out of the mouths of majors..

An Australian Army Major, on ABC's Lateline, 30 Aug 2004, explaining what we're actually doing in Iraq, put it this way: "We're here to further Australia's interests." Now that's an honest statement. We're not there to further Iraq's interests, we're there to further "Australian interests". That's code for "the interests of Big Business".

Now that might almost be a reasonable activity if it didn't involve our complicity in the mass-murder of thousands of Iraqi civillians and a hundred thousand or two of their hapless soldiers (of which we've heard virtually nothing) in order to further "Australian interests".


I'm sick of Big Business dictating our foreign policy. I'm sick of the mass-murdering that's happening globally to further Big Business "interests".

If I as an individual go about killing people in order to further my business interests, I'd rightly be seen as a murdering criminal. When mega-corporations, via the government of America and it's toadies, via their military might, go marauding globally, murdering hundreds of thousands of people, cumulatively millions of people, they get away with it.

I'm utterly sick of the human and environmental price being paid by people in "the developing"(majority) world just so we in the "developed"(minority) world can enjoy greedy, selfish, consumerised, hedonistic lifestyles bought by mass-murder, plunder, and destruction of the planet. It has to stop!

It's no wonder that people from countries, cultures and religions being utterly raped "in our interests" are striking back at us in our own countries. It's the only way we'll pay attention. It was always going to happen if we didn't curb our murderous, greedy and unethical way of "doing business" and forcing our cultural "values" upon others.

And now, we've gone too far to admit we're wrong. The war crimes carried out in the name of our wonderful lifestyle are too huge. So we're just going destroy any country, culture and/or religion from which their freedom fighters stike back at us.

Thank you America, thank you Big Business, thank you ball boys!

the day after...

I can't help thinking that those of us who are against what the "coalition of the oil-swilling" are up to, or indeed those who merely perceive some vague "wrongness"
in U.S./British/Australian foreign policy, think that it will all get better if Bush/Blair/Howard are voted down. Well, not necessarily...

Let's examine:

1. The Democrats in the U.S. have never displayed many qualms about the typical Big Business/Military-Industrial global agenda.

2. The Tories would make British Labour look like saints when it comes to globalised rape, pillage, and mass murder.

3. In Australia, let's not forget that it was Labor, under Prime Minster Bob Hawke, who had no problems at all in racing off to Operation Desert Storm. Even though, at the time, Osama Bin Laden tried to convince the Saudi Royal Family that he and his mujahedin, fresh from Afghanistan, where they trounced the might of the Soviet Military, would have no trouble in dealing with Saddam's rag-tag army in Kuwait. But the Saudi Royal Family belonged firmly to the U.S., as did Australia, and Bush Snr wanted to establish a permanent stragegic military presence in Saudi Arabia, much to the disgust of the Arab world. But who gives a toss about the Arabs, eh? And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, even if The Three Wise Monkeys get the chop, I fear it will be "business as usual", unless there emerges some sort of Third Force in politics.

Here in Australia it is parties like the Greens, the Democrats, and a swag of Independents who, hopefully, will form a Third Force large enough to "keep the bastards honest" (a mantra that had some resonance until many of those whose brief it was to do just that started to sleep with the enemy, literally, or just blatantly do dodgy deals with them.) Hope died and cynics had a field day...

So, why would we expect things to be different after this coming round of elections? Is the question too "black" for you? Rigid excreta! What will be, will be. Vote carefully citizens - whilst you still can...

it's all starting to unravel - part 2...

Ok, let's work with this bit from Part 1:

Those of us who live within this (Western) culture can see nothing wrong with it, and we call it "Civilisation". And we never question the "rightness" of our culture. That's one of the things which defines a culture - the unwillingness or inablility of its victims to question it. It's a hypnotic state which in any fair court of law would give you grounds for acquittal of all sorts of crimes committed whilst under its spell.

In our hypnotised state, we believe that ours is the "right", "superior" culture. You wouldn't expect hypnotised people to act otherwise, right?

And in this hypnotised state, people could even be convinced that it's "only right" to convert others to this culture, right?

People would even be convinced, in such a state of hypnosis, that they ought to engage in a "war of liberation" in order to enforce the establishment of such a "right" and "superior" culture on those not so "fortunate" or "advanced", right?

There's just one small problem. It's only true for you whilst you're in this culture-induced hypnosis. There is no absolute truth for any of this. The same goes for all other cultures. It's also true for all religions. The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths. It's all just a matter of cultural or religious conditioning, and such conditioning is hypnosis.

And now we've got the situation where a culture which has the biggest military might by far is imposing itself on the rest of the globe, because of no demonstrable absolute "rightness" or "superiority" other than "might is right".

So, those with the means and the will to carry out the biggest slaughter, those with the biggest stick, get to rule the world? We call this "Civilised"? If ever there was proof for the old adage "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", we're staring at it right now.

The rest of the world must unite to put the U.S. and Britain back in their place. Don't worry about Australia, we'll be with you all the way just as soon as we can see that you're going to succeed. We Australians are real moral leaders, we are. Isn't that right, Mr Howard?

yankees go home!

I've just looked at pictures of the damage done to buildings and infrastructure in Najaf. And then there's the death toll of hundreds of Iraqi freedom fighters in the recent skirmishes.

What the U.S. is doing in Iraq has nothing to do with "freedom" or "democracy" or "the war on terror". It has everything to do with installing U.S. oil corporations and other U.S. and British corporations in Iraq. And to this end, so far 12,000 Iraqi civillians have been murdered and much of the urban areas and infrastructure razed. And for what? For Big Business profits and a puppet government put there to rubber-stamp it all! It's nothing short of murder and pillage! It's a mega war crime!

Aussies come home! Pommies go home! Yankees go home! Enough's enough, you murdering, thieving criminals! And anyone supporting Bush, Blair and Howard is nothing less than complict in these war crimes.

Think about that, you mongrels!

I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Watch me blog my head off NOW!

it's all starting to unravel - part 1...

Well, it's 3.35am, I can't sleep (again), and it looks like my "writer's blockage" has unblocked itself. My head's full of thoughts, which I'll try to get down now in some sort of order, but it'll probably get messy.

I'll start with broad brushstrokes in this post, and I'll flesh-in later, ok? Forget about typo's and such, you're all big boys and girls now, ok? (Anyway, I'll come back later and fix them up. I usually do.) So, here goes:

Nothing big. Just little, easy issues. Trivialities such as Truth, Culture, Civilisation, that's all...

It all started with the thought that the world seems to be headed for some sort of mono-culture. One culture is gobbling up all cultures in its path. Remember the Pac Man computer game? It's a lot like that. The culture that's doing all the gobbling, the runaway cultural virus for which there is no antidote (or so it seems) is of course, Western culture.

Those of us who live within this culture can see nothing wrong with it, and we call it "Civilisation". And we never question the "rightness" of our culture. That's one of the things which defines a culture - the unwillingness or inablility of its victims to question it. It's a hypnotic state which in any fair court of law would give you grounds for acquittal of all sorts of crimes committed whilst under its spell.

Well, it seems that a while ago, I don't know when exactly, someone or something snapped their fingers and I woke up from this hypnosis. I think others may have also. I guess they'll have to lock us up now. They'll have to figure out a way of putting us back in the Petri dish before we get out of the lab and out of the building and out onto the streets and spread right through this wonderful "Civilisation", snapping our fingers and waking everybody up. ("Oh, the horror, the horror...")

"Truth" has a habit of being contageous. Stop reading now, if you can. Before you become infected by it, if you're not already...

And if you are infected, your mind's probably already full of stuff you want to say in your own blog, so I'll finish here for now. Just a quick reminder for you to give this blog a plug (or better still, link to it) as you go on your own merry way, blogging your head off. Off you go, now!

(It's 5.30am now and after heaps of editing and re-editing I can finally leave this masterpiece and go back to bed.)

Go to part 2 >>

not so clever...

I was so pleased with myself when I said "the keyboard is mightier than the sword." I thought I was clever, I did.

And then I ran the phrase through Google. There were 504 recorded uses of the phrase. All of them well before I had my "original" thought. Hmmmm...

Update: I've changed it to "the keyboard is mightier than the machine gun" and now I am truly original (according to Google).

why i like blogging...

I've just realised why I like blogging. It's a control-freak thing: I get to say what I want to say without some pillock interrupting me or hijacking my monologue!

It's lovely... :-)

it's my blog and i'll rant if i want to...

From a recent discussion elsewhere:

I said:

God told me to write this. "My life is none of my business" He said. But He sounded drunk. Could God be drunk?

He said:

If it was god, then she would have corrected YOUR spelling.

And then I continued: If God can be drunk, God can be an attrocious speller too, no? After all He has a few other character flaws as well. He hates women, He's a control-freak who made Hitler look like a saint, He's the rallying king-pin for every dangerous religious lunatic around.

He built this special palace where only the faithful are admitted. Sadly, or due to His psychopathic rat cunning, you have to die whilst in His service in order to get there. Upon entry, you can deflower 72 virgins if you think you're up for it, and there's a whole lot of other goodies for His Christian and Jewish party-faithful as well.

Sounds a bit like Saddam, Uday and Co, doesn't it?

Having studied His most devout followers for some time now, I notice they are almost without exception, the most murderous, bigoted, narrow-minded, racist, elitist, and willfully ignorant bastards on the planet. So, not only is He a dangerous, psychopathic, despotic control freak, but He also preys on the dangerously ignorant and aims to keep them that way for His own purposes. Not surprising, really.

Here's the bit that puzzles me though: When all these murdering, pillaging, ignorant bigots get to "Heaven" will they stop trying to kill or dispossess others? And if they could stop doing it there, why can't they stop doing it here? Conversely, if they're rewarded and praised for being that way here, why would they not be encouraged to be that way there? I wouldn't want to go there to find out. Especially if I were a virgin.

But you don't have to be Einstein to figure out that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes. It's all just a 4000-year-old superstition kept alive by dangerous, psychopathic control-freaks engaging in Mushroom Politics.

I wouldn't really be dwelling on any of this except the mass-murders and war crimes continue as we speak. And now The Messengers of Light and Hope have figured out how to bring death and destruction to a street near us. Near us?!?! And all of a sudden we're outraged???

Here endeth the lesson...

the corporation...

Blighted seeds, tiny children hunched over sewing machines, a nation in
convulsive riots over the price of water: What shadowy entity could be behind
all these horrors? The corporation, according to the documentary of the same
name. << you must go and see this film >>

Playing now in Australia.

watercorp regrets to advise...

"Due to shareholder priorities, you no longer have access to your local water supply." A bad dream? Think again! It's happening all around you as you procrastinate and equivocate. Try this on for size:

Water privatisation - global domination by a few Most of the world's water and sewerage systems, in developed and developing countries alike, are run by public sector bodies. However, neo-liberal economic policies, and especially the policies of the World Bank, have driven an expansion in privatisation.

Read more >>>

And then there's the privatisation of Bolivia's water, including its rainwater. For those of you yet to get on board, that means that some Very Rich US Shareholders now control where your local water goes if you're unlucky enough to live in Bolivia:

"The next world war will be over water," remarked the former Vice-President of the World Bank, Ismail Serageldin, some years ago. That cliched quote, while highlighting the potential for conflict among nations in a water-starved world, does not quite reflect the rising tide of popular anger against growing inequalities in the distribution of water within countries, resulting in water-haves and water have-nots.

Read more >>>

But here in Australia, although water-table levels are falling alarmingly, we have nothing to worry about. The US Free Trade Agreement will guarantee that water will flow towards Australia in amazing quantities. Right? Wrong!!!

You might like to inform yourself about the degree to which just one US corporation, Coca-Cola Amatil, has been buying up water rights, right accross Australia, including bore water and natural spring water rights.

And in the eventuality of a global water shortage, do you really think that the major US shareholders of Coca-Cola Amatil will allow that water to be made availabe to you, an impoverished local resident?

Do you really think that you will be able to match the prices "the US market" will be prepared to pay for this water?

Do you really understand what is meant by "free trade"? If you don't, good luck to you. You will need it! Your very life might depend upon it!

send john howard a little letter...

Dear Mr Prime Minister,

Please consider carefully the following quotes:

"It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is Hell." American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman.

"War is often the product of those who never fought, while those who did the fighting are often the ones fighting against war." Gerald S. Rellick, a retired "Star Wars" scientist.

Mr Howard, in the name of humanity, please stop your lying, your obfuscations, and your fawning to the corrupt regime currently installed in America. Too many good people have already been killed.

Dollars for Big Business are not worth all this bloodshed. Unless you think that "foreign" blood is less valuable than White Australian blood...

You have offended me badly but I doubt you are capable of understanding the reasons for this.

Mr Prime Minister, I'm afraid you are a bigot !!!!

Yours disgustedly,

Gerry

You can email the PM at: http://www.pm.gov.au/email.cfm and you're more than welcome to copy my letter. Tell Howard how you feel! I did!

vale, marcel caux...

Marcel Caux died peacefully in his sleep today, aged 105. He was a veteran of the First World War. This quote from an article in The Age (Melbourne) in April of this year:

Mr Caux was opposed to Australia fighting foreign wars such as Iraq. "We learnt at Gallipoli what a mistake it was to fight other people's wars on foreign shores. We paid a terrible price there and in the Somme. We should only defend our own shores," he said.

>> read more >>

Rest in peace, Marcel Caux.

Lest we forget...

the gospel according to gerry...

Hallelujah, I have seen The Light! God has spoken to me! And God said to me "He who controls the oil wins! Ever seen a 60-ton Abrams tank try to run on batteries or solar panels? Or an F-15? Or a B-52? Or a military supply convoy? Or a battle group? No? Ok! No oil - no military - no global control. Very bad for Big Business."

God has commanded us to get this oil (and any other resources we take a fancy to) by hook or by crook. Doesn't matter who owns it now, we will own it after we've installed The Right Kind of government. And God gave us the name for this kind of government, He called it Divine Democracy.

God then explained Divine Democracy to me, and He said: "Divine Democracy is where you deceive and mislead the people to vote a certain way. The idea being that when they vote in that way they won't stage uprisings because they think they've had a say in the flavour of government they got. This is also known as Mushroom Politics - Keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em on bullshit.”

And if some malcontents gag on the flavour of that government and they have the temerity to object, God commanded that they be branded as Blasphemers, or Heretics, or anti-American, or anti-Democratic, or anti-Semitic, or anti-Patriotic, or anti-Bush. And then God added: "Shooting them is good, and if they shoot back, call them 'Terrorists'."

And God told us that if the unholy dare to resist the installation of Divine Democracy, or try to tamper with it, we must kill them for daring to oppose God's People in the doing of God's Work. Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

And praise be to God for speaking to George Bush and showing him The Way! Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

And God said: "Go George! You are a real hero, George! You tha man, George!” Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

Spread the Good News! Spread the Gospel according to Gerry! Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

God commands you now to copy this and email it to George. Our brother George needs all the moral support he can get. God also commands you to email it to all your friends, who are themselves commanded by God to email it to all of their friends. And then God said "et cetera, et cetera." Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

And the last thing God said was "you shall from this day forth be known as Saint Gerry." Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

Now, where did I put my anti-delusion pills...

*Authorised by God, written by Saint Gerry of the Blue Mountains
"Offence freely given to those who wish to take it." Saint Erich the Mangomuncher.

I can email you a beautifully type-set email-friendly version if you want, personally blessed by Saint Gerry. And it's FREE. But HURRY, your request must get here before they come to take me away...

democracy - u.s.army style...

Kamil Mahdi, writing for The Guardian, gives us this:

Those they can't co-opt, they destroy - Najaf proves that the US will never allow democracy to flourish in Iraq.

The US military offensive against Najaf is a dangerous and ill-judged escalation, revealing the violent reality of an occupation that has undergone only cosmetic change since the supposed handover of power to an interim Iraqi administration in June.

For more than a week, an aggressive foreign power has addressed an essentially domestic political question by means of tanks, helicopter gunships and F16s.

>> read more >>

who wants to be a patriot...

I'm told I'm supposed to be patriotic. Like it's a noble thing to be, or something. Ok, so let's get into this thing then.. First, the OED definition:

patriot one who defends or is zealous for his country's prosperity, freedom, or rights;

There's huge problems staring back at me here. Can you see them too? How can I be a patriot and a citizen of the world as well?

Can I be zealous for my country's prosperity if that means we're complicit in invading, murdering, dispossessing, exploiting, and enslaving the people of other countries in order to achieve this prosperity? No, I cannot. Looks like I've failed The First Test of Patriotism.

Can I be zealous for my country's freedom if we use our freedom to rob others of theirs? No, I cannot. So, I've failed The Second Test of Patriotism as well.

Can I be zealous for my country's rights whilst we recklessly trample on, or ignore, the rights of people in other countries? No, I cannot. Oh dear, I've also failed The Third Test of Patriotism.

Looks like I'm an utter failure in the patriotism stakes. But wait! Would I fight to the death if someone did to me what we're doing to the rest of the world? It's quite possible... Yea! I'm a patriot, by jingo! I'll quickly race outside now and proudly hoist the Australian flag on my shiny new flagpole!

Not Happy, John!!!

disembedded media...

Breaking news: "Iraqi Police have insisted that foreign journalists leave Najaf in anticipation of a major US assault."

Yeah? Right. Are we getting this yet, dudes and dudettes?

Here we have the Iraqi Police (the sheriffs for the Puppet Government of the US) asking reporters to leave the scene prior to a US assault...

Really? Why? What might they witness if they stay? Stay tuned...

the war on truth...

How can we wage war on "terrorism"? All war is terrorism. All terrorism is war. Conventional war is "approved" terrorism on a grand scale, and "terrorism" is "unapproved" war on a lesser scale. "Terrorism" as a tactic is actually justified the moment conventional war is waged against a population. And anyway, we're not waging conventional war against an entity called "terrorism". That cannot be done. We're waging conventional war upon a whole population. And only some of those people are "terrorists", the rest are innocent civilians, dismissed, cynically, as "collateral damage". The term "terrorist" is merely a convenient propaganda word used to disguise the fact that these are guerilla fighters or freedom fighters in their own right. We just don't want to acknowledge that they have a cause as valid as ours.

And now you can see what kind of trap we've gotten ourselves into: We're trying to wage conventional war against guerilla warfare. That concept failed for the US (and us) in Vietnam; it failed for the Soviets in Afghanistan. At present it's failing for the Russians in Chechnya; it's failing for the US in Afghanistan; it's failing for the US (and us) in Iraq; it's failing for the Israelis in Palestine.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work because it creates more patriots than it kills. It's a self-defeating concept - and always has been - unless we're prepared to commit genocide. Are we really going to try to wipe out entire populations/races/religions/ideologies from which guerillas emerge? Now that would be the road not just to another holocaust but to an endless series of holocausts. It would be the road to Hell itself. Whatever happened to "never again"? I'll tell you what: The warmongers have taken over again!

So, how do we defuse the threat of "terrorism"? Well, I'd say we start by telling the truth instead of spinning webs of deceit to hide our complicity in their brutalisation, oppression, exploitation, disposession and maltreatment.

The truth is that those on the receiving end of that baseball bat that is the globalisation of "US interests", feel their national, ethnic, religious, ideological, ecological, and/or economic sovereignty is being threatened. The truth is that they have many, many valid greivances. The truth is that we don't want to deal with their grievances no matter how valid they are. The truth is that the reason we don't want to deal with their grievances is because "it's not in our interests". The truth is that we've become corrupt. The truth is that "it's not in our interests" to admit that we're corrupt. And so we'll create more "terrorists" ad infinitum.

The truth is that "the war on terror" is in fact the war on truth.

don't call me a hero...

By the time I got to Vietnam I had, over many years, been lied to and subjected to many layers of "education" by my government, my "news" providers, my religious leaders and my teachers. And I was never told that those wonderful war comics I was reading were actually preparing me to want to become a patriot too. I was stupid enough to believe all that stuff. I was ignorant. I did not know. "I was only nineteen." I had trusted them. And so I had no trouble at all in inventing my own grubby little "reasons" for wanting to go and kill people who dared to subscribe to an ideology which I did not then understand. And when I saw them dead I thought them no different from dead feral dogs. Don't call me a hero!

war is a racket...

So said Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, in a speech he gave in 1933. Read what this highly decorated general has to say about US-instigated mass murders on behalf of Big Business >> here >>

A more detailed account on this issue can be found >> here >>

More recently, Chris White, ex-Marine sergeant, continues on this theme >> here >>

Then, if you want books on this theme, why not read:

* Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum
* Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated, Causes of Conflict in the Last Empire by Gore Vidal
* Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower by William Blum
* Rogue States by Noam Chomsky
* The Last Empire by Gore Vidal.

That'll keep you off the streets for a while...

a letter from trucker todd...

"Living in a Democracy is being free to speak your beliefs and stand up to things you believe are wrong. There is no question in my mind that what is happening to our world in these times is blatantly corrupt and wrong..."

This dude has also recorded a really cool anti-Bush song/video. >> check it out >> You'll also be able to read the rest of his letter...
.