Shrove Tuesday

I just can’t bring myself to do any proper work this afternoon. I do have plenty of work to do, but I’m procrastinating. I am going on holiday in less than 2 weeks, hooray! Heading back to my home town Sydney to visit my family, see their new place, see friends, soak up the sun etc. Really looking forward to it, have missed home a lot recently, and to be honest I really need a holiday. Taking my English girlfriend Sarah back with me, all her friends insist she will fall in love with the place and not want to come back….. yes that is the plan!

I’ve had just about enough of the cold weather in London for now. We were teased a bit a couple of weeks ago when it got rather mild and we thought that was it for winter, but it’s been freezing the last couple of weeks which adds extra incentive to get back to Sydney for a few weeks. Before that though I’ll be spending a few days in a far colder climate than London; my mates and I will be showing our commitment to doing things a little different by going to Finland this weekend. We’ll be going to the Lahti Ski Games. Current forecast for Lahti on Saturday is –7C. Am sure if we can avoid freezing our bollocks off we’ll have a good time.

But that’s still a few days away and in between now and then I will have to do the work I am procrastinating now, but not this afternoon. No once I have posted this I think I will go back to The Neurology Channel and decide which incurable neurological disorder would be the best/worst one to have. Lou Gehrig’s Disease looks pretty unfortunate, then there’s CJD, although that’s pretty mainstream now, and it’s pretty hard to look past everyone’s favourite, Tourette’s Syndrome. But for a pure ‘shit that would really suck’ feeling today I’m going to go with Huntingdon’s Disease. Huntington’s disease is a fatal hereditary disease, progressing without remission over 10-15 years, that destroys neurons in areas of the brain involved in the emotions, intellect, and movement. The course of Huntington’s is characterized by jerking uncontrollable movement of the limbs, trunk, and face (chorea); progressive loss of mental abilities; and the development of psychiatric problems….. I think I’ll pass.

I am Nostradamus

Well what a terrible result in the Champions League on Tuesday night, not only was I forced to listen to the utter bullshit that is the commentary of Peter Drury, but Thierry Henry actually won! Yes it was Real Madrid vs Henry and weren’t we constantly reminded throughout the game about how Arsenal were such underdogs and wasn’t it weird to say that, and weren’t Madrid in such a rich vein of form, how on earth were Arsenal going to win!?! I should actually point out that the last time I watched Madrid play they were ripped to pieces by Zaragoza, in a 6-1 cup thrashing. So it was really not a surprise to see Madrid play so poorly as even though they have a star studded line up, they are certainly capable to not turning up on the day. Which made the ignorant ramblings of ITV’s commentary team even more irritating.

So Arsenal and their only decent player managed to pull one over, in fairness it was a pretty good goal, but they are nothing without their funny shaped headed striker. I’m sure normal service will be resumed and Madrid will win the return fixture 4-0. That will then be the end of Arsenal’s season, they will focus their attention on claiming fourth spot in the Premiership, to which they will be beaten to by their North London rivals.

This will have disastrous consequences for the club. They could not possibly expect to retain the services of Henry, their only class player, he will off to Barcelona. With no champions league football they will be unable to attract star players and improve their squad. Their inaugural year in the new stadium will be tainted by the fact that they are no longer a top 4 club in the country. The departure of Henry will no doubt ensure the departure of other old hands at the club, do not expect to see Pires, Ljungberg, Cole or Bergkamp next year. Sol Campbell has already lost his mind, and will no doubt be selling the big issue in 6 months time. Moving to a new stadium is very expensive; they will be without the significant income that the champions league brings. This will mean that they will have to direct all their funds into payments on the new stadium, thus not having any money to spend in the transfer market, a further hindrance to improving their squad.

So 2006/07 will not turn out to be a very successful season for the Arse. A top 10 finish but no European football. Debts will start to mount; the club will need to sell its better players in order to fund its new stadium. This will further deteriorate the quality of the squad, Arsenal will continue their slide down the ladder. We have seen all this happen before, yes that’s right last time it was called Leeds United. It may not be that season, it could be the season after, but Arsenal will be relegated. Once this happens, they cannot possibly expect to afford to stay at their very expensive stadium, indeed how can a club expect to fill a 60,000-seat stadium when playing in the championship? So Arsenal will be forced to move to a cheaper, smaller stadium, however by that time Highbury will no longer be a football stadium. So where could they go? Who cares really, I’m sure they’ll find something, but in order to stay liquid they will need to lease their own stadium out to another side, that’s if it hasn’t been repossessed by the creditors. So which team would by that time be looking for a bigger stadium to seat its many loyal supporters while playing in Europe’s premier competition? Yes that’s right,

Tottenham Hotspur.

Crazy fucking insane maniacs

More utter madness.

More violence, death and destruction, all because of a few cartoons! Yes they were not in particularly good taste, but surely this has gone too far! Do the people involved in this nonsense actually even know what they are rioting about? Forgive me for being somewhat condescending, but are those in Nigeria responsible for this, really that well connected with international news? Pardon me, but I can’t help but suggest that this is a game of Chinese whispers that has gotten a little out of hand; because surely the printing of cartoons 6 months ago cannot cause people to commit terrible acts of violence! Maybe word has made its way there and the story has been twisted so now that people think that the people of Denmark constructed a large statue of the prophet Muhummad, threw all their shoes at it and then tipped the entire nations’ raw untreated sewage over it, all whilst proclaiming that Islam is the scourge of the entire world and solely responsible for cancer, AIDS, poverty, homosexuality, ingrown toenails, ginger hair and reality television. AND, somehow, the Christian population of Nigeria, colluding with McDonalds, KFC and David Hasselfhoff, are all responsible. Maybe then could you start to convince me that these violent lunatics might have something to crow about. This doesn’t even need to be about religion any more, forget about it, these people are crazy, fucking insane maniacs!!

Yet there has been so much dignified protest as a result of the cartoons that has been so sadly overshadowed by the mindless violence and destruction. There was a peaceful rally by British Muslims in Trafalgar square recently, that expressed their displeasure not only at the offence of the cartoons, but also at the aggressive reaction of so many Muslims as a result. Good on them, these people should get more publicity because they are the true voice of their religion. Sadly they will not because peaceful protest doesn’t make nearly as compelling news stories as burning buildings and murdered people.

There has been some opposition expressed at a South Park cartoon that is due to be shown in New Zealand later this year. I love South Park; I love its irreverent humour, its pointed attacks, controversial content and generally foul dialogue. If I were a Christian then I would be pretty offended by this particular episode. I am not so no doubt I will find it funny. However I cannot imagine the Christian community having the same kind of reaction that we have seen from certain parts of the Muslim community. Allahu Akhbar, God is Greatest, God is also forgiving, truly religious persons know this, regardless of faith. Those who are now rioting, ransacking and murdering cannot claim to be religious. They are a stain on their faith, petty, pathetic, disgraceful, Godless people. To hell with them.

Name Change

To go along with my attemps to breathe life back into this blog, I have changed the name and the format. Clearly if you are reading this then you already know that.

The Armed Republic of Disgruntled Citizens

Created a nation state in the East Pacific. Is quite a cool site to interact with. I plan to become rule a far right society with a corrupt and hard line government. Although the site is not complicated enough to allow me to overthrow other nations in the region.

http://www.nationstates.net/disgruntled_citizens

The Armed Republic of Disgruntled Citizens
"Please stand to the right of the escalator"
UN Category: Iron Fist Consumerists
Civil Rights:Few
Economy:Strong
Political Freedoms:Outlawed
Location: The East Pacific

The Armed Republic of Disgruntled Citizens is a tiny, pleasant nation, renowned for its compulsory military service. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 6 million are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources." The medium-sized, corrupt government is effectively ruled by the Department of Defence, with areas such as Religion & Spirituality and Social Welfare receiving almost no funds by comparison. The average income tax rate is 12%. A large private sector is led by the Trout Farming industry, followed by Woodchip Exports and Cheese Exports. Crime is moderate, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Disgruntled Citizens's national animal is the platypus and its currency is the sullen.

Soldiers are not policemen

IRAQ: What a farce. Almost 3 years we’ve been there now, and it’s still fucked up beyond recognition. A haven for insurgents and extremists, dozens of innocent people being violently killed every day. The place is an absolute mess and there really are no signs of it getting better any time soon. Would have to be thus far, the 21st century’s mother of all fuck ups.

It’s now such common place for someone to blow themselves up in a crowded part of Baghdad for Basra, killing scores of innocent people, that it barely makes the news. We have become so accustomed to seeing this death and misery that one can’t help but become desensitised to it. What has made the news this past week however, has been fresh evidence of abuse of Iraqis by British and US soldiers. New pictures have been released by SBS of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib by US soldiers. This kind of treatment of anyone is unacceptable, however I feel that those responsible are not as responsible as has been made out. The soldiers concerned have been tried and some jailed, but soldiers follow orders, and no one is going to convince me that someone high in the chain of command didn’t give the order to make prisoners feel ‘a little uncomfortable.’

A video was on news this week (with sound) that was taken by a British prisoner and showed a troop of British soldiers rounding up some Iraqi civilians who had been rioting in the streets. They dragged a few of them back into their compound and, while the Iraqis were screaming for mercy, beat the shit out of them. The whole thing was recorded with a gleeful running commentary from the cameraman.

Again this has brought outrage from Iraqi citizens and members of the international community about the behaviour of the occupying force. The US and Britain cannot afford for these kind of things to happen, it is highly damaging to their whole plan. The problem that is faced is that The US and Britain invaded Iraq on the basis of moral superiority; that Saddam was a bad man and by attacking his country, they would in fact liberating the Iraqi people from his tyranny. Even the operation was given the beguiling name ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ Although perhaps it was more about freeing Iraq of its oil, and freeing it up to become another pro US outpost in the middle east, but I argued about that 3 years ago. So revelations such as these are highly damaging because they strip the moral superiority away from the coalition. Evidence such as this continues to raise questions as to whether these people were better off with Saddam there anyway. How can an army claim to be mounting an operation to free the Iraqi people from tyranny, and then end up treating them like this?

This has all happened because the coalition are still bogged down in Iraq. The US didn’t plan for any of this, all they knew they were going to do was attack the place. They had no strategy of what to do once they had ousted Saddam, no real plan on how to maintain law and order, return the country to order and get the hell out of there. I bet the administration didn’t reckon they’d still be there 3 years down the track. They probably had figured they’d be well on their way to attacking another country by now. So what happens when you get stuck like this? You ask your military to perform a job they were not trained to do. Let’s face it, they’re soldiers, not policemen.

Without trying to condone the recent actions of the aforementioned soldiers, they are being forced to police the country, when they were sent in to perform a completely different task altogether. A solder is trained to attack and disable, usually by killing its enemy. This is what is in the soldier’s head when he goes to war and this is the mentality he will hold while he serves his tour of duty. You cannot then successfully ask an army to become a police force. A soldier will want to protect his or her life and that of their comrades; while their presence may have a policing effect, any signs of trouble or potential conflict and soldiers will revert to their training. They are not police officers, they are soldiers trained to go to war and kill. This is why we keep seeing incidents of so called mistreatment and it will keep happening while ever Iraq is occupied.
None of this was ever supposed to happen, but I don’t think anyone had any idea what was supposed to happen. The longer the coalition stay there, the more they are damaging their whole campaign, and the more people will see this was a bad idea in the first place. The catch 22 is that they can’t just leave now, that would be even worse, the country would be left in turmoil; a likelihood of civil war and certainly no pro US government. There is real question whether the US and Britain can achieve their objectives and withdraw successfully; perhaps they need to compromise on some of those objectives because they need to hurry up and work out how to get out!

Further to the smugglers

I would just like to make a further note on yesterday's post. I will qualify it though by saying I do understand the sentiments of the parents involved. However let us imagine that the Bali Nine had succeeded with their plan, and now think about the consequences of an additional 8.4kg of heroin hitting the streets. This would infact end up being a lot more than 8.4kg once it had been cut so many times down the chain of supply. How many more people would become addicted to heroin because of this, and how many existing heroin users would die from injecting this heroin? Would their blood be on Scott Rush's hands? Yes. Had the Bali Nine not been caught, would they have attempted to smuggle more heroin back to Australia in the future? Possibly, Renae Lawrence had already made the trip once before! So the interception of this shipment of drugs, and the imprisonment / execution of those involved, has probably saved a small number of lives.

Whether or not the lives of heroin addicts are worth saving is another question. Perhaps heroin exists in order to weed out the undesirables from society. One less heroin junkie on the street is one more car stereo that remains unstolen.

Drugs are bad mmkay!

No one else to blame

Today saw the sentencing of Scott Rush and Renae Lawrence, members of the so called ‘Bali Nine’ to life in prison for their part in attempting to smuggle 8.4kg of heroin from Bali in April 2005. The other 7 will be sentenced this week with 5 more expecting to receive life sentenced and the 2 ringleaders expected to be sentenced to death.

What has prompted me to comment on this fact is the following quote of Rush’s parents from the Sydney Morning Herald

Rush's mother, Christine, said their "family tragedy" proved Australian citizens could not rely on their government. His father, Lee, had tipped off federal police that Scott was being recruited to smuggle drugs, in the hope they would stop him visiting Bali.

"Australia has always held as a value and a philosophy opposition to the death penalty," Mrs Rush said. "However, our laws are such that our children are exposed to the death penalty … this must not happen to any Australian again."

While we are sympathetic to the parents of those involved, and perhaps to a certain extent some of those involved as well, why is any of this the fault of the Australian Government? The Government does not exist entirely to stop its citizens from doing silly things. Simply because Lee Rush had spoken to a member of the AFP concerning his son, does not then place the onus on the AFP to prevent Scott Rush from attempting to smuggle heroin.

It is certainly a normal human trait to try and place blame on somebody else. I would perhaps suggest in this case, that Mr Rush is more desperate to lay the blame on the AFP because he knows he could have done more to prevent it. Surely a person’s father is in a better position to influence his son than almost anybody else.

It is widely known that the penalties for trafficking drugs in Asia are very harsh. Just because one is a citizen on another country, does not exempt them from the laws of the country they are visiting. These people were knowingly smuggling heroin, which, regardless of what country you are in, is illegal. They took a risk, a rather big one. Sometimes the risks we take in life pay off, sometimes they don’t. When they don’t we must accept the consequences involved. Sometimes the penalties are much harsher than might seem fair, but that still is a consequence of the risk taken, and life is not fair.

Cartoon Farce

It has been quite some time since I last made a post, I will make no reasons or excuses for not having done so. I may or may not continue to post regularly from now on, however the urge to have a rant about something has grown in me again and I am therefore posting.

Front page news at the moment is all to do with the current reaction to a series of cartoons that were published in a Danish newspaper last September. Why the protests are suddenly all coming to the fore many months later and not immediately after the event is another question; however I would suggest that it is more of a case of a number of pathetic fools who wish to jump on the 'mob mentality' bandwagon, and use it as an excuse for violence and unrest. In the same way that we saw hordes of people gathering to riot in Cronulla recently, many of these people were not that interested in the purpose of their actions, but merely looking for an excuse for a fight.

Now let me pre-empt my comments by saying that I am in no way going to tar the entire Islamic world with the same brush, the vast majority of Muslims and indeed the vast majority of people throughout the world, are honest and decent citizens. However as is often the case, it is the actions of the minority that casue problems.

Indeed it was the actions of a minority in the first place that started this whole episode. Only a small number of people were responsible for printing the cartoons, in turn a small number of people have targeted the entire western world as culprits for this, and in turn many of those in the western world will treat the Islamic world based on the reaction of the few.

What essentially this issue has now turned into though, is quite frankly the most laughable case of hypocracy I have seen in a while. There is no reason why Muslims should not find these cartoons offensive; however mild they may be, they are still insulting on a certain level to a particular faith. Let us consider though the degree to which the reaction to these cartoons has reached. Because these cartoons have been printed, those of us in the west must be killed, preferably by beheading. We are to expect more attacks such as the ones on September 11 and July 7. Let us all be clear that the punishment for these cartoons is death, and there are many people out there who are threatening to kill us. Now I'm pretty sure that it is actually illegal to make such threats in this country, where indeed much protesting has been seen. In fact, one chap decided he would dress up as a suicide bomber and suggest that people be killed as a result of this most heinous and unforgivable insult of Islam. Of course this fellow was quick to realise that his actions were indeed far worse that those responsible for the cartoons, and given the ill feeling that exists regarding the recent bombings in London, he hastily made a public apology. Unfortunately for him, he happened to have been released on parole from a five and half year gaol sentence; evidently he had broken the terms of his parole and was quickly thrown back behind bars. Silly boy.

Clearly all this hated and rage is being fuelled by extremist groups who will look for any excuse to promote their cause and try to gather troops to fight it. These are the same people who promote a constant stream of hate towards Israel and the west. There are countless anti western and anti Zionist rhetoric and literature that are spewed from these people. Promising death and destruction to all who do not follow their cause. Committing acts which many would agree are far more despicable than drawing cartoons.

So the fact that those who protest as a result of these cartoons are not innocent themselves; the fact that their protests and threats of death have made them far more offensive than those they are protesting; smacks utterly and totally of bald faced, blind eyed hypocricy. Surely there are so many people who can see how laughably ridiculous this whole thing is.

Riots that have broken out in Damascus, Beruit, Tehran and other cities in the Islamic world, have seen violence, destruction and death. Yet it is not those of us in the west who have been killed, inspite of the threats, it is the protesters themselves who seem to be killing each other; which makes this ridiculousness beyond farce.

Perhaps those who wish to attack certain factions of the Islamic world should take note; do not send your own warriors in to fight, they too may suffer casualties. Let's instead print a few cartoons that insult your enemies and let them all kill each other in the resulting outrage! Surely this is far more economical.