Yesterday I read a CNN article in which a Whitehouse representative claimed that the EU had issues with George W. Bush’s “style”, implying that their disagreements were entirely over his distinctive manner, rather than his strategic decisions - upon which EU and US were presumably in complete agreement.

So it’s not the Blackhawk helicopters that are ruthlessly dismembering innocent Iraqi civilians that the EU has an issue with, rather the colour scheme inside the cockpit. Laura Bush prefers teal, whereas Cherie Blair is more fond of burgundy and cream.

However, the wind was taken out of my sails somewhat when CNN replaced the article with a newer version a couple of hours later which no longer contained the quote about GWB’s divisive “style”. Google has no cache of this page, and the Wayback Machine hasn’t cached cnn.com since July 2004.

I am not claiming some kind of vast conspiracy, but it is interesting to note how caches such as the Wayback Machine and Google are (with the exception of local browser caches) our best hedge against Orwellian history-rewriting on the web.

UPDATE: I found the original article on CNN to which I was referring by scouring my browser cache. The exact quote is:

"The Europeans don't like the president's style," said Richard Perle, a conservative with close ties to the Bush White House. "But they have carried this disapproval of the president's style to an extreme."

But not to the same extreme as the Bush Whitehouse has carried, say, their dislike of Saddam Hussein.

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More GWB news, this time the President of the USA admitting he’s tried Marijuana. If that’s the case, chalk up another few years of jail time if he is ever brought to justice. Oh, and add that to his death sentence for crimes against humanity. Whoops! “All the cool kids were doing it.”

If he’s lucky, he’ll have a cell near his Dad.

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Crikey.com.au has an article about the ins-and-outs of the Western Australian election. The article is notable not so much for its arrogant proselytizing to the WA opposition about how to run an election campaign as much as the completely unrelated tactical nuke it drops at the end:

And the main opposition parties in Canberra and the states should watch out for the impact of a new generation of moles – Green moles. The Greens seem to have an excellent network across the public sector. Their motivation is idealism, not power. Don’t dismiss. Similarly motivated moles got Stalin the atom bomb.

What the fuck? From a certain angle, that looks like a straw man attack (yes, I’m using my SlashVocab there):

• The Greens are idealistic.
• Stalin's moles were idealistic and got Salin the atom bomb.
• Therefore The Greens are associated with "getting the atom bomb".

That made me rather cross. In my opinion it wasn’t politically motivated, rather an example of poor journalism. Still, I think Christian Kerr can go fuck himself.