Isn't it odd that peaceniks should be so despised by the religious right when one of the absolute tenets of Christianity is Thou shalt not kill? Isn't it bizarre that to declare yourself to be against killing should make you the enemy of those who claim to believe above all things these ten instructions supposedly coming straight from God's mouth? Isn't it crazy that piety is measured (in some circles) by the enthusiasm with which you support America's pulverisation of small poorly armed countries?

a sad sad story...

GI gets three years for killing Iraqi18:29 AEDT Sat Dec 11 2004
AP - A US soldier has been sentenced to three years prison after pleading guilty to killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager.
Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne Jr, 30, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, also received a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of wages and a dishonourable discharge.
Horne, attached to Company C, 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, based in Fort Riley, Kansas, pleaded guilty to one count of unpremeditated murder and another one count of soliciting another soldier to commit unpremeditated murder.
The charges relate to the August 18 killing of a 16-year-old Iraqi male found in a burning truck with severe abdominal wounds sustained during clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City, an impoverished neighbourhood which was the scene of fierce fighting between US forces and Shi'ite rebels loyal to anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
A criminal investigator had said during an earlier hearing that the soldiers decided to kill him to "put him out of his misery".

the boom boom bus

My older daughter, Gillian currently works away from home in a small rural town where nothing much ever happens unless you make it happen. She comes home every second weekend. When I picked her up from the bus last night, she says to me, 'Mum, this really weird thing has been happening. And I started it. And I feel bad.'

Like what? Like what????

'Well, it's a lie. A little white lie we started at work and now the whole town believes it's fact and when I try to tell them that it's a lie and that I know it's a lie 'cause I am one of the liars, people think I am lying!'

So the story is: She works in a government training program with about ten other teenage kids and they go from government training place to government training place in a distinctive bus with Greencorps logos all over it. As a joke some time ago, Liam, the group's resident sexual obsessive, made a great show of putting condoms into the ashtray - Just In Case. Then a few weeks ago, the bus is broken into overnight and Gillian and her friend, Kim are the first on the scene. As a joke, Kim takes the condoms out of the ashtray and they tell everyone that someone must have broken into the Greencorps bus to Have Sex. First they tell the others in the Greencorps team the ... ahem... shall we say ... embroidered version of events. Then the rest of the team tell the management. Then they all tell everybody they know. The news travels throughout the small town! Gillian watches the ensuing rumour grow with alarm.

Oh my God! Oh my God! There are louts going about the town breaking into vehicles and having sex! Don't just lock up yer daughters - lock up their cars too! Someone heard there were drugs. Suspects are starting to be named!

People start coming up to Gillian in the street and asking her for more details about The Crime. She begins to tell them that she and Kim made it up and that it hadn't really happened at all. The responses she gets to that range from pity... 'Oh, don't be embarrassed about it. Not like it's the first government vehicle ever to get christened that way... ' to accusations that she is in denial... 'For god's sake, Gill... Everyone knows it happened. Just admit it.' The town begins to call the Greenscorp vehicle The Boom Boom Bus.

I couldn't stop laughing as Gillian described the snowball she and Kim created on the spur of the moment with no idea of how far it might roll.

But she was serious. ' Mum, I know it's trivial. I know it doesn't matter that the whole town believes that someone had sex on the Greencorps bus. But it's just disturbing! I just made up a piece of the town's reality! And I can't unmake it! I just can't believe that it's become fact.'

I said to her, 'There's worse to come. Just wait till you get to the stage where you and Kim begin to believe the story too.'

She looked at me. 'I'm pretty sure Kim already does.' Apparently Kim acts just as shocked and amazed as everyone else when they talk about it.

Of course, the next step will be that some kids really WILL break into the Greenscorp bus and have a sex and drugs party because someone has put the idea into their mind that they can!

Later, Gillian and I went for a video and by chance picked up a film called Donnie Darko, a great story that explores the nature of reality and how we create our own realities out of whatever is around us. There is a great scene about people emballishing a rumour as it goes from teller to listener to the next teller. That little bit of synchronicity was a bit disturbing in itself.

canadian parliament gagged

Here in Australia, when the Great Gonzo Georege W Bush came to visit our parliament to bestow his approval and blessing upon the monied classes, no one else was allowed to speak. However, two great Australians, Bob Brown leader of the Greens( only in Australia could one of our bravest men be called Bob Brown) and Kerry Nettle, Greens senator, stood up in the silence of the awe struck hallowed parliament halls and had the unadulterated gall to ask the Great Gonzo Georege W Bush for a 'Please explain' regarding his global homocidal tendencies. Ah, twas a beautiful sight! Later, an even better sight was the outrage of the other parliamentarians who gasped and hrumphed about how rude these two upstarts were. When Senators Brown and Nettle tried after the session to hand George Bush a letter stating their objections to America's behaviour, conservative parliamentarians formed a cordon around him as though they were secret service agents and jostled and pushed Ms Nettle in an extremely aggressive manner preventing the delivery of a letter from two elected representatives of an allied country.

Is this the right of free speech that George Bush is supposedly killing Iraqis for? Now Canada is not to comment on anything at all.

Mark Latham, our once exciting, now blanded down oppostion leader once called those who fawn over George Bush 'a conga line of suckholes'. Never a truer or more Australian term was ever spoken.

canadian parliament gagged

!!!!!! CLANG !!!!!!!