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October 2002 | |
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Interview: The Wet One Bad Boss: Like A Bastard Unions: Demolition Derby Corporate: The Bush Doctrine Politics: American Jihad Health: Secret Country Review: Walking On Water Culture: TCF Poetry: The UQ Stonewall
The Soapbox Postcard Month In Review The Locker Room Bosswatch Wobbly
The Legacy of 11/9
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Wrong Way, Go Back
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Month In Review Bush Whackers
******* Ever get sick of George Bush hogging the headlines? Same, but then he is threatening to ignite a Middle East firestorm, so he continues to earn his mention. This month, Dubya, put a deft new touch on that old journalistic motto - never let facts muck up a good story. The Bush doctrine appears to be - just change the facts. It wasn't many weeks ago that he was promoting his desire to bomb Baghdad on something that sounded suspiciously like the integrity of the United Nations. The world, Bush argued, couldn't afford to stand back and let Saddam Hussein snub his nose at international opinion, as expressed through UN resolution. It sounded sus, to put it mildly, right from the off, given Dubya's record as an international citizen could be described, with more than an ounce of generosity, as ordinary. This, after-all, is the man who has told the rest of the international community to jam their Kyoto Protocols, World Criminal Courts, Sanctions on Torture, and pretty-much anything else that didn't serve the immediate interests of Amercian big business. Unfortunately for Bush, he appears to have met in Hussein a man of equal, if not greater, moral flexibility. Since Bush became a born-again UN advocate, Hussein has decided weapons inspectors on his territory are not that bad after all. His regime has gone further, negotiating terms for their return. The American president has spat the dummy, deciding the UN can now go take a running jump if it thinks support for the stance he was pushing only a few weeks ago will keep his bombs in their bunkers. The new Bush line is that UN credibility is on the line. Either it will line up behind a resolution making military action inevitable or it will lose US support. In fact he has gone to Congress demanding unfettered rights to decide when Iraq will be attacked, irrespective of UN support. Donald Rumsfield, a key Middle East operative in the Reagan Adminstration that fitted Hussein out with weapons of mass destruction in the first place, talks even tougher. Russia and France are not happy to see the UN bush-whacked again. John Howard maintains his - US right or wrong - approach to military action but concedes American farmers are likely to scuttle the Washington-Canberra trade deal he expected in return. .................................. Unlike George Bush, you have to admit that Building Industry Commissioner, Terence Cole, is at least consistent. Having been unwaveringly anti-union since the off, he clearly sees no reason to change his approach after 10 months. Cole refers Victorian CFMEU secretary, Martin Kingham, to the DPP after Kingham refused to turn over a list of delegates that had been through a union training programme, citing victimisation and employer black bans. Kingham could be fined or imprisoned, prompting broadcaster and one-time Liberal Party activist Alan Jones to describe Cole's action as "un-Australian". In another development, Cole rejects an application from the NSW branch of the CFMEU that he should step aside on the grounds of apprehended bias, following his recommendation for a Building Industry Task Force. In effect, after due consideration, Cole declared himself unbiased, apparently because he had invented the word "evidences", allowing him to make "evidences" rather than "findings", prior to hearing union evidence. ..................................... It's official - pizza is bad for you, in ways you had probably never imagined. Phillipine military files reveal that terrorist Abu Sabaya was brought undone by infra red tracking of the heat generated from incoming pizza deliveries. Mind you, he lasted another two weeks, injured, before his eventual demise which was approximately 14 days longer than two of his three hostages, shot dead in a botched military raid. No doubt, if Bush and Howard have their wicked way, every pizza man will have a war story to tell.
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