SILLINESS FROM JOURNALISTS

Silliness from journalists? That is becoming so common that I was going to give this stuff a pass. I feel like I’m complaining about the actions of 8-year-olds. 8-year-olds whom I’m not responsible for and who answer to no one. In short, it’s a waste of time and beneath me.

But then this came from Reuters by way of NRO:

World's oldest person celebrates 115th birthday

- A Dutch woman who swears by a daily helping of herring for a healthy life celebrated her 115th birthday on Wednesday as the oldest living person on record.

Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, a former needlework teacher, was born in 1890, the year Sioux Indians were massacred by the U.S. military at the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Full story Here.

I swear, those are the first two paragraphs. You can look it up on the link. Is that not priceless silliness? I wonder if they researched to see if any blacks were lynched that year so they could throw that in there also. Surely there was more negative crap they could have thrown in on the poor lady’s 115th birthday.

By Reuters standards, there isn’t a news story in the world that can’t be linked to Wounded Knee:

Moscow-Jul 4, Putin said today, which happens to be 115 years after Sioux Indians were massacred by the U. S. military at the Battle of Wounded Knee, blah, blah, blah.

See how easy that is. No one would notice that.

Here in Bangkok we have our share of petulant 8-year-olds who pass themselves off as journalists. Their silliness is compounded by their attempts to duck responsibility for it. They compose their own Letters to the Editor, claiming readers are sending them in. How silly is that?

This is about The Nation, an English language paper, one of two here in Bangkok. Their charade is so transparent and amateurish only the most gullible would be fooled. They use this ruse to slander the United States while denying responsibility for it. Did I mention they have little courage?

After their first slander I sent this letter. I deliberately treated them like reasonable adults, in the hopes they were, despite the obviously forged letter which I mocked a little.

Needless to say, they didn’t print any part of my letter or any other rebuttal of the attack. Instead, probably taking offence at my treating them as adults, they forged this piece of silliness:

Nobel Peace prize not all it’s cracked up to be

While we congratulate Aung San Suu Kyi on reaching her 60th birthday, one wonders if she really wants to be so closely identified with that dubious badge of honour known as the “Nobel Peace Prize.”

Her name rarely appears in any article that does not mention this award, though she has brought “peace” to no one. Does she really want to boast about a prize that puts her in the same category as the war-criminal architect of the destruction of Cambodia – “Bomb-’em-into-the-stone-ages” Kissinger – who won the Nobel in 1971? (Even Le Duc Tho refused to accept the coveted prize that year.) Or Yasser “now-that-I’m-gone-peace-can-begin-in-Palestine” Arafat, who won the prize in 1994?

Perhaps the US government should ask itself if its actions are more of a problem for peace and prosperity in Burma than those of the repressive regime there.

Maybe Condoleezza “pre-emptive-strike” Rice could learn a lesson from Kissinger about what happens when you try to destabilise the government in a small country – Cyprus, Angola, Timor and of course Cambodia, the greatest American war-crime of the last century.

Richard

Nong Khai

See it in context Here.

Now who couldn’t tell that was a forged, planted letter? The petulant 8-year-olds at The Nation, furious at being treated like adults, have answered me.

“Reason? We don’ need no stinkin’ reason! Take you logic and shove it!”

Their non-sequeter is at least equal to the silliness of Reuters.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the Thai people are the most friendly, polite, and patient that I’ve ever encountered. I haven’t met any who disliked Americans. The childish churliness, the hate-filled venom spewed by the misfits at The Nation is so far from the mainstream Thai that I have to wonder if they have been infiltrated by big money from the outside. It has happened in the US. It has happened elsewhere.

That is someone else’s problem. I have seen the futility of arguing with children. I should say I have seen that I am arguing with children.

That is beneath me.