Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

A random egg-pelting attack on the leader of the Czech Social Democrats Jiri Paroubek during a rally for the EP elections that took place in a small town, has turned into a huge Facebook meme. Over 40 000 people have joined the usergroup "Eggs for Paroubek in every town". The attacks have continued during the rallies in other small-ish towns, where one or two protesters have thrown a few eggs, mostly missing the target. Today in Prague however, the meme has culminated on a rally, where the protesters, vastly outnumbering the present socialists, have flooded the whole leadership of the party with hundreds of eggs.
https://pic.armedcats.net/h/h0/h0nzik/2009/05/27/169184-original1-i27el.jpg

Here's an article in English:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hiFNuX3hpapKVmXVLNwb3n7IuWxQ
And here are lots of addtional photos and videos:
http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/169819...l-v-praze-na-paroubka-jich-letely-stovky.html

Now, it isn't the most dignified way of expressing one's political opinions, but it's pretty hillarious. It's amazing how can the Internet turn a small isolated incident into a huge egg-war.
 
vikiradTG2007 said:
North Korea is completely and utterly MAD in every single bad way there can be.[...]
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North Korea IMO is like a really bad Poker player bluffing ... just waiting for someone to call and then get laughed out of the room for talking big without having anything. Just ignore them and that state will (in some decades) deterioade by itself.
They are trying to blackmail the rest of the world into taking them seriously so they can get food and money from them (as just treating their people like shit and having them starve won?t work anymore as ransom). And we shouldn?t fall for that. What do you thing NK will do? Start a war? Don?t make me laugh, they know they would be history before they could even say 'unconditional surrender'.
 
efoolution said:
Just ignore them and that state will (in some decades) deterioade by itself.
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That's not really the best way this could end. It's deteriorating state has led to even crazier people coming to power over the past year or two. And plus, China has a vested stake in North Korea not collapsing, since that's where everyone would go.
 
Politico has an extraordinary report on Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, launching a furious broadside against the British press. Here are Gibbs' sneering and condescending remarks:

"I want to speak generally about some reports I've witnessed over the past few years in the British media," Gibbs said. "In some ways, I'm surprised it filtered down."

"Let's just say if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a write-up of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I'd might open up a British newspaper," he continued. "If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be the first pack of clips I'd pick up."

Gibbs' juvenile comments followed an article in The Daily Telegraph relating to the President's decision not to release new photos reportedly showing appalling prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib by a tiny minority of military personnel. The straightforward news piece, hotly disputed by the White House, is based upon an interview with Major General Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the inquiry into the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

For the record I firmly believe the President was right to refuse to release the photos in the face of pressure from the ACLU, which would only further inflame anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world. However I cannot recall an instance like this where the President's official spokesman has blasted the press of a key ally - in this case America's closest friend, Great Britain.

This kind of attack would normally be made against the likes of the North Korean or Iranian state media, but in the current climate of "engagement" with America's enemies the White House is far more likely to attack its own allies. Gibbs' remarks have echoes of a senior State Department official's anti-British statements to The Sunday Telegraph after the appalling handling of the Prime Minister's visit in March.

Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen. The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington. Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.

Robert Gibbs' completely unwarranted rant against the British press is an absolute disgrace, and the President should disown his views. An unreserved apology by Gibbs is also in order.

For all its talk of "raising America's standing" in the world after the Bush years, the Obama administration is doing a spectacularly bad job of reaching out to its allies. Unfortunately this is the new face of America's public diplomacy, which will only serve to alienate public opinion across the Atlantic. Congratulations Gibbs - you've just made an enemy out of the entire British media, quite an achievement for the man in charge of selling the President's message.

Memo to Obama attack dog Robert Gibbs: stop pooping on our lawn by James Delingpole.
Robert Gibbs, rattled by Telegraph story, lashes out at British press by Toby Harnden.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/nile_g...se_to_the_british_press_for_his_sneering_rant
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Another stupid move. One does have to wonder just what Robert Gibbs was thinking. Does he prefer the American news media which lavishes praise on Obama? That's just another kind of bias.
 
Gen. Petraeus joined FOX News and Martha MacCallum today and gave a blockbuster interview, but probably not the one Fox expected. Once again, he called for the responsible closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also said that mistakes were made after 9/11 and that the Army Field Manual is all that we need to use to interrogate prisoners. In addition, he said that we have to have faith in our judicial system and we should try the Khalid Sheikh Muhammads in a court of law.

Martha tried to give him the ticking time bomb scenario to justify torture and he really didn't bite. He did say maybe an Executive Order could be appropriate, but that it really wasn't necessary. Petraeus repudiated pretty much most of what Limbaugh Republicans and the Rove/Newt/Cheney Party have been saying.
(rush transcript)
MacCallum: Where do you think those people should go?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, it's not for a soldier to say. What I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo. Gitmo has caused us problems, there's no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.

MacCallum: What about the concern that a Khalid Sheikh Muhammad or anybody of that ilk might be tried here in a US court and the possibility that some of the treatments that were used on them that they could go free.

Gen. Petraeus: Well, first of all, I don't think we should be afraid of our values we're fighting for, what we stand for. And so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we're doing on the battlefield and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith, I think, in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.

MacCallum: So you're confident that they will never go free.

Gen. Petraeus: I hope that's the case.

MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)

Gen. Petraeus: ....T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them -- those techniques work, that's our experience in this business.

MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we're not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.
​
Wow, there was a lot in that interview. I couldn't transcribe it all. He admits that we violated the Geneva Convention. Is he saying that the Bush/Cheney administration failed our "value system" in their leadership in the two wars and how America responded to the 9/11 attacks?

He obviously is against torture. He is also saying to let the chips fall where they may in prosecuting these detainees and use our legal system to try terror suspects. Martha didn't go into the military commissions, but if they come here, just let them stand trial. All the conservatives and Republicans anointed Gen. Petraeus as the true leader of the wars when George Bush decided he didn't want to take the heat on the war any longer.

Remember when to question him was sacrilegious? Will they now disavow what he is telling them today?

After the interview, the other Fox host predictably tried to intimate that Petraeus was working for Obama now so, ya know, he's in the tank for him. Whatever happened to listening to the generals on the ground being critical to our "victory" in Iraq? He said that our values as a country do change in a time of war -- a scary notion -- so Bush is just all right. Don't they ever give up with their Bush-hero worshiping?

How long will it take Rush Limbaugh to lash out at the General? What about Newt and Rove?
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jetsetter said:
Another stupid move. One does have to wonder just what Robert Gibbs was thinking. Does he prefer the American news media which lavishes praise on Obama? That's just another kind of bias.
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Don't get me wrong, Gibbs picking a fight like this is just dumb. What's the saying, "Don't pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel!" But the English media (DailyFail as an example) is so horrendously sensationalistic. While the various media entities in America have some bias to them, left or right, the headlines you get out of England would make Matt Drudge blush.

And no, I'm not going to go find examples :p
 
While the various media entities in America have some bias to them, left or left, the headlines you get out of England would make Matt Drudge blush.
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Yes, generally the British Print Media is crap but why does Robert Gibbs care? Why even bother mentioning it? Is there some other agenda going on here, surely it can not be that a few Americans read the Times and Telegraph on-line?

/EDIT Oh I see, just re-read it. OK, he was just doing his job - fair enough.
 
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jetsetter said:
Pithiness.
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Yeah, I forgot those WSJ and Washington Times editors endorsements of Obama. And that sound leftist commitment over on the highest rated news network too. Don't forget Tom Brokaw has a strong personal hatred of John McCain.:rolleyes:
 
The Canadian dollar is stronger than the U.S. (again...this time 92?) and this moron is going on dates and catching broadway shows. Seriously? Is shit solved already?
 
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I edited a bit. I'm wondering what Obama is up to, you know, while Rome burns.
 
Firecat said:
The Canadian dollar is stronger than the U.S. (again...this time 92?) and this moron is going on dates and catching broadway shows. Seriously? Is shit solved already?
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I just realized how our $ is higher thanks to you and am also wondering why the prices for stuff haven't gone back down the second this happens. Like when our prices went up the second our $ dropped to under .90
 
Oh and our former president was great about staying in the white house, flying off to Texas to vacation for months at a time. Obama should have some time seeing that good ol' Bush would basically disappear.
 
Bush was heavily criticized for "clearing brush" and whatnot, and that was pre-9/11 and the global economic meltown.
 
I'd like to see you try to run the free world when sleeping on the couch every night! No matter who you are, gotta keep the wife happy cuz if she's not happy, nobodies happy!
 
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