Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

[Cobol74]

Originally Posted by nomix

The BBC could be a wee bit less leftist, ...

Reflects the centre of political gravity of the country so to us it is fairly well balanced.

[nomix]

So does NRK in Norway (they, and the BBC, are almost perfectly in tune with me), but that doesn't change a leftist bias.

[Plissken]

An accurate reflection of reality cannot be a bias.

[nomix]

It's about how you present it. And what you present. One could paint a picture of Israel as a peace loving nation that does nothing wrong if you want to do that, simply by just presenting news about good efforts from said state, one could also do the oposite. Journalists are good at this game, I should know, I am a journalist.

[PaperBiro]

You got to feel sorry for our country's PM. He had to apologise for his scruffy handwriting as a result of a rugby injury.

[nomix]

Being blind on one eye is a big no-no if you're a pilot. Not if you're a PM.

[Twerp128]

Just found a good quote but don't really have a place to use it. It's a Buddhist saying apparently, "Western culture is a very major response to a very minimal set of problems."

[nomix]

I get that. Look at pants, terribly over engineered piece of kit. How did the scots fix the problem of leg clothing? The kilt! It's a much simpler design.

[Plissken]

Originally Posted by PaperBiro

You got to feel sorry for our country's PM. He had to apologise for his scruffy handwriting as a result of a rugby injury.

I think this is a seriously twatty thing to have a go at him for, and I say that as someone who doesn't like Brown. He is practically blind (I believe he is about 40% in his remaining eye) and takes the time to handwrite a letter of condolence and makes the understandable mistake of spelling "Janes" as "James".

I bet the Sun rang around every one of the bereaved families until they found one who would go along with their line.

[Dogbert]

Linx, so us non-UKers know what's going on?

[Plissken]

http://the-sun-lies.blogspot.com/200...or-reason.html

Dominated the news for a day or two.

Edit: In short, Gordon Brown has been quietly handwriting letters of condolence to the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. He sent one to the family of Jamie Janes, who was killed in October. He managed to get the name wrong, or has such bad handwriting due to him being blind in one eye and having a detached retina in the other. (The name "Janes" was misspelt "James"). When Brown found out, he rang the mother personally to apologise.

This isn't enough for the mother, or the Sun, which has leapt onto it like the scum sucking piece of shit rag that it is.

On Saturday, the Sun ran a leader attacking Gordon Brown for having the temerity to answer a question about The X Factor given to him during an interview on a Manchester radio station. According to a newspaper which that day led on, err, The X Factor, he should be dedicating his "every waking moment" to the fate of our forces out in Afghanistan. He ought to be, according to the leader writer, be "leading the way". This is without mentioning the completely fatuous argument the paper made by comparing the number of hits on Google when searching for "Gordon Brown and Afghanistan" and "Gordon Brown and Michael Jackson". Not that it'll be doing so again, considering Mr Murdoch is pondering "banning" Google.

Two days later, and the paper attacks Gordon Brown for err, dedicating his "every waking moment" to the fate of our forces out in Afghanistan. Not only did Brown "fail to bow" at the Cenotaph, quite clearly a concious snub to Our Boys, but he also sent a "bloody shameful" letter to Jacqui Janes, mother of Jamie Janes, killed on October the 5th in Afghanistan. Brown's crime was to write it in his almost illegible handwriting, as well as possibly mistaking their surname for James instead of Janes (it isn't clear whether Brown has written James instead of Janes; his n and m look very similar) and to make a number of spelling mistakes. According to Mrs Janes, who has naturally given the Sun an exclusive video interview, she was so angered by the letter she threw it across the room and burst into tears:

"I re-read it later. He said, 'I know words can offer little comfort'. When the words are written in such a hurry the letter is littered with more than 20 mistakes, they offer NO comfort.

"It was an insult to Jamie and all the good men and women who have died out there. How low a priority was my son that he could send me that disgraceful, hastily-scrawled insult of a letter?

"He finished by asking if there was any way he could help.

"One thing he can do is never, ever, send a letter out like that to another dead soldier's family. Type it or get someone to check it. And get the name right."


Of course, once she had finished chucking it across the room, she got on the phone to the Sun. In fact, there's nothing to suggest that the letter was hastily-scrawled: Brown's handwriting is simply that bad. As someone whose handwriting is also close to being illegible unless I write out every letter individually, which makes you look even more like a child, and who also has a surname which is very easily misspelled, which while annoying is hardly the end of the world, it's difficult not to have some sympathy for Brown. Clearly he wants the letter to have the personal touch, something that a word processed expression of condolences wouldn't have, and just what do you say to the parent of someone who's just lost their son in a war you sent him to fight without slipping into the obvious, the clichéd and the torturous? Yes, he should have perhaps been more careful with the spelling and especially with the names, but has it really come to the point where we think that personal letters written with the very best of intentions are acceptable material to attack the prime minister with?

The Sun it seems, having up until very recently having supported the prime minister, even if it didn't blow smoke up his backside like it did his predecessor, has decided to attack Brown over the very trivial things it was alarmed he was involving himself in. Not being able to disagree with him over policy on Afghanistan, on which he only fails to be as gung-ho as they are, they've decided that such perceived slights are "more evidence of Mr Brown's underlying disregard for the military". After all, nothing quite says you disregard the military like not acting like a hunchback in front of the Cenotaph, or err, writing a personal letter to the bereaved. This also ties in with, according to the Sun, his "half-hearted attitude to the war in Afghanistan". This half-hearted attitude involves his increasing the number of troops by 500, and yet another speech last Friday on just why we're in the country. His speech did have a contradiction at its heart, but the reason for this is that Brown is trying to please everyone: he has no intention of getting us out, but knows as public opinion turns against the war and against the corrupt Karzai government, he has to put down some "conditions" for their continued presence, even if they're false ones. If Brown is being half-hearted, then so too is President Obama, still undecided on whether to increase the US troop numbers by 40,000, as requested by the army. Seeing as we rely on the Americans, we're waiting on them as much as everyone else is.

Even by the Sun's complete lack of any standards, this must rank as one of the lowest attacks to be launched on a politician in recent times. Not only is it without any foundation whatsoever, but the newspaper seems to think it's perfectly acceptable to use an individual, in this instance a grieving mother, to attack someone for their own ends, someone as pointed above which up until a month ago they were giving their nominal support to. As Mr Eugenides also suggests, it says more about that person that her first instinct on getting the letter was to phone the Sun to complain about the handwriting than it does about the person who took the time to write it. Clearly, we've now gone beyond the point where Brown will be attacked by the Sun on the virtue of his actual policies, it's now "bucket of shit" time, where anything and everything that he does which they decide is wrong will be pointed out and complained about. Going by the Sun's past record when it comes to smearing Labour politicians, the election campaign coming up could be quite something.

[Dogbert]

I'm so glad Rupert Murdoch is trying to charge for all of his papers' news stories and ban Google from aggregating them. Hopefully papers like this and the New York Post will eventually just die.

The days of the print tabloid are numbered.

[nomix]

The Sun is just a piece of shit newspaper.

Gotta love the tabloid mentality though, reportedly, John Mayor called the editor of the Sun after Britian leaved the ERM, and asked if how he'd play it the following day.

Reportedly, the answer was; "it's like this Prime Minister. I've got a big bucket of shit on my desk, and tomorroh, I'm gonna pour all over yer head!".

So, gotta love the tabloid mentality. But the Sun is still a piece of shit newspaper.

[Cobol74]

Murdoch is bad for this country IMHO. Hell, he does not even like us, and became an American citizen for money. Nasty bugger.

[jetsetter]

Sniper who terrorized Washington area is executed
Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:39am EST

JARRATT, Virginia (Reuters) - John Allen Muhammad was executed on Tuesday for masterminding and carrying out with his teenage accomplice the 2002 sniper shootings that killed 10 people and terrified the Washington, D.C., region a year after the September 11 and the deadly anthrax attacks.

The 48-year-old Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, said Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor.

"Death was pronounced at 9:11 p.m. There were no complications. Mr. Muhammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement. He did not acknowledge us or make any statement whatsoever," Traylor told reporters.

"Things went very normally," Traylor added.

Three journalists who witnessed the execution said a clean-shaven Muhammad was stoic as he was strapped down and as the lethal injection was administered.

Muhammad was convicted of killing Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station near Manassas, Virginia, during a three-week shooting spree in October 2002 that spanned Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Paul Ebert, the Virginia prosecutor who won the death penalty conviction against Muhammad, was among the officials and family members of victims to witness the execution.

"He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims. I felt a sense of closure and I hope that they did too," Ebert told reporters.

As witnesses spoke to reporters gathered outside the correctional center, an ambulance carrying Muhammad's body to the medical examiner office in the state capital Richmond left through a gate behind them.

Muhammad's teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, also was convicted in a separate trial of another killing in Virginia and is serving a life sentence in prison.

Malvo was 17 at the time of the shootings.

There has been uncertainty over exactly how many of the victims were shot by Malvo and how many were killed by Muhammad, though courts have found they acted together in all of the sniper slayings.

The random shootings terrified many people in and around the U.S. capital a year after the hijacked airliner attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and the mailing of deadly anthrax-laced letters to politicians and media organizations.

The pair shot innocent people who were going about the ordinary tasks of daily life in places like gas stations, shopping mall parking lots and outside restaurants and schools.

Authorities said Muhammad and Malvo cut a special hole in the back of a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice and fired rifle shots from the trunk of the car.

The execution took place after Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine rejected Muhammad's request for clemency based on his claims of mental illness.

"I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury and then imposed and affirmed by the courts," Kaine said in a statement.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request by Muhammad's lawyers to halt his execution and also rejected their appeal.

Muhammad's current lawyers argued that his attorneys at trial were ineffective by allowing Muhammad to briefly represent himself at the start of his trial. They said he was too mentally impaired to act as his own lawyer.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domes...5AA0B620091111

A fitting end for a terrible person.

[nomix]

I'd much rather execute Murdoch..

Anyhow. Killing to show that murder is wrong is as silly as a very silly person falling over a donkey.

[FATMOUSE]

^Could be killing to discourage other would be killers, or killing to ensure that they cannot conceivably kill again.

[nomix]

There's nothing to say the death penalty has any effect what-so-ever in preventing killers from killing, and putting the guy in prison for the rest of his life would get the same effect.

Sure, it's nice to get society down on the level of the killer.

[Dogbert]

Originally Posted by nomix

I'd much rather execute Murdoch.

Murdoch's eventually going to kill himself, anyway, if he keeps making MySpace-esque business decisions.

[SpitfireMK461]

Originally Posted by nomix

I'd much rather execute Murdoch..

Anyhow. Killing to show that murder is wrong is as silly as a very silly person falling over a donkey.

He terrorized my area for three weeks, gunning random people down doing everyday things. My school ended up closing the blinds on all the windows during the ordeal. Muhammad showed no remorse in any way for what he did, nor any desire to right his wrongs. It was a fitting end for him that was too long coming.