George Lucas has gone bonkers this time. For some time I have been a fan of star wars books, yes I know they are trashy, but at least you are guaranteed a happy ending; at least until recently. George Lucas has allowed some bloodthirsty writer to kill Chewbacca.

THATS RIGHT KILL CHEWBACCA!

In protest I am selling all my Star Wars books on E-bay. If you want to have a look at my range of star wars books just click here!

I feel this is racist or at least Xenophobic, it is the equivalent of killing the token black dude in horror films. But this ain?t just no human, it?s Chewbacca for crying out loud.

Jeremy from MelbourneLefty made a very ill conceived comment in his last post. “Swinging voters SUCK.”

I said in his comments: “Swinging voters SUCK

Lefty’s aren’t meant to use the term swing voter as an insult. Swing voters are willing to study the policy’s of all parties and vote for the one they most agree with. What is wrong with that?

If some people are stupid enough to change their vote over a few dollars that is a different issue.”

I seemed to have opened up a can of worms. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on this subject. This could turn into quite a heated debate. Do swing voters suck? Do they ruin elections? Should you respect your parents by voting for who they vote for?

Will anyone who has an opinion of this subject please place his or her thoughts in my comments.

Labor candidate Dr Ivan Molloy has been caught holding a gun allegedly supplied by Islamic terrorists. Pity for the Courier Mail that it happened 25 years ago.

I wonder if they’ve ever seen the footage of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.

People should remember that even Saddam Hussein was once an ally of the US, and that means Australia as well.

The people that Ivan Molloy had his photo taken with the “Moro Liberation Front” have recently been linked to Al-Qaeda. However, in the 1980′s Osama Bin Laden was also an ally of the United States, he was fighting against the USSR that had invaded Afghanistan.

Dr Molloy hasn’t been very helpful to his own cause, but I believe some of his comments have been taken out of context. Dr Molloy believes that a distinction should be drawn between guerrilla fighters and terrorists, he said: “It is no good to call them all terrorists. You have to look at the side they came from,” and “I don’t want to get caught in the trap of saying I am sympathetic but I would say I understand their causes,”

This is a bit like “one person?s terrorist is another persons freedom fighter”, just because someone is Muslim and they own a gun, does not make them a terrorist. If they use that gun to murder innocent civilians then they are a terrorist.

The Coalition has already demanded that the Labor Party disendorse Dr Molloy as a candidate for the seat of Fairfax after his wife, made a statement blaming the US for the Bali bombings. Dr Molloy has also made statements that the west is largely to blame for terrorism, which is pretty true if you know a bit about history (the other 9/11 anyone?)

You can expect John Howard to go nuts about this one over the next few days and probably weeks. Whether he gets any mileage out of it depends on the gullibility of the Australian electorate and the media.

I have just upgraded my blog to use Moveable Type. My effort to develop my own blogging software has been abandoned. I didn’t know anything about blogging when I started, and moveable type is a hell of a lot better than anything I could develop. (The lack of a programming team and a couple of hundred thousand dollars being the problem.)

ChrisFryer.com should now support trackback pings and any other kind of ping. My website now has two types of archives, individual and monthly.

This site could still be a bit buggy so please tell me if you find one. Unfortunately it was extremely hard to insert all the comments so they are all missing for now, but I will try to add them in manually.

Thanks to all the visitors to my blog and I’m sorry about the comment thing.

Howard has gone to far this time. The PM has told the Sunday Age that he plans to open 24 Technical Colleges in opposition to the Tafe system.

This is ridiculous for the following reason. A lot of money is going to go to waste setting up the infrastructure, which is already in place. Why Howard wants to set up a system competing with the TAFE system is beyond me. If there is a shortage of Technical colleges why doesn’t he just put more money into the Tafe system?

These Technical Colleges will also be federally controlled, Teachers who work at these new colleges will not be allowed to be members of the teaching union, and they will receive performance-based pay.

All this adds up to is a stupid disgusting waste. This is either a mistake or blatant stupidity on behalf of the Howard Government.

Has anyone been to Mike Jericho’s site lately? He’s found himself a bird, check this out. She loves George Bush and she wants to see a regime change in Iran. Her name is Aliyeh Tanner and she’s not a bad looker.

He has completely changed the look of his site, and changed the name, It’s now called “Jericho & Tanner”. I think it’s only a matter of time before the blogosphere sees another engagement and soon we will see another ring on another finger.

Update: I have just been informed that Mike is already married. So sadly there will not be an engagement as Mike is not a Fundamentalist Mormon.

Here’s a little something I found today in the “The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable”. I like to call it The Warcry of the Death Beast.

The End must justifie the means;
He only sins who I’ll intends;
Since therefore ’tis to combat Evil;
‘Tis lawful to employ the Devil.
-Matthew Prior

Update: I have just discovered that this is a snippet of a poem called “Hans Carvel” By Matthew Prior 1664-1721. Click Here to see the rest of it.

The Caucuses is a very interesting place but incredibly confusing so today I will focus on the former Republic of the USSR Georgia. One thing that might be confusing in the following is the use of the word “Republic”. Unfortunately in this part of the world they seem to apply this title very liberally. Update: my spell checker in Word seems to have had the gong so be forgiving.

Georgia is a confusing patchwork of cultures and religions. Each culture seems to want their own homeland. During Georgia’s split away from the Soviet Union, many Republics that were to be part of Georgia tried to go their own way.

South Ossetia:
The history of this place reads like a bad novel with a convoluted plot and hundreds of characters with similar names. In 1989 the “Republic of South Ossetia” tried to unify itself with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia. A day later the Georgian Government intervened and abolished South Ossetian autonomy. Georgia has never fully recognised South Ossetia, consiquently it is made up of several Georgian states.

In 1991, violent conflict broke out in South Ossetia and many villages were burnt to the ground. Over 100, 000 people were resettled in North Ossetia. Conveniently, large portions of North Ossetia had been left uninhabited, because of the forced resettlement of the Ingush population by Stalin in Soviet Times. Consequently, there is now an issue of who actually has the right to live in this area.

Soon after this Russian president Boris Yeltsin declared a cease fire between Georgian and North Ossetian forces, a combined peacekeeping force of Georgians, Ossetians and Russians was sent in. Recently the issues of tax free Russian goods and small tit for tat skirmishes has increased tensions. This situation escalated in mid July 2004 when the Russian Duma passed a resolution supporting South Ossetia.

Problems:
South Ossetia’s greatest source of currency is the levying of customs duties on freight travelling through the Roki Tunnel, which connects Russia with Georgia. They are also have problems with arm dealing and drug trafficking.

The “Republic of South Ossetia” is not one continuous piece, instead it is made up of a patchwork of Georgian and Ossetian towns. The Ossetian towns are controlled by the government of South Ossetia and Georgian towns are controlled by Georgia. This problem would be amusing if it wasn’t so serious, it is impossible to split this land, as giving it to one group or the other would require the mass deportation of thousands of people.

Abkhazia:
If you thought South Ossetia had problems, this place is even worse. In February1992, the Abkhazian parliament declared independence from Georgia. Georgia dispatched 3,000 troops to “restore order”. Of course this led to fighting between Georgian troops and Abkhazian nationalists. Eventually the Georgian troops managed to take control and shut down the Abkhazian parliament.

In September 1992, Abkhazian forces allied themselves with Confederation of the Mountain People of the Caucasus. This group is made up of a large number of paramillitary groups from different ethnic groups including Ossetians and Chechans. This loose alliance was enough to push the Georgian millitary out of Abkhazia. This was followed by a campaign of ethnic cleansing on both sides, it’s thought that up to 10,000 people have lost their lives and 300,000 have been forced to leave.

There has been a cease fire agreement since 1994 over seen by the UN. This cease fire is supported by a contingient of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) peacekeepers. Russia also seems to have a finger in this pie with Abkhazia expressing it’s wish to become part of the Russian Federation. Many Abkhazian residents also have Russian citizenship and do not require a visa to travel over the border into the Russian Federation.

Russia is unable to force Georgia to become part of the Russian Federation, so they seem to be supporting seperatist areas within Georgia. They are also selling tax free goods in South Ossetia which pisses off the Georgian government no end. If Russia keeps up it’s current treatment of Georgia this state will fall to pieces and it will be the rest of the world that has to pick them up.

The one terrorist caught after the Russian school siege said the terrorists leaders want to start a war across the Caucuses. This war I can only imagine is the full scale invasion of Georgia by Russia. I think this is incredibly unlikely, but terrorists really have a lot to gain if this does happen. Such an invasion would involve large amounts of weaponry underpaid Russian soldiers would make a lot of money selling these weapons at bargin basement prices.

If the rest of the world wants to stop terrorism in this region they need to support countries such as Georgia. It’s countries like these, when they fall apart, that become terrorist hot spots. The rest of the world also needs to wake up to Russian bullying and apply the maximum diplomatic pressure to get them to stop.

If you want to learn more about Georgia and the Caucuses go to Wikipedia.

The school siege in the Russian Republic of North Ossetia illuminates the growing conflict in a little known place called the Caucasus. The Caucuses is a region jammed between The Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Russia, Asia and the Middle East. It seems to combine populations from all these regions into a patchwork of cultures. Chuck into this one part Islamic terrorism, two parts nationalism, a pinch of Russian pride, some plastic explosives, a liberal sprinkling of AK-47’s and stir until it turns blood red.

Here is a map so you know where Chechnya is when you hear it on the news, as you can see the Caucasus are surrounded by countries such as Iran, Turkey and is but a stones throw away from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Closer.

Sill closer. You can see the capital of Chechnya, Groznyy just North of the Georgian border.

The history of some of these places is absolutely incredible. Georgia has declared independence more times than any other country I know of. In ancient times Georgia was repeatedly invaded by the Arabs, Mongols, Persians and Turks. Relatively recently Georgia has been invaded by the Russian Empire in 1801. The Russian Revolution of 1917 allowed Georgia to gain independence in 1918. Two years later they were re-invaded by the Red Army and Georgia was absorbed into the USSR. Georgia again declared independence, when the Soviet Union fell in 1991.

The Republic of Chechnya tried a similair thing in the 90s, the “National Congress of Chechen People” declared independence from a crumbling USSR in 1991. This eventually led to a series of wars, the most recent in 1999-2002, with the Russian Federal Military trying to take control. The conflict in Chechnya has unforunately over flowed into neighbouring Georgia. Russia has accused Georgia of harbouring Chechnyan guerrillas.

End of part 1, stay tuned for “Terrorism in the Caucasus”

References
History of Georgia
History_of_Chechnya
CIA – The World Factboo

Some RWDBs have gone absolutely nuts at Ken Parish, for suggesting that people will now be more likely to vote for Howard, now that terrorists have bombed the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Some of the reactions are quite amusing and melodramatic such as Tim Blair “Ken, can you please remove my link from your blogroll?” Really! As if Tim has never said anything controversial, who does he think he is, God? It’s up to Ken and Ken only to decide who he links to.

I happen to know that the first thing I said when I heard about this bombing is “Howard has won the election” and the second thing I said was ‘to win this election Latham needs an Australian to be kid-napped in Iraq”. Should I censor myself and try to delete this from my brain, impossible!

Most RWDBs and lefties with a bit of election experience probably thought “bloody Terrorists” and then ten seconds later “Howard will probably get back in now.” Yes you probably feel bad for thinking it, but it’s not bad, it’s a natural human reaction. The natural thing to do when you hear about a tragic event is to think, how will it affect me?

Ken was just sharing his thoughts with us; he did not mean to offend. He perhaps should have used slightly different words but the result is the same. RWDBs need to learn to take a deep breath and count to ten before posting a comment.