rssSo there's this clown out there that keeps on giving his email address out (erroneously) as "anthony@bigpond.net.au", which is one of my addresses. He's actually anthony_@bigpond.net.au, where _ is the initial of his second name.
I've actually contacted him a couple of times and said "look, cretin, stop it, because it's beginning to shit me", but I've stopped sending his email on.
But today's one is special. (Information that identifies said drongo has been changed)
Subject: Your Keys and Certificates - Reference Number ______ From: "Australian Taxation Office" <pki@ato.gov.au> Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 13:08:04 +1100 To: "ANTHONY DRONGO" <ANTHONY@BIGPOND.NET.AU> Dear MR DRONGO MR ANTHONY A DRONGO Reference Number ______Your Keys and Certificates provided to secure and maintain confidentiality and integrity of your use of the ATO's internet-based systems, are now available. -snip-
Wow. What a maroon. Time for a short phone call to the Tax Office to say "um, no, please contact said maroon and give him a head-slapping".
Tim Dunlop skewers the "australian oath of allegiance" idea nicely.
As is pointed out in the comments, we already have a national oath:
This is the wattle,
the emblem of our land,
you can stick it in a bottle,
or you can hold it in your hand.
Amen.
... and that's good enough for me. "Oaths of Allegiance" are for cults and for my-country-right-or-wrong type loonies.
Safire is another to miss the point. It's possible to be both against Saddam, and against the current US-led attempt at a war to depose him and replace him with a US puppet.
Those who think the US will bring a Happy Fun Democracy to Iraq are deluded. The US has already said that they won't act against existing Ba'ath Party members who help them in the war (in an attempt to encourage a coup). If Saddam goes, and one of his underlings (with a pro-U.S. bent) is installed, does anyone seriously expect things to get better for the average Iraqi? Really? I can see it turning into a free-for-all grab for power.
Meanwhile, bin Laden is still out there. Y'know, the mass murdering psycopath? Few planes, some tall buildings, that thing?
seems like a current blog effort is finding out exactly what president G.W. "AWOL" Bush actually did in the last couple of years of the Texas Air National Guard service he used to avoid the Vietnam war.
The following piece A Military Career Distinguished Only by Favoritism lays out a lot of the known facts. Democratic Veteran is trying to navigate what's left of the US's Freedom of Information act to get more info.
Why does this matter? Well, you've got a leader who's claiming the moral right to send men and women to die for control of oil, and kill an enormous number of civilians at the same time. Yet at the same time he didn't feel like it was appropriate to serve the country himself.
It seems like this is a bit of a theme for the mob in power over there. "Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you."
I am perfectly well aware there is a case to be made for taking out Saddam Hussein -- you can make it on humanitarian grounds alone. The question is whether it's riskier to leave him alone or take him out. The oldest of all Texas dicta is, "Leave the rattlesnake alone." Those of us who spend time outdoors here not infrequently encounter snakes and sometimes have to kill them. But the rule is: You don't bother the snake, snake won't bother you. Saddam Hussein is 68 years old and slipping.
Via The Note, I see this:
[White House budget director] Daniels told the US Chamber [of Commerce] "that no one should 'hyperventilate' because the government has 'returned to an era of deficits,' but he warned of serious fiscal problems unless Medicare is reformed promptly," says the Washington Times.
So, enormous tax cuts for the rich, and for corporates: OK. Entitlements for the poor and the elderly: Oops, sorry, no money for that.
At what point are the U.S. media going to start calling this people on this utterly disgustly class warfare? Ever? Or at least start pointing out when the little spokesdroids are telling complete lies?
Ted Barlow decided that he was too busy to blog this week, so instead we get an abso-fricking-lutely gigantic list of political/weblog related light bulb jokes. Make sure you read the comments, many more great jokes in there.
John le Carré's piece in The Times on the madness of the US.
I was going to write a piece about serial fool Tim Blair's piece in the Oz on Monday, about the anti-SUV ads, but just couldn't summon the enthusiasm. I'll just point to Digby's piece, instead.
Finally, book of the week: Richard Preston's "The Demon In The Freezer" (excerpts here). Not something to read if you're prone to worrying. And some of the descriptions of exactly what smallpox does to it's victims are completely stomach-turning.
A French yacht taking part in the Jules Verne round-the-world sailing trophy has been attacked by a giant squid in the mid-Atlantic, its skipper announced by radio link.
"The squid was pulling really hard, so we put the boat about and when we came to a stop the tentacles let go. We saw it behind the boat -- and it was enormous. I have been sailing for 40 years, and I have never seen the like," he said.
Crew member Didier Ragault, who spotted the creature through a port-hole said "the tentacles were as thick as my arm wearing an oil-skin, and I immediately thought of the damage it could do.
Cooooool. I like squid. They rock. And they don't like the French - what's not to like?
Washington -- Bush administration officials are seriously considering proposals that the United States tap Iraq's oil to help pay the cost of a military occupation, a move that likely would prove highly inflammatory in an Arab world already suspicious of U.S. motives in Iraq.
...
Yet there are strong advocates inside the administration, including the White House, for appropriating the oil funds as "spoils of war, according to a source who has been briefed by participants in the dialogue.
"There are people in the White House who take the position that it's all the spoils of war, said the source, who asked not to be further identified. "We [the United States] take all the oil money until there is a new democratic government [in Iraq]"
(emphasis added)
So, let's see: you invade, trash what's left of the infrestructure, then walk off with the only source of revenue that could be used to rebuild said infrastructure. Then you sit around complaining "well, we'd love to give the oil back to the Iraqis, but I'm afraid they'll need to rebuild their society and fashion a democracy first.
Using Iraqi oil to fund an occupation would reinforce a prevalent belief in the Mideast that the conflict is all about control of oil, not rooting out weapons of mass destruction, according to Halim Barakat, a recently retired professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University.
"It would mean that the real ... objective of the war is not the democratization of Iraq, not getting rid of Saddam, not to liberate the Iraqi people, but a return to colonialism, he said. "That is how they [Mideast nations] would perceive it.
Well, duuuuh. I wonder why they'd perceive it that way? I mean, the U.S. has long been a supporter of democracy in the Arab world. Look how they restored democracy to Kuwait. Or the brave and fearless way they supported the democratic government of Iran (and didn't that work out well...)
As many people have pointed out in the comments section on Atrios, the "spoils of war" justification was used by Iraq after they conquered Kuwait.
So can we please stop pretending it's about getting rid of Saddam, now?
Media Whores Online has started referring to Gene Lyon's term "Moron American",
However, elections, particularly national elections, do not ultimately hinge on a mere battle of ideas. While policy is important to a majority of voters who do vote their pocketbooks and their conception of the national interest, an election cannot be won without appealing to the 10-20% of voters who are swayed not by the message but by tone and attitude of the candidates, as well as the general "images" of the parties. Gene Lyons recently referred to this important voting bloc as the "Moron-American community." (They also comprise the contemptible "late deciders" who make national election outcome predictions impossible until election day - when they make their voting decisions.)
I'd actually suggest "Simpleton-American" as a more accurate term. We have Simpleton-Australians here, too. These are the folks who don't care about what's happening out there in the big bad world, they just want "an answer" (preferably a nice simple one that doesn't involve much thought.)
Terrorism? Just get the bad guys and it'll stop. Foreign affairs? Obviously it's just a matter of deciding who's on our side and who's not. Economy? Too hard, too boring, what's the latest sports news?
The problem is that these folks don't want to have to think, to evaluate choices and choose. They prefer a nice world of moral absolutes, just like in the movies, or in video games.
more later...
For an example of why you don't let a business regulate it's own occupational health and safety rules, go read this horrifying piece from the NYT.
It's of course completely unsuprising to see McWane's soft-money contributions for the 2000 cycle go entirely to the Republicans. I'm sure I can't imagine what they hoped to get out of it.
The usual suspects out on the right in Australia are forever claiming that the Fairfax press is for the "elites". So let's look at today's Oz, shall we? With things like Iraq, bushfires, and North Korea all in the news, why on earth is today's front page splashing some pissing match over a performance of "waiting for Godot" in Sydney? I mean, really, who cares? Not only that, but an editorial and an opinion piece on the same subject?
From the age today, Can Gollum win an Oscar?.
I just want to see the nomination speech. "Smeagol wantss to thank the nice academy for the nomination. We wantss the oscar. We needs it! And if the nassty academy members won't vote for us, maybe we'll have to wait until they're sleeping, and wring their neckss, and takesss the oscar for ourselves!"
Go watch this latest drug control ad. (For those without quicktime, a couple of teenagers sitting in dad's study getting stoned and generally bullshitting. One finds a gun in the desk, fucks about with it, and shoots the friend.)
Uh huh. So dope leads to accidental gun deaths? Really? What are the numbers, compared to, say, the number of gun deaths at the hands of people who are drunk? Googling around leads me to the cDC's National Violent Death Reporting System. Looking more closely at this, though, it seems like they're at the stage of getting funding for the system - it's not yet in place.
Of course, given the current US government's willingness to deliberately lie about health matters (see, for instance, their recent stealth actions to force the National Cancer Institute to spread FUD about an abortion-breast cancer link), it's unlikely that this information's ever going to be available in a non-"edited" way. So we'll all just have to go on trusting them.
Via Tim, from www.notbored.com, we have:
My god. An article critical of the Bushies and their not-a-stimulus package? In the Washington Post? What is the world coming to. It's not a bad piece, overall.
"I understand the politics of economic stimulus, that some would like to turn this into class warfare," Bush said last week as he was giving reporters a tour of that very nice ranch he owns in Crawford, Tex. "That's not how I think."
Now, if I were in the president's position -- or in the position of the wealthy contributors who lavishly financed the campaigns of his political friends last year -- I wouldn't want anyone to talk about class either. God forbid we look at the details of exactly who benefits most from this administration's policies.
The article finishes with a nice pithy quote:
Years ago, Harold Lasswell, the great political scientist, suggested that one of the fundamental political questions is "Who gets what, when and how." It's a question we're not supposed to ask anymore.
The obvious response, of course, is that this is a very, very good question. And one that should be asked way more often, preferably with nice simple answers. Fortunately, plenty of people out on the web are digging up the actual numbers (Bush would refer to it as "fuzzy math", no doubt) on this. People like Atrios, Ted Barlow, and Brad DeLong are all covering this, and their answers to the three points are the usual for the current mob: "The Rich", "As soon as we can back the dumptruck full of cash up to the door", and "Without the slightest hint of subtlety."
Greg Palast's interviewed (note: link is to GP's own site, not Hustler, so is work-safe) in the March 2003 edition of Hustler. Lots of fun stuff in the interview:
and more:
HUSTLER: Any final words on the state of the American press?
PALAST: Let's put it this way: This is the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, and that means it's been 30 years since the Washington Post has broken a major story. I uncovered the story of the purged voters and broadcast it in Britain within three weeks of the election. Al Gore was still in the race. The Washington Post ran my story, seven months later, nicely buried there. W. is reading it in the White House and giggling to himself.
And yes, it's saying something that you have to read about this stuff in Hustler, for chrissakes. Anyway, go read the full thing.
from the article at the WashPost (via Altercation) -- big media and big telecoms get even less regulated, because gods know, the one thing the big telecoms companies have been suffering from is too much regulation.
Oh, no, hang on, wait. That's not right. What they have been suffering from is idiotic business plans, greedy and unethical executives and investors, and a glut caused by every half-wit and his dog being thrown a few hundred million to drop fibre into a trench in the late 90s.
Anyway, why I noticed this - the photo caption on the article reads:
There's nothing mindless about anything the Republicans are doing in the US. It's all very carefully targetted to reward their friends, and if it's convenient, punish their enemies.
Another quote:
But Powell said he is determined to keep the Internet relatively free from the decades-old, tightly regulated framework of local telephone service. He also disparages claims that changing FCC rules will mean open season for consolidation that will stifle competition.
"That assumes that the antitrust division takes a pill and goes to sleep,"
Um, hello? Microsoft case, anyone? I think it's quite clear that the US DoJ won't be chasing anyone for anti-trust violations any time soon.
The previous piece on Krugman uncut reminded me - I found this a while ago, and only just got around to finding it again. ABC Radio's "Media Report" interviewed Hunter S. Thompson last August on the state of the media in the United States. A juicy sample:
Mick O'Regan: So in that sense, theres not enough room for dissenting voices?
Hunter S. Thompson: Theres plenty of room theres not just enough people who are willing to take the risk. Its sort of a herd mentality, a lemming-like mentality. If you dont go with the flow youre anti-American and therefore a suspect. And weve seen this before, these patriotic frenzies. Its very convenient having an undeclared war that you can call a war and impose military tribunals and wartime security and we have these generals telling us that this wars going to go on for a long, long time. Maybe not so much the generals now, the generals are a little afraid of Iraq, a little worried about it, but its the civilians in the White House, the gang of thieving, just lobbyists for the military industrial complex, who are running the White House, and to be against them is to be patriotic, then hell, call me a traitor.
A partial transcript of the interview is on the ABC website, as well as real audio of the full 37 minute interview.
watching tbogg and James Capozzola tag team stomp noted child-prodigy Ben Shapiro, I almost start to feel sorry for him. Then I go back and read some more of his posts and columns, and my only response is "stomp him harder".
He's the perfect poster child for mandatory parental controls on web access.
maybe it's just me, but I read pieces like the latest Krugman piece, and I wonder what it said in the first draft. would something like a 'Krugman uncut' be entertaining? There's certainly no shortage of unedited stream-of-consciousness blithering from the other end of the spectrum - look at the WSJ, the Washington Times, or The Australian's Opinion pages recently.
Which reminds me -- according to crikey's mailout today, that complete tool Imre Saluszinsky is apparently getting a regular gig at the Oz. If only they could move Andrew Bolt across from the Murdoch tabloid to the Murdoch "quality broadsheet", we could get an almost complete set of tools in the one location. How convenient. Suprisingly, though, searching Just Tools for 'editorial writers' produces no hits - so the Oz must be buying from somewhere else.