Welcome to No Right Turn. This is basically a collection of my favourite opinion pieces and articles from the net, neatly packaged so that I can share them with other people who think on the same wavelength as I do...I'm not sure how much of my own opinion and commentary will make it in here...it all depends how pissed off I'm feeling :-)

So firstly here is one of my favourite columnists - Russell Brown's Hard News, which I have been reading forever. Wednesday's installment was particularly good and featured Russell Brown on full attack. Personally, I preferred the old format where we got a weekly installment of Hard News every Friday on Scoop, but I can hardly criticise him for wanting a blog now can I :-) Russell Brown is also involved with the Mediawatch programme on Pointy Head Radio which is quite good and they have a website so you don't have to suffer the shame of admitting to having listened to National Radio.

I'm also a huge fan of Robert Fisk, who is the Middle East correspondent for The Independent in the UK. Over the last few years through all the troubles in the Middle East and Afghanistan he has shown an uncanny ability to slice through the lies and propaganda to reveal how the world really works and to portray events (such as 9/11) in their proper context. Here is a list of some of his recent articles.

Robert Fisk: The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest of America.
Robert Fisk: You wanted to believe him �Ebut it was like something out of Beckett.
Robert Fisk: Don't mention the war in Afghanistan.
Robert Fisk: The wartime deceptions: Saddam is Hitler and it's not about oil
Robert Fisk: The coffee table war.
Robert Fisk: Focus: Part one The human cost - 'Does Tony have any idea what the flies are like that feed off the dead?'
Robert Fisk: The Media Column: War journalists should not be cosying up to the military
Robert Fisk: This looming war isn't about chemical warheads or human rights: it's about oil
Robert Fisk: New crisis, old lessons
Robert Fisk: The double standards, dubious morality and duplicity of this fight against terror.

There is a complete archive of his past articles here. Its well worth a read.

Keeping with the international theme, reading the news these days is getting pretty depressing but It is heartening to see that not all of America's politicians have gone completely stir crazy - just most of them. Senator Robert Byrd made a speech to the Senate on Wednesday and managed to show a level of moral courage that otherwise seems to be severely lacking in Washington. Its good to see some dissent coming out of America but I suspect that it will be futile. Bush will have his war, thousands of Iraqi's...mostly civilians (and in fact mostly children) will die, and so will the international agreements and alliances (NATO, the UN) that have kept the world relatively safe for the last 50 years or so...but hey, at least we'll all have enough oil to take our SUVs to the supermarket.

It is also good to see people world wide taking to the streets in large numbers to protest against the upcoming war..however this didn' t make me feel any better about sleeping in yesterday and missing the protest in Christchurch...oh well, I'm sure it won't be the last. Perhaps if I had read this article - Why We Should March Tomorrow by John Pilger - I would have been propelled out of bed and onto the streets, alas I only saw it after the event.

Anyway in case after reading all this you are thoroughly depressed about the state of the world and the stupidity/ callousness of the American Government you can at least take heart in the fact that some enterprising soul has found a way to turn vegetables into musical instruments. Bye for now.