Fellowship of Punditry

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Cul Heath

Mick Arran

Jeffrey Barbose

Inspector Lohmann

Eric M. Fink

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Rep. Mark B. Cohen

The Fellowship is accepting new members. Inquire within.

The Sages

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  • George Orwell

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    Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

    In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

    If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

    But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

    Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

    Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

    In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

    All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

    At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

    Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

    John Stuart Mill

    Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

    The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

    The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

    Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

    A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

    Mark Twain

    Don't let schooling interfere with your education.

    All generalizations are false, including this one.

    A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

    Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

    Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

    The Public is merely a multiplied "me."

    Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."

    Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

    Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

    Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

    Winston Churchill

    The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

    I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

    Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.

    Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

    Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

    However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

    In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

    Otto Von Bismarck

    When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

    I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.

    Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

    Be polite; write diplomatically ;even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.

    Voltaire

    A witty saying proves nothing.

    If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

    When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

    I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

    To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

    Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

    It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

    The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

    Karl Marx

    Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.

    All I know is I'm not a Marxist.

    The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

    Thursday, July 01, 2004

    HONG KONG: THOUSANDS PARTICIPATE IN PRO-DEMOCRACY DEMONSTRATATIONS

    By Nick

    Filed by Reuters at 4:12 a.m. (Just broke 3 min ago from time that I started writing this.)
    NYTIMES

    This is freedom. May it crush oppression. This story just broke, but my soul is with every protester that has the courage to fight such a massive and powerful totalitarian regieme. Our friends in China should know that their brothers and sisters in American and the rest of the free world are praying for their victory against Chinese oppression. We no longer need our governments to tell you "our" offical response. For those outside of Honk Kong, here is what is happening:

    Tens of thousands of Hong Kong people dressed in white poured onto the streets on Thursday to vent their frustration at Chinese rule and challenge Beijing's refusal to allow them to elect their own leaders.

    Waving green and black banners and sheltering under umbrellas from the searing sun, protesters chanting ``Return power to the people, fight for democracy'' streamed from a park to government offices in the heart of the city several kilometers (miles) away.

    Organizers said tens of thousands of people had gathered by mid-afternoon and estimated that as many as 300,000 people would join the march on the seventh anniversary of the former British colony's return to China, a public holiday.


    Consider how arrogant 'leaders' of Beijing were when they deprived Hong Kong of their freedom to vote:

    Last year, half a million demonstrators took to the streets wearing black to symbolize despair over a string of government missteps, including a controversial draft law that would have outlawed acts of treason against China.

    Earlier, in an unusually low-key ceremony to celebrate the 1997 handover, Beijing's handpicked leader for Hong Kong made only a passing reference to the debate over elections, telling dignitaries that full democracy would come only gradually.


    Full Democracy? They already had Democracy, Bejieng must realize that totalitarianism turns to chaos in places which have tasted freedom. Their system has no legitmacy, it is nothing more than an egotistical, and bizaree form of paternalistic oppression. Make no mistake, Hong Kong had no choice than to consent to totalitarianism. Consider the arrogance that this displays on the part of the chinese government:

    China tightened its grip on Hong Kong in April by flatly ruling out universal suffrage in 2007, when the city's next chief executive is due to be selected. The move infuriated democrats and alienated many people in Hong Kong, who accused it of breaking its promise to allow them a high degree of autonomy.

    Chinese officials also heaped abuse on leading democracy activists, calling them ``clowns'' and ``traitors.''


    Now consider the rhetoric of the pro-democracy activist Martin Lee:
    Martin Lee called on Thursday for more improvement in relations, including direct dialogue and lifting a ban on trips by activists like himself to the mainland.

    Writing in the Asian Wall Street Journal, Lee noted that a motion he introduced in the Legislative Council calling on the people of Hong Kong to work with China for the territory's future passed with an overwhelming majority last week.

    Lee wrote:

    ``Beijing...can reject the olive branch and continue with the hard-line policy of ruling from Beijing and suppressing all dissent. Or it can accept the olive branch from the democrats and try to win the hearts of the people of Hong Kong...,''

    Other News at 4 AM: Hussein is to appear in Iraq court today
    From FREE PRESS NEWS SERVICES
    U.S. and Iraqi officials refused to say where today's televised arraignment will take place or release the name of the presiding judge, citing security reasons. Those concerns were highlighted Wednesday morning by a mortar attack on a base in Baghdad that wounded 11 U.S. soldiers.
    ---
    The transfer of legal custody of Hussein and the other defendants took place Wednesday. Salem Chalabi, director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, said the defendants were brought into a room at an undisclosed location and informed of the change in their status from POW to criminal suspect.

    They were informed of their rights as a criminal detainee of Iraq, which includes legal representation by an attorney and the right to remain silent.

    According to Chalabi, the 67-year-old Hussein appeared haggard and thin.

    "Some of them looked very worried," Chalabi said of the other defendants.
    ---
    The charges the men face haven't been made public, but are likely to include war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

    Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer told a Mideast newspaper that the new government has decided to reinstate the death penalty, suspended during the U.S.-led occupation.

    A half-dozen reporters will be permitted to cover the arraignments, half of them from Arab-language media. TV cameras will be allowed, though the arraignments will not be broadcast live. Hussein will be joined in court by several figures from his regime, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed Chemical Ali for his role in directing a poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 that killed thousands.

    posted by Nick at 7/01/2004 04:07:00 AM |

    Comments: Post a Comment

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