Posts Tagged ‘robert stacy mccain’

Severe Irony Alert: Charles Johnson and the BBC

Posted: October 12, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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On Oct Post Tim Blair dared to tweak King Charles the Pious with the following post:

Then.

Now.

UPDATE:

Then. Then. Then.

Now. Now. Now.

Charles answer included the following:

Tim Blair seems to believe I was supposed to toe the right wing line on climate change forever. Now that I’ve invested the time and effort to educate myself on the issues and have changed my mind, I’m an unfaithful monkey who must be stoned.

But the Gods of Irony do not like to be mocked:

The climate change correspondent of BBC News has admitted that global warming stopped in 1998 – and he reports that leading scientists believe that the earth’s cooling-off may last for decades.

“Whatever happened to global warming?” is the title of an article by Paul Hudson that represents a clear departure from the BBC’s fanatical espousal of climate change orthodoxy. The climate change campaigners will go nuts, particularly in the run-up to Copenhagen. So, I suspect, will devout believers inside the BBC. Hudson’s story was not placed very prominently by his colleagues – but a link right at the top of Drudge will have delivered at least a million page views, possibly many more.

The actual BBC story is here:

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Damion Thompson asks the question:

The BBC now has serious questions to answer. It has used millions of pounds of licence-payers’ money to advance a simplistic point of view that is beginning to fall apart under scrutiny. Did it not foresee that this might happen? And, now that statistics are beginning to point in the other direction, is it prepared to give equal prominence to a debate about climate change that is both respectable and urgent?

So as the evidence has changed to a degree that the Climate Change correspondent for the BBC actually questioned Global Warming Charles Johnson has managed to be convinced in the other direction.

There has been speculation that LGF is on the gravy train. Robert Stacy disagrees:

Some commenters have speculated that Johnson is now on the Soros gravy train, a conspiratorial suspicion that violates Occam’s Razor. Johnson surely isn’t a sellout, for this would mean that he had been bribed to betray some important principle or to dishonor some obligation of loyalty.

Yet no one has ever offered evidence that Charles Foster Johnson ever had any principle or honor, and or that he was ever loyal to anyone but himself. He has been consistently vicious and selfish, and this only escaped notice so long as it served Johnson’s interests to deceive those whose assistance he sought in advancing his own self-aggrandizing agenda.

I was in that camp for quite a while but the Global warming issue isn’t something that was a part of any kind of vendetta or a key issue for any of the people that Charles was feuding with. Combine this with the fact that the evidence is actually going the other way and this story:

Billionaire George Soros said on Saturday that he would invest $1 billion in clean energy technology as part of an effort to combat climate change.

and I must confess I just don’t know what to think anymore.

Update: Given my not knowing a new poll is in order.

When you have the Charleston Gazette’s editorial board behind you…

Posted: October 8, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…then you are really doing well.

Congratulations Charles you’ve managed to get your slanderous attack on Robert Stacy McCain actually repeated in a Newspaper in Charleston West Va.

Now Don Surber writes for a paper in the same city (Charleston daily mail) so far be it from me to deride the state but I suspect that this was based on the clip from Rachel Maddow via LGF now that’s sourcing for you!

So to try to score a cheap shot against Sarah Palin they have committed an actionable offense. Once they repeated that claim in print and online it became so. And since the paper is on the net so if it’s picked up by a paper or a blogger in the UK. Robert Stacy and co might even choose to sue under British Libel laws.

Robert Stacy has already taken the first step demanding a retraction:

Over the years, this malicious campaign against my reputation has metastasized spectacularly on the Internet, as individuals and organizations with various political or personal motives have elaborated and repeated them. Some of the original sources for these accusations (e.g., a column by Michelangelo Signorile) contained factual errors, which have been incorporated into the urban-legend mythology, producing a Gordian Knot of non-fact that is not worth the effort it would take to unravel it. Like ancient Alexander, however, I am prepared to swing the sword. Retract, please.

These charges have, as I say, taken on an Internet life of their own. However, never before have they been published in a print newspaper. Whatever malice against the former governor of Alaska inspired your publisher, editors and writers to undertake this false and dishonorable guilt-by-association smear, it was a most foolish blunder. Retract, please.

Congratulations Charles you now have a chance to make Robert Stacy a fair amount of change and to have your charges refuted in a court of law and it will likely not cost you a cent. Then again if he is already going to court one more person in the doc won’t make a difference will it? You will make a real great witness at the trial. I suggest deleting those Archives asap.

The Decline and Fall of Little Green Footballs…

Posted: October 7, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…is Chronicled is some detail at Gates of Vienna (via lgf2) in a post sarcastically called Becoming the MSM:

Sometimes even prominent bloggers make mistakes. But Rule #1 of blogging is to correct all errors promptly and post retractions. A blogger’s credibility supposedly hinges on such prompt corrections.

To this day, Charles Johnson has not corrected or retracted these two factual errors, nor any of the others.

And, strangely enough, his credibility hardly suffered at all. His star didn’t begin its descent until he picked fights with some of the big guns in the American blogosphere. Now — two years later — he is finally recognized as a retailer of smears and falsehoods.

Funny about that.

It’s not funny at all but the explanation as to why it took so long for him to be figured out is explained in the next sentence.

Charles Johnson made his substantial reputation back in October 2004 as one of the major bloggers who helped discredit CBS, Dan Rather, and the forged “Killian Memo”.

Basically most people here in the states weren’t familiar with what was going on over there. We saw Charles become a 9/11 hawk, saw what he did with both Rather and the Fauxphotography and with those precedents decided that he knew what he was doing. We assumed this was a blog war and figured it was both a bit of a blog war and and to some degree an honest disagreement along the lines of “who do we want as allies”?

I wrote a defense of Charles back in April at the start of his big break with US bloggers and had this to say about some of the people he was talking about:

BTW: I didn’t include the “other side” on the various disputes because this particular post was concerning Charles and LGF. I’ve read and been happy to quote both Atlas and Jihad Watch on various topics and will continue to do so. I would recommend checking out both sites and Charles’ archives if you want the full back and forth between them. I don’t listen to, read or watch Beck so frankly I’m not really interested.

On the Vlaams Belang

(BTW I don’t have a problem with either Geller’s or Johnson’s positions as they are both in my opinion decisions of conscience)

I linked to Pam and I’ve linked to Gates, didn’t have a problem with either as I simply assumed it was a stronger version of the old CIA debate over how pure allies in the war on terror have to be.

Since I had read Charles regularly until other blogs overtook him in my attentions I missed a lot of the banning. It wasn’t until he went after Robert Stacy that I actually saw Or cared what was going on.

So I must confess that I’ve been more concerned with my own situation so here is the link to the Gates Correcting page for LGF. I suggest you read it along with Charles Charges from his archives (while they are still there anyway). It will not surprise you now but it might have before. Gates of Vienna is dead on with this:

He has become the Dan Rather of the blogosphere.

Back in those heady days when political blogs first came into their own, the bloggers promised the MSM that they would “fact-check their a**.”

But what about the major blogs? Who will fact-check their a**es?

The answer, in a word, is: nobody.

I am a very minor blog in the scheme of things but for what it’s worth I’m sorry I didn’t give your situation the attention it deserved.

Good advice from RSM to Nigel Horne…

Posted: October 6, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…regarding libel law:

While I am not litigious by nature — my views being rather Jacksonian in that regard — perhaps Governor Palin, Mrs. Vincent and their publishers have different views. It is my understanding that British libel law is far more inclined toward the plaintiffs than is true here in the United States, especially for “public figures” as covered under the U.S. Sullivan precedent.

Should Mrs. Vincent retain the services of a British attorney, I suspect that your publisher would be advised to settle the suit at any sum asked, as it would be quite impossible to prove that Mrs. Vincent is “closely associated with a well-known white supremacist,” which I most assuredly am not, no matter what any particular idiot has published to that effect or how often it has been repeated.

Think of the cost to your publisher, Felix Dennis, of flying Charles Johnson, Michelangelo Signorile, Rachel Maddow, et al., to London for a libel trial, sir. Ask yourself how such witnesses might stand up under cross-examination,

How do I know this is good advice? As Chris Hitchens reminds us Polanski won such a case in England :

In July 2005, Polanski took advantage of the notorious British libel laws to sue my colleagues at Vanity Fair and collect damages for his hurt feelings. It doesn’t matter much what the supposed complaint was—he had allegedly propositioned a Scandinavian model while purring about making her the next Sharon Tate—so much as it mattered that Polanski would dare to sue on a question of his own moral standing and reputation. “I don’t think,” he was quoted as saying of the allegation, “you could find a man who could behave in such a way.” Say what? Anxious for his thin skin, the British courts did not even put Polanski to the trouble of appearing in a country where he has never lived. They allowed him to pout his outraged susceptibilities by video link before heaping him with fresh money.

That being the case a certain Little Green Flake should be happy Mr. McCain is Jacksonian by nature. I’d say the same about Maddow but she doesn’t have to worry as Robert Stacy somehow thinks she is a handsomer woman than Mika. I beg to differ.

Frankly I think he should be more worried about Todd Palin. He has a lot more free time to avenge his wife’s honor.

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