"A bunch of young American, British and
Australian soldiers are going to spend a
lot of time manning sandbagged
checkpoints, being shot at and bombed by
locals who smiled and said hello
as they passed by the day before."

The McGuinness nomination
28 January 2003
Months ago, Nick accidentally came into possession of rightist columnist Paddy McGuinness's nomination for Officer of the Order of Australia. Now he's free to divulge the contents.
The enemy within
1 February 2003
The bush is burning and Nick gets hired by the Rural Fire Service to hunt for the arsonists responsible for so many of this season's bushfires.
Emperor Bush and the lifestyle wars
1 March 2003
In which Nick and Jo go on holidays and meet an American surfie who insists we can learn a lot about the US elite's war drive from the fall of the Roman empire.
What a difference a week makes
1 April 2003
At the beginning the spindoctors told us it would be a quick war to "liberate" Iraq. Soon it looked like a brutal war of conquest against people who didn't want to be "liberated" by the Anglo-US invasion force.
A windfall for the cultural looters
1 May 2003
Nick investigates the American Council for Cultural Policy, a new lobby group for the shady art dealers and their wealthy clients who are set to benefit mightily from the looted Iraqi cultural treasures.
Face down in the Kitty Litter
1 June 2003
Celebrity stockbroker Rene Rivkin is convicted for insider trading, details of Saddam Hussein's narrow escape from US smart bombs emerge, and the US occupation forces in Iraq get bogged down in a bottomless political mire.
The poppies of wrath
1 July 2003
Nick is musing on the nutty reactionary ideas of Australia's Governor-General designate when out of the blue the Taliban's files on his former business partner, Bruce Possum, now an evil international heroin dealer, land on his desk.
The murky depths
1 August 2003
The revelation that two of the September 11 hijackers boarded with an FBI "asset" reminds Nick of the many mysteries surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
The living dead
1 September 2003
One by one John Howard's most trusted henchmen are falling ... and Nick hears you should never mention Iraq to the PM, who lives in terror that George Bush is going to ask him for more Australian troops for Iraq. The Iraqis hate us because we've been bombing the shit out of them for 80 years.
A spin doctors' summit
1 October 2003
Nick gets an audio tape from an anonymous source. It was apparently recorded at a secret meeting of John Howard's media cheer squad. Paddy McGuinness, Paul Sheehan, Miranda Devine and Gerard Henderson were in attendence. On the agenda was the need to prepare the public for a decision to send more Australian troops to Iraq.
Thinking outside the square
1 November 2003
In which Nick, Joadja and Old Possum go walking in Royal National Park and come up with the only rational, equitable solution to the Israeli/Palestinian problem.
A likely story
1 December 2003
Was Willie Brigitte the al-Qaeda desperado the Australian media painted him to be? Was Melanie Brown just an innocent Aussie gal seduced by the dastardly terrorist? All might not be as it seems.