He is not concerned about aftershocks hitting the beach half a mile from here, or about the haphazard rescue operation finally under way in southern Thailand.

Nor is he worried by the deaths of several hundred compatriots. Mr Johansson is anxious that the bar girl he has his eye on is going to keep holding out on him. "I'm having a good holiday," he said. "I went for a walk along the sand this morning, did a bit of swimming. Now I'm off drinking, and then we'll see."

Four days after the tidal wave hit, normal life has returned to much of Phuket and surrounding resorts such as Patong. The "girlie" bars are reopening, the bazaars selling rip-off Rolex watches are busy, the tourists are streaming off flights and on to the beach. Here Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's request for the country to wear black and forego New Year festivities seems likely to fall on deaf ears.

"I heard what was going on with the wave and so on, and I just thought it was a bit of an exaggeration," said Peter Anstiss, 48, from Sydney, as he shared a beer with his brother in a bar off Patong beach's main drag. "I didn't think too much about it."

That the Revisionist-Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has fond visions of rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in concentration camps isn't a big surprise. That a mainstream American newspaper would publish this David-Dukeian evil is. Of course, this is also a man that President Bush appointed to a temporary vacancy at the United States Institute of Peace, after the Senate understandably balked at a regular appointment for him.

"About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government, and 26 percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies ... About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans."

Muslims planned to turn an old sod farm near Memphis into a cemetery, but angry neighbors protested, complaining the burial ground could become a staging ground for terrorists or spread disease from unembalmed bodies.

How many tsunami-dead Swedes are fags & dykes? vacationing (sic) on their fat expendable incomes without kids to bother with and spend money on. With respect to each of these earthquake-dead perverts: "He shall be buried with the burial of an ass." Jer. 22:19. Maybe Sweden can pass another law - making it a crime for God to send earthquakes and tidal waves to kill vacationing Swedish fags & dykes.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

The U.S. spends approximately $270 million each day for the occupation of Iraq. The cost of one F-22 Raptor fighter jet is $225 million.

Clinton was taught in the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, by his favourite historian, Professor Carroll Quigley. In 1966, Quigley had written a book [7] on the elite’s control of world affairs which had caused them a considerable degree of anxiety. While Quigley’s book was entirely sympathetic to their aims of world domination, the elite were extremely upset that it allowed ordinary people a forbidden glimpse of the workings of the matrix:

“The powers of financial capitalism have another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. The system is controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert… and by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. I know of the operations of the network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life been close to it and many of its instruments… My chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”

The elite reacted quickly when the book was published, ensuring it was pulled from the bookshelves nationwide and “recalled faster than (an) exploding Easter bunny” Although it was never published again, second hand copies are available from Amazon.com.

The Bilderberg club (named after the hotel in which its first meeting was held) is the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. Every member pledges absolute secrecy on what has been discussed at annual meetings. The online Asia Times, 2003, provides a very rare glimpse into the Bilderberg club in a column headed “The Masters of the Universe” [9]: “Expert strategists attend to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus; an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - that what’s good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of humankind. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited to attend and duly ‘approved’ by the club before they took office.

“The club mingles central bankers, defence experts, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty and international financiers. Guests this year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is also a member) included David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain. The Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans, or Africans.”

   

   

Saudi officials are concerned that insurgents fighting US-led forces in Iraq are gaining military experience that could be used within the kingdom.

Suspected militants with military experience gained in Iraq have been detected in several Middle Eastern countries, and some have been found as far afield as western Europe, according to intelligence officials.

"They are coming back with security experience, ranging from skills in how to lose people who are trailing them, as well as having the qualities of guerrilla fighters. They also know how to do surveillance," a senior European intelligence officer said.

Despite some foreign fighters having been killed in clashes with US, Iraqi and other forces, evidence that others have gone to Iraq to gain skills they can use elsewhere is now of serious concern to intelligence and security officials.

The deal includes eight P-3C Orion naval reconnaissance planes possibly with anti-ship and anti-submarine missiles, 2,000 TOW-2A heavy anti-armor guided missiles and the deadly PHALANX Close-In Weapon Systems for ships...All this makes one wonder if the United States has learned anything from history.

...In the 1980s, Pakistan was a frontline ally of the U.S in the effort to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

During that time, supporters of Pakistan in Capitol Hill and the Pentagon argued for giving that nation advanced arms, including the F-16 fighters as well as billions in military aid...

...As it turned out later, Pakistan actually accelerated its nuclear program during the same period with the American taxpayer funding its conventional defenses to the tune of $5 billion, thereby freeing up funds for its nuclear program.

To keep the suburban expansion going indefinitely we will need to continue using one-quarter of the world's oil every day. Since this resource is about to head over the all-time peak production arc, there will be incrementally a few percentages less total oil produced every year after the peak. We'll probably have to occupy Venezuela, too, and Nigeria, to keep the suburban expansion going -- not to mention the daily operation of it, with the sixty mile commutes and the estimated average seven car trips per day per household to chauffeur kids and run errands. As we maintain our oil consumption under these conditions, other nations will have to use proportionately less. How will the Europeans and the Chinese feel about that? Will there be discontent over it? And might it affect our relations with them?

In more recent years it has been the Irish in America who are returning home. Most of them were job-seekers who went to the U.S. in the 1980s.

One reason for the reverse flow has been the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal immigration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Many Irish were working in the U.S. illegally, mainly in construction trades, but stiffer visa regulations have made it more difficult for them to come and go.

A more compelling reason, according to Curtin, is the job market. Ireland now offers plenty of opportunities, while the sinking dollar makes working in the U.S. a lot less attractive than it was a few years ago.

Paris was normal, which is to say the streets were thronged with live human beings (hardly any of them overweight), the cafes and restaurants were bustling, even the parks were well-populated on a brisk December day and we were reminded emphatically of the stark contrast with the impoverished public life of America. In fact, one morning as we puttered in the hotel room with CNN-Europe playing in the background, a story came on about retail sales back in the States, and there was a shot of our supersized fellow countrymen waddling around in a WalMart dressed in the usual slob apparel by which they fail to make a distinction between being at home and being out in public.

Baby Jesus wants to know Why hast thou forsaken me? Don't worry - this is a humor site run by the grade-A genius ZAPATOPI - the creator of the Sasquatch militia, the tin foil beanie how-to page, and lots lots more. He's got a shop wherein the righteous may purchase Baby Jesus merchandise (praise be to Him).

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin.

The incident was not as shocking as the recording of an Israeli officer pumping the body of a 13-year-old girl full of bullets and then saying he would have shot her even if she had been three years old.

Nor was it as nauseating as the pictures in an Israeli newspaper of ultra-orthodox soldiers mocking Palestinian corpses by impaling a man's head on a pole and sticking a cigarette in his mouth.

But the matter of the violin touched on something deeper about the way Israelis see themselves, and their conflict with the Palestinians.

The violinist, Wissam Tayem, was on his way to a music lesson near Nablus when he said an Israeli officer ordered him to "play something sad" while soldiers made fun of him. After several minutes, he was told he could pass.

The rightwing Army Radio commentator Uri Orbach found the incident disturbingly reminiscent of Jewish musicians forced to provide background music to mass murder. "What about Majdanek?" he asked, referring to the Nazi extermination camp.

The critics were not drawing a parallel between an Israeli roadblock and a Nazi camp. Their concern was that Jewish suffering had been diminished by the humiliation of Mr Tayem.

Yoram Kaniuk, author of a book about a Jewish violinist forced to play for a concentration camp commander, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the soldiers responsible should be put on trial "not for abusing Arabs but for disgracing the Holocaust".

Your kid died in Iraq? OK - just don't expect a signed note or anything. You couldn't make this up if you tried. Bush signed one of the ''condolence'' letters with a BIG FUCKING GREEN MARKER! Rumsfeld is using an autograph machine to sign his. What Rummy? Too busy planning the Iran Blitzkrieg to sign off on the 3 to 4 kids you get killed every day? What's that? Your wrist hurts? Waa-HAAAA!

The military has announced the plans it is considering to use for allowing Fallujans back into their city.

They will set up “processing centers” on the outskirts of the city and compile a database of peoples’ identities by using DNA testing and retina scans. Residents will then receive a badge which identifies them with their home address, which they must wear at all times.

Buses will ferry them into their city, as cars will be banned since the military fears the use of them by suicide bombers.

Another idea being kicked around is to require the men to work for pay in military-style battalions where these “work brigades” will reconstruct buildings and the water system, depending on the men’s skills.

There will also be “rubble-clearing” platoons.

The intent of the US commanders and Iraqi leaders is to make Fallujah a “model city.”

I wonder if they’ll try this in Baghdad. The goal of crushing the resistance and creating stability by destroying Fallujah has gone so well that resistance fighters here roamed freely about Haifa street today hunting for Iraqis collaborating with US forces.

They executed a man they suspected as being a collaborator in Tahrir Square, and then they moved on to Mathaf Sqare, just 3 blocks from the “Green Zone” where the interim government and US embassy are located.

Episode 5 of The Worst Wing! - The Fuhrer Sometimes I get emails from people asking me if I really think that Bush is like Hitler. What can I say that I haven't already? - um, no, I'm just pretending to think that. He's really a nice man who likes children and dogs. The war is going badly because he's got bad advisers. Bush may or not be the next Hitler. I do believe that the Bushies have no problem with fascism, however.

On Thursday I ranted about Don Imus's 'joking' about the genocide of Palestinians - they were called "animals", they should be "nuked", ho ho ho. Several months ago, Britain's own Moron Laureate, Robert Kilroy Silk, lost his BBC job for making racist anti-Arab comments in a newspaper column. Today he gets a bucket of shit tipped over his head. Actions. Consequences. Du-uh.

''WATCHA EXPECT FROM ONE OF THAM THAR YURRUPEANS? THOSE FOLK AREN'T EVEN PROPER CHRISTIANERS!''

''AH LOVE OUR PREZNIT, GEORGE DUBYA BUSH, AH LUV OUR GLORIOUS ARMY, AND AH LUV THE BABY JESUS! DEATH TO ALL FORREN SCUM - TIME TO GO TO WAL-MART TO BUY LITTLE TIMMY AND TAMMY THUR CHRISMUS PRESENTS: THE MUSCIAL VERSION OF THE BIBLE, THE INFLATABLE MOSES, AND THE INTERACTIVE TEN COMMANDMENTS.''

''HALLEJUH LORDY! PRAISE GOD FOR VALUES!!!''

“There were families with nothing. I met a family with three daughters and two sons. One of their sons, Mustafa who was 16 years old, was killed by American snipers. Then their house was burned. They had nothing to eat. Just rice and cold water-dirty water…they put the rice in the dirty water, let it sit for one or two hours, then they ate the rice. Fatma, the 17 year-old daughter, said she was praying for God to take her soul because she couldn’t bear the horrors anymore.”

The families’ 12 year old boy told Suthir he used to want to be a doctor or a journalist. She paused then added, “He said that now he has no more dreams. He could no longer even sleep.”...

...She said not one mosque, house or school was undamaged, and said the situation was so desperate for the few families left in the city that people were literally starving to death, surviving as the aforementioned family was.

Rather than burying full bodies, residents of Fallujah are burying legs and arms, and sometimes just skeletons as dogs had eaten the rest of the body.

She said that even the schools in Fallujah had been bombed. Suthir also reported that the oldest teacher in Fallujah, a 90 year-old man, while praying in a mosque was shot in the head by a US sniper.

These places, and their furnishings, represent the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. Their salient characteristic was their futurelessness, and that future is now here...

...The people who built this stuff came out of the world's ... most irresponsible society. They were childlike in their utter disregard of the future. Your generation is now being asked to lay down your lives in the deserts of the Middle East to keep that racket going. Nothing will really avail to keep this way of life going.

Bush appeared distracted, and glanced repeatedly at his watch. When he stopped to gaze at the river, where secret service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said: "Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there." Bush replied: "A submarine could take this place out."

I'm betting that they'll never run out of bombers and Jihadis, and we'll never run out of GIs from rust-belt ghost towns. I think the party will just keep going, and going, and going -- killing and killing and killing, like the Energizer bunny on PCP....

....When we do leave, get set for something big and nasty and religious, like your least-favorite relative. Right now we're being like assistant coach for the Jihad, killing off all the Islamic guerrillas who are too dumb or too brave (too brave is a very bad thing for a guerrilla). The guerrillas we killed in Falluja were too brave. The smart ones left. So we're weeding out the insurgents, making sure their best and brightest survive.

Four years from now these super-Jihadis will have risen to the top, and when we leave they're going to grab power and start sliding toward the Mediterranean like a giant slug.

By that time, this war will have cost us so many trillions, and I do mean trillions, that we're going to have trouble maintaining the infrastructure in Ohio, never mind Iraq. Whoever takes office in 2008 won't have the option of putting more money down the Iraq toilet. We'll be lucky to afford camera crews to video the Jihad, let alone stopping it. At least it'll make good TV.

IMUS: They're (Palestinians) eating dirt and that fat pig wife (Suha Arafat) of his is living in Paris. ROSENBERG: They're all brainwashed, though. That's what it is. And they're stupid to begin with, but they're brainwashed now. Stinking animals. They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now. McGUIRK: You can just imagine standing there. ROSENBERG: Oh, the stench. IMUS: Well, the problem is that we have Andrea (Mitchell, NBC foreign correspondent) there. We don't want anything to happen to her. ROSENBERG: Oh, she's got to get out. Just warn Andrea, get out, and then drop the bomb, kill everybody. McGUIRK: It's like the worst Woodstock. ROSENBERG: Look at this. Look at these animals. Animals!

   

The Texas native spent the next nine months swimming, weightlifting, mountain biking and getting used to running with an artificial leg. He passed the necessary physical fitness tests given by the Army medical board and was declared fit for duty. Next year, Rozelle is slated to deploy to Iraq as the commander of a 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment headquarters troop.