[LINK] fridge magnet pack - war, amateurish leaders etc.

[Robin Whittle]

When I wrote "new low point" in Australian political leadership, I was
meaning that I hoped things don't get any worse from now on, not that
things have never been worse.  A Linker reminded me of one of the
extreme low points of Australian political leadership was the use of
Aborigines as nuclear radiation guinea-pigs in the testing of atom bombs
in the atmosphere at Maralinga in the 1950s.   

Another Linker pointed out that the Downing St document is here:

  http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp

and a report on the plagiarism from various sources and various
roundings up of the figures is at:

  http://cryptome.org/mi6-mi6.htm


A friend writes from the USA:

> You get refrigerator magnets! All we get are recommendations to buy
> batteries, water, a manual can opener, plastic sheeting, and duct 
> tape, and find a room in our houses to take all this stuff into. 
>
> (A friend of my friend) says that it might be worth it just for the 
> sake of having a situation in which civilization really would be 
> saved by duct tape.
>
> The low-level anxiety is just horrible, to me. I'm not even 
> particularly prone to it, and I don't feel some great threat from 
> the rest of the world -- I can pretty much understand suicide bombers, > really -- and *I* feel kind of terrible a lot of the time, haunted by 
> the things that I might not get to do and see and live for and so on.
>
> One thing that makes me even surer of: I do not want anyone to make 
> other people feel this way in my name. I especially don't want anyone 
> to make small Iraqi children, who've already had their dolls and toy 
> trucks sold off on the sidewalk to pay the bills, feel this way any 
> more than they already do, which has to be overwhelmingly.

  
   - Robin