Loose cannons

Contempt for innocent

"The terrorists who struck today have again shown their contempt for the innocent." — Emperor George Bush II, responsible for the deaths of at least 6000 innocent Iraqis, commenting on the August 19 truck bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad, in which 24 people died.

It's called the 'free market'

"It's a wake-up call... We've got an antiquated system." — Emperor Bush, commenting on the August 14 black-outs which left 50 million people from Detroit to New York without electricity for days.

Sky's the limit

"We need to have a much more productive airline. We cannot just continue to make $500 million before tax and people say, 'what a terrific result'... It is not a terrific result." — Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon on Channel 9's Business Sunday program, August 24, justifying the campaign to drive down wages

through increased casualisation.

US-made sequel now playing in Baghdad

"Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film." — From a flier distributed by the Pentagon's special operations chiefs for an August 27 screening in the US Army auditorium of The Battle of Algiers, the classic 1965 film by Italian-born Marxist film maker Gillo Pontecorvo about how the Algerian resistance movement defeated their French colonial occupiers.

From Green Left Weekly, September 3, 2003.

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From GLW issue 552