Team Rodent on patrol, desperate for ammo

Little DiggerTalk about making a mountain out of a molehill. Kevvie’s staff stuffed up with their tasteless Sunrise pre-recorded Anzac dawn service plans – yet unlike Johnny, Kevvie takes stumbling responsibility. Surely the stress of leading the ALP into an election isn’t getting to him already?

The SMH describes the kerfuffle kindly:

The tawdry plans to stage the pre-dawn service at Long Tan so as to coincide with peak ratings in Australia may not have been hatched by Mr Rudd, but he suffered because he was at the top of the bill.

We are already in the throes of a media led election as the chooks, as dear old evil Bjelke-Petersen used to call them, begin their cackling chorus. A typically preachy Australian editorial transparently berates Kevvie for favouring Murdoch rival, Stokes, and does not beat around the bush lecturing him and his office for their minor misdemeanours, whilst significantly drawing attention back to far more disturbing, heinous rodential crimes.

It demonstrates failings within Mr Rudd’s office and undermines one of Labor’s strongest weapons against the Government. That is Labor’s claim that government ministers, including Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, were negligent for not being across all the documents and details of the AWB wheat-for-weapons scandal with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The Government’s AWB failings, which took place as the country prepared for war with Iraq, are clearly more serious, but Labor has nonetheless surrendered some of the high moral ground.

Those damn emails. We’ve had our own experience with emails to Kevvie. He needs to insist his staff at least acknowledge receipt of communications from electors. If there’s one thing voters deserve to expect from their elected representatives, it’s a response to their justified concerns.

No mention in the editorial of the rodent’s latest hideous demonstration of political abuse of the sick and vulnerable, as he jumps on the Hansonite apocalyptic, demented bandwagon, decrying immigration to Whorestralia of HIV positive folks. Why pick on them? why not keep out the fat, the stupid, the smokers and the elderly (who, if one is going to count dollar costs, drain the public purse the most) as well for consistency? HIV people with proper treatment can live long and productive lives. And with drugs heading toward production like Whorestralia’s own company, AVX with its apricitabine, it may not be long before the illness can be arrested completely.

Again the rodent shows there are no depths to which he will not stoop to gee up the worst amongst us, the braindead bigotted Jonestown goon squad.

The slimy prime miniature snatched the opportunity to capitalise on Rudd’s dawn surprise with all four paws, hypocritically slathering that Anzac Day is

… a sacred occasion and nobody should be trying to give it a political spin.

Sunrise HoohaaOn the other hand, the hapless ailing humans who suffer from HIV are apparently fair game and legitimate pawns for the opportunistic, dishonourable rodent, for whom all’s fair in love and politics.

Kevvie is to address the Press Club today, and then fly off to present in the United Stupids. Perhaps distance will steel his resolve and return clarity – if the rodent is to be defeated, Kevvie will need his neurones firing on all cylinders. The crucial debate on the economy looms after the May budget. He might also take his cue from the above editorial and ‘feed the chooks’ – maybe someone in Murdoch’s stable is keen to dredge up the AWB disgrace again.

FRINGE NEWS UPDATE: Kevvie and Hockey conduct a tandem retreat from Sunrise. Fur to keep flying? From the SMH again:

Furthermore, this election will be fought centrally over industrial relations – Mr Hockey is the minister charged with selling the laws Mr Rudd wants to tear up.

The men are supposed to exist in a state of daggers drawn. The sight of them being matey each Friday helped Labor and did nothing for the Government.

NB: Today’s cartoon was prepared using the SP-Studios funtimes online South Park character generator.

Saluting a Real Hero

Phillip Adams commented once that most Australians could name plenty of sports heroes, yet they’d struggle to name one hero of the intellect. Very depressing – there are so few people who appreciate intelligence and intellectual pursuits, especially non-competitive ones, as opposed to footy and cricket brawn, boobies, beer and all that turgid shallow stuff. Give me a good book any day and a fine red doesn’t go astray either. The epic thud of beefy gladiatorial thighs colliding and choruses of oy oy oys are not my cup of tea.

At the Asstralian school I attended, kids who didn’t participate in sport were considered freaky geeks. And if one was very good at sport and *still* prefered to read a wonderful book, it was worse – one was regarded as a frightening, pathetic mutant. If it was not for one decent mate, I would have literally starved. Books delivered us to another world, other times, where our own minds created the accompanying video. No home entertainment centres back in the good old days. We, the avid book athletes, used our imaginations.

We would exercise with weekend book reading races. I remember reading Lord of the Rings in a weekend which *really* annoyed my mate – it took him three days. Our most favourite explorations were into science fiction, reading everything we could lay our hands on, delving and plumbing school and public libraries, and begging parents to add to their small collections where from our passion first arose. My particular joys were H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”, Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” and A.E. Van Vogt’s “Voyage of the Space Beagle”. From the third, I found my true calling in life as a nexialist, a crossover specialist in alien cultures and science, as from my experiences outside my family hearth already, those skills might be very useful.

The fourth book which spellbound me was Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cats Cradle” – a quirky, witty satire perpetrated through the sci fi genre. This book confirmed for me that there were others out there who thought as I did – that the bulk of people on the planet refuse to learn to control their own base stupid natures and thus threaten their own and the planet’s existence. Ice-nine became a secret code word between my mate and myself for the atomic bomb, overpopulation, pollution and above all for ‘the stupids’ – those who should know better yet couldn’t be bothered altering their life patterns in time to save us all. As Kurt recounted

“Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

*We* were in the know – and *they* were (and are) the aliens. Voluntary simplicity is more easily achievable in a virtual, bookish world.

Kurt died yesterday at age 84. I don’t think he would have minded carking it – he’d had a great innings.

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

He’s gone past the edge now. Kurt – good on ya. I never knew you, but if I had, you could have been a mate.

Dining on Mufti

Hilaly and Cat

From the august Australian Constitution

116. The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

Yet a wave of disapprobation from our servants in Parliament on both sides of the bench is rising against Hilaly, who besides being an Australian citizen since 1990, is still ordained as Mufti of Australia at least for the next three months. The lines between religion and politics are blurring.

Sheik Taj has been reported in the Iranian papers – another propaganda coup for that wily regime.

The mufti of Australia has called on the Islamic world to stand in the trenches with the Islamic Republic of Iran which possesses the might and the power.

Continue reading “Dining on Mufti”

Impervious to 650,000 Iraqi deaths

Three Monkeys of the Apocalypse

As reported at Now Public, the United Stupids have denied a visa to one of the recent Lancet Iraqi death study researchers, Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who will instead present his talk in Canada.

An Iraqi medical school professor will talk about the death count in Iraq after the 2003 invasion: causes, types of victims, categories of violence, and other health indicators.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta will be in North America to collaborate with University of Washington colleagues on a research project to document elevated levels of pediatric cancers in Basra, Iraq. The project was conceived as part of a sister university relationship between Basra Univ and the UW. The research project is supported by a grant from the Puget Sound Partners, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who teaches medicine at Baghdad’s Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine, co-authored the October 2006 Lancet article that estimated more than 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the the American-led invasion in 2003.

Lafta will speak at a public gathering at Simon Fraser University’s Wosk Centre (580 W Hastings in downtown Vancouver BC) on Friday, April 20, at 7 pm.

His talk will be video cast to the UW’s Kane Hall at the same time with the opportunity for interactive audience participation.

Dr. Lafta will be a guest of Simon Fraser University, in part because the U.S. State Department would not issue him a visa to come to the United States.

The public is welcome at either location.

For more information:
Tim Takaro, MD, MPH, Simon Fraser Faculty of Health Sciences
ttakaro at sfu dot ca
604-268-7186

Amy Hagopian, PhD, UW School of Public Health
hagopian at u dot washington dot edu
206-616-4989, 685-3676 or Ian Maki 206-543-6020

The ABC records the members of the Coalition of the Gobbling’s infantile reactions to the Lancet study:

GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t consider it to be a credible report.

JOHN HOWARD: I don’t believe that Johns Hopkins research, I don’t.

Continue reading “Impervious to 650,000 Iraqi deaths”

No Easter eggs for Ahmaddy

Ahmadibunny

Even at Easter, following Ahmadinejad’s generous theatrical gesture releasing the Brit sailors, the United Stupids remain fixed in a characteristically un-Christian mind frame. They continue to refuse Iran access to their 5 officials abducted by the United Stupids.

“I think there’s no inclination right now to let them go,” Mr Gates said in Washington when asked about the fate of the five Iranians captured by US forces in Iraq and held since January.

“Iraqi government officials and US officials are discussing if there’s some way, perhaps, that there could be some kind of Iranian access to them,” he said. “But as far as I know, there’s no requirement for that.”

“I don’t think that consular access is being considered. I think the issue is whether there’s some other means by which some other access might be given,” he said.

Mr Gates’s comments appeared to fall short of a statement by US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell, who told reporters in Baghdad that a consular request to visit the five Iranians was “being assessed”.

The United Stupids’ hostage taking may blow up their faces, as Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has agreed with Tehran that

the men were operating with the knowledge of the Iraqi government and were not involved in any sort of “clandestine operation”.

“They were known by us. They were under surveillance by regional security. They operated with the approval of the regional government and with the knowledge of the Iraqi government.

“We were in the process of formalising that liaison office into a consulate. Then they would have diplomatic immunity,” he said.

As usual, Doodoo’s peculiar god must be telling him fibs.

Bush’s assertion that “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job” brings to mind God as a dull-witted, cognitively-impaired nationalist unable to utter a simple declarative sentence who spends his time preaching “blessed are the warmongers and profit-makers.”