Just love it Gus.

Give a man a spanner!

If we don't approve of the software on view at Downloadable jihad by Sudha Ramachandran, then feast our eyes on the hardware that has Fox-approved seal of approval. Full details in a Murdox special lift-out supplement, soon.

Afghanistan fighting the past by Jim Lobe.
WASHINGTON - As an unexpected resurgence of fighting by Taliban and allied forces against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai raises new concerns over Afghanistan's stability, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has repeated its call for the prosecution of past atrocities by key warlords, a number of whom continue to hold senior posts under Karzai. ...

[Miles, be a good chap and remind me to reward our SAS with a package of Boeing shares each - if they can provide me with some suitable electioneering footage. In the meantime, we'll have goats and camels to blow up, tents and villages to incinerate, orphans to turn into jihadis. A paleolithic's work is never done, in the name of social Darwinism.]

Fourth of July, 2028 “The war on terror is terminated

When I walk through the Box Hill Cemetery, two things impress. One, the short lives before the invention of penicillin. Two, the way each denomination claims their own patch of turf. I thought that was for pure convenience, and an aid to vistors. But, on reading more of 'Underground', there's another possibility. One of the persons interviewed for the book, a member of Aum, put it this way. If you believe in emperor worship, then after death your soul will repose at Yasukuni shrine. If you had followed some of the eastern religions, your soul undergoes transmigration.

But there's another aspect of Buddhist belief that is quite scary. At least, the interviewee said it was a strand of buddhism, but I haven't checked it out. Apparently, there is a fast-track route to salvation, that includes taking the life of someone else. It seemed like the rationale for this murder is that the dead person must have been at a point where death was a better outcome than continuing to live.

This bit of pure evil aligns with the Genesis myth, about Cain murdering Abel. In this instance, it may refer to something infinitely more powerful and destructive than killing another out of anger, or jealousy, or to get rid of a nuisance.

These jihadis are coming out of the same hole that generated kami-kazi, the Aum attacks, and, certainly, ritual killings in primitive societies. This new breed is assisted in their aims by social networks, education and technical skill.

My worst fear is not they (jihadis) will interpret every word out of Howard's mouth as another reason to strap on the harness. It is that Howard knows that. But I cannot believe that his words and actions are opaque to all his minions. Their silence and inaction will condemn them. Mene, mene, tekel, uparshin.

"Rockstar"

When I drew Bush, Blair and a suckling Howard in “Me Fix World

As Jacob Leonisky, my brother, says: “You cannot stop terrorism until you stop the intellectualisation of war.�?

It is in human nature to fight against something. It’s in the genes... It is in the natural world. but in nature, the fight does not go beyond a couple of individuals or very small groups of individuals of species, except for some viruses and microbes that are indiscriminate. No intellectualisation in this mob. For these low-life organisms, other species are their living grounds necessarily. Many are benign, actually most are. But some kill their host or make them sick, with no structured thought in the blither... One would think it was an unfortunate accident of success as killing the host is not the intent. But us, we build natural resistance, natural defence... Evolution and extinction... subterranean dynamics that do not involve intent.

The intellectualisation of war has buried humanity way below this cesspool of nature.

We kill with intent.
We kill with an extraordinary determination. When we are so able to send people to the moon and so able to understand our world, we still dream of better bigger ways of killing. We make war plans. Deep in the bunkers of the world’s largest war machine, the Pentagon, we plan for the future wars in 20.. 30 years or more... Some people even plan of suiciding themselves, killing others in the process...

We make movies, write novels and intellectualise battles in manners that are beating the drums of war... In these, with our imagination, we invent the heroes, the glory, the victories. In science fiction we deflect the dart rays of aliens 10,000 times more intelligent than us, with just a couple of paltry sling shots...
We delude ourselves.

Sure we call this determination “defence�? but the word is hollow as other words like “preemptive strike�? and war games and others comes to the fore. The size of our arsenal of war is such that it cannot hide the purpose of attack. Defence is a wall. Attack is a war machine. We build war machines.... and very little walls apart from bean counting our individuality at airport and other check points.
We delude ourselves.

I was listening to an interview on Radio National with Kate Grenville talking about her new book, The Secret River, yesterday. The subject explored the relationship between the original inhabitant of this land and the early settlers. How there was a gulf not so much of language and communication but of comprehension and the settlers did not understand the situation...

I thought to myself that Ms Grenville could do better than that... Come on I was thinking... Come on tell the true dynamics... There she was talking about how "reports of the day" harped on this misunderstandings and so forth...

I was awaiting more and more impatiently for her to say what she eventually said:

“or pretended not to understand...�?

Yes Ms Grenville, in the way we live from simple folks to the king of kings we pretend...
We delude ourselves. We fake the excuses for our deliberate actions that create pain to others.

We steal with great abandon and hypocritical purpose. We do not want to share. If sharing has to to be had it has to be regulated. it has to be “profitable�?... In the end this is the seed of greed, the roots of the intellectualisation of war.

We are bathing in a history of intellectualisation of war. We invent the purpose of it from which ever side we come from. And if one side seem to gain an advantage, the other side will reinvent itself as there are never “good versus evil�? but “will against will�? in a battle that can only bring grief to ordinary folks. Sometimes there is victory but it has many side effects. Presently the phoney war on terror is a battle of ownership and of profitable resources, including faith.
We delude ourselves.

When our PM was talking about private ownership within Aboriginal communities, I could sense his dubious mastery at work... Aboriginal culture relies heavily on the notion of sharing. Remove this concept and although you may or not arguably improve the conditions of Aboriginal individuals you are also most likely going to destroy the said cultural backbone, eventually sending it to folkloric pages of history...
A very sneaky victory... A whitewash of the true past.

As we ponder what would enter the mind of young kids ready to blow themselves up... remember: “You cannot stop terrorism until you stop the intellectualisation of war.�?

Terrorism is the word used by the recipient to denigrate the real cause and intent.

I hate war. I hate terrorism. I despise war machines.

How do peoples react when bullied? The Chinese (oh dear! PM Howrat, squarely beneath the nooklar umbrella, says "tut tut", but gently, so not to offend uranium sales), Koreans and Iranians?

Extract from Michael Ignatieff's Iranian Lessons in New York Times -
It became apparent that what I should have been teaching during my visit was the history of the Protestant Reformation. It's not just that Islam badly needs a Reformation. It's also that Iranians need to know how the Reformation and the bloody religious wars that followed it taught the West to put God in his place. Democracy arises, I told the students, not just to enthrone the people but also to separate religion and politics, establishing rules of tolerance that allow all religions to enjoy freedom and creating a political system in which religious and secular arguments compete on equal ground. Many young Iranians I talked to were so hostile to clerical rule that I found myself cautioning them against going too far in the other direction. Many seemed in favor of a secular republicanism in which religion was excluded from politics altogether, as it was in Turkey during the rule of that country's modernizing dictator, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. As Isaiah Berlin warned, however, if you bend the twig too far, it will snap back in your face. In Turkey, the reaction against the extremes of Ataturk's secularism has brought an Islamic government, though admittedly a moderate one, to power. Secularism, I argued, doesn't mean crushing religion, it just means creating a neutral space in which arguments between religious and secular people are settled by evidence, not dogma. ''Like in the United States?'' a bright female student asked me with a coy smile. In the United States, I said, God is never out of the public sphere. The furor over the end of Terri Schiavo's life and the Bush administration's restrictions on federal financing for stem cell research, among other things, make that obvious. From their vantage point inside a theocracy, young Iranians long for ''a wall of separation'' between religion and government, as Thomas Jefferson called it, and they told me they found it puzzling, even disappointing, that religion and politics are not actually separate in the United States. I tried to explain that keeping God in his place in a democracy is work that never ends.
...
American neoconservatives also tend to argue that democracy will make Iran peaceful and pro-American. This might be wishful thinking. Fear of encirclement by the United States means that the regime's drive for weapons has widespread popular support. If a genuine Iranian democracy were as nationalistic as most new democracies usually are, a democratic Iran might well remain a bellicose opponent of the United States and Israel.

--

SPEAKING FREELY : The dehumanizing factor
In contrast, I give one example, that of the incident I made reference to earlier in this article. The Saturday before last saw the bombardment of Chechal village in eastern Afghanistan by US forces. At least 17 people were killed in the air strike, including women and children. According to initial reports, the US Air Force indiscriminately bombed the village in retaliation for the US loss of a Special Forces unit. While some villagers went to help recover bodies and aid the wounded, the air force launched a second raid, killing in the process many of those who had gone to help. Later, ground troops were sent to find out who the victims were and determine if any of them had actually been "terrorists". A few days later, the US issued a short statement acknowledging that civilians had in fact been killed. No wall-to-wall coverage for the fathers, mothers, sons and daughters killed then. No strong, united protests of condemnation or impartial inquiries either. But it did make a few lines in the daily news. Dehumanize, eh?

--

BOOK REVIEW : God's madmen
Iranian intellectual Farhad Khosrokhavar's new book argues that Muslim human bombs, far removed from traditional atavism, are in fact products of modernity and Westernization. They are extreme forms of subjectivity that embrace violence and death through a complex mental construction of the modern world, not merely naive creatures manipulated by a few masterminds.

--

"Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance." So, what is a dead American worth?

Juan Cole links this article in The Age, and it looks like he got it before anyone else. I can't find it from The Age home, but it did get a run on ABC radio news at 6pm. [It seems to be filed under the 'In depth' section, whereever that is.]

The Royal Institute of International Affairs in London has concluded that the Iraq War aided al-Qaeda in its recruitment efforts and made London a target for terrorism. It also diverted key resources away from the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

As everyone can see, the report is wrong, wrong, WRONG, as Greg will have to point out in tomorrow's Murdox. It's wrong on fact. Bush's pillion passenger is John Howard, not Tony Blair. And Tim Howard is tucked away in the papoose carrier.

From the Entertainment supplement, A Church That Packs Them In, 16,000 at a Time.
... After $95 million in renovations, including two waterfalls and enough carpeting to cover nine football fields, the arena now belongs to a charismatic church with a congregation of 30,000, revenues of $55 million last year and a television audience in the millions. ...
... God, Mr. Osteen preaches, does not want to see people suffering and poor; he wants them to be healthy, wealthy and wise. ...

And yet another 'wrong' report .....

Seeds Of Terror In Iraq

A fixture on the calendar for the boys at Chez Shed is Myth Busters on SBS.
Last night -
And take one cement truck, add 850 pounds of dynamite, and what's left? Absolutely nothing, apparently. Adam and Jamie join forces with the FBI to find out if you can remove cement build-up from a mixer's barrel using dynamite.

A spectacular series of explosions, and more replays and angles than Nathan Brown's broken leg.

The parent Myth Busters site in the US has banner at one of the pages, to Are you prepared?
This link takes the citizen through a short quiz, on how to get ready for, and respond to, a terrorist incident. The item with the longest explanation says something about priorities in American cities.

Correct! With the exception of service animals (such as guide dogs), pets are not typically permitted in emergency shelters for health reasons. If you have pets, you need to make special arrangements for them. Find out before a disaster which local hotels and motels allow pets and where pet boarding facilities are located. Be sure to include some outside your local area in case local facilities have closed. Most boarding facilities require veterinarian records to prove vaccinations are current. Be sure your pet has proper identification tags securely fastened to the collar. You should keep a current photo of your pet in your family supplies kit. Make sure you have a secure pet carrier or leash for your pet; it may need to be restrained during tense situations. Assemble a disaster kit for your pet with all the things that it would need to survive with you for three days including food, water and medicines.
There is no mention of identification tags for kiddies, or fridge magnets.

The ID card debate is floating in the stratosphere, and the PM will notice some diffidence in the demeanour of the Prez, if they do discuss the subject. The fountain of liberty does not dispense the means to surrender the identity of private, armed citizens to a government.

For once, Beazley made the right call. Howard trotted out ID card as a distraction. It will last about 5sec on the Cabinet table. Oh yes, they can promote a services card, but they will not want to pay for it. The idea that we will have to carry a national ID card, only if we are in certain places, or performing certain transactions, has some merit. But wait till they authorise OzSS agents to shake down top executives jogging through the CBD. Following the logic, determined evil-doers will keep ahead of the pack. The bad guys will be the ones carrying information on tiny data chips, like thumb-drives, and they can be hidden in  ... certain orifices. I reckon Phil should present plans to bail up females at leisure for full body cavity searches. Or make it mandatory to carry the card at all times. Cabinet downloaded ID cards onto Doofus Hockey, whose career will not be enhanced by sponsoring a $10b 10 year project with no popular support. Do what Phil did, Joe - drop it.

I'm more concerned about being blown up by a home-grown lunatic, like the unrepentant homicidal bomber Eric Rudolph.

As his sister-in-law made clear, Rudolph is driven by the ideology of the "Christian Identity" hate group. Terry Nichols of the Oklahoma City bombing was likewise connected to Christian identity and their "Elohim City".
More about Elohim City
Also here. 

On April 19, 1995, Robert Millar visited Snell before he was executed, witnessed the execution and arranged for Snell's body to be buried in Elohim City; the Oklahoma City bombing occurred the same day.

Juan Cole on the contribution of colonialist mentality to crimes of hatred.

We have seen these sorts of events many times in colonial history. The French colonists rioted in Algiers in January 1960 as it became clear that DeGaulle was moving toward granting Algerian demands. There were a million colonizers in Algeria then, and they had managed to grab up the best land, the most lucrative industries. The Algerian owners of the country had run out of patience with this colonial theft, however, and the colonists would not prevail. Had the French tried to remain in Algeria, it would have meant a 30 years war. The Western Right, so attached to the colonial project of dominating others and establishing racial and economic hierarchies, has been frustrated for decades by decolonization. But as the Israelis have learned, the costs of colonialism in the contemporary world are very great indeed, since contemporary populations are mobilized, connected by media, and savvy about using modern science to strike back at their torturers. You can have a colony to feel superior over, and to exploit, only at the cost of living your life in fear and being brutalized and driven toward a kind of fascist society. The only forces that really want such a fate are . . . fascists.

From Jim Lobe's Attack! Attack! Attack!

It's always difficult to play defense and offense at the same time, but when the geopolitical ground is shifting beneath one's feet and damaging leaks are spurting out of the White House and Downing Street plumbing like July 4 fireworks, it's more difficult than usual.
At least, that's the sense one gets after watching the frantic maneuverings last week of far-right and neo-conservative personalities who found themselves trying, on the one hand, to persuade their compatriots to prepare to take on new enemies in what they call "World War IV", while, on the other, mounting rear-guard actions against faint-hearted allies who want out of Iraq and Democrats who are calling for the head of President George W Bush's "brain", political advisor Karl Rove.
While, by week's end, most of them, at least judging by their editorials, columns and Fox News television appearances, were focused on defending Rove from charges that he may have compromised national security by "outing" a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer as the immediate priority, they were all over the map - almost literally - for most of the past week or so, dispensing a never-ending stream of geostrategic advice for all and sundry.

Some of it was entirely familiar, especially with respect to Iran and Syria, favored neo-conservative targets, for the next phase of the "global war on terror".  ...

--

A roll-call of the defenders of the faith, and lots of lessons for the pillion passenger.

From the BBC

World 'needs new wildlife body'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

The world needs a new global organisation dedicated to stemming the loss of plant and animal species.

That is the argument put forward by a group of eminent academics in this week's edition of the journal Nature.

They call for the establishment of an Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity (IPB) to parallel the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Recent studies show continuing loss of biodiversity, with the hippo and polar bear just added to the danger list.

The 2006 Red List of Threatened Species showed more than 16,000 plants and animals sliding towards their demise, including a third of amphibian species and a quarter of mammals.

"The international community is failing on its biodiversity targets," said Alfred Oteng-Yeboah from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Ghanaian government's science advisory body.

Read more at the BBC
----------------

Having argued with some eminent scientific luminaries about the need to preserve ALL biodiversity — even in the most obscure domains, or even in small species variation — since the late seventies, I approve wholeheartedly with this urgent call.

I know... At the time, the budgets for the protection of species was shrinking at a rate of knots while the destruction of habitat — a result of aggressive human progress — was going gangbuster the other way... But my argument was that scientists could not pick and choose which species to protect... They had to fight to save ALL in the face of the human onslaught... Government had to be pressured to come to terms with this sorry state of affair... People like Bob Brown and organisations like the Total Environment Centre have managed to slow down the destruction but the work has to be a hundred fold... May our bio-travellers forgive us...