The Age seems to have decided to start publishing the idiotic drivel of one Angela Shanahan. This strangely ignorant woman was originally writing opinion pieces for the Murdoch "quality newspaper" The Australian. That she is married to the paper's Political Editor was, I'm sure, nothing to do with her being picked up as an opinion writer. This doesn't, of course, explain why The Age decided to pick her up. Of course, The Age has also published Piggy Pearson and Imre Saluzinsky, so it's not like they've got some sort of ban against idiotic hacks on their opinion pages.

Fortunately, as an opinion writer, Shanahan's able to churn out nonsense without any regard to those pesky "fact" things. This is lucky, or else she'd be utterly stuffed.

Her latest piece contains the usual crap from her Australian columns - a fierce devotion to John Howard, a denial that his election victory last year was due to his playing the race/immigrant card. She's also still engaged in what she thinks is a "culture war" (her quotes).

Then we get to the truly stupid comments:

Mmm. "Howardism". I didn't think Howard actually had enough ideas that he was actually in favour of to get his own "-ism". It seems to me like Howard's positions are usually defined by what he's against. This can be roughly summed up as "against anything that's come out of society after about 1958".

Another point - if Howard (and presumably the Liberal party, which he rules with pretty complete control) is so popular, why is it that we have the almost-unprecedented case of every single state government under ALP control? And not just "slightly" under control. In Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania, the conservative parties have been thoroughly thoroughly thrashed to a bloody pulp. If "Howardism" is so much in favour, why is it that, with the exception of Howard's Tampa-driven bash-the-reffos election victory, the Liberals and their National Party stooges can't seem to even lose with a reduced majority? Could it be, perhaps, that the Liberal party's core beliefs of reducing or eliminating the social safety net, turning society into a Thatcherite all-against-all jungle and pandering to the big and the powerful, are in fact completely on the nose in the electorate?

One final quote - I don't want to turn this into a "Fisking", as practiced by many and varied idiots out there out in the blogosphere.

So, there you have it - Howardism consists of "the war", gutting Medicare, cutting taxes, and "restructuring of family income support". The last, by the way, is the coded phrase for "penalising women who try to enter the workforce, rather than staying in the kitchen like A Proper Woman". Of course, the attempts to gut Medicare (which remains intensely popular amongst those people who Shanahan thinks are "Howardists") will have to continue on their stealthy way. We're already seeing this, with Howard's assaults on bulk-billing, and the ever-increasing handouts to the private health industry via the 30% tax rebate.

I ranted a couple of weeks ago about the appalling Australia Institute survey and op-ed pieces on mandatory filtering as a "solution" to "protecting the kiddies" from net porn. A couple of updates:

• Electronic Frontiers Australia has a response to the original survey, and the media coverage of it. If you read nothing else, at least read the executive summary. It lays out quite nicely the gaping holes in the australia institute's case.
• Media Watch last night got stuck into the Fairfax media's coverage of this. As well as pointing out the rank hypocrisy of the Fairfax papers, David Marr also commented

From the ABC "Free trade talks to discuss medicine scheme". Yep, the Howard agenda to destroy PBS and Medicare proceeds onward, this time there's cover being provided by the US. I've got a longer piece on this that I'll post soon.

Media Watch reported tonight that last week's "big speech" by Howard was, well, a bit of a British-dossier kind of thing. That is, he ripped off someone else's work. In this case, every left-of-center warhawk's favourite Ken Pollack.

See more here - starts about halfway down the page. In this case, he can't even blame an anonymous staffer, as he claims his speeches are his own work.

No doubt we can expect to see Dick "fuckstick" Alston out there bitching about ABC bias while he attempts to stuff another loony right wing mate onto the board. Hey, Dick! I hear Kennett's got media experience and is currently out of a job.

[note. not many hyperlinks in this. I was going to add them, but I'm far, far too pissed off]

It's hard to get the enthusiasm to post when you can see a bunch of evil pricks deliberately trashing peace and diplomacy, while all along claiming "oh oh, that bad, bad man Saddam". No. No, no, no, no, no. Bush, aided and abetted by a cast of dozens, is going to kill a whole pile of people who've suffered for, well, the last 30-40 years at least under many and varied evil bastards. And, to rub salt into the wound, these sons-of-bitches are trying to claim "self-defense". These fuckers have been happy to sit back and support and supply this fucker when it suited them - he was their son of a bitch. Suddenly they feel a need to be all butch and assertive, and oh well, guess you're enemy of the month, you'll have to do.

I hold especial scorn and vitriol for those who should know better. Primarily Blair, who is rightfully going to go down in history, not as the man who ended Tory rule in Britain, but as the spineless wretch who provided useful cover to a pack of slavering wolves eager to stamp control over a chunk of the world that's known more pain and suffering than most. British press reports have recently described how tired and haggard and worn out he looks. Good. I hope he is feeling a fraction of the pain that his actions will cause. He's helped this absolutely hideous chain of events unfold, I hope every last moment of it is rubbed into his face. Because one thing is certain, these fuckers in Washington DC have got a taste for trashing countries now, and they won't stop. Afghanistan - wheee! we get to go in and knock it all over. fixing it up? Nah, who cares. The media won't report on it, so long as we give them something bigger and shinier to focus on. And guess what, Tony? You made it alllll happen. You must be so proud. Good luck getting off this bandwagon of death and despair - your own people won't thank you for it, and your new friends in Washington will dump you as soon as you dare deviate from their party line. Your political life is over, done, finished.

And let's look at our own local enabler of bad behaviour. John W. Howard. It's almost unbelievable, but the "W" does indeed stand for "Winston". As in Winston Churchill, yes. This pathetic little specimen has been pimping his wretched little carcass all over the place - oh-so-eager to be the first to sign up to Bush's eternal war. The public, who he's so eager to court when there's a minority that needs to be demonised, seem ungrateful for this opportunity. Time to wheel out the dismissive language - they're a mob, they're silly leftists who watch the ABC and download internet pornography, they don't have access to all the special secret information that my friend George insists exists. Of course, little JWH wouldn't be getting this secret info - he's just a stupid little tool. He didn't even need to be bribed! He was desperately seeking approval and validation from his big buddy George, like some snotty-nosed 12 year old with the world's largest inferiority complex. Look at the various photos from any meeting of Howard and Bush - Howard looks like he's about to wet himself with excitement. Jesus H. Fucking Christ. I guess that's what we get when we end up with a soulless, talentless void as leader. You know, anyone that makes Costello or Crean look good really has to worry about themselves. Perhaps he can book in for a soul transplant.

I'm pretty much a complete atheist, but times like this, I long for the existence of a roasting, boiling hell. And I'm pleased to think that the war-obsessed power-mad cabal in Washington and their eager/callous/stupid enablers around the world will spend many an eternity screaming in agony.

It's funny. I keep seeing all these people whose primary concern is "for the troops". Um, the troops are a) volunteers, and professionals, b) not going to be getting the living shit bombed out of them. How about a little less concern "for the troops", and a little more "for the poor bloody 'collateral damage'". For what it's worth, I do support our troops. And the best way to support them is to bring them back here. Now. If I see that cunt Howard sending off more of "our brave military" to a pointless and futile war, I may do the television set a grievous injury.

Lil Johnnie must be feeling awfully alone. No invite to the Azores for a summit (the Azores?? what, they didn't want to chance anywhere else in case protesters might get involved?). Christ, even Portugal got an invite, and they're not on the Security Council or sending troops to Iraq.

From this piece on talkingpointsmemo, we hear that the Kremlinologists who observe the White House have detected an alliance between the State Department and the Office of the Vice-President against the Pentagon over the North Korea issue. As part of this:

Sorry, they're sending Dick "everything I touch turns to shit, but it's someone else's fault" Cheney (even more), and these is supposed to be a good thing? Why don't they just fucking nuke Pyongyang, it'll be quicker, and probably cause less casualties than sending Cheney anywhere near the situation. Christ, every time they send Cheney outside the US they have to either declare war or send a crack team of highly trained apologisers to clean up after him. Last time he did a major tour of the Middle East he managed to produce a near-unanimous front from the countries of the area, all backing Saddam against the US.

Once more we see wishful thinking from Tom Friedman, who's signed on to the war only to find that shock, horror, it's not the war he wanted. But good on him for continuing to hope and wish that things were other than they are.

See, that might have been the case some time ago - but with the Bushies "you're wit' us, or agin' us" talk, and their continual building up of the non-threat, there can be no backdown for them. They've spent last last 6-9 months turning Iraq into the biggest scariest baddest monster around, and, to be frank, you've been their willing helper. The result now is that they have no way to back down. They've kicked away all the supports that they had - allies, treaties, international frameworks - and insisted that all else was to be subservient to their One True Way. Right now, I can't see a way where this war, in this appallingly mis-managed and disasterous way, can be avoided. They've done their damnedest to ensure that once the plan was started, there would be no possible way to stop it.

See, this is never going to happen. For all his "humble" talk, Bush and his associates have never regarded other countries as anything else than as either vassals, or potential enemies. I don't think they'd know how to commence any real diplomacy. It's not something they know how to do. The only member of the cabinet with any possible credibility - a necessity in diplomacy - was Powell, and he's trashed it in the last 2 months pushing puffed up, misleading, and outright false evidence to justify this war.

It might seem I'm being harsh on Friedman - I've posted pieces before denigrating his recent editorials. My feelings are that he's been willingly pretending that things were other than they are, and was quite willing to speak out in favour of things, pretending that all was good, and happy, like in his imaginary world. Then, once it's too late to actually do anything about it, he turns around and sorrowfully announces that what do you know, this isn't what he thought it was. Meanwhile, the people who've been out there in the trenches, dealing with things as they are can only say "oh, really Sherlock? No shit? Now you notice?"

The Bushies are masters at co-opting people. But at the end of the day, you can only be co-opted if you willingly suspend your critical facilities. I fully expect that in 10 years time, if these current times are just a bad memory, plenty of people who've done sterling service defending, covering up for, and otherwise excusing the current inmates, will be telling everyone how "they knew they were bad, all along".

In the most recent piece in David Neiwert's Rush, Newspeak and Fascism series, he includes a speech that Clinton made after the Oklahoma City bombing. In it, Clinton talks about purveyors of hate speech - he didn't say "they should be silenced", or "how dare they say what they say". He pointed out that freedoms come with responsibilities - and there was a responsibility to stand up and speak against "reckless speech and behaviour". In other words, the way to defeat words that we don't like is to speak up and state a different point of view.

Compare and contrast to the current inmates. In response to the satirical site GWBush.com, Bush said, during the election campaign: "There ought to be limits to freedom." This was after the Bush campaign attempted to shut the site with legal threats.

After Bill Maher's comments on Politically Incorrect, where he and a guest opined that flying a plane into a building was not an act of cowardice, while lobbing missiles from far away was cowardly, Ari "spokestool" Fleischer said:

"Watch what they say, watch what they do". Uh huh. In case you're thinking "oh, that's just Fleischer's anti-democratic opinion", two days later Ari was asked whether Fleischer had got into trouble for his statements. His comment was that no-one in the building he worked with blamed him for his comments.

Why do the Bushies hate America? Why do they persist in their attempts to shut down free speech? (Ah, but Clinton was a bad president, because he had sex in the oval office. Ooo aaa. Jesus fucking christ, get some perspective.)

Toby pointed out this amusing little flash piece Economists.

Boing Boing points to this story at Greenpeace. A bunch of 200 Indian women were protesting outside a Dow (who now own Union Carbide) plant in Bombay, trying to get Dow to take responsibility for cleaning up their Bhopal mess. You know, that little oops where thousands and thousands of Indians were killed due to negligence on the part of a large corporate? So what are Dow doing? They're suing the survivors for protesting. Lovely. If you'd care to express your opinion to Dow in the language of the consumer, a helpful list of all their product names is available from their website. As Boing Boing put it: "These guys are more evil than Darth frigging Vader."

Over at Orcinus David Neiwert's up to Part 10 of his continuing series on the spread of the extreme right through mainstream american society. There's helpful links to the past installments at the top of the article.

The Memory Hole has a nice summary of how the media thoughtfully shielded the Boy Emperor after his "scripted" admission at the recent "press conference".

And to finish off on another nice note, puppies.

While we're all being distracted by the war talk, the free-trade-at-any-cost crowd continue their stealthy way onwards.

Shearing away the fluffy talk, this means:

• No change on agriculture (the only thing we would like to gain)
• Everything else will be front-loaded.

A related note - the new head of the World Water Association is already moving to undercut the UN's drive to supply more people with fresh water and sanitation. Needless to say, he's a product of the UK's Thatcherized water system.

It seems somehow ironic that this week is the week that the International Criminal Court gets inaugurated. Of course, the US has decided that they're not bound by it, and that they're going to violate the 1969 Vienna Convention on Law of Treaties (it's a kind of "meta-treaty", defining rules of how countries work with treaties) to try and trash the ICC. But still, it's a start. And both the UK and Australia have signed and ratified the treaty. Given the US's stated intent to bomb the living shit out of Iraq (military, civilian, it all looks the same from high altitude), and the somewhat questionable legal status of this invasion without UN sanction, I know I'd be nervous were I a higher-up in the Australian or British military...

Of course the ultimate irony would be if push came to shove, and the Australian government decided to defy the International Criminal Court, while still refusing to even raise the slightest hint of dissent with the US about the Australian citizens being held without trial (or any other form of due legal process) in the US's military detention centre in Cuba.

From TBogg, the periodic haiku table of the elements.

Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies (via Boing Boing).

The ever-lovely CIA has the young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and they're being used as leverage to get him to talk. (Remind me again - the CIA are the good guys, right?) [Update: Long Story; short pier has more]

The hideous Donald Rumsfeld being interviewed by the BBC's David Dimbleby (and why is it that the US media can't do interviews like this? You know, with followup questions, pointing out when the interviewee is telling obvious lies, that sort of thing...)

And apparently Princess Diana is "having fun" in the afterlife, spending time with Mother Teresa. Well, that's nice, isn't it.

Howard is scum. No, lower than scum. He actually tried to link the deaths of Australians in the Bali bombing to the invasion of Iraq. Needless to say, pretty much everyone's piled on to him (and deservedly so). Downer's running around claiming Howard was misunderstood, but I think the problem is that everyone understood perfectly well what he said, and what he was trying to do.

This is a government that loooves their sly innuendo and nudge-nudge wink-wink comments. From the kids overboard, to Heffernan-Kirby, the detention centre riots, it's always about making those comments that you can immediately back down from, saying "oh no, don't be so sensitive, you misunderstand what we said". Bollocks. You're a pack of lying opportunistic scumbags without a trace of decency or morality.

The Hersh piece that caused Perle to label Hersh the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist" is online at the New Yorker.

In it, there's more reasons that Perle feels so strongly about Hersh.

I'm pretty sure Hersh was still at the NYT in 83.

The short version of the article is that Perle is Yet Another "access capitalist" (harsher mouths might call it "crony capitalist"), peddling his access and who he knows for money. He joins a list that includes, well, pretty much the entire administration, from Bush on down. Another way to describe it (the way that Adnan Khashoggi (yes, that Khashoggi) describes it) is simply "influence peddling".

The closing paragraph:

Oh, and for Perle's benefit, the following is a quick visual guide. (No, I'm no Uggabugga).

Osama Bin Laden (terrorist) (still at large)	Tim McVeigh (terrorist) (dead)	Eric Rudolph (terrorist) (still at large)	Seymour Hersh (journalist) (still at large)

As a tip, try concentrating on catching the terrorists, rather than sewing up nice little deals for yourself and your mates. It may result in more success.

The US is blessed with very few genuine reporters, these days. So it's interesting to see semi-official spokesthing Richard Perle, when confronted with examples of real reporting. From the CNN transcript:

Let's note, for the record, that Perle did not deny the charge - his response was "I don't believe that a company would gain from a war", before launching into a non-sequiter about terrorism. Now this point is obviously false. Plenty of companies will gain from this war, from the companies who get the cleanup jobs for the oil fields *cough* Haliburton *cough*, to the contracts for managing prisoners of war (no doubt coming soon to a Wackenhut near you), to the suppliers of the military - food, ammunition, and all the other supplies that make a huge army run.

The article's not up at the New Yorker yet, so it's not clear what Perle's conflict of interest is yet. But it's important to note that this isn't the first time that Hersh has mentioned Perle. See this article (link found via SF indymedia site), which cites this piece in the Atlantic, from 1982:

The Hersh piece is more about Kissinger and Nixon and their obssessive need for control over everything. It's worth reading the whole piece in light of today's inmates of the White House.

(original link via Atrios)

In a snit reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson's discovery that he wasn't on Nixon's "enemies list", Mark Morford is upset that Whitehouse.org gets legal threats for parodying Lynne Cheney, while he doesn't.

(From memory, Thompson declared that he was going to make damn sure that if the list was ever updated, he would be on it.)

The Pentagon wants to start testing nuclear weapons again. But it's ok, because they're only itty bitty little nukes. Phew. I was worried there for a moment that they were going to work on something that would blow up the world or something, but no, they just want to build ones that are small enough to use without anyone getting upset. I can see their point - I mean, what's the point of building all these nuclear weapons if they're too big and dangerous to use? Sheesh, it's enough to drive an underendowed leader of the free world to prescription medication.

Caution: The above post may be considered sinful to certain religions.

According to Jim Allchin of Microsoft, discussing some future version of Windows that will be all things to all people:

How do I put this politely? Ahem. Google's got something out there and in use by millions of people. They got to be number one by being the best at what they do, rather than by forcing their unwanted wares on people by bundling it in with existing products, or by forcing users to buy their products. They have a history of rolling out new tools that are interesting, exciting, and useful.

Microsoft gives us... well, fuck-all, really. They buy up innovation, they destroy competitors using dodgy/illegal techniques (don't just take my word for it - they're on the record now, thanks to the US DOJ v. Microsoft trial), and their home-grown innovations are either copies of someone else's work, or else... well, anyone remember Micosoft Bob?

Allchin, put up, or shut up. Preferably the latter.

(link via this week's NTK)

From New Scientist, "Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer":

Well, there goes "The Emerging Republican Majority" </cheapshot>.

Nastasha at the watch asks, of the UK:

The subject is the latest British, ahem, over-enthusiasm on the subject of Iraq. Or, to put it more bluntly, their latest lie-peddling for Bush. Turns out that the info the Brits gave out on Saddam attempting to import uranium from Niger was "not authentic" (the Guardian goes further, quoting it as "deliberately fabricated evidence"). Of course, no-one's suggesting that the Brits deliberately peddled this nonsense, no no, of course not. But they are getting something of a reputation for being over-enthusiastic with the truth. And in a world with Ari Fleischer, that's no mean achievement. Joe Conason has more on this.

I avoided the topic of the idiotic federal government defence policy shift, where "we need to participate in the missile defence scheme". But it occurred to me today that a missile defense system is a perfect match for the rest of our armed forces. We have submarines that are noisy, without working weapons systems, and which leak under water. We have "front-line" fighters that aren't capable of going up against the Iraqi air defenses (which have been gutted by 12 years of air-strikes and sanctions). A completely useless missile defence system is the perfect match for these other systems.

Well, aside from the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars we'd be pissing away to give to US defense contractors. And the loss of sovereignty - can you imagine the americans letting us run our own defense systems? No chance, there'd be US military manning it.

But aside from that, it makes the perfect counterpart to the rest of our large military acquisitions - junk, the lot of it.

Sean-Paul at the Agonist uses the phrase "spiteful teenagers" to describe the Bushies threats against Russia:

For fuck's sake. Threatening the Mexicans, threatening Turkey, trying to punish the French... what the hell? No, really. Why on earth does the US expect anyone to help them in their "war on noun" schemes, or in any other way? And with the US economy in serious trouble (the housing bubble, the only thing keeping it afloat, is showing signs that it's deflating), and the rest of the world not much better, now's really a bad time to start getting all imperial.

If you know fuck-all about the a subject, is it too much to ask that you put a disclaimer on your opinion pieces saying "oh yeah, by the way, I know fuck all about what I'm talking about"?

Current example, Michael Flood, writing in The Age on internet porn. He tries to make the case that there's two extremes out there "no porn, ever", and "free porn for all kiddies". This then allows him to claim that his solution, mandatory filtering of all web access, is a "middle ground".

First off, I don't think I've seen anyone claim that kids should have access to porn. If you have children and you don't trust them to not look at porn on the net, then either: a) supervise them, or b) buy some filtering software and put it on your computer. Why the hell should the rest of us suffer because you can't be bothered to make a minimal effort to supervise your offspring. Yet in this article, it's "the pornography industry" that are the ones advocating parents actually act like, well, parents.

Secondly, mandatory filtering. People who advocate this are, by and large, completely ignorant of what this involves (see examples: Alston, R. and Harradine, B.) The amount of hardware required to proxy and filter all web traffic in Australia would be astronomical. I've been there, I actually know what I'm talking about, rather than those ignorant buffoons who just wave their hands and claim "oh, it's just a matter of filtering". Guess what, they're not proposing to actually pay for this, oh no no. That's for the ISPs to do, out of their enormous profits. It's obviously not been noticed in Canberra, but, well, the net isn't quite the money magnet that it used to be. ISPs are doing it damn hard, these days.

And exactly how do you propose to handle SSL (https)? Because if you start this mandatory filtering, all that happens is that the porn sites move to SSL secured servers, and then your precious filtering solution is worth fuck all.

Apparently the current approach is "failing". The current approach suggests/urges that ISPs make filtering software available for clients. If this software can't/won't do the job, how the hell is putting it at the proxy server level going to be any fucking better? Of course it will be better, in one particular use case: if little Richard is surfing the net unsupervised and sees porn, the parents will be able to run to A Current Affair and sell their shocking story.

Arghgrhrgrrrr. Goddam useless know-nothing retards.

Ok, I'm getting a bit pissed off. Friedman and others have spent the last 6 or more months agitating for war. Pushing it, praising it, explaining it. Now we're told:

Um, fuckwit, you've been fucking pushing the current line all along. To turn around now and say "Oh, what a mess, but, sigh, what can we do" is disingenious at best, and slimy weasel words at worst. You decided to shack up with the imperialists, you knew what they were all along. Don't you dare try to climb back up the slippery slope to a position of moral respectability (he says, mixing metaphors at a furious pace).

I wonder how many more of the warmonger party will try to pretend that they "would have preferred we didn't go to war"? Get a clue, Friedman. You helped, with your words, to make the current situation happen. Don't fucking try to pretend that you're horrified by the mess. Grow some balls and accept responsibility for your own past actions.

Atrios called the "we can't back down as we'll lose face" argument 'Worst Argument Ever'. Josh Marshall claimed that this wasn't the only argument, and promised more. Well here it is. The piece title claims "There's more than just U.S. credibility at stake in Iraq", but offers, what, exactly? As far as I can see, a bad analogy, and the assertion:

Interesting. No mention here of human rights violations or any of the other fig leaves that have been seized upon in recent times. Just that "if Saddam is a serious threat to our security" and "if we won't get another bite at this apple". I don't think anyone can seriously argue that Saddam is a threat to the US. A threat to the US's hegemony over the Middle East, possibly. But to the US? Pah. And the "without having made a nod to disarmament" is such a load of shite. The last 12 years has seen most of the Iraqi offensive capability destroyed. I also don't see how it is that the US won't "get another bit at this apple". Is that because the US has managed to piss off so many potential allies with their recent behaviour that none of them are likely to offer the US any help? Or are we back to the "credibility" thing again? Backing down now will cause loss of face, yadda yadda.

The oft-cited piece by Jim Henley thoroughly trashes the "Saddam is a danger" idea, and delivers a fairly solid arse-kicking to TPM-fave Ken Pollack, in the process.

It really does look to me like the only remaining argument is "the US will lose face". This is such a losing argument that it's not funny. It's been used so many times to justify thoroughly bad ideas - "well, we've started now, may as well keep going". It allows those with bad intentions to force their bad ideas on the rest of the world - get into the situation, then say "oh well, guess we'll have to finish it". Of course, there's a couple of absolutely easy ways for the US to get out of this, if they so wish. Send a message to Kuwait and Qatar to announce that they've changed their mind in favour of the Arab League's new proposal.

Desperately grasping at any sort of positives in the current mess -- if it does go ahead, it's quite likely to be going all pear shaped in about 18 months time. Assuming Chuck Hagel decides that a fair election is OK with him, the responsible parties are likely to get their butts firmly kicked.

TBogg rips into Kristoff's "be nice to the evangelicals" piece.

I'd just like to take a moment to note one little point here. From the original piece:

Um, let's not play gosh-the-poor-old Evangelicals game too hard. After all, wasn't it Bush I who claimed that atheists shouldn't be considered as citizens or patriots? I don't think I can recall anyone suggesting that knuckle-dragging rednecks from Alabama aren't citizens.

And as for the "Upanishads versus Revelations" - err, um. Have you read Revelations? It's a bad mushroom trip, committed to parchment a long long time ago. I know I've read stuff that I've written when I'm not in my right brainspace, and afterwards, it really is strange and unreadable gibberish. This describes Revelations pretty well. It's utterly barking. Really. And, I hate to break it to W, but if the bible's right, and the rapture comes, he's getting left behind. Revelations 14:3-4, only virgins need apply. Last time I looked, Bush's sprouted a couple of little baby bushlings. Oh, you don't believe that bit of the bible? Well, who the hell are you, bucko, to choose which bits you like?

Seriously, the US would be a much healthier place if the "poor little evangelicals" read the texts of a couple of other major religions, than if those nasty american liberals stopped picking on those poor defenseless evangelicals.

So, after the US gets rebuffed by Turkey for, other reasons, being pushy bitches:

... what better to do than to turn around and demand that they vote again. Um. Er. Is there no-one in the US government with two brain cells to rub together? Standing up to a nominal ally and saying "sorry, your democracy got an answer we don't like, please vote again until you get the right answer" does not send a real good impression. Particularly when the local populace is something like 90% against a war, and there's by-elections this weekend.

It also kinda screws up your sunny happy "Iraq as Model Democracy" story when you tell an ally "so sorry, but your inconveniently feisty elected representatives didn't do what we told you to do. Vote again, and vote the right way this time."

I'm sure the US wouldn't mind if the military just took over in Turkey, after all, it's far easier to deal directly with military dictatorships than those pesky democracies. I mean, sometimes they even let the "wrong guy" win!. (The US, of course, has started working on a solution to this problem, but it will take a while to export this "innovation" to the rest of the world.)

Ahem, drifting off track a bit here. Oh well.

On a related note, Tim Noah at Slate comments that the Turkish rebuff is probably good news for the Kurds in Iraq, given the US's sellout of their interests to Turkey in an attempt to buy the Turkish participation in this jolly little war. If the second vote doesn't overturn the first (or if the second vote never happens) it makes the US look extra-stupid, as well as morally suspect - why on earth did they let out the details of the "let's let the Turks screw over the Kurds" before the deal was done? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Via Boing Boing, the Catholic Church in the Phillipines has decided that confessing by SMS or email is not acceptable.

Sheesh. I'd have thought "text 50 Hail Mary's to God" would be a good penance.

Fax is also out, so it's not just a "it's new, people like it, let's ban it" approach.

Interestingly, one of the reasons for the ban is because of the lack of confidentiality - what about anonymous remailers, or if the priests published PGP keys? I mean, they've got the web of trust thing down absolutely pat - you simply have to trust the pope's key, and you should be able to drag the rest from the Vatican's keyservers (pope to cardinal to bishop to local priest). What do you mean you don't want to trust the pope's key? He's infallible - like he'd ever screw up and compromise his private key.

It's a cheap shot, but if I was as old as Safire appears to be, I'd be a bit cautious about fabricating opinions and assigning them to dead people - if it turns out that their is an afterlife, there's a fair chance that Barzani's going to be waiting to kick Safire's arse, not too long in the future.

I just re-read the Safire piece. It's truly incredible. The week after the americans announce that they're shafting the Kurds by selling them out to Turkey, Safire is faking up an interview with a Kurdish hero who's been dead for just on 24 years..

Perhaps someone else can point out to me the difference between what you or I would call "making shit up" and this bullshit fabricated interview.

I love the slightly stilted English tone to Safire'sBarzani's responses in the piece. It makes it seem so much more... authentic. And isn't it touching how at the end, Barzani comes down on the side of Safire - that a post-war Iraq would just spontaneously become a happy and peaceful confederation of freed peoples. And I love the whole "repudiate Saddam's corrupt Russian debt" - nice touch. Particularly given the US's previous approach to countries who throw off despotic, corrupt, thieving regimes and are saddled with huge debts to US banks or the US-controlled IMF and World Bank (of course, the money's all gone to Swiss bank accounts). I believe the official US response to these situations is "tough shit; where's our fucking money?"

Stay tuned - in future weeks, highlight's of Safire's columns include:

• An interview with Richard Nixon (deceased), where Nixon expresses his admiration for the work of George W, and in passing agrees with whatever Safire says (amazing!)
• An interview with Ron Ziegler (recently deceased), where Ziegler expresses his admiration for the work of Ari Fleischer, and in passing agrees with whatever Safire says (astounding!)
• An interview with Adolf Hitler (deceased for quite some time), where Hitler claims "Hussein is much worse than I ever was!", and in passing agrees with whatever Safire says (fantabulous!)
• An interview with Franklin D. Roosevelt (deceased), who apologises for the New Deal, claiming "we had no idea - obviously tax cuts for the rich would have been a far better answer to the Great Depression". Oh, and in passing, he agrees with whatever Safire says.

What a load of utter shite. Maybe it's a competition between Friedman and Safire - they're actually seeing who can get the stupidest column printed, before doing a runner for the safety of the WSJ opinion pages.

[Update: cleaned up a badly worded sentence]