Iraq

“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a money lender; charge him no interest.” -Exodus 22:25

Unless of course the rate is a CRAZY 5-year fixed 4.32% per annum! How exactly does one refinance the house the Christian Way? I suppose the Polonius method of mortgage lending is far more unequivocally self-defeating. And less attractive as a cheap, knee-jerk brand name.

Meanwhile, James Carroll of the Boston Globe writes a rather succinct article summing up the whole Iraq adventure. Just in case the aftermath of the flag-waving, god-thanking, nationalistic orgy of the Republican National Convention has caused a few of you to, you know, lose touch with sobering reality.

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 interests. The leaders - the conservative, tax-cutting, bring-’em-on President and the Third Way, tax-raising, internationalist Prime Minister - struggled. Bush offered this breakthrough in personal diplomacy: “Well, we both use Colgate toothpaste.”

OK, I’m being totally serious here. I had this entry typed up, mentioning how they’d probably preempt the highly symbolic nature of counterinsurgency and do the transfer of power from Bremer to Negroponte about a day or two early (the former pissing off as if his girlfriend’s husband had just come up the driveway), but I had to do other stuff and completely forgot about it. D’oh! So, just to recap;

a) I guessed the ending to Sixth Sense, and
b) I had a feeling they’d do this, which is more than I can say for “Coalition “Member”" Howard, who was clucking away at a Liberal Party gathering in Tasmania with his thumb up his arse at the time, and had to be informed of the developments via the media. Tight little alliance they’ve got there. Of course, if everything had gone according to plan, you never would’ve heard about any of this. Speaking of which…

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 the portrayal of excessive and pointless violence and yet considers himself anti-war.

There is little doubt that the inspiration for the inexcusable treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers came from filmmakers like Tarantino and their counterparts in the American pornography business.

“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 the horseshoe above your door and bring plague to your crops? Who are these people?

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 by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty on television the other day, Howard and his cronies fell over themselves to decry and discredit him. The PM questioned his credibility. His personal lapdog, Australian Killbot Factory chief General Peter Cosgrove, was wheeled out in front of the media to express his disappointment. Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock admonished him for lacking the evidence to reach such conclusions. Perpetual political featherweight and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer even implied he was peddling al-Qaeda propaganda. The quote?

Getting it right in Iraq

(some tweaking for aesthetic purposes. Coz, you know, I’m anal-retentive)

A great cloud hangs over public broadcasting in Britain since Lord Hutton’s trial and sentencing of the BBC. Yet for the journalist at the centre of the fuss, Andrew Gilligan, it’s been a great week, as more evidence emerged that his story was essentially correct. It went to air in May last year some weeks after the fall of Baghdad.

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 handing down the sentence, New South Wales District Court Justice Anthony Blackmore described the offence as serious because of the damage done to the Opera House.

He said there was a need for a general deterrent to discourage others from damaging public buildings.

Outside the court, defence lawyer John Doris said there would be an appeal against the convictions and the sentences.

Defence Minister Robert Hill says the longer the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq goes on, the less chance there is of finding them.

An independent US report says it has found no evidence Saddam Hussein had stockpiled any weapons of mass destruction.

Senator Hill says it is easy to be wise in hindsight and a team of 15 Australians continues to search for the weapons in Iraq.

But he admits they have had little success.

“We haven’t… found weapons of mass destruction and the longer the search goes on without finding them, the more reasonable it is to doubt that they will be found,” he said.

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 years old. No wonder I have such an impeccable taste in music considering I was wearing out my parents’ Beatles and Hendrix vinyls while my peers were memorising the Hokey Pokey.

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 clerk was captured by Iraqi forces on March 23 near the city of Nassiriya.

Eleven other US soldiers were killed and nine wounded in the incident.

She became a symbol of American patriotism during the war, which generated controversy as accounts of her rescue in Iraq varied.

An early media report quoted unnamed US officials saying she engaged Iraqi soldiers in a fire fight despite being wounded before being captured.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” So wrote Sun Tzu two and a half thousand years ago, and in spite of the fame of the book in which this line appears - The Art of War - it seems to be a book more talked about than actually read. The media commentary on the recent war in Iraq, for example, has appeared even to me, a non-general, to be so spectacularly ill-informed and lacking in even a basic understanding of how wars are fought as to be virtually useless as a guide to what was really going on. Instead, we were treated to a dismal parade of second-hand ‘knowledge’ and third-guessing dressed up as thoughtful insight - and, if not that, rather faux-clever attempts by the various authors to ‘interpret’ the events unfolding before them by the lights of their own preoccupations and a priori notions, relevant or not.