FORMER STASI COLLABORATORS BACK SCHRODER

Seven members of Germany's Left party are accused of collaborating with the old East Germany's secret police:

The head of Germany's state-held Stasi archive, Marianne Birthler, said she had documents to prove the MPs had worked as "inoffizielle mitarbeiter" (unofficial collaborators). The public had a right to know which MPs had collaborated, she said, adding: "It's a question of trust."

With neither Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats nor Angela Merkel's conservatives able to form a government on their own, the Left party's MPs could play a crucial role in a secret ballot for chancellor. Some have already hinted they might back Mr Schröder.

This isn't really surprising, now is it?

HEY, LOOK AT ALL THESE COOL WEAPONS

Hanging around with a bunch of hate crazed fanatics can be dangerous:

A massive explosion ripped through a crowd at a rally staged by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip today, killing at least 10 Palestinians and wounding scores of others, medical officials said.

Hamas blamed Israel, which categorically denied any involvement in the blast. Witness accounts and some Palestinian Authority officials suggested that ordnance and weaponry being paraded by the group had accidentally exploded.

Not wanting to look like complete idiots Hamas has blamed the explosion on an Israeli air-strike. But that looks unlikely:

A jeep exploded during the parade that was attended by thousands of people at the Jabaliya refugee camp, in the first deadly incident in the territory since Israel completed its withdrawal.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group and the Palestinian interior ministry said Hamas is to blame.

The jeep was ferrying gunmen from the Islamic fundamentalist movement's armed wing to the open space set aside for festivities celebrating Israel's withdrawal from Gaza when the vehicle exploded, sending mangled body parts of militants and bystanders flying.

Palestinian witnesses said a crowd, including many children, swarmed around the truck moments before it blew up.

Fanatics, kids and weapons, now there's a disaster just waiting to happen.

Update: The explosion was a Middle East machismo thing:

A truck filled with masked militants and homemade weapons exploded at a Hamas rally Friday, killing at least 15 Palestinians and wounding 80 — including children — bringing a grisly and terrifying end to one of the last gatherings by armed groups celebrating Israel's Gaza pullout.

Mishandled explosives apparently caused the blast, which came a day before an agreement by militants not to publicly parade weapons is to take effect.

Witnesses said many children were among the casualties.

Since Israel left Gaza last week, ending a 38-year military occupation, militant groups have held rallies throughout the Mediterranean coastal strip. Masked militants paraded with rockets, grenades and rifles in celebrations lauding their campaign of suicide attacks and other violence as having forced Israel's withdrawal from land Palestinians claim for a future state.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, struggling to combat the chaos and the public display of arms in Gaza, wrested a pledge from militant groups to stop holding military-style parades with weapons after Saturday.

"There is absolutely no excuse to parade weapons in the streets," Palestinian National Security Adviser Jibril Rajoub said Friday. "The (militant groups) are merely trying to express their power and their capabilities. I would hope Palestinian society will soon be rid of all of these images."

I'm guessing these masked "militants" had really small penises.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

At Antony Loewenstein's blog:

Sydneysiders, looking for something to do on the evening of Thursday, September 29?

Come down to The Salon:

Sydney's Monthly Arts & Debate night gets up close and personal with the USA and the American way of life.

The Debate - featuring:

NEVILLE MEANEY (Assoc. Professor - 20th Century American History, University of Sydney)
JAMES MORROW (Editor, Investigate & New Yorker)
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN (Freelance Journalist and Author)

At the linked c-side page:

The Debate - featuring:

NEVILLE MEANEY (Assoc. Professor - 20th Century American History, University of Sydney)JAMES MORROW (Editor, Investigate & New Yorker)
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN (Freelance Journalist, Editor & SMH Blogger)

Recently noted by Tim Blair:

A Sydney Morning Herald staffer called the other day, annoyed that I’d described Antony Loewenstein as an ex-SMH employee. “He was only a cadet at f2, the online network,” the whistleblower said. “I think he wrote a few book reviews for us, but he was never on staff at the SMH. Even f2 eventually had to let him go.”

As for editor, what's he edited?

THE RITA DIFFERENCE

Lefty academic Tim Dunlop reckons the pre-storm preparations for Rita are much improved because of the immediate and relentless post-Katrina attacks on the Bush administration. As far as I can tell, the response so far has been limited to those of Texas's state and local governments. To a Texan the difference is obvious: Texas isn't Louisiana.

I tried to post this as a comment at Dunlop's blog but it was repeatedly rejected as having questionable content. Since he doesn't display his email address – shy, I guess – it ended up here.

BRITISH BOMBER BRAINWASHED

London suicide bomber Jermaine Lindsay and his Muslim-convert wife Samantha Lewthwaite have an interesting history:

The couple, who married in October 2002 after meeting on the internet, first came face-to-face at a Stop the War march in Hyde Park. He told her then he wanted to qualify as a human rights lawyer and had been a member of Amnesty International at school. He said he wanted to make a difference to the world by peaceful means.

Lindsay's attitude soon changed after the family moved to London:

“I firmly believe if we had stayed up North he would be the same [Lindsay],” she said in an interview with The Sun newspaper, “but he got involved in mosques in London and Luton and became a changed person. In October through to November 2004 he met a group who changed his life. He became a man I didn’t recognise. I have no doubt his mind was twisted in there.”

Like my dear departed dad always used to tell me, "you are who you hang around with".

Via: Watch

DRINK SPIKE VICTIMS SIMPLY DRUNK

Nick at The Thin Man Returns links to a drink spiking study in Perth:

Emergency doctors at Perth's Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (SCGH) have completed Australia's first medical study on drink spiking.

They found patients' symptoms were often caused by excessive alcohol and illicit drug use rather than sedatives.

"In the community there is a view that drink spiking occurs and that it is the scenario of an offender slipping a sedative into another person's drink, presumably to stupefy them in order to take advantage of them – this is what we used as the basic premise of our study," study leader Dr Mark Little said.

"Our research findings don't support that."

Not one of those reporting to hospital suspecting their drink had been spiked had actually been drugged, not by someone else anyway; they were simply very drunk. Just in case the absence of drink spiking is due to a lack of know-how the Otago University Critic has produced a drink spiking how-to manual:

An explicit date rape article in a Dunedin student magazine has outraged Police and Rape Crisis who say it is a "how-to" guide and revictimises rape victims.

Critic, run by the Otago University Student Association, ran the story outlining types and amounts of drugs to use, what drinks drugs are best concealed in and who is best to target.

The magazine says the item is intended to provoke awareness of the problem and Critic editor Holly Walker is standing by her decision to publish the article in the magazine's annual offensive edition.

"While it's couched in particularly offensive terms, the information that is in there is going to be useful for people preventing this kind of thing happening to them," says Walker.

She says drug information included is widely available on the internet and anyone who would commit date rape wouldn't need a student magazine to tell them how to do it.

Too much information is never enough.

The original Critic article is here but the page enlargements refuse to load. This could be because I'm using a Mac at the moment; the enlargements loaded fine earlier on a PC.

ROBERT MUGABE, ROLE MODEL

Back in August many people thought South Africa's deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was joking when she made what sounded like a threat:

"Land reform in South Africa has been too slow and too structured. There needs to be a bit of "oomph". That's why we may need the skills of Zimbabwe to help us. On agrarian and land reform, South Africa should learn some lessons from Zimbabwe, how to do it fast."

As it turns out, she wasn't joking:

South Africa's Government has announced the first acquisition by force of a white-owned farm.

Another African famine coming up. Oomph.

SICK MAN OF EUROPE

Despite Bush's tax cuts and the billions being poured into Iraq the United States budget deficit for 2005 – not including any spending on Katrina and Rita – is forecast as 2.9% of GDP. Europe's biggest economy has problems of its own:

The experts predict Germany's deficit to reach 3.9 percent this year, and it is estimated at 3.2 percent in 2010.

The main factor behind the gloomy picture is the country's sluggish economic growth, although it may be improved as a result of the Agenda 2010 economic reforms initiated by the previous red-green government.

What the hell is the German government spending its money on?

THE HAZARDS OF LOOTING

A group of New Orleans looters made a basic mistake:

"Some looters came up and pulled a gun on the wrong group of men," said Mr. Harris, adding that he did not fire a gun. He declined to say who else was involved in the battle.

"Two men were shot right there," Mr. Harris said, pointing down the street as he watered his rosebushes. "One was shot in the back, the other in the leg, and the third I was told made it a block and a half before he died in the street. I did not go down to see the body."

Cost effective and no messy Miranda rights violations.

EXTORTION ATTEMPTED

Apparently, whites are to blame for Aboriginal parenting problems:

An Aboriginal pastor in Western Australia says the legacy of the Stolen Generations needs to be addressed before at-risk children are removed from their families.

The Pastor of the Ninga Mia Fellowship, Geoffrey Stokes, says the effects of the Stolen Generation are still being felt and removing children will only make the situation worse.

However, the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health believes the welfare of children should be the main priority, even if it means placing them with a non-Indigenous family.

Mr Stokes says if the Stolen Generations issues were resolved, the positive effects would filter through into everyday family life and children will no longer be placed at risk.

"It's a sore, and the sore won't be healed until you deal with it and until we deal with the issue concerning the Stolen Generations and squashing that out, then we can take care of the rest of the community and the family and the children," he said.

In other words, give us more money.

FUN WITH NUMBERS

"A few cigarettes a day 'deadly' " blares the headline on the BBC homepage. But reality doesn't quite match the findings of the recent study that's the subject of the report:

Compared with those who had never smoked, the men and women who smoked between one and four cigarettes a day were almost three times as likely to die of coronary artery disease.

Among women, smoking one to four cigarettes daily increased the chance of dying from lung cancer almost five times.

Men who smoked this amount were almost three times as likely to be killed by lung cancer.

However, due to the relatively small number of men that this applied to in the study sample, this finding could have been due to chance.

The researchers believe their conclusions are accurate, even though they had to estimate the projected impact of smoking one to four cigarettes for five years in those light smokers who had smoked for less time.

Dr Ken Denson of the Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation questioned the validity of the figures.

He said other large studies had not found that smoking fewer than 10 cigarettes daily increased the risk of heart disease.

Even though the study's findings are questionable that doesn't deter the true believers:

Amanda Sandford from Action on Smoking and Health said the conclusions were clear.

"This study should dispel the myth once and for all that smoking just a few cigarettes a day won't do you any harm.

"Quite simply, there is no safe level of smoking."

Yep, just like there's no safe level of living.

LEFTARD HAS A BET BOTH WAYS

A continuing theme of Antony "Leftard" Loewenstein's recent posts is the sad state of Australia's news media with particular emphasis on the obvious "pro-US, pro-privatisation and pro free-markets" bias of the Packer, Fairfax and Murdoch dominated press. (See the most recent example here with plenty more if you'd care to have a look around his archives.) Obviously Loewenstein sees himself as a purveyor of truth, counterbalancing the MSM's tilt. On the contrary, he's simply a lefty in the Margo Kingston mold, pushing an anti-Howard line.

In Loewenstein's offering in today's New Matilda, Fear Works, he gets stuck straight into Howard:

On the fourth anniversary of September 11, Prime Minister John Howard claimed (yet again) that the al-Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington 'were an attack on our way of life.' He's mouthed the same platitudes since that fateful day always hoping that a majority of Australians shared his perspective.

And sure enough, a recent World Vision report found that 31 per cent of Australians were worried about an increase in terrorism, while the worldwide average was 22 per cent. Howard and his media cheerleaders should be pleased with their efforts. They have created an environment that cleverly plays on people's fears about threats to our 'way of life' and our 'values'.

For liberal democracies, questioning and confronting this orthodoxy presents one of the greatest challenges since Cold War propaganda convinced millions that the (crumbling and inefficient) Soviets were actually determined to destroy our benign, capitalist, Western world.

Loewenstein's rewrite of Cold War history notwithstanding – Soviet desires to overwhelm the West and their inability to do so being distinctly different things – his attack on Howard as a purveyor of fear doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because he has also alleged that involvement in Iraq has increased the likelihood of Australia suffering terrorist attack:

The Iraq war has created a terrorist threat far greater than existed before the invasion.

So, on the one hand, Loewenstein accuses the government of attempting to gain fear-inspired political advantage by overstating the terrorist threat. On the other hand Loewenstein claims the terrorist threat has actually increased and he actively spreads that message. It just doesn't make sense and doesn't have to because he's preaching to the converted.

Loewenstein's obvious manipulation of the truth doesn't bode well for the accuracy of his upcoming book. But if his current form is any indicator, it could be one funny read.

Update: Loewenstein describes his New Matilda column:

My latest New Matilda column is about Western "values", the media's war on terrorism and shameless propaganda...

Yep, he's a shameless propagandist alright.

Update II: In comments at Loewenstein's blog, commenter Anthony links to my post, describing it as a "review" of the New Matilda column. Loewenstein responds:

RWDB review? Er, that's one word for it. The man is going place, that's for sure...

Hardly the devastating rebuttal you'd expected from a journalist and author.

THE ITALIAN SOLUTION FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IMMEDIATE DEPORTATION

Euro-weenies are all upset about Italy's handling of illegals:

Following a visit to an Italian refugee camp on the island of Lampedusa, a group of socialist MEPs are accusing Italy of breaking human rights laws and the UN's refugee Convention.

The 12 MEPs say they were appalled by the state of the detention camp on Lampedusa, situated off the Sicilian coast, claiming it is run-down and lacking in fresh water and basic hygiene facilities.

They also say refugees' access to legal assistance and medical care is not safeguarded.

The Italian authorities have repeatedly received complaints about the overcrowded camp, however when the MEPs arrived they saw that their own delegation actually outnumbered the immigrants, with just 11 people residing in the compound.

Inhabitants of the island told MEPs that the immigrants had been flown out from the island three days earlier.

Martine Roure, a French socialist MEP, believes that the immigrants were deported to Libya without their legal status having been tested.

The map with the article has this elaboration attached:

Immigrants sail across the Mediterranean from Africa to Italy - only to be flown back immediately, say MEPs.

Sounds like a realistic and effective policy.

WRITE YOUR OWN PUNCHLINE

As usual, John Kerry is all negative:

In a blistering critique, Kerry said former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was to Hurricane Katrina "what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to 'slam dunk intelligence'; ... what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' ...

Oh course, Kerry isn't immune to such an approach: what John Kerry is to winning a Presidential election; ... what John Kerry is to a sensible choice of life partner ... There must be loads of 'em.

BIGGER THAN AL SHARPTON

Shadi Rahimi in The New York Times:

Before her son was killed in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan was just another wife and mother, unknown to most of America. But since camping outside of President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., in August, she has become a starlet of the anti-war movement. On Sunday night she drew crowds in the hundreds for a speech in Brooklyn, and today she stole attention away from the Rev. Al Sharpton at a news conference this morning in Manhattan.

Sounds like a 6th magnitude starlet to me.

FRENCH QUARTER GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS AS USUAL

One business in New Orleans is ready to re-open:

On Bourbon Street in New Orleans' French Quarter, Big Daddy's strip club plans to feature its "bottomless, topless, tabletop dancing" as soon as the lights come back on, hopefully by Wednesday.

General manager Saint Jones said military and police patrons will line up down the block when the club opens its doors again. "We won't have to pat them down for guns, because we already know they've got them," he said.

Big Daddy's will be the safest place in town.

NORTH KOREA ARMS BREAKTHROUGH?

Just exactly what is North Korea promising?

The North "promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programmes and to get back to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections" by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the statement said, quoted by the Associated Press.

Of course, the North might drop all of its nuclear weapons on the South and then embrace the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

AFGHAN ELECTIONS GO SMOOTHLY

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal sums up the elections:

"We have not had a single civilian casualty. It went very well, beyond our expectations. After all their boasting, it's a big failure for the Taliban."