Archive for the ‘internet/free speech’ Category

You can tell a lot about a person by what they bold when quoting

Posted: February 4, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, middle east
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Yglesias links and quotes Ayaan Hirsi Ali on what is coming in Egypt

Ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali warns us to be very afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt. And maybe she’s right. But it’s difficult to take her word for it. After all, she thinks that Islam in general needs to be extirpated from the planet:

He then quotes her piece, bolding certain bits:

“I’ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate – a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren’t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.”

Now of course bolding a piece is meant to draw your eyes to the bolded section and to avoid the unbolded sections. Yglesias having a liberal audience is trying to stress Ali “intolerance”. How dare she be intolerant of Islam. Now lets look at the same piece with different words bolded:

I’ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate – a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren’t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.”

Now I would think that these things about Islam and Sharia law would be significant to liberals. After all if I as a believing Roman Catholic am repressive because I oppose sex before marriage, gay marriage and believe in God, how much more would they oppose Sharia, which stones women, beats (and kills) gays and slays apostates.

But we can’t stress these facts, because it promotes “intolerance of Islam”. Maybe it’s just me but I think we shouldn’t tolerate Sharia law, stoning of women, beating of gays, and killing of apostates.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali “intolerance” of Islam is based on a standard of Islam’s actions. Yglesias critique of Ali and defense of Islam is based on a standards of her thoughts.

That to me is the perfect illustration of how liberalism works.

Answer: When the black man people call to be strung up is conservative

Posted: February 3, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, media
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Question: When is it OK in the age of civility to call for lynching, stringing up or sending a black man back to the fields?

Our friends on the left decided to protest the Koch Brothers conference. In the event sponsored by Common Cause, AFFCE, The Ruckus Society, 350, Greenpeace, Code Pink, the Progressive Democrats of America, the public attending had some choice words for Justice Clarence Thomas:

Big Government noted something missing:

At the morning panel event featuring UCI Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, activist Jim Hightower, Center for American Progress journalist and “Koch Brothers expert” Lee Fang, California Nurses Association co-president DeAnn McEwan, and President Obama’s former green jobs czar Van Jones, we were forewarned of the impending demise of both the environment and democracy at the hands of corporate lobbyists and their government shills.

There was eerily no mention of GE, AEP, Goldmann Sachs, Pfizer, Aetna, Alcoa, Xerox, Google, Motorola, IBM, or several other corporate giants who profit at taxpayer expense via their K Street connections to the Obama White House as well as the very economic and regulatory policies they lobby that these Common Cause panelists commonly endorse. But I’m sure that’s only because no one wanted to point out the obvious. Right?

I’m sure the No Labels crowd, the Major networks and the Cable networks will rapidly report on these racist declarations of white folks against a black man with power? Hot Air asks:

Will the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the “Rage on the Left” and label Common Cause a racist hate group?

R.B is more blunt:

Let’s just imagine if the video above was taken during a Tea Party rally and several participants stated that a sitting US Supreme Court Justice should be sent “back to the fields” or “strung up”. Picture the news coverage. Predict what Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann (if he still had a show) would be saying right now and over the next few days. It would be non-stop. Democrat Congressional members would be using the tape as “proof” of what is really behind the opposition to ObamaCare or any other piece of legislation they want to get passed.

Nonsense I’m sure they will give this story all the attention the big three gave the Planned Parenthood story this week.

Has anyone seen Al Gore this winter?

Posted: February 2, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech
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No sign of him anywhere in the mainstream media.

I think after the summer thaw we will find him under some snowbank.

Speaking of things that you aren’t seeing in the mainstream media

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has been taking the University of Virginia to court to get information on a climate change researcher who once worked at the school.

Now several members of the State Assembly say they’ve had enough and have introduced legislation to rein in Cuccinelli’s investigation.

Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic, is looking into whether UVA professor Michael Mann manipulated data to show that there has been a rapid, recent rise in the Earth’s temperature.

Nor have you seen this:

Dr Benny Peiser and Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), have written to John Hirst, chief executive of the beleaguered Met Office, asking for an explanation of a press release issued by his organisation on January 20 and headed “2010 – a near record year”. This won headlines by claiming that last year was hotter than any other in the past decade.

When the two men examined the original data from which this claim was derived – compiled by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre – it clearly showed 2010 as having been cooler than 2005 (and 1998) and equal to 2003. It emerged that, for the purposes of the press release, the data had been significantly adjusted.

Pay no attention to the people behind the curtain.

Or This:

TWO inquiries into claims that scientists manipulated data about global warming were yesterday condemned by MPs as ineffective and too secretive.

Nah nothing to see here.

I don’t think we will see the same cartoons as 1986

Posted: January 28, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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I was always a fan of political cartoons and when Ferdinand Marcos was in the process of being overthrown the White House and the president made some intemperate statements in support of Marcos and suggesting that both sides in the Philippines were at fault in the People power revolution.

I remember in particular a Pat Oliphant cartoon where the line kept coming up “Marcos is a cheap crook change the position boss”

Well Joe Biden has decided to interject himself in a rather foolish way into the Egypt mess:

Ahead of a day that could prove decisive, NewsHour host Jim Lehrer asked Biden if the time has “come for President Mubarak of Egypt to go?” Biden answered: “No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that – to be more responsive to some… of the needs of the people out there.”

Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

I don’t think Pat will be drawing a cartoon hitting Biden anytime soon, meanwhile in the real world:

In Desperation Move, Egyptian Regime Shuts Down Access to Iowahawk

Also, the entire freaking Internet:

[I]n an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet.

When you have a government cutting off all internet and all phone the worm is not only turning but it is doing somersaults. This is going to tip huge and if we are on the wrong side of it we will be in trouble.

Meanwhile the Wikileaks are doing their best to help us out aren’t they by leaking communications.

Aren’t you glad we have a president Obama instead of a president McCain to deal with this issue? Aren’t you glad we have Biden speaking out on Egypt rather than Palin for the country? Maybe Pat will draw a cartoon about that.

The real question is not if the revolt will work. (I say it will) it is who will be taking it over once it is all done.

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