Friends don't let friends...

Australia's PM, honest John Howard, made a fascinating statement today:

Australian troops must stay in Iraq to maintain the country's friendship with the United States, Prime Minister John Howard says.

Mr Howard said he accepted responsibility and stood by the decision to commit troops to Iraq.

Speaking about Australia's alliance with the US, he said friendships were most important and tested when they came under pressure.

"And the loyalty and friends is more deeply appreciated in times of challenge, in times of difficulty," he said.

A real friend trys to stop their friends from doing stupid things. A real friend doesn't feel their friendship would be challened by disagreement. Real friends argue and fight, and stay friends because they have common history, share fundamental ideals and are bonded by real love and affection.

There's are terms for the sort of friendship Howard is talking about; 'fairweather friend' at best, 'lackey' at worst. You don't send people to kill and die in the name of friendship. John Howard is a pathetic, spineless little man.

Fucking laptop thieves suck ass!

My 15" G4 Powerbook (Serial Number W844204BRGV) was stolen today along with 2 laptops belonging to my friend and his wife. The bloke next door lost 5 laptops, 3 of which belonged to his clients apparently and had not been properly backed up. Amazingly they didn't steal my brand-new 24" iMac that was sitting right next to the powerbook. They did steal my brand new black iPod (Serial number 000A27001575D152) and matching Foof Pod bag.

It sucks but at least most of my data was backed up properly and it's not a huge drama to reinstall stuff on the new 17" MacBookPro that I now have in front of me. They were out of stock of iPods in NextByte but kindly stayed open late to install extra ram and get together the bits I needed at last minute notice and let me put it all on account. Wonderful people.

I'd alwasy meant to get a new laptop through work anyway but had been putting it off until next year as my Powerbook was quite adequate, especially as it had a new battery and hard disk installed just recently, but it sure feels nice to have this little beauty. Because it's a work machine, not my personal machine, I am installing everything from scratch on it. My iMac is my new plaything. Hopefully, if insurance pays for a new mac for me, I'll get another 15" for personal use too and my wife can have it. Her 12" G4 is getting pretty long in the tooth now. I have plenty of friends who's love an old 12" G4 powerbook.

The only data I have lost is the 2000 odd words I'd written up about my wedding and honeymoon, but I can easily rewrite that. Oh and a month or so of my old email account but that's mostly just lists and crap nowadays. Hooray for once I didn't lose any photos.

Anyway iSync is whirring away now, restoring my life. Tomorrow I am off to Canberra (by train - less CO₂) and we move into our new flat on Friday. It has an alarm.

Anna Politkovskaya shot dead

I just read in The Guardian that Anna Politkovskaya has been shot dead. I read several of her books and she struck me as an intensly capable woman, comitted to digging up the dirty truths in the otherwise fairly undocumented Chechnian wars. She was a crusader against military and political corruption and died a horrible, if predicatble death. She is a genuine modern martyr.

The story in Russian.