Daily Diatribe

From a Jaapie correspondent:-

Were did the money that RSA gave to Zimbabwe last year go to?
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President Robert Mugabe will soon be driving around in a super-luxury Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman like this one.

Pretoria- Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe will be protected against any projectile or hand grenade when travelling in his new official car.

The car, together with the new luxury vehicles for his vice-presidents and speaker and the 19 new armour-plated cavalcade vehicles, will
cost the government about R52 million.

Mugabe’s luxury Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullmann arrived in Zimbabwe via South Africa, after it was custom built to his specifications in
Germany.

According to the Zimbabwe Standard, the vice-presidents and speaker will have to be satisfied with Mercedes-Benz S320 models.

The cost of Mugabe’s vehicle is difficult to calculate. A spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz South Africa, Shirle Greig, said on Tuesday it was a personal transaction of which the details were extremely confidential.

She confirmed the car had arrived in South Africa by ship and was taken to Harare on a special truck. The German company, Cloer, armour-plated the vehicle to the highest possible specifications, a B7 Dragunov standard.

According to Grieg, the Zimbabwean government negotiated directly with Cloer for the luxury vehicles. Mugabe’s car’s floor, roof, windows and petrol tank have been specially reinforced, as the most vulnerable parts of the vehicle.

A quick calculation shows that the car - at 3 850kg - weighs more than double the weight of a large sedan.

According to the information on Cloer’s website, the car will do only 200km on a full tank, which means that Mugabe will have to take a petrol tanker along if he wants to travel long distance. Between 35 and 40 litre/100km means the car’s fuel consumption is twice that of a loaded, large 4×4 vehicle.

Order was placed last year Depending on Mugabe’s specifications for the car, it may have anything from a DVD and CD player, Internet access , a telephone to special, heated (or ventilated) leather seats and walnut finishes.

The tyres on the vehicle can travel a further 50km if punctured by bullets.The driver can address people outside the vehicle without turning down a window.

According to the Zimbabwe Standard, the Mugabe government placed the order and possibly paid for the vehicles last year. According to experts,such an order would not have been accepted without guarantees or cash payments.

The vehicles were ordered before the European Union instituted sanctions, prohibiting this sort of trade, against Mugabe and his cabinet earlier this year.

When Mugabe’s car was delivered last week, it apparently was taken immediately to the nearest garage to check for listening devices.

Bob’s such an enviromentalist- he’s saving all the wildlife from becoming roadkill and the population choking on fumes by using every last litre of benzina in the whole country himself- why someone so popular needs a heavily armoured hunwagen to traverse his domain and wave at the happy, smiling populace is a little beyond me.

Mind you though, it’s not as if this bastion of centralised planning and shining example of the wonders of tribal primitives adopting unfettered marxism can’t afford it- the fearless leader of the best example of a colonial fiefdom turned worker’s paradise is surely entitled to a little self-indulgence, and I’m sure the beneficiaries of the regeime’s success and largesse would have to agree.

It would be a terrible waste of a fine automobile, but surely a 155mm AP round (maybe with a little DU on the snout as well) would make a mockery of the armour plating used, and send Bob off to the section of purgatory reserved for genocidal fuckers like himself, Saddam, Hitler and Milosovic.

That or just take out the fuel tanker, and wait for him and his entourage to eat each other.

First it was Ants Loewenstein, now The Oz is allowing an obviously misanthropic economic rationalist thug to befoul the broadsheet with a selfish tirade, expecting such nonsense as personal responsibility. Won’t somebody think of the kiddies?:-

Why Should Other People Have To Pick Up Tab For Families?

April 20, 2006

MOST TALKED ABOUT

TAX AND WELFARE

GOING by the latest pronouncements from the Prime Minister and the Australian Taxation office, once again single/childless taxpayers will continue to be a bottomless pit, subsiding the lifestyle choices of others (”PM signals big tax cuts for parents”, 19/4).

Having children is a matter of personal choice, and the associated costs should be considered before procreating. Why should other people have to pick up the tab?

As to family payments not being a form of “churning”, I’d like an explanation of the benefit of taking money from people, running it through several expensive layers of bureaucracy, then returning the residue, rather than not taking it in the first place?

I note a lack of outrage from the civil liberty collective over the planned use by the tax office of private motor vehicle registration details to hound those with a better quality car; obviously the Privacy Act doesn’t apply to the upwardly mobile.

Paul Bickford

Wilston, Qld

Whatever next- actually expecting government to be answerable for how it spreads the largesse’ swiped volunteered by citizens for the national benefit, and to only take what it needs to administer the actual responsibilities of a federalised system in a modern, wealthy and independent society?

Then again, if they didn’t have your money to bribe you with, would you vote for any of the filthy buggers?

I never cease to be surprised by the reaction to the obvious from most people- oddly enough when they elect a Castro-esque government of old-school marxist revolutionaries, they then wonder when said government’s minions act like Beardy Boy and his cohorts.

Likewise the respective moonpies and dingbats in Canberra and the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, who elected a hard-line eco-Stalinist collective in each constituency then wondered why said politburos not only expect other people to abide by their oddball notions, they also expect SUV driving, airconditioner installing concerned citizens to do likewise, while exhibiting all the economic acumen of a housing commission-dwelling lottery winner.

Ditto for the ageing hippies and new age twonks in Byron Bay and Noosa shire- I can think of no finer example of people getting the government they deserve.

Apparently when a horde of drunken, indignant indiginies descend on shopkeepers and restaurateurs, swipe their stock and torch their premises, all the while beating the shit out of unarmed police and bystanders, it’s “civil unrest”.

If a horde of drunken bogans throw a few bottles and duff up a few persons of Middle Eastern appearance, in the eyes of the media it’s “a riot”.

All clear now?

I always knew I’d only return to blogging for money, but somehow I’ve managed to get involved in something involving cash that’s utterly altruistic- I’ve really got to stop answering late night emails when I’m twatted on tonsil polish.

I was approached last week by RWDB JF Beck to partake in a rather Ramadam-y past-time to raise dosh for skeeter nets in the third world, run by Dunk Malaria and set for between 9am and 6pm on Thursday the 11th of May- should be a doddle if I get a snootful the night before, I’ll only feel like fizzy bicarb, a few coffin nails and caffeine until the sun has buggered off, which is close on six PM these days in this neck of the woods.

Anyway, here’s where you stump up- give ’til it hurts worse than having your bloodstream riddled with hideous parasites that make you shiver like a dog shitting razorblades, cause uncontrolable spasms and eventually result in your body temperature reaching a point where your brain liquifies. Or when you realise how much tax you paid last year. Or even when you tap into Google “girl on girl action” and this is the result.

Besides which, it’s a tax deduction, so forget doing the right thing and just stick it to the man- if that doesn’t inspire you to kick in, just think of the satisfaction you’ll feel in making a hungry fat sod look like a bulimic sub-Saharan supermodel with full blown AIDS.

(I’ll have to find out if you can’t eat anything- it’s going to be a bugger if your own bodily secretions are included).

But goes on a month-long bender from time to time. Not really- what with dead dogs, new dogs, biopsied mater and idiot clients there’s been little time for lollygagging, hornswaggling and twiddly-diddling on the interweb thingy.

In the meantime I’ve been getting the usual dross, debauch and outright loopiness in the mail-box (thatks especially to regular correspondent Raff), so to fill in while I think of something worth snorking on about, here’s some high (and low) lights:-

Firstly, time to update some links. There’s Watching America, a new site that looks at news items from outside the US to try to find the view held by other nations of the USA (Bloodthirsty warmongering oil leeching fundamentalist hegemons, if most of the tripe I read is anything to go by), but it’s best summed up in the words of Robin Koerner, one of the co-founders.

My name is Robin Koerner and I am cofounder of the unique site, www.WatchingAmerica.com , which translates foreign news about the U.S., to enable Americans (and all English speakers) to read what is being written about them and their country throughout the world. Much of our content is available nowhere else in English. Our attempt to break down the final barrier to understanding ? the language barrier ? has attracted the attention of mainstream media (such as USA Today, dozens of other US papers, BBC, and various talk radio stations), since we launched about a year ago. We are generally considered now an A-list media site, mentioned and listed along with the NYT, BBC, CNN etc. What is put out in other countries in English for Western consumption often differs markedly from what is being written in the native languages. Accordingly, Watching America offers a unique window into world opinion. We have no political agenda or position.

Why anyone would want to know what assorted frog munchers, bucketheads, dirt nibblers, goat pilots and rock worshippers think of you is beyond me, but go and read.

Next we have Scoozmee, a large site with all kinds of stuff, including some random quotes from senior members of the religion of peace- funnier than stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork.

Then there’s ikdonaldson, who’s sent these two links, and a more incoherent load of god-bothering babble I haven’t seen for some time. In a lengthy and rambling tirade, Ikey reckong the end is nigh, so we’d better all stop assorted naughtiness such as random fornication, covetting thy neighbours’ ox and blaspheming otherwise it’s off to a place hotter and more brimful of obnoxious, violent yahoos than Surfers Paradise in January; sounds rather a lot like what this chap would like us to do as well- maybe they should form a cartel, thus maximising their market potential.

Here’s a brief preview of what we’re in for:-

Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.
“Immediately after the distress of those days
” ‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

Sounds like a hoot- count me in.

Finally there’s Streetcow, what the cow on the street thinks. (Mostly “eat grass, shit, eat grass, how come I’m now a hamburger”?) It promotes itself as streetcow - guaranteed quickest daily waste of time on the web- a fairly tall claim when Webdiary is still in circulation.

I’ve missed a lot of news and events, and even had to forego the opportunity to attend this worthy function- irony as a concept is utterly alien in Moonbatopia, it seems- a commemorative pancake feast for an idiot who was puree’d by a D9 seems the sort of thing a tasteless, vicious and morally bankrupt fiend such as the editors of this blighted bandwidth would hold, not a caring, concerned, empathetic and affront-aware collective as the The Rachel Corrie Memorial Committee of Victoria.

Personally, I’d have opted for the steak tartare.

I’ve also had emails touting for Tori Spelling and Zoroastrianism**- I’d like to combine the two, and have vultures feed on Tori’s carcass in one of the towers of the karked so favoured by probably the least silly religion to emerge from the Middle East.

Finally, some wacky pictures.

We in the west think we’re so advanced, what with our RVs with showers and such, but here a simple desert dweller shows us an oil-free way to freshen up after a hard day’s commuting through nature- and what a saving in aftershave as well!

Once again, we’re revealed to be the planet-degrading, Gaiea-raping troglydites Bob Brown keeps telling us we are.

Traffic’s been down a tad lately, what with no new content whatsoever (this doesn’t seem to affect Channel 10’s ratings, however), and if Mr Lefty can get hits with cute lil’ kitty pictures, I expect the site meter to rotate faster than Vision in his macrobiotic biodegradable grave* when I park a Dodge Viper on top of it with the posting of a video of a genuine catfight:-

Last but not least, what sort of a host would I be if I didn’t give you a Hildebeest KFC gag?

*Given that the bugger wouldn’t have had a whiff of preservatives within cooee of him, he probably would’ve dissolved and had to be hosed out of his kaftan.

**Isn’t that a fan club for oily wops in masks with skinny swords?