2Jun03
Iraq, the beat goes on
June 1..rpg & assault rifles ...attacked an American convoy ..on the busy square in front of the Abu Hanifa mosque
"This is just the beginning!" shouted a woman
..followed ..the first mortar attack in Baghdad since the end of the war
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G8 protests dont feature in Aus media. The NYT reports looting of a Lacoste store... seems the Swiss protesters havnt quite got the anarchist ethos yet...

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Mohamed Bakri's banned "Jenin,Jenin" made it to Aus TV last night, 14 months after the event.
Amazing pictures of an 11 year old girl saying "We will live like rocks and die on our feet like lions, I want all the Israelis to memorise this"

Pictures of Palestinians roped together by the IDF as human shields... the closest image that came to mind was the Warsaw ghetto, but the Nazis somehow lacked the evil inventiveness displayed by the Zionists.

SBS screened some interviews with IDF soldiers, i guess to "balance" - it seems that the IDF lost 24, not 13, and the Jews on screen seemed quite fearful about the prospect of being called up for another massacre.

JeninMassacre


At least living in Jenin leaves no doubt as to who is the enemy and what is the task.

Living in Aus I have a great weariness. The citizens here seem concerned only with their house valuations, and Aus predominance in minor sports (there is oddly no Aus national skill at all in Football - they call it soccer and practice other codes). The fastest man in the world this year is an Australian aborigine, sub 10 in the 100m. A happy stat in a country where the aboriginal health statistics are mostly sub-third world level.

At least when I lived in the USA I felt the country had some creativeness and excitement. Since that time the main income for the USA has become from copyright, ie from movies & games. Used to be from Jet planes, but seems its now safer to play with your joystick at home.

One thing about the USA that was great was the volunteer ethos. Everyone was expected & encouraged to do volunteer work in the community. In SF,within a day of offering, I was coaching teenagers in math. I recall telling one young black man that you dont need to learn long division, just use a calculator. He, however, insisted that I teach him... "..so you start with guessing the divisor..." an interesting moment....

In Aus to offer to volunteer is to be regarded as weird, unless its at a sport event. I once rang up a volunteer agency,to offer to teach migrants english, and got treated somewhat like a criminal. The fact that I didnt own a car meant I was scorned, and "of course" as a male I couldnt possibly be allowed to teach women or children....
Sadly Aus lacks a volunteer ethos.

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