These are mostly random thoughts provoked by this post:
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/16/whither_twitter
Which quotes this:
QuoteI followed the events of the weekend via three basic sources. The first was cable news, and as everyone in the world has pointed out, it sucked. Most TV news outlets have no foreign bureaus anymore; they didn't know what was going on; and they were too busy producing their usual weekend inanity to care. Grade: F.
The second was Twitter, mostly as aggregated by various blogs. This had the opposite problem: there was just too much of it; it was nearly impossible to know who to trust; and the overwhelming surge of intensely local and intensely personal views made it far too easy to get caught up in events and see things happening that just weren't there. It was better than cable news, but not exactly the future of news gathering. Grade: B-.
The third was the small number of traditional news outlets that do still have foreign bureaus and real expertise. The New York Times. The BBC. Al Jazeera. A few others. The twitterers were a part of the story that they reported, but they also added real background, real reporting, and real context to everything. Grade: B+. Given the extremely difficult reporting circumstances, maybe more like an A-.
And this from Megan McArdle:
QuoteThe Missing Iran Coverage
15 Jun 2009 09:01 am
One of Andrew's readers asks where the MSM is on Iran. The New York Times and numerous internet sites have wall-to-wall coverage, including Andrew's sterling work. Other outlets practically ignored the biggest story currently going on in the world over the weekend.
I haven't commented on it because other than the obvious--elections should result in the election of the person who got the most votes--I don't have anything to add. I know nothing about Iran, and I don't blog much about foreign policy because I don't know much about foreign policy.
But I think Andrew's reader's question is ultimately a business story. Why doesn't the MSM have more coverage? Because they don't have the manpower. The cable networks are hamstrung by the fact that they don't have much footage of what's going on in Iran. As I watch, they're showing a combination of shots of peaceful protests in Western countries, lying propaganda footage from Iran's state television system, and random b-roll of unidentified protests in some unidentified country that does not seem to be Iran. This is less than must-see-TV.
The print media is hamstrung by the fact that they've slashed their foreign bureaus to the bone--and then amputated the bone. There are too few journalists in too few places to cover a big story like this.
Basically I'm wondering where we're heading in terms of the media. The direction for a long time has been for TV stations and newspapers to cut down on foreign bureaus as much as they can. This isn't the case with the BBC because it's funded by the taxpayer and the BBC World Service (which is funded by the government) depends on being able to report from the areas that matter to the 100+ languages it broadcasts in.
Similarly a few high-brow papers are probably able to make some money out of their foreign affairs coverage because other newspapers don't provide as much: the NYT and Guardian have been superb in covering Iran and both seem to have active journalists who know Iran well in Iran right now.
But with those few exceptions, and I don't know if they'll last, I'm finding it difficult to see how we'll have a culture that's able to keep abreast of developments in foreign affairs. Without foreign bureaus, which for newspapers and TV stations aren't terribly profitable because people don't tune in (and don't see the adverts) for that sort of news I worry that what we currently have in the blogs will sort of become our news. Lots of shouting and an aggregation of information with little context, because we won't have the people on the ground providing the context.
I also worry that the same thing will happen in the opposite direction. I wonder just what local government (sub-state for the US) will get up to if they don't have a local paper dedicated to that county or city watching the local council. It seems like it is the sort of situation in which corruption's more possible than normal.
But I'm not sure and I'm aware people have been having such concerns since Gladstone's abolition of the paper tax didn't lead to the mass education he hoped for, but to the start of the tabloid press. So maybe we'll just carry on at about the same rate? :mellow:
The situation now is a lot better than back when everything we knew about foreign events was filtered through journalists. I am not worried.
Hyperreality. :wub:
We see glimpses of the future in phone vids uploaded to Youtube, Twitter posts and such. In a few years everyone will be routinely recording and uploading real-time footage of his or her surroundings. For security, if nothing else. Sending that to a public space like Youtube will be easy.
Journalism will consist on filtering all that information into a coherent image.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 18, 2009, 05:34:17 PM
Journalism will consist on filtering all that information into a coherent image.
yea. which will require different education and standards for journalists, and a different, but related, role from they have right now.
I've seen newspapers embed twitter feeds on their sites, while they are covering an event, and it was surprisingly very refreshing. however, I think we all agree that newshounds no longer have the monopoly of gathering data; so I think practises like that will be increasingly supplied by other participants.
good journalism will become more like a storytelling hybrid of wiki and google: a story will provide context, with links to a variety of sources, data, blogs, posts, uploads and feeds. but there still will be people filtering the information in order to reduce noise and convey meaning. unlike wiki, the filtering process won't be open to the public.
don't like the story? there's always another channel. probably linked to as well.
journalists are adapting. the bigger issue: who pays for it? online revenue is pretty sketchy and the advertising industry itself is suffering. it's the dailies which are suffering the most. some of the niche medias are doing well, like trades, who have customers willing to pay good money for very relevant news, and some locals, who have communities willing to pay for it, because no one else can.
increasingly, I think the BBC model is very relevant: run media as a nonprofit for the public good. keep in mind that many of the failing dailies are suffering under high debt, incurred from their last acquisition.
Quote from: saskganesh on June 18, 2009, 06:35:19 PM
increasingly, I think the BBC model is very relevant: run media as a nonprofit for the public good. keep in mind that many of the failing dailies are suffering under high debt, incurred from their last acquisition.
I agree with all your post.
The problem is the money. The groups that make money aren't doing it by providing in-depth, heavily contextualised analysis of world or even local events. It's the cable news and tabloids who are doing well. I think that's fine and that they have a worthwhile role to play in a sort-of healthy media ecosystem.
My concern is that most people won't pay for in-depth coverage of foreign affairs, or for a local newspaper that's dull 90% of the time but keeps an eye on local government and the scandals that wouldn't attract attention otherwise. But I think both of those things are good for public discourse in general.
My fear is that the local stuff will be ignored because there's no money in it and similarly the foreign bureaus will be too. We won't have journalists with experience in a region who are able to provide context. Rather we'll get coverage of foreign affairs in the same way we do domestic issues, without the sources and contacts. A news clip and voiceover lasting a minute or two followed by a period twice as long in which talking heads from the two 'ideologies' or parties get to argue.
I like the idea of non-profits. I think it could work, especially in terms of local papers.
If the people don't want to pay for foreign or local news, perhaps they shouldn't get foreign or local news. What is the problem with that?
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 10:53:09 PM
If the people don't want to pay for foreign or local news, perhaps they shouldn't get foreign or local news. What is the problem with that?
It's not good for democracy or the functioning of civil society and the rule of law in general. I know you communist automatons don't care about that, but many of us in the west do.
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 10:53:09 PM
If the people don't want to pay for foreign or local news, perhaps they shouldn't get foreign or local news. What is the problem with that?
I don't understand. There is lots of demand for foreign and local news that is why news shows and news magazines and newspapers are bought.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 18, 2009, 11:04:28 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 10:53:09 PM
If the people don't want to pay for foreign or local news, perhaps they shouldn't get foreign or local news. What is the problem with that?
It's not good for democracy or the functioning of civil society and the rule of law in general. I know you communist automatons don't care about that, but many of us in the west do.
On the contrary, I think my view point is distinctly capitalist :contract:
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 11:06:09 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 18, 2009, 11:04:28 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 10:53:09 PM
If the people don't want to pay for foreign or local news, perhaps they shouldn't get foreign or local news. What is the problem with that?
It's not good for democracy or the functioning of civil society and the rule of law in general. I know you communist automatons don't care about that, but many of us in the west do.
On the contrary, I think my view point is distinctly capitalist :contract:
My post had nothing do with Capitalism.
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 11:06:09 PM
On the contrary, I think my view point is distinctly capitalist :contract:
Isolationist, yes. Flawed capitalism, maybe, but so many peripheral factors affect the markets that a breakdown in information sources would be distinctly un-capitalist in its consequences.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 18, 2009, 11:11:47 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 11:06:09 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on June 18, 2009, 11:04:28 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 18, 2009, 10:53:09 PM
If the people don't want to pay for foreign or local news, perhaps they shouldn't get foreign or local news. What is the problem with that?
It's not good for democracy or the functioning of civil society and the rule of law in general. I know you communist automatons don't care about that, but many of us in the west do.
On the contrary, I think my view point is distinctly capitalist :contract:
My post had nothing do with Capitalism.
Then my first post had nothing to do with communism.
Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.
Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.
Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. :bleeding:
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 05:51:33 AM
Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.
Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.
Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. :bleeding:
I am not sure I agree. Some of the stuff I read on languish is actually much better than local newspaper articles, for example. A professional journalist does not necessarily do better than another individual, especially if that someone is smarter, has access to generally unavailable information, has professional knowledge etc. You may get a better understanding of the division of work among the 70+ HK government departments from me than from the local BBC correspondent.
Quote from: Monoriu on June 19, 2009, 06:03:28 AM
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 05:51:33 AM
Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.
Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.
Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. :bleeding:
I am not sure I agree. Some of the stuff I read on languish is actually much better than local newspaper articles, for example. A professional journalist does not necessarily do better than another individual, especially if that someone is smarter, has access to generally unavailable information, has professional knowledge etc. You may get a better understanding of the division of work among the 70+ HK government departments from me than from the local BBC correspondent.
You are confusing a source with a journalist.
You are right in that you would provide a better overview of your level of the civil service than the local BBC correspondent. But the BBC journalist would have access to a wider range of information that you - some within the civil service, some outside it - and if they are a good journalist, they will have a good degree of credibility based on their proven ability to interpret raw information. Not to mention the fact that, as a professional journalist, they will have institutional resources behind them.
There is also the final point that we can't really know you are a HK civil servant, what level you are, or whether anything you say is true. Whereas the journalist at least has some incentive to be somewhat honest some of the time. ;)
Twitter is the devil and should burn. I do not use that either to post myself or read other people's stuff. Its just stupid and pointless.
Blogging though. Now there I can see a place in the future.
Sure, there are lots of idiots just making things up as they find it. But there are also many well regarded, trusted people. A known spread of these across the world could well make for a good way to get your international news.
How conventional media can save themselves....better international cooperation? Getting foreign media to have one of their journalists write a piece about events in their country aimed at ignorant foreigners with the promise that you will do the same? - Of course these cooperation should be formed between similar papers, it'd be silly to have the left wing pro-freedom western paper printing reports from some right wing dictatorship's state media.
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 06:38:28 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 19, 2009, 06:03:28 AM
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 05:51:33 AM
Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.
Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.
Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. :bleeding:
I am not sure I agree. Some of the stuff I read on languish is actually much better than local newspaper articles, for example. A professional journalist does not necessarily do better than another individual, especially if that someone is smarter, has access to generally unavailable information, has professional knowledge etc. You may get a better understanding of the division of work among the 70+ HK government departments from me than from the local BBC correspondent.
You are confusing a source with a journalist.
You are right in that you would provide a better overview of your level of the civil service than the local BBC correspondent. But the BBC journalist would have access to a wider range of information that you - some within the civil service, some outside it - and if they are a good journalist, they will have a good degree of credibility based on their proven ability to interpret raw information. Not to mention the fact that, as a professional journalist, they will have institutional resources behind them.
There is also the final point that we can't really know you are a HK civil servant, what level you are, or whether anything you say is true. Whereas the journalist at least has some incentive to be somewhat honest some of the time. ;)
All that is fine, but chances are the journo doesn't know shit, and he'll be forced to improvise on a 2 minute notice once something big happens.
The best example I can think of is the coverage of the Madrid bombings and following elections. It was uniformly dismal.
It took me 2 minutes looking at the statistical data from the elections to know what had happened. Another poster in the Spanish EUOT (whose work involves survey design) arrived at pretty much the same conclusion I did.
Yet not a single correspondent did. They had the raw data. They had the institutional backing. Access to wider range of information than I did. They had experience and credibility. And all* failed miserably.
*By all I mean all that I read, for example WSJ, Economist, NYT etc.
Meta Gamin meets Journalism
edit:stoopid spic kant spell
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 07:58:56 AM
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 06:38:28 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 19, 2009, 06:03:28 AM
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 05:51:33 AM
Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.
Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.
Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. :bleeding:
I am not sure I agree. Some of the stuff I read on languish is actually much better than local newspaper articles, for example. A professional journalist does not necessarily do better than another individual, especially if that someone is smarter, has access to generally unavailable information, has professional knowledge etc. You may get a better understanding of the division of work among the 70+ HK government departments from me than from the local BBC correspondent.
You are confusing a source with a journalist.
You are right in that you would provide a better overview of your level of the civil service than the local BBC correspondent. But the BBC journalist would have access to a wider range of information that you - some within the civil service, some outside it - and if they are a good journalist, they will have a good degree of credibility based on their proven ability to interpret raw information. Not to mention the fact that, as a professional journalist, they will have institutional resources behind them.
There is also the final point that we can't really know you are a HK civil servant, what level you are, or whether anything you say is true. Whereas the journalist at least has some incentive to be somewhat honest some of the time. ;)
All that is fine, but chances are the journo doesn't know shit, and he'll be forced to improvise on a 2 minute notice once something big happens.
The best example I can think of is the coverage of the Madrid bombings and following elections. It was uniformly dismal.
It took me 2 minutes looking at the statistical data from the elections to know what had happened. Another poster in the Spanish EUOT (whose work involves survey design) arrived at pretty much the same conclusion I did.
Yet not a single correspondent did. They had the raw data. They had the institutional backing. Access to wider range of information than I did. They had experience and credibility. And all* failed miserably.
*By all I mean all that I read, for example WSJ, Economist, NYT etc.
What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 05:51:33 AM
Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.
It is sort of like relying on Tamas for all my news about Hungary.
Of course I DO rely on Tamas for all my news about Hungary. Doh!
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 10:30:48 AM
What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?
They all went with the retarded "Spain surrenders to Osama" shit their target audience wanted to hear. None mentioned things like the relation between participation and socialist victories going back almost 30 years. Analysis my ass.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 12:40:04 PM
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 10:30:48 AM
What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?
They all went with the retarded "Spain surrenders to Osama" shit their target audience wanted to hear. None mentioned things like the relation between participation and socialist victories going back almost 30 years. Analysis my ass.
And why did the Spanish people participate? Because they wanted to send a message that surrendering to Osama was the will of the Spanish people.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 12:40:04 PM
Quote from: Warspite on June 19, 2009, 10:30:48 AM
What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?
They all went with the retarded "Spain surrenders to Osama" shit their target audience wanted to hear. None mentioned things like the relation between participation and socialist victories going back almost 30 years. Analysis my ass.
Wow, what an excellent example of why personal anecdote is no substitute for actual reporting.
it's not like there was any chance you were going to come to the conclusion that the bombings influenced the election - your analysis started with the need to prove that they did not, and went from there.
Heh. I've always maintained the bombs influenced the election. It's fairly obvious, since participation went up 10%. Which in turn gave Zapatero his victory.
And thank you (and Neil) for proving my point about the audience rather neatly, by the way. :)
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 02:05:18 PM
And thank you (and Neil) for proving my point about the audience rather neatly, by the way. :)
How so? I had no interest in Spain bowing to pressure from terrorists - as a supporter of the war in Iraq, of course it was exactly the opposite - I was very dissapointed out the outcome of the entire fiasco.
If anything, I would be pre-disposed to NOT wishing to believe that AQ can force an ally out of the war.
You certainly didn't want to hear that one of the supposedly most important allies, one of the Azores Three, had been from the outset against the invasion and wanted nothing to do with the whole thing.
It was sweeter to think the cowards had surrendered, lacking the spine of true American Warriors, when the reality was that only a few delusional fools believed an invasion was the right thing to do.
Even today you refuse to acknowledge that you can't force someone to do something he wants to do. And Spain never wanted to be in Iraq. No, in your mind Spain "bowed to the pressure of the terrorists" as you so aptly put it. :lol:
The Revolution Will Be Twitted.
Anyway I think Sheilbh raises an interesting question. The printed media is pretty much in its death throes. Worse still (at least for the media industry) is that commercial electronic media is pretty much becoming outcompeted by free "amateur" media (how many of you log in daily to Languish to find your news?)
Sure, the news have to come from somewhere (which is now mainly commercial media), but I guess the convergence will continue to happen.
So the question remains: will we turn into a hyper-information society, with everybody becoming a news source, or will we be lost totally in information chaos, as we have no longer a way to verify that any information is real?
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 02:19:59 PM
You certainly didn't want to hear that one of the supposedly most important allies, one of the Azores Three, had been from the outset against the invasion and wanted nothing to do with the whole thing.
It was sweeter to think the cowards had surrendered, lacking the spine of true American Warriors, when the reality was that only a few delusional fools believed an invasion was the right thing to do.
Even today you refuse to acknowledge that you can't force someone to do something he wants to do. And Spain never wanted to be in Iraq. No, in your mind Spain "bowed to the pressure of the terrorists" as you so aptly put it. :lol:
Yes, it is clear that you approached this in a dis-passionate and objective manner.
I was actually one of the very few who wanted the troops to remain there. Not because I believed in the invasion, but because I thought (and still do) it was our moral responsibility to assume the failure of a system that allowed Aznar to participate in a war despite the opposition of 85% of the population and every other party.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 02:19:59 PM
Even today you refuse to acknowledge that you can't force someone to do something he wants to do.
Well, that's not exactly true, but even if it were, your statement that Spain never wanted to be in Iraq is a lie. Spain went into Iraq of its own free will.
Not really. Traditionally the party in power seeks the cooperation of the opposition in such endeavours (like during Desert Storm), which more or less ensures there is a consensus.
Aznar broke that rule. Spain went to Iraq on his personal crusade - and despite the opposition of most Popular voters and quite a few factions within, Popular MPs followed the Party line.
Quoting the head of the (European sense) liberal wing, then VP (and later IMF head honcho) Rodrigo Rato after the election results: "You [Aznar], and your war".
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 05:12:33 PM
Not really. Traditionally the party in power seeks the cooperation of the opposition in such endeavours (like during Desert Storm), which more or less ensures there is a consensus.
Aznar broke that rule. Spain went to Iraq on his personal crusade - and despite the opposition of most Popular voters and quite a few factions within, Popular MPs followed the Party line.
Quoting the head of the (European sense) liberal wing, then VP (and later IMF head honcho) Rodrigo Rato after the election results: "You [Aznar], and your war".
Which doesn't explain the difference between the election results and the last poll.
I've told the reasons several times (starting on my very first post all those years ago).
Spain has had a leftist majority for nearly 3 decades, a result of Franco's right wing dictatorship. And it is only getting bigger, as old folk die off.
Aznar's victories were based on high Popular participation and low Socialist participation. The former prompted by nationalist or anti-commie rhetoric, the latter due to apathy and discontent after numerous corruption scandals during the 14 years González led the country and the following clusterfuck within the PSOE when they finally lost in 1996.
Looking at the data, there's a clear correlation between participation in an election, and socialist victory. IIRC pre-election surveys commissioned by the Socialists gave them 6% as the increase in voting needed to win, which as you point out seemed unlikely at that time.
Then the Salafists struck.The main effect of the bombings was making people feel their country was being threatened. The first reaction to that was to go out to the streets - which is what usually happens when ETA attacks as well. The second, being that close to an election, was to go and vote, even those who had no intention to do so originally. So participation jumped up 10 points, and the Socialists, in accordance with statistical trends in place for the last 30 years, won, to everyone's surprise. And they won 3 months after that in the EU elections as well, showing the original results were not a fluke.
Of course there were other factors as well, mainly the disastrous handling of the bombing investigation by the government, that included lying not just to the people but also to our allies in the WoT, withholding intelligence info from them, airing a documentary about ETA in the night before the election and so on. That surely cost PP votes, as well as encouraged some Commies to go Socialist instead of wasting their vote on their party.
Is there precedent for domestic terrorism increasing turnout?
I don't know. ETA used to strike during every election, so that might be hard to see just looking at the figures. They mostly failed during the last decade, though (when I was a kid there was a successful attack every other day - over a hundred victims a year).
I can tell you, however, that just like AQ played a big role in electing Zapatero, ETA played a similar role in the election of Aznar a decade before, when a failed attack put him in the limelight. Until then he was another obscure figure with no charisma (PP had tried in vain to reinvent itself since the 80s). From that moment on he was the president-to-be.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 05:12:33 PM
Not really. Traditionally the party in power seeks the cooperation of the opposition in such endeavours (like during Desert Storm), which more or less ensures there is a consensus.
Aznar broke that rule. Spain went to Iraq on his personal crusade - and despite the opposition of most Popular voters and quite a few factions within, Popular MPs followed the Party line.
Quoting the head of the (European sense) liberal wing, then VP (and later IMF head honcho) Rodrigo Rato after the election results: "You [Aznar], and your war".
Aznar was the government. Aznar, and only Aznar spoke for Spain. Not the opposition. Not the opinion polls. Not the Spanish people protesting the war. Only Aznar.
Quote from: Neil on June 19, 2009, 07:37:44 PM
Aznar was the government. Aznar, and only Aznar spoke for Spain. Not the opposition. Not the opinion polls. Not the Spanish people protesting the war. Only Aznar.
I agree with you. Which is why I was for keeping the troops in Iraq.
What really pisses me off though is Zapatero promised to change the law to require a majority of two thirds in order to send troops aborad. The bastard hasn't done that.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 19, 2009, 07:44:37 PM
Quote from: Neil on June 19, 2009, 07:37:44 PM
Aznar was the government. Aznar, and only Aznar spoke for Spain. Not the opposition. Not the opinion polls. Not the Spanish people protesting the war. Only Aznar.
I agree with you. Which is why I was for keeping the troops in Iraq.
What really pisses me off though is Zapatero promised to change the law to require a majority of two thirds in order to send troops aborad. The bastard hasn't done that.
Such a law would be madness. Why would a government want to give the opposition a veto on the use of force. Such a thing is simply not good government, although it's the sort of thing that sounds good if you're a communist party riding a wave of anti-Americanism and cowardice to power. Nevertheless, such a law could interfere with Zapatero's pet project: The use of the Spanish military to destroy Israel and to slaughter the Jewish race.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 19, 2009, 06:41:19 PM
Which doesn't explain the difference between the election results and the last poll.
I believe Spanish state TV, after the bombing showed a two-hour long documentary about the bombings and the line at Spain's embassies, even after doubts were raised, was that that it was an ETA bomb. I don't think any country in the West would tolerate just absolute lies being pushed by the government after a terrorist attack. It's like Blair blaming 7/7 on the IRA because he thought there was electoral gain in it.
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 19, 2009, 09:09:37 PM
I believe Spanish state TV, after the bombing showed a two-hour long documentary about the bombings and the line at Spain's embassies, even after doubts were raised, was that that it was an ETA bomb. I don't think any country in the West would tolerate just absolute lies being pushed by the government after a terrorist attack. It's like Blair blaming 7/7 on the IRA because he thought there was electoral gain in it.
They made a documentary on the Madrid bombings and aired it before the election? How long did it take to make, 30 minutes? :huh:
I've only heard this story that Aznar lied about the bombings for electoral gain at third hand. Has it been conclusively demonstrated that he knew it was not ETA?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 19, 2009, 09:16:39 PM
They made a documentary on the Madrid bombings and aired it before the election? How long did it take to make, 30 minutes? :huh:
No. A documentary on ETA, sorry I fucked that up :blush:
QuoteI've only heard this story that Aznar lied about the bombings for electoral gain at third hand. Has it been conclusively demonstrated that he knew it was not ETA?
Well from the start people were pointing out that it wasn't ETA's style. The embassies were still suggesting that it was 'internal terrorism' (which means ETA) until the election by which point it was entirely clear that it wasn't.
You'd need to ask Iorm, but I don't think the PP admitted that it was not ETA until the evidence was so overwhelming that they couldn't deny it and I think that was just before the elections.
My understanding is that the issue wasn't the bomb but the perception that the government was playing with it for political purposes that lost the PP the election. And I don't care who was the opposition if that was how things were prior to the election the government deserved to lose.
Edit: I will go on holiday tomorrow for a week so don't expect a reply, no matter how grievously wrong I am. Which returns us to my first question, followed up by Marty and Ark :p