When Democracy (TM) goes bad

Hamas members celebrate their landslide victory over the Fateh party in Palestine, Ariel Sharon begins to rotate in his bed.

As it is, if the U.S. had sat down and tried to formulate a deliberate policy to undermine the credibility of any Palestinian party that promotes a negotiated end to the conflict with Israel – and this means essentially Fatah - it couldn’t have come up with anything more effective than the crooked mediation and the blind eye to Israeli expansionism that Republican and Democratic administrations alike have practised since the Madrid Conference.

Lawrence of Cyberia

What's good for the goose

"Senior members of the Arabic community need to really have a close look at themselves

















and start … identifying these people. The only people that know these people out there are members of the Middle Eastern community …
















They need to stand up and …













be held accountable for the actions of people in the community."

SMH

If only

Wheat exporter AWB knew it was providing hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks and deceived the UN about the payments that helped prop up Saddam Hussein's murderous Iraqi regime, an inquiry has heard.

In a damning opening statement, the Commission of Inquiry into the monopoly wheat marketer's deals under the corruption-ridden United Nations oil-for-food program has questioned whether AWB told the truth in claiming it was duped by an elaborate scheme of kickbacks set up by the despot.

Counsel assisting the inquiry, John Agius, SC, said evidence would show that AWB's most senior executives knew they had paid close to $300 million for non-existent trucking services that were funnelled directly to Saddam's government.

Evidence would also be presented that AWB "was prepared to deceive the UN as to the true nature of its contractual arrangement with the IGB [Iraq Grain Board]", Mr Agius said.

AWB, the former Australian Wheat Board which is now a listed company, has consistently denied that it knew the hefty trucking fees paid to a Jordanian company, Alia, were ending up in the dictator's pocket.

Mr Agius rejected AWB's position.

"Evidence will be called to the effect that AWB always knew that Alia was a conduit for the payment of money to Iraq," he told the inquiry.

"These matters were always known to AWB to be in breach of the UN sanctions [imposed on Iraq].

"These matters were known at high levels within AWB."

SMH

Not that you kids care but what irony. A market monopoly aided and abetted by a government clamiming a commitment to free markets in the sigle biggest act of bribery to prop up a regime the same government claimed to oppose. Of course John Howard knew nothing, nothing definately much less than his somnambulist foreign minister or the suddenly and perhaps precipitously departed defence minister. Something tells me that Lord Downer of Baghdad and Mark "Uncle Sam sold me some magic beans" Vaile will definately be 'shuffled' by our Saddam loving PM. I hope in vain but oh to see the Liberal party hoist by its own petard, collapse in scandal brought on by their own hubris. Of course Kim Beazley is nowhere to be found. The man couldn't win an arse kicking contest against a one legged man. And... hey, get off my lawn!

Respecting the Flag

Race riot flag burner jailed

From: AAP

By Sonya Neufeld

January 12, 2006

A MAN has been jailed for three months for burning the Australian flag, despite apologising to the court for his actions during Sydney's recent spate of racial unrest.

Hadi Khawaja, 24, who has been an Australian citizen since 1986, pleaded guilty to participating in the damaging of an Australian flag at the Brighton-le-Sands RSL, in Sydney's south, on the evening of December 11.

Earlier that day, more than 5000 people had been involved in a race riot at the southern Sydney beach of North Cronulla, during which people of Middle Eastern appearance were chased and attacked.

Khawaja and a 17-year-old boy were alleged to have burnt the flag during the retaliatory violence that spread to other Sydney beaches and suburbs and eventually led to the introduction of anti-riot laws at an emergency sitting of the NSW Parliament.

The teenager, who cannot be named, is alleged to have climbed the flagpole and thrown the flag down to Khawaja, who set it alight amid a crowd of about 150 people.

Khawaja, of Peakhurst, appeared in Sutherland Local Court today on charges of malicious damage and entering enclosed lands with intent to commit an indictable offence during public unrest.

news.com.au

Maybe you think burning our flag is a terrible thing, maybe you think he deserves his sentence and more, just one thing though. If he gets a three month sentence for burning a flag what do we do to people who do this while wearing it?

The more things change

Then

In the 1920s Britain bombed Kurds and Arabs in Iraq when they rebelled against Britain's attempts to control them. By October 1922 the RAF had principal responsibility for the war, with British ground forces being reduced. In a single aerial sortie, in mid-May 1922, Suleymaniya was bombarded, causing the town's 7,000 residents to evacuate the town for the rest of the conflict. In fact, armed confrontations between Kurdish and Arab nationalists and British imperialism continued until the early 1930s.

Winston Churchill, the colonial secretary at the time, believed that gas could be used effectively against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples in the Empire): 'I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.' Some shared Churchill's enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the British cabinet was reluctant to allow the use of a weapon that had caused such misery and revulsion in the First World War. In the event, gas was used against the Iraqi rebels though gas shells were not dropped from aircraft because of practical difficulties.

Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris, later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command, was happy to emphasise that 'The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage. Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.' It was an easy matter to bomb and machine-gun the tribespeople, because they had no means of defence or retaliation. Iraq and Kurdistan were also used as testing grounds for new weapons; devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry for use against tribal villages.

Now

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 -- U.S. pilots targeting a house where they believed insurgents had taken shelter killed a family of 12, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping.

A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed Tuesday from the house outside the town of Baiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

A U.S. military spokesman said that American forces take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties and that they were working with Iraqi authorities to determine what happened at the farmhouse in Baiji. "We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail.

The Associated Press Television News showed footage of men carrying several bodies wrapped in carpets from the wreckage of the house. The men chanted ritual prayers: "There is no god but God."

The United States has steadily intensified its use of airstrikes against insurgents in Iraq in the past year, increasing the number of attacks from 25 in January 2005 to 120 in November.

Washington Post

Where the hell is my bike!?

Was supposed to get my new baby on the 3rd, the courier company's drivers didn't show up for work, which was nice of them, on the 4th they said it's on the way, be there by the end of the day, yeah right. They need to ship it from motherfucking EAGLE FARM to ST LUCIA. It's TWO goddamn days late. I could have taken a cab there and ridden the fucker home. First Express "Distribution with a difference" yeah, unlike other companies we just don't deliver your shit, see? That's the difference. If I don't get my bike today unpleasantness will follow.

BANZAIIII!!!

"Osama? That Pussy won't even get his hands dirty, I'm the real deal."

Remember back in the 70s when one of the most ruthless, most feared terrorist groups was from... Japan? No? Well get a load of the Japanese Red Army, hijackings, mass slaughter of civillians, contract killers, you name it. Funny how no one ever saw the need to tar every Japanese person as a potential terrorist though.