Staff Sgt Angie Johnson … can’t wait till she gets out of the Air Force and gets a recording contract

better than the original, for mine.

been thinking over this whole osama bin laden thing

… and i’ll be honest with you … it makes me uncomfortable.

yay, he’s dead. he killed a lot of people. a lot of innocent people. i understand how his death gives closure to a lot of hurt people. end of an era, etc etc. i have no argument with the fact that the world is a better place without him. i have no doubt he deserved to die for his crimes.

however.

a small, elite team of professional killers entered another sovereign nation’s space, without their knowledge or permission. that team enters a building, finds the man they’re looking for, who is, by their admission, unarmed. they kill him on the spot, no doubt none too prettily. they then take his body to another sovereign nation, where presumably they take materiel for dna testing. then they dump his body in the ocean.

no trial, no ‘loose ends’ if that’s what you want to call it. an execution, leaving no trace.

here’s what Noam Chomsky had to say about this week:

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders …

… There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly.

… Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

it makes me uncomfortable that liberal commentators like Rachel Maddow, for example, not only can’t seem to see that the jingoistic celebrations on the streets of young Americans chanting ‘USA USA USA’ and ‘Obama got Osama’ and holding posters of the Statue of Liberty holding aloft bin Laden’s severed head have their exact parallels in the celebrations on the streets of the Middle East on September 12, 2001. Not only can Maddow — just to choose the one liberal i’ve followed all week — not see that parallel (or at least chooses not to draw it) but she took part in the celebrations herself.

there has been no critical commentary on the execution of bin Laden from Maddow at all, and that disappoints me, because, sadly, it deserves some objective analysis from someone other than the Glen Becks of the world, god help us.

the USA is about ‘justice for all’, right? i don’t have an argument with bringing bin Laden to justice — and if that means execution at the end of the judicial process, then yippee.

but shot down by, presumably, multiple assailants, in his own bedroom in front of his wife, and for all we know, his kids?

strikes me that the USA just sank to Al Qaeda’s standards. and it’s double standards, no question.

no doubt this will bring the hate to this blog, but i’m going to say it out loud …. I EXPECTED MORE FROM THE COUNTRY THAT CLAIMS TO BE THE MOST POWERFUL AND THE MOST ENLIGHTENED IN THE WORLD.

bin Laden didn’t deserve to be treated like a human being — god knows he didn’t treat his enemies with anything other than evil contempt. but how much more enlightened would the USA look today if they had treated him with the respect he DIDN’T deserve?

come on, bring it on.

film review: ‘beneath hill 60′

best australian film i’ve seen in years. not that that’s saying much, really, let’s face it. possible exception being wolf creek. but i digress.

by all accounts jeremy sims is a bit of an arseclown as a person, but he’s a pretty bloody good director. he’s brought together a very good cast of aussies and has recreated one of the most little-known and true-blue aussie moments of WWI.

digging a deep tunnel under a hill full of germans in the middle of the hellhole that was Ypres in 1917 sounds like something only a pack of aussie miners would do. and they did, very successfully.

of course, like all things WWI, it was an ultimately futile exercise. despite creating the largest manmade explosion in history at that time — it could be felt in London and Dublin — and killing thousands of Germans, the enemy had regained Hill 60 not so many months later and it was all for nothing.

top yarn, though. and well told. brendan cowell is great as captain oliver woodward, the CO of the 1st Australian Tunnelers. also featured are gyton grantley, who seems to be everywhere lately, john stanton, and stephen le marquand.

maybe it’s just my fascination with all things WWI, but this film felt genuine to me. it came as close as any film i’ve seen to portraying the sheer bloody obscenity of the Western Front.

well done, jeremy sims. not such an arseclown after all.

IN A WORD: Gripping.

Wikileaks footage

more about "air attack on civilians and children", posted with vodpod

y’know, it’s not even the fact that civilians, photographers and kids were shot at and killed … mistakes happen, and i suppose long lens cameras can look like ak-47s and RPGs if that’s what you want to see.

no, that’s not what bothers me most.

what bothers, and sickens and angers me most, is the attitude. the ‘fucking pricks’ … the ‘c’mon let us shoot’ … the utter silence when it becomes obvious that there are no weapons, just a bunch of civilians and kids and cameras … the amusement when someone drives a tank over a body … the urging of the wounded, crawling guy to ‘just pick up a weapon’ … it’s the ‘their fault for bringing their kids to a battle’. it’s the killing people for retrieving their wounded.

the US military is a barbaric, arrogant, murdering machine, looking for any excuse to kill the little sandniggers, apparently.

seriously, Americans, do you wonder why half the world hates your over-priviliged, over-armed guts?

*disgusted*

picture of the day

this has been doing the rounds of the ‘toobs for the last 24 hours or so. and why not? it’s a classic. it’s from the wall street journal. i think. it depicts a US soldier in afghanistan who didn’t have time to put on his uniform and gets caught by the camera taking up a defensive position in pink I<3NY boxers and his double-pluggers, bless him.

anzac day photographs

a couple of visiting americans at the anzac day service

currumbin surf lifesaving club

intrepid gold coast bulletin reporter ben dillaway (c), photographer brad wagner (r) and a lovely old digger

medals of honour

horses of the australian light horse regiment

proud of his family's service

looking south from elephant rock, currumbin

dawn service

right, decision made. was trying to figure out which anzac day dawn service to go to. took a nap this morning about 11am. woke up at 6.31pm. guess that means i’m going down to currumbin, because that needs a really early start, like 2.45am, to get a good photo-op possie.

blue blankie, remember when i called you from the beach last year? *grins* … best brace yourself for another chat while i meander back to my car, no doubt parked miles away once again.

will probably twitter from elephant rock. catch me @cate3221.

i love me anzac day.