QFT. CNN, in its current state, exists to make money. And sadly, the WORLDWIDE public (let’s not pretend it’s just the US) eats this shit up. So duh, money making organization does whatever it can to maximize profits. News at 11. It may not be the most important news of the day, but it’s certainly the most popular, and that’s where the money comes from. CNN long ago stopped being a news organization with any real principles, it’s just a big corporation doin’ what big corporations do.
Now can the Onion explain why boing-boing keeps publishing Dennis Eichhorn’s nihilistic comics?
Huh. Recalibrating…
Also, you may find this helpful.
Anyone wondering why CNN gave the top spot to Miley Cyrus should see how much it upset Hank and Marie.
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Brilliant, and much needed after the heated posts on this thread.
Do note that Matt Drudge of Drudgereport once spent three solid days complaining that important stories weren’t highlighted on CNN and elsewhere. Yesterday, on his site Miley’s antics were placed above:
Syria
Yellowstone burning
Several stories of black people attacking white people (because the “msm” doesn’t cover those, even though every site linked to was owned by ABC,CBS,NBC,MSN or a major newspaper)
“SHOCK: HS teacher gets 30 days in jail for raping 14-year-old girl, who later killed herself…”
among others. It would have given me no end of pleasure to see the Onion lampoon him instead.
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Dang typos. Too bad you quoted my mistake or I could have edited it out of existence. Curse you’s.
This time it is different. This is the first time in history that the victims of a chemical weapons attack were able to report the incident with video evidence in real time.
You can trawl Youtube, and see for yourself. Lots of dead bodies of all ages, with no physical trauma. Lots of people injured with the obvious signs of nerve gas poisoning. To put some frosting on the cake, there’s vdeo footage of small =children suffering from the side effects of the atropine injections that saved them. And to put the cherry on top, you can watch the last moments of a 1 year old in the field hospital where most of this footage was collected.
potato, potatoe
Syria, Cyrus
let’s call the whole thing off…
The term is parity not parody, and it happened because of several factors, including a rise in the Canadian dollar that would have happened even without a devaluation in US currency. It’s not simply that the US dollar slid. The Canadian dollar went higher because of increased revenue from the oil industry.
YES! One thousand times, YES!!! It’s just a TeeVee show!
Ah, that explains all that inflation that’s been happening. Where by happening I of course mean not happening.
How do you lampoon someone who is already a parody of himself?
This time it is different. This is the first time in history that the victims of a chemical weapons attack were able to report the incident with video evidence in real time.
I should have been more clear in my first post. I’m not saying that I think without a doubt there hasn’t been any chemical weapons used. What’s not clear is whose weapons they are.
What’s also not clear is whether airstrikes will help or exacerbate the situation. What is very clear is the military-industrial complex has been chomping at the bit for a long time to attack Syria and it’s not about humanitarianism, it’s not about democracy… it’s about money.
Once again, why aren’t we going into the Congo if we’re chomping at the bit for a humanitarian mission?
We’re not. It’s about money.
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" What’s not clear is whose weapons they are."
That too is pretty easy to reconstruct. Damascus is crawling with videographers who have pretty good vantage points to record where mortar shells and rockets are coming from. It’s particularly easy for when the regime is shelling, since they often use Mount Qassioun. There is no guesswork there. At the time of the gas attack, both areas on the east and west of Dmaascus were in rebel hands and being shelled by the regime.
So either 1. the Syrian army added some sarin delivery shells into their barrage, an easy thing to do, or 2. the FSA coordinated a discharge of sarin into those same areas. William of Ockham might have some words on which of these is more plausible.
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It may indeed be the simpler solution that the Syrian army used sarin shells along with conventional artillery shells, but that’s not proof.
It’s really not implausible that someone within the rebel groups - who we know are far from saints - would release sarin in an area that the army was shelling, in order to implicate the army and force the intervention of the US and/or the UN against the regime.
I’m not saying I believe that to be true, but Cow’s point is that without additional specific incriminating evidence (which may certainly exist, but is not public knowledge at this time) we just can’t know. What we do know is not a valid justification to start bombing the place.
It is probably reasonable justification for intervention, but, while I wish that there were a way for intervention to occur that could end this and that the US or the UN would just go ahead and do it, there isn’t. Bombing won’t do it (and will cause untold collateral damage), and while putting troops on the ground might do it, there are many obvious reasons nobody wants to do that. Not even sending in spec-ops teams Call of Duty style to take out Assad and top generals etc. will do it. We really need a non-military solution, and that doesn’t seem forthcoming.
So the US has decided to just say fuck it, let’s bomb them because that’s easy - which I find unacceptable. I don’t have a better solution, but this isn’t right.
There is no appetite among the US population to go to war and everyone knows it. If we do act, it’ll be some drone strikes or a couple heavy targeted strikes. Even the “war profit machine” knows that. Short of Syria wiping out entire towns of people or nuking their populace, I’m not sure anything could motivate the average citizen at this point to support a war.
This isn’t Iraq. We don’t have a gung-ho President suffering from feelings of inadequacy. We don’t have a major terrorist attack in our recent history. We’re certainly not scared of Syria. I just don’t see it happening.
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Don’t worry, that can be arranged.
The area in question remains contested by the rebels and regime. You’re not going to get much of an investigation of the area until the war ends, and even then, only if the side favored by teh truth wins the war (see Tiananmen Square, where in 1989, absolutely nothing happened.) There’s only so much evidence you can ask for under these conditions before crossing over to disingenuous.
There are three separate issues here: is the suspect that sociopathic? Was the crime feasible under those conditions? (Dubious in the FSA’s case) And did the suspect have something to gain my it? (For the SAA: physical control of the area – the shelling was followed up by an intense attempt to gain it with boots on the ground. For the FSA: they could only lose in doing this. THey need (and had) resident support, and they have a track record shwoing they care a lot about that.
On the contrary. So long as the rebel side consists of barely-trained militias that literally believe God guides their bullets, the MIC will keep making money hand over fist provinding them with very expensive 50cal ammunition, RPGs, and AK 47 ammo. Outside intervention would hasten the end of this very profitable phase of the war. If the MIC had wanted US involvement in Syria, they’d have been beating the war drums two years ago, especially in late 2011, before the more overtly Al Qaeda influenced militias moved in.
