Protected: Goofing Off and Avoiding What I should be Doing

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Goofing Off and Avoiding What I should be Doing

Dubya is promising that after the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam the Middle East will be a peaceful place. Almost as peaceful as this picture –

Cold snap… A man walks between snow-covered palm trees outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Snow blanketed several Middle East cities, closing major highways and schools in a cold snap, which brought economic and social life to a virtual standstill.

I hardly think so. I don’t see PM Sharon who has just signed up to his coalition government the most fundamentalist of the Zionist parties who believe that settlements in the Occupied Territories (or Greater Israel as they call it) will some how be so easy to handle. Maybe Bush should threaten regime change in Israel as well. It has nuclear weapons, is in breach of countless UN Resolutions pertaining to the Lebanon, Syria and Palestine and has invaded its neighbours on numerous occasions when the need or the mood struck as well as committing human rights offences and authorising assassinations and kidnappings of troublesome opponents. But then it doesn’t have any oil, maybe that’s why it doesn’t quite fit the same category as Iraq or just that it has more electoral clout in the US.

What an odd picture! Is this some sort of sick promotion for CNN or an artfully shot photo advertising the next blockbuster coming soon from Dubya & Blair Corp, Washington?

Loved the cartoon in the paper today –

I’m just avoiding what I should be doing. Preparing for my promotion interview on Monday and preparing another Promotion Application for another job that I have seen advertised in the Public Service Notices. I don’t know what it is about applying for jobs but they remind me too much of exams and rather than study or prepare I always preferred to goof off. I got away with it at school and uni because I listened in class and had a reasonable memory so I didn’t really need to study that much to pass reasonably well at exams. Job interviews are a different kettle of fish altogether. I either freeze, hardly saying a thing or gabble on like a demented woman. I know if I get this job it will mean an extra 2,000 a year straight away and over the following three years at least an additional 6,000 on top of that. I do need the money but I do so hate going through the process.

As well this week everything that could go wrong at work has done. After the upgrade to the database it kept crashing and cannot handle more than 160 users at one time even with the increased memory that has been assigned. The users are ringing in every second minute complaining about the death like speed of the system and they are under pressure to get all the new casual teachers first pay of the year processed. Then the Finance Section wanted me to run a massive report and then Audit sent a request for at least 20 reports to be completed by Monday morning at the latest. My partner in crime is off in New Zealand watching the Americas Cup Yacht Race so I have to do both shifts, early and late. On top of which the Institutes have hired a whole lot of new temp data entry operators who need accounts created straight away. By the end of the day the last thing I want to do is look at my bloody job application. Shriek! Aaargh! And on top of that when I do get home my home PC runs as slowly as our payroll system. My ISP has reverted to form and I can’t even open MSN as I have such slow speeds and when I do get on after numerous attempts, changing screens is like watching paint dry.

I’ll stop my rant and go to bed as I know I’m going to do nothing tonight and have to be up at 6 am tomorrow.

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Protected: Legal Opinion Concerning the Coalition of the Willing – read the Bully and his Minions

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Legal Opinion Concerning the Coalition of the Willing – read the Bully and his Minions

I know, I know I’m obsessive about this but unfortunately I’m the type who cannot turn away and ignore something like this. It would be nice not to think about it, not to read about it but when I think we as a country and the world are going to be dragged into such a hideous maelstrom by the folly of one man(Dubya)I can’t shut up or stop thinking about it. Though I guess some probably wish I would. Sorry changed my mind. Make that two fools -Dubya and Saddam. They’re both bullies and have both signed execution warrants, though Dubya’s were legal by Texas law I gather. Bush is merely cruel through stupidity and lack of empathy for anyone who is not American or at least the right type of American (The Republican voting and election funding variety and fellow Texas Millionaires). Saddam is just straight out crazy as well as a brutal savage.

I wonder how John Howard and Tony Blair would go in the dock at the International Criminal Court in The Hague when they were questioned about their motives for joining in the Coalition of the Willing’s intentional/unintentional? genocide of Iraqi civilians, the collateral damage of Dubya’s proposed invasion war. But then Dubya would not be there to testify. Because according to him the US doesn’t have to live up to the standards of most other civilised countries who signed the treaty that allowed the International Court to bring to justice any citizens of a country who have committed genocidal acts. It seems the US Administration believes that the rules everyone else lives by don’t apply to them. But then that has probably been true since the ‘Sixties’ at least, it’s just that this current administration hasn’t the wit to hide their arrogance. A true Imperial Court to rival Louis XIV’s rule in France. Maybe they did learn something from “Old Europe” after all. But arrogance and bullying are hardly something to admire. Though I am not sure Dubya could say “L’état c’est moi” with quite the conviction required. Though if it was part of a prepared speech where he received maximum coaching he just might manage it with his usual silly grin plastered across his face.

Here is a piece I read today expressing legal opinions on the legality of the proposed invasion –

Coalition of the willing? Make that war criminals
February 26 2003
A pre-emptive strike on Iraq would constitute a crime against humanity, write 43 experts on international law and human rights.
The initiation of a war against Iraq by the self-styled “coalition of the willing” would be a fundamental violation of international law. International law recognises two bases for the use of force.
The first, enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, allows force to be used in self-defence. The attack must be actual or imminent.
The second basis is when the UN Security Council authorises the use of force as a collective response to the use or threat of force. However, the Security Council is bound by the terms of the UN Charter and can authorise the use of force only if there is evidence that there is an actual threat to the peace (in this case, by Iraq) and that this threat cannot be averted by any means short of force
(such as negotiation and further weapons inspections).
Members of the “coalition of the willing”, including Australia, have not yet presented any persuasive arguments that an invasion of Iraq can be justified at international law. The United States has proposed a doctrine of “pre-emptive self-defence” that would allow a country to use force against another country it suspects may attack it at some stage.
This doctrine contradicts the cardinal principle of the modern international legal order and the primary rationale for the founding of the UN after World War II – the prohibition of the unilateral use of force to settle disputes.
The weak and ambiguous evidence presented to the international community by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to justify a pre-emptive strike underlines the practical danger of a doctrine of pre-emption. A principle of pre-emption would allow particular national agendas to completely destroy the system of collective security contained in Chapter Seven of the UN Charter and return us to the pre-1945 era, where might equalled right. Ironically, the same principle would justify Iraq now launching pre-emptive attacks on members of the coalition because it could validly argue that it feared attack.
But there is a further legal dimension for Saddam Hussein on the one hand and George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard and their potential coalition partners on the other to consider. Even if the use of force can be justified, international humanitarian law places significant limits on the means and methods of warfare.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their 1977 Protocols set out some of these limits: for example, the prohibitions on targeting civilian populations and civilian infrastructure and causing extensive destruction of property not justified by military objectives. Intentionally launching an attack knowing that it will cause “incidental” loss of life or injury to civilians “which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated” constitutes a war crime at international law.
The military objective of disarming Iraq could not justify widespread harm to the Iraqi population, over half of whom are under the age of 15. The use of nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive attack would seem to fall squarely within the definition of a war crime.
Until recently, the enforcement of international humanitarian law largely depended on the willingness of countries to try those responsible for grave breaches of the law. The creation of the International Criminal Court last year has, however, provided a stronger system of scrutiny and adjudication of violations of humanitarian law.
The International Criminal Court now has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity when national legal systems have not dealt with these crimes adequately. It attributes criminal responsibility to individuals responsible for planning military action that violates international humanitarian law and those who carry it out. It specifically extends criminal liability to heads of state, leaders of governments, parliamentarians, government officials and military personnel.
Estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq suggest that up to quarter of a million people may die as a result of an attack using conventional weapons and many more will suffer homelessness, malnutrition and other serious health and environmental consequences in its aftermath.
From what we know of the likely civilian devastation caused by the coalition’s war strategies, there are strong arguments that attacking Iraq may involve committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Respect for international law must be the first concern of the Australian Government if it seeks to punish the Iraqi Government for not respecting international law. It is clearly in our national interest to strengthen, rather than thwart, the global rule of law.
Humanitarian considerations should also play a major role in shaping government policy. But, if all else fails, it is to be hoped that the fact that there is now an international system to bring even the highest officials to justice for war crimes will temper the enthusiasm of our politicians for this war.
THE EXPERTS
Don Anton, senior lecturer, ANU; Peter Bailey, professor, ANU; Andrew Byrnes, professor, ANU; Greg Carne, senior lecturer, University of Tasmania; Anthony Cassimatis, lecturer, University of Queensland; Hilary Charlesworth, professor and director, Centre for International and Public Law, ANU; Madelaine Chiam, lecturer, ANU; Julie Debeljak, associate director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law; Kate Eastman, Wentworth Chambers, Sydney; Carolyn Evans, senior lecturer, Melbourne University; Devika Hovell, lecturer, University of NSW; Fleur Johns, lecturer, Sydney University; Sarah Joseph, associate director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University; Ann Kent, research fellow, Centre for International and Public Law, ANU; David Kinley, professor and director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University; Susan Kneebone, associate professor, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law; Wendy Lacey, lecturer, Adelaide University; Garth Nettheim AO, emeritus professor, UNSW; Penelope Mathew, senior lecturer, ANU; Ian Malkin, associate professor, Melbourne University; Chris Maxwell QC, Melbourne Bar; Tim McCormack, Red Cross professor and director, centre for military law, Melbourne University; Sophie McMurray, lecturer, UNSW; Anne McNaughton, lecturer, ANU; Kwame Mfodwo, lecturer, Monash Law School; Wayne Morgan, senior lecturer, ANU; Anne Orford, associate professor, Melbourne University; Emile Noel, senior fellow, New York University Law School; Dianne Otto, associate professor, Melbourne University; Peter Radan, senior lecturer, Macquarie Law School; Rosemary Rayfuse, senior lecturer, UNSW, Simon Rice OAM, president, Aust ralian Lawyers for Human Rights; Donald Rothwell, associate professor, Sydney University; Michael Salvaris, senior research fellow, Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University; Chris Sidoti, professor, Human Rights Council of Australia; John Squires, director, Aust ralian Human Rights Centre, UNSW; James Stellios, lecturer, ANU; Tim Stephens, lecturer, Sydney University; Julie Taylor, University of WA; Gillian Triggs, professor and co-director, Institute for International and Comparative Law, Melbourne University; John Wade, professor and director of the Dispute Resolution Centre, Bond Univer sity; Kristen Walker, senior lecturer, Melbourne University; Brett Williams, lecturer, Sydney University; Sir Ronald Wilson, former High Court judge and president, Human Rights Commission.

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Protected: Refreshing Honesty and Decency From a Politician

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Refreshing Honesty and Decency From a Politician

I read this as part of an article today. If only this man was President and not the current incumbent. But then the world and the US would never have been in it’s current parlous condition under anyone else than George Dubya and his coterie.

Ironically, on the very day this second Iraq debate ended so humiliatingly in our Parliament, the US senator Robert Byrd, former Senate Democrat leader and now its longest-serving member (45 years), made a speech in the US Senate that puts to shame so much of the pap of so many of our politicians. This edited version of what he told his colleagues and his nation should be read by everyone in this country. I make no apologies for its length:
“On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war. Yet this chamber is, for the most part, silent. Ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralysed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events.
“And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. This coming battle, if it materialises, represents a turning point in US foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.
“This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of pre-emption – the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future – is a radical new twist on traditional self-defence. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of worldwide terrorism, making many countries wonder if they will soon be on our hit list or someone else’s.
“High-level figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilising and unwise? US intentions are suddenly subject to worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion and alarming rhetoric from US leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against terrorism which existed after September 11.
“Here at home the mood is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising. This Administration, now in power two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that record is dismal. In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a projected surplus of some $US5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. [Its] domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition. [It] has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. [It] has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care and for our elderly …
“In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. [It] has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling for all time international order-keeping entities like the UN and NATO. [It] has called into question the perception of the US as well-intentioned peacekeeper. [It] has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats and name calling of the sort that reflects poorly on the intelligence of our leaders and which will have consequences for years to come.
“Calling heads of state pygmies, labelling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant – these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight global terrorism on our own. Our awesome military machine can do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters cheering us on.
“The war in Afghanistan has cost us $US37 billion so far, yet there is evidence terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in the region. This Administration has not finished the first war yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace? And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife.
“Will we seize Iraq’s oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls price and supply? To whom do we propose to hand power after Saddam Hussein? Will our war inflame the Muslim world, resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq? Could a disruption of oil supply lead to worldwide recession?
” Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club? In only two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years. One can understand the shock and anger of any president after September 11. But to turn frustration and anger into the destabilising and dangerous foreign policy the world is witnessing is inexcusable. Frankly, many of the pronouncements by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.
“Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on Iraq – a population of which over 50 per cent is under the age of 15 – this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face chemical and biological warfare, this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could be vicious terrorist retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.
“We are sleepwalking through history. In my heart of hearts I pray this great nation and its trusting citizens are not in for the rudest of awakenings. I truly question any president who can say that a massive, unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50 per cent children is ‘in the highest moral traditions of our country’. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to find a graceful way out of a box of our own making.”
Remember, this is a veteran American politician, not some eloquent Australian peacenik. It is political speech-making of the highest quality and courage. If Howard or Crean ever said anything similar we’d embrace them for their wise, expansive leadership.
Instead, by comparison, we do truly have pygmies.

This compares to the spinmeisters in the Bush & Blair administrations trying to concoct more reasons why invading Iraq could be considered a ‘Just’ War. Here is a good description of their current activities –

Concocting a ‘just’ war
By Mike Carlton
February 22 2003
Subtly, ever so gradually, the war has changed. First it was the war on terrorism. Then, when it became so embarrassingly apparent that Osama bin Laden had vanished into thin air, it became the war to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction.
Now, as the global protests mount, the spinmeisters are concocting a just war to liberate the Iraqi people and lead them to the broad, sunlit uplands of Western-style democracy. This will make more acceptable the rain of death to be unleashed upon Baghdad in the next few weeks.
The chief proponent of this new, liberationist line is the insufferably sanctimonious Tony Blair, who rolled it out at a rally in Glasgow last weekend. All teeth and hairdo, Blair patronised the million and more of his compatriots so deluded as to march to London’s Hyde Park to demonstrate for peace.
“If there are 500,000 on that march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for,” he smarmed. “If there are 1 million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started.”
Such humbug. Blair conveniently neglected to mention that thousands of Saddam’s victims were undoubtedly killed with the help of British military materiel.
Britain’s Campaign Against the Arms Trade reports that in 1986, Iraq’s director of armaments and supplies, Major-General M. Ibrahim Hammadi, and the director of military computer applications, Major General Qahtan al Azzawi, were welcome guests at the British Army’s military equipment exhibition at Aldershot.
Britain sold Saddam battlefield radar and missile firing systems, 300 military Land Rovers, high-tech lathes for turning artillery shells, hardware for use in chemical plants and, believe it or not, tens of thousands of desert uniforms. This profitable trade continued to the eve of the Gulf War in 1990 and, as a judicial inquiry later revealed, Cabinet ministers lied through their teeth about it to the House of Commons.
Britain remains the second largest arms dealer after the US, selling to some of the world’s nastiest regimes. Blair is a flaming hypocrite.
HOW unkind of Miranda Devine to remind us on Thursday, in her own words, “that George Bush talks like a Texan, has slightly crossed eyes, can stumble into incoherence when a microphone is thrust in front of him, talks about God, and therefore is a dangerous moron”.
This sort of ad hominem rudeness is not helpful, Miranda, although I admit I worry that the notional commander-in-chief of the world’s greatest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction pronounces nuclear as nookular.
But as everyone knows, Dubya is only the front man. After the Nixon catastrophe the Republican Party redefined its approach to the presidency, choosing Ronald Reagan as a telegenic talking head to host the show while the tough got going in the shape of Caspar Weinberger, George Schulz and James Baker. George W. Bush has a similar totemic gig: pitching the first ball of the Major League season, lighting the White House Christmas tree, cheering up conventions of realtors in Minneapolis and so on, while a camarilla of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice et al calls the shots.
Of them all, Rice is the scariest. Chevron Oil named a supertanker after her. Dripping with Ivy League degrees in international relations, an accomplished classical pianist, speaking elegant French, monumentally self-assured, Condy knows everything and nothing. It is utterly beyond her comprehension that the citizens of Baghdad might not welcome a cruise missile arriving in the upstairs bedroom as the instrument of their liberation.

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Protected: A Python’s view of George Dubya

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A Python’s view of George Dubya

My manager at work just sent me this. Very amusing letter sent by Terry Jones to the London Observer newspaper, in reference to the Iraq contretemps.

A letter to the London Observer newspaper from Terry Jones (of Monty Python
fame).

Letters
Sunday January 26, 2003
The Observer

I’m really excited by George Bush’s latest reason for bombing Iraq: he’s running out of patience. And so am I! For some time now I’ve been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street.

Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I’m sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven’t been able to discover what.

I’ve been round to his place a few times to see what he’s up to, but he’s got everything well hidden. That’s how devious he is. As for Mr Patel, don’t ask me how I know, I just know – from very good sources – that he is, in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the street telling them that if we don’t act first, he’ll pick us off one by one.

Some of my neighbours say, if I’ve got proof, why don’t I go to the police? But that’s simply ridiculous. The police will say that they need evidence of a crime with which to charge my neighbours.

They’ll come up with endless red tape and quibbling about the rights and wrongs of a pre-emptive strike and all the while Mr Johnson will be finalising his plans to do terrible things to me, while Mr Patel will be secretly murdering people. Since I’m the only one in the street with a decent range of automatic firearms, I reckon it’s up to me to keep the peace. But until recently that’s been a little difficult. Now, however, George W. Bush has made it clear that all I need to do is run out of patience, and then I can wade in and do whatever I want!

And let’s face it, Mr Bush’s carefully thought-out policy towards Iraq is the only way to bring about international peace and security. The one certain way to stop Muslim fundamentalist suicide bombers targeting the US or the UK is to bomb a few Muslim countries that have never threatened us.

That’s why I want to blow up Mr Johnson’s garage and kill his wife and children. Strike first! That’ll teach him a lesson. Then he’ll leave us in peace and stop peering at me in that totally unacceptable way. Mr Bush makes it clear that all he needs to know before bombing Iraq is that Saddam is a really nasty man and that he has weapons of mass destruction – even if no one can find them. I’m certain I’ve just as much justification for killing Mr Johnson’s wife and children as Mr Bush has for bombing Iraq. Mr Bush’s long-term aim is to make the world a safer place by eliminating ‘rogue states’ and ‘terrorism’. It’s such a clever long-term aim because how can you ever know when you’ve achieved it?

How will Mr Bush know when he’s wiped out all terrorists? When every single terrorist is dead? But then a terrorist is only a terrorist once he’s committed an act of terror.
What about would-be terrorists? These are the ones you really want to eliminate, since most of the known terrorists, being suicide bombers, have already eliminated themselves.

Perhaps Mr Bush needs to wipe out everyone who could possibly be a future terrorist? Maybe he can’t be sure he’s achieved his objective until every Muslim fundamentalist is dead? But then some moderate Muslims might convert to fundamentalism. Maybe the only really safe thing to do would be for Mr Bush to eliminate all Muslims?

It’s the same in my street. Mr Johnson and Mr Patel are just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of other people in the street who I don’t like and who – quite frankly – look at me in odd ways. No one will be really safe until I’ve wiped them all out. My wife says I might be going too far but I tell her I’m simply using the same logic as the President of the United States. That shuts her up.

Like Mr Bush, I’ve run out of patience, and if that’s a good enough reason for the President, it’s good enough for me.

I’m going to give the whole street two weeks – no, 10 days – to come out in the open and hand over all aliens and interplanetary hijackers, galactic outlaws and interstellar terrorist masterminds, and if they don’t hand them over nicely and say ‘Thank you’, I’m going to bomb the entire street to kingdom come.

It’s just as sane as what George W. Bush is proposing – and, in contrast to what he’s intending, my policy will destroy only one street.

Sincerely,
Terry Jones

Always loved the man.

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Very Sore Feet, sunburnt and tired.

Ooh! I’m sitting here with my feet dunked in a bucket of cold water, sunburnt and somewhat dehydrated. Went on the Walk Against War in Sydney today. It was in the 30’sC(80s shading into the 90s in the old Fahrenheit scale) and very humid. There were an estimated 250,000 people there today, so it was more of a stand around for a long time and walk very slowly type of march. The public transport system couldn’t cope with the number of people coming into the city at the same time on Sunday timetables. Well it is at least a sixteenth of the city’s total population out on the streets. Very peaceful, no arrests and very cheerful and friendly.

I woke up late as I had been rather unsuccessfully working on my CV and my application for a promotion the night before. I was meant to meet the local Leichhardt chapter of the Walk against War movement at Glebe Market to march into town with them but I was too late and so took the bus straight to the city. Remembered the water but forgot the hat and the sunscreen. We were crammed in so tight in Hyde Park most of us were sharing body fluids(sweat). The little kids at least could strip off and jump in the fountains to cool off.

At the end of the rally it started to rain but the tar on the streets was very hot and at first the light rain turned to steam straight away and it was like walking through a sauna. Then the rain got heavier and cooled everything down.

Even though 100,000 turned out in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane and more than 250,000 in Sydney and many thousands more marching in regional centres, John Howard is stubbornly talking about war and is totally ignoring every protest in an obdurate display of pig-headedness. Pontificating that his actions are in the best interests of Australia. I don’t see how slaughtering thousands of innocent Iraqis outright through the planned initial bombing blitz on the major cities of Iraq and seeing thousands more die of irradiation from depleted uranium dumped with the bombs, as well as dying of cholera and other water-borne diseases caused by the destruction of vital infrastructure as well as the eventual death by starvation of those already malnourished can be in Australia’s interest. But then the loss of all these Iraqi lives will be dismissed under the horrible military jargon “collateral damage.” And I’m sure that the US Military will stage manage the show for local consumption so that the ‘collateral damage’ will only be obliquely referred to and never displayed to bring back the truth of the horror unleashed by modern weapons on human beings. The television networks would rather concentrate on the nice little computer displays of how the so called “smart” weapons work. Much more cleaner, less likely to upset the voters than dead and dying Iraqi women and children, killed by these ‘smart’ weapons.

Oh end of rant, must still be hyped from the rally. Am going to go and veg out in front of the tellie.

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Very Sore Feet, sunburnt and tired.

Ooh! I’m sitting here with my feet dunked in a bucket of cold water, sunburnt and somewhat dehydrated. Went on the Walk Against War in Sydney today. It was in the 30’sC(80s shading into the 90s in the old Fahrenheit scale) and very humid. There were an estimated 250,000 people there today, so it was more of a stand around for a long time and walk very slowly type of march. The public transport system couldn’t cope with the number of people coming into the city at the same time on Sunday timetables. Well it is at least a sixteenth of the city’s total population out on the streets. Very peaceful, no arrests and very cheerful and friendly.

I woke up late as I had been rather unsuccessfully working on my CV and my application for a promotion the night before. I was meant to meet the local Leichhardt chapter of the Walk against War movement at Glebe Market to march into town with them but I was too late and so took the bus straight to the city. Remembered the water but forgot the hat and the sunscreen. We were crammed in so tight in Hyde Park most of us were sharing body fluids(sweat). The little kids at least could strip off and jump in the fountains to cool off.

At the end of the rally it started to rain but the tar on the streets was very hot and at first the light rain turned to steam straight away and it was like walking through a sauna. Then the rain got heavier and cooled everything down.

Even though 100,000 turned out in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane and more than 250,000 in Sydney and many thousands more marching in regional centres, John Howard is stubbornly talking about war and is totally ignoring every protest in an obdurate display of pig-headedness. Pontificating that his actions are in the best interests of Australia. I don’t see how slaughtering thousands of innocent Iraqis outright through the planned initial bombing blitz on the major cities of Iraq and seeing thousands more die of irradiation from depleted uranium dumped with the bombs, as well as dying of cholera and other water-borne diseases caused by the destruction of vital infrastructure as well as the eventual death by starvation of those already malnourished can be in Australia’s interest. But then the loss of all these Iraqi lives will be dismissed under the horrible military jargon “collateral damage.” And I’m sure that the US Military will stage manage the show for local consumption so that the ‘collateral damage’ will only be obliquely referred to and never displayed to bring back the truth of the horror unleashed by modern weapons on human beings. The television networks would rather concentrate on the nice little computer displays of how the so called “smart” weapons work. Much more cleaner, less likely to upset the voters than dead and dying Iraqi women and children, killed by these ‘smart’ weapons.

Oh end of rant, must still be hyped from the rally. Am going to go and veg out in front of the tellie.

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