brd - welcome to the coalition of the shrilling.

just a bit of background to put you in the picture

in the buildup to the invasion, i couldnt believe what i was seeing and built lukeryland.com in a furious rage. when the invasion started i switched to wotisitgood4.blogspot.com - which is mostly just a scrapbook where i paste snippets of things that i read, with links back to the article, and also some comments from me trying to make sense of things. (anything at the blog that is in all lower case is me being rantorific. normal capitalization means a quote from somewhere)

i kind of stumbled into doing this by accident (mostly cos i was just watching the world go by and none of it made sense) so theres no real purpose or target or woteva - but i guess the essential focus is that it seems that bush et al are trying to take over the world or cause ww3 or woteva, and destroy whats left of democracy and the idea of america - so i guess im trying to understand exactly wot is going on, in the vain hope that understanding the problem is the first step to finding a solution.

there are a gazilion bush-haters - and many of them know way more than me about the world - i wouldnt be able to find iraq on a map, prolly even if it was one of those maps that helpfully have the countries clearly labeled, so the only thing that i can offer really is that i see a *lot* of media and pretend to be able to put it into context somehow, and try to ascertain the purpose, or try to find an internally consistent logic which can encapsulate the observed facts or some such.

the astonishing thing is that as far as i can tell, most of what we hear/see is totally rubbish - to the extent that it seems more reasonable to doubt every media story, or at least ask why we are being told the story. it seems that we really live in a press-release world, and the idea that stories we see in the news are there simply because its news reporting is fundamentally outdated and erroneous. so i guess the premise of news-as-agenda has become my starting point, but then i kinda switch to a detail level and ascertain
(to varying degrees) if the story/stories cant be true and is therefore a bunch of lies (its disconcerting how often i can virtually prove that a story is made-up - simply cos the facts dont make any sense). and so then another lukeryrule kicks in - people dont tell lies for fun, cos the cost of getting caught is really high - and then i triangulate all the bits and attempt to ascertain the purpose of the lies (or omissions or wotever). its a flawed process, but it seems to catch a fair bit of stuff.

i try not to waste too much of anyones time by commenting on obvious stuff - for example by ranting about how disgusting the abuG pictures are - where i dont have anything to add, but i might try to highlight some important questions which seem to be unasked... for example, about the british pix, everyone was outraged that they were fakes, but nobody seemed to even ask why it may have been done, or by whom. or i might question the release strategy of the abuG pix or i mite ask why theres not even a hint of suspicion about the validity of the iconic abuGpix, despite the fact that they were released the same week that the fake iconic britpix and the fake (not yet officially)iconic berg beheading video came out. its often amazing to me that elefant-in-the-living-room questions go unasked - and not just by bigmedia. i dont really have a hypothesis to explain it - the best i can come up with is the completely unsatisfying idea that the agenda-setting is massively comprehensive and effective that no-one can think any more. or praps the much more satisfying concept that im a genius and everyone else is stupid - the only problem with that hypothesis is that theres nothing genius in the questions i ask... the britpix things is a classic example - someone singlehandedly destroyed the credibility of the british media and british army - surely the first 2 questions are who? and why?

another type of story that gets my attention is straight-up, barefaced lies and corruption -
a recent example: www.iht.com/articles/520494.html
"The administration is using pseudoscience to justify its decisions. Randall Tobias, its AIDS coordinator, has said numerous times that condoms are not effective at preventing the spread of AIDS in the general population. He repeated this assertion while testifying in the House of Representatives in March, citing the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Mr. Tobias is wrong. The dean of the London School wrote to him to say that the school had never produced any such report, and that its research shows that condoms do work."
- the specifics of this paragraph are stupid, and the implications are astonishing. this sort of thing happens all the time - the facts simply dont matter - even while testifying. and oftentimes, this type of story throws up other curiosities - eg newsgoogling "london condom tobias" gives only 3 responses - all the same article - 2*nyt, and 1*iht (ie 3*nyt). praps curiously, the title of the article changed from "Opposition to Condoms" in the nyt to "A big step forward on AIDS, and a step backward" in the iht.

another type of lie that gets my attention is stuff like this "In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq."
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/) - if the journo wasnt trying to make a point, he'd prolly have mentioned that those 6 people werent charged cos there was no case... again - this sort of thing happens *all* the time as well. speaking of ricin and other assorted terror toys - lets remember that all the terror arrests - from sleeper cells in ny to ammoniumnitrate - have come up empty handed. not a single conviction - anywhere. even if they have 500 policemen involved in the swoops, it doesnt seem to make the arrested any more guilty...

speaking of 'sleeper cells' - there are a bunch of similar spooky-sounding words/phrases that seem like they are written by a bad fiction writer - they are - and the premise of the story needs to be tossed into the garbage can. i always get excited when we get fed a new spook-word - it makes the whole game more fun. i can pick em a mile away, and most of the time when i take a closer look, the story turns out to be bollox. im sure i sound crazy most of the time - but after making apparently outrageous statements for 18 months, theres hardly a statement that im embarrassed by. and thats really bloody scary.

some admin stuff: lemme know when u want to get off the email list. feel free to reply or not to any of the emails. i just rant from the top of the email to the bottom - so i prolly often get off-point, and often dont get back on...

la di da

On Thu, 27 May 2004 20:26:31 +0100, wrote:

>
> Rylo,
>
> Would enjoy getting your thoughts - I very much enjoyed
> listening and chatting and generally catching up with
> you at Christmas so would also enjoy getting your
> thoughts now.
>
> BRD
>
> ________________________________
>
> From:
> Sent: Thu 27/05/2004 15:42
> To:
> Subject: Re: R: R: R: Happy Birthday
>
>
>
> btw - u may have heard that i rantalot to pam/g/hecht
> about the bushcrew and the state of the universe. most
> of it must be rubbish, but ive at least convinced
> myself that some of it mite be true. i assume that u
> have more important things in your world - and i copy
> most of it to my blog if you are interested - but i can
> also add u to the list if u need more emails in your
> day. none of it is fun.
>
> lr x
>