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The War On Christmas has begun! Huzzah!

And now it?s time to look ahead: Rather than destroy Christmas in the usual way this year ? by boiling elves and impaling Christians on giant candy canes and peeing in creches, and all that ? our plan, as liberals, is to work within the system, to send spies into Christmas itself, and to bring this so-called, scare-quotes ?holiday? to ruin by the grinding of its own cogs.

Opening salvos were launched on Thanskgiving from the pagan base at Sadly, No and sleeper cells are already up and running in major cities around the world. Frustrate the spirit of Christmas! Give toys to children, bwahahaha! Here, here or especially here.

One commenter rather missed the point that Christmas isn’t actually Christian anyway:

Major Woody said,
November 24, 2006 at 13:46

I think Penguins are perfectly appropriate for Christmas. After all, they live at the North Pole just like Santa, and like the Baby Jesus, they are raised in beds of straw. Most penguins, like Mr. Christ, are born Jewish, too. Penguins also have the ability to walk on water (when it?s frozen) and like to eat fishes, which I believe Jesus and the Disciples (that?s the band he was in, it was quite big) enjoyed. In fact, before they formed the band, all those guys were fishers-men, except for Judas who was an accountant, and Paul, who was a gay hooker. It?s true, you can look it all up on Wikipedia, just give me about 15 minutes first.

Oh, pagans, not penguins. Sorry.

Hmm. I suspect that may ‘ve been written for comic effect. Mind you, why shouldn’t Yuletide become a penguin-based holiday?

Penguins are the perfect symbolic winter holiday bird. They’re cuter than pagans; they tend not to mess the house up with awful purple batik throws and crystals, like those Bach-flower-remedy-spilling hippy drippies do; they don’t insist that a microwave oven removes protein from food, or direct ‘healing’ rays in your direction whether you want them to or not, or disappear from family events because the negative vibe is just too much for their little sensitive-flower souls; they also don’t dance in the moonlight singing paeans to the Goddess and pretend to be elves in their spare time. (Well, only the Gentoos, but their LARPing’s isolated enough not to bother me much.)

Not all penguins are suited to seasonal celebrations though. The Adelies, for example, are monotheistic, bloodthirsty and in league with Opus Dei, so are no use at all for our evil purposes. Emperors, on the other hand, are anyone’s for a bucket of squid and have that portly Maitre D’ in a tux look that adds so much tone to one’s festive events.

Who would you rather have at the feast, a religious nuttjob or an aquatic extremophile avian in cool monkey suit?

No contest, is there?

Read more: War On Christmas

Australian Wheat Traders Told Of Iraq Invasion 13 months Beforehand

Blair never just lies, he lies about his lies.

Remember this?

AS a civil service briefing paper specifically prepared for the July meeting reveals, Blair had made his fundamental decision on Saddam when he met President George W Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002.

Well, this next rather undermines Blair’s claims that no decision had been made to go to war until that April meeting :

NZ Herald:

World News: Iraq invasion plans tipped a year ahead

Friday November 24, 2006

CANBERRA – A senior diplomat tipped off the Australian Wheat Board a year before the Iraq war that Australia would join the United States-led invasion, new documents show. The evidence appears to contradict the Howard Government’s statements that it did not decide to join the war before the invasion was debated in the United Nations in late 2002 and early 2003.

The revelation prompted the Opposition to call for the Cole inquiry into the AWB’s Iraq kickbacks to be reopened and its terms of reference expanded – just 24 hours before the final report is handed to the Government. The documents, released by the Cole inquiry, show Australia’s then United Nations Ambassador John Dauth revealed the Howard Government’s position to former AWB chairman Trevor Flugge. Dauth briefed Flugge in New York in February 2002 – 13 months before the invasion – and the details appear in minutes of AWB’s February 27 board meeting of that year, tendered to the inquiry. “The Ambassador stated that he believed that US military action to depose Saddam Hussein was inevitable and that at this time the Australian Government would support and participate in such action,” the minutes say. [My emphasis]

[…]

Opposition leader Kim Beazley said the documents showed the Howard Government was prepared to take AWB into its confidence a year before going to war – but not the Australian people. The Cole inquiry, which is likely to recommend criminal charges against current and former AWB executives over the A$290 million ($339 million) in illicit payments the company made to Iraq, should be allowed to continue with expanded terms of reference, Beazley said.

[…].

So the wheat traders on the other side of the world knew in February ’02 that the US would invade, but Tony Blair didn’t? Oh, give me a break. If it was common knowledge even among the Australian diplomats, do we really thinkBlair didn’t know until that meeting at the Crawford ranch in April?

What perplexes me most about Blair’s deceit before the war and his continuing Iraq lies is his blatancy and seeming assurance that no-one will ever hold him to account. Many of his untruths have been indeed been speedily and relatively easily uncovered but Blair as yet hasn’t had to face the music, unless you call the Butler report an accounring and I certainly don’t.

Like the now desperately recanting US neocons Blair seems not to have thought beyond the actual point of the invasion to what might happen to either postwar Iraq or their own governments. They assumed it’d all be hunkydory both at home and abroad. But why? Had they had assurances that they needn’t worry about any consequences, and if so, who from?

There’s a lot more collateral info to come from the Cole enquiry – though it’s otsensibly about kickbacks to .au wheat producers and the UN Oil for Food Scandal, it bears paying some attention to on both sides of the Atlantic for the backdoor insights it gives into the machinations leading up to the invasion.

Read more: Iraq, Invasion, Butler report, Blair war lies, Australia, Cole Enquiry

Saturday Travelling Cat Blogging

Oh, the poor little love, From AP, Reuters and many many others…

Stowaway Cat Found After 17-Day Sea Voyage

(AP) LONDON A fluffy white cat stunned cargo workers in England when it jumped out of a goods container after a 17-day sea voyage of more than 2,000 miles from Israel to Britain, an animal charity said Friday.

The cat nicknamed Ziggy was starving and dehydrated when workers at a warehouse in the northwestern town of Whitworth discovered the unexpected cargo a week ago.

Ziggy fled from the workers when the container was opened and hid for more than five hours.

“I think he was scared to death,” said James Ratcliff, an officer with charity the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “He’d traveled all that way and got to a strange country, and ran for his life.”

The animal charity was called to help and officers discovered the cat by a pool of water on the warehouse roof, luring it to them with a plate of tuna, Ratcliff said.

Local trading standards officer Colin Barton said Ziggy began his journey at a factory in Afula, northern Israel, on Oct. 31, when a container was sealed and taken to the port of Haifa for shipment.

It arrived in Liverpool, northern England, 10 days later and was taken to the warehouse, where workers had expected to unpack a cargo of plastic goods, he said.

When the container was finally opened, staff unloading it got a real surprise when this fluffy white cat shot out,” Barton said. “I think it has probably used some of its nine lives.”

Ziggy has been tended to by veterinarians and is now being kept at an animal quarantine as officials attempt to trace its owners in Israel, Ratcliff said.

Read more: Weird news, Pets, Travelling cats

A Liberal Is A Conservative Who’s Been Arrested

Click To Play

8 minutes QuickTime

Check Point “Dubya” focuses on constitutional violations by security forces and the brutal over use of pepper spray at the 14th & Pennsylvania Ave. inauguration parade route check point. January 20th 2005. This piece aired on Free Speech TV as part of the documentary Mandate?

Remember the disgraceful and brutal behaviour of the police towards peaceful protestors during the demonstrations at Bush’s two inaugurations in Washington DC? At the 2001 inauguration:

At a primary entry and check point to the Parade route and the location finally given by permit to protestors, the private Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee working jointly with the D.C. Police and federal law enforcement officers prevented activists from entering, creating a highly provocative situation, in order to stop activists from being along the route of the Presidential motorcade.

At another location along the parade route, government agents provocateurs carried out felonious assaults, beating and pepper spraying peaceful protestors in order to disrupt their demonstration and assembly activities.

Elsewhere, hundreds of protestors who were marching to get to the parade route were surrounded on all sides trapped, and detained and falsely imprisoned by law enforcement officers with violence and force.

The naughty bad anarchists deserved all they got, according to some Bush supporters. But the courts saw it differently:

The D.C. police department agreed yesterday to pay $685,000 and take steps to protect protesters from police abuse and ensure their rights to settle a lawsuit over the treatment of demonstrators at President Bush’s inauguration in 2001.

[…]

The lawsuit uncovered evidence that the department had suspended rules limiting the use of force during the protests, had pressed undercover officers to infiltrate protest groups and had sought to provoke protesters and uninvolved bystanders by attacking them with batons and pepper spray.

Under the settlement, the department denies any guilt but agrees to change its police handbook to better protect protesters, adding a requirement that officers report the use of force during a mass demonstration and prohibit arrests without evidence of a crime. Officers assigned to civil disturbance units will be reminded of the changes in a new, mandatory 40-hour training course and annual refresher session.

[…]

The settlement, which comes as [police chief] Ramsey is preparing to leave his post, is the latest in a series of payments the city has made stemming from police conduct at demonstrations. In January 2005, the District government agreed to pay $425,000 to seven people caught up in a mass arrest at Pershing Park in September 2002. More than 400 people were rounded up at the downtown park during demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Several investigations found that Assistant Chief Peter J. Newsham, after conferring with Ramsey, had ordered arrests without warning or evidence of a crime — including of people who had nothing to do with the protests.

Even those friendly towards Bush were shocked by the brutality of the DC police , including this Republican who was also a party to the lawsuit:

Mike Shinn, a security consulting company owner who joined in the suit settled yesterday, said he was glad that the department would be forced to follow the laws of the country. Shinn, a Bush supporter who went to watch the inaugural celebration, said he felt he was in another country when police pushed him, other spectators and protesters against a wall and an officer hit him on the head from behind with a baton.

“I tried to explain what I was doing and ask him what he wanted me to do, and he hit me again,” Shinn recalled. “He said, ‘Do you want some more of this?’ I was just shocked, just utterly shocked. I thought: What in the world are they teaching them?”

Shinn said he hopes the incoming chief, Cathy L. Lanier, and the departing Ramsey learn a lesson.

“You can’t arrest people for just having opinions, as unpopular as they may be,” he said. “You don’t just arrest everybody on the streets because you think they might have an opinion. It flies in the face of everything that is America.”

If only more wingnuts were to feel the full force of the paramilitary police every time they exercised their right to free speech – that right that they like to boast is one that’s unique to the US – perhaps they might be a little more clued in to what it is the rest of us are actually protesting about.

There are a number of lawsuits pending re the police violence at the 2005 inauguration and the Republican conventions in New York and Philadelphia and we’re going to be hearing a lot more soon about exactly what it is the Bush administration has been putting the police and FBI up to.

Read more: US politics, Bush inaugural protests, Court settlement, Washington DC, Police brutality,

They Do It With Fudge

Digby, on how the Right cleverly frames the contraception debate (AKA The War On Women) to incrementally carve away womens’ hard-won gains of the last 50 years and turn them back into baby-making machines :

Anti-choicers: “Birth control is just like baby killing”

Reasonable Dupes: “Not true! It’s nothing like baby killing. We are against baby killing!”

Anti-choicers: “We don’t believe you. You just want the freedom to put little girls on the pill and when that doesn’t work, you want to yank unborn babies from their wombs against God’s will!”

Dupes: (rolling eyes) “Ok, ok. We’ll prove it. We are willing to outlaw abortion, but you will pry our birth control from our cold dead fingers.

Anti-choicers: “heh”

Why am I a hard-line socialist? One of the reasons is because the above exchange is typical of the kind of thing that happens when social democrats act all reasonable and go for the fudgey middle – woolly compromise by woolly compromise, the far Right get their way.

The right of women and girls not to be forced to bear unwanted children is too important for that.

Read more: Abortion, War on women, Anti-choice Contraception