Wednesday 21 January 2009

Bush's Last Day 20 January 2009.

Bernie wanted me to post this - and for good reason.
Certainly the G.W> Bush Presidency was indeed an era of error.

Click to enlarge, to read the fine print of my disclaimer
Let me just say that this Blog wishes Obama all the very best for his Presidency.

No doubt it will be difficult, with huge challenges ahead - the environment for starters. Do you remember Global Warming? And all that stuff about Kyoto Protocols?

And that's not to mention the excesses of the Stock Market. My opinion on that will differ from what Obama is likely to do - he will continue to bail out the banks and stockbrokers, in order to keep the economy from collapsing totally. Personally, I think they need to charge the B"astards.
In my view, theft is theft, and ought not be rewarded.

There were other parts to the email, about the supposedly "funny" things GWB said, while President. I am afraid I do not find them funny, because, he was President (in all probablility, by fraudulent means), and he got to laugh at the rest of the world - for 8 long, miserable years.

In truth, I doubt the world will recover from the excesses and errors of the GW Bush presidency within my lifetime.
  • THAT'S NO LAUGHING MATTER.

  • ASK THE IRAQIS
  • ASK THE PALESTINIANS
  • ASK DAVID HICKS
  • ASK MAMDOUH HABIB
  • ASK THE PEOPLE IN TENNESSEE WHOSE HOUSESHAVE BEEN DELUGED WITH TOXIC COAL ASH
  • ASK THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS -THE VICTIMS OF CYCLONE KATRINA,WHO WERE IGNORE BY THEIR PRESIDENT
  • ASK THE MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WHOSE HOUSES HAVE BEEN SOLD FROM UNDER THEM BECAUSE OF THE "SUB-PRIME LOANS".
  • AND THAT' S JUST FOR STARTERS.

NONE OF THAT IS FUNNY!

Let's hope President Obama can get on with repairing the damage done by his predecessor.

Its moments like these when I feel like praying for him, and the world at large!

Tuesday 20 January 2009

He's done such a great job with the RTA, lets reward him

"The (NSW) Roads and Traffic Authority chief executive officer, Les Wielinga, has been appointed to the head of the new Sydney Metro Authority and charged with the responsibility of developing a $13 billion subway network for Sydney." SMH - Linton Besser Jan 20 2009
 
Can you believe it?
 
He's done such a "great job" with the RTA, lets use him to spend an unbelievable amount of money ($13 BILLION) on a new Rail Metro system for Sydney - the project nobody believes will work anyway, or if bits of it ever do, it will only be bits.....
 
Half the NSW Labor members do not believe in it.
Federal Labor Party members do not want it to go ahead.
 
Amazing stuff.

Read the full story in the SMH website.
 
Ask yourself how many schools, or Hospital Emergency Departments you could build with $13 Billion ???
 
It is an obscenity.
 
Profligate wastefulness and straight out bad planning.

Monday 12 January 2009

American Warmongers supporting the outrages in Gaza.

This attached story comes from the Reuters UK Website.
U.S. seeks ship to move arms to Israel (see full story below).
My own perspective is that this is George W Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney's parting "gift" to Israel.
Bast*rds (Bush and Cheney, I mean).
Am I naive? Very likely!
The American War Machine is huge, and greedy and, frankly, evil to the core.
But there is another factor at play - the defeat of G.W. Bush's party in the November Elections in the USA. Remember that?
The America is supposedly the most modern nation in the world. But the American people are still living with an archaic US Constitution, with its "horse and cart era" insistence on the Presidential hand-over occurring in late January - two months after the election. That gives ample opportunity for a corrupt and evil administration to: cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war".
The full quote from Marc Antony (in "Julius Caesar") is worth reading: It reads like a News report from the Gaza Strip this week:
ANTONY:
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side, come hot from Hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
George W. who most likely has not read much of The Bard, certainly understood the "opportunity" presented to him and his people, by this Constitutional "delay". And now we see he has used his chance to send "bucketloads", no - "shiploads", no - 2.5 million kilograms of high explosives to Israel. And that is just the first (reported) shipment. We know from today's report that there is more on the way. The Americans hardly need to tell the Israelis to "go for it - while you can", when they are making such extraordinary "special shipments".
This smacks of the behaviour of a War Criminal to me. But we more or less know that about George W, anyway, don't we?

After all, the whole business of the invasion of Iraq, on an illegitimate pretext, and without the sanction of the UN, is just the largest, and most obvious of his outrages. The perversion of the US justice system, at Guantanamo is another. And there are hundreds more examples, no doubt, which "little people" like us may never hear about.
I like (personally) nearly all the Americans I have met. But goodness me, as a nation they have a lot to answer for, after allowing George to steal the Presidency in the first place - 8 years ago.
I vividly remember the frenzied response of otherwise "nice people" after the September 11 outrage. George took full advantage of that outrage, and confusion. Somebody played the American people for "Suckers" AFTER September 11, 2001 - and possibly before that date. We may never know the truth.
Our own "Little Johnnie", who was in Washington at the time, fell into line with George W. And next week he will get his beloved Medal for it. It should be an "Iron Cross" - befitting a "Man of Steel".
Bastards - all of them.
Bush ought to have been impeached. At the very least he ought face an International Court of Justice hearing for "Crimes against Humanity". But I am not holding my breath. Howard ought just go away and hide his face in shame.
These are my opinions, but don't anyone bother complaining, for I am just a "little person" living an ordinary life in the hills of NSW, Australia.
What does it matter what I think?

Read the full press report below. (The text is original, but the emphasis is mine).
U.S. seeks ship to move arms to Israel
Fri Jan 9, 2009 11:42pm GMT
By Stefano Ambrogi
LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tons of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show. The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as "ammunition" on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
A "hazardous material" designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given. "Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot," one broker said, on condition of anonymity.
"This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven't seen much of it quoted in the market over the years," he added.
The U.S. Defense Department, contacted by Reuters on Friday in Washington, had no immediate comment. The MSC transports amour and military supplies for the U.S. armed forces aboard its own fleet, but regularly hires merchant ships if logistics so require. The request for the ship was made on December 31, with the first leg of the charter to arrive no later than January 25 and the second at the end of the month.
The tender for the vessel follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip.
A German shipping firm which won that tender confirmed the order when contacted by Reuters but declined to comment further.
CHARTERS "RARE"
Shipping brokers in London who have specialized in moving arms for the British and U.S. military in the past said such ship charters to Israel were rare. Israel is one of America's closest allies and both nations regularly sell arms to each other.
A senior military analyst in London who declined to be named said that, because of the timing, the shipments could be "irregular" and linked to the Gaza offensive.
The ship hired by the MSC in December was for a much larger cargo of arms, tender documents showed. That stipulated a ship to be chartered for 42 days capable of carrying 989 standard 20-foot containers from Sunny Point, North Carolina to Ashdod.
The tender document said the vessel had to be capable of "carrying 5.8 million pounds (2.6 million kg) of net explosive weight," which specialist brokers said was a very large quantity. The ship was requested early last month to load on December 15.
In September, the U.S. Congress approved the sale of 1,000 bunker-buster missiles to Israel. The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world.
The Jerusalem Post, citing defense officials, reported last week that a first shipment of the missiles had arrived in early December and they were used in penetrating Hamas's underground rocket launcher sites.
(Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; editing by Michael Roddy)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved.
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Wednesday 7 January 2009

Howard makes Liberal-minded Aussies hang their heads in shame

It is with great pleasure that I publish the following message which arrived tonight, in response to a Crikey bulletin which announced that President-elect Obama and his family are unable to take up the traditional residence for the President-elect, "Blair House" at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. Why?
  • Because our illustrious former PM, John Howard and his lovely wife - what's-her-name (?) have accepted an invitation to bunk down at Blair House, prior to receiving the (US) Presidential Medal of Freedom.
My correspondent's message is as follows:

JWH's distinguished career as PM featured the following notable contributions to the human condition as detailed by Julian Burnside QC in his excellent book - 'The Watching Brief' p. 176 (a must read for all liberal-minded men and women)
  • "Our treatment of asylum-seekers, in particular: arbitrary detention involving cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of children and adults; the unregulated use of solitary confinement; and treatment amounting to torture;
  • "The government's complacent acceptance of the detention in Guantanamo of two Australian citizens: Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks. Habib was tortured by Egyptian and American authorities; Australia knew about it and did nothing to help him. Hicks was held for five years and then faced a 'trial' without any features or safeguards of a proper criminal trial; the Australian government did not lift a finger to help him;
  • "The 2002 amendments to the security legislation permitting the incommunicado detention of people not suspected of any offence;
  • "The 2005 amendments to the security legislation permitting the imprisonment for up to 14 days without trial, house arrest for up to 12 months without trial, and deprivation of basic rights without access to the evidence used against the person."
All the above was achieved while our ex-leader trotted out platitudes about a 'fair go' and 'family values' ably assisted by an Attorney General flashing an Amnesty International badge. Lord Downer of Fishnet also minced about adding colour to each new initiative.
Australians await the obliteration of these foul laws which have heaped shame and condemnation of the land of the real fair go. Sadly, we seem to be getting the message from the citadel that owing to the current global slump, the light at the end of the tunnel has been temporarily switched off. We await further news...........
Oh! But I digress. The medal that Johnny is getting while he keeps a real Statesman waiting in a hotel?
Why, its the Presidential Medal of Freedom stupid!

REMEMBER: "IT IS BY BEING QUIET AND POLITE CITIZENS WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE IGNORED"