Posted in Uncategorized on September 29, 2003| Leave a Comment »
I haven’t done one of these quizzes for a while and as I do like Walken I thought I’d try it –
Frank White: A mob boss with political aspirations
and a good cause
What Christopher Walken Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
I’ll send the boys around to sort you out, but all in a good cause.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 29, 2003| Leave a Comment »
I haven’t done one of these quizzes for a while and as I do like Walken I thought I’d try it –
Frank White: A mob boss with political aspirations
and a good cause
What Christopher Walken Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
I’ll send the boys around to sort you out, but all in a good cause.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 29, 2003| 2 Comments »
It is unlikely that any diplomatic skills any of these three possess will undo the damage they have done to the world’s perception of the US.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 29, 2003| 2 Comments »
It is unlikely that any diplomatic skills any of these three possess will undo the damage they have done to the world’s perception of the US.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 29, 2003|
Posted in Uncategorized on September 29, 2003| Leave a Comment »
Dubya seems to believe the only way to get rid of terrorism is first demonising certain Middle Eastern countries and then bombing the crap out of them. He could consider actually giving third world countries in Africa and Asia a helping hand by actually implementing proper Free Trade Policies at home and not just asking other countries to implement these policies. More of “do as I say” not “do as I do”. But then Dubya probably believes that the US farmers have a right to be protected from those pesky third world starving farmers. But then implementing true free trade would mean being politically courageous and alienating a key power-base and source of electoral funding wouldn’t it? Dubya isn’t known for his courage. Please see an interesting article in this morning’s paper on a way of truly getting at some of the sources of terrorism and hatred generated for the US in third world countries –
War on terror dealt blow down on farm
By Thomas Friedman
September 29, 2003
The US war on terrorism suffered a huge blow last week, not in Baghdad or Kabul but on the beaches of Cancun, Mexico.
Cancun was the site of recent world trade talks, which failed largely because the US, the EU and Japan refused to give up the lavish subsidies they bestow on their farmers, making the prices of their cotton and agriculture so cheap that developing countries can’t compete.
This is a disaster because exporting food and textiles is the only way for most developing countries to grow. The Economist magazine quoted a World Bank study that said a Cancun agreement, reducing tariffs and agri-subsidies, could have raised global income by $500 billion a year by 2015, more than 60 per cent of which would go to poor countries and pull 144 million people out of poverty.
Poverty is great for the terrorism business because poverty creates humiliation and stifled aspirations and forces many people to leave their traditional farms to join the alienated urban poor in the cities – all conditions that spawn terrorists.
I would bet that when it came to deciding the Bush team’s position at Cancun, no thought was given to its impact on the war on terrorism. Wouldn’t it have been wise for the US to take the initiative at Cancun, and offer to reduce US farm subsidies and textile tariffs, so some of the poorest countries, such as Pakistan and Egypt, could raise their standards of living and sense of dignity, and also become better customers for US goods?
Yes, but that would be bad politics. It would mean asking US farmers to sacrifice the ridiculous subsidies they get from Washington – $US3 billion ($A4.4 billion) a year for 25,000 cotton farmers – that make it impossible for foreign farmers to sell in the US.
And one thing we know about this Bush war on terrorism: sacrifice is only for US army reservists and full-time soldiers. For the rest of us, it’s guns and butter.
When it comes to the police and military sides of the war on terrorism, the Bushies behave like Viking warriors. But when it comes to the political and economic sacrifices and strategies that are also required to fight this war successfully, they are cowardly wimps. That is why our war on terrorism is so one-dimensional and Pentagon-centric. It’s more like a hobby – something we do only until it runs into the Bush re-election agenda.
“If the sons of American janitors can go die in Iraq to keep us safe,” says Robert Wright, author of Nonzero, a book on global interdependence, “then American cotton farmers, whose average net worth is nearly $1 million, can give up their subsidies to keep us safe. Opening our markets to farm products and textiles would be critical to drawing many nations – including Muslim ones – more deeply into the interdependent web of global capitalism and ultimately democracy.”
If only the Bush team connected the dots, it would see what a nutty war on terrorism it is fighting, explains trade expert Clyde Prestowitz. Here, he says, is the Bush war on terrorism: preach free trade, but don’t deliver on it, so Pakistani farmers become more impoverished.
Then ask Congress to give a tax break for any American who wants to buy a gas-guzzling Humvee for business use and also ask Congress to resist any efforts to make Detroit increase fuel economy in new cars.
All this means more US oil imports from Saudi Arabia. So then the Saudis have more dollars to give to their Wahhabi fundamentalist evangelists, who spend it building religious schools in Pakistan. The Pakistani farmer we’ve put out of business with farm subsidies then sends his sons to the Wahhabi school because it has free tuition and offers a hot lunch.
His sons grow up getting only a Koranic education, so they are totally unprepared for modernity, but they are taught one thing: that America is the source of all their troubles. One of the farmer’s sons joins al-Qaeda and is killed in Afghanistan by US Special Forces, and we think we’re winning the war on terrorism.
Fat chance.
Thomas L. Friedman is The New York Times foreign affairs columnist.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 26, 2003|
Posted in Uncategorized on September 26, 2003| 3 Comments »
I was reading a book called “What Philosophers Think” put out by the editors of the Philosophers’ Magazine in Britain. They included an interview with Don Cupitt a theologian at Cambridge outlining how he believes we should view ‘God’ in this day and age. It is an interesting article and you can actually go to their website and read it if you’re interested –
It certainly makes more sense to me than the ravings of the fundamentalist Christian right or fundamentalists of any persuasion really.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 26, 2003| Leave a Comment »
Was listening to Late Night Live last night and heard Philip Adams’ interview with Shazia Mirza, an Islamic stand-up comedian. She was relating a story about her encounter with US Immigration Officials at an airport when she was attending a function in San Francisco to perform there. She said she was held at the airport by them for more than 2 hours because they did not believe that she could possibly be a female Islamic stand-up comedian. They obviously don’t believe Muslims have a sense of humour. If you want to listen to the full interview go to-
and choose Thursday, 25 September program.
Though you will have to listen to a preliminary discussions on the impact of Metrosexual men (if they exist and they are not a media construct) on Australian society before hand.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 26, 2003| Leave a Comment »
Was listening to Late Night Live last night and heard Philip Adams’ interview with Shazia Mirza, an Islamic stand-up comedian. She was relating a story about her encounter with US Immigration Officials at an airport when she was attending a function in San Francisco to perform there. She said she was held at the airport by them for more than 2 hours because they did not believe that she could possibly be a female Islamic stand-up comedian. They obviously don’t believe Muslims have a sense of humour. If you want to listen to the full interview go to-
and choose Thursday, 25 September program.
Though you will have to listen to a preliminary discussions on the impact of Metrosexual men (if they exist and they are not a media construct) on Australian society before hand.
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