Bloggerheads » 2005 » June

Iran? Next? Noooooo…..

Tim Ireland — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:11:58 +0000

Here’s a lovely trigger. Let’s all blow our brains out…

FUXNews – Ex-Hostages: Iran’s President Was Captor: Five Americans who were held for more than a year in the hostage crisis believe that (Iran’s President-elect) Ahmadinejad was one of their captors.

We tolerated it… we paid for it

Tim Ireland — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:55:04 +0000

I tell you, it’s a crying shame that the courts; “(have) no power to make any decision or interfere in any way in which taxes are spent”… because I’m a taxpayer and I’m fucking *ropeable* that my government spent 175k on training soldiers involved in the Uzbekistan massacre and we *still* don’t know how many ~~protestors~~ terrorists they potted.

Damn it, I want to know where my money goes and if it’s being spent efficiently!

Guardian – UK trained Uzbek troops weeks before massacre

The official figures, prompted by a question from Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, Michael Moore.

Take another look at Bush’s crew chumming up with Karimov.

Perhaps Craig can find us a picture of Jack Straw massaging baby oil into his back.

UPDATE – Ooh, look! We even provided essential military equipment.

Fear what is foreign, love what is new (and good for you, too)

Tim Ireland — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:38:53 +0000

Europhobia – Blair government – yet more bullshit scaremongering: Bunch of opportunistic bastards. This is precisely the sort of thing which leads to increased racial tension and suspicion. It’s irresponsible and cynical, designed merely to build support for a stupid and ill-considered policy in the face of condemnatory expert opinion – despite the fact that the policy in question will do precisely tit all to prevent the perceived problem.

I was watching a series of WW2 propaganda films last night (directed by such luminaries as Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones) and one of them dealt with the danger of rumours in a time of war. All of the sins committed by the dopey soldiers in this cartoon have been committed time and again by our ‘leaders’ in this ‘war’ on terror.

Or is it war on foreigners? Hang on, maybe it’s a war against protestors?

Hell, they keep changing Teh Danger so much, I get confused.

Look behind you! Bear!

Hah-ha! I scared you.

But seriously, bears would be less of a problem if we had an integrated and co-ordinated system of identification that…

The exclusion zone – a loophole

Tim Ireland — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:06:49 +0000

Will Brian Haw be the only person who is allowed to demonstrate in Parliament Square without prior permission?

Wahhh! You’re making me look bad in front of Osama!

Tim Ireland — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:30:31 +0000

Please pardon the link-dump. I have to see a little man about a red-and-yellow car…

Bush evokes 9/11 to bolster Iraq war
Bush Criticized Over Speech About Iraq War
President Bush’s Speech About Iraq
Deception, Denial, and Demagoguery: Bush Speech Sets A Record
Bush’s No-News Iraq Speech

Think Progress also has a number of posts. Worth a browse.

Fake applause; speech numbers: ABC’s Terry Moran just reported that the only time Bush got applause was in the middle of his speech when a White House advance team member started clapping all on their own in order to cajole the soldiers into clapping, which they dutifully did. So even the applause was fake.

Here’s a link to the transcript followed by many comments from the reality-based community, here’s a link to a video followed by many comments from the Kool-Aid brigade and here’s both sides slugging it out on Fark .

Harry’s Place, Harry’s rules, Harry’s values

Tim Ireland — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:22:49 +0000

Harry is having a rough old time. He decided yesterday to propose a new regime of registration and banination, mainly because (in my view) he and his chums are having a hard time defending the indefensible.

Now, there’s nowt wrong with the concept of comment registration (used here to keep spam, trolls, anonymous abuse and straw-men at bay) but Harry’s justifications deserve a closer look.

First, take a look at the exchange that triggered Harry’s decision (all you need to read is the post and the first two comments, really).

Look at the shrill accusations cast toward anyone wanting to talk a little common sense. This pattern continues in Harry’s post on the proposed policy.

Yes, Hugo Chavez is my hero. And, as an opponent of the war on Iraq, it’s a given that I want to have Saddam Hussein’s babies. BTW, I had that nice George Galloway over by the house last week. We split a barrel of oil and made our plans for raising funds for a variety of terrorist groups. But not before I expressed my support for social justice by having unprotected anal sex with the pickled corpse of Joseph Stalin.

This is a common enough technique. You defend your extreme views by projecting a polar extreme on anyone who criticises them. These recent comments by Karl Rove are a prime example.

So, let’s get to the justifications. What are they? Well, Harry keeps talking about “reasonable level of debate”, and what not:

Harry: “I’d like to create a space for debate among people who are interested in lively discussion not slanging matches.”

Hmmm, if you’ll pardon a small but necessary detour…

I don’t know about you, but when an issue I take an interest in crops up, I usually comment on it on my own blog, then keep an eye on comments, Trackbacks, Technorati and tracking stats to see who else is talking about it. I might even pop over to other places where the issue is being discussed and have a word or two there as well.

And that’s just what Robin from Perfect has done.

The response from Harry (Mr Reasonable Level of Debate) has been to:

1) Accuse Robin of cyberstalking
2) Accuse Robin of trackback spamming (a quick look here will – for now – show 3 trackbacks from a single post at the Observer weblog within the space of 7 minutes – which suggests to me that the fault lies with Harry’s back-end accepting multiple pings following each update/correction from posts that reference his site)
3) Accuse Robin of being a coward
4) Mock Robin for not receiving enough comments himself

That was pretty much the limit for me. I spoke up.

My reward was to be called a Tory glory-hound.

Now, is it just me, or does this walk, talk, and smell like personal abuse? Am I wrong to point out that several people highlighting what’s false about Harry’s claims that he desires open and civil debate have been rewarded by Harry throwing mud in their direction?

Over at the aforementioned Observer post, d-squared (who has been banned from Harry’s at least once on the grounds of undertaking “a personal attack”) had this to say, and pretty much nails it in my view:

But somehow, I’ve been banned on four separate occasions, whereas people who post nothing but abuse, SWP talking points or, to be frank, outright Islam-hatred, don’t appear to ever have been banned at all. As far as I can tell, the power of the ban has been used nearly exclusively at Harry’s Place to get rid of people who were dangerously close to winning arguments against the hosts (cf: the “International Law Wars”), while leaving enough morons present to allow the impression to remain that Harry, Marcus and the “Decent Left” were taking on all comers and emerging triumphant. That’s the exact policy of Charles Whatshisface at Little Green Footballs, who also allows outright hate speech to remain while deleting civil disagreement with the prevailing rather extremist line. It’s why I coined the nickname “Little Green Soccer Balls” for your blog, and why it stuck.

Agreed. Very fitting…

Little Green Soccer Balls

Harry doesn’t want to protect and maintain an open and honest debate. He wants to shape something that *appears* to be an open and honest debate into a validation/confirmation of his own personal views.

Hey, it’s his blog. He can do what he likes on it, and that’s his right.

But if he’s going to use his blog to create a false impression for the unwitting casual reader, it’s my right – and yours – to call him on it.

The very best intelligence

Tim Ireland — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 23:06:41 +0000

NBC – Bogus analysis led to terror alert in Dec 2003: CIA analysts mistakenly thought they’d discovered a mother lode of secret al-Qaida messages. They thought they had found secret messages on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language television news channel, hidden in the moving text at the bottom of the screen, known as the “crawl,” where news headlines are summarized.

This just in… David Icke has been hired by the Bush administration to interpret possible ‘crawl code’ and the eyebrow fluctuations of light-entertainment presenters.

Wow! Cake and ice-cream!

Tim Ireland — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 22:14:39 +0000

Vote? What vote? Oh, you needn’t worry about these silly little details.

Look, kids! Fireworks!

No, seriously. We just happened to schedule this when there was a ruddy great show on in Portsmouth Harbour. What are the odds, eh?

Anyway, never mind all that. There’s plenty to argue about down by the shore. We even hired some chap who looks just like Robert Kilroy Silk to play Nelson. Surely you’d all rather chat about that…?

UPDATE – BBC – MPs narrowly back ID cards plan: Ministers have won a Commons vote over their controversial ID cards plan but their majority was cut from 67 to 31.

PS – How about that? Up really *is* down.

Big and hairy, big and scary

Tim Ireland — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:28:10 +0000

King Kong – the trailer!

While you’re in a ‘big and hairy’ mood, Anna Nolan (you may remember her from BB1) has been doing a series of (ahem) interesting documentaries for BBC3 including this one on furries (it’s 40Mb; wide-pipers only). You can read more about furries here, but do watch your step after that.

Finally, my mouse hovers, my mind considers… Google Video Viewer.

Bloggerheads 5th most-linked UK weblog

Tim Ireland — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:06:36 +0000

Again. Not bad, considering I had to almost double the number of inbound links just to maintain that position. Now all I have to do is earn it all over again.

Something’s cooking…