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Live Whacking Permalink Archive
click "Live Whacking" button for the latest entries


13 December 2003

Quote of the day

Everyone needs to just shut up, get in the kitchen and bake me some pie

- Cantinera


Amusing showbiz quotation for the day

It's now almost ridiculous to think Aguilera was seen as the poor man's Britney, especially when Aguilera breaks into a spine-tingling cover version of Etta James' At Last. You can't imagine Spears could even name an Etta James song, let alone sing one.

- The Herald Sun


Toy Run

I went on the annual Canberra Toy Run today, where local motorcyclists do a parade ride in the city and dump a huge pile of toys in the city mall, which are collected by the Salvation Army and distributed to needy kiddies for Xmas. They also collect cash donations for the Smith Family.

This morning, around 500+ bikes met at the entrance of Old Parliament house for a 10am start. I'm hoping the noise created much disturbance for the wastes of oxygen at the Aborignal tent embassy (when, oh when will this ugly shitheap be bulldozed?).

We then did a parade ride to Woden and doubled back to the city, where we rode our bikes right into the centre of the mall, much to the surprise of morning shoppers.

We had to endure the painful, waffling drawl of one of the worst MC's I've ever seen, though Senator Kate Lundy gave a nice, short speech, graciously praising former Liberal Senator Margaret Reid, who had attended the Toy Run in previous years. Senator Gary Humphries was there too.

Much fun was had, and for a great cause.


Lackage

Blogging been slow lately. It looks like I've been accepted into a job I've been pushing for over the last year. Hence mucho work to do before the transfer happens, resulting in less bloggery. Looks like I'm near finished most of it, which should mean more regular posting in the future.


The snowglobe

Thanks to Steve in L.A. for this amusing little link.


Stop Iraqi liberation!

Niall Cook didn't much like my post on Iraq:

Really good at the polemic rhetoric is Tex.

This coming from the guy who said that Israel was planning the genocide of Palestinians and remarked that a psychotic killer was pretty much your "average american".

In a long, idiotic screed typical of the sociopathic left, he ignores every single improvement in Iraq, and gives us a list of gibbering, whinging observations, of the variety War Is Nasty and Some People Are Still Unemployed.

If Iraq is free, why are the yanks still there? More to the point, why are a myriad of other nations troops there? When will they leave?

I guess Niall doesn't want the Americans to help rebuild the country. This is typical leftythink: if the Americans do leave, they'll be accused of abandoning the Iraqis, if they stay, they're Evil Occupiers.

I don't know of any other civilised nation on the face of this planet which allows its citizens to keep AK-47's for personal protection.

I guess Niall has never heard of Switzerland. What does Niall want the Americans to do about this: go in and shoot them?

Saddam isn't imprisoning people without trial, the US-led coalition forces are.

Uh, yes he actually wrote that. Some lovely moral equivalency going on here.

Very few internationals are free to come and go into and out of Iraq without US-led coalition permission. Ironically less than were permitted under Saddam.

Actually, most people can come and go, provided they're not crossing the border to shoot Americans. I guess this distinction doesn't count.

Then there's some more blather, finished by this:

The list of shortfalls, economic and social failings can go on as long or longer than any supposed list of US successes in Iraq.

The "supposed" list of US successes includes:

  • Reopened courts and an independent judiciary
  • Reopened universities and schools, which - lest we forget - no longer have to live under the eye of Baath party control
  • All hospitals and most clinics reopened (and equipped with drugs and medical supplies that lovely Saddam never bought because he needed the money for himself). Oh, and millions of vaccinations to kids.
  • Teachers now earning at least a dozen times their pre-war salary
  • And how's this for a "supposed" success: ...a Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq's 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals. They now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.
  • Then there's the free press, the lack of mass slaughter by Saddam's goons.

Niall fails to address every one of these points, and all the others. Oh, and he's horrified a country with no history of democracy hasn't managed to become one in a matter of months.

So, despite having liberated every aspect of Iraqi society from a genocidal regime, the stunning success of reconstruction projects in such a short time, the saving of thousands of lives per year from Saddam's mass murder and neglect, the American invasion was a "humanitarian disaster"

Yet, at the end of his drool, Niall offers this observation:

Undoubtedly, Iraq without Saddam has to be better than Iraq with Saddam

Niall needs to lay off his bong for a while.

Let's see if I've got this right: the war was a humanitarian disaster, but Iraq is better off anyway? Why does he say this? It seems in the face of overwhelming evidence of the liberation of Iraq, he needs to justify his pathological hatred of Americans somehow, and he tries it with this convoluted reasoning:

Remember, Iraq pre-invasion was an Iraq created by US-backed embargos and US-promoted trade sanctions. Why? Well, I suppose the second largest oil reserves on the planet have bugger all to do with the situation.

Well Niall, I guess the mass-murdering bastard using his oil money to build palaces and fund his military, instead of spending it on food and medicine had nothing to do with it either eh??

But then, there's money to be made in Iraq, isn't there. Only if you're on the American's good books though. Only if you followed along on their coat-tails in the hope of picking up some reconstruction crumbs which might fall from the post-invasion dinner table, or intended chasing that legendary animal, the Free Trade Agreement. If you objected to preemptive, aggressive, militaristic invasion of a sovereign nation, and you voiced that objection in the global community forum, well I'm sorry to say......you're fucked.

Gotta love double standards: making money off Iraq reconstruction is evil if you're the USA, but how dare they deny those noble anti-war nations the chance to do the same.

The removal or not of Hussein never was the argument. The argument was the means by which that removal was achieved and in a civilised world, a world that runs by the rule of law, pre-emptive, aggressive, military invasion of sovereign nations on proven trumped up excuses for closely guarded and undisclosed purposes, is unacceptable.

So, Niall has admitted Iraq is better off without Saddam - thanks to the coalition invasion, but he's more worried about the "sovereignty" of an unelected genocidal dictator than the liberty of Iraqi civilians. Freedom from tyranny is less important than American motives. Reconstruction of Iraq is good, provided only the anti-war nations make money off it.

Welcome to the mind of Niall Cook: where ideological strutting beats reality every time.

 

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