Almost Human?

In her column explaining ‘the key to understanding the Prime Minister,’ Anne Summers offers an explanation for the Groveller General’s attitude towards Iraq, terrorisim and Barack Obama. But it is just not good enough, says our investigative journalist.

“On the morning when the planes hit the twin towers and the Pentagon, the smoke from which Howard had a view from his hotel, he had an epiphany; perhaps for the first, and only, time in his life he experienced compassion for fellow humans.”

“I couldn’t get out of my mind the desperation of the people who were trapped in those buildings and the sense of loss and despair of those families.”

This could make him seem, well, almost human. Until you consider what he did then: he eagerly agreed to, barracked for and participated in – and continues to agree to, barrack for and participate in, without apology or admission of error – a visitation upon the people of Iraq (a country not associated with the events that had so upset him) a retributive storm of violence and destruction that has produced the very same “desperation of the people who were trapped in those buildings and the sense of loss and despair of those families”, except that at this stage the horror he has sanctioned and helped unleash has affected at least a hundred times as many people, almost all of them innocent civilians.

A person who becomes emotional about three thousand Americans but is sanguine about the suffering and death of how many hundred thousand Iraqis and their families and communities, suffering and death which he personally was a party to, is unbalanced at best.

A person who can happily allow these two things to co-exist peacefully in their mind is a hypocrite, a sociopath, or a fool. Or all of the above.”

Blackberry Massage Parlours

ABC reports “Relief at hand for NYC text addicts”
Apparently American hotels are offering hand massages for texters.

“Mobile phone addicts who spend hours on end sending text messages, emails or talking on their phone can now seek a ‘BlackBerry Thumb’ massage for their sore hands”

But we always knew that any decent concierge could arrange a massage with manual relief.

I am definitely unhappy about this

ABC also reported:

“Man critical after stabbing in Sydney suburb”

And so you would be!

The headline was changed later in the morning to “Man stabbed in chest during Sydney brawl”.

Oddly enough, ABC had four years earlier (19/12/2002) reported, almost identically,

“Sydney man critical after stabbing”.