Leigh M. Smith

(Letter sent to the West Australian Newspaper) With Prime Minister Howards proposed “anti-terror” legislation, if I point out the unfashionable truth that it is legal under the U.N. charter (which Australia signed) for Iraqi’s to militarily resist the colonial occupation of their country by the U.S., Britain and Australia, that view is now “urging a…

(letter sent to the West Australian Newspaper)

I visited New Orleans in 2003 for Mardi-gras, and just recently was sent pictures of some of the destruction of my friends houses there from Hurricane Katrina. I’ve been following (quietly admittedly, I’m exhibiting Blogger Burnout due to “real” workload) the fall-out from the disaster.

Juan Cole makes the perceptive point the breaking scandal that over USD$1 billion has been stolen from the Iraq military is a bigger scandal than Saddam’s oil for food corruption.

Bush’s Brain, Karl Rove is now rightfully exposed as source of the vendetta against Joe Wilson, attempting to destroy Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame, career by exposing her employment as a CIA officer to right wing propagandists (calling themselves reporters).

An acerbic, excellent critique of Iraq war coverage by Gary Kamiya is worth reading. I’m in the middle of the Revelation 8: Perth international film festival, which includes a devastingly good movie about Iraq by an Aussie director made before, during and after the invasion: In The Shadow Of the Palms. I was literally crying…

Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who blew the whistle on the FBI, reporting that warnings of 9/11 attacks using airplanes as weapons were mistranslated continues to fight on.

As BBC investigative journalist Greg Palast has commented, the leaked memo from Tony Blair’s cabinet is a damning indictment of the perversion of the truth by the Bush administration to wage war against Iraq. It couldn’t be more plainly told: “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy (of invading Iraq)”.

AFP has a good objective assessment of Gallipoli and the role it still plays in the psyche of Australia, as it is sending more troops off to brutalise another race in Iraq.