Yes, motivated by present tensions and attacks I went on a time travel
Some videos time forgot — any conclusions you may draw are yours alone….
Trawling my archive I found 18th April 2006
“The Poet” is my former colleague Dick Stratford, former Principal of Sydney Boys High, and in the same Dip Ed class as me in 1965, later 1977-8 a colleague in the Dip Ed program at Sydney University under the great Ken Watson!
The Poet has also sent quite a few news items in the past few days. This one he says is a must. I agree. Brian Cloughley was deputy head of the UN mission in Kashmir (1980-1982), Staff Officer 1 (Force Structure) in Australian Army HQ (during which time he was appointed to the Order of Australia, or AM), Director of Protocol for the Australian Defence Force, and Australian defence attache in Islamabad (December 1988 – July 1994). He now lives in New Zealand…
It was on Counterpunch but is there no longer.
…Even if Cheney and Bush are not lunatic enough to send their cruise missiles and bombers to attack Iran they might manage to have harsh economic sanctions imposed, additional to the unilateral ones in place by the US for years. They usually ignore warning signals, so doubtless they dismissed the unmistakable threat in September 2005 that Iran could endure a self-inflicted cut in oil exports in the national interest of combating what it would consider rabidly hostile action. It is estimated that cutting exports would raise the price of oil to $80-100 a barrel. This wouldn’t matter to the rich in America, who are all that Cheney and Bush care about. But it would matter to the average man and woman who are even now struggling to make ends meet as a result of the rich-supportive tax policy of the present Administration.
There is no point in putting the moral position against attacking Iran. The Cheney-Bush administration has shown itself impervious to argument, and presenting a case against killing thousands of innocent people cuts no ice with blinkered zealots. The planned blitzkrieg of divine strikes will probably take place. It will alter the entire world and create hatred of America that will never be eradicated. And there is nothing we can do about it. At this Easter time (and Thai New Year), God help us all.
Oh good — the Internet Archive has it!
Brian Cloughley read my post:
Also found in this archive trawl — the best Iraq War blog ever
It eventually appeared as a book.
Salam Pax has attracted a huge worldwide readership for the Internet diary he kept during the buildup, prosecution, and aftermath of the war in Iraq. Bringing his incisive and sharply funny Web postings together in print for the first time, Salam Pax provides one of the most gripping accounts of the Iraq conflict and will be the subject of global media attention.
In September 2002, a 29-year old Iraqi architect calling himself ‘Salam Pax’ began posting daily accounts of everyday life in Baghdad onto the Internet. Written in English, these postings contained everything from descriptions of the hardships of life in Saddam Hussein’s paranoid regime, to reviews of the latest (pirate) CDs by Coldplay and Bjork, to gossip about his employers. Salam daily risked retribution from Saddam’s regime, as over 200,000 people went missing under Saddam, many for far lesser crimes than the open criticism of the regime that he voiced in his diary.
I was a follower of the blog which was originally on Blogger but transferred (as I did) to WordPress. There was even a YouTube version.
Neil's Commonplace Book 