Letters to the Editor
-
engsoc
engsoc:
Well, I don't know if the article you cited is representative or not of Cato. As I said, I didn't spend much time on that site. But since you bring it as an exhibit for the defense, we might as well assume it is representative.
No, the fact that the article expresses views that differ from mine does not make it propaganda.
It is odd, I thought you were familiar with the Cato Institute. I am not very familiar with their current positions since we Rothbardians have a slightly different take on some issues. Rothbard was a founding member, but left in 1981 in a dispute. I occasionally read their site, but not enough to know if the paper that came up first in my site search was representative; and now you acknowledge little familiarity also. What a pair we make, eh?
engsoc:
I will tell you what it is exactly that unmistakably makes it a propaganda piece.
The promiscuous use of such vague terms as "likely" and "unlikely" by scientists who are trained in precision speaks volumes about how much is unknown.
This is just silly. [...]
You pick that sentence to support the claim that Cato is a propaganda organization? To those trained in theoretical mathematics most 'scientists' seem imprecise, but I understand that there is no 'truth' in the hard sciences, only ever better (we hope) approximations of reality.
Since almost all 'scientists' are dependent upon the government grant giving agencies, I would hope to see more precision in the language used when claims of 'scientific consensus' are thrown about.
As one who built a few modeling systems in the early days of computers, I know the limitations of predicting the future based on these attempts. Have any models yet included water vapor in the atmosphere in the system? I ask because water vapor is highly variable in the atmosphere, measurements of it are generally neglected in computer-generated forecast models.
"...High-altitude water-vapor measurement is a key element in modeling global warming because water has a much greater influence on Earth's tropospheric energy balance than trace gases such as carbon dioxide. However, water vapor is not accurately monitored, and little is known about its influence on global climatic change. ..." Do you disagree with this?
Anyway, I see no propaganda in the Cato position or the article.
-
LWM in another lie ...
The liar LWM: ...Just like bucky attacks us all here (he calls us a "cabal") just because we are not likely to vote for Ron Paul ...
I was attacked by the cabal for stating that I support Ron Paul; I did not attack anyone for not supporting him, but I did respond. I received the exact same treatment that Mona just got.
I labeled 5 individuals as cabal members, and there may be a couple more. LWM wants to say that these 7 (at most) represents "all" here. Codswallop by a coward trying to hide amongst the crowd after all his foul slander of anyone he disagrees with.
I try to respond to slander like the sentence of LWM's that I quote above --- that is not attacking. Attacking is what LWM does daily.
LWM, you really need to seek help. This is not 'snark' --- if your words really represent you, and are not just playing a teenager's game, then you are becoming unhinged.
-
Kovie
This is what happens when laws are brazenly broken by people in power, in secret. It sends a chill throughout the entire populace, and understandably so, because no one can know whether they have been the victims of these crimes
Right, that is exactly the point that I wanted to make. But as you know, secret wiretapping is for "preventing terrorism", so the bigger the chilling effect, the better, presumably.
-
Bucky!!!!111!!!!
This one's for you!
Sick, or What?
Antiwar.com Senior Editor and Lewrockwell.com Columnist Jeremy Sapienza has once again given everyone an occasion to “smear” him by…quoting him. He recently headlined an essay as follows:
A Grim Milestone — 159,000 US Troops Remain Alive in Iraq Filed under: War UPDATE: WHY I HATE THE TROOPS.
Jeremy Sapienza @ 2:13 pm
Another occasion that Mr. Sapienza gave to “smear” him by quoting him was when he wrote:
“I will stand up proudly for it. I have cheered on men attacking US troops. I will continue to cheer any defeat US troops meet.”
If William Kristol and other neo-conservatives had tried to invent people to discredit their critics, they could not have done better than the kind of trash that antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com have dredged up. What a truly sickening display of how far someone can go off track — from “the state is an enemy of liberty” to “any enemy of my state is a friend of mine.”
(I mention the “smear” charge because when Mr. Sapienza is quoted, his defenders at lewrockwell.com and antiwar.com insist that such quotations — with links to his expressed opinions — are “smears.”)
UPDATE: I just had a chance to settle in to my hotel room in Portland, Oregon when I checked my email and found one insisting that Mr. Sapienza isn’t a columnist for lewrockwell.com. Sure enough, his name cannot be found on the list. I’ll respond to some of the comments later, but I did have the foresight to take a screenshot of the list of “Columnists and Commentators” before posting the column above. Here it is. And just in case Mr. Sapienza gets dropped from the masthead of the antiwar.com and sent down the memory hole, here’s a screenshot of the antiwar.com masthead taken at the same time the material above was posted. Had the neo-conservative warhawks set out to do it deliberately, it would have been an astonishing accomplishment for them to have invented personas more likely to discredit the cause of non-intervention and peace than Justin Raimondo and Jeremy Sapienza.
http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/026869.php
Really Bucky. I just wish all you loonitarians would piss off and go away. Between the Bush apologists and enablers at Cato now trying to distance themselves from this debacle, to the kultist freaks like you at LewRockwell trying to shoehorn a proto-fascist populist into power by capitalizing on the anti-war sentiment, you are all part and parcel of the same right wing lunacy this country needs relegate to very fringes of society for once and for all. None of you have any integrity as far as I'm concerned and the in-fighting between your two camps of base and vulgar loonitarianism makes any comments I've directed at you or Mona look tame by comparison. You are all bug fuck insane.
A taste:
First off, the kultists at Lew Rockwell and Anti-war.com are not anti-state.
They will stand up for the "states rights" of multiple Slave-States, including Baathist Iraq and the Confederate States of America.
They are collectivists too, fellow travelers with out-and-out racists, and obsessed with the skin pigmentation of themselves and others.
They hate "neocons" so much that they swallow and repeat the lies of totalitarians.
I said it before, the sick little "cadre" at Lew Rockwell are not our friends or friends of liberty.
They are our enemies, as much so as communists, Robert Mugabe, Baathists, neo-nazis and Al Queda. Their guru was an admitted Leninist for cripes sake, who proudly would lie, cheat and steal (even if it hurt other libertarians), all for the glory of his cadre/front/faction.
The fact they smear the memory of Ludwig Von Mises with this is even more sick.
But what's that? Tick...tock...it's the countdown before George F. and other kults take up arms in the name of the Kadre and use ad hominem and other fallacies to try to distract us from the ugly truth of Lew and his cronies. Watch out for more ink from the squids.