Twisted Democracy

Opposition expects to do badly in the elections, so withdraws, claiming fraud. And media swallows it. (via TPMCafe).

Iraq Irony

It is a better Iraq, just don't go there. The Hindu:

CAN THERE be a greater irony than that a country after being "liberated" amid such hype and supposedly on the road to democracy should be seen by its own "liberators" to have become so dangerous that they are forced to warn their citizens not to visit it?

Yet, this is what the British Government has done after a spate of kidnappings and killings of its nationals in Iraq. Short of imposing an outright ban on travel to Iraq, the Government has made plain that it does not want Britons to go there — with the unstated subtext that if they do they would be doing it at their own risk.

WMD, In Hindsight

More information surfaces on

...more evidence of how many questions the intelligence community had about pretty much all the evidence of Iraqi WMD during the lead-up to the war ... (also) the secret British memo, which came to light in the final days of the recent British election, which suggested that almost a year before the start of the war the US was shaping the available intelligence to make the case for war.

We knew that didn't we. Yet all inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic leave everyone involved unscathed.

From this post on Talking Points Memo. Read the whole post to find out, from someone who should know, one instance of how politicians from both sides of the aisle can sit together and bail each other out.

This from one of the linked items I found refreshingly honest:

But Thomas Patrick Carroll, a former officer in the Clandestine Service of the CIA, suggests in the conservative Front Page Magazine that those dwelling on the memo may be missing the forest for the trees.

It is simply inexcusable for opinion makers and public intellectuals (e.g., those who made such a fuss about the 'revelations' in the Downing Street memo) not to grasp the strategic imperatives behind what we are doing in Iraq and elsewhere. It's certainly okay to disagree with our strategy, but for supposedly sophisticated commentators to miss the entire point and continue raving about WMD and UN sanctions is simply beyond the pale.

They lied, so what!

Of the people, by the people ...

Democracy - government of the people, by the people, for the people. But in practice it doesn't quite work out that way. X company contributes to politician Y (say) or party Z. Y/Z wins. X demands his pound of flesh from Y/Z. After all, there really are no free lunches on this small planet. Unfortunately the flesh turns out to be of the people. So what! Read about it here as the credit card companies demand their dues from the politicians they bankrolled.

No, it did happen!

After a Libertarian Girl who is not a girl - which pales into comedy of course compared to this - comes a reporter who is not a reporter, working for a news organization that is not a news organization. At least not really. His job? Lobbing softball questions at White House news briefings "intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents." All this in 2004 - election year, though he was still at work till it all came out a week or so ago. Sounds improbable? It did happen! Read this piece on the topic at the New York Times.

And it also turns out he is not Jeff Gannon as the White House thought but James D Guckert. Or did the White House know better after all? All this after it turned out that other journalists were paid money to plug the administrations policies, as the article points out. Is anyone surprised?

The article raises at least one important point:

The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press. Conservatives, who supposedly deplore post-modernism, are now welcoming in a brave new world in which it's a given that there can be no empirical reality in news, only the reality you want to hear (or they want you to hear).

In fact, I would say it is not just the administration but also the right blogosphere which is involved in this effort. Sounds like a conspiracy theory - well it must be one that has occurred to many people.

Warning bells

I have this on Arthur Miller's passing away at my other blog. As I say there, some warning bells are sounded for America.

Girl turned mystery guy

Libertarian Man of Mystery - who used to be Libertarian Loser Guy earlier and Libertarian Girl even earlier - is going strong and getting out some great posts. This one, for instance, which explains the culling of the guilt-free genes from the Jewish gene pool thus making Jews overwhelmingly Liberal. And Mormons solid Republicans. Hilarious. As this reader got it while many others did not:

Speaking as an escaped Mormon, this post was absolutely hilarious. Keep it up.

Kyoto kicks off

As the Times of India notes. But,

"...but the country that is the world's biggest emitter has not joined yet, and that is regrettable," said Japan's top government spokesman, chief cabinet secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda.

Australia, the only other developed nation not to join, defended that decision, with environment minister Ian Campbell saying the country was nonetheless on track to cut emissions by 30%.

Secure at last

The American homeland has suddenly become secure after the elections it appears. At least from where I see it.

Searching for "threat level" on the Homeland Security section of the White House website yields around hundred results. The date on the last of them is 29 October 2004 - a few days before the election. It is the longest period in which 'threat level' was not mentioned since September 10, 2002. The advisory system was launched in March 2002.

(On the Department for Homeland Security's website it returns around 500 results only I couldn't navigate beyond the first page.)

The search results show announcements of threat level changes, further remarks by Ridge on the changes, then remarks by Bush, Cheney, and others, and press briefings by Mr Scott McClellan, Mr Ari Fleischer and so on. I'm guessing most of them would have appeared on tv.

Split by year the results are:

9 in 2002
26 in 2003
20 in 2004

Bush/Cheney mentioned "threat level" in radio talks/tv seven times - all in 2004.

So what happened after the election? Have the threats evaporated or have the security measures taken by the department and Bush administration made America totally safe?

Or can it be conjectured that since the elections are over, there is no need to keep the American people in constant fear of attacks.

Right and left blogospheres

Someone seems to be pointing to a polarizing effect of blogs. See this.

A test for bloggers

It's called the Instapundit Test and I came across it here which is a blog by Amit Varma. An excerpt:

He writes: "The links on Instapundit.com represent the most popular filter used in the Blogosphere. If you click regularly on Instapundit's links then a good test of how filters affect polarization is whether Instapundit causes you to read more or less diverse material."

I'm an Instapundit junkie, and there is no question that the most popular blog on the internet has certainly increased, by far, the diversity of my reading. QED.

'He' being James Miller and the quote from The Depolarizing Power of the Blogosphere. The discussion is about whether people visit only blogs which agree with their views or whether they choose a diversity of views by going to other kinds of blogs also.

I was a bit surprised by Amit's assertion that Instapundit increased the diversity of his reading. I too am a regular Instapundit reader - I go there normally after finishing Talking Points Memo and Slate. One could jump merrily through a majority of links in Instapundit's posts and not find a dissenting voice - unless the dissenting voice is being given a hard time by myriad other voices.

There is a collection of blog links on the sidebar - but who has the time after going through the blog itself and its various links and their follow-ups and so on, to explore them? It would be safe to bet that a majority of those are like-minded (read reddish) blogs anyway.

So, funnily, Instapundit seems to fail the Instapundit test. Could Cass Sunstein be right?

CNN spamming!

Instapundit accuses CNN (grrr... msm) of 'comment spam' here! Well, not exactly. He just links to a blogger who asks if CNN is 'comment spam'ing. The blogger has prejudged already ('This spam just showed up ...' ), but the title which is in the form of a question still allows wiggle-room. And what is the offending spam anyway? Here it is!

http://www.cnn.com

cnn

Posted by: cnn at February 7, 2005 02:48 PM

Of course, two readers tear apart the claim. No matter, since a central message of the Instapundit remains intact for such of his readers who do not delve deeper! And the message : MSM is bad (biased and desperate)!

MSM bias!

It is funny seeing the msm being constantly accused (here and here for starters) of being anti-Bush - and anti-Republican, anti-Coalition, anti-freedom etc by the unbiased community. The same msm which so willingly caved in to the Bushmen during the run-up to the Iraq war - refused to question the WMD claims, allowed 9/11 to be shamelessly worked for partisan reasons, provided a willing stage for the pro-War folks to peddle their arguments including 'any critic is not a patriot'. This same msm to be labeled as biased? Beats me!

More bias from the beeb - or is it?

Another allegation of news manipulation against the msm (the BBC in this case) by the community of unbiased. Why am I not surprised? Who cares if the BBC report claiming that more civilians died in military action than were killed by terrorists was based on data given them by the Iraqi health ministry itself, as the following excerpt from the BBC shows:

On Thursday, January 27 2005, the Iraqi ministry of health released to the BBC's Panorama programme statistics stating that for the six-month period from 1 July 2004 to 1 January 2005:

• 3,274 people in Iraq were killed and 12, 657 injured in conflict-related violence

• 2,041 of these deaths were the result of military action, in which 8,542 people were injured

• 1,233 deaths were the result of "terrorist" incidents

Reading those numbers, why would anyone one even think that the 2041 deaths as 'the result of military action' would include deaths caused by terrorists too, when there is a separate number for that?

Beats me!

Still on the same topic, this quote from the BBC report says it all I guess!

Iraqi health ministry figures for deaths in violence cannot differentiate between those killed by coalition forces and insurgents, officials say.