2004 ... bring it on
1 January 2004
Nick and friends have survived the great cultural wank of Christmas. Relaxing over a few drinks they contemplate the ongoing war in Iraq and its baleful effect on American democracy.
Don't give me Religion, Lordy, Lordy
1 February 2004
In which Nick tails a merchant banker to the Maroubra Seals Club and comes in contact with the mad world of the fundamentalist Christian group, Jews For Jesus.
A standout performance in the topless comp
1 March 2004
Going topless at the beach is a fine art. Our hero watches a young Amazon rupture the envelope with a performance that has the judges gasping.
Lying low with Renee's boys
1 April 2004
Nick gets a fun job tailing one of Renee Rivkin's "business associates" and wonders whether Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz aren't holed up somewhere with Renee's missing mates.
Marching to the drums of madness
1 May 2004
Good Christian boys and girls abusing Iraqi POWs ... John Howard's God Squad lashing out at secularism ... our hero ponders the religious right's march to madness.
The Nicholas Berg execution:
A working hypothesis and a resolution for the orange jumpsuit mystery
23 May 2004
Why was Nick Berg wearing a regulation-issue US prison jumpsuit when he was apparently executed on video by what are claimed to be al-Qaeda-linked terrorists? Something fishy there, but there may be a simple explanation.
Nick Berg: the missing month
1 June 2004
A lot of people would like to know what happened to Nicholas Berg after he walked out of Baghdad’s Fanar Hotel on 10 April. They say the 26 year-old American contractor was looking for a taxi when he walked off down the street and into history.
Nagging questions about Nicholas Berg's last days:
An open letter to Beth A. Payne, US Consul, Baghdad, Iraq
9 June 2004
Millions want to know the truth about the last days of the young American contractor murdered in Iraq. Was he seized a second time by US forces? The US Consul in Baghdad should tell us all she knows.
Is al-Zarqawi a false flag operative?
1 July 2004
If Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader credited with the beheading deaths of Nick Berg and Kim Sun-Il, did not exist it would be necessary for the United States to invent him. That may well be what the CIA has done.
New evidence and observations on the Berg case
18 July 2004
A close comparison of frames from the Berg video and pictures from Abu Ghraib prison reveals more evidence that the execution video was recorded in the notorious prison complex. Warning: this article contains disturbing images.
Our man in Kabul:
Torturing Afghanis with Fox News' celebrity mercenary
1 August 2004
Jonathan Keith Idema was one of Donald Rumsfeld's boys until he fell foul of the US State Department and the Afghan regime.
Handled by experts (blocked)
1 September 2004
The Carr government is pushing towards yet another massively expensive traffic-generating motorway for Sydney. Nick's been investigating how the RTA handles community opposition to its proposals.
By their Senate preferences shall ye know them
1 October 2004
The Labor Party and the Australian Democrats have shown their true colours by preferencing the right-wing 'Liberals for Forests' and the nutty religious fundamentalists of Family First before The Greens in the poll for federal Senate seats for NSW.
The Sydney Morning Herald and the dirty politics of the religious right
1 November 2004
No story about the 2004 Federal election more clearly illustrates the reactionary role played by the religious right than the Muslim-baiting of Ed Husic, Labor’s candidate for the seat of Greenway in Sydney’s west.
Bush lost the election
The biggest story never told
1 December 2004
There's now a huge mass of evidence of systematic fraud in the US presidential election – all of it favouring Bush – but the mainstream media won't touch the story.
New Year surprise:
Bush sponsors an Iranian government in Baghdad
28 December 2004
“So the inevitable outcome of the Neocons little exercise in setting up a pseudo-democratic pro-US regime in Iraq is that the surrogates of the ultra-conservative Iranian ayatollahs will end up as the government in Baghdad. I suppose if that happened they’d stand a chance of raising a Shi’ite Iraqi army that would fight, but what a humiliating outcome.”