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30
December 2003
William
Shakespeare's postmodern Piglet
 |
| Ethan
finds his sunglasses clash with the Iambic Pentameter |
This evening I checked
out the postmodern film adaptation of Hamlet, set in NYC in the
year 2000. This visually stunning effort stars Ethan Hawke in the title
role, and also features Bill Murray, Leiv Schriebler, Diane Venora, Julia
Styles and Kyle McLachlan.
What did I think of
it? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. It usually takes me two viewings
to make my mind up, as I find some of Shakespeare's text impenetrable
at a first hearing.
I'll give you some
initial impressions though. First, it's an extraordinary looking
film. The modern urban setting and 21st century technologies are used
to terrific narrative effect, particularly the scene where Hamlet uses
his amateur film viewing to expose Claudius' plotting. The weaving of
the modern setting into Shakespeare's centuries-old text is achieved more
effectively than in Baz Luhrmann's messy Romeo and Juliet.
The supporting cast
is impressive: Murray restrains his usual tired smirking to deliver an
effective and witty portrayal of Polonius. Styles makes a convincing Ophelia.
Sam Shepard registered strongly as dad's ghost in a sizzling scene with
Hawke. Kyle McLauchlan is suitably slimy as Claudius. Venora - a fine
actress - has little to do in her usual "harried waif" role.
Unfortunately, Ethan
Hawke is a snooze in the lead role. Though I'm not sure if this is because
of him or the role itself. Hamlet - both as character and movie - is burdened
with lengthy monologues: something I've never enjoyed in Shakespeare.
His text works for me best in the interplay of dialogues, whereas the
monologues are something I find both impenetrable and tedious. Hamlet's
internal tortured whining made me wish the self-absorbed prick would just
shut the fuck up and die already.
The musical score
was a problem also: effective at first, it became intrusive and distracting.
So where does this
fascinating schitzoid film stand in relation to other "postmodern"
Shakespeare adaptations? For me, the judgement is affected by the source
material, rather than the movie itself: Hamlet, as a story, simply
isn't as interesting as Ian McKellan's Richard III or as emotionally
touching as Romeo and Juliet. Yet, as a motion picture production,
I found it superior to Luhrmann's movie, and almost as good as Richard.
It looks and sounds great, with intelligent direction and a fine cast.
The problem, ultimately,
is that Hamlet just isn't anywhere near as much fun as the
other two. I think I've worked out the problem: when I see Hamlet enter
a scene, it feels like I'm watching Kurt Cobain.
link
29
December 2003
Quote
of the day
I don't get mad,
I get stabby.
- Fat Tony, The
Simpsons
link
Back...sorta
Been busy on the Christmas
break. Or lazy, depending on how you look at it. Pretty much been watching
DVDs, eating and drinking. I am likely to continue this sort of activity
for a few days.
link
What the.....
With thanks to Sasha,
here is the home page of the Australian
Union of Students.
It has some rather....um.....interesting
material.
The following
is a list of targets for bombings. We emphasise again that this is only
in the event of an undemocratic government being illegally set up:
- The Sydney Gay
and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade (including the spectators) - a homemade
nuclear device would be desirable, but is not essential as conventional
homemade explosives will do the trick.
- Trades and Labor
Council buildings.
- Federal Law
Courts.
- Homosexual nightclubs,
and nightclubs where illegal drugs are sold.
- Sex shops.
- Drug injecting
rooms and needle exchange rooms.
- Offices of homosexual,
anti-genetic engineering, anti- genetically modified food or animal
liberation pressure groups.
- Lecture theatres
where a lecture in Gay and Lesbian Studies, Sociology or Womens Studies
is in progress.
- Labor Party
and Green Party electorate offices, and those of Catholic politicians.
- Labor Party
conferences and branch meetings.
- Maritime Union
picket lines.
- People taking
part in protests against duck shooting.
- Television and
radio transmission towers in cities.
- Internet service
providers that block access to this site.
I'd naturally assume
it's a hoax page, except it's not funny or smart enough.
It is a hoax
though...right?
link
23
December 2003
Winning
the war on terror
Christopher
Hitchens,
pointing out what should be obvious to many:
I think that
Osama Bin Laden made the greatest conceivable error by demolishing the
World Trade Center and thereby retarding the cause of jihad to an incalculable
extent, so I think that his followers have repeated the mistake in Indonesia,
Turkey, and perhaps above all in Saudi Arabia. Three years ago, sympathizers
of al-Qaida controlled the government of Afghanistan, heavily influenced
the ruling circle in Saudi Arabia, and were in a good position to take
over the Pakistani state from within. They were also being sought out
for meetings by the regime in Baghdad. Now they have lost Afghanistan,
are being hunted in Saudi Arabia, are being killed in the rat holes
of Iraq, and stand little if any chance of seizing power in Islamabad.
Their charismatic leader is almost certainly dead or at least incapacitated:
Even the pretense that "communiqués" are coming from
him has practically dried up.
[...]
Col. Qaddafi,
though, has lived to rue the mistake he made with Pan Am. He started
the grinding of an inexorable machine, beginning with the deceptively
modest processes of Scottish law, and he now stands before the world
as a gibbering and whimpering psycho, forced to pay blood money and
to beg for leniency. The latest development is the best of all: In a
sort of reverse of the pre-emptive strike, he has agreed to disclose
and destroy all his stocks of unlawful weaponry.
The hawks are
quite plainly right to say that this sudden tribute by vice to virtue
is a direct consequence of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Amen.
Richard Neville insanity watch
Richard Neville is
so stark-raving bonkers you wonder if his entire skull cavity was at some
point sucked dry and used as a refuge for an army of head lice.
The Crazed One has
posted
a new item at his site, a specially "annotated" version
of a piece written on the Iraq war by Rupert Murdoch.
Raging against the
Bush/Murdoch/Zionist New World Order, Neville rants that;
- There is no free
press in Iraq
- The horrible Americans
have dismantled Saddam's wonderful social infrastructure (curiously,
he then says they are actually rebuilding that infrastructure, but it
is being done by "corrupt corporations linked to the White House")
- Iraq's poverty
was the result of sanctions...nothing to do with Saddam
- Living standards
are improving, but are improving "less fast" than those horrid
"US shareholders"
- Saddam NEVER
GASSED THE KURDS [I swear to God, I am not making this up]
- The "real"
casualty figures are being suppressed by the Dubya/Murdoch cabal
He concludes
The
war was fought and won in the interests of the people of Iraq West and
the cause of peace power, profit and the enrichment of those already
rich.
I
wonder that if Neville had been around during WWII, would he have either
supported, or had quiet sympathy for, Nazi Germany. After all, they were
the champions of Neville's pet loves: Heidegger-ish "authentic existence"
gibberish over horrible meaningless modernity, "culture" over
liberty, social engineering over capitalism, love of Mother Nature, gun
control, animal liberation, and most of all, standing up to those power-hungry,
imperialist Zionists.
Richard
Neville is a psychopath.
22 December 2003
An
old friend writes in
I was delighted today
to receive an e-mail from "Osama Bin Laden" at IP 61.95.64.22:
30 years old
and still no girlfriend?
clean the world
- kill a jew a day.
Good to hear from
you sir. Hope you are having fun, running like a little girl from the
Americans.
21
December 2003
The
festival of freaks goes on
The aus.politics crowd
prove that IQ can diminish at an exponential rate for eternity:
First, we have Dubya
Fake-Moon-Visit Election conspiracies.
Then, someone claims
that the Americans must have attacked Saddam with nerve
gas for him to have surrendered so weakly.
Proof that Americans
are "fucking
retards".
And last but not least,
Jewish
brainwashing world-domination conspiracies.
Another crackpot ozblogger
Check out this
raving headcase.
18
December 2003
A
bad time for Dick
 I've
been keen to see Richard Neville's reaction to Saddam's capture, and as
expected, he's gone berzerk;
The three
hit men from the West
Hooray Hooray,
the Frankensteins of the West have finally captured the monster of their
own creation, the monster that has cost so much to the people of Iraq,
and who, even as a forlorn trophy, will incite more bloodshed. Saddam’s
extinguishment will brighten the lights of Christmas trees in Washington
and Westminster, despite the plumes of pillage, terror & war swirling
through the world as the season of merriment approaches. Kill, torture,
rip-off, humiliate – this is one of the themes of Christianity
2003, as the three leading liars of the Coalition, George W Bush, Tony
Blair and John Howard sink into the delusional torpor of their fundamentalist
Christian pud, appropriately laced with pieces of silver.
We can see how Richard
is still seen as an "intellectual" by the Radio National crowd.
Cue some typically Neville-ish non-sequiters:
Is the General
Bonkers? Does Satan wear a Turban?
Can you catch a falling
bathtub? Or carry moonbeams home in your penis?
Later, Richard tells
of his remarkable discovery: bullets can hurt people.
Take this cute
little stocking filler from Texas, an intelligent bullet, which penetrates
steel and concrete, yet does not exit from a human torso. Instead, it
“effectively explodes inside the body, ravaging tissue in all directions,
creating untreatable wounds”.
Amazing stuff. Bullets
you say? I think I saw them once on Zionist American TV.
Maybe I'm being too
critical of Dick. He finally asks an important question;
Why Am I Wasting
My Breath?
Which he answers by
wasting more breath;
In the intelligence
industry, the WMD claims were widely regarded as bogus, even by Colin
Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as revealed in the John Pilger documentary,
Breaking the Silence.
Ah, such an authoritative
source. He also quotes those notable indepedent thinkers counterpunch.org
and www.iraqbodycount.net.
Oh, get a load of
this;
Opposing the
invasion was not about tolerating for the crimes of Saddam. It was about
protecting the lives of Iraqis, about upholding the language of truth.
Protecting the
lives of Iraqis? By keeping Saddam in power? A humanitarian strategy
worthy of an Obergruppenfuhrer.
And to finish, Crazy
Dick offers us this.
No matter how
you look at it – the US army doesn’t – it adds up to
a lot of blood. More blood than ever filled the swimming pools of Saddam
Hussein.
Quite right, all that
blood never made it to Saddam's swimming pools, he preferred to keep it
in mass graves.
link
Loser alert
The mullets at aus.motorcycles
aren't too happy about Saddam being captured either.
Let's start with election
conspiracies:
Lets hope that
there isnt a re-election in his scopes now because of this. im sure
Georgie Bushie certainly has one in his sights now. :-\.
I don't think
they can have an election on the leader's whim in the US of A... unlike
Australia.
and "Bush is
terrified"-isms:
I don't think
the White House will be too happy with the tropps who captured him then
kept him alive. Would have been far more convenient for him to be dead.
That can be arranged...
inevitable IMHO, lots of people don't want to hear the truth from Saddam.
Or rather, they don't want US to hear the truth from Saddam.
'Crushing dissent'
whinging:
Considering the
US totally control all the media in Iraq at the mo' so we aren't gonna'
hear anything they don't orchestrate!
Some complaining about
the americans not firing any bullets in Saddam's capture:
...it WAS unusually
disciplined... usually they fire off 10000 rounds of ammo and shoot
several people passing by...
Some bizarre ranting
about Reagan and Hollywood:
the Rambo sequels
were partly funded by the Reagan govt's
policy of subsidising patriotic output by the entertainment industry.
Saddam
was partly funded by the Reagan gov't policy of subsidising everyone
who was
perceived as keeping their enemies busy.
Rambo always
won. Rambo was subsidised by the US government. Ergo, since
Saddam was also subsidised by the US government, he would also always
win.
Yeah, I reckon
he should've shot it out, too...
..and of course, an
"americans are cowards" rant:
600 troops required
to go collect a 66 year old man hiding in a hole in a farmhouse....
how brave of them... and how disappointing it must have been for those
600 soldiers who joined up so they could play with guns and never got
to fire a single round at their arch nemesis... they're probably feeling
like they should have just stayed home and waited a couple of weeks
for the Playstation game to be released.
A collection of great
minds here folks.
link
America is the greatest force for good on this planet
This should piss off
a lot of wankers: Dennis
Prager's list of truth. Some of my favourite excerpts:
America is the
greatest force for good on the planet.....If it were up to the U.N.
or the EU, or the editorial boards of most major American newspapers,
Saddam would still be happily making palaces for himself and torture
dungeons for his people.
No Muslim or
Arab country lifted a finger to help the Iraqi people. [Why would they?
There are no Jews to be killed there]
Not everyone
is happy about Saddam's capture. Palestinians, for example, are weeping.
Saddam was their hero. Iraqis were forced to march with his posters,
but Palestinians did so voluntarily. Many on the Left are also not particularly
happy. Saddam's capture is a victory for American force and for George
W. Bush, and the Left hates both more than it hates Saddam.
Most of the Left
does not hate evil; hatred of evil is primarily found on the Right.
The reason the
president is shaping history is that he has as strong a set of beliefs
-- in America's moral mission and in Judeo-Christian religious values
-- as those he is fighting. Those who hold bad beliefs can only be defeated
by those have equally strong good beliefs.
Via LGF.
link
Another list of Tex Truth
1: The USA saved the
world from communism.
2: Every problem in
the middle-east is the fault of muslims.
3: Pumpkin is shit.
4: Law & Order
is the best one-hour show in the history of TV.
5: American beer is
shit.
6: Only fried potatos
are edible, all other potato permutations are unacceptable.
7: Intellectuals who
supported any socialist regime are no better than nazi sympathisers.
8: People who vote
for Bob Brown are losers.
9: Americans are better
at making movies than any other nation.
10: Guns are fun.
More people should buy guns and go hunting.
11: Public transport
sucks. You ever noticed how public transport advocates never use it themselves?
Trains and buses are mobile, taxpayer-funded urinals, nothing more. There's
a reason people buy cars. You can go where you want, when
you want, and don't have to sit next to stinky freaks.
link
Tex rules the world
Hey, I
scored myself some Soviet property! Woo!!
I always knew my communist
sympathies would pay off.
link
16
December 2003
A
good 'un
Here's a superb Canberra-based
blogger I only recently come across. Go say hello to Alan
E. Brain's big brain.
link
Off the planet
If you haven't done
so, go see what those interesting folks at aus.politics
are saying about Saddam's capture. It's a kaleidoscope of mental illness.
link
Let's kill Castro
Steve
H. gives
us plenty of good reasons why this filthy murdering bastard should get
an American bullet in his head.
link
Loving Saddam
An evil, mass murdering
bastard has been captured. Good news you'd think. Well, not to the readers
ofThe Age, who are
throwing a fit:
The US has occupied
Iraq for 8 months, searching high and low, and it has taken that long
to find Saddam when he's been right under their noses all the time.
What hope is there of finding Bin Laden? Very little.
Isn't it interesting?
We all know what Saddam did, but the Coalition of the Willing insist
that it's oh-so important that he be given a free, open and fair trial.
Meanwhile, we still don't really know what David Hicks and the 600-odd
detainees in Guantanamo have done, but there's no such trial planned
for them. And as for John Howard, he seems happy to try despots according
to our definition of fair, while trying our nationals according to the
despots' definition.
Has anyone actually
considered the fact that the Americans are good liars? Has anyone actually
thought that just maybe this isn't the "real" saddam? I mean
it might just be possible that this guy (assumingly a body double, one
of at least 10 that saddam has)could have been paid or more likley bullied
into pretending to be saddaam, so that good old Bush, can have a gloat
at how "wonderful" he and his country are, just a short while
before there election campaign. Very convinient dont you think? What's
next he will find Osama Bin Laden in the New Year?
The picture of that guy "saddam" being checked by Medical
officers, some how didn't look quite right to me. Something which says
that it is not THE saddam. I mean if you think about it, why after Iraq
was invaded would Saddam in his right mind, remembering how "powerful"
he was in his country be stupid enough to stay in that country, knowing
darn well that the yanks would be staying there until they "found"
him? Is he really that stupid? I don't think so.
Doubts: I do not
believe it is him.
At 66 yrs old and having spent 8 months living in exteme difficult condition,
Only few white hairs on his head and ?????. Maybe this is made in USA.
Saddam Hussein has may substitutes because CIA and others have been
trying to kill him for many years.
Have a look at our Johny at 64 and Bush at 55 and compare them with
this guy at 66. You've got to be joking.
Its incredible how
this is already being used for political gain by leaders who weren't
actually there themselves.
I wonder why there's
no front page pictures of Donald Rumsfeld having lunch with a smiling
Hussein next to the pictures of his capture? Would make a nice contrast.
Maybe at the trial Saddam can tell the world where he got his weapons,
money and power from.
Complicity in a
crime is also a crime therefore those who aided and abetted Saddam Hussein
in acquiring lethal micro-organisms & chemical weapons precursors
should also be arraigned. There is zero chance that we will see Rumsfeld,
Bush snr, Thatcher et al in court. Once again it is the victors' law
that pertains.
My favourite bit is
the post from "Hitfa Ugay":
It's
funny isn't it, a man once boasted to be an ally of the US is now debased
and humiliated by the same nation that armed him and encouraged him
to war with Iran, the same nation that supplied him with the chemical
weapons that he used against kurds, the same nation that supervised
while all this took place and made sure that it was never an issue AT
THE TIME these events were materialising, WHY? because saddam was someone
the US needed and used, the US couldn't care less what happened to the
people of IRAQ, if this is the case then why is it out there spending
billions of dollars in trying to fulfil it's empirilistic ideals when
it has literary 10s of millions of it's own citizens living in poverty.
This is the same nation that dropped a NUCLEAR bomb on Nagazaki and
Hiroshima and never once apologized and to this day the nuking of these
cities is seen as a triumph. This is the same nation that encouraged
riots and revolts against legitimately elected governments, this is
the name nation that rather not remember Vietnam and never mention the
millions of innocent vietnamese, men, women, children, elderly, disabled
that were butchered, raped, and pulverised by the early definitions
of US carpet bombs. The same nation that removed one governing body
in Afghanistan and it's placed installed a puppet government that consists
of war lords that are known for their barbarism and violating young
boys, it matters not one bit to them as long as the pipeline project
in Afghanistan goes ahead.
And history repeats itself, sooner or later, they will strike against
Syria, Iran and the rest of the nations will follow while Israel instigates
then withdraws and watches in celebration and with a smirk on it's face.
Here I quote Sharon who had the audacity to come out and speak against
saddam and terrorism while the world has finally acknowledged the barbarism
of one tyrant they're yet to see and even hear about the barbarism of
Sharon the butcher.
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and
will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry
about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America,
and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon,
October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
Nice people these
lefty loons........
link
13
December 2003
Quote
of the day
Everyone needs to
just shut up, get in the kitchen and bake me some pie
- Cantinera
link
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
link
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.
link
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.
link
The snowglobe
Thanks to Steve in
L.A. for this
amusing little link.
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.
link
9
December
Sprung
Dave at Israelly Cool
has
caught out anti-semite ozblogger Michael
Talismann plagiarising from the charming website Jewish
Tribal Review.
Mickey has been pestering
Dave's comments section for a while now, reciting one Jew-hating rant
after the other. It's hardly a surprise the nutty git does his "research"
at a website that publishes witty cartoons like this one: "Jew
Klux Klan". Hohoho. Or this one: Jewish
Santa (the one that steals toys from kids).
On their main page,
there's lots of great links to essays/articles & sites dealing with
holocaust denial & trivialisation , "the Jews are controlling
everything" conspiracy theories, Jewish racism, Jewish infestation
of the media and showbiz, and pretty much how everything on earth is the
fault of Jews.
Mike's not an anti-semite
of course. He's just a impartial thinker bravely taking on ZOG and their
worldwide network of big-nosed lackeys.
Nice fella.
link
Yobbo
vs. The Flying Kangaroo
Yobbo really
doesn't like QANTAS.
link
8
December 2003
Amadeus
 Finally
checked out the DVD of this movie in big-screen, surround-sound glory.
Given my complete lack of interest in classical music, opera or biopics,
I approached this three-hour movie with some trepidation.
I needn't have worried.
This was top-shelf cinema.
The key to its success
is the interesting narrative method: Mozart is almost a supporting character,
the story is told by Antonio Salieri, Court Composer to the Austrian Emperor,
driven mad my his hatred of Mozart and guilt over his death.
The cast are absolute
knockouts: F. Murray Abraham a deserved Oscar winner for his turn as Salieri.
Tom Hulce pulls off the role of the impish musical maestro with great
aplomb, and even the bit-part actors are uniformly excellent: a pre-kiddy-diddling
Jeffrey Jones as Emperor Joseph II, a breakthrough performance by Elizabeth
Berridge as Mozart's wife Constance (where in God's name has this actress
been since?), and a large ensemble too numerous to mention.
The Prague locations
are remarkable (I loved director Milos Foreman's comment: "because
of communist inefficiency, Prague was still in the 18th century"),
the cinematography superb, and the music soars.
Amadeus is
the rarest of beasts: an Oscar-winning movie that really did deserve to
be called "Best Picture".
Festival
of fools
The village idiots
at the Green Left Weekly have
a new edition out. Amongst the latest bunch of gems are:
A glowing portrait
of violence-loving crackpot Che
Guevara.
A display of horror
at the growing nightmare of market
forces in Vietnam. The left love poor people, except when it comes
to them wanting to vote, earn money or generally make their lives better.
A visiting nut-job
from the USA tells us to close
down all prisons. No really.
Apparently, terrorist-apologist
Tariq Ali is coming
to Australia to speak. How wonderful.
The USA
is evil because it's a homophobic hell-hole. Odd that they'd complain
about this, considering their unabashed admiration for Castro's gay-murdering
paradise.
More unspeakably godawful
commie poetry:
Mutual Obligation
It's somewhere
between
the obscene and unclean
but John Howard is my inspiration.
You work for
the dole.
You mortgage your soul,
and he calls that liberation.
Actually, I think
he calls it 'working for the dole'.
Get off your
fat arse,
do a job that's first class.
Yes, work is your obligation.
If I'm paying you,
it bloody is, yes.
You have to say,
“Nay,
I don't want any pay.”
It's part of building the nation.
Well, if you don't
want to work, don't ask for other people to give you money. Sounds simple
to me.
Fair pay will
not last
it's a thing of the past,
what you need is incentivation.
"incentivation"?
No dude, what you
need is to get a job and earn money. You can buy a thesaurus
with it.
Fair pay so it
seems
is a thing of our dreams,
all you need is incentivation.
Incentivation?
If you've got
kids galore
and you're terribly poor
then work is your obligation.
Is Fuhrer Howard
suggesting that parents have a moral obligation to look after their own
children? Can concentration camps be far around the corner?
3
December 2003
Iraq
Hey, aren't things
in Iraq supposed to be getting worse?
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...nearly all of Iraq’s
400 courts are functioning.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... the Iraqi judiciary
is fully independent.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...on Monday, October 6
power generation hit 4,518 megawatts—exceeding the pre-war average.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...all 22 universities
and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all
primary and secondary schools.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1, by October 1, Coalition
forces had rehabbed over 1,500 schools - 500 more than their target.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... teachers earn from
12 to 25 times their former salaries.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...all 240 hospitals and
more than 1200 clinics are open.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...pharmaceutical distribution
has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total
of 12,000 tons.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...the Coalition has helped
administer over 22 million vaccination doses to Iraq’s children.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...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.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...we have restored over
three-quarters of pre-war telephone services and over two-thirds of
the potable water production.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... Iraq (has) a single,
unified currency for the first time in 15 years.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...satellite dishes are
legal.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... there is no Ministry
of Information.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...there are more than
170 newspapers.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... foreign journalists
and everyone else are free to come and go.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...a nation that had not
one single element—legislative, judicial or executive-- of a representative
government, does.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...Shia religious festivals
that were all but banned, aren't.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...the Coalition has completed
over 13,000 reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of (a)
strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...Uday and Queasy are
dead - and no longer feeding innocent Iraqis to his zoo lions, raping
the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing
Iraq's soccer players for losing games...murdering critics.
Since President
Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...children aren't imprisoned
or murdered when their parents disagree with the government.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...political
opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or are forced
to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...millions
of longsuffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...Saddam
is gone.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... Iraq
is free.
This is maybe half
the list. Go read the rest and remind me again why invading Iraq was a
humanitarian disaster.
Not that this will
prevent the leftist "peace" crowd from wishing Saddam was still
in power. Coz they really really care about innocent people man.....
link
Scum
Moral equivalency
galore over at Islamonline.net,
in Kareem M. Kamel's sickening justification for Palestinian suicide bombings:
In this regard,
one must note that Israel’s military strategy had always been to
export fear into neighboring countries, and the Israeli military always
made sure that the battleground for any Arab-Israeli conflict would
be outside the borders of Israel. This was exemplified by the Arab-Israeli
wars of 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, all of which took place on Arab territory.
On the other hand, all the military operations during the Intifada took
place within the borders of Israel, with many Palestinian bombings and
guerilla operations taking place inside Israeli towns, cities and settlements.
Nice huh? The Arabs
start wars of extermiantion against Israel, then complain the Jews fight
back against them on "Arab territory". The
peace-loving arabs then conduct their "military operations"
by targeting civilains, then claim they are only doing what the
horrible Jewboys have done.
Nice people.
Also, be sure not
to miss their fabulously delusional "Islamic
Viewpoint" Q&A page.
Or their views on
homosexuality:
the punishment here
is the burning of both homosexuals (the actor and acted upon) or stoning
them with rocks till death because Allah Most High stoned the people
of Lot after demolishing their village.
This gives "compassionate
conservatism" a whole new meaning.
link
Essential reading for the day
Damian Penny's brilliant
mini-screed on Islamic hatred:
If Israel leaves
the West Bank and Gaza, the Arabs will complain that Palestinian "refugees"
haven't been allowed to return to Israel. If Israel, heaven forbid,
decided to let these "refugees" return, they will complain
about the "economic inequality" between the Arabs and the
Jews. If the Jews gave all their money, property and power to the Palestinians,
the complaint will be that the "legacy of oppression" makes
it impossible for Palestinians to share a country with Israelis. And
if the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the area altogether, they'll
complain that the rest of the world is still "controlled"
by them.
Barring military
conquest and "de-Nazification" of the Middle East, this pathological
hatred will not end until every Jew in the world - not just Israel,
but the world - is slaughtered. And when the Jews can't be blamed anymore,
they'll turn on Westerners. Then the Christians. Then the Sufis. Then
the Shi'ites. And so on. (Why do I write about the Jews so often? Because
eventually their persecutors, regardless of how much we try to appease
them today, will come for the rest of us.)
Make sure to read
the report that precedes this piece. Frightening.
link
The joys of farm subsidies
John Humphreys at
libertarian.org.au site argues
that not only are they economically foolish, they're
bad for the environment.
(Warning: The ALS
still seems to be using a webserver they found in a public toilet somewhere,
so you may need to try the link more than once to get it to load)
link
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