Pure Poison readers will appreciate the seriousness with which we conduct ourselves when attempting to highlight the shortcomings of some of the arguments in our media. We strive for a forthright, but respectful, tone in everything that we do, so I must suggest that you do not go and read this article at Groupthink by Cosmicjester. The hectoring tone of the article shouldn’t be encouraged so I repeat, don’t go and read this article.
Thank you, as you were.
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Matthew, I noticed that too earlier but didn’t say anything as your intention was clear enough. Though I guess it could be misquoted out of context by one’s, er, critics as saying that O..bama should be in the dock for the extra-judicial killing of O..sama. So, yes, best to clear it up.
“Those moderators certainly do work hard. It must be hell. But they do miss some goodies. Get this while it’s hot:
We all know there is only one solution to this madness.
The Final Solution.
Now where is the politician strong enough to take the necessary measures?
Diamond Dave of Sydney (Reply)
Sat 07 May 11 (02:39pm) “
Matthew, you should put that on the Cut & Paste Trophy thread. That’s exactly what it’s for.
That “Final Solution” comment really is so awful you’d hope it was some kind of hoaxer ‘punking’ Andy’s site. But likely not — Andy must be so proud. And of course the wonder of it is that it was let through at all!!
Jeremy, I think that’s The C&P Trophy Winner right there. Rupert must be so proud.
Yet another review has cleared the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), according to the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13300058
“Successive reviews into the University of East Anglia (UEA) climate e-mail hack cast no doubt on the basic picture of global warming, the government says.”
“The reviews, headed by Lord Oxburgh and Sir Muir Russell, found that the episode did raise questions about the conduct of climate science and about universities’ compliance with Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation.
But, they said, individual researchers had not tried to subvert the scientific process, and the fundamental picture of a planet warming under the impact of fossil-fuel burning was basically unchallenged.
The government agrees, saying: “we find no evidence to question the scientific basis of human influence on the climate”.”
I wonder what Delingpole, and others in the denial industry, will make of that?
The PM announces a bilateral agreement with the Malaysian PM, committing $300m of taxpayers funds in the process, and what does the ABC Online run with? Abbott frolicking int he surf with a GetUp refugee.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/
Can someone do a screenshot?
Same thing they always do when presented with an organisation’s research showing their claims to be false – claim it is all a conspiracy. Facts bounce off those guys like they’re teflon coated.
Ugh. Just, UGH.
800 of ours for 4000 of theirs
great swap for Malaysia – 800 of ours for 4000 of theirs:
” Ms Gillard and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said that they were close to signing a bilateral agreement which would see 800 people who tried to get to Australia by boat taken immediately to Malaysia instead.
In return, Australia will take 4000 genuine refugees from Malaysia over four years.”
Could this stop the boats? Maybe. All we know for sure is that we’re going to get 4000 extra refugees above our usual quote over the next four years. And if the boats keep coming…
Utterly, irredeemably repulsive. Does he realise he’s talking about actual human beings there?
Matthew @ 49: “Ow ow ow – the stupid, it hurts so much.”
Yeah it’s so pervasive and unremitting. I just wandered through the first few comments here (don’t do it, don’t hit that link!). Woeful . . . Enough!
Chaps …
In case anyone thought this was some bywater blog … that post has been replaced by:
I suspect that we did that.
And yes I took a screenshot. I always do.
Grist. Mill.
“That “Final Solution” comment really is so awful you’d hope it was some kind of hoaxer ‘punking’ Andy’s site. But likely not”
I don’t think he is, unless it’s somebody posting under somebody else’s handle – but I’m sure the moderators can check the email addresses. “Diamond Dave of Sydney” is a reguar over there.
I’ll copy it over to C&P, but I’m not sure it counts if it gets taken down …
WTF?!?!
We’d ALSO “never hear the end of it” if it was turkey killing syrians, or iran killing syrians, or egypt killing syrians, or russia killing syrians, or even (brace yourselves) if it was SYRIANS killing syrians. Just google it. Is 14,400 hits for “syria protesters” in the news category alone “hearing the end of it”?
The public reaction seems to have a bit to do with the perceived justice of the action. My recollection is that the destruction of that would-be reactor in syria a couple of years back didn’t generate much outrage. Anyone who bothered to dial it up on google maps would have noticed a ruddy great big perfectly cubic building in the middle of nowhere, in a valley, close to a water supply. It was a wee bit conspicuous, and it seemed pretty likely that israel was on the money (and kudos for getting it right). Syria’s almost-silence on the subject at the time helped their case too. But dumping cluster bombs on southern lebanon or white phosphorus on gaza … not so widely supported (although I supported cast lead as a strategy – it was an improvement on the air war they tried in lebanon. I believe I can even dig up Over There posts to document that)
I’m not sure why we’re not hearing the same level of public support for the outside world stepping into syria. I suspect that there’s a level of “slippery slope” awareness going on (i.e. how many of these things are we going to take on?) I also suspect that there’s an awareness of the west’s militaries starting to stretch thin (which is sad, really, but there it is). And no world leaders are suggesting any plans to barrack for anyway. It probably helps libya’s case that gaddafi is such a telegenic bad guy with a history of technicolor insanity, whereas the assads look like a bunch of CPAs (no offense to CPAs intended – you’re not all socialist despots).
But AB is implying a general media double-standard that simply doesn’t exist. He tried this same line of implication with the libyan case as well, then obama et al showed that he was wrong. If another coalition took on the syrian regime, I imagine he’d just pick another country and pose the same hypothetical (if israel were keeping, um, burmese refugees in camps on the thai border we’d never hear the end of it). And the droogs would cheer his insight once again.
What is a ‘moby’?
The first 800 asylum seekers coming in by boat go straight to Malaysia….. that will have the people smugglers worried – not.
It won’t take long for a work around. For instance, go to Malyasia, pay 800 people to sail to Australia by boat and claim asylum. They are flown home and you are back in business!
Moby = Cockney rhyming slang for sick.
It is a pity that govenments have to crow about their achievements. Imagine if America said nothing about killing Osama….
“What is a ‘moby’?”
An expression used to describe a sort of troll, who poses as somebody who agrees with the political leanings of the site, but who takes it to extremes. So a moby on AB’s site would be somebody who jumps on one of those sudanese-panic threads and starts spouting white-supremacy comments.
I have read that it’s called a moby because a certain diminutive DJ-turned-songwriter proposed that people do it in order to discredit Teh Rights. No idea if that’s true, but it’s what righties think.
I see. Thanks for that.
Israel is, for obvious reasons, generally held against higher standards than a tinpot dictatorship.
Syria’s rulers aren’t particularly concerned with what punters in, e.g., Australia are saying about them, they tend to care more about how they’re accommodated by the geopolitical realities.
Earlier this weekend I posted details of an Amnesty Intenational action aimed at trying to influence Syria’s leadership — it’s perhaps a long shot, but you never know, it’s worth a try.
Israel and her supporters everywhere do care desperately about what punters think, and do all they can to prevent Israel being held against those higher standards — necessarily, because Israel’s policies of occupation and expansion require this.
Bolt’s response to the Syria story he cited is consistent with that. He might have posted details of the AI action (“not necessarily endorsing, merely informing”), but instead fell to gratuitous propagandising. A year or so ago he participated in the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, a hearts-and-minds initiative that has evidently fulfilled its mission — at least in Southbank.
This can’t be true. Surely.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/05/07/2011-05-07_two_imams_removed_from_flight_to_north_carolina_after_pilot_refused_to_fly_with_.html
They were screened twice, then the pilot returned to the gate and they were screened again while TSA officers searched around their seats. Then the pilot just refused to take off. I wonder what that cost the airline?
This suggests that the pilot’s just a patsy, that the TSA made the decision and used the pilot as an excuse:
http://www.ajc.com/business/muslim-leaders-removed-from-938149.html
But that doesn’t mesh with the booted passengers’ recollection of subsequent negotiations:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gOInkvocxoaeYmZ2mt-D38mabQpA?docId=CNG.868a4b86837a386de3ae9d3945b7599c.01
The passengers seem to be pretty easy-going about it. CAIR says:
I’d be curious to hear the pilot’s side of this. I could see how he might be annoyed be being called back to the gate, or just rattled, not to mention the other passengers, and decided that enough was enough.
And this is just funny:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2011/05/04/2011-05-04_expresident_bush_feels_obama_undermining_his_staffs_role_in_osama_bin_laden_stri.html
Yeah. And bush’s people were so even-handed about clinton’s legacy too. Nah, sorry george. You get credit and blame for what you did. Not what you didn’t.
It is perhaps time to start wondering how the story of the bin laden attack evolved so strangely. Some have made an interesting comparison with the jessica lynch case. That was straight propaganda. And it doesn’t seem to have been the whitehouse doing the spinning – it was an eager press and the pentagon wanting the right sorts of stories.
So … what happened in this case? The whitehouse says it’s the “fog of war”. I think they’re covering. The original story was packed with hot-buttons – a desperate firefight, osama using a human shield, chucking his wife at the attackers, imminent peril everywhere. But it now seems that once they’d taken care of the one armed person early on, it was fairly quiet. Nobody fought back. Osama didn’t hide behind the missus.
I doubt that the soldiers (sailors?) themselves would have cooked up the story – they’ve got no particular reason to, they’re already The Man (and The Dog) and they’re surely smart enough to know they’ll get caught. The shriekers want to pin the “spin” on the whitehouse – but I have my doubts about that too. They had no obvious reason to try to spin it (they’d just got osama, for goodness’ sake) and no way to control the story anyway. I also get the impression that they were only hearing the story slightly ahead of the rest of us. After all, they were the ones who released the new details as they emerged. If they were spinning, and had control of the story, why would they do that?
I wonder if the pentagon just can’t help itself. That’s a big worry, if it’s true. It means another gulf of tonkin is only a matter of time. Not to mention another WMD fubar. It suggests a very serious cultural problem when simply telling the whitehouse what happened is seen as an opportunity to go all Tom Clancy. You’d think they’d learn.
I don’t think it’s the whitehouse’s task now to explain why the story was sexed-up. I think it’s the pentagon’s job. I hope somebody thinks to ask. Because this sort of thing doesn’t help the US’ credibility, particularly in the UK and europe. One day they’re going to want to ask the world to trust them again.
It was the cyber-dog with titanium teeth wot dunnit!
The Daily asserts that a military dog accompanying the Navy SEALS Team 6 on the mission to off Osama bin Laden was the one responsible for actually taking him out. Making the story even more interesting, this dog was reported to have extra scary titanium teeth.
Yes, according to The Daily, the dogs have “razor sharp teeth made from titanium, their body armor can withstand clouds of hot shrapnel, and they’ve been trained to wear oxygen masks for high-altitude skydives into enemy territory…A bite is like being stabbed four times at once with a bone crusher.”
Unfortunately, a crock of dog faeces.
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/55801-awesome-rumor-that-military-dogs-had-titanium-teeth-dispelled
MOC I wonder if the media effectively invented this by over enthusiastic interpretation and extrapolation of snippets of info (along with negligent fact checking). It has the feel of overly patriotic enthusiasts believing what they want to believe rather than what can be supported – cf WMD AGW etc
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