Fellowship of Punditry

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Cul Heath

Mick Arran

Jeffrey Barbose

Inspector Lohmann

Eric M. Fink

Michael Lane

Rep. Mark B. Cohen

The Fellowship is accepting new members. Inquire within.

The Sages

  • David Weinberger
  • Jon Lebkowsky
  • Jay Rosen
  • Rebecca MacKinnon
  • Nova Spivack
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  • Lawerence Lessig
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  • The Titans

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  • Jim Hightower
  • Wonkette
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  • Brad Delong
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    Distinguished Colleagues

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  • Into the Blogosphere
  • 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, November 04, 2004

    On the non-existence of Al Qaeda

    By Anonymous

    Yeah OK another documentary from Auntie Beeb (in three parts on the rise of the neo-cons fundamentalist islam and the myth of al quaeda), one interesting point did emerge from it, that the dirty bomb plan that of a CBRN device was a fantasy created by Zubaida i believe his name was, he started off with japanese sci-fi films of the 1970s and then just got carried away.

    The Chemical Biological Radioactive Nuclear Device relies on a bomb that requires two contradictory forms of response. For a Radioactive attack the area becomes contaminated and the need is to move them out of the area and then to begin decontamination, for biological attacks the people are contaminated and it is important for them not to move around as they infect those close to them, chemical attacks depend on weather conditions. Apparently original reports about the plan to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge came from King Kong Godzilla movies. Many of the so called non-combatants were sold to the US by the Northern Alliance and as they were paid for quantity you got a lot of Al-Qaeda from them. The hills of Tora Bora with its Thunderbirds are Go mountain hideaway never existed. And most of the Islamic Foreign fighters were quickly killed. Then the need for a new Cold War eternal enemy shadow warrior arose and Al Qaeda works for now. You really can't rely on evidence produced by torture these days. I wonder why.

    If people buy this version they will have to invent something else and they will so i don't wish to persuade anyone.

    The use of radioactive materiel as part of a dirty bomb was tested by US scientists and it was determined that even if people stayed in the same place for a year, there would not be sufficient radioactive poisoning from radioactive materiel once it was dispersed. Unless you use a nuclear device, insufficient contamination is produced. The programme then went through the plots exposed in the United States and the UK. A tourist video taken by muslim yutes visiting disney land was the main evidence against a group on the grounds that if you were going to case Disney land you would pretend to make a tourist video. Similarly a tourist map marked out by an ANZAC backpacker but left in his hostel became the main evidence against muslims on the grounds that they must be planning to destroy those sites. Another group were arrested when a colleague sent them an email saying he was getting married and settling down in Saudi so they wouldn't be seeing each other for some time, on the grounds that that wedding was the code word for 9-11 and only an idiot would say terrorist attack.

    The premis of the programme is that islamic fundamentalism is real, hatred of americans is tangibly real especially in the arab world. But that there is no co-ordinated command and control organisation called Al Quaeda. There is far more evidence for a unified progressive blog alliance acting with one heart and mind in a plan to dominate the US and obtain political control of the Web, and we know what bollocks that would be. Since 9-11 there have been no further attacks on the US and still nothing in the UK it might be due to James Bond and his CIA friends but it might be because Osama has switched to the straight to video movie business where all the real money is.

    The French seem to have enjoyed the results of the US election the most. Germany had already promised troops to assist the US if a more multi-national approach was adopted in the bridge building to follow (i.e. if Kerry was elected). Now the French realise they can moan and wring their hands in sorrow for another four years and they don't have to clear up the mess Bush started.

    I hope he doesn't believe his advisors who tell him the US can and must now deal with Iran and the rest of the axis of evil who flout UN resolutions and aren't Israel, the US don't have the troops for another land war, though it is the only country with sufficient weapons of mass destruction to win a war from the air. And you have done it before against Japan in 1945 apparently the indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations are justified if you declare war first and no one has the futile sense of morality to fight back against a bully. But of course that will never happen americans are decent freedom loving people with a sense of decency and morality and democracy is your main export. I think this is the time to develop new ties with the emerging african democracies whose moral values you clearly share.

    posted by Anonymous at 11/04/2004 06:13:00 AM |

    Comments: Post a Comment

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    "Netpolitik is a new style of diplomacy that seeks to exploit the powerful capabilities of the Internet to shape politics, culture, values, and personal identity. But unlike Realpolitik — which seeks to advance a nation’s political interests through amoral coercion — Netpolitik traffics in “softer” issues such as moral legitimacy, culturalidentity, societal values, and public perception." - The Rise of Netpolitik

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