Workers are like lemons: When the rich have sucked out all the juice, they throw them in the garbage. - Ricardo Flores Magon, Regeneracion, April 1911 The minute ordinary Czech citizens decided to keep away from stirring the pot filled with political issues, almost immediately the scums floated to the top and stayed there for a long time. I could not agree more with the suggestion that ordinary citizens have a lot in common with each other no matter what country they come from, but most are divorced from governments of any colour or ism ... I look at certain politicians and they remind me so much of the former communist leaders such as Gustav Husak. Yet the neighbourhoods here and back in old Czechoslovakia share the same joys and challenges: The biggest difference is that in Australia I can link to articles like the one below without getting a knock on the door: "Persepolis" author Marjane Satrapi talks about why Iranians don't think sex is sinful, the hypocrisy of American saber-rattling over Iran, and why George Bush and the mullahs are "the same." By Michelle Goldberg 'Do you have any advice for secular Americans who are faced with living in a country that's increasingly governed by religious fundamentalists?' If I have any advice, it's that every day that you wake up, don't say, "This is normal." Every day, wake up with this idea that you have to defend your freedom. Nobody has the right to take from women the right to abortion, nobody has the right to take from homosexuals the right to be homosexual, nobody has the right to stop people laughing, to stop people thinking, to stop people talking. If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same. - Marjane Satrapi, interviewed by Salon.com Sexual revolutionaries Jozef Virtual Reference

Dear Prez

‘Much to the dismay of President Bush, Americans can remember all on their own, without any coaching from Democrats, that in the run up to war in Iraq, it was top official from the administration who were making the claim that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden and that he was secretly involved to 9/11.  

 

The fact that the administration's disinformation campaign was entirely successful is evidenced by an October 2004, Harris Poll, taken three weeks before the last presidential election, which reported that 62% of all voters, and 84% of those planning to vote for Bush, still believed that Saddam had ''strong links" to Al Qaeda, and that 41% of all voters, and 52% of Bush backers, believed that Saddam had ''helped plan and support the hijackers" who had attacked the country on 9/11. 

 

As we now know, the basis for these allegations were false but the saddest part of the situation is that many Americans are just now beginning to realize that Bush knew the stories were false for more than a year when he cited them as justification for taking the country to war.’ 

 

Bush Gang Swore Saddam Was Behind 9/11