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In principle, one should not give in to blackmail ...Very true. Of course, there's a "but" coming up:
... but this time I think we had to give in ...*sigh* No you didn't.
... even though this opens a dangerous path because it is obvious that both for political or criminal reasons, this path can make others want to take others hostage to make some money.Precisely.
"I always knew she was the most beautiful goat in the world and now it's been proven."I assume none of the goats fainted.
... I have a cruel and unusual proposal: everyone's tax returns should be published. If the teachers and dustmen of this country could see that certain multi-millionaires are paying less tax than they are, they'd be so angry that the government would surely be obliged to act. ...I look forward to George Monbiot taking a lead by publishing the details of his own finances.
... A poster "Let's turn our villages into socialist fairyland where crops are abundant!" calls for sprucing up streets, villages and working sites with ardent patriotism and love for native places.You couldn't make this stuff up.
I'm not sure that I understand the difference between the Resistance in the Second World War and the insurgents and rebels operating in Iraq today.*sigh*.
If anyone anywhere else in the UK wrote like this, it would be called "very bad spelling"; in Scotland, it's called "our proud heritage" or possibly "oor prood heeritage". The Scottish Parliament haven't produced that site as the result of some silly political compromise: they actually take it seriously, as do most of their constituents. Sad.I'm waiting to see whether the North East regional assembly comes into being in England, and whether they get a "Geordie language section".
Two candidates in Australia's October 9 federal election plan to go on hunger strike for the last three weeks of the campaign to protest against the country's trade in live sheep.As well as being stalked by a woman in a sheep costume, John Howard has also had to cope with coming under cheese bombardment.
Ralph Hahnheuser and Benno Lang, animal rights activists standing for upper house Senate seats in South Australia state, said they hoped their hunger strike would highlight 'failure to eat' syndrome, which they say kills thousands of sheep a year. ...
Howard has been stalked in recent days by a woman dressed as a sheep, also protesting against the live export trade. The woman has turned up at venues visited by Howard as he campaigns through Western Australia state.
"We believe that there was no explosion in the place where intelligence authorities had previously suspected that there were signs of an explosion," [South Korean minister] Lee said.Well that was a damp squib, after all that fuss. Move along now.
[North Korea said it demolished a mountain and] on Thursday, it allowed Britain's ambassador and other diplomats in Pyongyang to visit the site of the Sept. 9 explosion to verify its claims that it wasn't caused by a nuclear test.
Lee said the site that North Korea opened to foreign diplomats was about 60 miles from the North's Kim Hyong Jik County, the site South Korean officials had initially pinpointed as a site for the mushroom cloud.
the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that "about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away".And of course GIs have time travelling and seeing-through-buildings superpowers so they would have been able to stop the kidnapping if they wanted, right?
And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs.You see? They were armed with AK-47s instead of Kalashnikovs. This proves it! Not quite sure what it proves apart from Naomi Klein not realising that the AK-47 is a Kalashnikov product.
Spy 1: Yet more indiscriminate mass slaugher today by the resistance.Hopefully next week Naomi Klein will reveal how Elvis Presley was hired by Marilyn Monroe and the British royal family to shoot JFK from the grassy knoll.
Spy 2: Damn... if only there was some way to discredit the people setting off these bombs and killing all these people.
Spy 1: Yeah. Because at the moment they just get more popular with each bomb they explode and each time they kidnap and kill someone.
Spy 2: I've got it! How about we kidnap someone, but say the resistance people did it?
Spy 1: You mean... we pretend the resistance have done something which they've done lots of times before. Very cunning.
Spy 2: Yeah. That'll discredit 'em for sure.
Spy 1: Of course we'd have to make sure our kidnappers dress in Iraqi police uniforms and go out of their way to tell people they're working for Ayad Allawi. Otherwise it just won't look plausible.
etc...
...This is a preposterous smear campaign.Although foreign diplomats would be visiting the site "as early as Tuesday", no visit seems to be reported yet. Well well, who'd have imagined that?
There has been no such accident as explosion in the DPRK recently.
Probably, plot-breeders might tell such a sheer lie, taken aback by blastings at construction sites of hydro-power stations in the north of Korea.
The story about the explosion is nothing but a sheer fabrication intended to divert elsewhere the world public attention focused on the nuclear-related issue of south Korea for which they are now finding themselves in a dire fix.
... This means that, like me, you may also have noticed that - hamsters: are they too long? - every time you think you're getting somewhere with an article, or a broadcast - population of Wolverhampton may die tonight - the flow of information will either dwindle to a prostate-afflicted dribble and then stop, or be interrupted by - genital- piercing circus triumph - vaguely titillating garbage, or statements visibly spinning with perverse - how to spot and disable a Muslim - foreboding. ...I suppose she gets paid for this. Maybe I should apply for a part time job as a Guardian columnist - I make no claims to be an eloquent or engaging writer but their standards can't be very high. Kennedy again:
For God's sake: when you're being fed a schizoid mishmash of gibberish that wouldn't convince a herring, if you're sane/moral/alive, how can you simply reprint it ...Good question for the Guardian editors there.
"Many apologies, esteemed guest minister of perfidious imperial agressor, but visit to site regrettably not possible today."That or they take the visitors to a big building site but it's nowhere near the explosion. It's not as if the visitors will actually know where they are: they'll be driven along twisty roads into mountains but unless one of them has a GPS handset (or a sextant to take sun sightings) all they'll be able to say for certain is that they were in mountains somewhere north east of Pyongyang.
"Oh, that's a shame. Why?"
"Ah... workers are all tired and shagged out after big party to celebrate successful demolition of mountain. Have hangovers, cannot accept guests. Perhaps we go tomorrow."
<Next day...>
"Many apologies, most revered yet distrusted representative of shameless capitalist oppressors. Visit to site must be postponed."
"Oh what a surprise. Why?"
"Today there is problem with running water at building site, due to swift progress of the hydroelectric project. Out of the question to visit site when not possible to brew you up a nice fresh cuppa."
"I commend you on producing such a plausible reason."
"Thankyou, running-dog lackey. Perhaps we go tomorrow."
"Yes, perhaps."
<Next day...>
"Many apologies, oh respected two-faced foreign weasel, but..."
"Site visit postponed again?"
"Sadly yes. Due to unforseen circustances, in which a..."
"Let me guess. A rare species of flightless bird has suddenly established a breeding colony on the road to the site, thereby stopping all traffic?"
"Yes! How did you know?"
"Oh... just a hunch."
<etc.>
We hae producit a publication cried "Makkin Yer Voice Heard in the Scottish Pairlament" that tells ye aboot the different weys that you can let the Pairlament and the Memmers o the Scottish Pairlament (MSPs) ken whit ye think.Must have been written by Rab C Nesbitt.
[The young vanguard of the Ministry of People's Security] merrily danced to the tunes of such songs as "Let's Sing of Our Pride in Being under the Guidance of the General", "Pyongyang Is Best" and "Let's Support Our Supreme Commander with Arms"Those certainly sound like catchy and danceable tunes. I found a website a while ago with some North Korean music on it, I think the song was called something like "The Great Leader Crushes Imperialist Aggressors as the Proletariat Gather Another Record Harvest", and it was truly toe-curlingly awful. It sounded like a brassy military band was colliding with a lorryload of Wurlitzer organs. I'll see if I can find it again for you to marvel at. At least the Soviet Union had some genuinely good music.
A man who tried to shoot seven puppies was shot when one of the dogs put its paw on the revolver's trigger. ... [The surviving puppies] appeared to be in good health and were taken by Escambia County Animal Control, which planned to make them available for adoption.Heh. Well done that dog. I hope finds a good home and a suitable name, like "Trigger" or "Bullet".
The contest was also attended by officials from ministries and national institutions. It was held, divided into two groups, one for anglers selected in the provinces and the other for those from ministries and national institutions....which was nice.
About six minutes after the contest started at 8:30 a.m., an inspector of the Education Department of the Ministry of Culture Ri Ui Ryol was the first to catch fish. ...
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement. ... a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.I expect the spokesman went on: "If the tape of dogs barking did not work, the kindly old school janitor would pull a white sheet over his head and jump out going 'woooooooooooooooooh', causing people to run away with an exaggerated leg-spinning movement and their arms held straight out in front of them."
We shall cite a multitude of evidence which testifies that all “ancient” manuscripts are literary works of the 15th and 16th centuries and that there never was in reality an “ancient” Rome and Greece as modern historical science teaches us.Yeesh.
We have collected the conclusions of dozens of scholars from various countries, who say irrefutably that the most ancient monument of mankind, the pyramids of Egypt, were constructed in the period between the 10th and 13th centuries A.D...
It's not just the intellectual poltroons of the Internet who feign bravery by loudly saying what is patently stupid so that people a fraction dumber than them might mistake it for boldness and conviction.
... When was the last time a Western nation had a leader so obsessed with God and claiming God was on our side? If you answered Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, you're correct ... Both Bush and Hitler believe that they were chosen by God to lead their nations... Like Bush-ites, Hitler was fond of invoking the Ten Commandments as the foundation of Nazi Germany... But if you ever wondered where Bush got his idea for so-called "faith-based initiatives" you need only consult Hitler's January 30, 1939 speech to the Reichstag ...While Op-Ed News editor Rob Kall wrote on August 31st:
[violent protest] is bad. It is not the time nor place for violence. All the protests in NYC should be non-violent. Still, I understand the perpetrators feelings. [Republican convention] delegates are supporting the closest thing America's seen to Hitler since Adams passed the sedition acts. Michael Moore made a big splash at the Republican Hitler-fest. ... And under [Laura Bush's] friendly texas smile she's a scorpion sleeping with the 21st century's Hitler."And on September 1st:
I thought I was going overboard, using the Nazi word too much. Then Zell Miller gave his talk and I realized that the Bush team acts like Nazis, they walk the path the Nazis walked, but Zell Miller, he talks like a nazi, like a goosestepping gestapo leader. He's the kind of guy who could send Jews and Muslims alike to gas chambers, or maybe they'd use laser or nuclear "star-wars" ovens of genocide this time around.
... After all, it costs money to train soldiers but politicians are 10 a penny and one less would be no loss. Who'd miss Bush or Blair? I'd be much more willing to believe them if they'd lay down their lives for their countries instead of other people's. I'd certainly be prepared to pay for the whisky, the revolver and the back garden.Simple!
Phrenology is a true science, which is there to benefit humanityChortle, snigger.
Some gay and lesbian campaigners in the US are understandably upset about invitations being given by the Republicans to a couple of people who allegedly equated gay people with Nazis to speak and perform at their Convention in New York:
Gospel singer and "ex-gay" Donnie McClurkin, the first speaker singled out for joint disapproval, told Pat Robinson's "700 Club" TV show that gay Americans are "trying to kill our children," ... Sheri Dew, the Mormon activist who spoke on Monday, reportedly told a magazine audience that those who fail to oppose same-sex marriage can be compared to those who failed to stand up against Hitler during his rise to power.Fair enough points: it is retarded to say such things. Better stop the likes of this guy coming to the protests, then. "Vote Republican" with a Nazi swastika?
"I mean, it's a bunch of bulls***. When you see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, it just confirms it," she added.Huh, right! Doesn't she know that John Kerry and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 are really all parts of the Vast Neoconservative Conspiracy, as revealed by Les Blough at Axis of
When asked if she would vote in the coming Presidential Elections in November, Janet said, "Do I vote? Yes, I do. Will I be voting for Bush? Hell, no!"
The drumbeat for targetting Saudi Arabia has been getting progressively louder in the U.S. corporate media in recent months and the fact that Moore's Hollywood-sanctioned Fahrenheit 9-11 sets up Saudi as our new enemy is not lost on us. All these Kerry-targets, added to his promise to put 40,000 more U.S. troops in the Middle East blah blah...Damn... is there nothing for which the Vast Neoconservative Conspiracy is not responsible?
The Home Office has warned that Britons who travel to Iraq on behalf of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr could face life imprisonment for treason (Report, August 12). But when Britain [sic] citizens in Northern Ireland took up arms against the British army in pursuit of a united Ireland, I do not recall them being threatened with life imprisonment for treason. It would seem that this harsh sanction is only for non-white citizens.Yes, that's right. When people in Northern Ireland took up arms against the British army (and against the police, and against random strangers and the oppressive imperialist fish & chip shop) in pursuit of a united Ireland (or trying to prevent a united Ireland) they weren't charged with treason. But I do recall people being charged with murder, arson, attempted murder and the like. And they were thrown into jail, often for life, until we rather bafflingly decided to let them off scot free recently. As for treason charges being brought "only for non-white citizens": that rather depends on the colour of citizens who decide to go and fight for Moqtada al-Sadr.
One of Australia's largest agricultural shows has been engulfed in scandal after four people were disqualified for "udder-tampering".In other cow-related news, the menace they pose to air quality is finally being addressed.
[Thankyou for getting in touch, sorry for taking a while to get back, sheer volume of correspondence etc.]Well, yes. Choosing not to interview him could have been justified too.
I do not disagree with your assertion that Mr Madsen has "strong and rather eccentric views", and that his journalism is both fiercely anti-Bush and polemical in style. We described him as an "opponent of the war", but I think a stronger description could have been justified.
However, Mr Madsen's theory was not the central feature of the report. On the contrary, Matthew openly described it on air as a "conspiratorial titbit... with little in the way of hard fact (to support it)". It is not a new theory, but - as he made clear - is illustrative of the type of unsubstatiated allegation that flies around the internet.It's a conspiratorial titbit with little supporting fact, an unsubstatiated allegation which is neither new nor central to the report. So why include it at all, and even give it about 2 minutes of air time?
The key to Matthew's report was that such amateur musings had for the first time been supported by a senior US military figure, namely Brigadier General Janis Karpinksi. The general's encounter with an interrogator claiming to be from Israel was of news value. You may feel "she would say that, wouldn't she", and other listeners may well agree with you. Either way, I'm confident they would be able to make up their own minds on the matter.I've never suggested that people can't make up their own minds, and I have no argument with them interviewing Karpinski. I was just a tad alarmed that Wayne Madsen was thought to be a good choice of interviewee.
The report included a firm denial from an Israeli Government spokesman that any member of the Israeli establishment was operating within Iraq, and I'm satisfied that the broadcast was fair. To interpret it as "the BBC proves Mossad is torturing Iraqis" would be wildly inaccurate: we did not do so, nor even try to do so, and I do not believe that any reasonable listening back to the report would reach that conclusion.I absolutely agree that no reasonable listener could interpret the report as being proof of the Mossad torturing Iraqis. As I said, my concern was that the report would be perceived that way. I'm glad that, say, Al Jazeera would not listen to the report and run it under the headline "Israeli interrogator was at Abu Ghraib" despite the report specifically saying that Karpinski didn't meet the Israeli at Abu Ghraib. Such an interpretation would be wildly inaccurate.
[Concluding niceties etc...]
MemoShould that have been ignored because it was four years old? Raising an alert at that time would presumably have been a blatant diversion of attention from something, such as controversial plans to permit oil exploration in Alaska / votes in Florida / education reform / Kyoto treaty / international criminal court / healthcare reform (delete as appropriate).
From Sheikh Yerbooti Beybi (Henchman-in-chief). To Sheikh Usama Bin Laden. Date September 1997.
Subject Proposal for attack upon Great Satan.
Our scouts in the Den Of Snakes the "United States" have noticed a gaping vulnerability in their defences and have formulated a plan of attack.
Our Glorious Jihad Warriors could carry out simultaneous hijackings of commercial airliners flying from airports in the many cities close to one another in the North East of the country. Naturally the foolish yankee devils would expect the hijackers to negotiate. Instead, we will change the hijacking paradigm and boldly push the envelope of mass slaughter. Each aircraft will be under the control of our own Glorious Martyr Pilot and will be flown at maximum speed into a densely occupied building. Many thousands of our enemies will be killed: for example over 20,000 people work in each tower of the World Trade Centre in New York, and there are an abundance of such targets. For maximum effect each airliner should be on a long distance journey (transcontintal? transatlantic? to be determined) thereby carrying the maximum load of fuel.
Initial reconnaisance suggests 5 hijackers should be sufficient to overpower the crew and take control of each targeted aircraft.
etc etc...