Full disclosure. I’ve worked in television and radio for 30 years, and I’ve seen many examples of bias in my time. Bernard Goldberg, who was a reporter for the CBS Evening News, documents even more in his book at left.
After this story, there’s example of a pattern for what peaked in the 10:10 video. – Anthony
Exploding Children in Eco-Group’s Video Fails to Upset Liberal News Media
Shocking British short to promote cutting carbon emissions shows skeptics being blown up for not participating.
By Julia A. Seymour
Business & Media Institute
10/6/2010 3:11:11 PM
Red is the new green, according to a horrific short film put together by global warming alarmists in Britain for 10:10 a “Global Day of Doing.” Blood red that is.
The group 10:10 UK’s “No Pressure” video advertisement that was intended to promote its cause begins with a teacher lecturing her students: “Just before you go there’s a brilliant idea in the air that I’d like to run by you. Now it’s called 10:10 – the idea is that everyone starts cutting their carbon emissions by 10 percent, thus keeping the planet safe for everyone, eventually.”
Preaching global warming alarmism to children is nothing shocking, but the next part of the film was. The teacher singles out the two students who are skeptical about participating, presses a red button and BLAM! those children’s bodies explode as blood and guts cover their classmates.
Skeptical soccer players, businesspeople and even actress Gillian Anderson all get blown up in the “disturbing” video for not complying with the wishes of the global warming crowd.
The violent depiction may be a new low for the environmental movement, but its violent rhetoric has been in use for years. Yet, the response from the liberal news media in the U.S. has been minimal, despite the willingness of the same outlets to portray – without a shred of evidence – conservatives as “incendiary” and violent.
Despite the horrific nature of the video and the message that skeptics should be killed, the television news media, with the exception of Fox News, haven’t reported on it as of October 5.
The New York Times has run a couple of articles on its website, and James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal wrote a strong condemnation October 5 of the “green supremacists” that created the video. But, so far at least, much of the national news media have ignored the controversy.
The video was outrageous enough to upset even climate-change extremist Bill McKibben, who called it “the kind of stupidity that hurts our side.” Taranto said that the video had “drawn lots of criticism, much of which to our mind is not strong enough.” Perhaps he had the Time magazine’s blog headline in mind which callously read: “Blowing Up British Kids: Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea.”
But compare the minimal, isolated journalistic condemnation of such a violent and shocking film, to the volume of news stories portraying tea partiers and conservatives violent, without any proof whatsoever. On March 25, NBC’s Ann Curry harangued Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., about Republicans “encouraging the violence” against Democrats.
Curry specifically cited a map from former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin’s website that had shown weak Democratic districts in crosshairs. She pressed McCain saying “Do you know, recommend that your party use less incendiary language?”
McCain replied that terms like “targeted” and “battleground” are part of the “political lexicon.” Such terms have been long used by both parties and by the news media without concern of actual violence, yet Curry declared “These are very dangerous times.”
A few days after that “Today” interview, CNN condemned Palin with an onscreen caption that read: “INCITING VIOLENCE?” as Palin was showing speaking in Nevada.
Anchor Don Lemon said on March 28, “Sarah Palin takes on one of the highest ranking Democrats right in his own backyard, all while causing another uproar by urging tea parties to quote ‘reload.’ And the question is, are comments like that inciting violence and name-calling over the health care bill and the like?” The panelists that answered that question agreed that Obama’s political opponents were inciting violence and were motivated by racism.
But Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen took the criticism of conservatives to an absurd level on October 5 by arguing that the Tea Party movement is like those responsible for the 1970 Kent State shooting. Cohen claimed a “language of rage” fuels the Tea Party and took shots at Glenn Beck and New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino.
Violent Video, an Attempt at Humor?
After sparking outrage over the violent video, 10:10 pulled the video and issued an apology which read in part: “At 10:10 we’re all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark … Oh well, we live and learn.”
The 10:10 UK climate group, which has several corporate sponsors including Sony, Kyocera Mita and O2, along with a number of celebrity supporters, claimed the video was supposed to be humorous. 10:10 said its sponsors did not have prior knowledge of the video and Sony issued a statement condemning the video as “ill-conceived and tasteless” and said they were “disassociating” from the group.
Kyocera Mita is reconsidering its partnership with 10:10 and said they were “very shocked by the movie.”
“We wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh,” said more of 10:10’s apology. But is humor a valid defense for portraying the murder of people who disagree with you?
That was the basic defense Jim Edwards of CBS Interactive’s BNet gave for the video. Edwards said, “No one but the most extreme climate change denier believes this is actually what environmentalists want. It’s obviously just a joke outrageous enough to actually get people’s attention.”
WSJ’s Taranto wrote that “one may hope that Jim Edwards is right when he denies that ‘this is actually what environmentalists want.’ But it’s bad enough that this is what they fantasize about — and that they manifestly felt no inhibition about airing such a depraved fantasy in public.”
Full editorial here
=========================================================
This incident would be simply a bad aberration if it were not for the fact that we have had a string of such blunders from the green movement.
Let’s go all the way back to 1990, where the National Resources Defense Council uses a group of babies, a John Lennon song, and Tom cruise, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, and Demi Moore to push what they are selling.
By itself, harmless. But it does represent the beginning of a trend in the global warming movement with these two points; be afraid for the children, and pay attention to clueless celebrities. It is a theme that has been repeated again and again.
For example in 2006, we had a little girl that was going to be run over by a freight train if we didn’t do something about climate change:
Here’s another from 2006 called “Tick” using dozens of children:
While I can’t be certain, it looks like they may have used the same child actress for both of these. Compare:
Then we have this difficult to watch Finnish TV ad from Greenpeace showing a baby that could drown in a bathtub if we don’t do something about climate change
There’s the drowning puppy bedtime story from ACT ON CO2:
Then they move on to the beloved animals committing suicide:
Plane Stupid’s Polar bears falling from the sky commercial:
We have this disturbing child rant from Greenpeace:
Then we had this disturbing and insulting ad showing a swarm of planes attacking New York City to promote WWF’s view:
“The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.”
Yes, there’s a whole lineage of shocking, angry, tasteless, and disturbing videos from the NGO’s that take donations and turn it into pure propaganda.
But we’re the crazy ones.
UPDATE: I forgot to add this one, probably the most offensive one, from the 2009 Cannes film festival.
Source: http://www.act-responsible.org/ACT/ACTINCANNES/THEEXPO2009.htm
Act responsible?
Bias is a great book– truly eye opening.
But it’s nothing new to use children to get your point across. We’re in a political season, so listen to the ads. If we don’t stop the debt, our children will be bankrupt. So-and-so cut funding for schools, or voted against a bill (or one-version of a bill) that would have put sexual predators in jail, which means So-and-So hates kids.
I remember the California Lottery initiative, and how they said all of the proceeds were going to “help our schools”. Well, the money was quickly raided by the Assembly for a variety of pork projects, none of which had to deal with schools. But if you voted against the Lottery measure, you obviously want our kids to be ignorant.
Most people react sympathetically to children, so if an advertiser can make someone feel guilty about actions that may hurt children, they tend to exploit it. It’s an attempt to bring up an emotional response, and often a response devoid of reason.
I find such advertising abhorrent, from any political party, but the truth of the matter is that you cannot form a reasonable argument in 30 seconds. Just like in political debates, you cannot form a solid premise, explanation and conclusion in 60 seconds. I know I couldn’t. So how do you get a point across in 30 seconds? Make it memorable and provocative.
I know I’ll never forget the “No Pressure” ad, or any of the other Warmist ads, but not for the reasons of the ad. I respond negatively to anything that attempts to illicit an emotional response without any basis in fact.
And Anthony, you forgot the Copenhagen opening video. Girl, Teddy Bear, World Annihilation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGGgncVq-4&feature=related
““The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.””
Insulting.
Are tsunamis caused by climate or even weather events ?
Are they the expression of the anger of Gaia ?
Beneath the lowest common denominator, as well as contempt.
I also found it hard to believe that that anyone would release the print ad of the little noose girl just days after this uproar started to roar.
Nice job showing the parallels of the bias MSM uses towards both skeptics and the Tea party movement. Skeptics that aren’t of the conservative stripe are getting exposed to some of the most vicious mischaracterizations they’ve ever imagined. Sadly, this is an all-too-familiar tactic used against conservatives. Welcome to our world.
If the message doesn’t fit the dogma, then attack. Whether the attacked is based or reality or not, is of little consequence or matter.
A while back I watched a video in Maui on evolution and how adverse evidence was oppressed by those in power and those who owned the media.
Human artifacts were found deep in Colorado mines that could have gotten there but through 100k thousands of years ago via ice age deluge.
We may have begat the Neanderthal when it is all figured out. We might be a monkey’s uncle after all.
The only reason I can think off, why mainstream media is not reporting on this 10:10 incident is, that they are afraid, that the public could leave the eco-hysteria-train too soon and hop on the skeptics-train.
just my 5 cent
Anthony, you say: “This incident would be simply a bad aberration if it were not for the fact that we have had a string of such blunders from the green movement.”
I don’t consider them “blunders”. These people want a fight, and this kind of thing is deliberately employed to start one. Get beyond the immediate impact. They have stated that the goal is to de-develop the modern world, slash population, etc. What better way to accomplish that than to sow disruption and anger? You see it at every rally, every protest march. Anarchy and lawlessness works to their advantage, because it results in ever more restriction by governments in their attempt to quell it and maintain a civil society. Don’t you see? They truly believe that destruction must precede rebuilding in their image, and they are quite willing to martyr themselves in process.
Also the drowning puppy bedtime story from ACT ON CO2:
And here are links to the WWF 9/11 video:
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/9/crazy-9-11-wwf-ddb-commercial-1180487.html
REPLY: Thanks, I’ve added these – Anthony
Ironically, Russia Today news agency also reported on the 10:10 video, showing a blood and guts censored version.
The good news is that fewer people are paying much attention to the “national media”
these days or they take it with a grain of salt. If you look at recent surveys, the trust in the national media is at an all time low. There is a reason why Fox’s ratings are higher than CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News combined and why Newsweek and Time are seeing declining numbers.
It was 63 this am at my place about 90 miles due north of Key West. The Gulf locally is in the 70s.
The Hurricane forecaster on the local TV was whipping it up this AM for the latest extra-tropical storm in the Atlantic as he tried to pad their lame yearly forecast of destruction from hurricanes that just didn’t cooperate.
Then, there’s this video showing snips of the snuff piece, plus two others, bracketed by an interview with Pachauri stressing the importance of recruiting children in the cause of promoting CAGW. And, keep in mind that he shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Gore.
“Bernie Goldberg. He’s a regular on Fox, especially O’Reilly, therefore his opinion doesn’t count.”
(I’m sure this is what’s going through liberal’s heads right now)
During the most recent presidential elections there was a lot of political hay made out of the 5% unemployment rate (national) and the high gas prices ($3-4). I live near an extremely liberal state which has followed business killing policies for a long time. During this same period the unemployment rate for that state was 10% but it was always reported as “improving” or “dropping” from previous levels.
Our gas prices are edging passed 3 smackers, and the national unemployment rate is 10%. Now the liberal news media is dead silent on this.
Drop by http://www.vhemt.org/ for a view of where the greenazi’s want to send us.
Each person is solely responsible for maintaining & protecting their own intellectual integrity.
If a person transfers that responsibility to the press, then the bias of the press becomes the person’s own biased intellectual integrity. Sorry, you will have no valid claim that you did not know the press was biased.
John
I saw the 10:10 blowing up of kids on Spanish TV this morning.
Next group to promote this idea will probably be the Taleban blowing up women for not wearing a burkha – the liberal media might just take offence at this.
Well, lest we forget: The 13.4 Trillion in National Debt is very real, and unless we pay it off in the next few years, it’s dumped on our kids.
The Fantasies of Climate Catastrophe are quite different. They do not exist today and empirical evidence shows no certainty they will occur in the future.
Practical observation of facts vs Eco -Fantasies of the deranged…. who strangely suggest Econo-cide, Genocide, and Marxism will fix it all.
Not comparable at all.
Zeke the Sneak says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:03 am
During the most recent presidential elections there was a lot of political hay made out of the 5% unemployment rate (national) and the high gas prices ($3-4). I live near an extremely liberal state which has followed business killing policies for a long time. During this same period the unemployment rate for that state was 10% but it was always reported as “improving” or “dropping” from previous levels.
Our gas prices are edging passed 3 smackers, and the national unemployment rate is 10%. Now the liberal news media is dead silent on this.
=======================================================
Not true Zeke! Fortunately, unemployment is down to 9.7% from the previous 9.6%!!! http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/07/news/economy/initial_claims/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
They’re still in full spin mode. Soon, they’ll be saying 10% unemployment is a sign of a healthy economy, simply because we can’t seem to budge from the number. In spite of the $trillions we throw at it.
I happened upon another World Trade Center attack inspired eco-advert a few days ago.
“For nature, everyday is 9/11”
Never mind bias. The media tells outright lies.
The best proof that the media tells outright lies is work done by Noam Chomsky (sorry if the name puts your blood pressure up) on the media coverage of the wars in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Chomsky is a world class scholar (in linguistics) and he did a very scholarly job. If you think his facts are wrong, you can check his sources.
I am absolutely certain that the MSM is lying to us about AGW and I am absolutely certain that they will continue to lie even after their falsehoods are pointed out to them. Chomsky had no luck getting Time magazine to retract lies even after the editor admitted they weren’t true. (In my mind, failure to retract a known falsehood transforms a mistake into a lie.)
The freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns the press. Thank God for the blogosphere.
The msm may ignore this but the people haven’t….
Spread the word…
The dirty little secret is that “news” is simply another product, generated by companies trying to make a profit. It’s packaged, processed, and delivered to the mass market much like sliced bologna.
In the past, they used to get away with setting the news “agenda” and telling us what to think and shading the truth to support a liberal bias. Not any more. I don’t knowingly purchase their products (save for a small local paper) – I don’t even have “premium” cable so no CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc. I unfortunately still have to support (to some degree) our “national” media (NPR etc.), and I feel sorry for those of you in other countries who, through you hard-earned tax dollars, have to support a giant “national” media complex.
On the positive side, the old paradigms are crumbling with internet/WIFI, and the old media will be soon be a quaint memory…
The left has enthusiastically embraced the climate change ideology as a godsend. So much so that they have persuaded themselves they are the main architects of it.
The more innocent among them follow this out of sheer conviction: they have been persuaded that the planet is in grave danger, and that their actions are the only way to save it.
Many others among them have also discovered the sweet taste of money that is so liberally circulating to promote this ideology.
The chance to feel like heroic fighters for the planet AND getting rewarded is probably an irresistible combination.
Very few of them seem to be aware that the climate change ideology, and the means to spread it by lavish funding of the right kind of research, as well as its continuous promotion in the main media, was engineered at the very centers of the power they believe to be fighting. They are totally deluded. And so are many right wing conservatives who perceive this as a “communist plot.”
“The people who own the country ought to govern it,” wrote John Jay, a colleague of James Madison. And as Madison himself put it, the main function of government should be: “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” And so it is indeed. The main media has always been firmly under the control (increasingly so) of the “people who own the country,” who I daresay can hardly be described as tree-hugging raging liberals. So if the main media has been relentlessly spreading this ideology, it can only be because they are being strictly fed this ideology by their masters, in order to spread it.
Children have been used in Left leaning scare tactic ads since the Johnson Daisy Ad in 1962.
James Sexton says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:19 am
…”They’re still in full spin mode. Soon, they’ll be saying 10% unemployment is a sign of a healthy economy, simply because we can’t seem to budge from the number. In spite of the $trillions we throw at it.”
Did you see that Congressman Phil Hare (D-Illinois, 17th District) said that disputes the existance of the national debt and will cast if off as only a “myth” that he plans to “debunk”.
http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=1978080&spid=
Evidently “They” (Cool, flamboyant, nice, beautiful, intellectual, gays, free thinkers, artists, poets, nature lovers, charming atheists, Gaia lovers, haters of those nasty and decadent people who work for a living, sons and daughters of Mommy and Daddy) are very angry against us non-believers of their cause, infidels against their “creed”, as to wish us to blow up in a gore’s bath..but, last but not least, what bothers them the most, is that we are the spoilers of their “carbon business”.
Don’t forget Ben Santer’s cute little cartoon…
Talk about the power of poop…in more ways than one.
When I first saw the 10:10, I was quickly clicking on links, and I thought that this was a parody video produced by skeptics to show how insane they perceived the warmists to be.
After jumping to this conclusion, it took a few minutes to realize that this is a video produced by warmists that show how insane they perceive themselves to be.
Wow.
Here’s another sick example:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/slideshow_coole.php
Gareth says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:24 am
“I happened upon another World Trade Center attack inspired eco-advert a few days ago. “For nature, everyday is 9/11″”
Ok. So when does the US President announce the War on Nature?
If “the planet is [so] brutally powerful”, then let’s get it before it gets us! 🙂
HATE CRIME?
I can’t help but wonder if the pattern of violent rhetoric exhibited by so many on the alarmist side — if/when its acted on by some person, will qualify for “hate crime” & be prosecuted with the associated harsher penalties.
commieBob, I have checked Noam Chomsky’s sources. I have the Stanford Libraries available to me, and I’ve made good use of them.
What I found after checking many of his citations in many of his works, is that Noam Chomsky has consistently lied across at least 35 years. His lies are very specific. He misrepresents what people wrote, or said, juxtaposes unrelated quotes, or prunes quotes, all to the same end: to make his targets look callous, hard-hearted, venal, and racist. His targets are almost invariably Caucasian men associated with, working for, or part of the US government.
He has engaged in a systematic and deliberate program of character assassination. It’s impossible to believe that he did not know exactly what he was doing. And it appears that his editors have rarely, if ever, fact-checked his sources. I have the goods on that guy, with many examples of his lies in my “Noam Chomsky” folder.
What’s really ironic is that he started his career of political commentary with his 1967 article* on “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” in which he said they should “tell the truth and expose lies.” He has done the opposite. Including in that very article.
He is a mockery of an intellectual.
* February 23, 1967, The New York Review of Books.
Chuck says:
October 7, 2010 at 9:45 am
The proof that evolution it is not real is that Neanderthals and Cromagnons still exist among us. Wonder who they are? 🙂
Advertising standards are at an all time low and they have been deteriorating for more that 20 Years. I can remember complaining about a company which offered a lifetime guarantee. I asked for a definition of lifetime and they withdrew the advert. The product was fitted into houses and they would not say if the guarantee was for the life of the home owner or the life of the house etc. Neither would they say if the guarantee was transferrable.
I think that nowadays, they would just have laughed at me and sent me on my way.
Adverts that exploit children would be banned in any civilized society and those who hide behind children to sell their message would be despised, as they are now.
Where is the Advertizig Standards Authority??????
To increase their sales they should seriously think in changing sides….It’s a good advice.
No surprises here. The left is the father of the big lie. They use the same tactics regularly. First control the media & education, the rest is a cake walk. The problem is that conservatives are unwilling to fight as hard as the socialists. The street fighter will always beats the guy obeying the Marquis de Queensburry rules. Toughen up boys and girls or get your ass handed to you.
“the idea is that everyone starts cutting their carbon emissions by 10 percent, thus keeping the planet safe for everyone, eventually.”
Eventually. Maybe they should define that one? Lets see the geological record says 1500 PPM was the highest and we increased around 100 PPM in the last 150 years so we have 1100 PPM left to go and at this rate we have more than a millennium before we hit 1500 PPM.
No that’s not going to work. Lets blow up kids and tug at the emotional side of things because we aren’t going to win on the facts!
David L. says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:41 am
Did you see that Congressman Phil Hare (D-Illinois, 17th District) said that disputes the existance of the national debt and will cast if off as only a “myth” that he plans to “debunk”.
========================================================
That’s amazing. I would have a nice chuckle about it, except that it verifies the obvious bias mentioned in this article. Can you imagine if a Repub. had stated as much? That said, his statement seems to be pretty much in line with the current administration’s point of view. Money, just print the stuff! Turns out, it does grow on trees!!!……..Lunatics running the asylum.
@James Sexton
Thank you for the laugh… and the glorious news about unemployment:
“it fell to the lowest level in nearly three months!”
“an encouraging sign!”
“lower than economists’ forecasts!”
“…we are in the recovery!”
“claims ticked below 450,000!”
BUT, “Economists say they’re looking for initial claims to fall to 400,000 or lower before they can saaaaay a jobs recovery has made noteworthy progress”
I was wrong 😀
Add this one to the list via Hot Air. http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/06/another-brilliant-moment-in-agw-marketing/
A child with a noose around his neck standing on a melting glacier.
http://media.hotair.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/act-chld-noose-lg.jpg
REPLY: Thanks for the reminder, I covered it yesterday in a post, but my brain is full today – Anthony
He alone, who owns the youth, gains the Future!
http://histclo.com/youth/youth/org/nat/hitler/hitler.htm
http://cjunk.blogspot.com/2010/10/when-eco-facist-just-doesnt-cut-it.html
One of Bernie’s main points, of course, is that bias is as much a story of what is not reported as it is of what is reported.
Zeke the Sneak says:
October 7, 2010 at 11:18 am
So you were around, opining about saturnine people…:-)
AGW is dead in the News. For days on end no fresh fear in the MSM, neither in the U.S. nor in Germany. And this means that the pressure groups collect less money.
Expect more shock campaigns.
Curious George @ 9:47:
“I don’t consider them “blunders”. These people want a fight, and this kind of thing is deliberately employed to start one. Get beyond the immediate impact. They have stated that the goal is to de-develop the modern world, slash population, etc. What better way to accomplish that than to sow disruption and anger? You see it at every rally, every protest march. Anarchy and lawlessness works to their advantage, because it results in ever more restriction by governments in their attempt to quell it and maintain a civil society. Don’t you see? They truly believe that destruction must precede rebuilding in their image, and they are quite willing to martyr themselves in process.”
Bingo.
The Frannies of modern religious hate-marketing are themselves the newly grown products of the “educational” dichotomy of empty self-esteem ladled over endtimes nihilism.
They do have mutlicentury goals of de-development for “sustainability”, re-wilding, the whole Turtle Island fantasy.
They see themselves as merely cogs in a great set of wheels, and that alone may be their only honest perception.
It is the only honest (horrified) pity I can muster not for what they have become, but for what they might have been before being completely rotted and spoiled.
This is not a liberal bias. Are you nuts?
This is a corporate bias since all of the “mainstream” media are corporate owned. If the corporations wanted it broadcasted, it would be broadcasted.
What a crock!
I believe Douglas DC at 10.27am “The msm may ignore this but the people haven’t….
Spread the word…” has just about hit on the answer. The proof that man-made CO2 is not the cause of any noticeable climate change is well-known to us, but until the Lindzens, Moncktons, Spencers, Michaels, Corbyns and all the rest who have shown it come out of the shadows of the blogosphere and start shouting their convictions in the public ear, we will see the same old story year after year as we have done so far. How they do it is something we bloggers might usefully discuss but until they do, the left, the libtards, the politicos, the warmists, call them what you will, will continue to hold sway over the uninformed, and nothing will change.
If only it could be done, it would pull the rug out from under the whole AGW case at a stroke. Just imagine, every ad that mentioned “carbon”, “emissions”, “footprint” etc. would have to be withdrawn, plus the media would be simply stopped in its tracks.
Is it just a dream or is there someone out there who can work out how to do it?
An excellent book on how the news gets distorted is “Flat Earth News”
http://www.flatearthnews.net/
I reccomend reading it – it covers the role of green and oil lobby groups in skewing the issue.
Unfortunelty the author used the union of concerned scientists as a reliable source (a green advocacy group itself) on how oil companys manipulate the media re: global warming – so that may not be that reliable from a green advocacy group! – but its otherwise very interesting reading and helps one understand how science gets distorted so much.
Jimash says:
October 7, 2010 at 9:40 am
Insulting.
Are tsunamis caused by climate or even weather events ?
Are they the expression of the anger of Gaia ?
Well, if you are Danny Glover, that is exactly what it is all about (remember the Haiti Earthquake as Gaia getting back at us for AGW?)
But compare the minimal, isolated journalistic condemnation of such a violent and shocking film, to the volume of news stories portraying tea partiers and conservatives violent, without any proof whatsoever.
Yes, it’s almost flat out amazing that these rabid persecuters can’t find even one valid case of a racist or violent Tea Partier, which if they did, they would then say “proves” their case instead of being only an anecdotal example and more a case where “the exception proves the rule” to the contrary.
Apart from being logically challenged, I think such people are actually psychologially “projecting”, that is, attributing to others their own propensities because they mistakenly assume that everyone must be like them, and are even verging on a quite delusional paranoia, where it can then eventuate that they are the ones actually posing the threat or who are the true racists.
Spurred on by their “brilliant” Propaganda Masters, many of these people are also quite frightened and have apparently reached the limits of their own rational capacities. It’s strange how so many otherwise functional and normal acting people suddenly fall directly off the cliff into a free fall of gross delusionalism. “Perception is reality” has become a political propaganda tactic instead of a definition of “being deluded” or of an intent to delude others, and it apparently finds a large market of susceptibles.
Btw, I’m still waiting for the proponents of Universal Health Care who deride the comparatively superior American Health Care System at every opportunity to provide just one valid example of someone in the U.S. not receiving proper medical care because of an inability to pay – not that there aren’t any, but why can’t they find even one valid example, when ~”we know there must be a lot of them” as I heard Chris Matthews remark when confronting this same discrepancy? But if Obamacare becomes the practice, then there are going to be quite a lot of people who will be rationed into this very condition. The Gov’t and its crony associates simply won’t pay for care. And Sarah Palin whas quite right to point out that this mechanism will essentially involve “death panelling” and can be also taken to another level where more “personal” determinations will be made as to who will get what care, if it still even exists.
I really liked the ‘new’ little bit, “Red is the new green.” – but didn’t you know?? “Green is Red”, that’s been out there for almost twenty years.
I got THAT little tidbit stopping in for a bagel one morning, must have been about 1991-92 when I was studying architecture at the Fingerlakes Institute for Advanced Bolshevik Studies [they don’t call it the BIG RED for nothing]. Out of idle curiosity I picked up a copy of MIM Notes [that’s the ‘rag’ of the Maoist International Movement] off the rack [something one could DO in a bagel shop in Ithaca, NY] and there it was, the headline of the lead article on the front page, “GREEN IS RED” which described how the communist and revolutionary movements of the world were changing their tutelary color from Red to the more environmentally aware Green. And, this of course in a journal where the by line was a three or four digit number [Hey, at least if I choose to use a ‘handle’ it is a properly obscure literary reference], and half of these were written, “From behind bars.”
You’ve noticed too perhaps the progression of ‘Some Facts’ [or information pretending to be factual] to ‘No Facts – 100% Narrative’. We can interpret this as the evolution of the environmentalist meme away from any attempt at a fact based propaganda approach to a the ‘Shock and Awe’ approach based upon hypercannabinated paranoid fantasy. I wonder if anyone has attempted to correlate this shift in strategy with the passage of medicinal marijuana legislation? [just a thought]
I wonder if losing their sponsorship will ‘shock’ any of these folks back into reality instead of ‘awing’ us with their dreadful lack of good taste?
~ your friend W^3
Would I get snipped if I called you all a bunch of whiners?
The liberals all complain how the MSM is biased against them too, and can bring up many more examples and more serious examples than this. Was it liberal bias that none of the media would even mention the biggest anti-war rallies in the history of the human race?
Also, if you saw Fox’s segment on this, you’ll understand the dilemma facing the news shows – the video was too graphic for them to show, but if they don’t show it there’s no story. Do they give a sensationalistic warning “the following is very graphic – I dare you to leave the T.V. on you wuss!” like Fox did? Geraldo would have been all over it, but I can’t remember if he thought he was liberal or conservative. That kind of warning strikes me as tacky and unworthy of a serious news program regardless of subject matter.
You know, there are lots of people in America who just don’t care that much about global warming that they would be interested. I care about it. You care about it. That’s why we come to blogs like WUWT. Most of our neighbors couldn’t be bothered to listen. Try to keep a little perspective.
Pat Frank: Thanks for the heads up.
I googled on Noam Chomsky lies. There appears to be lots of stuff there.
My coffee break’s over and I have to get back to work but I will be following the links after I get home. On the other hand, I do recall (dimly because it was more than three decades ago) checking Chomsky’s references on a couple of lies published in Time magazine. As far as I could tell, Chomsky had his facts right in that instance. Even liars sometimes tell the truth. 😉
James sexton,
According to Gallup, unemployment is actually 10.1 %.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/143426/Gallup-Finds-Unemployment-September.aspx
A bit OT, but since unemployment was mentioned a few times above, consider this: With a population growing at roughly 2.5 million per year, the US needs to “create” 200,000 new jobs per month, just to stay even. So when we hear trumpeting about 40,000 “new jobs” last month, it means 160,000 labor force entrants did not find jobs.
Pat Frank: Yes, upon a time I was under Chomsky’s spell.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by those hundreds of footnotes in Chomsky’s books and by the calm intellectual authority of his voice. (Though even back then I wondered how many of those cites were assembled by grad students and disciples.) Eventually I realized that things weren’t adding up with Chomsky, especially with regard to the Middle East.
If you were to make the contents of your Chomsky file public on the web, I would be interested. Here’s the link to an Israeli blog diary of an anti-chomskyite.
I actually begin to wonder if this was not a brilliant set-up of the whole climate change movement – I could not have written a better parody of how we, the “uninformed public”, and especially our children are being brainwashed by this tripe.
I just loved the sanctimonious teacher – obviously a fully paid-up member of the Greens – who thinks nothing of indoctrinating children with her highly politicised views of the world. If you wanted people to sit up and question the “message” that the climate fanatics are dispensing, you really could not have done it better.
I think Richard Curtis should go down as one of the best 5th Columnists of all time.
Now hopefully everyone will be asking their children exactly what they are being taught in the classroom and we parents can fight the brainwashing.
MSM baffles me.
In all honesty though, media is not my field (I’m an engineer and own and operate a small engineering/manufacturing firm). I like magazines and reading is my chief form of entertainment – I do not look at the TV and haven’t for decades. No offense TV people, I just don’t like the medium.
I became aware of Climategate through the Wall Street Journal and read CruTape Letters as soon as it came out. Wow. I fully expected to see print journals just all over this story. Practically Nada. When Newsweak did run a mangled and poorly informed article, they published a letter from Michael Mann the next issue giving him plenty of space to point out how wrong they were.
Time passed and still no participation in Climategate beyond the Wall Street Journal and a few obviously right-leaning publications. After educating myself on CAGW a bit, I noted how ridiculously slanted MSM print media was/is on the topic and canceled my subscriptions to all magazines except “Guitar Player” and if they so much as breath a peep about CAGW (unless to debunk it) they are toast too!
So there you have it – a former fan of print media canceling subscriptions and further more, telling everyone who will listen that print media is shot through with outright lies. If all these magazines wanted was to sell copies, they should have jumped all over Climategate – I think it would have been a fabulous magazine seller. But what do I know about media? Obviously not much.
CAGW is an exaggerated non-problem with no solution (if indeed it was a problem…). This post shows how heavily invested MSM is in CAGW propaganda and I can’t help but wonder “what are they thinking?” How does this serve MSM? I mean, how long before everyone starts to notice the sea-level isn’t rising any more than usual; the poles aren’t melting; etc. It may take time, but eventually people who haven’t yet figured out CAGW is a scam, will figure it out and then how many of them will cancel their subscriptions to print media and tune out like I have? It’s not like magazines and newspapers are doing well right now…
One explanation is that media is run by incompetent, stupid people. There is no conspiracy or insidious interests being served – it can all be explained by simple human laziness and stupidity. They just missed the mark and keep missing the mark. I believe people are interested in the truth. But again, what do I know about media?
It would be nice if some writer or editor from some MSM magazine or another would post a comment explaining how their poor journalism practices are helping their cause; which I imagine is to sell more newspapers and magazines. They aren’t getting anymore money from me.
Whats worth noting here is not only are they dangerously finatical but in many cases they are also just plain stupid about even the most basic facts.
The WTC commercial was in poor taste but for them to use a tsunami disaster as ammunition for action against global warming simply doesn’t make sense and anyone would see this.
Another example more recently is found in a gallery of synthetic photos published by the telegraph in the UK showing what the world would look like of we don’t take action. Take a look at this photo which depicts rising sea levels:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/8044199/Postcards-from-the-future-illustrators-imagine-how-London-could-be-affected-by-climate-change.html?image=11
“London’s busiest thoroughfare is a haven of calm as water levels rise ever higher. Water lilies, fish and wind turbines fight a losing battle on behalf of a civilisation which is going, going, gone. What happens to busy city centres once they become redundant? Piccadilly Circus is synonymous with being busy but could become a haven of calm and peace with empty buildings just used for supporting the infrastructure of power generation”
Whats wrong with this picture? (I realize everything is wrong with it, but take a closer look – hint; sea is salty)
Not just wrong, but also stupid.
The thing that disturbs me in this video the most, is that they aren’t blowing up “skeptics” per say, but anyone who is apathetic to their message.
Frank K. says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:33 am
I feel sorry for those of you in other countries who, through you hard-earned tax dollars, have to support a giant “national” media complex.
I sold the TV on ebay last year. Since then, although I already told them we don’t have a TV anymore, I get a threatening letter from the TV licensing authority about once a fortnight. When the one with the red capitals an inch high on the *outside* of the envelope was handed to me by our postman I wrote back to them threatening court action for harassment.
I got another today saying our address has been passed to “THE ENFORCEMENT TEAM” who “WILL ENTER YOUR HOUSE”.
What? They think they can break into my home? Bring it on boys, my cricket bat is ready and waiting.
tallbloke says:
October 7, 2010 at 1:12 pm
“1984”. Every exaggeration it’s a sin, and you, up there, have exaggerated democracy.
This is not a great example of bias because the group, 10:10, is not something we’ve heard of before. If some nut off the street does something stupid, then it’s not news. If this had been put out by Greenpeace, it would certainly be news. But as it is, it’s just somebody passing gas in their backyard.
commieBob says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:25 am
Never mind bias. The media tells outright lies.
The best proof that the media tells outright lies is work done by Noam Chomsky
=================
For his work on linguistics, linguistic philosophy, and philosophy of mind, Chomsky is universally recognized as one of the sharpest minds of the 20th century. I have read part of that work, and I do think he is a first rate intelligence.
His political/activist work is more controversial, but no doubt his analysis of the media and propaganda systems were groundbreaking at the time and have become classics of the genre. The main media does lie and distort – compulsively, chronically, systematically – almost as if lying and distorting was the main reason for its existence. Which it is. It is mainly a vehicle of propaganda, and has always been.
Having antagonized the political right for obvious reasons, Chomsky proceeded to ridicule post-modernism as nothing but empty posturing and prattle, thus antagonizing what for many people is the current “university left” as well.
He has antagonized critics of Israel who accuse him of being too soft on that score, and also antagonized supporters of Israel who accuse him of being too critical.
He has slowed down now –getting old. In his day, very few people dared debate him in public on political matters, for the exact same reasons they don’t dare debate Monckton on AGW. The amount of information he had ready at his fingertips, coupled with the sharpness of his mind, was thoroughly intimidating.
He had an article in January of this year commenting on a Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to fund elections directly – and what it implies. This decision should have caused some worry by defenders of democracy, but it didn’t.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/5502/the_corporate_takeover_of_u.s._democracy/
Obama just said if the Rebublicans win the house next month, there will be “hand-to-hand combat” on Capital Hill. Is he promoting overthrowing the gov’t if the Dems lose the House? I’m just reporting the facts. You decide!
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-base-20101008,0,3160644.story
Duncan says:
October 7, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Would I get snipped if I called you all a bunch of whiners?
The liberals all complain how the MSM is biased against them too, and can bring up many more examples and more serious examples than this. Was it liberal bias that none of the media would even mention the biggest anti-war rallies in the history of the human race?
=======================================================
I’d rather not be covered than mischaracterized. Remember the hubbub about the racist conservatives with guns by an Obama town hall meeting? As proof they showed us a man with a rifle across his back. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx4HqkqNnJU
Oops, nary an apology offered.
BTW, I’ve never known any of the big 3 to be too squeamish to sensationalize a story, only too squeamish to tell it if it contradicts their point of view.
Your statement, “You know, there are lots of people in America who just don’t care that much about global warming….” says about all that needs saying. You’re right! So, if its clear that many don’t care about it, why the constant coverage? Why the laws? Why the ceaseless droning about unprecedented this and robust proof to that? It may not fit perfectly into the left vs. right narrative.(It doesn’t.) But it is clear, to me anyway, that there is an agenda with the MSM, and it isn’t about selling airspace, as you so clearly stated, many simply don’t care. (Until the laws are passed that robs them of their liberties and wealth.)
@ tallbloke says:
October 7, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Frank K. says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:33 am
I feel sorry for those of you in other countries who, through you hard-earned tax dollars, have to support a giant “national” media complex.
I sold the TV on ebay last year. Since then, although I already told them we don’t have a TV anymore, I get a threatening letter from the TV licensing authority about once a fortnight. When the one with the red capitals an inch high on the *outside* of the envelope was handed to me by our postman I wrote back to them threatening court action for harassment.
I got another today saying our address has been passed to “THE ENFORCEMENT TEAM” who “WILL ENTER YOUR HOUSE”.
What? They think they can break into my home? Bring it on boys, my cricket bat is ready and waiting.
Excuse me? I don’t understand. Are you saying they are forcing you to have a TV?
allright. climategate and darwin zero woke me up.
but had i still been a believer, blowing up Gillian Anderson would surely have sent me over.
that’s just plain sacrilege.
This is not a liberal bias. Are you nuts?
This is a corporate bias since all of the “mainstream” media are corporate owned. If the corporations wanted it broadcasted, it would be broadcasted.
What a crock!
—————————————————————————————-
Spot on David, it’s good to see that others can spot this classic capitalist conspiracy to rip off all and sundry while dressing up the scam in green and left wing ideology. It’s clever, and many people have fallen for it.
For those who fawn over Chomsky as a “great intellectual” and not simply an academic PT Barnum I strongly suggest reading The Anti-Chomsky Reader for a little insight.
British readers may have come across this comment in The Times today (Oct 7th), in its ‘Eureka’ science supplement. Ben Webster, who I think is the Environment Correspondent, has made a list of ‘infamous five’ top sceptics. He says that he has ‘selected the five most important sceptics. Importance is gauged more in terms of influence on public opinion than scientific credulity. With sceptics, there is usually an inverse relationship between the two.’
He ends his list (Bjorn Lomberg, Nigel Lawson, Sarah Palin, Christopher Monkton, Steve McIntyre) thus:
‘Prominent sceptics tend to be over 60, so few will be alive in 20 years’ time to see the consequences of their efforts to resist global action on climate change. Perhaps Sarah Palin, 46, will be left alone (with her hunting rifles) to confront the displaced millions.’
The Times used to be a newspaper of some standing.
Luke says:
October 7, 2010 at 1:03 pm
The thing that disturbs me in this video the most, is that they aren’t blowing up “skeptics” per say, but anyone who is apathetic to their message.
========================================================
I don’t believe they perceive a difference. If you’re not with them, then you should be humorously exterminated.
I don’t know how I missed the COP15 nasty video. To me, the COP15 child’s scream is as harrowing as the Greenpeace child’s abusive misplaced anger and the 10:10 sick humour.
This putting millstones round children’s necks is what made Jesus really angry. Plus he said his work was bearing witness to truth – which is what I understand real science is about.
Michael Mann’s immunity is allowing this indoctrination without debate to continue. So is IPCC’s lack of accountability. So is the MSM’s handling of science. So is academia’s infiltration by activists and funding by alarmism. So are all the schools which are teaching alarmism without checks.
So many people are to blame. So many people who could wield clout are too chicken to speak up. So many people are too lazy to check. So many people can be selfishly motivated to dangerous actions by the whip hand of a small number in control.
So many people believe that so many people cannot all be wrong.
“The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.”
I don’t quite get it. Does it follow from the principle “the brutally powerful should be respected and preserved“? Whose principle is it? What kind of people think this way?
No doubt 9/11 was a brutally powerful act in itself. Does it mean al-Qa’ida should be respected and preserved? Or was this deed still too meager to deserve it? I do admit I am confused more than a bit.
OK, maybe the planet should be respected and preserved (although I don’t have a clue why an inanimate object is to be respected and as for preservation, enhancement sounds better). But anyway, is it because it was able to inflict a hundred times more damage in a single act than the vilest of our contemporaries or in spite of it? If the former holds as the ad suggests, does it follow the bolsheviks and nazis, who killed off even more people than the tsunami of 2005, should have been respected and preserved?
This logic is sicker than we thought.
In terms of media bias, here are a couple classic examples from ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/video/hero-scientist-titanic-earth-sink-global-warming-hope-save-control-climate-science-stephen-schnieder-11360895
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/video/pikas-tiny-cute-close-extinction-9448648
Curiousgeorge,
I believe tallbloke is saying that he is charged for the access to TV as are all people there. He got rid of his TV so shouldn’t need to pay any longer. As a typical bureaucracy they will not accept his word for his no longer having a TV and will come ONSITE whether voluntary or not to CHECK.
Think of your cable box and the Cable company as PART of the gubmint and what they would get up to with that kind of authority!!!
jeez says:
October 7, 2010 at 2:14 pm
For those who fawn over Chomsky as a “great intellectual” and not simply an academic PT Barnum I strongly suggest reading The Anti-Chomsky Reader for a little insight.
===============
I think the authors of the Anti-Chomsky reader stand to Noam Chomsky in a very similar intellectual relation as the producers of the 1010 blowup video stand to, say, Richard Lindzen.
Google the phrase:
“long march through the institutions gramsci”
and follow the links. The leaders of the left may not be informed about natural science, but they do understand propaganda and psychological tricks. For example, Google:
obama nlp filetype:pdf
The internet should allow more rational people to organize a counter-march. There are a few talented media people such as Andrew Breitbart that can offer technical and strategic advice. The take-down of ACORN was instructive. He could introduce someone like Roy W. Spencer to far more people than the current informed minority.
The control of public information is extensive, and a generation will be required to have any strong effect.
“Red is the new green”
Wrong, green is the new Red !
Great article.
Also read “Does increased solar activity lead to global cooling” by Lubos Motl
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/10/does-increased-solar-activity-lead-to.html#more
This article is not off topic because he lashes out at (Bias) Richard Black
Thanks. That said, who the hell would acquiesce to that? It’s none of the gov’ts business whether I have a TV or not. I contract with a cable company to buy their programing, but that is completely different than simply having a TV or 2. What kind of government intrudes itself into that level of personal lives? Communist? Totalitarian? Do they apply the same rule to other forms of communication (web, radio, phone ) and other appliances?
Well bad on me – after ripping on print media for missing the boat Forbes publishes this:
http://blogs.forbes.com/warrenmeyer/2010/10/07/why-blowing-up-kids-seemed-like-a-good-idea/#post_comments
I dunno. The phrase ‘bias’ implies you can determine what is neutral. People alwasy accuse the media of being biased in the opposite direction to what they happen to think. The comments here are selective, piling up evidence that reds and greens are violent. One could just as easily produce a damning indictment of conservatives, including their defense of torture, the invasion of Iraq, and so on.
Hate crime only applies with the media or liberal organizations force police to make it so. If an atheist attacks a fundamentalist Christian because he is a Christian, it is not a hate crime; if a fundamentalist Christian attacks an atheist only because he is an atheist, it is a hate crime. If a black person attacks a white person because he is white, it is not a hate crime; if a white person attacks a black person because he is black, it is a hate crime. Since the global warming movement is led by liberals, any attacks by it is not a hate crime but any attacks against it is a hate crime.
All this is true. A few years ago, here in North Carolina a black stripper accused the Duke LaCrosse team of raping her. The local district attorney called the Duke LaCrosse team thugs. The NAACP and Al Sharpton held rallies denouncing the team. The accuser even received a college scholarship. Then the evidence came out. Even though the LaCrosse team should have never hired a stripper, they did not rape her. The local DA was removed in disgrace. To this day, the NAACP has yet to apologize for their actions against the Duke LaCrosse team. Yet has the NAACP been held accountable for their actions? No.
And so it goes. The only time when the media is riled up is when the left leaning PC crowd determines it to be so. Even when AGW is disgraced, these people will never be held accountable for their slander and actions.
Anthony and Mods, you’ve been working overtime on this one.
Thank you very much, the value of your contribution cannot be overstated. We are all very appreciative of your time spent on our behalf. Cheers, Charles the Dr.P.H.
But – but – but – the real question here is whether any animals were harmed in the making of this production …
(Sorry if somebody’s already done this one, I didn’t have time to check all the entries above. If I doubled up I will volunteer to be the next one exploded.)
Some clips on the role of the media by Noam Chomsky:
On the beauty of “concision” in the media (3 min clip):
His comments here would perfectly apply to what would happen if you went on a mainstream tv show and said that climate change is basically an industry based on a fraud – with no time to give evidence for it.
Chomsky on the Liberal media (5 min clip)
Andrew Marr interviews Chomsky on the media (interview starts at about 4:10). This is more in depth.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4827358238697503#
Chomsky on the media, democrats, republicans (C-Span)
Left/right political bickering will always be the same big yawn it has always been. Natural climate oscillations, on the other hand, are absolutely fascinating.
Has anybody considered that even if everybody DID reduce their carbon footprint by 10%, as soon as we had 10% more people we’d be right back where we were? So what then? Blow EVERYBODY up?
Their lack of logic is legendary. Their lack of introspection is phenomenally amazing!
Someone said “For his work on linguistics, linguistic philosophy, and philosophy of mind, Chomsky is universally recognized as one of the sharpest minds of the 20th century.”
His work on linguistics is already in the dustbin. His linguistic philosophy was banal at best. There are tons of good books explaining the meaningfulness of grammar contra Chomsky. Start with Whorf. Grammar is not, as Chomsky postulated, an innate human mechanism that mindlessly transforms a “deep meaning” into a grammatically correct sentence. Rather, grammar, like other levels of language, is built from categories. The basic reason Chomsky doesn’t understand linguistic categories is that his relativistic philosophy precludes an understanding of conceptualism.
————-
Eric (skeptic),
Your last sentence is wonderful. I think it shows you don’t love Kant and his apologists (including the linguists). I don’t love old Kant and his >200 yrs of fellow travelers. : )
Oh, basically I agree with you on Chomsky.
John
Ian in the UK: “If only it could be done, it would pull the rug out from under the whole AGW case at a stroke. Just imagine, every ad that mentioned “carbon”, “emissions”, “footprint” etc. would have to be withdrawn, plus the media would be simply stopped in its tracks.
Is it just a dream or is there someone out there who can work out how to do it?”
What you need is some hard-hitting media product that doesn’t pull its punches, something that will explode across the internet and into the mainstream media.
I’m not in the creative media, but there must be people around who can come up with some ideas to achieve this sort of effect.
I think Goldberg’s best analysis is that what is most important is not that they are biased, but that they don’t even realize that they are biased. A condition that can only be incubated in the echo chambers of the ‘journalism’ schools like Columbia and NYU.
A mental (non-linguistic) categorization of the world has to precede the emergence of human language, not the other way around.
So the concepts a language develops are determined by the needs of the medium where it developped.
A lack of a specific word for a concept or object has never prevented the concept from being grasped (and named) once it emerges.
But a lack of a concept or object does indeed prevent the creation of a word for it.
It is remarkable that in spite of the huge differences in medium and culture where a langage develops, they all have words for common concepts and objects, with extremely similar categorizations, and even more remarkable that the underlying structures are so similar.
We really don’t have much of an idea how human language emerged, or how fast it was ingrained in our brains. But we know it IS there, dormant, when we are born, to be awaken very quickly by just very fragmentary and very incomplete exposure to it. In that sense, it is totally innate. If you believe it is entirely put there by those you learn it from, try putting it there in the head of a chimp, see how far you can get beyond, “Me, Banana, More” kind of messages.
Whorf’s ideas strike me as banal when not obviously circular. He observes what any young student of a foreign language observes right away: that certain concepts are much more finely split in some languages than others, and sometimes concepts for which a word exists in one language, lack a word in another. He concludes that the vision of the world a person has, is somewhat (or heavily) influenced by his language, which may be trivially true in some ways, though he offers no real proof of it other than the fact that the linguistic differences themselves exist. But if a language lacks a specific noun for “sibling”, or possesses a specific verb for “getting up before sunrise” or “befriending one’s sister’s best friend” etc, it does not follow AT ALL that a speaker of a language lacking those words cannot grasp or express the concepts. If that were the case, nobody could learn a foreign language.
I once knew a person who was planning on writing a thesis demonstrating how the absence of a grammatical gender in English rendered its speakers inherently fairer to women. She commented with great seriousness that, since the word for “kitchen” is feminine in Latin-based languages, this will tend to give more naturalness to its being a woman’s place, and so on. That’s the logical path Whorf leads people to. I didn’t even know good old Whorf made a comeback.
Rod McLaughlin says:
October 7, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I dunno. The phrase ‘bias’ implies you can determine what is neutral. People always accuse the media of being biased in the opposite direction to what they happen to think. The comments here are selective, piling up evidence that reds and greens are violent. One could just as easily produce a damning indictment of conservatives, including their defense of torture, the invasion of Iraq, and so on.
I know bias
Bias is a strong inclination of the mind or a preconceived opinion about something or someone. The liberals and the supporters in the media are quick to point out examples of racial bias but do see themselves as biased reporters of other issues that are conservative. There is a simple reason, they were educated in colleges and universities across which only hire liberal professors. Their experiences in higher education classrooms have convinced them that the liberal politics are really mainstream and centrist. Therefore they are not biased in reporting events they perceive as they are middle of the road. The 10:10 video is not worthy of comment because from their point of view the message in not ultra left wing.
The question you raise is a good one. Bias you say implies that there is a standard which one can use to judge whether the reporting is biased. Bias can be a matter of degree. Mel Gibson has been accused of being prejudiced against African Americans when he got is a verbal confrontation with his current wife by using words that are offensive to African Americans. Is he biased or is he careless? Generally there seemed to be a consensus that he probably is not against African Americans although a significant number of people who were offended would not agree. Whose standard applies?
How does society decide who is biased in reporting if there is no standard? If major politician used the N word in speaking about African Americans in speech, the majority of the black community would be demanding that the politician be removed because he or she is unfit to represent constituents. The basis for deciding what is biased is the opinion of the people it is directed towards, in this case the African American population. If this hypothetical event was not reported by the mainstream press, the black community could argue that the press is biased.
The 10:10 video offended many of us who seek the scientific truth about the causes and impacts of global warming. We think it is important to know what is true. However the 10:10 position on the issue of anthropological global warming is not offensive. It was intended to offend. Threatening my life in a subtle way with the notion that I should be destroyed over this issue is very annoying and disturbing. The destruction of life by explosion is a terrorist act that we are all too familiar with today. It is the ultimate form of bias.
The ignoring of the nature of the message destruction of life in the 10:10 video by most of the mainstream press means that projected violence against anyone who is skeptic about the science of global warming is an acceptable position for them. That is offensive to all of us. Therefore, the mainstream media are biased because the offense committed against the body of global warming skeptics is not even worthy of comment nor of an inquiry as whether anyone took offense or whether that is an appropriate notion to share in a video. It is easy to recognize bias when you are the subject that is being wronged.
commieBob Here’s a good web site to look at: The Chomsky Hoax
Thanks, huxley. I’ve thought of writing them up, but there are so many projects. . .
You’re right. His footnote density is daunting. But one just has to begin and go plugging along. I have to admit, though, that after all my exposure it’s become psychologically painful to read Chomsky’s stuff. That, as much as anything, makes me shy away from any more work on his material.
911tsunami-large
“The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. ”
I was up flying that day.
Out of character for me to say this, but what goes around, comes around.
Over the last few days I’ve also created a list of green propaganda.
Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C92D7C5162FE0598
I think we should keep a record of this crap for the next bullshit environmental scare.
While I agree this film is vile and probably the biggest PR screw-up of all time I thing some skeptics are misreading this and taking it as a direct attack on them , I don’t believe it is.
“Despite the horrific nature of the video and the message that skeptics should be killed”
If you look at the victims in the film they are not in any “skeptics”. Their crime appears to nothing more than a lack of enthusiasm. When asked if they want to participate they shrug. No-one says they don’t agree with AGW or anything of the sort.
It seems the original thought of the producers was that they’d like to put a bomb under all those who are not bothering to do anything. So they did , literally, in their film.
So if this is the fate they reserve for those who are simply apathetic , God knows what they want to do to skeptics. Presumably some kind of Spanish Inquisition treatment where we renounce our mistaken beliefs and sign up to 10:10 just before being disembowelled and burnt at the stake. (Using recycled wood-chip pellets of course.)
I guess we’ll have to wait for the sequel to see what they have in mind.
Commenters ask how we can counter the media bias towards AGW and I suspect that the answer – beyond the great example set by WUWT, Christopher Brooker and other clear communicators of the truth – is that we cannot. AGW is essentially a global, corporate moneyspinner (that relies on the turkey-voting-for-Christmas mentality of the green movement) and, unfortunately, all the traditional checks and balances once imagined to have been practised by governments and the media have succumbed to the corporate dollar.
For my part, I have cancelled my O2 contract and told them why. I ceased to watch or listen to BBC news programmes several years ago (but have yet to go the whole hog and stop paying the licence fee!). I haven’t bought a newspaper for at least 3 years. These make me feel better but I’m well aware that my efforts will have no effect on the overall scheme of things.
Something that the environmental movement has been very good at has been organising: here in the UK, for example, Fairtrade has taken off in a big way, despite the premiums involved. We should, perhaps, adopt a similar tactic.
Short of warfare, and in the absence of democracy, the best way to make ourselves felt is economically: as far as possible, we boycott any organisation that supports the AGW hypothesis and only use businesses prepared to display a universal logo signifying their opposition to the scam.
Are there any businessmen out there prepared to comment on the real-world viability of such a proposal?
“I ceased to watch or listen to BBC news programmes several years ago (but have yet to go the whole hog and stop paying the licence fee!). I haven’t bought a newspaper for at least 3 years. These make me feel better but I’m well aware that my efforts will have no effect on the overall scheme of things.”
Why just the BBC? Just get rid of the TV. Then you could legitimately not pay the licence fee. You will probably find not being bombarded by the constant titillation and violence will make you feel better as well.
Life is possible without a telly. Strange but true.
Anthony you missed out the biggest culprit..
The Cop15 Opening Copenhagen Conference video…
THis is what made me sceptical..
The last bit particluarly, a small child running from a tidal wave (IPCC say 59cm in 90 YEARS) the child leaps into aq tree, left dangling as the sea rushes underneath her, then she starts SCREAMING..
This LIE gave my 5 year old daughter nightmares, she still askas about the child..
She doesn’t understan why someone would make a video like that if it is not true..
So I can see the doubt in her eyes when I say, it isn’t true………………..
Pat Frank says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:02 pm
You’re right. His footnote density is daunting. But one just has to begin and go plugging along. I have to admit, though, that after all my exposure it’s become psychologically painful to read Chomsky’s stuff. That, as much as anything, makes me shy away from any more work on his material.
================
I still occasionally re-read some of his essays on the philosphy of language and mind. I no longer read his political work much, but not because I disagree with it. Arundhati Roy once commented on the “insanity” of Chomsky’s volume of evidence for whatever he was showing. It is indeed overwhelming, but in a certain sense, needed, given the highly unorthodox nature of his views. Had he been much lighter on the documentation, he would have certainly been accused of providing little evidence and making things up. As things are, critics are reduced to the drudgery of digging through the montains of references with a magnifying glass trying to find occasional inaccuracies, a depressing task. It is amusing to think of the number he could have done on the climate alarm industry, had it been an issue he chose to tackle his days. Here’s how Roy put it in a 2003 article:
[…] “when I first read Noam Chomsky, it occurred to me that his marshalling of evidence, the volume of it, the relentlessness of it, was a little — how shall I put it? — insane. Even a quarter of the evidence he had compiled would have been enough to convince me. I used to wonder why he needed to do so much work. But now I understand that the magnitude and intensity of Chomsky’s work is a barometer of the magnitude, scope, and relentlessness of the propaganda machine that he’s up against. He’s like the wood-borer who lives inside the third rack of my bookshelf. Day and night, I hear his jaws crunching through the wood, grinding it to a fine dust. It’s as though he disagrees with the literature and wants to destroy the very structure on which it rests. I call him Chompsky.
Being an American working in America, writing to convince Americans of his point of view must really be like having to tunnel through hard wood. Chomsky is one of a small band of individuals fighting a whole industry. And that makes him not only brilliant, but heroic.”
—From: The Loneliness Of Noam Chomsky
By Arundhati Roy http://www.countercurrents.org/us-roy240803.htm
davidgmills says:
October 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm
“This is not a liberal bias. Are you nuts?
This is a corporate bias since all of the “mainstream” media are corporate owned. If the corporations wanted it broadcasted, it would be broadcasted.
What a crock!”
What is the Federal Govt if not one big corperation? And yes by a factor of two to one wall street out donates more to the left then the right, and additionally Goldman Sachs largest contribution went to one Barrack Obama. You see, many coorperate top dogs are Ivy league educated, I call them the “corperate royalty of America”, and as such the majority have beeen indoctrnated into a leftist world view due to their youth (Ivy League schooling)
Noam Chomsky has many legitmate critics, here is just one:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.russilwvong.com%2Ffuture%2Fchomsky.html&ei=SRavTIfgE5KgsQP-uIWcDA&usg=AFQjCNEij9NyFR5tLn7ELxp0aAP5YvcLew&sig2=2wDvlW6B5-RBD6q2QNusxA
Here is a more sever criticism:
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/200chomskylies.pdf
Here is just one Chomsky untruth:
The Lie: “in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise.”1
The Truth: The communists murdered 4 million people in the Ukraine; 753,000 in Poland;
360,000 in Romania; 300,000 in Belarus; 200,000 in Hungary; 100,000 in East Germany;
100,000 in Lithuania; 70,000-100,000 in Yugoslavia; 30,000-40,000 in Bulgaria; 20,000 in
Czechoslovakia; and 5,000 in Albania. Other atrocities included the murder of over 500,000
POWs in Soviet captivity and the mass rape of at least 2 million women by the Red Army.2
Francisco, your example of the chimp who utters “Me, Banana, More”, presumably deep meaning without the benefit of innate human grammar, reminds me of when I was feeding treats to one of my cats and a stray cat. Each had a pile of 4 or 5 in front of them and I carefully took one from my cat’s pile and put it on the stray cat’s pile. My cat said something like “hey!” (one word without the need for or possibility of grammar). Suppose the chimp in that situation said “banana more ME!”. He obviously has not learned English grammar which requires that “more” be in front of “banana”. But he has expressed a grammar-based concept of “one instead of other” which in a different situation might produce “banana more you” to reward the instructor. It is not simply a random ordering or mimicry of something a human might have done. The reason chimps don’t do this sort of thing is the same reason it takes them years to learn a few dozen symbols that a two-year-old human can learn in weeks or less: a low ability to conceptualize. My cats have the same deficiency.
You say “It is remarkable that in spite of the huge differences in medium and culture where a language develops, they all have words for common concepts and objects, with extremely similar categorizations, and even more remarkable that the underlying structures are so similar.” You dismiss the entire idea of linguistic anthropology such as found in a simple form here http://nothingforungood.com/ The existence of common concepts comes from the human condition and how we interact with the world, not from innate grammar. A translation using common concepts alone, without the benefit of grammar and culture and other context, is going to sound much like your chimp.
The reality of “culina” as a feminine word is simply a fact, one that Whorf would not choose to ignore as you seem to desire. John Whitman above is correct that Kant among others started the excursion away from reality-based philosophy ending up at Chomsky’s linguistics based on politics or expediency. More specifically, Kant’s analytic/synthetic dichotomy was the genesis of Chomsky’s universal and meaningless grammar. If the world contains no causality or entities or identities as supposed by Kant and Chomsky, then language is simply an arbitrary assignment of words to concepts independent of context or grammar. The problem is that leads to the oversimplified analysis of words as social constructs rather than symbols representing concepts differentiated in the real world.
I don’t mean an insult to you or your intelligence above (Nichts fur ungut), and there are many areas I’m sure we would agree.
Frank K. says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:33 am
On the positive side, the old paradigms are crumbling with internet/WIFI, and the old media will be soon be a quaint memory…
———————————————–
God I wish I could believe that. I am afraid that the current internet reporting freedoms (blogospere) will be a secretly treasured memory once Internet 2.0 comes along and only corporations will have the clout to get any decent bandwidth on the net – maybe you’ll need a license to put up a web site. Anyway, once net-neutrality is gone, it’s back to the old days really. Then the ‘old’ media will truly have re-asserted itself, in the sphere of dominating and manipulating peoples’ thoughts and opinions (globally).
And all it will take is a large-scale cyber ‘attack’ on the US and well, you know…
This post is an excellent resource, drawing together, as it does, the worst excesses of the green propaganda machine.
I hadn’t seen the little girl on the melting ice with the noose. That is just so sick. At least the explosive demise of the 10:10 dissenters was quick and painless. These media offerings really do provide a very piercing insight into the minds of some of these people. WTF is going on?
I see the bias in other areas, such as “Whale Wars”. In any other case, the actions of these protestors would be considered those of pirates. At the very least, the captain of the ship would be tried for hazarding a vessel. Peaceful protests are fine; this show incites violence. They are just waiting for one of their crew to be killed show they have their martyr.
tallbloke says:
October 7, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Frank K. says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:33 am
I feel sorry for those of you in other countries who, through you hard-earned tax dollars, have to support a giant “national” media complex.
I sold the TV on ebay last year. Since then, although I already told them we don’t have a TV anymore, I get a threatening letter from the TV licensing authority about once a fortnight. When the one with the red capitals an inch high on the *outside* of the envelope was handed to me by our postman I wrote back to them threatening court action for harassment.
I got another today saying our address has been passed to “THE ENFORCEMENT TEAM” who “WILL ENTER YOUR HOUSE”.
What? They think they can break into my home? Bring it on boys, my cricket bat is ready and waiting.
———————————-
I don’t watch TV – not for a few years. I keep up-to-date with stuff on the internet. But I still pay the UK license. It’s like living in 1930’s Nazi Germany otherwise. Been there.
P. Solar says:
October 8, 2010 at 12:55 am
“Life is possible without a telly. Strange but true.”
———————————————————
Life is better without a telly.
It’s a sign of desperation. The weaker their stand, the more violent and blatant their propaganda attempts. “Join us or die.”
Is it just me, or do these crude attempts remind anyone else of WWII propaganda demonizing the ‘enemy’ ?
Noam Chomsky advocates, amazing: BBBS
A license for a TV, that’s crazy.
Just wait…
It does not matter how “liberal” they are – MSM is savage when aroused and this will happen soon.
What arouses MSM? – Profit.
Mainstream media (apart from the BBC) are generally privately-owned profit-oriented organisations. Circulation/advertising drives their business model. Their stock-in-trade is to set someone (think: Obama, Blair, Woods etc.) on a pedestal, profit from the hype and then, when the person inevitably become less popular, shoot them down with the “we brought it to you first – here is the real story…” line. We have seen it so many times, it should not surprise.
Concepts or policies (such as the Iraq/Afghan campaigns) usually take a little longer to reverse because it is more difficult for them to disavow a previous (editorial) position. However, once one breaks ranks with a “scoop”, and this jells with public opinion (increased circulation/advertising plus no apparent loss of government access), the rest will surely follow.
The key is the “tipping point” (sic). When one MSM organisation feels that 1) public opinion has broadly swung in the contrary direction and 2) irritating the current government is not going to hinder future access (think: Blair/Brown in their latter years, Obama now, and their governments’ need to court every outlet for their views, not just those that are on-message), then they become free to use the opposite tack: “How we were all deceived.., How we were lied to…” (note: “we” is the get-out). They now have a whole bunch of new people to pillory. If this is seen to work (increased circulation/advertising), the rest of MSM will then rush to catch up – and it won’t be pretty.
They have such a wealth of good info here on WUWT, they don’t need to even to do much original research themselves (think: a reporter at a some “photogenic” weather station above the Arctic circle?). What goes around, comes around.
I would not like to be Al Gore, Jim Hansen or any other figure of the AGW movement when this happens, because they will be hung out to dry. MSM do not take prisoners.
Climate-gate (and lots of other “-gates”) will be resurrected, along with “Big Government” (which will chime here in the UK), “unfair carbon taxes” (which will chime everywhere). You can see how it goes…
So, yes, we all know about the luvvies in the BBC and elsewhere in MSM, but forget them in the greater scheme of things – they are irrelevant. The keys are profit and government access – the latter currently being the driver.
The big question is when Obama is such a soft target that, even if withdrawn, government access is not really any issue. Then there is minimal downside and a lot of upside for MSM to take a revised position. I expect this will occur in a matter of weeks.
Political leanings, aka “liberal”, will cause some MSM to be slower than others – but the liberal-leaning will catch up with a heavy attack on those who sought to profit from the global warming scare (think: [imagine; dream, even]).
es lives with their big government/brother and now I am liberating you…”]
When MSM switches, all of the above videos are going to come back to haunt the AGW/Climate change brigade. They will be replayed endlessly by MSM as examples of how our children were being brainwashed and how (- insert MSM name -) has uncovered the fraud and “protected” us …
Such is the world in which we live.
Truth be told, when this all blows up my fear is that it goes too far and people stop recycling/saving energy/thinking about their waste. I might not be “Green” but actually I am “green” – I just do what I can/want to…. quietly.
Just wait…
It does not matter how “liberal” they are – MSM is savage when aroused and this will happen soon.
What arouses MSM? – Profit.
Mainstream media (apart from the BBC) are generally privately-owned profit-oriented organisations. Circulation/advertising drives their business model. Their stock-in-trade is to set someone (think: Obama, Blair, Woods etc.) on a pedestal, profit from the hype and then, when the person inevitably become less popular, shoot them down with the “we brought it to you first – here is the real story…” line. We have seen it so many times, it should not surprise.
Concepts or policies (such as the Iraq/Afghan campaigns) usually take a little longer to reverse because it is more difficult for them to disavow a previous (editorial) position. However, once one breaks ranks with a “scoop”, and this jells with public opinion (increased circulation/advertising plus no apparent loss of government access), the rest will surely follow.
The key is the “tipping point” (sic). When one MSM organisation feels that 1) public opinion has broadly swung in the contrary direction and 2) irritating the current government is not going to hinder future access (think: Blair/Brown in their latter years, Obama now, and their governments’ need to court every outlet for their views, not just those that are on-message), then they become free to use the opposite tack: “How we were all deceived.., How we were lied to…” (note: “we” is the get-out). They now have a whole bunch of new people to pillory. If this is seen to work (increased circulation/advertising), the rest of MSM will then rush to catch up – and it won’t be pretty.
They have such a wealth of good info here on WUWT, they don’t need to even to do much original research themselves (think: a reporter at a some “photogenic” weather station above the Arctic circle?). What goes around, comes around.
I would not like to be Al Gore, Jim Hansen or any other figure of the AGW movement when this happens, because they will be hung out to dry. MSM do not take prisoners.
Climate-gate (and lots of other “-gates”) will be resurrected, along with “Big Government” (which will chime here in the UK), “unfair carbon taxes” (which will chime everywhere). You can see how it goes…
So, yes, we all know about the luvvies in the BBC and elsewhere in MSM, but forget them in the greater scheme of things – they are irrelevant. The keys are profit and government access – the latter currently being the driver.
The big question is when Obama is such a soft target that, even if withdrawn, government access is not really any issue. Then there is minimal downside and a lot of upside for MSM to take a revised position. I expect this will occur in a matter of weeks.
Political leanings, aka “liberal”, will cause some MSM to be slower than others – but the liberal-leaning will catch up with a heavy attack on those who sought to profit from the global warming scare (think: [imagine; dream, even!]).
When MSM switches, all of the above videos are going to come back to haunt the AGW/Climate change brigade. They will be replayed endlessly by MSM as examples of how our children were being brainwashed and how (- insert MSM name -) has uncovered the fraud and “protected” us …
Such is the world in which we live.
Truth be told, when this all blows up my fear is that it goes too far and people stop recycling/saving energy/thinking about their waste. I might not be “Green” but actually I am “green” – I just do what I can/want to…. quietly.
(moderators – please delete if already posted – it seemed to get lost on my system)
Eric (skeptic)
I am not sure what you are talking about when you speak of a “linguistics based on politics or expediency.”
On the other hand, I am quite sure Whorf would not miss the gender of the word kitchen in some languages. He had a sharp ear for that kind of thing, which is precisely the kind of thing I might entirely miss or attatch no importance to.
There is a pretty funny essay by Chomsky, published in Artificial Intelligence 171 (2007), 1094-1103 that may shed some light on these matters. And even if it doesn’t, at least some parts of it are very entertaining. The main character, Boden, has great universal appeal and provides all the fun. A brief excerpt:
“To begin with, Boden does not seem to comprehend the terms she uses. Thus she refers repeatedly to my “postulation of universal grammar” (UG) and writes “What universal grammar will turn out to be — if it exists at all — is still unclear.” UG is the term that has been used for many decades to refer to the theory of the genetic component of the human language faculty, whatever it will turn out to be: very much an open question, of course, as in far simpler cases that are far easier to investigate. Insect communication, to mention one. To question the existence of UG, as she does, is to take one of two positions: (1) there is no genetic component; (2) there is one, but there is no theory of it. We can presumably dismiss (2), so Boden is left with (1). She is therefore questioning the existence of a genetic factor that played a role in my granddaughter’s having reflexively identified some part of the data to which she was exposed as language-related, and then proceeding to acquire knowledge of a language, while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird, etc.), with exactly the same experience, can never even take the first step, let alone the following ones. It is either a miracle, or there is a genetic factor involved. Boden’s suggestion — presumably unwitting — is that it may be a miracle.
If UG is viewed as a mapping from external data to internal state attained (abstracting from more general principles of growth and development), we can think of it as a “language acquisition device” (LAD). To question the existence of LAD is the same as to question the existence of UG — that is, to leave my granddaughter’s feat a miracle. Boden questions the existence of LAD; more accurately, thinks she does. She cites “non-Chomskyans” who believe that the capacity to acquire language “may be some combination of mechanisms evolved for more general purposes.” If this shot in the dark happens to hit the mark, then LAD is that combination, and Boden again agrees that LAD/UG exists, while believing that she questions its existence.” […]
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20071011.htm