiful

* "If I say it out loud, it's death." -- Alexandra Wolfe, daughter of Tom, quietly admits she'll be voting for Bush

* "We're the majority and they're the minority, and on Jan. 20, they're going to be the official minority." -- Michael Moore keeping it real with the kids during his Slacker Uprising tour

* "There was a reason to kill (British hostage Kenneth) Bigley, there was a reason to kill the (two) Americans (kidnapped with Bigley). There was not a reason to kill me." -- SBS reporter John Martinkus, following his release from insurgent Iraqi capture

* "If the editor of the Guardian's up for it, fifty quid says Bush will win a higher proportion of the vote in Clark County on November 2 than he did last time." -- Mark Steyn, who would have won his bet

* "The relative safety of the Afghan capital and a stunning demonstration of the people's yearning for a new life when they came out to vote in their millions on October 9 are proof that good things might happen in this crazy world." -- the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough credits Afghan advancement to random craziness

* "Can I get me a hunting license here?" -- John Kerry employs yokel-speak in a bid to gain Ohio critter-killing authorisation

* "You couldn't fail to be a little shocked by the volume and pitch of the invective directed our way." -- The Guardian's Ian Katz is alarmed by reaction to Operation Clark County. His paper had earlier run this line about the US, from director Ken Loach:"Today, your country is reviled across continents as never before"

* "On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?" -- The Guardian's Charlie Brooker. Reader Arty wrote this in reply: "Somebody flies a plane into the Guardian headquarters and the bastards are all burning or being crushed alive. Hundreds of the fuckers, from the publisher down to the cockroach-office-support-staff. Burning! Burning! like only leftist shitbags can burn. Charlie jumps out of his office window rather than get burned but spectators throw him back inside. (now here's the funny part) It's take-your-kid-to-work day at The Guardian."

* "The other day John Kerry, as part of his campaigning, took a gun, dressed in camouflage, and went off to shoot some geese ... To foreign eyes, this gratuitous violence had to be the most extraordinary moment of a larger-than-life US presidential campaign." -- the Melbourne Age's Michelle Grattan demonstrates goose solidarity

* "I will be worried. I will be concerned for the world." -- Salon columnist Joe Conason considers the possiblity of a GWB second term

* "Vote for us or your children will die. It is a compelling message and President George Bush has no qualms about delivering it." -- Sydney Morning Herald US correspondent Marian Wilkinson is insane

* "Eat your soylent green, clutch monkeys." -- reader Matt from Denver defends automatic transmissions

* "Don't get sick." -- one-liner penned by Kerry scriptwriters to counter George W. Bush's healthcare plan. As delivered by Kerry, however: "And don’t get sick. Just pray, stand up and hope, wait - whatever. We are all left wondering and hoping. That's it"

* "If Africa was to vote, Kerry would get a landslide." -- Ugandan political analyst Robert Kabushenga

* "Clueless people love Bush." -- headline on a Molly Ivins column published at Working for Spare Change

* "A robber arrives to steal the dad's red car! But the goat butts the robber and saves the day." -- terrorist and children's literature expert Osama bin Laden summarises The Pet Goat

* "I know a great deal about the Middle East because I've been raising Arabian horses." -- actor and intensely informed Bush opponent Patrick Swayze

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QUOTES OF 2004 - NOVEMBER

* "One of the Democrats' greatest weaknesses: their vulnerability to getting knocked off stride by the rush of events, their tendency to fret that all is lost, almost to indulge in it, when the car hits a simple bump in the road." -- Josh Marshall outlines his reasons for voting Republican during a time of war

* "My key prediction in an article published in February this year was this: 'On Monday, December 20, 2004, the Electoral College will meet and 327 votes will be cast for John Kerry and 211 for George W. Bush.' Subject to a quite minor revision, that remains my forecast." -- Australian poll wizard Malcolm Mackerras backs horseface in the Presidential horserace

* "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry ... I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: 'Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." -- BBC correspondent Barbara Plett weeps for Yasser Arafat

* "One woman shrieked at the top of her lungs." -- Hollywood reaction to Roger L. Simon's Republican voting confession

* "The sort of young women you would expect to see jumping out of a cake at a bachelor party." -- author Bill Bryson describes his Bush twins fantasy

* "If you believe, as I do, that America's best days are ahead of us, then join me tomorrow and change the direction of America." -- John Kerry makes an election eve plea for voters to stick with Bush

* "The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riff-raff who disagree to heel." -- New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd had four years to work up a better line

* "There are a lot of long faces today." -- New Yorker editor David Remnick, who really should consider John Kerry's feelings before speaking

* "George Soro." -- caption typo in the Washington Times. Hey, who wouldn't be sad after wasting millions on a campaign to oust George W. Bush?

* "I was out last night and I was with some friends I knew, including Val Kilmer, and they looked as if they were going to start crying. It's an overall landslide for Bush, which is really bizarre." -- British artist Tracey Emin, whose affection for the bizarre should place her in Bush's camp

* "If another '9/11' does happen - a distinct possibility - then Bush's re-election credentials are shot to pieces." -- Melbourne Age reader Leonard Smith

* "Could the Guardian and its Operation Clark County be responsible for a second Bush term?" -- the BBC's Kevin Anderson

* "De prezident, he be a racist ... de prezident, he got a bug fer killin' ... Seems lak haf' de country be plumb crazy." -- Alice from Turkey Scratch, one of the multiple personalities inhabiting folksinger Joan Baez

* "Phone sex operator." -- Cathy Seipp's friend Lewis identifies the one career forever closed to Fox News contributor Susan Estrich

* "This is John Kerry." -- John Kerry in a phone call to Al Gore following Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean. The line went dead instantly

* "That idea's so f---ing bad it sounds like something Rove came up with." -- George W. Bush during a staff meeting

* "I am in mourning because of the decision our country has made. I don't think I'll be wearing pants for a while." -- 18-year-old Western Washington University freshman Riley Sweeney launches a pantsless protest against George W. Bush

* "Don't blow up Travis County in Texas pleaaaaaaaase." -- one of the tragic appeasers at sorryeverybody.com

* "Here's a great girl band doing Fleetwood Mac songs." -- a Guantanamo Bay military intelligence officer commences to torture an inmate

* "To say this scheme backfired is to fail to give it proper credit. It ranks right up there with the worst political schemes, ever." -- NRO's Michael Ledeen on The Guardian’s Operation Clark County

* "Those little bastards betrayed us again." -- Hunter S. Thompson condemns the youth vote

* "There is a lot of grieving and mourning -- not unlike the Jewish shiva." -- Manhattan psychologist Bonnie Maslin discusses her devastated Democrat patients

* "Instead of the New Frontier, Karl and W. offer the New Backtier." -- New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes from the new craptier

* "All Iraqis were Republicans on election day. We are confident he will finish the job and wipe out terrorists from the region during the next four years." -- Ahmed, an Iraqi in Australia

* "Karl [Rove] was calling states long before the networks did. His grasp of reality was totally uncanny." -- a Bush confidant quoted in Newsweek

* "While the Democrat supporters had right on their side, the Republican supporters were far, far better at fighting dirty ... Woe betide any TV reporter who didn't check his facts properly before claiming that George W didn't finish his national guard service." -- The Guardian's Paul Carr, who thinks pointing out factual errors is "fighting dirty"

* "May they go to hell!" -- Iraqi soldiers after being told by Ayad Allawi of the need to liberate Fallujah. Allawi's response: "To hell they will go."

* "Arafat is in stable condition after dying in a Paris hospital." -- the WSJ's James Taranto

* "Really? I wonder who'll get his tea-towel." -- my 93-year-old grandmother, on learning that Yasser had died

* "I don't know if we'll survive the next four years ... I don't think the Americans have, on the whole, the faintest idea - and I have to say also I don't think most Australians do either. But it's not just the threat from nuclear war. It's the threat of what's happening to the environment, the global warming which is occurring rapidly now, to ozone depletion, to species extinction, to deforestation - it's the whole thing." -- Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr Helen Caldicott, who thus far has not responded to a $1,000,000,000 bet that humankind will still exist in 2008

* "Here's a newspaper article on blogs, pointing out that they can be inaccurate. It mentions my name: Dave Berry." -- Dave Barry

* "It has now been two months since CBS President Andrew Heyward promised that the investigation would be over and public in 'weeks, not months.'" -- Glenn Reynolds, waiting for the network to release its Rathergate report

* "If you want to live in the Netherlands, you have to adhere to our rules." -- Dutch immigration minister Rita Verdonk responds to national feeling following the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh

* "I have decided to leave the CBS Evening News on March 9, 2005." -- Dan Rather, in a memo yet to be precisely dated

* "Latham's f..king mad; he's in complete denial." -- a senior Labor figure, quoted in The Bullletin

* "My family is truly sorry that we live in a great country, that we have an abundance of food, and that George Bush beat John Kerry like a rented mule. So, in solidarity with all those sorry individuals, here are five sympathetic head tilts and two very weak power fists." -- reader Chris Joyce celebrates Thanksgiving

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QUOTES OF 2004 - DECEMBER

* "THE ONLY TERRORIST I KNOW IS NAMED BU$H." -- a Canadian protester who's never heard of Osama bin Laden

* "It turns out that the film's real targets are Hollywood actors who have been rash enough to speak out against the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq. Sean Penn, Timothy Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon, Samuel L. Jackson and Alec Baldwin are mercilessly pilloried and (literally) demolished. Whatever you think of their politics, these actors, Penn and Robbins especially, have impressed over the years with their talent and their willingness to take risks ... and they don’t deserve the bile that Parker and Stone pour over them." -- film reviewer David Stratton defends Team America's stupid victims

* "Porsche owners were more likely to be Republican; Volvo owners, Democratic." -- from a New York Times analysis of campaign data

* "Even in Los Angeles, even in Malibu, even in Hollywood. Tremble, Barbra, tremble. We are right outside your gates, with our truth. We are not afraid and we shall overcome." -- Ben Stein alerts California to the Republican Underground

* "To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom." -- actor Rowan Atkinson on the UK's proposed don't-mock-Islam law

* "I think my cartoons are very funny." -- The Guardian’s Steve Bell has a unique opinion

* "I just had one of my best days as a journalist today." -- Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, whose "best day" involved setting up a soldier with a question for Donald Rumsfeld

* "Herbert M. Hazelkorn, of Glencoe, Illinois, left us on December 7, 2004, of a broken heart at the recent passing of his wife of 35 years, Bobby, exacerbated by a broken spirit arising from the results of the Presidential election." -- obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times

* "Yesterday I came to your country. Today, I met the President." -- Iraq the Model's Omar goes to Washington

* "We have to recognise that others have some rights as well. They don't lose all rights because they're engaged in criminal conduct." -- British attorney-general Lord Goldsmith makes evident his priorities

* "The mouth machine registers experiences and then articulates them -- utters them. In eating we may munch into whole chains of previously established connotations, just as we may disrupt them. For instance, an email arrives, leaving traces of its rhizomatic passage zapping from one part of the world to another, and then to me." -- Professor Elspeth Probyn demonstrates the writing skills that have earned her $266,500 in government grants

* "The winds are not going the right way … they're pushing sort of westerly instead of the normal easterly trade winds that we would normally get." -- the Australian Institute of Marine Science's Dr. Ray Berkelmans warns of global warming. Not exactly 'The Day After Tomorrow', is it?

* "Look, guys, you got the benefit of the doubt with the 'butterfly ballots' in 2000, but we can't dumb it down for you much more than this." -- Free Will's Aaron after a Minnesota Democrat mistakenly awarded an electoral vote to John Edwards instead of John Kerry

* "They can take every penny. They can take every peaceful night's sleep. They can take every home comfort. They will never stop me campaigning against their vile destruction of Tasmania's forests and its wildlife. Not ever. They misjudge we defenders of the forests." -- Greens leader Bob Brown doesn't like it when business fights back

* "It is not permissible to stand and urinate as this is now the culture of the Kuffaar." -- the Imam orders his followers to sit down for Islam

* "Redeem yourself or forever be consigned to history's judgment of political turncoats, renegades and saboteurs." -- Ralph Nader hands out some tough love to ex-supporter Michael Moore

* "For the left-leaning political intelligentsia, 2004 was a peculiarly dispiriting year." -- academic Robert Manne explains why the rest of us are so happy

Click here for 2003's Quotes of the Year.

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SLOW GEORGE

Global warming is still a long way off, if George Monbiot's frozen brain is any guide:

In February, a leaked report from the Pentagon revealed that it sees global warming as far more dangerous to US interests than terrorism.

Sigh. The report wasn't leaked. The report was to, rather than from, the Pentagon. The report was hypothetical. Monbiot's next column? A fierce condemnation of NORAD's citizen-tracking spy satellites.

(Via Rob at SemiSkimmed)

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RENO MELBOURNE 911

Way to go, Victorian coppers:

Victoria Police's world-first roadside drug testing system is in tatters after the man identified as the first in the world to return a positive drug test at a roadside drug bus was cleared - first by an independent laboratory and now by police.

Earlier this year the Victorian government had to refund $26 million to drivers wrongly fined for speeding. Professor Bunyip is all over this like beetroot on a burger, and he's got more to come.

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LABOR NEEDS DIVERSITY

Excellent column from ... well, just read this extract before you hit the link:

Fewer and fewer Labor pollies have been self-employed, privately employed or even unemployed. They belong to a class who comprehend the outside world through focus groups, demographic analyses and what are virtually anthropological observations of voters, rather than direct experience.

The other day, I interviewed an up-and-coming MP, an impressive young woman who holds pilot's licences for both agricultural and general commercial purposes, who has worked in air traffic control at Tullamarine and Mascot, as well as being involved on a family farm. Unfortunately, she's a Liberal. That automatically, axiomatically makes her more interesting than most ALP counterparts who have been recruited from the ranks.

Politics should welcome people of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, interests and experience. If Labor is to improve its empathy with the voters, it should be more eclectic in its pre-selection process -- less reliant on characters who, on leaving school, join an ALP branch and sign up for a faction.

At state level, the situation is even odder. If you want to become a premier or chief minister, at least in a Labor state, it's almost mandatory to have worked at the ABC. Premiers Brian Burke, Neville Wran, Bob Carr and Chief Minister Clare Martin are among those who come to mind. No wonder conservatives accuse the national broadcaster of bias.

Via Alan E. Brain, who also examines the cut-and-run urgings of ironically-named academic D. Day.

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MARR RUBBO'ED OUT

It's meant to be the season of goodwill, yet Australia's literary elite is throwing a hand-flapping hissy fit of Normandy proportions:

Three of the five judges of the $42,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award, including writer and journalist David Marr, resigned late last week amid a flurry of claims and counter-claims. Marr, along with fellow resigning judge Melbourne bookshop director Mark Rubbo, said in a statement yesterday that the company responsible for administering the prize had cut the judges' terms in half, introduced the right "to dismiss any judge at any time without explanation" and stripped the panel of "nearly all decision-making, including election of the chair".

The third judge to resign, writer Kerryn Goldsworthy, said yesterday his decision to go was "the result of an accumulation of issues and unfortunate events".

Troublemaker Marr is at the centre of the feud:

The catalyst is believed to have been the decision not to invite Marr to take up the traditional second three-year term of judging. This news is said to have been delivered in a less-than-tactful way ...

Hmmm. Dave is often less than tactful himself.

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VERY SIMPLE ANSWER DODGED

Before the US election, Michael Moore was anxious that his documentary Overweight 9/11 be broadcast everywhere so that it might turn voters against Bush:

The only problem with my desire to get this movie in front of as many Americans as possible is that, should it air on TV, I will NOT be eligible to submit "Fahrenheit 9/11" for Academy Award consideration for Best Documentary. Academy rules forbid the airing of a documentary on television within nine months of its theatrical release (fiction films do not have the same restriction).

Therefore, I have decided not to submit "Fahrenheit 9/11" for consideration for the Best Documentary Oscar. If there is even the remotest of chances that I can get this film seen by a few million more Americans before election day, then that is more important to me than winning another documentary Oscar. I have already won a Best Documentary statue. Having a second one would be nice, but not as nice as getting this country back in the hands of the majority.

It was all about the election.. But now, with the US safely returned to absolute Bush control, Moore has -- big surprise -- changed his mind. Asked by Rolling Stone if his movie failed, Moore replied:

No. I mean, Bush is still in office, but the film is about the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. Those were the original reasons I made the film. It wasn't about the election. The feeling I had after Roger and Me was different because those of us from Flint [Michigan] who made the movie felt like we had the power to change things. In this case, you know, I wasn't the candidate. I couldn't make John Kerry give a very simple answer to what he would do with this war.

All Kerry's fault. Gotcha. On the plus side, the country is back in the hands of the majority.

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ABC ARROGANT AND STUBBORN

AM -- the ABC radio program that announced "if this is liberty, then it's far from perfect" only 12 hours after Saddam was driven from Baghdad -- continues its desperate sniping:

The President has shown no loss of confidence in Mr Rumsfeld. In fact there is suspicion in Washington that President Bush admires Mr Rumsfeld for his arrogance and stubbornness – both characteristics the President was accused of by Democrats during the election campaign.

That's from ABC Washington correspondent John Shovelan, who thinks months-old (and barely related) election accusations are apt closer material.

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GOOD/NOT GOOD

Good news from Iraq: Arthur Chrenkoff's final edition of goodness for 2004. He promises the segment will return next year, which is also good news.

Bad news from Iraq: Ali, one of three brothers who contribute to Iraq the Model, has quit blogging. Some remarks in his final post have left fans puzzled; whatever the reason for Ali's departure, I hope he returns soon.

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CATE FEAR

Cate Blanchett joins the sorry:

Cate Blanchett loves living in her homeland of Australia - despite her frustration that Prime Minister John Howard was recently re-elected.

Despite the Conservative leader's win, the Aviator actress believes good can be born out of political opposition as it forces people to become more aware of issues and forces them into action.

Blanchett says, "I do love it (Australia), but many people are very saddened by the recent re-election of PM John Howard - what it condones.

"But one has to be optimistic because good things can come out of a frustration with an administration. It politicises you."

Interesting theory. Howard has now been elected four times. By the way, Alexander Downer today becomes Australia's longest serving foreign minister. Tomorrow -- barring the saddened masses suddenly rising up and forcing him from office -- Howard becomes Australia's second-longest serving Prime Minister. We might have a drink on Tuesday night to celebrate.

(Via Rafe Champion)

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HUTTON REPORT AWAITED

The Australian Test team is too good:

Yesterday's events re-emphasised how no one country can come close to Australia at present ... Australian captain Ricky Ponting could only agree that such exercises in shooting fish in barrels do not bode well for the welfare of Test cricket.

What to do? The Australian proposes a handicap system:

The most obvious solution would be to give opposing teams a head start, based on a sliding scale: say 200 runs for the bottom-ranked Bangladeshis, scaling down to 50 runs for the halfway-decent English. On a similar principle, we could offer our opponents anywhere between one and five extra batsmen and fielders.

Maybe we should force all the Australians to bat left-handed. The ones who don't already (Langer, Hayden, Lehmann, Gilchrist) that is. Perhaps Harry Hutton, a skilled problem solver and diplomat, can work something out.

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DIVERGENT VIEWS EXPLAINED

"Now to a story of two brothers who have sharply diverging views on American policy in the Middle East," reports the ABC's Hamish Robertson. Why might these two Palestinians disagree? Let's find out:

Khaled Zighari survived more than 19 years in Saddam Hussein's most notorious prison ... Khaled is one Palestinian who praises the Bush administration for toppling Saddam.

His brother Rashid has a rather different perspective. In fact, he's being held in the United States on charges of hijacking and bombing airliners.

(Via contributor J.F. Beck)

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SELF-APPOINTED INTELLIGENTSIA MANNE

Robert Manne is sad:

For the left-leaning political intelligentsia, 2004 was a peculiarly dispiriting year.

This group - in which I now include myself - has continued to believe that truth in government matters. In the week following the Scrafton incident, the Coalition's electoral stocks actually rose.

The left-leaning intelligentsia remains concerned about the fate of the thousands of mainly Iraqi and Afghan refugees on temporary visas, who live in a daily purgatory and, even more, about the suffering of the dozens of mainly Iranian asylum seekers who have been gradually going mad as a result of their indefinite incarceration for the past five to six years.

No word on how long Manne has been imprisoned. I wonder if he's noticed that policies pursued by Bush, Blair, and Howard have permitted three million Afghan refugees to return home since 2002.

Even stranger is the question of the invasion of Iraq. It is now clear beyond argument that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction; that it posed no danger to its neighbours, let alone to the West; and that since the invasion tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed while daily life has descended into a truly Hobbesian hell. Nevertheless, despite all this, Iraq barely rated a mention in the election campaign. Compared to truly serious matters, such as the domestic economy, the broad public frankly did not give a damn about our role in the origin of the Iraq tragedy.

The "Iraq tragedy"; Manne thinks it began with Saddam's removal.

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COVER THIS, CBS

Powerline -- Time magazine's Blog of the Year! Excellent choice; the Powerline team (along with LGF) led the way on Rathergate, a story perfectly crafted for blogger attention. Some links here and here to Dan coverage from Powerline and others.

One assumes Time's Andrea Ripley wasn't a Blog o' the Year judge. Speaking of old slow media, consider the massive volume of news this year (Iraq, Afghanistan, elections everywhere, Olympics, Reagan, bombings in Spain, Abu Ghraib, Saddam in court, Yasser, Osama's return, Boston winning something, etc, etc) and that this didn't produce (in most cases) increased circulation or viewership. If the press couldn't cash in on 2004, how will they cope during a slow year?

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QUESTION NOT ASKED

Veteran foe of democracy John Pilger -- whose entire body is on compassionate tilt these days -- faces a gruelling interrogation from Antony Loewenstein. It would have been interesting to learn if Pilger still supports Madrid-style bomb attacks:

The current threat of attacks in countries whose governments have close alliances with Washington is the latest stage in a long struggle against the empires of the west, their rapacious crusades and domination. The motivation of those who plant bombs in railway carriages derives directly from this truth.

Antony never got around to asking. Must have been pushed for time.

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GOOD CALL, STAN

Are you alive? Well, then maybe you should thank Stanislav Petrov:

There was a time when Petrov, now 65 and a widower, was almost larger than life. He was a privileged member of the Soviet Union's military elite, a lieutenant colonel on the fast track to a generalship. He was educated, squared away and trustworthy, and that's why he was in the commander's chair on Sept. 26, 1983, the night the world nearly blew up.

Tensions were high: Weeks earlier, on Sept. 1, Soviet fighters had shot down a Korean airliner, killing all 269 people aboard.

Petrov was in charge of the secret bunker where a team of 120 technicians and military officers monitored the Soviet Union's early-warning system. It was just after midnight when a new satellite array known as Oko, or The Eye, spotted five U.S. missiles heading toward Moscow. The Eye discerned that they were Minuteman II nuclear missiles.

Petrov's computer was demanding that he follow the prescribed protocol and confirm an incoming attack to his superiors. A red light on the computer that read START! kept flashing at him. And there was this baleful message: MISSILE ATTACK!

Read on. It's fascinating.

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INDUSTRY FIGHTS BACK

Excellent column from Miranda Devine in today's Sun-Herald:

After years of cowardly pandering to environmental and animal rights activists, at last industry is fighting back.

Groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Wilderness Society have long been getting away with twisting the truth and using questionable methods to push their agendas. Many other groups have become power-crazy bullies using a compliant media to expand their influence.

But last week, in a twin blow for fairness, the Tasmanian timber company Gunns Ltd filed suit against 20 activists, alleging they have told lies and sabotaged the company; and Italian clothing giant Benetton refused to cave in to PETA threats and boycott Australian wool. Not only that, but the Australian Wool Innovation group last month launched legal action in the Federal Court to stop PETA threatening clothing retailers

And the really good news:

Gunns shares rose to an all-time high at initial news of its legal action, reported Hobart's The Mercury newspaper.

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PHIL ON THE COUCH

Phillip Adams reveals the terrible childhood forces that shaped him:

Gun lust: "A toy cowboy gun -- a scaled-down version of a Colt .45 in the cheapest of cast metals with flanks of plastic masquerading as pearl handles. It was the most beautiful object I'd ever seen."

Materialism: "Buying it, possessing it, was entirely out of the question. First of all, the price was enormous: around ten shillings."

American cultural imperialism: "Oh, that gun! It looked exactly like the one Tom Mix used in the cowboy serial at the kids' matinee at Hoyts Rialto -- or the two that Hopalong Cassidy kept in matching holsters."

Jealousy: "It was the sort of present that the wealthy parents of my best friend, Johnny Sinclair, could easily buy for him. Even the less affluent Prestons, just up the road, could buy it for David, whom I regarded as my worst enemy."

Self-pity: "But there was no-one who could or would buy it for me."

Parental resentment: "Once my absentee mother, in an attempt to demonstrate the depth of her maternal concerns, had made me some short pants ..."

Shame: "I can still hear the laughter those wretched pants provoked at East Kew State. Almost as bad had been the two-wheeler I'd been given which, instead of being a shiny, glamorous velocipede like my friend Johnny's or my enemy David's, turned out to be embarrassingly secondhand and old-fashioned."

Sexual insecurity: "To make matters worse, it had pink tyres. Pink! The thought of being seen on it, let alone leaving it with the gleaming machines in the school bike shed, was intolerable."

If only Phil's bike had non-girly tyres. Imagine all the columns we'd have been spared.

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NEWS BRIEFLETS

* CNN mocks CNN.

* The Sydney Morning Guardian isn't looking forward to Harrison Ford's new movie: "The film promises to depict the story from the point of view of US soldiers and politicians. It seems unlikely that the plight of the Iraqis will figure too prominently in Hollywood's take on the subject."

* An ABC program condemned within the ABC as "inaccurate, emotive, unfair, misleading and seriously lacking in balance" has won Australia's top award for environmental journalism.

* Look who turned up in the SMH the other day: Mark Lawson, the clown who launched the plastic turkey myth.

* Why blog? Acidman offers some straightforward reasons: "I like my audience and I've met some really great folks over the past three years that I never would have known except for my blog. I swap email with people from all over the world. I believe that I 'know' a lot of individuals that I probably never will meet face to face. That's not a bad payoff for me."

* Alan Ramsey dismisses the Eureka uprising as "a story about a flag designed by a Canadian and a 20-minute rebellion led by a Pom who later became a land-owning Melbourne politician who used Chinese miners as strike breakers and who opposed the vote for anyone who did not own property. So much for Peter Lalor, Eureka hero." Hey, sounds pretty good to me.

* Labor is sinking in the West: "The survey, conducted in the three months to December, shows the Liberal-led Opposition has gained a 14-percentage-point lead in primary votes over Labor of 49 per cent to 35 per cent."

* Describing John McCain as a conservative Republican should just about disqualify someone from the Washington beat.

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PEOPLE MOCKED

Those concerned about the UK's proposed religious hatred bill may be interested in the result of an Australian vilification case:

An evangelical Christian group incited hatred and severe ridicule of Muslims when it called them demons, liars and terrorists, a tribunal ruled yesterday.

In the landmark ruling, Catch the Fire Ministries pastors Daniel Nalliah and Daniel Scot were found guilty of religious vilification, making them the first under Victoria's new race and religion hate laws.

Pastor Scot told a congregation in a 2002 seminar that Muslims were training to take over Australia and encouraged domestic violence, and that Islam was an inherently violent religion.

Yesterday in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, Judge Michael Higgins found that throughout the seminar Pastor Scot had made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct.

Which is illegal, apparently.

Judge Higgins will hear submissions from lawyers relating to fines in January.

Under the new vilification legislation, there is no maximum fine.

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BAGHDAD HOLDEN

An Australian mechanic working in Iraq meets a fellow Aussie who's up on blocks and down on his luck:

A few days ago I was out road testing a Chevy-badged Holden Commodore when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a wrecked car in one of the back streets of the Green Zone in Baghdad. Something about it was vaguely familiar ...

To my complete amazement it turned out to be a badly beat up HR Holden, one of the last things you could ever expect to see in Iraq. Going by the orange painted front guards and rear quarter panels, the old HR had been in use as a taxi cab. The car was left-hand drive and on close inspection it seemed that the conversion had been done in a professional manner.

It's hard to tell what finally killed the car, but a missing cylinder head coupled with a lack of spare parts probably spelled the end of its time on Iraqi roads. The Iraqis are masters are keeping old cars mobile after living with years of sanctions and parts shortages, but this old soldier was obviously beyond even their means.

One of my Iraqi employees was familiar with the HR, and said that there were quite a few on the roads back in the '60s. He thought that Holden was an English brand, and had no idea how these cars ended up in the Middle East.

Coincidentally, the parents of our mate in Iraq owned an HR -- notorious for its "kidney slicer" headlight surrounds -- when he was young. As for the Commodore, it's apparently one of three imported from Dubai for use by US army officers. All three bear the Capone-style marks of a mortar attack:



UPDATE. Holden expert Neil Lyons writes: "It was the 1965-66 HD Holden that had the 'kidney slicer' headlight surrounds, not the 66-67 HR Holden. The 'kidney slicer' was the main feature they tried to remove with the HR make-over."

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HUNGRY ANDY

"I've always encouraged people not to engage in hunger strikes in the past," says Andrew Bartlett, "and I still don't encourage them to do so." Nevertheless, the former Democrats leader plans to begin a hunger strike this weekend.

He's an unpredictable fellow, our Andrew. Did you know, for example, that he's a closet P.J. O'Rourke fan and a reader -- an approving reader -- of this site? Maybe we should send him some food. Bartlett and George W. Bush aren't the only politicians who get blogs, by the way; yesterday I received a Christmas card from Minister for Foreign Affairs (and fellow pawn of the hegemon) Alexander Downer. You know, if this place is enjoyed by conservatives and Democrats alike, I must be doing something seriously wrong.

Sam Ward is operating on a much higher level, becoming ensnared in a drinking session with Ian Chappell, Waqar Younis, and Simon O'Donnell. I was an O'Donnell drinky victim in '93, although we weren't joined by other old cricketers; instead, we had to make do with the company of model Jo Bailey.

Sigh.

(Bartlett news via Theo Clark)

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GENERAL ALERT

This year's sacrificial sheep coupon is 20% more expensive than in 2003. Also, unlike certain lazy sites, Jim Treacher has a new poll. Consider yourself alerted, poll-taking sheep couponers.

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MEET A DEMOCRAT

Alone? Depressed? Can't find that special someone who wants to discuss Ohio recounts over a candlelit dinner? Then join the tolerant romantics at the Democratic Singles Network! Just listen to these satisfied Democrat customers:

"SOOOO happy to find a site for Democrats. I have been doing eHarmony (don't get me started on how much I hate eHarmony) and Match.com and I just can't date another conservative."

"After the people I've met since I became single 7 years ago, I recently realized there is no way I could date a conservative republican."

"If we can't vote the Republicans out, we can hook up Democratic couples and breed them out."

"I don't care to date narrow-minded, judgmental, religiously fanatical, etc., etc., Republican women."

"I would NEVER consider dating or marrying someone who was not a liberal or progressive."

"I have been corresponding with great women on this site and hope to meet them and dance with one of them at John Kerry's innaguration 1/20/05!!!"

That's going to be one tragic dance. In other doomed relationship news, Ralph Nader has sent a Dear Michael letter to Mike Moore:

It was a wild and crazy run, was it not, Michael? Weeks of standing before large college audiences mixing a potion of book and movie promotions with a message that was more laughable than producing laughter. You told the young men and women that "George W. Bush and John Kerry both suck. Vote for Kerry." That is supposed to be "cool?" Here you were -- against the Iraq War occupation, pro-justice for the Palestinian people, against the Patriot Act, against the swollen military budget and you were telling the university students to vote for Kerry who is on the complete opposite side of these issues ...

Redeem yourself or forever be consigned to history's judgment of political turncoats, renegades and saboteurs.

It's way too late for that, Ralph.

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EXECUTIONS OVERDUE

Is America a fascist state? YES, YES, YES argues The Daily Kos, whose case is slightly undermined by the fact that The Daily Kos hasn't been shut down and none of its contributors executed in the street. Glen Wishard takes an opposing view.

Those poor Kos people, all convinced that the US somehow opposes Bush. Here's news: even Syrians were in Bush's corner:

While the results of this year's American election may have liberal Democrats and much of the extended international community shaking their heads in disbelief, a surprising number of Arabs seem to have not only expected President George W. Bush's return to power but also supported it.

Since I began teaching in Damascus six months ago, I have been continually surprised to find support and even admiration for Bush in that city, mixed in with the usual polemics about American imperialism. The presumed wildfire of anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment that has consumed much of Europe and Asia has apparently skipped over parts of the Arab world, where people often have more in common with Middle America than they do with the Middle East.

(Via Amir Agam)

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HOLLYWOOD VALUES

Harrison Ford last year:

"I'm very disturbed about the direction American foreign policy is going," said Ford, according to the Australian Associated Press.

"I don't think military intervention is the correct solution," he said. "I regret what we as a country have done so far."

And Harrison Ford now:

Harrison Ford is set to play one of the main characters in the first major film about the war in Iraq.

Variety reports that the film will be based on the upcoming book 'No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah', which will be published next May.

Ford is to play Jim Mattis, the General who led the US assault on Fallujah following the murder of four Americans.

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NEWS BRIEFLETS

* Check out the official inauguration website.

* "Mark it on your calendar," writes Austin Bay. "Next month, the Arab Middle East will revolt."

* Another victory for Michael Moore! Hey, Mike; why not share the love?

* The best line from this report of the shooting of an idiot wearing an Osama bin Laden mask in Costa Rica traffic: "Police declined to detain Mr Sandoval, saying he had believed he was acting in self-defence." In Britain, he'd be jailed.

* Whoa! Nice prices.

* Your taxes at work. Actually, episode nine ist so bad.

* Anne Summers laments commercial exploitation of a beloved tyrant: "Mao Zedong's mausoleum, selling T-shirts and trinkets, is a capitalist roader's delight. The contrast with the non-commercial austerity and gravity of visits to Lenin and Ho's crypts could not be greater."

* James Wolcott finds his audience. Scroll down to the final batch of trackbacks ...

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TERRORISM SOLVED

The Imam decrees:

It is not permissible to stand and urinate as this is now the culture of the Kuffaar.

Which gives reader Stephen W. a brilliant idea: "If we want to stop our Muslim chums doing something, all we need to do is adopt it as part of our filthy culture, whereupon it becomes forbidden to them! I'm strapping on the suicide belt as I speak."

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BEER FORCED

Is it Beer O'Clock yet? That hour tends to arrive early this time of year. Caution is advised:

A 21-year-old Perth man is lucky to be alive after having his stomach ripped open during a beer-skolling game using a home-made device powered by an electric pump.

The drinking game at a 21st birthday party in a southern suburb 10 days ago went badly wrong, rupturing the man's stomach and forcing beer straight into his abdomen.

Via reader Chris Howell. Possibly the victim was using a mechanised version of the BeerMaster 5000:



(Thanks to Stewart McCure for the image)

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TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Via eBay, a 1984 Nissan 720 King Cab Ute: "Those amongst you suffering a lengthy history of non-violent mental illness are likely to find this vehicle appealing."

Winning bid: $581.

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FOREST DEFENDERS 'MISJUDGED'

Goddamn warmal globing will cram the oceans with hideous coral:

New Australian research claims the world's coral reefs could expand in size by as much as a third as oceans heat up.

The study has contradicted the standing view that increased ocean warming, a result of climate change, is killing coral reefs around the world.

The newly published research, by a team led by oceanographer from the University of NSW Dr Ben McNeil, suggests ocean warming will foster reef growth.

It's about time we signed up to that Kabuki Treaty, or whatever it's called. Coral is disgusting. In other happy environmental news, forestry company Gunns Limited is suing Bob Brown and other enviro-activists. Targeted conservationists say the writs are "an unprecedented attack on free speech and their right to protest"; Greens leader Bob Brown is predictably hysterical:

They can take every penny. They can take every peaceful night's sleep. They can take every home comfort. They will never stop me campaigning against their vile destruction of Tasmania's forests and its wildlife. Not ever. They misjudge we defenders of the forests.

He's worried about losing "every home comfort". Go live in a tree, Bob.

UPDATE. Martin Flanagan is deeply concerned: "If Tasmanians opposed to Gunns are silenced, all who challenge the rich and powerful in this country are vulnerable." Good! And speaking of the crushing of dissent:

United Nations officials will not renew the contract of a New Zealand doctor who co-wrote a controversial memoir about life on the front lines of peacekeeping in the 1990s.

Andrew Thomson, who has worked for the UN for 12 years in New York, Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, received a letter three weeks ago declining to renew his contract.

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SAPS FROZEN

Leading arts figures (of whom nobody has ever heard) are angry that the British government is no longer handing them sufficient cash taken from lowly taxpayers:

Leading arts figures reacted with fury yesterday after the government announced a £30m cut in funding in real terms - the first such setback to the arts since the Labour victory in 1997.

John Tusa, managing director of the Barbican, described the decision as a "slap in the face" and a return to "the bad old days". He said that those involved in the arts had been "namby-pamby" in their dealings with the government, and advised them to get "rough".

English arts weenies getting “rough”. This I would pay to see. Oh, the slapping!

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport announced that its allocation of funding to Arts Council England would be frozen at its 2005 level of £413m until 2008. Taking into account Treasury inflation estimates, the grant will be worth £10m less in the financial year 2006-07 and £20m less in 2007-08, meaning a total shortfall of £30m in real terms.

They get £413,000,000 -- four-hundred and thirteen million pounds -- every year. And they’re complaining.

The composer Michael Berkeley called for Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, to "consider her position".

Consider yours, tax bandit.

The reason Sir Simon Rattle had abandoned Britain for Berlin, he said, was that the conductor could not "face fighting the system year in, year out and talking about money rather than music".

He added: "This country produces great performers and creators, and these cuts abuse their gifts. What are we - and history - to make of a socialism that freezes the creative sap of an entire generation?"

Frozen saps. That’s your British arts scene summed up in ten letters.

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PARIS SYNDROME

Idealistic Japanese are rushing to Paris, only to find the place infested with common French people:

A strange illness has descended on Japanese living in Paris, tipping many of them in a state of profound culture shock after realising their ideals about the French capital were unrealistic, a study published in Monday's Liberation newspaper said.

More than a 100 expatriates a year are sinking into a state called "the Paris syndrome" which is characterised by feelings of persecution or suicidal tendencies, according to the mental health facilities of city hospitals.

"They make fun of my French and my expressions", "they don't like me" and "I feel ridiculous in front of them" are common refrains heard by the doctors.

The French sound sort of insular and intolerant. This is the sort of behaviour the French media usually links to bigoted Texan cowboyism. Here’s more from The Times:

A Japanese woman in her 20s stopped a well-dressed Frenchman in the Opera metro station yesterday afternoon and asked him in broken English for help with a public telephone. He replied with a finger in the air and walked on, leaving another potential candidate for “Paris Syndrome”.

UPDATE. In other European developments, the US has denied entry to former Red Army terrorist Astrid Proll. Der Spiegel's front-page headline: 'AMERICA’S NEW ENEMIES:Why a German can’t travel in the USA'.

UPDATE II. These primitive countries should be busted down to component form and sold for spare parts:

Today, in Germany and France, divorcing your spouse is easier, and in most cases cheaper, than dismissing an employee under due observance of the provisions of the contract of employment. The administrative hurdles can be a long nightmare. Court approval may be required and failing it, the employees in question must be reinstated. The labor union representing a majority of the employees must agree to the "social plan" by which the employer company undertakes to assist the employees who lose their jobs.

(Via Rafe Champion)

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REDS RATTLED

Commie paranoia is sweeping the globe:

Cuba pressed on with its biggest military exercises in almost 20 years, with 400,000 reservists joining regular forces and millions of civilians in wargames which the authorities say are to deter a US invasion.

"The enemy will never catch us by surprise," the official communist party daily, Granma, trumpeted Tuesday ..."The only way to stop aggression is to make it abundantly clear that, in this case, Cuba will become from one end to the other an enormous wasp's nest that no aggressor, however powerful, will be able to overcome," Defense Minister Raul Castro said Monday.

Sure thing, Raul. No aggressor could ever overcome a large pod of bugs. And over in the Democratic People's Republic of Total Failure ...

North Korea warned that it would regard any sanctions imposed on it by Japan as a declaration of war and would hit back with an "effective physical" response.

"If sanctions are applied against the DPRK (North Korea)..., we will regard it as a declaration of war against our country and promptly react to the action by an effective physical method,"the unidentified spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Nations with "official news agencies" don’t have a great record in recent international conflicts. Good luck finding your weapons in the dark, North Korea.

(Via contributor J.F. Beck)

UPDATE. Santa isn't welcome in Havana:

Cuba's most senior US diplomat says he has been warned by the government of serious consequences unless he takes down Christmas decorations in Havana.

James Cason says he will not remove the display at the American interests section, which includes a reference to 75 dissidents jailed last year ...

The BBC's Stephen Gibbs in the capital, Havana, says the display does seem designed to irritate the Cuban government.

He adds that the government cancelled Christmas as a holiday for several decades in an apparent bid to increase sugar production.

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'MAKE IT GO AWAY'

The thing that elevates this above your standard Democrat-mockery is that it's not a parody. Try to keep that in mind as you roll about on the floor, shrieking with delight; this is a genuine, heartfelt response to the Tragic Bush Re-Election.

I'd like to see a version using this soundtrack, however. Then it would be perfect.

(Via reader Bob)

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WORLD TO END

Women, minorities hardest hit:

Severe weather caused by global warming can pose greater physical danger to women than men, a Canadian attending a UN conference on climate change said Friday.

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COLE WARNED

Columnist Kathleen Parker breaks the media silence on a good news story out of Iraq:

Regular travelers of the blogosphere, that rare and wonderful new universe on where bloggers post news, commentary and other ruminations on the Web, may be familiar with the names Omar and Mohammed.

They, too, are bloggers. In Iraq with brother Ali, they created a blog called Iraq the Model, through which they’ve kept the blogosphere abreast of events from their native, on-the-ground perspective.

Last week, Omar, 24, and Mohammed, 35, both dentists, came to the United States to meet their American blogging counterparts and to shake hands with someone they hold in high esteem — President George W. Bush. They wanted to thank him.

The two Iraqi brothers, who are Sunni, came to the United States under the sponsorship of Spirit of America, a nonprofit organization founded by technology entrepreneur Jim Hake that helps Americans serving abroad improve the lives of others.

Several bloggers have posted reports of last week’s historic human intersection that began in cyberspace. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine wrote: “They have tremendous courage doing what they are doing: They grab onto free speech like men dying of thirst who finally come upon the oasis. They use their free speech with a gusto we should all admire and aspire to. They use it improve their nation and their future.”

Damn straight. Revolting Juan Cole is suspicious of Iraq the Model, however; Jarvis responds appropriately. So does Ali:

I've exposed you once Dr. Cole and so I did to you precious Riverbend, but I, and my brothers have great expectations for our country and we spend most of our time trying to make them come true. However, if you ever insult my brothers again, I'll make sure to make time for you with a free bonus to your Riverbend. So don't let me put you on my mind or else you'd better focus on something other than Iraq. Talk about Lebanon, or Yemen. Yemen is good! You haven't messed up with a Yemeni blogger I assume? Or if you can't live without talking about Iraq, then keep it poetic. It saves my time and your reputation.

Ali rocks.

UPDATE. Another Iraqi wants to meet the Prez.

UPDATE II. Roger L. Simon meets Omar and Mohammed. So does Patterico.

UPDATE III. Judith Weiss has your complete Omar-and-Mohammed US journey roundup.

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EWARDS IN '08!

Who needs Republican dirty tricks when you can rely on stupid Minnesota Democrats?

Defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry likely is going to get one less electoral vote nationally than he should have -- 251 instead of 252 -- because of an apparent mistake Monday by one of Minnesota's 10 DFL electors.

One of the 10 handwritten ballots cast for president carried the name of vice presidential candidate John Edwards (actually spelled "Ewards" on the ballot) rather than Kerry.

There was stunned silence after the announcement that Edwards had gotten a vote for president, but none of the 10 electors volunteered that they voted for Edwards as a protest, nor did anyone step forward to admit an error.

Meuers said he was certain that the Edwards ballot wasn't his, but he noted that "both the candidates were named John, and the ballots looked pretty much alike."

As Free Will's Aaron notes: "Look, guys, you got the benefit of the doubt with the 'butterfly ballots' in 2000, but we can't dumb it down for you much more than this."

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DARK VICTORY

Having called for readers to nominate “the most cowardly Australian of 2004”, Margo Kingston got all sensitive when a reader nominated her:

Could you expand on why you think I'm the most cowardly Australian of 2004? I've been called many, many things in my career, but never, until comments to this entry, a coward.

People are so unkind. Those nominations have since been treated as votes; here are the 2004 Webdiary Awards. Congratulations, David Marr!

UPDATE. Explaining the Webdiary results to a troubled reader, Margo writes:

I don't discount 'flaming': one popular ultra-right blogger referred his readers to the awards entry.

That should be "popular ultra-BLANK blogger", surely.

UPDATE II. Margo's US correspondent, Kerryn Higgs, continues the smearing of Condi Rice:

Powell’s replacement is another member of the family clan, Condoleezza Rice, who spends her leisure time watching sport with the President and was overheard at a recent dinner, saying As I was telling my husb — " and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, "As I was telling President Bush..."

"Recent"? It happened -- or, more likely, didn’t -- back in April. The clan reference is a nice touch. At least Higgs avoided the n-word.

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NEWS BRIEFLETS

• Whoa! Via reader A.M. Mora y Leon, here's a truly tiltastic compassionate head-tilt.

• "Life, for me, has become intolerable," admits Phillip Adams. Perhaps he's been listening to this disco remix of the Australian national anthem.

• Michael Duffy reports an authentic Christmas miracle.

• Newsweek's Kathryn Williams asks: "Can Moveon.org move on?"

• The collective wrongs of Canberra's press gallery are reviewed by Gerard Henderson.

• Thanks to a Federal Government study, we learn that "when parents disapprove, their children are less likely to drink, and when parents are permissive or tolerant about teenage alcohol use, their children are likely to drink more."

• Network Ten is currently promoting this as a main news item.

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GO LEFT, YOUNG DEMOCRATS

"The days of trying to move the Democratic Party to the right are over," argues Michael Moore, citing some impressive numbers:

•Total members of Move On: More than 2,000,000
•Total Attendance at Vote for Change Concerts: An estimated 280,000
•Total Union Members in U.S.: Around 16,000,000
•Total Number of People Who Have Seen “Fahrenheit 9/11”: Over 50 million
•Total number of you reading this: Perhaps 10 million or more

Er, Mike ... total number of people who voted for George W. Bush: 60,645,844. Malcolm Mackerras is still recovering.

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HUMANITY DOOMED

The Australian Institute of Marine Science's Dr. Ray Berkelmans warns of global warming's terrifying awesomeness:

There's some signs of unusually warm water building there. The winds are not going the right way … they're pushing sort of westerly instead of the normal easterly trade winds that we would normally get. So those signs are a little bit worrying.

'Sort of westerly' instead of easterly? People, we are as good as dead.

(Via contributor J.F. Beck)

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TURKEY FIXINGS

Blogger Patrick Frey extracts a fake turkey correction from the Los Angeles Times:

Joel Stein — Stein's Dec. 5 column said a photo showed President Bush holding a fake Thanksgiving turkey during his 2003 visit to U.S. troops in Iraq. The turkey he was holding was real. Also, the name of Nicole Richie, co-star of "The Simple Life," was misspelled as Ritchie.

This is the second fake turkey correction published in the past year. The mainstream media's concern for accuracy is stunning.

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PROBLEMS

Any problems with the new site? List all problems here, and if you can't (due to other problems) please send an email with the subject line "problems".

All problems will be dealt with once I return from Tuesday's Bulletin Christmas lunch. And recover from resultant cranial problems.

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NEWS BRIEFLETS

• I once installed garden sprinklers at John Elliott's house. By bitter coincidence, the company that bankrupted him is called Water Wheel.

• Howard Dean thinks the Democrats are right on track: "We have a message to sell. I frankly think it's a better message than the Republicans'; we've just got to figure out how to get it out there." I suggest SHOUTING REALLY LOUDLY. Oh; you tried that already.

• Sam Ward asks: "If you genetically engineered away all the bad things about cats, wouldn't you just end up with a dog anyway?"

• Arthur Chrenkoff has your latest good news from Afghanistan.

• What kind of sick monster would steal John Quiggin's posts?

• Pencil sharpeners are now banned in a UK grade school following a bloody calligraphy incident.

• The BBC's gentle description of Theo van Gogh's passing is noted by Professor Bunyip.

• Sure, she's demented and all, but former human shield Donna Mulhearn is actually doing some good in Iraq: "I handed to the children a bag of bright, coloured ribbons and beautiful cards collected by a 95-year-old woman from Sydney as well as some drawings sent from primary-school children in America. The children's eyes sparkled at the sight of the gifts from people from across the world ... On the footpath outside I told a gathering of staff and neighbours that Australian people care about Iraqi children and want to help." We cared so much we joined in the effort to depose Saddam, an improvement Mulhearn doesn't recognise.

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BRING ON THE DOZERS

NSW Housing Minister Carl Scully happens upon a universally-applicable guide to social engineering: if you aren't prepared to live a certain way, you shouldn't force others to do so:

Housing Minister Carl Scully today wrote off as bizarre the so-called Radburn developments of the 1970s, and announced a $500 million plan to renew high need public housing estates in the west.

"I don't think anyone should live in a home that I myself wouldn't live in," Mr Scully told reporters at the estate today.

Mr Scully said it would show the way forward for bulldozing most of the large-scale public housing estates in western and south-western Sydney.

He said the experiment on which many old housing estates were based was disastrous. The Radburn idea was based on the separation of cars and pedestrians, with houses turned away from the street to focus on open space and walkways.

Consider how many 'progressive' social experiments have been instituted over the past century by people who would not for one second consider living under such conditions.

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WHOLE CHAINS MUNCHED

Jim Treacher reviews the Washington Post's guide to good blogging. Depends on what you mean by "good", I guess, but if it's traffic you seek, the calculation is something like this:

short + interesting x frequency = hits

Simple, really. The calculation is a little different for academics chasing grants, however, as Andrew Bolt points out:

In 2000, [Professor Elspeth Probyn] received an $11,000 grant from the ARC to study 'The Making of Mod Oz: the roles of the food media in the construction of contemporary identity'.

In 2001, she won another $137,500 to ruminate over 'Practices and performances of alimentary identities: a comparative analysis of the food media and their audiences'. And that same year she shared a $118,000 ARC grant to study 'Girl Cultures: the effect of media on young women's self-representations'.

Elspeth's work is neither brief nor interesting, but it is churned out with frightening frequency. Bolt supplies an example:

"The mouth machine registers experiences and then articulates them -- utters them. In eating we may munch into whole chains of previously established connotations, just as we may disrupt them.

"For instance, an email arrives, leaving traces of its rhizomatic passage zapping from one part of the world to another, and then to me.

'Unsolicited, it sets out a statement from a Dr Johannes Van Vugt, in San Francisco, who on October 11, 1999, National Coming Out Day in the US, began an ongoing 'Fast for Equal Rights for persons who are gay, lesbian and other sexual orientation minorities'."

gibberish + pretension x academic authority = $266,500 of your taxes.

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DEFEAT TIM BLAIR

I wish to formally disassociate myself from the views of a certain Lewisville, Texas, councilman who opposes a vote to allow the sale of alcohol:

Councilman Tim Blair said he was not happy to be making the call and that he is concerned for the city and its citizens. He said he believes that city has done fine without alcohol and that it should continue as it has for the last 75 years.

Rev. Ben Smith is another alcohol opponent:

Smith expressed his concern over what he fears the sale of beer and wine would do to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Old Town. He said he thinks alcohol sales would tempt bums and drunken migrant workers to linger in the area.

"What do liquor stores and bums have in common? They both will destroy your neighborhoods," Smith said.

The Dallas Morning News, possibly confusing the local Baptist with a representative of Hamas, slightly misinterpreted Smith's remark:

Mr. Smith said Keep Lewisville Safe will launch a campaign to persuade residents to kill the initiatives at the polls. "What do liquor stores and bombs have in common?" he asked. "Both will destroy the area where you live."

Bombs notwithstanding, residents will vote on the matter February 5. Tim Blair must be defeated.

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PETER DOYLE

Seattle's Scott Wilcox, in Sydney with wife Paula, phoned yesterday from Doyle’s Restaurant in Watsons Bay. “This place is beautiful,” he said. Turns out Scott visited on an historic, and very sad, day:

The doyen of the Sydney seafood scene, Peter Doyle, died yesterday, aged 72.

Tributes flowed in last night for the Watsons Bay businessman, who turned a humble fish and chip shop into Doyle's restaurant empire, an institution and international tourist attraction.

Last week we caught up with Scott and Paula for a steak feast and hours of talk. He's been coming to Australia since he was an aimless youngster in the early '70s, and has a powerful bond with this country; for several years Scott worked in the Victorian country town of Shepparton, where he's now headed. Great to meet the both of them.

UPDATE. In other fish news, this Herald Sun account of a fatal shark attack reports: "The man's wife and 10-year-old daughter have requested that his name not be released." Yet in The Australian, it's nothing but names. Odd.

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GARRETT REJECTS PACKAGE

Why did Peter Garrett join the ALP instead of the Greens? Because, as Paul Sheehan writes, the Greens aren't really Green:

The environment is merely a flag of convenience for a large faction of the party, a mother-earth issue onto which they have parasited their real agenda. That's why [Senator Bob] Brown and several hectorers on the Green Senate tickets spent so much time talking about everything but the environment during the election campaign. They couldn't help themselves. They fought the election on the Iraq war. Why? Because while many Greens are dedicated environmentalists, the party is basically a branding exercise, a new package around an old product that most political consumers will never buy.

Unnecessary packaging. Isn't that something the Greens usually complain about?

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CARING FOR CRIMINALS

British attorney-general Lord Goldsmith defends his nation's besieged thieving underclass:

He said that criminals must also have the right to protection from violence ...

"We must protect victims and law abiding citizens," he said.

"But we have to recognise that others have some rights as well. They don't lose all rights because they're engaged in criminal conduct."

Maybe (I'm being hopeful) he's referring to their right to be shot. Meanwhile, Tim Lambert is disgusted:

The London Daily Telegraph has been running a cynical and dishonest campaign in the UK to give people the right to defend themselves against burglars. It's dishonest because people in the UK already have the right to defend themselves against burglars or anyone else who threatens them. The Daily Telegraph's campaign is nothing more than a beat up to create an issue to attack the government with. The truly disgraceful thing about their scare campaign is that it could convince people that self-defence is unlawful and frighten them out of defending themselves against an attacker, resulting in injury or even death of a crime victim. I am disgusted.

Supporting links at Tim's post, presumably written from his home in Tunbridge Wells.

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PAPER KNOWS ITS AUDIENCE

The New York Times is concerned about the reckless availability of Hardee's Thickburger:

If restaurants want to serve food like this, they should print the calories and fat content on the overhead menus.

That’s fine, so far as it goes. But if the NYT’s audience actually requires a fat warning over something called a "thickburger" -- there’s a clue in the name -- then the paper should campaign for other warnings to be posted throughout the city:

Danger! This taxi cab weighs many thousands of pounds, and may cause injury if it rolls over you.

The administration of the Empire State Building wishes to advise that the observation deck is for observing. Not for the construction of towering 150-man human pyramids.

Do not attempt to mate with the grizzly bears. Repeat: Do NOT attempt to mate with the grizzly bears.

Attention, citizen! Are you walking around Times Square in a Bush/Cheney T-shirt? Do you WANT to be killed?

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WELCOME ALL

This is the new site, same as the old site. Well, mostly; this one features an even greater amount of unapproved industrial toxins. You’re breathing the deadly fumes right now!

On the up-side, you must be registered here to comment. This is intended to cut down on insidious anony-trolling. All you need do is provide a genuine e-mail address, a birth certificate, and a vial of spinal fluid. Click on comments for details.

Those fumes kicking in yet? Yes? The trick is to bail out sometime after the desk lamp takes on human form but before blood begins pulsing out of your mouth and ears.

Enjoy!

And brevity fans: this site may also be reached via the less-cumbersome http://timblair.net

UPDATE. Regular posting will resume once people have had a chance to register and become accustomed to this violent change.

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