Quotulatiousness

May 5, 2011

Confused about the details of the Bin Laden raid? So’s the White House

Filed under: Government, Media, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:34

Jon sent me this link which is a systematic attempt to draw together all the information/misinformation/disinformation about the Abbotabad raid:

Usually when governments use misinformation, they use it to make themselves look good. The Obama Administration gets points for originality, insofar as it’s been using disinformation and misinformation to make itself look arbitrary, unlawful, helpless and stupid. Here’s jj’s great summary:

Okay, what do we have here:

1) There was a firefight.
2) There was no firefight.
3) Bin Laden was “resisting.”
4) Bin Laden wasn’t armed. (Makes the concept of “resisting” interesting.)
[4.a) And the newest one: the SEALS thought bin Laden was reaching for a weapon.]
5) He used his wife as a shield.
6) His wife was killed too.
7) He didn’t use his wife as a shield. She ran at a SEAL who shot her in the leg, but she’s fine.
8 ) Some other woman — the maid? — was used as a shield. By somebody. Downstairs.
9) That other woman — downstairs — was killed.
10) Maybe not. She was killed unless she wasn’t — and who was she, anyway?

That’s less than half the list.

Stay on message? They’d have to have agreed on what the actual message is first.

Back to the original post, which has been updated a few times:

When people say “something is wrong here,” they’re sort of right. The “here” in which the wrongness resides isn’t this specific news story. Instead, it’s an overarching pathology that we’re talking about.

That is, the SEALS did what they did. What’s driving everyone bonkers is that this administration is incapable of being straightforward. Serpentine deceit is its MO, regardless of the topic, whether birth certificates, health care debates, or sanctioned assassinations. Everything is wrapped in a web of lies and confusion because of the paranoia, personality disorders, narcissism, and sociopathy that walk the White House halls.

February 24, 2011

Ontario’s wine industry: stupid from 2007?

Filed under: Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

Michael Pinkus has more than a couple of bones to pick with Ontario wineries:

This is what I wrote while sitting at my table just minutes after my Cuvee pre-tasting:
“Here I sit tasting the wines from the fruit of the labour of Ontario winemakers for the 2011 Cuvee media pre-tasting … It is here we taste what the competition organizers and judges have deemed the best. Actually let’s get more specific, before us is one wine from each winery that entered the competition and we are told “These wines represent each participating winery’s top scoring wine from the Cuvee judging held in January”. In other words these are the top scoring wines from each individual winery’s submission … 62 wines in total. [. . . A few] were fantastic, well made wines worthy of their price (especially the Pelham which was an absolute steal at $24.95). But then there were others, whom I will not mention here by name but instead by price: a $45 Reserve Cabernet Franc, a $45 Cab-Merlot, a $55 Red Blend, a $40 Reserve Franc and a $35 Red Blend, that should all be ashamed of themselves for unleashing sub-par quality at astronomical prices. I’m talking about sub-par wines at above par prices for what the consumer is getting. This is not just about hurting the individual winery’s reputation but also, as one colleague pointed out to me, Ontario’s reputation as a whole. It’s time to stop trying to get all your money back at one shot — this is a long term investment people, and a tough one at that.

[. . .]

I was prepared to post that on the blog and just walk away (in effect, putting my own head in the sand) letting the chips fall where they may, but then it started to eat at me more and more. I want to keep writing about his industry, but what can I say? The final straw happened two days later at the bi-weekly media LCBO Vintages tasting and I have to admit to you I was appalled by a few of the Ontario wines being offered. I hopped on the train back home and found myself thinking about both tastings and penned the following:

I have been gentle on some of you over the years but seriously if these wines represent the best Ontario has to offer, give me a break. If the wines I tried at the Cuvee preview are some of the best wines wineries have to offer, then some wineries are in BIG trouble: (what was with that nasty-ass Merlot Icewine?). Don’t care what they submit: (a flat, flabby, bland Sauvignon Blanc, is that really what your winery does best?). Have given up: (a Gewurzt that has no Gewurzt characteristic to it what-so-ever). Are not paying attention: (a fume blanc so heavy handed on the fume that there was no fruit at all). And are just wasting grapes: (a poor excuse for an ’07 made with Franc and Sauv, an ’07!!!).

Two days later, at the LCBO Vintages tasting (for the March 19, 2011 release) I had to pull out my best conspiracy-theory to explain some of the Ontario wines we sampled. I know full well that the LCBO isn’t trying to be helpful to the Ontario wine industry, but never did I think they would stoop to this level: the tasting included a lackluster Sauvignon Blanc and a horrible Red Blend (you know who you are) … I suggest to you that the LCBO takes some of these atrocious wines to make Ontario look bad … advertise a red, from a good vintage like 2005, for under $15, and people will buy it, sip on it and just as quickly spit it out, vowing never to buy Ontario wines again. Thanks for nothing LCBO.

I’m not saying they do that with every Ontario wine (case in point: Cave Spring Cellars 2009 Estate Gewurztraminer), but I think they throw in a ringer every-so-often just to screw with their major competition, the wineries. Am I just paranoid? Well find out for yourself, buy each and every Ontario wine that comes thru Vintages and you tell me they are in the caliber claimed by the Board’s Vintages website: “the fine wine and premium spirits business unit of the LCBO. Our experts shop the world for fine wine and premium spirits of exceptional value.” Now, not every wine is to everybody’s taste you’ll say — true — but some of those wines the board tries to pawn off as “fine” are only fine for salad purposes and that’s all. I don’t buy this argument. As they say on ESPN NFL Football broadcasts, “C’mon Man”, this just ain’t happening.

Sturgeon’s Law claims that “Ninety percent of everything is crap”, and that applies to wine just as much as it does to novels. A big difference for wine is that even the crap is far better than it was just ten years ago. Nowadays, a crap wine is merely boring, not undrinkable as they once were. But that being said, Michael’s comments are worth paying heed — Ontario’s wine industry has problems galore from nature (cool climate wine production but a customer base accustomed to imported hot climate wines), legal obstacles (Ontario still treats wineries as if they produce radioactive waste, not wine), and the normal exigencies of competition: there’s no need to compound these problems with avoidable ones like poor quality control or (as Michael suggests) contempt for their customers.

December 13, 2010

Aha! A new conspiracy theory

Filed under: Britain, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

Following up to this post, Chris Greaves offers both a link, and a theory to explain the link.

The prince’s office also declined to comment, but stressed that the royal couple did not seek medical help after Thursday’s altercation.

Officials are assessing royal security after the attack on Charles and Camilla, whose Rolls-Royce strayed into the path of protesters against tuition fee hikes.

They hit the car with sticks, fists and bottles and chanted “Off with their heads” before the vehicle pushed its way through the crowd and drove off.

One casualty of the review may be the classic Rolls-Royce Phantom VI the couple were using, a gift to the Queen on her Silver Jubilee in 1977. The 33-year-old limousine does not have bulletproof windows or other modern protection features.

So what’s the conspiracy theory, you ask? Here you go:

Liz Windsor: (Thinks) How to get rid of Camela?
(later) I know, I’ll give her a Rolls Royce whose windows are not bullet-proof.
Heh heh.

November 26, 2010

“[T]he anti-TSA movement … is really a front for the Koch brothers”

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

Justin Raimondo pours scorn on the recent anti-libertarian hit piece in The Nation:

Speaking of implausible fiction, The Nation recently ran a piece by Mark “I spit on libertarians” Ames and Yasha Levine, which determined that the anti-TSA movement — that seems to have sprung up like a last gasp of life from the old America — is really a front for the Koch brothers, two formerly libertarian billionaires who have become the deus ex machina of clueless “progressive” commentators who cannot otherwise explain the explosion of anti-government anti-authoritarian populism currently upending politics. Glenn Greenwald seems to have taken care of the Ames-Levine fantasists, putting them in their proper place as apologists for the Obama regime and all its works, but one more thing needs to be said:

If Ames and Levine are going to become the “go to” team for the dirt on libertarians, such as it is, they ought to learn their subject. Because the very idea of Charles and David Koch leading a national resistance movement involving civil disobedience on a massive scale is laughable: to anyone who knows them, or knows of them in more than a glancing way, this can only provoke gales of unrestrained laughter. It is sheer laziness to believe this. Indeed, if only the Brothers Koch, and the plethora of organizations their money has funded, were that radical! Unfortunately, they are not: a stodgy, boring conservatism marks their both their methods and their politics, and always has.

Ames and Levine need to do some real research. It was the anti-Koch wing of the libertarian movement, centered around LewRockwell.com, that first gave John Tyner’s act of defiance the publicity and velocity that made it go viral. And if LRC is a front for the Koch brothers, then we have truly entered Bizarro World. In that case, so too is Antiwar.com a Koch front — and so why have we been doing this fundraising campaign for the past two weeks, begging our readers to save us from oblivion?

Gee, it seems like that check from the Kochs got lost in the mail! Charles, could you please look into that? Thanks.

H/T to Matt Welch for the link.

November 17, 2010

Nuclear ghouls unmasked

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Tabloid headline is in this case completely justified:

Organs of nuclear workers secretly harvested for 40 years, report finds
The families of scores of nuclear power station workers whose hearts, lungs and other organs were secretly stored and tested over a period of almost 40 years were let down by the authorities, a report said yesterday.

Relatives were seldom told that their loved ones’ organs were to be removed, and as a result families buried or cremated incomplete bodies.

In many cases the truth that their organs had been illegally removed and then destroyed in the testing process emerged only many years later.

The three-and-a-half year investigation conducted by Michael Redfern, QC, covered events spread over almost four decades.

This is the sort of thing that retroactively justifies some of the weird paranoias of the last fifty years. It becomes more difficult to dismiss worries that “they” are doing shady and unethical stuff when it turns out that that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.

June 2, 2010

QotD: Turkey’s conspiracy theorists

Filed under: Middle East, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

I’m a little surprised by how resolutely Turkey is turning against Israel at this moment (although it’s been building for years). When I was living in Ankara, it wasn’t too hard to find a Turkish-language copy of Mein Kampf in mainstream bookstores; even more widespread was books of conspiracy theories of every stripe and variety. Many Turks believed that there was a secret Israeli plot to harm Turkey; they also believed in a secret American plot with the same goal, a secret European plot, a secret Iranian plot, a secret Arab plot, a secret Russian plot, a secret Chinese plot, a Vatican plot, and perhaps a secret plot by the penguins in Antarctica. From my experience, the first rule of Turkish political philosophy is that everyone is always out to get Turkey, and the fact that what most Americans know about Turkey could fit on a 3×5 index card is no impediment to this conclusion. We may be subconsciously conspiring against them.

(Rule number two of of Turkish political philosophy is that they’re not Arabs and in their minds, Turks are nothing like Arabs. They’re like Europeans; sophisticated, comparatively wealthy, advanced, educated, technologically innovative, honorable and nothing like those backwards despotic hellholes across the border. A lot of Turks look at Arab states as former branch offices of the Ottoman Empire; the sense is that they couldn’t be anything like the Arabs because they used to rule over the Arabs.)

Jim Geraghty, “Oh, Turkey, You Used to Be So Different From All the Others…”, National Review, 2010-06-02

April 14, 2010

QotD: The environmental conspiracy theorists

Filed under: Environment, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

In the conventional wisdom, conspiracy theorists are stubble-faced old coots missing every third tooth, who live in backwoods shacks and claim the Pope (who is really Hitler’s love child) is in league with the Freemasons and the World Economic Forum to enslave us all through the cashless society.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, live in low-energy townhouses in upscale neighbourhoods, drink fair-trade coffee from 100% post-consumer recyclable cups, drive hybrid cars and eat only organic food grown within 100 kilometres of their homes. They are trendy, tony, highly educated and socially conscious with small carbon footprints. So, surely, they can’t be conspiracy theorists.

But they are.

In his new book, for instance, Mr. McKibben spins a tale about a vast web of shadowy payoffs to for-hire scientists, and intense pressure placed on politicians and editors by powerful lobbyists. He, like many environmentalists, sees himself and his colleagues as the little guys battling an enormous, unseen disinformation machine funded by Big Oil and Big Coal that is keeping the people from hearing the truth about the coming climate catastrophe.

They fancy themselves the underdogs when in fact they are the overdogs.

Lorne Gunter, “Green paranoia on parade”, National Post, 2010-04-14

January 7, 2010

10 Downing Street: the coup that wasn’t

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:48

A rather odd week for Britain’s embattled Prime Minister, with members of his cabinet seeming to be working on his ouster, yet still publicly supporting him. I suspect it’s a case of timing — few expect Mr. Brown to win the next general election, but potential leadership contenders don’t want to push him out of the top spot until after the coming debacle. If he gets replaced before the election, the new leader will take a lot of blame for the polling results, while the Brown team can take Parthian shots at the new leader’s supporters.

This the most likely reason that the “coup” never happened. All the key players in the next act want this act over properly, with Gordon Brown facing his doom at the hands of the voters, and a new leader in place (theoretically) untainted by the outcome of the election.

December 6, 2009

What if Ron Paul were taken seriously by the GOP?

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:47

Howard Fineman tries to analyze the Ron Paul phenomenon:

I have to admit that I kind of like Rep. Ron Paul. Partly it’s that we’re both from Pittsburgh, and both began our careers as paperboys for the Pittsburgh Press. More important, Paul is something unusual in politics. He appears to believe in something. His fundamental views have not changed since 1971, when he decided to run for Congress in Texas because President Nixon abandoned the gold standard.

I don’t like labels, but in this case I’ll use some. Paul, a Duke-trained physician, is an angry, apocalyptic, populist, hard-currency libertarian. He is against paper money, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and most of the federal government’s role in our lives, from fighting in Afghanistan to printing Social Security checks. Paul never saw an establishment he didn’t loathe. Many of his ideas are unworkable, some are dangerous, and some of his supporters are conspiracy theorists so paranoid, they probably think this column is part of the Plot. But, as odd as it seems, Paul has become a player in Washington and at the grassroots. His emergence should be a lesson to rudderless Republicans. They don’t want to scare away independent voters, but they need to find a way to emulate Paul’s outsider’s anger and his commitment to conservative essentials.

How much of a condemnation of American politics is it that you can tar someone by alleging that they “appear to believe in something”? Politicians are often portrayed as believing in nothing — except that it is critical that they be re-elected — but when it’s a smear to say that they hold any philosophical belief at all? Perhaps we really do deserve the governments we elect . . . as punishment.

December 4, 2009

Britain lowers defences against alien invasion

Filed under: Britain, Government, Military, Space — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:02

It’s true . . . the British are now wide-open to invaders from Rigel: they’ve re-assigned their UFO investigation forces to other duties:

The Ministry of Defence has closed its UFO unit after more than 50 years of investigating reported UK sightings.

A hotline and e-mail address for the public to report possible sightings was shut on 1 December because it had no “defence value”, the MoD said.

The officer handling reports has moved to another post, saving £44,000 a year.

The MoD said the unit had received thousands of reports, although none had yielded proof of aliens or any security threat to the UK.

Well of course they’d say that, wouldn’t they? Expect the mothership to show up any day now . . .

November 6, 2009

Those wild and crazy guys . . . in the CIA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:03

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has many purposes, but perhaps its most popular function is to provide some underpinning to the imaginings of conspiracy theorists worldwide. But, according to History House, the CIA was also a pretty weird operation in non-conspiracy terms, too:

[Project MK-ULTRA was] conceived by Richard Helms of the Clandestine Services Department (yes, the CIA actually gives its departments silly names like that), it went beyond the construction of mere truth serums and ventured into disinformation, induction of temporary insanity, and other chemically-aided states. The director of MK-ULTRA, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, figured LSD’s potential as an interrogative agent paled in comparison to its capacity to publicly humiliate. Lee and Shlain note the CIA imagined a tripping public figure might be amusing, producing a memo that says giving acid “to high officials would be a relatively simple matter and could have a significant effect at key meetings, speeches, etc.” But Gottlieb knew that giving LSD to people in the lab was a lot different than just passing it out, and felt the department did not have an adequate grasp on its effects. So the entire operation tripped to learn what it was like, and, according to Lee and Shlain,

agreed among themselves to slip LSD into each other’s drinks. The target never knew when his turn would come, but as soon as the drug was ingested a … colleague would tell him so he could make the necessary preparations (which usually meant taking the rest of the day off). Initially the leaders of MK-ULTRA restricted the surprise acid tests to [their own] members, but when this phase had run its course they started dosing other Agency personnel who had never tripped before. Nearly everyone was fair game, and surprise acid trips became something of an occupational hazard among CIA operatives . . . The Office of Security felt that [MK-ULTRA] should have exercised better judgment in dealing with such a powerful and dangerous chemical. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when a Security informant got wind of a plan by a few [MK-ULTRA] jokers to put LSD in the punch served at the annual CIA Christmas office party … a Security memo writer… concluded indignantly and unequivocally that he did ‘not recommend testing in the Christmas punch bowls usually present at the Christmas office parties.’

The in-house testing phase now over, MK-ULTRA decided to use the drug surreptitiously in the street to gauge its effects. They contract-hired George Hunter White, a narcotics officer, to set up Operation Midnight Climax, according to Lee and Shlain, “in which drug-addicted prostitutes were hired to pick up men from local bars and bring them back to a CIA-financed bordello. Unknowing customers were treated to drinks laced with LSD while White sat on a portable toilet behind two-way mirrors, sipping martinis and watching every stoned and kinky moment.” Lee and Shlain go on to comment, “when [White] wasn’t operating a national security whorehouse,” White threw wild parties for his “narc buddies” with his ready supply of prostitutes and drugs. He sent vouchers for “unorthodox expenses” to Gottlieb, and later said, “I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?” In case one needs reminding, these claims are backed by recently unclassified information. Yes, Virginia, truth is stranger than fiction.

Emphasis in the original.

I have no idea what relationship this account has to the actual facts, but if the mainstream media can get away with running stories without fact-checking, then I certainly don’t feel guilty about this one.

November 3, 2009

“Like Soylent Green, medicine is made of people”

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:04

Colby Cosh on the paradoxical nature of the public’s view of medicine:

We’re conditioned to think of “medicine” as a single, coherent planned enterprise, if not a conspiracy, and we often fear and despise it — until we decide we need it. At which point it cannot possibly move fast enough to please us. Like the state or the church, medicine is an impersonal abstraction, but one that seems to have common priorities and intentions, significant powers and one voice. Rationalists and believers in progress invoke it; nutcases and conspiracists resist it.

In a way, both are paying tribute to a fiction, much like Christians and Satanists. In real life, there is no pope or president of medicine, no temple where it can be consulted, no medical mandate of heaven. The emerging vaccine debacle, though mercifully likely to have fairly limited public-health consequences, reveals the terrible truth. Like Soylent Green, medicine is made of people. Not just doctors, but administrators, industrialists, economists and politicians — none of them angels, and none with an angel’s ability to predict mass behaviour, perceive and weigh risk, or foresee the judgment of future history.

[. . .]

People have always been prone to weird beliefs, but now there is a medium that compounds those beliefs, allows them to coalesce into a historical counter-narrative and unites their holders like never before. For the first time, there are people who seem not just weird, but positively, thoroughgoingly “weird-ist.” Try spelunking amidst the Internet detritus of the anti-vaccine movement. There is no philosophical reason that strange beliefs about vaccination should correlate with fringe beliefs about UFOs, reptilian elites, 9/11 “truth,” JFK, the world ending in 2012 you name it. Yet the correlation is real, and not hard to confirm.

October 19, 2009

The American social contract

Filed under: History, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:45

L. Neil Smith received some anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Iranian material recently. He tries to point out to the Christian who sent it to him that the United States was not intended to be a Christian country:

As I’ve testified often, I’ve known many Arabs, many Moslems, and more than a few Iranians, and found most of them to be extremely likeable, if not downright admirable people. What I see in my e-mail is an obvious product of ignorance and prejudice, and even worse, it fuels the evil machinations of the murderous warmongers in government.

Accordingly (with a few later additions), I wrote back to my correspondent:

We’ll all do better at getting rid of this administration if we face the truth, even if some of us find it unpleasant. This is not a Christian nation, nor was it ever intended to be. It was founded by a coalition of various Christians and deists (which is what atheists and agnostics back in the 18th century called themselves to avoid getting burned at the stake). It was bankrolled by a Jew, Haim Solomon. Look him up. None of this information is secret. It’s freely available to anybody who possesses the courage and integrity to click on Google or Wikipedia.

The deal between all of them is that religion would be separate from politics, that we would not make public policy on the basis of our mystical beliefs. Christians are trying to break that deal now, which is too bad. People in other nations, historically, have murdered each other over theological disputes. We have not, but we might start, if the Christians won’t stop welching on the bargain their ancestors made.

July 30, 2009

QotD: Conspiracy unmasked!

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:18

As a Charter Member of the Canadian Vast-Right Wing Conspiracy, Toronto Chapter, let me express my shock and horror at being discovered. Yes, me and the PM go way back. Oh, how we used to laugh away the nights, with talk of throwing widows and orphans into the cold winter night. That’s Social Darwinism, baby! Then we used to slap some waitresses around, because that’s what us right wing guys do. I used to sell bumpstickers that said “Scrooge was Right!” My winter coat is made of adorable puppy fur. The Prime Minister has a matching coat I gave him for Christmas.

Everytime Stephen Harper slashes a social program he laughs manically. I’ve seen him do it. He signs the Orders in Council with the blood of orphans. He says orphan blood flows more smoothly than that of children who are loved. Laureen Harper is not a real blond, it’s a wig. Part of an elaborate disguise to hide her actual Cruella de Vil looks. There is a hidden agenda and you clever folks have figured it all out.

The typical voter is just too dumb to understand the vast and subtle complexity of our plot. It’s rather clever. You see Stephie — as his friends call him — has for the last three years tried to lull Canadians to sleep, except you vigilant chaps. Way back in 2004-5 the federal government’s expenditures stood at $210.5 billion. Under two years of brilliant neo-con rule the expenditures reached $232.8 billion for 2007-8. By 2009-10 expenditures are projected to reach $258.6 billion. Hold on, you say, those are substantial increases? Exactly! By increasing government spending the Conservatives have convinced Canadians they are nice and friendly quasi-socialists. But just wait for that majority government! They’ll start cutting like there is no tomorrow, and for you Left-wing chaps that’s about right.

Publius, “News Alert: Stephen Harper Has a Hidden Agenda”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2009-07-29

July 29, 2009

QotD: Conspiracy theorists

Filed under: Government, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:29

Science fiction writer Damon Knight once claimed that the popularity of conspiracy theories could be explained by our “desire to believe that there is some group of folks who know what they’re doing.”

Wishful thinking. And few “groups of folks” have displayed less aptitude in the art of keeping secrets than government.

Yet no matter who is in power, no matter how incompetent they may be, there always exists this irate minority that believes politicians possess supernatural powers of deception.

The mystery the nation faces isn’t President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The mystery is how any American could believe that all the president’s former political opponents, both the Republican and Democratic parties, Hawaiian officials and two Honolulu newspapers (nay, the entire press corps) could work in concert to conceal the biggest con of the eon.

David Harsanyi, “Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind: What the Obama birth certificate conspiracy says about American politics”, Reason Online, 2009-07-29

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