Dirty Wars and Ignored Laws

Toby Manhire pointed out in Friday's NZ Herald that the country seems to have sleep-walked into a war. No-one appears to have noticed a New Zealander getting a collateralised death sentence by US drone. Not the prime minister, who has all but given up the ghost of an independent foreign policy for gimp status that would make Reek flinch with recognition. Not the public, which seems inured against war crimes or seem indifferent as long it doesn't affect their day-to-day grind.

As the Snowden NSA papers come closer to our shores, threatening to wash up all sorts of dirty security laundry, NZ may well have to face their complicity in atrocities. As a thought experiment, imagine John Key appearing before The Hague for aiding and abetting war crimes.

It's not such a mad proposition after reading this transcript from today's The Nation between Paddy Gower and Dirty Wars author Jeremy Scahill. Whether Key & Co know it or not, they're donkey deep in a very dirty war. A morsel (vid here, interview transcript here):

I can’t disclose specifics on this but what I can tell you is that I have seen dozens of top secret documents that the New Zealand Government has been provided by the United States, because of the Five Eyes status of New Zealand, that indicate that New Zealand is extremely aware of the extent to which the United States is engaged in drone strikes around the world and is briefed fully on the infrastructure of that programme. And the fact is that New Zealand through signal intercepts is directly involved with what is effectively an American assassination programme. People can say ‘oh well we are just giving them intelligence on terrorists’. The fact is that the world – most countries of the world – view what the United States is doing as rogue actions.

Never mind the fluff of polls, PR and show ponies, this stuff is important. It goes to the guts of sovereignty and statehood. NZ was one of the founding members of the League of Nations after WWI. It was a founding member of the United Nations after WWII. John Key's government has blithely swept all that precedent away by including NZ materiel and labour in these many crimes against International Law, including the Geneva Conventions.

The Nats have sold our century of pacific soul to Hollywood. Do you feel horribly short-changed yet?

Better Late Than Never

The second time I quit the Act party in disgust was over the party's unquestioning support for the Second Iraq War in 2003. So it is some small comfort to read then-Act MP Deborah Coddington's second thoughts while visiting Vietnam.

And now, here's America's smartest idiot on Vietnam, Robert Strange McNamara.

2+2=5

All hail the birth of Prince George of Orwell, third in line to the throne of Airstrip One, Defender of the faith of the Church of England and Patron Saint of women's magazines, lazy newspaper editors and the vacuous live cross-promotional soapbox theatre sock puppets of TV news.

# We have always been at war with *CLASSIFIED*:

The US refuses to name its clear and present antagonists in the War on Terror on the grounds of national security.

# Truth is Treason

Nicky Hagar reports on Stuff that the NZ Defence Force, GCSB and SIS were among the people tracking and tracing freelance journalist Jon Stephenson in Afghanistan:

An internal Defence document leaked to the Star-Times reveals that defence security staff viewed investigative journalists as "hostile" threats requiring "counteraction". The classified security manual lists security threats, including "certain investigative journalists" who may attempt to obtain "politically sensitive information".

The manual says Chief of Defence Force approval is required before any NZDF participation in "counter intelligence activity" is undertaken.

What lengths would the NZDF go to in order to save face on the basis of national security? Would they nobble a civilian jury, for example? I have met Defence Force PR people in the past. It's a safe bet that what they know about ethics could be written on an SD card in crayon.

# Hard is Soft

Rachel Smalley loses her 2012 Loki Award for the cross-promotional fluff that has infected The Nation. Who gives a rat's fat crack about X Factor on an alleged hard news program?

# Arbeit Macht Frei

The welfare reforms continue to bite. It's early days yet, but cracks are beginning to show. If the UK experience in outsourced welfare is anything to go by, big problems should be evident in time for next year's election.

The Continuing Adventures of Harry the Bastard

Harry the Bastard must be proving a boon to the Republican movement, repelling people away from the Windsor brainwash. Harry Windsor's latest blurt, where he brags of killing people from the Xbox console of an Apache helicopter, has the establishment so worried, the Torygraph is calling for the young prince to be gagged. And not in the Porterhouse faggot initiation way either.

Little wonder. There's not a mad leap of the imagination to having Harry behind the guns of an Apache gung-ho Collateral Murder expose that would show the little psycho up, upgrading his notoriety to Harry the Fucking Bastard. That's the problem with really good soldiers. They love to kill. The reason no longer matters.

North American Scum

What with the Heineken Mastercard Rugby World Cup in its final frenetic weeks, I've decided to ignore the rugbyhead-athon and have a read of Nicky Hager's Other People's Wars.

There's an internal logic to the book so far that clicks true with my limited knowledge of martial matters. Putting aside Hager's thesis, the Yanks look like sociopathic retards. Barbarians not soldiers.

Anyway, back soon. Enjoy the thugby.

There is no exception to America

PJ O'Rourke once described the Philippines' history of colonial rule by Spain then the US as three hundred years in a convent, fifty years in a brothel. What he failed to mention was what happened during the change from one to the other:

American forces were soon engaged in atrocities that resulted in the deaths of tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians as well as the burning of villages and the widespread use of torture to extract information. Brigadier General Robert Hughes defended the actions before Senate investigators in 1902 on grounds that would be familiar to the ancients: "These people," he said, "are not civilized."

HT Arts & Letters Daily.

OK, they got the idea from the previous occupiers, and WWII led to atrocities that would dwarf the Filippino massacres. But consider how the Guantanamo Bay occupants were and are excluded from the Geneva Conventions because a legal argument was used that rendered them non-combatants, completely unlike the civilised American soldiers.

From a very early age, I have known of the evil that men can do. OK, evil's the wrong word. Call it man's inhumanity to man and everything else. The USA is no exception to this, no matter how much it clutches its exceptionalism as an alibi for atrocities.

In WWII there was a Japanese POW camp in New Zealand based at Featherston. How's our SAS going in Afghanistan these days? Still handing non-combatants over to the US, or is it a Take No Prisoners policy now?

More on War

Both my grandfathers fought in the World Wars. My dad's dad fought in WWI, mum's dad in WWII. The first came home with shrapnel in his gut, the second came home sick in the head. Not Section 8 crazy, just the typical wife-beating, alcoholic, control freak type of crazy.

The first one, Soldier Bill, died in 1974. I have few memories of Soldier Bill, a gentle old soul by and large. He had his moments though, and lived a disturbed life of booze and his army rifle by the bed way before my days. Seven years before Soldier Bill cashed out, Ivo died on an operating table in Hamilton. All I know of Bad Ivo are a few horrific second-hand glimpses of domestic violence. He died three years before I appeared, and that's fine by me.

A large sum of Mum and Dad can be explained by the war experiences that their fathers witnessed. And so on echoing down the line to the present, still twanging some psychic string through me. If I had to put words to the vibe, it would be:

This is what war does. This is what war does.

War Crimes

The video of Collateral Murder has sprung up in Wikileaks. This released military footage shows the massacre of unarmed people by the US military. Reuters journalists are mistaken for insurgents, cameras are mistaken for arms. The arms grow into AK47s, then RPGs, in the eyes of the US crusading psychos. The group is killed. A van arrives and tries to retrieve the dead and wounded. The SUV Bongo is then fired upon too. Children are shot. And then the US military hushed it all up until someone leaked the truth.



Here's some stills. Click the image to enlarge:

Andrew Sullivan and Boing Boing have picked it up. Aardvark has some interesting comments surrounding the story (although it took a few attempts before I could reach the page. I got a half dozen blank impressions the first few clicks to the link. Strange, that). It comes not long after the US admitted trying to cover up the massacre of women in Afghanistan in February 2010, including digging bullets out of their corpses.

You can't win a war like that.

More Interesting Times

Too cold to think, here's some links:

#I don't get good reception down here in the crack of Northland, by I gather Rhys Darby's Rocked the Nation 2 is really choice. I'd link to this week's full length episode but all I can find so far are promos.

#Big ups to Ratesblog's Hickey-decimal Top 10 on Monday, pointing to CFR's sprawling and wonderful Crisis Guide to the Global Economy. If you do nothing else, have a play with the Motion Charts. After a little fiddle with them, as well as news of corporate espionage that could "manipulate markets in unfair ways,” all eyes should stay on Goldman Sachs.

#For some small time I've been wondering if they recalled Gray Davis, why in hell is no-one recalling the Governator? The New York Times looks at the contenders for next year's California Governor race, whilst Forbes points five fingers at who is to blame for the mess that the besets the land of stretch Humvees and bookless schools.

#Both the Huff and Dim Posts point to story involving an altercation between a hippie and Robert McNamara:

The most bizarre incident involving McNamara occurred when he was president of the World Bank and, off on his summer holiday, he caught the Martha's Vineyard ferry. It was a night crossing in bad weather. McNamara was in the salon, drink in hand, schmoozing with fellow passengers. On the deck outside a vineyard local, a hippie artist, glanced through the window and did a double-take. The artist was outraged to see McNamara, whom he viewed as a war criminal, so enjoying himself.

He immediately opened the door and told McNamara there was a radiophone call for him on the bridge. McNamara set down his drink and stepped outside. The artist immediately grabbed him, wrestled him to the railing and pushed him over the side. McNamara managed to get his fingers through the holes in the metal plate that ran from the top of the railing to the scuppers.

McNamara was screaming bloody murder; the artist was prying his fingers loose one at a time. Someone heard the racket and raced out and pulled the artist off.

By the time the ferry docked in the vineyard McNamara had decided against filing charges against the artist, and he was freed and walked away.

#The world can be roughly divided between two groups of people; those who have the vote and those who have AK47s. Wired takes a look at Russia's most democratic export.

#Tax avoiding rock group and Save the Planet flag wavers U2 have had their carbon footprint analysed. Conclusion? 65,000 tonnes of CO2 for this year's tour. To give you some comparison, that's about 40 Madonnas or a penance of planting over 20,000 trees.

#Werewolf 2 is out, with Gordon Campbell sitting down with the Goffinator and Lyndon Hood looks at the irony of satire. I can't afford $10 a month, otherwise I'd be tempted to swing a TransTasman subscription. If you can, and already have a TT sub, give Werewolf some support.

#One of the tragedies of living in an insular political environment is that we rarely see any decent political biographies. While US presidents, at least the ones who are literate, get book deals almost as soon as they leave the White House, over here in NZ few wish to spill their confidences when everyone is doing the same work with different hats. Aside from hagiographies and character assassinations, there's nothing. Where's Jim Bolger spilling his guts or Richard Long or Dick Griffin or Michael Cullen? Too much to lose, eh.

Thankfully, there's at least some outside record of these things. There's been a regular habit of academics reviewing each election. Bryce@liberation reviews the review of how the NZMSM covered last year's election. Hint to TV interviewers, Shut The Fuck Up occasionally.

#And finally, here's the trailer for Duncan Jones' debut feature length movie Moon:

MOON: Movie Trailer - For more of the funniest videos, click here

Strange Days

Robert McNamara has died. Here's feature length documentary The Fog of War, eleven lessons learned the hard way:

Our SAS doesn't do war crimes

Attack of l'esprit d'escalier on yesterday's post on the ex-CIA spook (does one ever leave the CIA? I imagine it would be a bit like the mafia) who has come over to preach to the NZ Police some of their steampunk intelligence (part modern, part medieval, complete fiction).

While Mark Lowenthal is in the country, Defence Minister Wayne Mapp might find it a good time to bend his ear about the treatment of prisoners of war captured by our SAS forces. After all, we have our good reputation to uphold, and we wouldn't want our international standing tarnished by their war crimes.

There's also the little matter of those dairy subsidies the USA has plagued us with. The welcome return of our stretched military forces at a time when our national income is hit by US protectionism, might also be an appropriate response to wave under their nose. Any people taken prisoner with the help of NZ's SAS are subject to the Geneva Convention. No ifs, no buts.

Ta to No Right Turn for the heads up.

Lest we forget

"There are many ideas worth fighting for. Some are worth dying for. None is worth killing for." - Tom Robbins

20 Civil Wars

The Telegraph has a slideshow of the most dangerous places in the world. Sad to see South Africa and Jamaica making the top 20.

Talking points

Much linky love to Lyndon Hood for John Key's victory parade. Yes, it was good and funny, and you could glimpse just how much time and thought went into showing the culmination of Key's campaign season. The Winston-skin that Rodney wore was particularly good. As a novice Photoshopper, I had to admire the love and attention that went into gutting and skinning Winston, hanging him up to dry, and moulding him to fit over Rodney's crusading pate.

It's time to vote in the Wellingtonista Awards. Still waiting for the Aucklandista awards. No pressure.

Agenda dead, wtf? It had an audience, it had a format, it broke stories. Of course you kill it. So what of the dissonance in Richard Harman's support of Nat broadcasting policy? Is a Front Page phoenix to arise next year? Whatever happens, can someone PLEASE bring back the Ralston Group?

McDonalds is trying to patent sandwich making.

Still thinking hard on NZX and Tyler Cowen points on economic reform.

Current US bailout costs more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget combined!

Wired has excerpts from a new book, Sex and War. If you want to know what's at stake if we mess this recovery up, have a read of the future of war.

Obama chooses War on Drugs nut as attorney general. Where's the Change?

Why does James Bond never travel to NZ? Whatever happened to Molesworth & Featherston? Is the fear of rhymes homophonophobia?

Off to blogger drinks at the Backbencher today. If you want me to stay, you can bend my ear for the price of a beer. On non-sport subjects anyway. Poverty breeds sobriety.

A book of holocaust poetry, complete with pictures

As I mentioned over at SunnyO a couple of weeks back, one of my favourite books when I was eight years old happened to be an illustrated book of assassinations. The other two books were the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Life at War.



Life at War was an uncomfortable coffee table book that would make some people lose their lunch. It was a graphic account by war photographers from the Spanish Civil War through to Vietnam and the Arab - Israel conflicts. If any book made me who I am today, it is this one.

So it's great to see TimeLife collaborating with Google to have these images and more available at this photo archive (Hat Tip /.) There is one image that struck me in this harrowing book then that reverberates for me still: the young German boy outside Belsen concentration camp.

Puppetry of the Palin

Who is behind the puppetry of the Dick Cheney replacement? How does this matter to little old NZ? And why does Sarah Palin scare the bejesus out of me?

First things first. Sarah Palin is a puppet. Former sports newsreader, she makes Ronnie Reagan's actor skills look solid. At least old Ronnie had to his memorise lines. So Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention was just pitch perfect for the audience. Sarah Palin is good at reading with feeling.

At least with Dick Cheney, we knew where he stood. One foot in the grave, the other in oil, with his gun shooting off in his friends' faces. The president-elect for eight years, Cheney fiddled with the government while George Bush slummed out at Crawford, Texas ( W broke the record for the most days off work (879) back in March. The previous holder was Ronald Reagan). And if anyone was going to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner, it would have been Dick before Bush.

McCain will not have the same relationship with Sarah Palin. Sure, she will be in charge of government while McCain is on holiday or having chemotherapy. She's a fan of big oil, and polar bears are fair game. But one could only wish that Halliburton were in the same league as Palin's backers.

John McCain is old. Really old. The oldest presidential candidate in US history. Yes, his Mum is still alive, but I'm unconvinced that a gibbering unpredictable dementia case is a quality of life to induce confidence. These things are hereditary after all. Thank Dagg Margaret Thatcher is no longer in power.

McCain is three years shy of the Average American Male lifespan. Going on the law of averages, Sarah Palin could be President of the Free World in 2012. Not scared yet? Perhaps it is that clean sweep through DC you think she's going to do. Yet her record demonstrates that her solution to cronyism is nepotism.

And what a family. Straight out of a My Name is Earl spin-off; Alaska, the Deep South of the Far North. Unlike Earl, which stars Scientology groupies, this sitcom has much more devoted following. The Assemblies of God is an evangelical group which is founded on the Sixteen Fundamental Truths. Loving thy neighbour is not one of them. The last two "truths" are particularly worrying. They involve the Second Coming of Jesus and the Final Judgement.

This is the big problem with fundamentalists. You could take all the books from all the libraries from all of history and put them on a scale with a bible or a Koran in the balance, and a fundy will still say that their bible contains the one and only truth. In most cases, it's not even the full book, just selected verses.

Sarah Palin reckons she has a destined part to play in all this. She's too young and inexperienced to be VP nominee, after all. God must therefore favour her. Whether it's banning books, having a Downs Syndrome baby or a knocked-up teenager, Palin will bear these trifling burdens. Her self-proclaimed destiny is to hasten the apocalypse, and she has the scripture to back it up. That's the confidence you saw during her speech. She is God's Honeybunny.

I'm not having a go at Palin just because she's Republican. Although there's not a Republican president in living memory whom I've actually liked, I've had the good manners to tolerate them. Even McCain is a relatively nice bloke. It's not because Palin is a Republican woman. You only have to read of Cindy McCain's lonely and painful poor little rich girl life to have some sympathy there (I only hope that Laura Bush has sustained herself with some Ibogaine-like prescription all these years, and doesn't have to steal her meds like Cindy did).

So I'm glad that NotPC, usually one of the louder barkers for the Republican party, is posting his doubts over Palin. Good on him drawing attention to Palin's spiritual guidance and "God's will be done" mantra. If Obama's preacher was considered extreme, Pastor Ed Kalnins of the Wassila Assembly of God is just off the planet:

Pastor Kalnins has also preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith;" and said that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode."

This is serious. This is Third Temple in Jerusalem-grade serious. This is World War serious. It's so serious, I'm just glad Hunter S Thompson isn't around to witness this. Guns are for fun, not fundamentalist crusades.

Sarah Palin is on a mission from God, and we should all be fearful. The current administration has already introduced the US equivalent of Saddam's Republican National Guard in the form of Christian mercenary outfit Blackwater. This Praetorian Guard, separate from the US military, provides the fulcrum for Palin's plans.

These plans are not tempered with experience. Palin only got her passport last year, and has travelled precisely once outside the US. Most of her travel up til then had been domestic, a narrow migratory circuit between Alaska and DC for federal funding grants. If travel broadens the mind, Palin's travels could be written on one side of a Eucharist wafer.

Palin's acceptance speech dripped hatred and xenophobia unseen in US history. Palin favours the oil pipepline as it reduces the reliance on "dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart." Vicious codewords litter the speech; caliber, faith, catastrophic, bulldog and lipstick. A servant's heart. This is undiluted fear and loathing.

These plans are not tempered with knowledge. Indeed, this is seen as a very big selling point against the Obama ticket, that elitist bookworm. General ignorance of history, politics, and evolution has never been in such high demand. Why be well read when all the answers are in just one book?

So I'm crossing my fingers that Obama is made president. Or at least, if McCain is president, he suffers no Gerald Ford type stunts. That could very well prove fatal for millions.

Fundamental as Anything

Looking at my karma score at DPF's over my comment on McCain's "choice" of VP, I'm pretty certain my level of sarcasm went unnoticed. I wasn't paying Palin a compliment. It merely confirms that McCain is a prisoner to the Religious Right of the Republican party. Of course, the VP was going to be a woman. It had to be, to catch the Hillary vote. But this woman? This woman is War.

I've just come back from an extraordinary day at the public conference on New Zealand & Australia's Secular Heritage and its Future:



The videos of the day's speeches should appear on the NZARH's YouTube channel sometime soon. The Oz speeches from their side is up there already.

Bill Hastings from the Censor's Office spoke on the Nun-wanking, "Jesus is a Cunt" t-shirt ban. I didn't get around to asking him whether a blood-dripping, masturbating hippie with "Gaia is a Cunt" t-shirt would also be considered offensive, but that's the nature of hindsight.

Nicky Hager (pronounced Har-ger, not Hay-ger) spoke on the main threat of fundies in NZ. Strangely enough, the Exclusive Brethren are not the main worry. Nope, it's the threat of issues-based networking power that churches can pull on. A cohesive and compliant flock can provide the numbers for talkback, letter-writing and petitions. Meantime, the fragmented majority is too busy, too distracted, and loses its voice. It loses its power. The destructive nature of binding Citizens' Initiated Referenda struck home. In theory, they're great. True democracy, woohoo. In practise, not so good.

Dr Bill Cooke from Auckland Uni at Manukau spoke on whether NZ is a "Christian Nation". Short answer is no. Too many whalers and sailors, too many Scottish immigrants, too many free-thinking refugees escaping ecclesiastical straight-jackets. WWI finished off any chances of a religious nation state. Too many soldiers returned from the slaughter knowing there was no God. Even Mickey Savage's Applied Christianity was a Humanist nudge to the pragmatics of being thy neighbours' keeper.

I'd like to paraphrase more, but his hard copy transcripts were too popular. And as a half-stoned deaf witness, I acknowledge that I'd be doing the man an injustice by stuffing more inelegant words in his mouth. Suffice it to say, it was the second most impressive speech of the day, and you should give it a squizz when it comes online.

The best speech of the day went to the mesmerising Prof Lloyd Geering, the 90 year old Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Vic Uni. The Rutherford House lecture theatre PA was down, but the old pro rattled off a dissertation off the cuff on New Zealand's Contribution to a Secular Global World. He spoke an epic.

First, define what one is talking about; secular not secularist. Secularist is anti-religion, which in itself is just another form of dogma. A secular society allows pluralism, it relishes differing opinions, it encourages freedom of expression. Define religion. Tricky. Prof Geering took a wide interpretation, saying that religion is whatever gets you through the day (I'm paraphrasing wildly here). Spiritual mysticism ties in all the threads, from the Three Brothers of Isaac, Ishmael and Andrew to New Ageism, Satanism and Scientology. It even ties in NZ's Animist culture that Simon Upton and Colin James are fond of drawing attention to. Fair call. Everyone believes in something, otherwise you'd be a miserable git.

Much of New Zealand's immigration occurred after the religious zealots had already landed in Australia and Plymouth Rock. NZ's people came across in the age of Darwin. Consequentially, New Zealand is currently performing its secular duty very well. We are a skeptical people. Humbled and wounded by doubt, it is our triumph and our tragedy (OK, now I'm just making it up. I'll get hold of a transcript and post it separately later on if possible. Never trust the storyteller, only the story).

I do not do standing ovations often, but I gave Prof Geering one. Whether others did or not is not my concern. It gave me the courage to corner him during afternoon tea to try and put my fears to rest. Unfortunately, what he said put a chill up my spine. To explain exactly why, I'll have to back-track a bit.

I am fascinated with quantum mechanics. I don't understand it, but I know beauty when I see it. Take, for example, Feynman diagrams:



Nicked from here

Combine this with Prof Feynman's admission over the Manhattan Project; when circumstances changed but they went ahead and built the atom bomb anyway, killing countless Japanese when the original fear and loathing was aimed at Hitler. This particular diagram has special meaning to me:


Nicked from here

Hang on, I'll clean up the image, substitute the virtual pi's and stuff with alternative definitions:



Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow, but let's call it a squiggly line instead. Call it a neuron firing. Call it Yeah Right syndrome. Call it doubt. Fundamentalists, whether they be of Christian or Islamist stripe, short-circuit this process. There is no doubt. God is on their side. Therefore, they can do no wrong.

In the macroscopic world, we are blessed with Hubble photos showing the incomprehensible age of our universe. In the microscopic realm, calculus has surpassed standard observation to the point where even really expensive machines cannot keep up with the predictions of theoretical physics.

God as mental short cut provides certainty in a world of increasing complexity and uncertainty. Fundamentalism is on the rise. The idiot mullahs are bad enough, but surely the world's superpower is run by the most enlightened leaders? Which is where Sarah Palin comes in.

I'm not putting too much stock in the Wikipedia article to be honest, seeing how over 1500 changes have been made to her profile in the last 36 hours. The edits are very interesting. Lots of literary airbrushing going on. No more "widespread criticism for her handling of Matanuska Maid Dairy." The hard line "Palin is [[pro-life]], even in cases of rape and/or incest" has gone. The convictions are being wiped clean.

There is no room for uncertainty in Sarah Palin's mind. Hypocrisy is justified.

"Palin admits that she used marijuana at a time when the state had legalized possession of small amounts. She says that she did not like it and she does not support legalizing marijuana, concerned about the message it would send to her children."

"Palin said she's not out to judge anyone and has good friends who are gay, but that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment. Elected officials can't defy the court when it comes to how rights are applied, she said, but she would support a ballot question that would deny benefits to homosexual couples."

Damn that pesky constitution!

So, back to what Prof Geering said to me. It was much along the lines of Blackadder Goes Forth regarding the origins of WWI: "It was just too much effort NOT to have a war." I'm too old for war, but I fear for my mates' kids. They may not be so lucky.

Dead as a Doha

The inevitable has occurred and another WTO round collapses. I saw this coming ever since attending a meeting at James Smiths corner in 2006. Observers had just returned from a Green Room session and were struggling to give any good news. It's affirmed, a new unilateralism and isolationist policy is setting in. Not good.

For New Zealand, that means that very soon we will be forced to choose sides. A small 'a' ally in the Pacific translates into client state status. As such, one does not have the luxury of completely independent foreign policy. There are some very big questions up ahead.

Amalekites suck at Photoshop

Back in the '80s, I was scared shitless by the idea that a flock of geese might spark a thermonuclear Holocaust. These days, I'm more worried that Photoshop might bring it all on.

While the hawks are screeching to all go all medieval on Iran, BoingBoing has kindly pointed out that Iranian media is sexing up the rocket tests.



Iran truly sucks at Photoshop. Already the mocking has started:







Never before has the posturing on both sides been so lame. Let's remember that these missiles are about as accurate as a Scud, and even less of a threat to Israel than those lame firecrackers. Stand down, people. It's not real.