Much of the Irish media is left-wing in the specific sense that I use
- that they oppose the victory of western front-line states (like America, Britain and Israel)
against non-western enemies.
For some of the Irish media below,
it's open anti-Americanism.
They hate America and want it to fail.
They are hostile to democracies like Israel,
and romanticise third world
fascist revolutionaries like the Palestinians.
They hate capitalism and long for socialism.
They hate the fact that Ireland, of all places,
is one of the greatest capitalism
success stories in the history of the world.
For others below,
it's not so much open anti-Americanism
as just general negativity
- endless carping and criticism of America, Britain and Israel
(the three countries that have leadership or frontier roles
in the defence of western liberal civilization).
These journalists
believe it is the duty of a journalist
to be slyly cynical and negative
about everything the government does.
There is some merit in this, of course,
but it is not the same thing as a dispassionate search for truth.
In particular, if you feel that the government is doing something
far more idealistic, noble and heroic
than anything the media have ever done in their lives,
then the media's endless negativity is hard to take.
For anyone who cares about the War on Islamism,
much of this commentary
is just
tedious, pointless and demoralising to listen to.
It is the criticism of people who don't seem to care,
who don't seem to really want the west to win.
It is the negative criticism of enemies and neutrals,
who wish you ill,
rather than the positive criticism of friends.
Orwell
sums up why it is hard
to listen to people like this.
It is possible to criticise
while still basically backing the west,
as people like
Ralph Peters, Michael Ledeen, and Cox and Forkum show.
In contrast, none of the people below are clearly on the side
of the west.
Why we must never abandon this historic
struggle in Iraq,
by Tony Blair, April 11, 2004,
The Observer -
sums up how I see the cynical, negative, whining media
in this age when the governments
they criticise are being heroic,
noble and idealistic:
"The truth is, faced with
this struggle,
on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western
opinion is sitting back,
if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with
schadenfreude
at the difficulty we find."
High Bias
- Orson Scott Card
on why it is difficult to listen to people like RTE and the Irish Times
at a time like this:
"When a nation is at war
.. we don't want to hear the news from neutral parties. We want the news to be accurate,
yes ...
But when a negative story comes out, we want the people telling us the news to say it with regret.
And when America wins, we want our news media to tell us with excitement and happiness.
In other words, we want to hear the truth from a friend.
From someone who is one of us."
Not from someone, like RTE and the Irish Times,
who is neutral or hostile.
Non-Irish opponents of the west
appear regularly in the Irish media.
At least, far more regularly than non-Irish defenders of the west.
For instance,
I have seen the anti-American, anti-Israeli polemicists
Robert Fisk and
John Pilger
a hundred times
in the Irish press.
I have never seen
Victor Davis Hanson
even once.
Well, some people really do live on different planets.
Interestingly, this leftie analysis agrees that RTE Radio and Newstalk 106
are both left-wing, perhaps explaining why
I can't stand radio in Ireland.
There is much less diversity
in radio than in newspapers.
Bizarrely, Harry Browne thinks the Irish Times would sell more if it was more left-wing!
The opposite is true for me.
I don't buy it, since 9/11,
because it is so left-wing.
I wish there was a quality, pro-American, non-left-wing Irish daily.
I would buy it all the time.
As it is, I tend to buy British newspapers, and read American and Israeli news online,
since there is no non-left-wing Irish daily newspaper.
Rebelling against the left-leaning Irish media is a natural reaction:
For example, I had paid little attention to
Libertas and Declan Ganley
until it became clear that Phoenix,
Village
and the Irish Times
absolutely
hated them
and were obsessed with them.
There seemed to be a constant stream of negative stories about them.
My natural reaction:
If the left-leaning elite hate them so much,
there must be something good about them.
I ended up voting for them.
The anti-Israel
David Cronin
was European correspondent for the Sunday Tribune.
He worked for Green MEP Patricia McKenna.
He has attempted a "citizen's arrest" of Tony Blair
and of Israel's Foreign Minister,
but oddly not of anyone from a non-democracy.
The Sunday Business Post
must be the weirdest newspaper in Ireland.
It pulls off the unique feat of managing to be
pro-capitalist and yet anti-American, anti-British and anti-Israeli.
It's like a bunch of lefties who have finally realised
that socialism doesn't work, but don't yet realise
that all their other beliefs are wrong too.
"International law confers the right to take arms against
foreign occupation.
...
Of course Iraqi resistance people have committed terrorist acts,
but so has the United States"
- Harry Browne,
Village,
23-29 Dec 2004,
on the satanic
Iraqi "resistance"
that is fighting to prevent democracy being set up in Iraq,
and cleanse Iraq of the Christians and Shiites.
Harry Browne, Village, Feb-Mar 2013, on the fanatically violent Palestinians,
who only believe in jihad,
and have never once since 1947 tried peaceful resistance:
"the relevant question about Gaza is not
"how dare they fire those rockets?".
We should ask, instead, what decent or fearful or otherwise-restraining impulse
causes Palestinians
to use violence as little as they do?"
Village shuts down, Aug 2008.
Not enough Chomskyites in Ireland it seems.
One of its investors,
Michael Smith,
said he wanted a magazine that was
"uniquely left wing in its editorial stance, because I believe there is a niche for such a magazine",
but that Village turned out to be:
"suffocatingly Gramsciite".
It's hard to please everyone!
Village back up, Nov 2008, with Michael Smith now as editor.
He must think it's different,
but it still seems "suffocatingly Gramsciite" to me.
Phoenix is all anonymous, and it's all left-wing, all republican,
anti-American and anti-Israel.
To be taken seriously only if you agree with that kind of thing.
Typical of Phoenix
was their endless portrayal of
Minister for Justice
Michael McDowell
as a "Nazi".
What an example of "Freudian Projection".
McDowell was of course the principal opponent of
extreme nationalist fascism
and organised crime
in Ireland.
While the republicans that Phoenix
is so sympathetic to are the only people in Ireland who
actually supported the Nazis.
Their anti-Israel supplement carried (without criticism) a highlighted quote from
a representative of the Fatah terrorist organisation
and a highlighted quote from
a representative of the Hamas terrorist organisation.
There is very little diversity on state radio and TV
in Ireland.
Some people are clearly anti-American and anti-west.
Many others are just endlessly negative and critical.
Nobody is clearly pro-west.
Eamon Dunphy epitomises the failure of private media to provide diversity.
He is (or was) the most prominent "alternative" to RTE's
endless diet of leftie anti-Americanism.
So what does he provide?
An endless diet of leftie anti-Americanism.
My introduction to Eamon Dunphy was as a bog standard anti-American leftist,
a fan of
Robert Fisk.
So I was startled to discover that he used to be more on the right.
See his
1992 attack on the Workers Party.
There is very little diversity on private radio and TV in Ireland.
Some people are clearly anti-American and anti-west.
Many others are just endlessly negative and critical.
Nobody is clearly pro-west.
The problem with private radio in Ireland
is it's just
the same stuff as state radio.
Unlike in the US
- where private-sector
talk-radio provides diversity to counteract the anti-West line of state-supported radio -
in Ireland private radio simply parrots the same line as state radio.
From here.
Obviously you have to be sceptical of the world the Internet has opened up for us
- a world of blogs, foreign media, foreign organisations,
direct access to press statements, original documents
and other raw material.
Otherwise you will start believing 9/11 truthers and Iranian TV.
But the educated Irish reader should not simply accept what RTE and the Irish Times
tell him.
He should augment it with background reading online.
One of the great wonders of the Internet age is the emergence of sites
attacking the media for bias
and omission.
The media can be incredibly annoying, even more annoying than politicians.
And if you want relief for your anger and annoyance at the media, you really have to go online.
Some people think it is a sign of right-wing madness
to think RTE and the BBC are
left of centre.
Surely it is obvious, they say, that RTE and the BBC are objective.
Right-wingers are bound to find it "left-wing",
and left-wingers are bound to find it "right-wing".
That's just a sign of its success, they would say.
Consider the following:
When I had a soft left view of foreign policy, I considered RTE and the BBC
to be objective.
Doesn't that indicate something wrong?
I suspect you are soft left of centre yourself,
if you think RTE and the BBC are objective.
Am I right?
Be honest.
What you need to do is show me right-wingers who think RTE and the BBC are objective.
Tell me here.
Survey of Americans, Jan 2007
shows
Democrats are far more likely
to think the media is unbiased than Republicans.
Doesn't that more or less prove the media is biased towards the Democrats?
Leftist Harry Browne
graphs the media, and
thinks RTE is left of centre.
Doesn't that indicate something wrong?
When it comes to things I still agree with the left on, such as sex and atheism,
I still feel RTE and the BBC are pretty objective.
But I guess that means something really is wrong.
Or put it this way.
On this page I list newspaper and TV/radio people that I think are left-wing.
On this page
I list newspaper people that are right-wing,
but I am unable to list any TV/radio people.
I cannot think of any TV/radio people in Ireland that are clearly right-wing.
Newspapers, even the left-wing newspapers, are much more diverse than TV/radio.
I don't actually mind that RTE and the BBC are not objective.
I'm not objective myself. I look on the world a certain way. I spin the news.
Everybody spins the news based on how they look at the world. It's impossible not to.
What I object to is:
(1) the claim that they are objective,
and: (2) that I have to pay for it.
Either make them private and voluntary (in which case they can be as subjective as they like),
or, if taxpayers have to pay for them, make them objective.
Is it possible to be objective at all?
I think it's impossible for one person to be objective.
But there is a model for how a collective can produce something fairly objective.
I find
Wikipedia to be broadly objective
(neither left nor right).
So I'm not impossible to please. It's not the case that unless something is right-wing
I will consider it left-wing.
I can give you an example of objective
(neither left nor right): Wikipedia.
How does Wikipedia manage it?
The answer is simple.
Both left-wing and right-wing people are writing.
The right-wing positions are not paraphrased by unsympathetic left-wingers.
They are written in the language the right-wingers would use themselves.
Then the left respond in the language they would use themselves.
The right-wingers also force the inclusion of uncomfortable topics that the left-wingers
would avoid
(just as the left-wingers force the inclusion of uncomfortable topics the right would avoid).
The lesson for RTE and the Irish Times is that it's not enough to have left-wing journalists
trying to summarise what the strange right-wingers believe.
You have to hire right-wing journalists as well as left, and let them write it in the way
a right-winger would think.
Wikipedia has left-wing and right-wing writers, and the end product sounds objective.
RTE and the Irish Times have only left-wing writers,
and when they try to paraphrase right-wing ideas
they invariably distort them.
Wikipedia is neutral. It is so much better than these alternatives:
We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News,
Simon Walters, Mail on Sunday,
21st October 2006.
Former BBC political editor Andrew Marr said:
"The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."
A BBC executive said:
"Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it."
BBC Director General admits BBC had "massive" left-wing bias in the past.
"In the BBC I joined 30 years ago [in 1979] there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the Left."
He claims it's different now.
Yeah, right.
In 1985, 92 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Republicans had a favourable view of TV network news.
Sounds like it was unbiased once.
In 2007, 84 percent of Democrats but only 56 percent of Republicans have a favourable view of it.
Sounds like it is unbiased no longer.
In 1985, 34 percent of Republicans thought the press was too critical of America.
In 2007, 63 percent do.
As for who is telling the truth about Iraq,
I would trust the U.S. military more than the Irish or UK media.
Republicans share my scepticism about the media.
76 percent of Republicans broadly think the military is giving an accurate picture of the war.
Only 34 percent think the press is.
With Democrats it is reversed.
Only 36 percent of Democrats think the military is giving an accurate picture of the war.
While 56 percent think the press is.
Could we have a new definition of the left:
The left are the people who believe what they read in the papers
and see on TV.
US survey, June 2008
(see details)
at end of 2008 presidential primaries
and start of the general election proper.
54% of Americans think Obama has received the softest media treatment so far.
Only 22% think McCain has.
44% of Americans think in the general election the media will try to help Obama.
Only 13% think it will try to help McCain.
70% of Republicans expect the media will try to help Obama.
Only 8% think it will try to help McCain.
82% of Republicans think reporters offer biased coverage of election campaigns.
Only 56% of Democrats think so.
83% of conservatives think reporters are biased.
Only 50% of liberals think so.
Again, the left are the people who think the media is unbiased.
Definition of the left:
The left are the people who believe what they read in the papers and see on TV.
US surveys show how Democrats believe in the media, while Republicans and Independents don't.
From Gallup.
Interesting how the media were broadly trusted on all sides just after 9/11.
But the Bush-hatred years and the Obama-worship years
have shown Republicans and Independents that much of the media is not to be trusted to tell the whole truth.
The poverty of Irish media
Bruce Bawer
describes the poverty of media in Europe compared to the
diversity of media in the US.
He talks about Norway, but he could be talking about Ireland:
After discussing the US, he says:
"Nothing remotely approaching this breadth of news and opinion
is available in a country like Norway.
Purportedly to strengthen journalistic diversity
(which, in the ludicrous words of a recent prime minister,
"is too important to be left up to the marketplace"),
Norway's social-democratic government actually subsidizes several
of the country's major newspapers (in addition to running two of its three
broadcast channels and most of its radio); yet the Norwegian media are
(guess what?) almost uniformly social-democratic
- a fact reflected not only in their explicit editorial positions
but also in the slant and selectivity of their international coverage."
"Most Norwegians are so accustomed to being presented with only one position
on certain events and issues (such as the Iraq War) that they don't even
realize
that there exists an intelligent alternative position."
Eoghan Harris on the utter failure of the Irish Times and RTE:
A formidable leader of the conservative revolution,
on how the Irish Times and RTE
don't even understand what's going on
under Bush
since 9/11.
A vast democratic revolution
is underway in the Middle East,
led by radical thinkers in the US who are sick of "realpolitik"
and want to spread freedom instead,
and the Irish Times and RTE
are so blinded by their prejudices
that they are missing the whole story.
Why Palestinians are the pet project of the Irish left, 9 Dec 2001.
-
"As the Americans conclude their triumphant campaign against the Taliban,
you have to admire the resilience of that radical young toff, Sir Montrose D'Olier.
[RTE and the Irish Times]
As a result of dud tips received from his resident guru Robert Fisk,
he has been wrong about three wars in the past 10 years: the Gulf War, the Kosovo War
and the war against the Taliban. And if you took your politics from RTE and the Irish Times
you would have been wrong too."
"Both the Irish Times and RTE have been consistently hostile to this
war,
even when it became clear that most Iraqis want to see Saddam gone
... RTE in particular has been so partisan as to be propagandist."
"This is the 5th war which RTE has read wrong, and for the same set of reasons
- a combination of anti-American
prejudice, a total ignorance of America's advances
in high-tech warfare, and an invincible inability to understand ..
George Bush and the so-called Pentagon hawks"
"RTE's poor professional reporting ..
arises from its bad politics. Montrose has an anti-American canteen
culture that cuts it off from
a constantly-changing world. Over the past 10 years, RTE has been biased against
American-led interventions in five wars:
the first Gulf War, Bosnia,
Kosovo, Afghanistan and now the Second Gulf War.
..
But if RTE was wrong in the past, it is much more likely to be wrong in the future."
I must admit I don't read left-wing Irish blogs much.
Why bother when you get the same analysis on RTE
and in the Irish Times?
Whereas the right-wing Irish blogs offer something different to the
mainstream discourse.
I've stripped down this list a bit, since I realised that
for many of these sites,
years
would go by without me ever looking at them.
He pretends to care about "gay Palestinians".
They are persecuted and killed by Fatah and Hamas,
but he does not mention that.
Instead, somehow Israel is to blame!
(I couldn't work out why. See if it makes any sense to you.)
It's a sad day when lefties run interference for the persecutors of gays.
The left's defence of Islamism is the major reason
why I am not a leftist.
This
is an Irish gay blog that is
hostile to Israel,
the only country in the
Middle East where gays have rights.
It is also interesting because it gets an
incredible amount of traffic
(155,000 visits per month).
Is this Ireland's biggest political blog?
Is it a political blog at all?
Are the hits mostly because of something else?
Blames the US right for Tucson.
Humdrum target metaphors in elections are wrong, apparently.
They lead to shootings by
mentally ill left-wingers
who never even saw the metaphor.
"What did [Sarah Palin] think her militant gun rhetoric would lead to ... democratic debates?
Her introduction of militaristic rhetoric in democratic politics
indicates the fact that the far right will use any means to destabilise democracy.
Glenn Beck and Palin and Fox News may well have blood on their hands".
Disgusting blood libel.
Dormant or extinct:
Back Seat Drivers
provides intelligent leftie commentary
(apart from Jon Ihle and Jason Ihle,
who provide intelligent non-leftie commentary).
I've no idea who this guy is,
but I thought
this
was very funny:
"The United Nations represents the noblest ideal which has yet arisen
since modern nations came into being."
So the idea that dictators should have a vote on what happens in the world,
and we in the democracies should "obey" them,
is "the noblest ideal which has yet arisen
since modern nations came into being"!
I do enjoy it when relentlessly negative cynics like this guy
finally take a break from telling you what they are against
(America, Britain, Israel, neo-cons, etc.)
and make the error of telling you what they are for.
This guy complained to a third party on
Twitter that I listed him as "left-wing", which I defined broadly as
"opponents of western power and western victory".
I replied to him, saying:
"If that's not you, send me link to your past support for US victory over Iraqi jihad."
But he just became abusive, telling me not to "pollute" his Twitter stream.
Some people are just too narrow-minded to debate their opponents.
Wow, Twitter is fun.
I used to include
"fustar"
on my list of left-wing blogs.
Then I forgot what the hell it was, and stripped down the list a bit.
Its owner, John Byrne,
now a journalist,
is still excited that I noticed him, even though he is gone from my site.
He tells
Irish goddess
Maria Doyle Kennedy and she publicly dismisses me, 14 Aug 2012.
I love it. Thanks John!
The super hot actress and singer
Maria Doyle Kennedy saying I'm great would be a thrill.
But Maria Doyle Kennedy saying I'm crap is a thrill too!
(In fairness, she never read me. She's just taking the word of John Byrne.)
This is an extreme left group blog started by
"WorldByStorm" (who also uses the handle "Donal Mac an Eala", but that is not his real name).
He was a member of the extreme
pro-Soviet, pro-North Korea,
Workers Party.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution
notices me, 2 Jan 2013.
Naturally they and their commenters are hostile. I would expect nothing else.
If you are pro-Israel, anti-jihad and anti-communist,
you are hardly going to be hanging out at the
Cedar Lounge Revolution!
Interestingly, "WorldbyStorm" attempts no defence of the Cedar Lounge Revolution.
He merely points out that they have posted material from other appalling groups:
"Truth is we’re much much worse than that, having posted up
...statements from the WP, CPI, SF, IRSP, ORM, éírígí, SP, PBPA, ULA ...
And expressed sympathy for many, most or all of those formations."
One chap is excited by me linking to the left-wing, anti-Israel
Irish Political Review.
But that was not to agree with them, but merely to establish the dates when
Seamus Martin was in the Workers Party.
The same guy thinks it ridiculous to complain that
V for Vendetta
does not feature Islamists as the baddies.
And yet consider
the amazing juxtaposition.
V showed the hero bombing the Tube in London. It was filmed in June 2005.
In July 2005, the very next month, Islamists bombed the Tube for real.
Doesn't that make V's
concerns about "British fascists"
seem so dated and 1980s?
V is a movie that looks like it is avoiding the issue.
He says it is absurd to complain that the villains in Good Night and Good Luck were
the anti-communists:
"should it have been remade with McCarthy as an agent of Stalin?"
No, but can we see a film where agents of Stalin are the bad guys,
and the anti-communists who expose them are the good guys?
Or is Joe McCarthy
the only acceptable bad guy to Hollywood?
I'm not sure what Carley's point about
W. T. Cosgrave
is.
If he means that 1916-23 figures should be banned totally from
my list of greatest Irish people,
I am sympathetic.
I do not approve of W.T.'s violent rising in 1916,
but in some ways he saved Ireland in 1922.
Hence his place.
He is an amazing global example of a revolutionary leader who does not lead to tyranny and democide.
The opposite of Castro, Lenin, Trotsky, Ataturk or Mugabe.
Carley usefully points out that I may over-praise
Castlereagh,
because there were wars during the
long peace of 1815-1914.
There was the 3 month
Franco-Austrian War
of 1859,
the 2 month
Austro-Prussian War
of 1866,
and the far more serious 9 month
Franco-Prussian War
of 1870-71.
This is true, and I will modify what I say, but Castlereagh
still helped bring in a long
century of relative peace.
The generation that ended that peace in 1914 are a disgrace,
perhaps the worst generation in history.
If only Castlereagh's long peace could have continued.
"WorldbyStorm" complains that I say no
pro-Israel, anti-jihad or anti-communist person
would be on their site.
Yet it is noticeable that no such person ever turns up in the debate.
(Apart from people who followed me there.)
The end of the debate is perfect.
"RosencrantzisDead", who is not, I think, even a Muslim,
goes to bat for the depraved ideology of Islamism,
and says anyone who hates Islamism is a bigot.
And then "WorldbyStorm" declares that future comments by non-lefties will be "moderated".
Political World do a thread on me too, 2 Jan 2013, but alas it is entirely content-free.
Mere abuse is not argument.
Mere days after complaining that I called them anti-Israel, the CLR put up this post, 24 Jan 2013!
See NGO Monitor on the
PCHR.
The Media Bite lefties complain about the sole, token, once a week,
right-wing column in the Irish Times,
a tiny balance to 6 days a week of left-wing opinion columns, leaders,
and left-wing news reporting.
They want it 100 percent left!
Media Bite says:
"writers such as Charles Krauthammer represent a massive right wing shift compared broadly speaking to the rest of the paper.
Why would he exist in the Irish Times?
And the same with Mark Steyn before and to a lesser extent Kevin Myers, who has a sort of humour value."
Note that both Steyn and Myers have been dumped,
but Media Bite are still complaining about them!
O'Toole, Assistant Editor at The Irish Times,
defends his paper
as exposing their readers to these awful ideas simply because they are influential.
But he too would be happy if the paper was 100 percent left:
"Personally I wouldn't mourn the loss of Charles Krauthammer from the Irish Times, though you might miss the display of prejudice, ignorance and bigotry."
In part 2,
Media Bite describes Iran,
the no.1 state enemy of the West,
a country that is directly engaged in killing American and British troops
and Israeli civilians,
and a country that threatens a genocide of the innocent Jews of Israel,
as "yet another, non-combatant country which has thus far broken no law while
enduring much provocation from the US and the UK."
What planet do these people live on?
It gets even worse!
David Manning of Media Bite
ask for better media treatment for the satanic war criminals
the Iraqi "resistance"!
"I was wondering whether there is a compassionate view of the resistance, or 'insurgency' as it has been dubbed by the occupiers, that needs to be told?"
Even Lara Marlowe's incredibly biased Iraq reporting isn't left-wing enough for him!
What's incredible is never once
does Manning suggest the Iraqi resistance
try non-violent protest, or even stand for election!
He seems perfectly happy for them to go straight to violence.
Surely violence should be the last resort, not the first?
(Indeed, the only resort here.
The resistance do nothing else.
They even suicide bombed the elections.)
Manning's sympathy for the
right-wing religious death squads
in Iraq
is deplorable,
but he seems like an intelligent guy,
and (I think) is young,
so there's a reasonable chance that
someday he will get sense,
understand the cruelty and tragedy of the human condition a bit better,
and leave this naive Chomskyite view of the world behind.
Miriam Cotton letter, The Irish Examiner, 14th January 2009:
"Hamas have repeatedly sought to enter into genuine negotiation and dialogue - they are not the evil, and essentially racist 'terrorists' of popular caricature."
Apparently Israel is the cause of the terror attacks:
"Israel ... engineered a provocation which they knew Hamas and the Palestinians, strained beyond human endurance, were more than likely to respond to".
In a follow-up letter of 28th January 2009, she comes close to justifying the Islamic terror:
"Do Palestinians not enjoy a right to self-defence against violently enforced dispossession
from their homes and lands and against punishing blockades?
...
Why is it one law for the Israelis and another altogether for the Palestinians?"
A glimpse into the mind of madness:
Miriam Cotton interviews the IPSC fanatic
Raymond Deane, Jan 2009.
See
part 1
and
part 2.
Deane complains that the Irish media aren't anti-Israel enough!
He can't stand pro-Israel voices:
"I don’t understand the Krauthammer phenomenon. Obviously before Krauthammer you had that lunatic Mark Steyn. The Irish Times people feel they have to have some extreme right-wing nutter to balance what they perceive as the “reasonable” views of their other writers ... I don’t read Krauthammer unless I absolutely can't avoid it; I don’t read Kevin Myers – reading these people does my head in."
Pro-Israel people are "crackpots":
"In this country it's easy to single out the worst: Independent Newspapers. Some people say that we in the IPSC are forever targeting the Irish Times and RTE ... My rationale, perhaps self-seeking because I simply don't want to read the Irish Independent or the Sunday Independent, is that everybody knows that these are just populist right-wing rags, everybody knows that people like Eoghan Harris and Kevin Myers and Ruth Dudley Edwards are contrarian crackpots."
Well it's easier than trying to refute them!
He complains that RTE
are pro-Israel! What a loony.
Of course he
likes Michael Jansen
and
Lara Marlowe.
"On the other hand you have to acknowledge the work of Michael Jansen for whom I have a lot of admiration, and of Lara Marlowe on the occasions when she does write about Palestine although it’s not really her brief. It’s ironic that the only two reliable reporters that the Irish Times have about Palestine are both American women."
What paper does he buy?
Oh, of course:
"Even the Guardian
– the only Anglophone paper I buy – is really going downhill - it has very little to say about Palestine – even during the US elections it was full of all this triumphalism about Obama".
Now there's gratitude for you! 450,000 Britons
died to protect Ireland from Nazi Germany.
And Irish leftie
David Manning
of Media Bite just sneers at them, 9 Nov 2011.
Bock The Robber,
mainly by the anonymous "Bock".
An aggressive anti-American, anti-Israel blog.
Don't bother trying to debate them, though.
Bock will
wave the banning stick.
His regulars will hurl abuse instead of debate, and cheer when you are gone.
It's like an Irish version of
Little Green Footballs.
Bock The Robber says, Feb 2010, that the Israeli team that assassinated the
Hamas leader in Dubai in Jan 2010 are "terrorists".
He also says Gaza is a "concentration camp".
Well it is a totalitarian Islamist tyranny run by Hamas, but I doubt that's what he means.
The anti-Israel
Bock The Robber, 1 Aug 2011, is so furious at the brilliant pro-Israel blogger John Connolly
ending David Norris' presidential run
that he compares him to the mass killer Anders Behring Breivik!
He concedes there are some differences:
"Obviously there is a difference. "Thesystemworks" hasn't killed anyone directly ... but I would be worried about this lad."
Bock The Robber claims that standing up for Israel is the kind of thinking that led to the Holocaust:
"ironically, such certainty as yours gave us the Holocaust."
This is the kind of advanced "thinking" you get at Bock The Robber!
Bock's introduction to the Gaza conflict, 14 Aug 2012:
"Now, Gaza is the world’s most densely-populated place, truly a concentration camp complete with walls around it to contain the population, and this was the place that one of the world’s most powerful armies assaulted using aerial bombardment, phosphorus shells and tanks. That was in response to repeated attacks by the lunatic, fanatically Muslim Hamas firing rockets into Israeli territory."
I think this needs re-writing as follows:
"Now, Gaza is the world’s most densely-populated place, truly an Islamist hellhole run by Hamas complete with walls around it to stop the population committing terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli civilians, and this was the place that one of the world’s most powerful armies assaulted using aerial bombardment, phosphorus shells and tanks. That was in response to repeated attacks by the government of Gaza firing rockets into Israeli territory."
Bock, August 27, 2012, says he condemns the Taliban, but his condemnation rings hollow since he
also condemns anyone who fights the Taliban.
He does not admire the brave Americans who sacrifice their lives
fighting the Taliban and other jihadists.
He has contempt for them.
He says they are the same as the Taliban.
He declares they are war criminals:
"back home, the Baptist congregations continued to Praise the Lawd, while remaining completely oblivious to the fact that they and the orthodox Muslims they hate are exactly the same. Does it just come down to a difference in presentation? If you machine-gun civilians from an Apache while playing the Killers, is that somehow better than setting off a suicide bomb while reciting the Koran?"
He doesn't bother to provide any evidence for this extraordinary claim -
that Americans machine-gun civilians from helicopters.
Bock imagined it, or saw it in a film, so it is so.
Bock saw it in a movie, and he thinks this is what actually happens.
The movie
Full Metal Jacket
(1987).
The above scene is of course
just fiction.
The hypocrisy of the Irish left:
(Left)
Bock the Robber, 9 Jan 2011, is horrified by a humdrum map showing political target seats.
He describes it as a call to murder!
He uses it to blame Sarah Palin for the Tucson shooting!
He compares Palin, a boring parliamentary democrat,
to Islamic clerics who constantly call for the death of blasphemers:
"So what's the difference between Sarah Palin and a crazy fundamentalist Islamic cleric?"
(Right) Bock the Robber, 3 Jan 2012,
praises a song wishing to see
Margaret Thatcher dead in the grave:
"I understand his anger and contempt."
OK, target metaphors in elections are evil.
Singing about jumping on someone's grave is good.
Got it.
Bock, 21 Aug 2012, is angry at my comparison above:
He claims he was quoted "out of context" on Thatcher.
I don't see it myself, but, as always, I link to the source above so you can decide for yourself.
Let me quote some more:
"As a human being with family young and old,
I find it distasteful that people might direct such invective against a defenseless old lady.
And yet, my sense of distaste is bullshit.
Why? Because our respect for old age has never prevented society from tracking down and arresting elderly people of every stripe and hue, right across the globe. We’re still searching for Nazi murderers. In twenty years’ time we’ll still be seeking out Serb and Croat killers. We arrested and tried ancient Khmer Rouge leaders.
Age is not a defence against justice, and Margaret Thatcher has been responsible for inflicting more than her share of misery on people both at home and abroad.
...
As a human being, I very much hope that Elvis Costello doesn’t follow through on his threat and tramp the dirt down on Thatcher’s grave. That would diminish him, much though I understand his anger and contempt."
So he's condemning Elvis Costello is he? I must have missed that first time round. And second time.
"Out of context", my foot.
Compare and contrast his sympathetic treatment of Elvis Costello
with the incredible abuse he hurls at Sarah Palin for merely using a target metaphor in an election!
He compares her with Islamic clerics who wish death on their political opponents.
Em, no, wouldn't that be more like Elvis Costello?
I await Bock's post about this bloodthirsty rhetoric from the
Washington Post, October 3, 2012.
"The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their
generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who
have never been and never expect to be in a position of power."
- George Orwell,
"England Your England",
1941,
The Lion and the Unicorn
(also here).
The negative, defeatist, hypercritical whining
I hear on my radio, my TV, and in my newspaper
is perfectly described by Orwell.
I really understand
why politicians pay so little attention
to negative whining critics like the above.
"Throughout history, civilizations rise and fall.
They fall for the same reason ...
the lack of will to defend her, a cancer which starts not from the bottom but invariably from the top.
...
It has always been this way. If you feel you see it happening now, before your very eyes, well
.. you are not alone.
A society unwilling to enforce the laws that civilize it,
that is unable or unwilling to see the advantages of civilization,
a society led by the pampered, the narcissistic and the corrupt,
is not long for this Earth. Our enemies look at us and see precisely these symptoms,
and the symptons are worsening.
...
One thing they do not see, however - also there. They do not see the Remnant.
They do not see the power and resilience of what the irreplaceable Victor Davis Hanson
has referred to as "the Old Breed."
Nock and Isaiah believed that the purpose of the Remnant was to rebuild a new civilization from the ashes of those destroyed by their own masters. And certainly to date this has always been their main function.
But there is something different -- just perhaps, something fundamentally different this time around. Because today, for the first time in human history, common people can communicate directly with one another. We are no longer dependent on spineless politicians and the jaded masters of the press to color our opinions of the world. For the first time in human history, the Remnant can reach out to each other on these gossamer threads of a world-wide web.
I believe - utterly - that this ability for the common person to communicate with other common people, this internet, will allow us to end-run the cycle of civilization. I believe it in my bones.
My friends, Western Civilization is not on its last legs.
Western Civilization is going to the stars.
Count on it."
- Bill Whittle, May 21, 2007.
The fantastic thing about the modern world
is that we are no longer dependent on the media.
And this may ultimately mean that Iraq will be won where
Vietnam was lost.
For example,
when, in any previous war, could one read, whenever one liked,
positive, morale-boosting, optimistic propaganda
by those who wished the troops well?
(I do not use "propaganda" here as a negative word, but rather to describe
writing that is
open and honest about being subjective and partisan.)
One could never read such happy propaganda easily
in Vietnam, the Cold War, or even WW2
or any previous war,
except dull state propaganda written by the civil service.
But now one can everywhere read
optimistic, pro-troops propaganda
written by private individuals for free as a labour of love.
This is something new, that the Internet has enabled, and that old media
had suppressed.
Since 1995.
