For The Byron Echo, Sept. 2005

We should add the new crime of Accidental Massacre to the court lists, after Mistaken Torture, Panic Homicide, Inadvertent Checkpoint Slaughter, Bombing Noisy Weddings in Error and Needlessly Hounding David Hicks, to ease the souls of those young US grunts who blocked off one end of the bridge on which -- and off which -- a thousand Iraqis were crushed, hurled and drowned on Wednesday last. Those thousands killed were more per capita than the US dead on 9/11, and no Iraqi's saying the world forever changed that day, but it probably did. It showed for a start the Civil War is on, the one Kim Beazley warned us not to be in. It also showed that terrorism works. All it took was a rumour, a whisper, a shout, a panic and hundreds died. And, oh yes, American stupidity as usual, blocking off one end of the bridge, ensuring nine hundred people, maybe, died that might have lived. What a good thing we follow their lead, wherever they go. Who doesn't hate us now? Hands up.

The Indonesians certainly hate us, to judge by the beautiful Australians busted for drugs most months in Indonesia. How could they hate us? We've done nothing to them. Only invaded their country and stolen their oil. Tortured members of their principal religion in Woomera and Abu Ghraib. Mooted laws against their principal religion in Australia, telling them what they can preach and wear. Joined a 'crusade' against two Muslim countries in lockstep with America whom some of their people see as the Great Satan. Oh, and yes, arrested their people smugglers and burned their boats on our beaches, and pushed a newborn Muslim baby and his mother out to sea. If Indonesia had done such things to us, would we arrest their drug couriers and put them in gaol for fifteen years, the way we do their people smugglers? No? No, you say? Hands up who wouldn't.

The Free Market

Times change, but some American fundamentals remain. No doubt the free market can sort out Hurricane Katrina as it did the tsunami, the Iranian earthquake, the Beslam massacre, the London, Madrid and Bali bombings, Kosovo, Rwanda, the rise of Hitler, the Titanic sinking, the Fire of London and the Black Plague; the good ol' free market fixes everything, buddy, just you wait and see.

Has ever a theory been more exploded? The Flat Earth hypothesis maybe, the Satan hypothesis, the love of God and the power of prayer. No, what is needed in New Orleans is not the free market and a level playing field but government intervention, re-regulation, burdensome bureaucracy, massive inputs of taxpayers' money and infrastructure spending or, as we used to call it, Big Government. Socialism, dare I say. That, and the urgent signing of the Kyoto Protocol and the impeachment of Bush for incompetence, or, as Baghdad now understands it, Accidental Massacre. Why, after 9/11 and Iraq, was there not a plan --- to, say, fill up the stadium with food and water and electric generators before the hurricane hit?

He somehow thinks he doesn't need a plan. He believes instead in, well, the power of prayer, the Satan hypothesis, the Rapture, the Conversion of the Jews, the Divine Roadmap, the Second Coming and God's unstinted, ongoing, all-forgiving love of America, land of the free. He's as daft as that, and thousands more will die of his delusions, among them surly young black men shot dead in Bourbon Street while seeking food for their mothers, or executed in Biloxi Prison for shooting back. Are we really on the side of this bewildered fool? Do we really follow his lead? Do we really believe there's advantage in it? What advantage is that? Just asking.