This is pretty cool. Apparently, several countries, most notably Mexico and Australia, have begun replacing their paper money with plastic bills. The article also provides a link to a photo of the new Mexican 20-peso bill.

Roger Franklin from Australia’s The Age says America is making war “on a butcher’s Baghdad, on terror, and on cultists who worship not Allah but death itself.” I like that. Good description.

Meanwhile, some stupid liberal writing for The Age thinks people who criticize him are censoring him; thinks a targeted bombing campaign that has killed a remarkably small number of civilians is the same thing as “unrestrained slaughter”; and thinks that the U.N.’s disarmament of Iraq was — get this — an unrestrained success! “When the job,” meaning disarmament, “was done, (Bush) was ready to go to war against a defenceless nation.” The job was done??? A defenceless nation??? Wow, you know what I would say if I could meet this guy? I think it would be something along the lines of, “You are an arrogant, uneducated ass.”

He also offers this lovely sentiment: “My guess is that what the average anti-war protester wants is for every Australian gun to jam in the dust; every tank grind to a halt with sand in its gears; every aeroplane to be grounded by a great haboob, so that they can neither kill nor be killed.” Neither kill nor be killed??? Yeah, because surely if the Australians or other Allies were rendered defenseless, they wouldn’t be killed by Iraqis. Of course not.

Ass.

Here’s what the front pages of three Australian newspapers front pages looked like this morning:

For a larger JPEG of the Sydney Morning Herald front page, click here.
For a really detailed view — a PDF file — of the Herald, click here.
To view today’s New York Times front page, click here.

Among other things, the dreadful terror bombing in Bali may wind up having a devastating effect on Australia’s football (soccer) leagues, whose players frequent the popular nightclubs that were bombed. A number of players are missing. Here’s an article about that. For the very latest news from Australia, click here.

And, uh, Happy Winter to our Australian friends. :)