Hard News: They faked those moon landings too, you know
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radiological weapons
Not wanting to defend the yanks or anything, but I dispute that DU is in any way a "radiological weapon".
Generally, an effective weapon will cause death or immediate, acute injury such that your enemy is removed from the battlefield and becomes a casualty requiring treatment. Something that causes an ill defined set of symptoms that might only manifest when the war is over isn't really a weapon. (even if you believe that DU causes those symptoms, as opposed to them being psychosomatic or caused by something else that was around the area - I have seen no explanation why uranium miners who are exposed to pretty much the same stuff not getting "Gulf War Syndrome").
The purpose of a U235 projectile is basically to smash into an object you dislike and f..k it and any occupants up. They use U235 because it's heavy, not for any radiation effect. It's also in the wingtip (?) weights on aircraft and was formerly used in the keels of racing yachts before the IYRU banned it on grounds of cost.
Incidentally, NZ has a Phalanx gun for use on the Anzac frigates. I wonder whether this has the lead bullet option rather than DU and whether this has always been the case. (If I was onboard and an Exocet was headed for me I'd rather have the DU and take my chances with the "radiation").
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*sigh* Yeah, whatever gets you through the night and doesn't require AA batteries.
Zzzing! And it's only Monday!
Personally, I'd rather leave the casual use of that kind of language to people who have some first hand experience of the real deal. Otherwise, it's all too much like being trapped in an episode of The Young Ones.
Yeah, although in cases like these it's nice to have a word to distinguish certain people from actual conservatives (and I'm so over "neocon", I already hate myself for using it this morning). I do like "winger".
Anyway, found this interview with Melanie Phillips from The Guardian last year. She seems so stressed-out and paranoid I sort of feel sorry for her.
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3410,
I find it hard to get too worked up about this. I mean, what's the bombshell? That right-wing pundits are often completely amoral liars? That "respectable" media organisations no longer have much regard for the truth?
FOX NEWS still run that "WMDs really are in Iraq" meme almost every day, along with all manner of demonstrably untrue stuff, and even CNN, ABC, etc. are not immune. Public political discourse slipped into the psychotic years ago.
I reckon our time would be better spent tackling the homegrown right-wing insanity from the Deborah Hill Coddington types.
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WiFi: I was going to post some techy stuff about ERP and so forth, but this caught my eye and expressed it so much better:
The writer is probably aware of the paper, "Information can impair your health," IEEE Trans Ireproduc. Theory, Vol 44, No. 7 pp. 1576-1578, 2006, by Schmoozer and Schockemuller in which it is shown that Tom Cruise movies modulated onto the carrier frequency showed a marked deterioration of human tissue, much more so than say Jurassic Park. This has been attributed to the "long term memory" processes of Tom Cruise movies where scenes are correlated, due to Tom's inferior acting, with Hurst parameter, H>0.5 , and efficient modeling using Levy-stable processes.I personally feel that too much exposure to system architecture diagrams being transmitted around the office by WiFi can cause a non-specific feeling of malaise, but that might just be me..
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or calling liberals "communists". my real question is how come these people believe this dave gaubatz guy, but refused to believe another former weapons inspector called scott ritter?
They didn't so much refuse to believe Ritter as try and burn him to the ground. Sean Hannity actually accused him of being in the pay of the Iraqi government, during an interview.
Funny thing is, Ritter had far, far more authority than Gaubatz, who basically spent a few months talking to the locals in 2003.
Ritter was in Iraq as a weapons inspector for seven years, and before that had been a senior military analyst for the Marine Corps and then, in Desert Storm, for Gen. Schwarzkopf.
He was a Republican and even a Fox News commentator. But then he spoke out of turn and the Bush cultists descended on him.
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Nice one Rich!
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They didn't so much refuse to believe Ritter as try and burn him to the ground.
same thing with the ever-so-slightly more nutty richard butler. although it was more his own stupidity that resulted in his credibility demise.
doesn't this whole theory smack of slightly freaked out chickenhawks looking to lay the blame for their mad war at the feet of someone, anyone, else?
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I reckon our time would be better spent tackling the homegrown right-wing insanity from the Deborah Hill Coddington types.
Damn straight! Did anyone Catherine Rich talking about early leaving exemptions (ELEs) the other night.
Reporter: The amount of [ELEs] have increased 62%...
Rich: The amount of [ELEs] have doubled...Can someone do a report on the number of politicians who misquote statistics? Actually, never mind, it'd be far to big a document
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::Sigh:: please excuse the terrible typing above.
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WH,
I always thought one of the most dangerous aspects of the new US right was its tendency to corrupt political discourse by filling it with misinformation and character assassination.
A society cannot work effectively without mutually accepted sources of reliable information. Once you let your ideological preferences take over you've lost your anchor to reality.
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"He subsequently learned from Iraqi, CIA and British intelligence that the WMD buried in the four sites were excavated by Iraqis and Syrians, with help from the Russians, and moved to Syria..."
And they somehow managed all this with the US army occupying the country and the US air force flying over it.
Invisbility fields?
We're through the looking glass here people@
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So, the Echo Chamber is, like, the modern Star Chamber?
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Anyway, found this interview with Melanie Phillips from The Guardian last year. She seems so stressed-out and paranoid I sort of feel sorry for her.
Yes, I've only had the blog up for four days and am already considering 'resting' her off the blogroll - though given the bitch pack mentality of the British commentariat (both left and right) when someone goes off the reservation, it's a miracle there aren't more paranoid, stressed-out wrecks out there. And, I never thought I'd say this but it's a shame Boris Johnson left The Spectator to focus on the day job -- not exactly the best occupant of the editor's chair over ir's 179 year history, but Matthew d'Ancona doesn't really get the difference between editing a magazine and his previous gig as opinion editor on the Daily Torygraph.
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You can toss the re-militarization of Japan into that list of yours too....an issue causing a great deal unrest here in Asia, far more so than Sino military expenditure or loopy old Kim.
Hum... Well at least Japan has a constitution and a functional democracy (both imposed under an American-lead occupation, in one of those delightful yet uncomfortable ironies history will keep dumping in your lap), which makes me a damn sight more comfortable with what's going down in Tokyo than anything in Pyongyang or Beijing. Still, it's a safe assumption I'd take a slightly different position if New Zealand has ever been invaded by Jaoan.
I'd be a lot more worried about North Korea (or Korea as a whole rather) AFTER the eventual reunification.
Then the funny business might start.
The Koreans have an interesting view of the world. Half inferiority complex, half we are the greatest race on earth. An interesting combination it makes. In fact it loosely sums up their neighbours as well. And ain't none of em' get along for shit.
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Meh, Korea will be a little like Bismarckian Germany. We will have a good 30-40 years before they start tapping the crazy stick after unification, with all the consolidation and development they will need to do.
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Yeah, whatever gets you through the night and doesn't require AA batteries
Relax Craig, I would have added smiley face if it had helped.
The Kiwiblog comments threads show that there is only a small amount of regular contributors for whom that comment is appropriate and offensive, and those people (I don't think I need to name them) are lunatics anyway.
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are lunatics
i don't think dads4justice is a lunatic.
he's a poet who needs to be outed. he should move to the big city, grow his hair, write some poetry and just chill the hell out.
small towns have a lot to answer for.
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Paul:
Point taken, but around April 25th my mind turns to the fact my father's 21st birthday was marked by the armed forced of the Third Reich trying to splatter his brain all over the sands of North Africa. (Around the same time, real Stalinists were racking up their own impressive death tolls.) I don't think functionally retarded commentators in blogs compare, or anyone needs to get down to their level to expose their wretched idiocy.
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i don't think dads4justice is a lunatic.
he's a poet who needs to be outed.Oh cool, the antiBaxter.
Had to happen. -
merc,
More like lRick The Peoples Poet in the Young Ones.
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my mind turns to the fact my father's 21st birthday was marked by the armed forced of the Third Reich trying to splatter his brain all over the sands of North Africa
Craig that's a pretty cheap shot. There are probably very few people here who don't have close relatives who weren't busy fighting in that war. You're preaching to the choir when it comes to the immorailty of war in the name of ideology.
Being called a fascist only stings because those morons can see that the link is at least partially true. The same can probably be said of the left. Stalin at least hung his hat on Marxism as a means to an end. The extremes of both left & right both have a tendency to totalitarianism.
My point (and I do have one) is that the argument is never about communists or fascists, it is about two sides espousing their ideas about how best to run the country. Those cowards who like to sink the argument in petty labels and don't have the intellectual wherewithall to argue their corner without them do their side a disservice. That takes us back to the origin of our little sub-plot:
Frankly, calling anything you don't believe a "conspiracy theory" is on a par with calling all your enemies "terrorists".
Like 3410 I was lamenting the intellectual laziness of using labels while avoiding any attempt to define them.
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he's a poet who needs to be outed
Are we doomed to repeat the Poetry purges of the past? Have you not seen the photos of cats sitting forlornly next to
mats, the magpies standing around with nothing to say, the Maori Jesus at home in bed???
Have you no pity, leave the poets alone!!!D4J seemed like a pretty normal ranter in the blogaquarium.But I am not familiar with his work and have no wish to be.
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no wish to be
very wise Eusaman, very wise
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pretty normal ranter in the blogaquarium
great last word there, by the way.
i was thinking that maybe the ranters are just frustrated somehow.
in a thread the other day d4j degraded into something like poetic psychobabble. it occurred to me that he just needed a chardonnay, a sit-down, and some milton.
of course, he's more likely to be a tui, a leaner-bar, and some hunt. but you get the picture.
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better a frustrated blogger, using the internet as an audience/pyschologist than an insane loon in a position of power
now if only Stalin or Nixon had blogs....
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