Iraq

From SMH columnist Paddy McGuinness’ May 25 piece on, of all things, the Cannes Film Festival (in which he, with calm and dispassionate reason, explodes Moore’s carefully developed arguments by referring to him as a “fat, hairy, foul-mouthed slob”) The chairman of the award jury was Quentin Tarantino, who made his name in cinema through [...]

Continue Reading The buck stops there… no, there…

Two men who painted an anti-war slogan on the Sydney Opera House last year have been sentenced to nine months periodic detention. David Burgess, 33, and Will Saunders, 42, were convicted of a charge of malicious damage relating to the painting of the words ‘No War’ on the landmark building in March last year. In [...]

Continue Reading Opera House war protesters get weekend jail

Intellectual and political impotence and ignorance disguised as moral protest. How constructive. Do they realise that there are more efficient ways of prostituting your own self-respect in order to try getting your 15 minutes of fame? Such as Reality Television? Anyway, onto more important matters…

Continue Reading Arrests after violent anti-war rally in Sydney

Former US prisoner of war Jessica Lynch has signed a deal with publisher Alfred A Knopf reportedly worth $1.58 million. The publisher said the book, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, will be written by former New York Times reporter Rick Bragg and is due for release in November. The 20-year-old supply [...]

Continue Reading US$1.58 million: The Price of Pawnography

I’ve suspected from day 1 that America would go in and clean up Bush Snr’s mess, with or without the UN. The question remains why America even needs other countries to help it at all. Surely people see that it’s just a ruse to make it look like a “good vs evil crusade” rather than [...]

Continue Reading Iraq War

Saddam gave Uday authority to control all press and media outlets in Iraq. Uday was the publisher of the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper. On the front page of the paper’s four-page edition for Nov. 14, 2002, there was a picture of Osama bin Laden speaking, next to which was a picture of Saddam and his [...]

Continue Reading Osama bin Laden and Saddam

Yellow Submarine is criminally underrated in my view. People tend to look upon it as a bit of a drugged-out, self-indulgent joke but, while the first two adjectives are largely accurate, “Hey Bulldog” begs to differ on the latter. I remember listening to the album over and over again when I was five or six [...]

Continue Reading All you need is love, love. Love is all you need…

If you are after William Shakespeare works you are going to be disapointed, so try the Classic Literature Library’s William Shakespeare section. Apparently stating the bleeding obvious is only permissable if it follows the official government line. Even if you’re a politically neutral public servant allegedly protected by the separation of power. Following a comment [...]

Continue Reading Methinks thou doth protest too much, Johnny

Apart from their shared adventure in Iraq, George Bush and Tony Blair don’t have much in common. When the two leaders emerged into the bright lights of a press conference after spending two days together in the log cabins of Camp David in 2001, a reporter wanted to know whether they had discovered any shared [...]

Continue Reading Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

“Not a monster”? In our current society where genetics is vaguely understood by even the biggest dunderheads (OK, I’m being kind), why does that comment need to be made, even in the light-hearted sense? Do people honestly have the impression a four-eared kitten is some demonic perversion of nature which could counteract the power of [...]

Continue Reading Four-eared kitten ‘not a monster’