“I Support Terror” by George W. Bush

I support terror.

The use of fear, intimidation, the threat and the actual act of violence to further a political, ideological, or religious aim, message, or belief.

Hell yes!

Bring it.

5 years on, and Iraq is just getting warmed up.

So many bombings and beheadings and mass graves that if less than 60 people die, nobody notices.

Unless one of them is an American, or an English, Israeli, or Aussie,

etc. etc.

Saddam – an amateur.

Killed 5000 civillians and got hanged for it.

Used chemical weapons.

That he got.

From my daddy.

Hee hee hee.

I killed 3, 4, 5 hundred thousand civilians and got re-elected.

Not like my daddy.

Hee hee hee.

So let’s look at what I’ve got.

Tax money for life? Yessirree.

Impeached? Not likely!

Gunned down? Not yet…

And I’ve sure got this military-industrial complex all up in this bee-yatch.

Machine Accomplished.

No American President can ever back down again.

I’ve killed too many parents and children.

Not for the House of Bush.

Not for my sidekicks – a Dick and a Con and a Robber(the ‘t’ is silent).

 

But in the name of the US People.

 

Vengeance ain’t mine ‘cause I have nothing to avenge,

Nobody wronged me ‘cept Barb when she gave birth,

But revenge will be my legacy.

 

Global hatred as intergenerational equity.

That ain’t me talkin’.

That ain’t even me writin’.

Have too much trouble with them words as big as Texas.

So Happy Birthday Iraq War.

We Won, but you – you’re five!

Don’t get lonely though, li’l camper.

I know our wonderful toys have killed your sons and daughters.

So we’re going to get you a sister!

I think her name’s Irene?

It’s just spelt kinda different.

Heh.

Crazy A-rabs…

 

This has been a preemptive strike in the name of the March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm…..

Last Train to Lhasa – [/sigh…]

Last train to Lhasa, originally a gorgeous piece of thoughtful music by Banco de Gaia, now a worthy way to reflect on yet another struggle for independence that has turned into bloodshed and brutality unleashed.

Mixed reports, almost impossible to confirm because of the Chinese regulation of Tibet, have emerged claiming anywhere from 10 to 67 protesters dead in the latest actions – the commemoration of the 49th anniversary of the events which forced the currently exiled Dalai Lama to flee Tibet. Probably a good time to brush up on the International Tibet Independence Movement if you’re not familiar with the struggle.

While it would be great to see the world reject China’s soft support for the slaughter in Burma and direct support for the slaughter in Tibet by boycotting the Olympics, it would suck for all the athletes, and it would be inordinately hypocritical. The US seems to export far more misery globally than China sews domestically, but where’s the outrage against America’s longstanding foreign policies which are responsible for the deaths of millions, even during the past couple of decades?

Grrrrrrrrrr. Enjoy the video played loud – the song is beautiful. The shorter version below has a collage of stunning and disturbing pieces of footage not included in the longer form above.

Dollar Implodes: Oh you crazy Carlyles, you’ve done it again!!

Go little squiggle! Go!!

It’s all happening a bit fast now for anybody to garner an official ‘WTF?’, but how funny is it that the Carlyle Group – post-Presidency employers of George Bush sr., negotiation partners of Osama Bin Laden’s family, and the American mass weapon exporter of choice – is this very moment the latest leading reason for the utter implosion of the US dollar and global share markets? Go team!!

That’s too funny!!! See the dudes on the left – it’s meant to look as though Carlyle Group is all about respecting and connecting with foreign cultures that encourage the accumulation of wealth, but it’s actually two coked out merchant bankers watching their friend all the way from the top of their building to the pavement below.

Don’t worry though, the US Federal Reserve will probably just cut their overnight rate a few more times so that by July they will actually be paying people to borrow American dollars. Then the whole thing might meet more than 87% of requirements necessary for the current clu$terfuc to be termed a “recession”.

It’s like when that prick with ears on the American Today show or Good Yawning America came out and announced that The Network had decided to call the war in Iraq a Civil War. I’m sure that semantic pedantry really made a difference to the bodies in mass graves who thought they had been put there as part of a regional conflict or neighbourhood dispute.

Further Bushes & the Carlyle Group info at

The Information Clearinghouse -> big assortment of interesting info-bytes, background, and collected links.

This one from Third World Traveller is awesome:

Dick Cheney and the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

The Carlyle Group: Crony Capitalism without Borders

excerpted from the book

How Much Are You Making On The War Daddy?

A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration

And there’s a more recent one here at Culture Change which gives good background and I like simply because it quotes Tom Paine.

New climate group to drive Australian policy change

In early March Sydney University’s Faculty of Law launched a new multidisciplinary initiative – the Climate Law & Policy Group.

In line with recent developments – the UK’s Stern Report in 2006, reevaluation of the Kyoto Protocol during 2007 and Australia’s current review process under Professor Ross Garnaut – the initiative aims to fill critical voids within current thinking and activity, both locally and internationally.

Key organisers Professor Gillian Triggs, Dean of Law at Sydney University, and Dr. Rosemary Lyster, an internationally respected teacher and practitioner of environmental law, spoke briefly of the new group’s reason for existence.

They identified the need to transverse various branches of law – administrative, environmental, international, trade, migration, taxation, corporate, criminal and public health – in making way for the emerging field of climate law and preparing legal infrastructure for an all-embracing response to the growing challenge of climate change.

With Australia’s emission trading scheme due to launch in 2010 and with Kyoto having so far failed to adequately engage developing countries, this first-of-its-kind initiative will work with individuals and governments to develop research projects and policy.

Keynote speaker John Connor, CEO of the Climate Institute, addressed the lawyers, academics, NGOs, Justices and students who came to hear his insider’s account of last year’s Bali negotiations and their implications for Australia. Though unsurprisingly absent, environmental barrister extraordinaire, Chris McGrath, did receive an honourable mention as the legal frontiersman keeping the Australian government falling over its legislative toes.

Connor signalled that there are powerful undercurrents building within global negotiations. Developed nations may yet group together to go beyond currently tentative Kyoto targets to cut their carbon emissions by between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020. He identified 2020 as the proving ground, the year by which bold initiatives must be taken and, if successful, replicated on a grand scale.

He said China and South Africa were leading the negotiations to build bridges with the developed world, while Australia is crossing a bridge of her own. The American position of controlled stalling has been rejected, traded for the quantum leap of the Garnaut Review and its broader consideration of the national interest in responding to climate change.

The way forward mapped out by these pragmatists seems to be a multi-layered paradigm shift already set in motion, from changes taking place in local planning laws and research financing to regional partnerships and global transparency and accountability.

The Climate Law & Policy Group’s first conference will be held on August 8.

 

Garrett’s Chile response to whaling claims by UK Independent

Following the welcome trend of reversing previous intransigence, the Australian Government has successfully floated a measure intended to heavily reduce, if not eliminate, Japan’s exploitation of “scientific research” as a justification for trying to kill close to one thousand whales annually.

During an international meeting at Heathrow during the first week of March, Australia found “a strong chord of support” for new Australian proposals to eliminate lethal research, according to a spokesperson for Environment Minister, Peter Garrett.

She rejected claims by the UK’s Independent that the meeting had somehow been secret, pointing out that it had received significant media coverage during the last week. She also flatly rejected the central claim of the article – that nations are moving to formalize approval of Japanese whaling – as selective quoting, misrepresentation, and a media beat-up.

Far from some sort of sinister new phase in negotiations, the central substance of the Independent’s claims regarding the nature of the meeting come from mentions made at the recent Heathrow meeting of a paper by the Pew Environmental Consultancy first tabled at a Tokyo meeting of the IWC in January.

She characterized the support for Australian proposals, voiced both formally and “at the margins” during the meeting, as a very pleasing result for both the Australian delegation and ongoing efforts to protect whales. Australia’s reforming proposals have now been accepted as formal items on the agenda of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) conference due to take place in Chile in June.

The measures would see concrete recovery plans established under the IWC. Supposedly scientific research would be subject to the IWC as a whole, rather than the standards determined appropriate by individual nations, as is currently the case with Japan’s program, sanctioned under their self-regulated JARPA II regime.

Obama v. Clinton defined

I’ve resisted any temptation to post about the US primaries simply because when kids are screaming and whining it’s not a situation that’s going to benefit from more attention. But this line from an article by Jonathan Freedland following the Texas-Ohio-Mordor primaries just nails it:

Democrats could be facing a choice between a woman who can win the party nomination but not the presidency and a man who could win the presidency but not his party’s nomination.

And this picture by Mr. Fish says as much:

I really think that American politics is way out in front in the global race to the bottom, Orwell-fantacizing irony-missing fart-sniffing bullshit-spouting sweepstakes, but Jeezus Effing Christ! After this week’s tri-state clusterfukkk, Hillary emailed her supporters to say that

Together, we are making history and showing every little girl in America that she can be anything she wants to be.

Now I may be mistaken, but I think that if Barack Obama emailed his supporters to say

Together, we are making history and showing every little black in America that they can be anything they want to be.

then the response would be an almighty “WTF?”. Which leaves me feeling pretty confident in my diagnosis of Billary as the all-time passive aggressive power-hungry hypocritical pantsuit motherfucker ever.

Your democracy is a joke America. I’m skipping the wait and printing up my Chelsea 2024 t-shirt now.

McCain may be a big White Elephant, but the Democrats are really a bunch of asses. It’s increasingly obvious how their own system worked to deliver the astoundingly pointless John Kerry as some kind of wannabe answer to George Dumber-than-you Bush. Maybe Barack should angle to be dismissed as a lesbian by Bill Clinton, then he too could claim to have Hillary’s level of leading edge experience in being close to the presidency.

Hi I’m Barack Obama. Bill Clinton wouldn’t fuck me, so how about giving me a chance to not fuck you.

I mean, really, anybody using the fact that they served cucumber sandwiches to visiting dignitaries and went on tourist jaunst to ’80 countries on the taxpayer-dime as a reason to vote for them really must just not have anything better to offer.

God knows Dennis Thatcher would do an awesome job of running Britain, eh what?

Monika’s Doggie Rescue: Paws for Thought

After more than a decade as a self-financed band of gypsies practicing random acts of canine survival, Monika’s Doggie Rescue became a fully registered charity in 2001. Now a network of over 300 volunteers, Doggie Rescue is reshaping its Sydney pawprint.

Speaking with Monika, she explained that their Drummoyne outlet, mainly used for weekend meetings between dogs and potential owners, has recently been dispensed with.

Increasingly, the refurbished Doggie Rescue website will play an important role for rescued dogs and their potential new families. People can look at online profiles of any of the hundred or more dogs housed at the Doggiewood compound at Ingleside. A half hour from the city, amidst scenic forests and the Northern Beaches, Doggiewood is already the main point of consolidation.

Fun, furry, pre-arranged happy petting sessions take place every Saturday at Pet Barn in Alexandria. This ongoing adoption program through Pet Barn provides an important physical gateway to potential inner city owners and foster homes.

Combined, these elements currently see Doggie Rescue place about a thousand dogs in new homes each year. But Monika’s real hope is for a change in the culture that produces abandoned animals.

Just last year, a small amendment to NSW law introduced a compulsory reporting mechanism for councils. As reported in late January, for the first time official figures confirmed that of close to 50 000 cats and dogs taken in by NSW pounds alone, nearly half were killed.

The Department of Local Government’s most recent figures also include the death rates from all other shelters, and indicate that over 60 000 cats and dogs were killed by the NSW system in 2007.

“We have an oversupply of animals because they get pumped out of impulse outlets,” said Monika. “And until people start thinking more about what they adopt when they take an animal – that it’s not just a disposable item – we’re just going to continue all these problems.”

In an effort to challenge this situation, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has been working to put the Animals (Regulation of Sale) Bill through state parliament. If she can build the necessary support, what began as a bumper sticker – ‘Say No to Animals in Pet Shops’ – could become law.

“Clover’s Bill,” said Monika, “really is the most crucial thing in trying to stave this awful production line, this breeding without very much care or nurturing.”

Monika described ‘the rescue cycle’. Similar to the cycle of homelessness facing many street kids, abandoned animals get dumped and re-dumped, usually ill-treated by more than just one home.

The proposed law, currently sidelined following a motion by Joe Tripodi, would end the sale of companion animals in pet stores. Sale would instead be restricted to breeders, shelters, vets, and pounds with a proviso that potential buyers are screened, educated, and matched to the needs of their new pet.

Monika’s Doggie Rescue already follows such a process. Perhaps uniquely, they also follow the progress of re-homed pets, requiring that mismatched pets be returned – an outcome that occurs in less than one per cent of cases according to Monika.

Doggie Rescue also provides a permanent backstop. In the event of an owner’s death, departure, or if it is at all needed, they offer permanent right of return for all dogs that come through their doors.

She lists her husband as the group’s biggest supporter who, along with Double Bay Vet Clinic and a number of private donors and supporters, makes it all possible. On the feeding, cleaning, caring, and financing rollercoaster, Monika’s ride has elements of Zen, Old Yeller, and Superfriends.

It is this environment which seems to produce the many Monika’s stories – one particularly sweet one being of a family that adopted a needy little dog with heart problems to keep their father company as he struggled with heart problems of his own.

Drop by www.doggierescue.com, Pet Barn Alexandria, or call Monika’s on 02 9486 3133 to find out more, or even see how you can help.

Tasmania – forest lies, lies, and more lies.

Tasmania – where blokes are blokes, and trees are nervous.

A state where everything is above board, but Royal Commissions – the highest level of independent inquiry into allegedly corrupt use of authority – are practically banned. Oh Tassie – thank goodness for you, the one place on Earth where destroying forest ecosystems defies physics, biology and chemistry to fight global warming. How? Buggered if I know, but some big blokes with beetroot-blood pressure and friends running chainsaws seem to have worked it out.

Barely a week ago, Paul Lennon – the spectacularly inept Premier of Tasmania and occasional dinner-buddy of Gunns’ CEO John Gay – made a baffling announcement. In response to Professor Ross Garnaut’s analysis of the climate change issues and options facing Australia, Lennon declared that once and for all it was time to get the facts straight about Tasmania’s forests.

This was baffling for two reasons.

Firstly, Lennon and his colleagues in government, industry, and small-minded lobby groups have spent decades arguing that old growth grows on trees and should therefore be woodchipped as quickly as possible lest it get out of control. This argument shifted in the ’90s toward the need for human-led forest management for the good of forests, because without humans, forests are incapable of cutting themselves down. The latest model is two-pronged – logging prevents bushfires (just like abortions prevent cancer) and clearing forests makes room to plant more trees and therefore fight climate change (yes, they are that stupid). In essence, these people have deemed themselves the source of all forest facts. By calling for someone intelligent and with no connection to forestry cash to disseminate facts, Lennon risked undoing decades of half-assed but ubiquitous propaganda.

Secondly, for any non-Greens member of Tasmanian parliament, let alone the bug-eyed, frothing, rabidly pro-Gunns Premier to call for a setting aside of nonsensical argument and the genuinely independent presentation of clear, firm, scientifically credible facts about the environmental impacts of logging is simply unheard of.

But today everything is back to normal. Thanks to our good progressive friends at GetUp, we can see Lennon’s message for what it was. Thanks largely to his timing, it was just another hot, steaming, cow chip of media distraction from a sociopathic Tasmanian bureaucrat. GetUp has just circulated the following release:

You may have missed it, but the Tasmanian Government last week unbelievably signed an agreement handing over Tasmania’s forests to the Gunns pulp mill for the next 20 years – in the very same week Professor Garnaut warned them of the dire climate change consequences facing us.

If we don’t act now, bulldozers will start clearing land for the mill that will contribute 2% of Australia’s greenhouse emissions – at a time when we’re being told we need to drastically cut our emissions. But unfortunately Australia’s forests were largely left out of Garnaut’s recent interim report.

We have only one opportunity to put them in the picture. A proper assessment in his impending Climate Change Report of our native forests’ climate change value may just sink the mill project. Click here now to sign the petition asking Professor Garnaut to examine the full climate impact of this mill madness and the logging of Tasmania’s native forests:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/DontPulpOurClimate

There’s a real risk the Garnaut report won’t include a comprehensive assessment of native forests – despite new research finding the stopping of deforestation a “large, immediate and perishable opportunity”* to massively reduce emissions. Costing out the real value of native forests will not only prove Tasmania’s trees would be better left in the ground but make this teetering project financially unviable when Gunns realises they will have to pay for the carbon embedded in our forests.

Native forests are invaluable sources of carbon storage – and it costs nothing to leave them in the ground. But 80% of the 4.5 million tonnes of wood needed to supply the pulp mill each year will initially come from Tassie’s native forests – permanently destroying forests that can hold 10-20 times the amount of CO2 than plantations.

A proper assessment of their climate change value will undoubtedly make the arguments in favour of the mill, whose climate change impact has never even been assessed, untenable. Take action to protect nature’s lungs before the bulldozers move in:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/DontPulpOurClimate

Long story short, Lennon can dance naked down the main street of Hobart wearing wattle in his hair and singing about how he loves the freaky forest critters and their precious wooded homes because he has already pushed through the legislation guaranteeing that they will all be turned into dioxinated mulch.

What visionary leaders he, his state Labor Party, and their big-L small-minded ‘opposition’ are.

Many people may have missed it, but Kyoto in its current incarnation is the best hope for global climate action. Even supposedly progressive governments in supposedly first world countries still treat Kyoto as though it’s too hard, but it is riddled with perverse incentives.

For example, emissions from international shipping and air traffic are not included on anybody’s scorecard at the moment – even though these vapours are as damaging as those of any American cattle ranch or any Chinese coal plant. More directly, Kyoto rewards the cutting down of trees that were planted before the 1990s by recognizing the carbon uptake potential of new trees planted in their place – which means that governments have incentive to replace 600-year old eucalypts with water-intensive saplings.

Brilliant.

Add in the fact that Tasmania’s forest ecosystems are administered by people you wouldn’t trust to look after a goldfish, and all the big environmental research, studies, reports, and recommendations look less and less like progress, and more and more like good ways to feel proactive about doing less than nothing.

RSPCA chickens out over allegations against industrial donor.

The above picture comes from an excellent animal update by Maxine Firth here in today’s SMH. Amazingly, the RSPCA endorses the conditions in which these thousands upon thousands of birds at the Pace Farm facility in Buchanan, near Newcastle, are kept. More amazingly, their spokesperson, asked about these specific conditions and the ongoing commission-for-approval arrangement between Pace and RSPCA contributed to the following exchange:

Chief executive Heather Neil said: “RSPCA standards for accredited egg production ensure that hens are given the freedom to exhibit natural behaviours.

The program involves a process of stringent and regular inspections every eight to 12 weeks to ensure standards are being met.”

Ms Neil confirmed the RSPCA endorsed beak clipping of birds at the Buchanan facility.

“The RSPCA is aware of behavioural problems with this particular flock at Buchanan, specifically feather picking,” she said.

On the allegation that the birds were too cramped, she said RSPCA standards allowed for seven birds per square metre as opposed to the national code of practice standard of 12.

Animal Liberation said the RSPCA standard gives each bird an amount of space equivalent to a piece of A3 paper.

Ms Neil said the demand for eggs in Australia was about 200 million dozen eggs a year.

“Such a demand necessitates large-scale commercial production,” she said. “The RSPCA would prefer to be in there helping to improve the welfare of birds in commercial egg production rather than not being involved at all.”

Now, I may be wrong, but if birds are forced to live in such squalid and cramped conditions that they have to have their beaks burnt off so that they don’t peck each other to death… is that really a “behavioural problem”? Or is that a “human contempt for animal life problem”? And would the RSPCA have helped improve conditions for horses at race tracks or increase the size of steel pigpens if “large-scale commercial production” as opposed to “animal welfare” or “prevention of cruelty” was meant to be their priority.

Ha!! more like “eggs have the tick because it’s one less reason for you to give a shit about how these fucking trolls cash in on animal torture”

I have been pissed off at the way eggs are packaged, bought and sold for ages. Pace, for example, has a facility with close to a million chickens about 4 hours south west of Sydney, near Wyalong, in the appropriately named Bland Shire (seriously). These bastards have the nerve to produce a line of free range eggs, and people are either so busy or so ignorant that they buy them.

Here’s a simple question: If, for example, I keep a million chickens laying eggs in conditions similar to a concentration camp from the moment of their birth until their premature over-medicated death, but have another hundred thousand that run around in a nice field, should ANY self-respecting consumer be rewarding me with their cash?

Or to put it another way: If I run Auschwitz and I butcher 5 million people, turning them into soap, gold, and ashes, but I supply half a million with false papers and make sure they get across the Channel to England, am I a saint, am I halfway toward redemption, or am I so fucking evil that I should never be allowed to sell eggs again?

Basically – do not EVER buy ANY kind of egg from ANY company that runs ANY battery/cage hen facilities. Fuck PACE FARMS. Fuck INGHAM CHICKENS. FUCK KFC. Etc. LET YOUR SUPERMARKET KNOW –> tell them that you don’t want Pace Free Range eggs, tell them you want any other kind of remotely ethical free range eggs.

Buy organic if you’re really concerned about your own health. Buy free range if you’re concerned about the chicken whose period you’re eating.

And to make you feel all warm and fuzzy, as opposed to henpecked and cemented, here are photos from this page which allegedly details a 2002 investigation-of-sorts by local activists into the Pace facility near Wyalong.

These happy lookin’ fellas down the bottom have been in chook rehab. Not yet 100%, I’m guessing.