LGF: Kill Those with Cameras

Charles Johnson expresses his outrage once again that anyone should dare to document the war in Afghanistan and Iraq on camera other than from his perspective. CJ's greatest hatred is reserved for Al Jazeera TV, whom he calls "the most powerful ally of terror in the world" (what: greater than the CIA? greater than the international arms and drugs trade? greater than the oil-grabbing neocon regime currently in the whitehouse? http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11459_Killers_with_Cameras). But he also has it in for The Australian (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11458_Naked_Appeasement_at_the_Australian), MSNBC (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11456_MSNBC-_Failure_Central), the BBC (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11441_BBC-_Living_in_a_Bubble) - basically the entire media (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11450_The_Media_Are_the_Enemy).

LGF is pure and true and good and has the blessings of the Almighty, while all journalists are scum and should be sent to re-education camp (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11455_Reaching_Out_to_the_Under-Educated).

Poll

Charles Johnson: Islamic expert

The scaly green webmaster of Littlegreenfootballs.com, Charles Johnson (who is not a woman, as far as we can tell), is now an expert on Islamic teaching! Indeed, CJ points out in the latest missive to his minions that many imams in France are 'self-taught' and don't have 'the right credentials' (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11437_Self-Taught_Spiritual_Leaders). Well blow me down: religious preachers making things up? Whatever next? The Pope's a Roman Catholic? Bears do it in the forest?

Charles Johnson: It was the Jews!

The Ueberlizard must have had his tinfoil hat on this morning when he posted an item about an AFP photograph of Dick Cheney in which he insinuated that the French News Agency was guilty of subtle anti-semitic propaganda when it ran a picture of the American vice president with (shock-horror!!) an ISRAELI flag behind him (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11426_AFP_Photo_Editorial#comments).

Now if this isn't a prime example of French perfidity, then Charles is REALLY going conspiracy-gaga.

Remembering Reagan

The 9/11 report

"The US commission investigating the September 11 attacks reported yesterday it had found no evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated in the plot," reports the Guardian.

Further, according to Der Spiegel, Osama Bin Laden may not have been the mastermind behind the attack at all, though he did supply funds for and know of the operation.

And on BBC Radio 4 Howard Dean talks about how America was deceived (realplayer required).

Charles Johnson: Orientalist

Chief LGF lizard Charlie J has a tendency to describe Muslim terrorists as 'savages' (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11397_Islamic_Savages_Parade_US_Hostage). This might be understandable, considering the actions perpetrated by the people he is talking about (decapitations, video-kidnappings etc). Except, of course, where similar things are done by Americans (bombing wedding parties, torturing prisoners, sniping unarmed civilians), the word 'savage' would be replaced by 'brave servicemen and -women'. To CJ, only 'towel heads' can be savages. Orientalism anyone?

MEMRI

An old but important article about the Middle East Media Research Institute

Janis Karpinksi interview on the BBC

Brigadier General Janice Karpinski tells the BBC's John Humphrys she is being made a scapegoat for what happened in Abu Ghraib

A great American

Conspiracy Theory - LGF style

Charles Johnson has figured out what the world's best intelligence agencies haven't been able to figure out: what happened to those 'weapons of mass destruction' that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled but which mysteriously failed to materialise before, during or after the war. In a posting titled 'WMD Puzzle Begins to Come Together' (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11361_WMD_Puzzle_Begins_to_Come_Together), CJ asserts that what ol' Saddam did was dismantle his WMD, crush them into scrap metal, and then secretly ship them out of the country so that nobody would guess he'd ever had them. Cunning plan, eh? There are only a few minor flaws with this theory:

1) If Saddam had WMD, why didn't Saddam hold onto them instead and use them against the invaders?

2) If Saddam really was prepared to scrap his alleged WMD in order to stay in power, why didn't he just hand them over to the UN to do so? It might have led to a loss of face, but less so than being invaded and having to hide in a hole in the ground for weeks...

3)...or better yet, destroy them all himself, and have inspectors come and verify this?

The most likely explanation for the appearance of large amounts of Iraqi scrap metal all over the world is that some enterprising scrap dealers decided to make a bit of money out of selling off disused industrial metal - and possibly even machinery that had once been used to produce weapons. But this is a very long way away from proving Saddam had an arsenal of ready-to-use WMDs in the run-up to the war.

LGF idiocy: priceless

You know littlegreenfootballs.com, that weblog where they go on about how America is doing great things by bringing democracy to the Mulsim world? Seems like that sentiment doesn't extend to Muslims per se, just the ones America is invading right now...

In a thread entitled 'Respect Islam, Do Not Vote', Charles "No Torture" Johnson picks up on a comment by the lunatics at Al Muhajiroon which urges Muslims in Britain NOT to vote in the coming European and Local Elections (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11310_Respect_Islam_Do_Not_Vote). Charlie wholeheartedly supports the sentiments of this fringe group of Muslims, because he too feels that Muslims should not vote. What would the world come to, after all, if Muslims got elected representatives just like everybody else!?

His mini-Lizards take the bait, proceeding to suggest what Muslims should do instead ("BRING A PIG INTO YOUR LOCAL MOSQUE, KILL IT, EAT IT, DOWN IT WITH SOME BOOZE, ALL THE WHILE HAVING SEX WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND AND SINGING HATIKVAH"), what they can do next ("Now if they just packed up the camels and went home...") etc etc.

Thankfully, there is the odd voice of reason, even on LGF (eg: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11310#c0051). Shame it tends to get banned...

Israel cracks down on anti-Arab racism

What took them so long?

IDF kills Arafat - in wheelchair

Is the Israeli Army getting a bit confused? It's certainly getting too trigger happy, when a 'warning shot' kills a protester.

Kandahar Cockney

In 1997 James Fergusson, a British correspondent on assignment in rebel-controlled Afghanistan, is helped by a resourceful 19-year-old interpreter called Mir. But because of his association with the Western media, the young Afghan is forced to flee to London - where the guided becomes the guide. Listen to the programme

Old man dies, Charles Johnson seethes

As the news came in over the weekend that the B-movie actor turned US president, Ronald 'McDonald' Reagan, had died at the ripe old age of 93, the world yawned and threw another burger on the bbq.

Charlie J of LGF fame however threw a hissy-fit at the fact that the Reuters news agency ("who else?") had DARED to present an other-than-rosy picture of the grand old cowboy (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11289_Al-Reuters_Slimes_President_Reagan).

Is Bush an Iranian agent?

Matthew Yglesias makes a compelling argument for why Bush must be in the pay of the mad mullahs

Lucianne.com blasted by Marines

Media Matters reports that LGF's satanic sister, Lucianne.com, has provoked the wrath of the US Marine Corps over the racist content posted by some of its users. This content, incidentally, is quite similar to that found on Little Green Footballs.

Are you a Disaffected, US-Hating Terrorist?

More on the Brandon Mayfield case

What did Cheney know about torture?

From Private Eye No 1107:

CONCERN over American forces' use of torture will not be news to US vice-president Dick Cheney. He was warned about the practice as long ago as 1992 when he was defence secretary under George Bush Sen.

In 1988 US senators investigated claims that American-backed "counter insurgency" operations in Central and South America, particularly Honduras, had included abusive interrogations. The senators were shocked to discover that two CIA manuals used to train interrogators recommended torture. They included techniques similar to those that have been used more recently at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

After the senate investigation the CIA added a new preface to the manuals, stating: "The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults or exposure to inhumane treatment of any kind as an aid to interrogation is prohibited by law, both international and domestic; it is neither authorized nor condoned." However, the National Security Archive, a historical project at George Washington University, uncovered a 1992 memo to Cheney warning that, even after the 1988 investigation the US government was still circulating Spanish language guidebooks with the torture instructions.

It warned Cheney that the "offensive and objectionable material in the manuals... undermines US credibility and could result in significant embarrassment.”

The memo was stamped "SECDEF HAS SEEN', and Cheney scribbled on it “I concur" referring to the recommendations that the manuals be withdrawn and the human rights component of military training be re-emphasised.

The senate investigations that led to the 1992 memo to Cheney were spurred by revelations of torture by US-backed forces in Honduras. The US ambassador to Honduras, who was implicated in the scandal, was one John Negroponte. Mr Negroponte is now the US ambassador to... Iraq.

Sorry is the hardest word

Portland lawyer Brendan Mayfield has been released after the FBI admitted mismatching his fingerprints to those found on items connected to the Madrid train bombings. See here (Thanks to Nate Dogg for the tip)

Now let us remind ourselves ourselves of some of the things Charles's minions said about Mayfield at the time of his release (all http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11093):

"He's a Muslim,therefore he is bound by his "religion" to lie to us.Never trust him for a moment." (mbruce)

"Why would they arrest him if they didn't have his finger prints? He's guilty. He should fry." (Modern Crusader)

"We are sorry he converted to the most vile cult known to man. We are sorry his friends are terrorists.We are sorry his wife is the poster girl for the burka. Sorry. He was released...so was OJ." (Karly)

Wondering whether Mr Mayfield will get a personal apology from Charles for insinuating that he was a terrorist accomplice...

Madonna threatened by Palis?

Charles J is flagging up a story about how pop singer 'Madonna' has pulled out of a concert in Israel because of death threats against her and her children from "an unnamed Palestinian group" (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11135_Madonna_Threatened). Apparently the threats were believable because they contained "intimate details" about the children.

Now let's get this straight: "an unnamed Palestinian group" thinks Madonna is a threat to the future of Palestine? "An unnamed Palestinian group" thinks that killing Madonna or her kids is going to help the Palestinian cause? "An unnamed Palestinian group" spends its time scouting around for "intimate information" about her kids in order to make its death-threat letter more belieavable? Not fucking likely, as Vinnie Jones would say.

Charlie's source is, of course, the ever-reliable Sun newspaper. But even the Sun prints the following denial from Madonna's management (plus inevitable unattributed counter-denial), which the Lizard Overlord conveniently fails to reproduce:

"Madonna’s people last night insisted the Israel leg of her Re-Invention tour has been cancelled because the singer wants to concentrate on Europe. But insiders say nothing except this security alert would have stopped her travelling to Tel Aviv."

"You're a Nazi!" "No you're a Nazi!"

Israel wrestles with Nazi insults

American Empire

Niall Ferguson on why America is an Empire - and why it should embrace this fact

AP claims video shows US forces did attack wedding party

"RAMADI, Iraq (AP) - A videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck."

Death from the skies

While Israeli gunships fired at demonstrators in Gaza, the US is alleged to have bombarded a wedding party in Iraq, killing 40.

Neither of these stories appear to have been deemed post-worthy by Charles Johnson.

Not Torture?

The Denver Post reports that a number of Iraq prisoners were tortured to death in US captivity:

"The deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon report. The documents contradict an earlier Defense Department statement that said the general died "of natural causes" during an interrogation. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the new disclosure. Another Iraqi military officer, records show, was asphyxiated after being gagged, his hands tied to the top of his cell door. Another detainee died "while undergoing stress technique interrogation," involving smothering and "chest compressions," according to the documents."

(Hat Tip: Empire Notes)

Meanwhile, InformationClearingHouse has pictures of US soldiers posing for pictures over the body of a dead Iraqi:

IDF shoots demonstrators, killing ten

From the BBC News website: "The Israeli army has opened fire on a crowd of Palestinian demonstrators in the town of Rafah in southern Gaza.

"At least 10 people were killed, though some reports put the number of casualties higher.

"Several children were among the dead, and more than 50 people were injured, many seriously, Palestinian medical workers said."

The Bush-bin Laden connection according to Michael Moore

"It does not have a big "showdown" moment, like Moore's encounter with Charlton Heston, although the director shouts out questions to the president he derisively calls Governor Bush and is rewarded by him with a snarling suggestion that he should get a real job, which takes some effrontery coming from the slacker fratboy head of state who makes Ronald Reagan's workload look Stakhanovite."

From a Peter Bradshaw review in the Guardian

IDF kills, Charles worries about grammar

Since Monday night Israeli helicopters have been firing at Palestinians in Rafah, a Gaza Strip refugee camp. IDF soldiers have been conducting door-to-door searches for Palestinian gunmen, and homes are being torn down by Israeli bulldozers.

So far, thirteen people have been killed. The BBC describes one attack:

"The raid began at dawn with a missile from a helicopter fired at a group of gunmen outside a mosque in Tel Sultan, killing three of them.

"Two more missiles were fired, killing three more people who rushed to help and leaving the mosque in flames.

"In a later air strike, four Palestinians were killed, all civilians, according to hospital officials quoted by Associated Press.

"Six Palestinians, at least one of them a gunman, were also reportedly killed in street fighting.

"Witnesses said tanks and bulldozers dug a trench to separate Tel Sultan from the rest of the camp and demolished at least four houses.

"About 20 people were wounded in the air attacks, and Palestinian security sources told AP that two ambulances had come under fire from Israeli snipers, one of which was hit by three bullets.

"Trapped residents were reported to be huddling in the most protective rooms of their homes as bullets rained outside. Others tried to flee the area."

Meanwhile, the only thing Charles Johnson has to say about the killings is "Count the grammatical problems and win a prize" - a reference to a Reuters report that he apparently doesn't think is well written (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11076). Charles, what's more pressing: the killing of people in refugee camps or your sense of grammatical correctness?

UPDATE: for more on the way Israel is terrorising the Palestinians, see Chris McGreal's report from Rafah.

Warblogger woes

Antonia Zerbisias writes in the Toronto Star about the silence of the warbloggers, mentioning our dear friend Charles.

'Who commands the private soldiers?'

Guardian report on the increasing use of mercenaries in US-led military campaigns.

'Back on track'

Guardian report on the prospects for the Iraqi Olympic team

The death of Asad Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel

Asad Abdul Kareem Abdul Jaleel died on 9 January 2004 in a US military prison in Iraq. According to his captors, Jaleel "died in his sleep". But a fellow inmate told the German weekly Der Spiegel that Jaleel had been sadistically tortured for five days prior to his death.

Some good news

Iraqi soccer team to play at Olympics

Abuse of female prisoners in Iraq

According to the LA Times, female prisoners in Iraq are also subject to torture at the hands of their American captors, sometimes even raped.

Was Berg family firm on Free Republic 'hit list'?

Serious allegations are being raised against the right-wing website 'Free Republic', after it emerged that it had named the family firm of beheaded American Nick Berg on a list of 'enemies' of the Iraq occupation. According to 'Break For News', this "could explain [Berg's] arrest by Iraqi police --a detention which fatally delayed his planned return from Iraq and may have led directly to his death." Read more

'Terrorists and Their Tools'

Riaz Hassan reports in YaleGlobal on the political reasons behind suicide bombings: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=3749

Not torture?

Not torture?

US author Ariel Dorfman and former military intelligence officer Col. John Hughes-Wilson discuss the political impact of Abu Ghraib and how far 'interrogation' should go: Realplayer Audio

LGF: Jumping to conclusions

One story that illustrates the way in which Little Green Footballs posters jump to premature conclusions, thanks to their pathological prejudices, is that of the ten men arrested on suspicion of plotting terrorist acts in Manchester, UK, in mid April. At the time, the story was reported under the heading 'Got 10 in Manchester' by Charles Johnson (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10727). Although Charles wisely refrained from commenting beyond the headline (implying as it does 'their' guilt and that 'they' belong to 'those terrorists'), his minions didn't hold back:

"so anyone wanna guess the religion of these thugs?" (bull)

"If they are Kurds, then it means Ansar al-Islam, an AQ affiliate. Oh Joy." (FH)

"Good job on this catch though. Can't wait for the BBC and Guardian to begin screeching about how deplorable it is these men are being detained and questioned." (Model4)

"Now convict and hang the terrorist savages ASAP." (Just the Facts)

"theses muzzies ought to be tried convicted and marched into the man u stadium at halftime in a match with arsenal so some brit ubber testoterone could go to work on them--i'm thinking of shaving my head and wearing my dr. martin's in anticipation" (HULUGU)

"The jihadis would do well to leave Britain tonight, when this hits the newstands tommorow things will get bloody for the al muhariroun vermin." (OverWatch)

Now that the ten men have all been released without charge we are unlikely to hear any more about the story on LGF. One of the men is demanding a police apology. His religion, in case you were still wondering, is: none.

No comment(s)

Hehe, seems like the Dirty Green Footballs have gone and put their foot in it again. Noticing that the comment function on LGFWatch wasn't working for a few hours, they jumped to the conclusion that "COMMENTS HAVE BEEN BANNED".

" lgfwatch has banned comments, which were entirely reasonable and coexistant, so I couldn't if I wanted."

and

"So LGF Watch has turned off comments? No surprise there. As usual, they can dish it out but they can't take it. Shouldn't we be screaming about our free speech rights being violated?" (both http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10775)

Sadly, Dom and Zulubaby, comments weren't "turned off". The entire haloscan comment system went down. Haloscan is back up now and we're proud to be taking all the usual flak again from the loony lizards, while they continue to jump to premature conclusions without hesitation. Sound familiar?

LGF: No 'torture' in Abu Ghraib prison

To quote Charles Johnson: "As despicable as the acts were that these MPs are accused of, those acts were not torture." (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10937_Thoughts_on_Torture)

Not torture:



Not torture:



Not torture:



Not torture:



Not torture:



Not torture:



Not torture:

Critical diplomats are 'Arab-flunkies'

...at least that's how the Lizard Overlord sees it. And what evidence does Charles offer for this daring assertion? None, as usual.

LGF watch atom feed

To display LGFwatch headlines on your site, pick up this atom feed: http://lgfwatch.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Israeli TV embarrasses IDF - belies images of 'soft touch' occupation.

Charles Johnson: 'killing Muslims is good, criticising Israel is bad'

In a thread about CAIR efforts to censure Boston radio show host Jay Severin, Charles Johnson comes out heavily on the side of 'free speech', even if that means radio show hosts and Charles's own minions advocating the murder of all Muslims (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10892_CAIRs_Jihad_against_Talk_Radio). How pernicious of those CAIR people to demand an apology from Jay Severin for saying what he thinks! How evil of CAIR to want to gag the right to free expression!

Could this be the same Charles F Johnson who wholeheartedly supports a certain Daniel Pipes in his efforts to denounce academics who express views critical of Israeli and American policy (see below)? Free speech for some, gagging order for others, it seems.

Why I ... urge academics to support Israeli academics' right to free expression

Published: THES 30 April 2004

According to reports in last week's Haaretz newspaper, Israel's academic freedom is in danger of being trampled on by politicians. These were sparked in part by the decision by Limor Livnat, the minister of education, not to attend the annual meeting of the board of governors of Ben Gurion University next month because she objected to the views expressed by a member of faculty in an article that was published in Belgium and in which he used the term "symbolic Holocaust" to describe Israel's policies of targeting and assasinating Hamas leaders.

At the same time as Livnat's views became public, Neve Gordon, a lecturer known for his leftwing views and critique of the policies of the present Israeli government, brought a libel action against Stephen Plaut, a lecturer at Haifa University, after Plaut refused to retract statements accusing him of being a "fanatic anti-Semite", a "Judenrat wannabe" and a "groupie of the world's leading Holocaust denier".

These are not isolated incidents, they are part of a much bigger campaign that has been growing alarmingly over the past three years. Leftwing academics have become the target of neo-conservative attacks - in Israel and the US. Many of these attacks have appeared as letters addressed to university supporters or the general public, or in articles that have been published indiscriminately on websites, many of which have affiliations to extreme rightwing organisations.

Academics have been accused of being anti-Israeli and, in many cases, of feeding anti-Semitism. Letters have been sent to US supporters of Israeli universities urging them to withdraw financial support from institutions that employ "treasonous" faculty, as well as to university presidents and rectors in Israel, urging them to intervene in the promotion process of these individuals. So far universities have defended academic freedom.

Much of this campaign has grown out of the McCarthyist Campus Watch organisation set up by Daniel Pipes, which asks students to sit in on lectures at US campuses and "report" all forms of critique that are considered unacceptable by the self-appointed guardians of neo-conservative post-9/11 political correctness. This has spread to Israeli campuses, with rightwing views escaping the political scrutiny and attack directed at leftwing opinions.

This McCarthyism is not divorced from the structural reforms that are taking place in Israeli higher education, which the government is forcing on university senates. Their implementation will make higher education in Israel far less democratic, transferring decision-making powers from faculty (we elect our own heads of departments, faculty deans and even rectors and vice-chancellors) to appointed committees made up of part faculty and part public and political figures.

Non-academic personnel would then be allowed to intervene in the hiring and promotion processes of individual staff (today, the promotion committees are made up of academic faculty alone and are autonomous) if they believed that the expressed political views of individuals were not to their liking or were causing international support of, and financial donations to, the institution to fall away.

Instead of pouring its energies into a futile academic boycott of Israel - a boycott opposed by the large majority of both left and rightwing Israeli academics - the international academic community should be expressing concern about these blatant attempts by the neo-conservatives and self-appointed "super patriots" to intervene in the academic process.

Intellectuals should take active steps to support the right of all academics to free expression, to defend themselves against libel, and to engage in their normal activities without fear that the stating of their political positions will jeopardise their professional future.

David Newman
Professor of political geography
Department of politics and government
Ben Gurion University in Israel
and editor of Geopolitics journal

'US Anti-Muslim Incidents Up 70 Pct in 2003 - Report'

Read on

Daily Kos goes Lizard-hunting

Daily Kos user 'Marshall' has taken a closer look at some of the comments on this LGF thread and found that, actually, LGFers are all perfectly reasonable, articulate, peaceful people. Not.

Take this comment for example:

"I would have destroyed Fallujah block by block, pausing after each rubblized block to demand unconditional surrender.And I would film it and put it on the 24 hour news stations in real time. Getting these jihadis on tape begging for mercy would do the world good. We have to 'reach' the fanatic soldiers. Once we break through to the brainwashed foot soldiers, it will be game over for all the other brainwashed soldiers. Just look at the effect of seeing Yassin in a wheel barrow of body parts with his head blown off, and a hacked up dead Rantissi layed out on a slab has done for the palestinian jihadis. This is all they understand. They exist in a realm barely imaginable."

ADL survey 'Finds Some Decrease In Anti-Semitic Attitudes In Ten European Countries

Read on

"An Israeli boy plays with weapons during an army display to mark the country's independence." (AFP)

Islam and America on Radio4

Two interesting programmes on BBC Radio 4 this week: The first is a discussion about Democracy and Civilization in the Middle East and the USA (Start the Week), the second a Women's Hour Interview with Irshad Manji. Both programmes can be heard over the net using RealPlayer.

Official: Coffman not Dominionist!

LGFWatch is proud to retract its intolerable slur against the honorable US Congress candidate Bryan Coffman. Contrary to previous indications, it turns out Mr Coffman is NOT a god-fearing, bible-thumping, Bush-lovin', women-hating, Congress infiltrating fundamentalist Christian. He is an idiot though, and a supporter of racists like Charles F Johnson. Ya basta.

Charles Johnson: "If your country lies in ruins, that's your fault cos you're Arab"

The latest in his series of racism cloaked as cultural critique pieces, Charles gives a nod (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10780_Escaping_Arab_Failure) to Ralph Peters, who delivers such choices bits of wisdom as:

"The oft-cited examples of the Arab world’s problems, from a lack of interest in secular education and a poor work ethic to staggering corruption and the oppression of women, are symptoms, not root causes, of Arab failure. Past a certain analytical point, we come up against the wall of our own taboos - we cannot admit that the psychological premises of an entire civilization might be dysfunctional."

Charles Johnson: blind to weapons of mass destruction

Once again the Lizard Leader sticks his head in the sand when it comes to weapons of mass destruction in the middle east; in what appears to be his only comment on the release of Mordechai Vanunu, the man who spilled the beans on Israel's nuclear arsenal and spent 18 years in prison for doing so, Charles mentions, of all things, some sort of rally in support of Vanunu that was supposed to take place on the other side of the world, in San Francisco (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10763_Ah_Vanunu_We_Hardly_Knew_Ye). If you want to learn more about Vanunu and Israel's nuclear arsenal, click here: http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,247242,00.html

Let them have chaos

Charles Johnson approvingly posts a Mark Steyn column which advocates instability in the Middle East (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10761_Mideast_Instability-_Is_That_Such_a_Bad_Thing). Incoherent though Steyn's logic is (wasn't the whole point about terrorism that it springs from instability?), Charlie-boy has no problem endorsing it. The clearest example yet of Johnson's 'Heaven for us, Hell for them' racism towards Arabs?

News roundup

Wife-beating Saudi Mohammed al-Fallatta has given himself up. In the BBC report the corporation's Saudi correspondent notes:

"The BBC's correspondent Kim Ghattas says Saudi Arabia is a deeply conservative society, where Islamic Sharia law is strictly enforced and where honour and appearances are hugely important.

The presence of problems such as domestic violence, rape, paedophilia or Aids is often simply not acknowledged."

Undoubtedly LGF Charles will find another reason to brand the BBC apologists for 'islamo-fascism'.

Meanwhile, some good news: Mordechai Vanunu has been released after 18 years in prison for leaking Israel's nuclear secretcs. And he's vowed to fight on.

Buy this book



...if you want to learn about the Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Religion and LGF

Charles Johnson delights in listing every instance of religious lunacy on his blog - as long as it's Muslim lunacy, that is. Christian and Jewish lunacy apparently doesn't exist. CJ would probably defend this by arguing that people of Christian and Jewish faith don't go round blowing themselves up for God (though they have been known to blow other people up and shift responsibility onto the almighty).

If there is one thing that his readers get drilled into them again and again it's that followers of Islam will blindly obey any command, however non-sensical. Unfortunate, then, that in one of the many posts in which Charles tries to identify himself with the victims of the Holocaust, he links to an article that describes how two Jews in 1941, with their lives crumbling around them, go to a rabbi for advice and, having received the advice, blindly follow it irrespective of whether the advice makes any sense (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10725_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day). As the article says:

"In the lowest depths of the Nazi hell, in a place of terror and savagery that most of us cannot fathom, here were human beings who refused to relinquish their faith — who refused even to violate a religious precept without first asking if it was allowed."

What, one wonders, would the rabbi have told them if they had lived in present-day Palestine?

Another interesting religious conundrum arises for Charles in the form of one of his sponsors, Bryan Coffman. Coffman, it seems, is a Dominionist, one of those who believe in bringing about an Old Testament order in America where women are stoned, 'magicians' are crucified, and gays are flogged. Nice sponsors ya got, Charlie boy.

Kidnapped in Fallujah

Jo Wilding's second report from Fallujah

Mess with Texas...

...and you'll get private companies taking over the military, and a war based on the lie of freedom.

LGF: wishing for racial war

Once again a peek at the latest LGF front page reveals the thinking that drives Charles Johnson and his frothing friends into a frenzy in front of their little green computer screens every day:

- "The Arab Way of War", "The New Arab Way of War" - apparently you can now determine how someone will wage a war by finding out what race he is.

- An LGF death swarm (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10698_Breaking_News-_Rantisi_Dead!) with no fewer than 850 posts responding to the joyous news of another extrajudicial assassination, among the most witty comments being this one:

"#664 Brian 4/17/2004 04:35PM PST
I hear that Rantisi is busy having anal sex with Rachel Corrie. He shouldn't find it that difficult falling into another pile of shit." (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10698#c0664

Who exactly is wallowing in death here?

- And finally, a reminder from CJ to all his minions why we're fighting this war: 'COS OF ALL OUR DEAD' (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10702_Jihad_Death_Count)! Which is kind of the flip side of the same coin that Jihad Inc is holding up to rally its support.

Will these goons never learn...?

Palestinian or Injun

La Vie Viennoise has an interesting addition to the LGF quiz.

Good news from our Muslim friends

Here are some items you won't find on the Muslim-hating Little Green Footballs weblog:

Saudi TV presenter stands up for women's rights

Turkish villagers boycott over-zealous imam

Muslim chaplain cleared by US army (see also: 'He is not guilty and he is not innocent')

Iraqi Blogs

You can either get your info on Iraq from the horse's arse (LGF etc) or from the horse's mouth: those who are actually there and know what the situation on the ground is like. Here's a quick roundup of essential reading:

Where is Raed - the original Baghdad blogger and still one of the best
Iraq at a glance - Observations of AYS, a dentist in Baghdad
Nabil's blog - a 16 year-old student in Baghdad
Riverbend - Iraq's most prominent female blogger, wants to " talk war, politics and occupation"
...and finally, Baghdad Bulletin, an online journal dedicated to covering the rebuilding of Iraq.

Johnson just can't stop freeping

Regardless of the question asked, regardless of what the common sense answer would be, Charles Johnson continues to encourage his minions to flock to online polls like the one on Al Jazeera at the moment and put their cross on the option that makes America look STRONG, DETERMINED and VENGEFUL (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10662_JihadTV_Poll_Watch). In doing so he employs the usual LGF tropes: describe middle eastern organisations as part of a 'jihad', claim they are sneakily trying to undermine the 'west' through ideological means (by describing them as the "vanguard" or "fifth column"), and suggest that anyone with an opinion other than his own is a terrorist, or terrorist supporter.

If only the world were as simple as CJs mind...

"We can make quizzes too!"

The Johnsons hit back at LGF Quiz by creating their own comparison quiz.

Quizzers

Billmon takes the LGFQuiz, and so do Johann Hari and Unqualified Offerings.

Where are your links?

Just a quick note to our fellow blogspot users and anti-Lizard conspirators: to ensure that your list of links appears at the top of the page rather than way down at the bottom you need to place the line "vertical-align: text-top;" (without the quote marks) in the CSS section of the template, within the 'div#sideBar' {curly brackets}. More on CSS.

Some comments on the comments

So far the comment experiment on LGFwatch is running pretty much as expect: a few interesting posts from those neutral or positive towards LGFwatch, while from Charles's Lizardoid minions comes a fair bit of bile, quite a few nonsensicals, and absolutely nothing of any substance worth responding to.

The experiment goes on.

Fallujah

Just how much of a grasp Charles F Johnson has on current affairs is reflected in his take on the present situation in Fallujah, where 'Coalition Forces' and 'Insurgents' have been fighting each other mercilessly for the past few days: while Johnson acknowledges that there is fighting going on and that it is fairly fierce, he accuses anyone who dares to point out the heavy-handedness of US army tactics there of being on a, quote "Jihad" (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10621_The_Medias_Jihad). In particular, he believes that newswires like Reuters are engaged in a holy war against America, because he refuses to accept stories of US attacks against civilians, even in the face of overwhelming evidence from multiple sources that these attacks are occuring. Take 'Empire Notes, Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, and Sean Rayment in the Telegraph. The unanimous verdict is that, whatever you think of the Iraq situation as a whole, what the US is doing in Fallujah is wrong, and will harm them in the long term. But once CJ has placed his bets, he won't backtrack; and certainly not when his entire ideological house of cards is at stake.

Review of a busy week:

Phew, these past days have seen a flurry of LGF-related activity in the blogosphere. First, LGFwatch started taking comments; next Spock set up the excellent 'LGF or Late German Fascist?' and 'LGF Quiz blog'; then a few blogging heavyweights started exchanging links; and all the time you could see the little green lizardking getting angrier and angrier, trying vainly to defend the thousands of hate-filled postings his weblog has generated over the years (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10619_The_Ankle_Biters). One could say this has been a good week for shining the spotlight into the dark and dingy corners that those creepy lizards have been hiding out in.

The Daily Kos "strikes back"

On Daily Kos, user Morpheum is urging visitors to complain about racists posts on LGF to a political candidate who advertises on Charles Johnson's weblog.

LGF Cites

This is interesting: quite a few other bloggers are taking the time to comment on the mess that is the Little Green Footballs weblog. And 'Mr Spock' has written in to tell us of an interesting little test he has created: "LittleGreenFootballs or late German Fascists?"

update: Mr Spock has created a blog "to track the LGF/subhuman/vermin meme" and Winds of Change has been debating LGF too.

LGF: getting a taste of its own medicine

Oh no, the overlord is taking flak! Charles Johnson, who attacked (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10547_Boing_Boing_Joins_the_Bashers) a blogger named Kathryn Cramer and the site BoingBoing, is seeing his boomerang unexpectedly come back after failing to hit its target. Duck Charles! You're unlikely to catch this one gracefully...

LGFers: your dreams have come true!

By popular demand (actually Justdanny's http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10468#c0038) LGFwatch has started a comment section. LGFwatch hopes you will use this function responsibly, but we don't expect you will. Nevertheless, this should be an interesting experiment.

Let the flames begin!

LGF's hosting company, Hosting Matters, is apparently under fire for giving shelter to rabid racist Charles Johnson and his crew of slithering lizards. While LGFwatch doesn't believe in bombarding a website's host or advertisers with hateful emails the way Charles does (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10479_Kerrys_Site_Delinks_Daily_Kos), we do think it's appropriate to let a company know what kind of content they are providing a platform for/advertising next to. Be friendly and rational when you write to Hosting Matters (abuse@hostmatters.com). You might also want to refer to Hosting Matters' Acceptable Use Policy, specifically articles 3, 4 and 5.

Other companies you might like to contact are Paypal and Amazon, through which LGF receives donations.

Charles Johnson: can't see the wood for the trees

While LGF hard man Charlie J gets all hot under his collar about what a certain blogger called 'Kos' did or did not say about the Falluja killings (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10451_The_Incredible_Disappearing_Kos), he seems to be totally ignoring a far more interesting case of trying to swallow your own words: Donald Rumsfeld's lies on CBS' Face the Nation. What are we to make of this? That Charles Johnson cares more about what some blogger says than what the secretary for defence says?

Roadkill

In other news, this just came my way:



Just goes to show that Lizards aren't the cleverest beasts on the road.

Charles Johnson hypocrit watch

Charlie J is on the loose again! Expect rampant hypocrisy and ludicrous logic. Today, the man they call the Lizard King takes a swipe (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10425_Moral_Equivalence_At_Its_Worst) at Billmon over on Whiskey Bar for having had the temerity to ask whether the Falluja attack on four US mercenaries hadn't been all too predictable. He does not, as Charles falsely points out, say that America "deserved it" (but we have already come to know Charles as a man who tells such lies).

In an update to his outraged post, Charles takes offence at the fact that Billmon is deleting all LGF hate-spam comments from his blog "except the ones from his sycophants". Well, well, well. Is this the same Charles Johnson who deletes all comments he doesn't agree with from his weblog "except the ones from his sycophants" and a few selected bozos he can take the piss out of? Is this the same Charles Johnson who bans whole IP address ranges because the people posting comments from them aren't to Charles' liking? I think we should be told.

Charles Johnson is a travelled man

Having received a nasty comment from "a European", Lizard King Charles has decided to set the record straight by painting red all the countries he has been to on a little world map (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10414_My_Country_Map). An impressive show of red, though unfortunately it tells us little of where in those countries he was and what he did there. For all we know, Charles may have spent his time in Thailand checking out Bangkok brothels. But that is his problem.

Far more interesting is the fact that the well-travelled, culturally-circumspect readers of LGF have such nice things to say about people they have never met. Let's see, Europeans are:

"f@#$wad euros" (#3)

"EUnuchs" (#23)

"amazing creatures" and have "inbred media" (#25)

"Europaeons" and "EU wimp" (#27)

"Zeropeans" (#31)

"Euroweenies" (#37)

"Eurotards (mostly French)" (#68)

...the list goes on. Charming people.

"Internet chatroom users can be so aggressive that a sociologist studying them has labelled some online communities "electronic fight clubs".

"According to the new research, even the most laid-back people can erupt into furious rants when debating online, and it's all part of an effort to distinguish themselves from the next user. Some even take on multiple personalities in a bid to outsmart their online acquaintances, while others adopt menacing usernames." (from Education Guardian).

Two teenagers ordered into battle by unscrupulous politicians.

Anti-Semitism in America

Today we bring you some news that you sadly won't be reading on the Little Green Footballs weblog, namely that there were over 1,500 anti-Semitic attacks in America during 2003.

Why does LGF ignore such news? We wouldn't dare to speculate...

Charles Johnson: coming all over a corpse

Lizard king Charles Johnson is seemingly beyond himself with joy at the assassination of Sheikh Yassin (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10280_Getty_Photos_of_Yassin) - and wouldn't we all be if we had Johnson's jaded worldview.

More interesting than the ideological aspects of Johnson's character this reveals, though, is the fact that Johnson delights in pictures of a blown-up corpse, parading them round his website like a bloody hunting trophy. This is the attitude of a man in-love with death, at least when wreaked upon Palestinians in wheelchairs.

His followers display a similar taste for blood. However, in all their orgasmic joy over Yassin's death, not one of them seems to display any knowledge of who the man actually was, beyond describing him as the arch-terrorist and leader of a band of murderers. Herein lies the problem when dealing with LGFers and their consorts: their lust for blood is stronger than their desire to actually achieve resolutions to problems. They would rather blow someone up and have the attack come back to haunt them in a few years time, than to try and understand the roots of those attacks and prevent them from happening.

Well, LGFers, if you're tired of bloodshed, why not start your political education by finding out more about the man whose death you've just celebrate? http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1175833,00.html

And on the idiocy goes

If further proof were needed that David Kaspar is an ostrich when it comes to judging the German media landscape, this would be it. You see, the journal Kaspar loves to hate most is Der Spiegel, a left-of-centre weekly that runs articles about Iraq, world politics and America which Kaspar doesn't like. In fact, he dislikes Der Spiegel so much that he has elevated all of their contributors (with the possible exception of Hendryk M Broder) to the status of 'Bush Haters' - something that is obviously very bad in Kaspar's book. And what is more, Der Spiegel reflects, according to Kaspar, the sorry state of German media, who like nothing better than to bash America while ignoring international terrorism - even tacitly supporting it.

It must come as some surprise, then, that Der Spiegel, that bastion of jihad-supporting liberals, currently has as its topic of the week the connections that Al Qaeda has to Germany and the terrorist danger this poses. Of course, to highlight the fact that Der Spiegel does take terrorism seriously and does write about jihadis in Germany would undermine Kaspar's whole venture. So he sticks his head in the sand an ignores it.

LGF readers: Charming as ever

The news of wheelchair-bound Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin's death by missile causes much joy over the LGF today. One reader, calling himself 'Darn Tootin', expresses his considered opinion thus:

"Goodbye you sick muslim fuck. All of your bloodlusting minions are next. May they die in pain. Allah the pig fucker willing." (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10269#c0319)

And they dare to claim they want peace in the Middle East...

David's Medienkritik and 'Democracy'

You gotta laugh at the idiocy of some of LGF's most ardent readers. Take David Kaspar's 'Medienkritik' weblog. In its latest posting, Kaspar describes Iraq as "the newly arisen Democracy in the Near East". Someone should tell David that it takes free and fair elections before a country can call itself a democracy. Oh, and the official term for the region is the Middle East, though I expect that depends on just how far east you are yourself...

Charles Johnson ignores Bush - bin Laden connection

How sweet: Mr J has found another reason for Americans not to vote for John Kerry. Apparently Kerry is married to this woman, Teresa Heinz, right? And she sits on the board of some funds, right? And the funds give money to charitable organisations and civil rights groups, right? And one of these groups is called the Tides group, right, and they once said that they were proud to support this other group that calls itself the Council on Amerian-Islamic Relations. And THEY once said that it wasn't proven that Osama bin Laden carried out all those terroist attacks that are attributed to him. So there you have it: Johnny supports bin Laden. Simple!

... or maybe not. For while Charles gets hung up on a rather tenuous link between the Democratic contender for US president and a fugitive Saudi terrorist (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10213_Teresa_Heinz_and_CAIR), he completely ignores some far more obvious links between the Bush family and bin Laden, and the links between the CIA and Al Qaeda. Why? Well, maybe they don't fit into his world view...

Charles Johnson no bright spark when it comes to politics

Has anyone noticed that Mr J doesn't really understand basic political terminology, much less complex political concepts? In one of his latest postings he describes the recently-elected Spanish PM-to-be as "communist", when in actual fact every foole knowe that Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero is a member of the Socialist Party (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10180_Spanish_Statecraft). It's probably all the same to Big CJ.

Charles Johnson: no sympathy with victims of terror

On Sunday, three days after 200 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a massive bomb attack at three train stations in Madrid, LGF webmaster Charles F Johnson proclaimed the following: "If Spain votes for appeasement following the horrific train bombings, my sympathy for the country will come to an abrupt halt" (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10153_Spanish_Protesters_Blame_Aznar_for_Bombings). By this one can assume that Johnson meant: if they vote for a socialist government, and if that government decides to pull its troops out of Iraq, then they will lose his sympathy.

Well, Spain voted in the socialist PSOE party and their leader, Jose Zapatero, has indeed announced that he will seek to end Spain's presence in Iraq. Hence, we can assume that Charles now no longer has any sympathy with the victims of the attack. Not that I expect it matters much to someone who has just lost their loved one whether or not some rabid Californian racist "has sympathy" for them. But it says a lot about Johnson's understanding of democracy (over 75% of the voting population cast its ballot) and about the way in which his allegiance falls only to those who experience tragedy and swear to take bloody revenge - rather than seek real solutions to the problem. Remember that next time some innocent gets killed: Charles only likes you if you vow to kill in return.

David's Medienkritik: another sad example of the kind of thinking LGF inspires.

In a departure from our usual fodder of Charles Johnson, lizards and rabid racists, we're taking a look at another weblog today, David's Medienkritik. DM, as it shall henceforth be know, pretends to be a serious obvserver of the German media landscape, but its subtext is that it will pillory anything that appears (in the eyes of David Kaspar, it's owner) to be anti-American or liberal. Fair enough, each to his own, you might say, and we would agree. Except for the fact that this blog makes claims to objectivity and impartiality where clearly neither of those attributes fit. What is more, DM quite simply gets its facts wrong and can therefore not be regarded as a trustworthy source of information of commentary. To illustrate the point, let us take the latest posting:

Poll Stop / Umfrage-Stopp

"SPIEGEL ONLINE has deactivated the online poll on President Bush's job performance. The folks at SPIEGEL ONLINE have the nerve to display the "results", describing it as a consequence of a "vote war"."

Indeed they have the nerve to describe the outcome of a poll THEY featured as a 'result'. Does Kaspar expect them to run the poll indefinitely? As for it being a 'vote war', well, that is a fairly accurate description of a poll in which proponents and opponents of a certain opinion go at each other like wolves by relentlessly clicking the most extreme opinions either way in order to see their view come out top.

"Fact is, the "results" were produced by massive use of technical manipulating by pro- as well as anti-Bush-programmers. We had no part in this. We had only called for participation, mainly among US internet users. That's not manipulation."

Fact is, DM started a thread on the website of Free Republic with the headline "Bush needs your help" explicitly calling for its (neo-conservative) readers to flock to Spiegel Online. Now if that doesn't indicate some sort of preference for which way people are to vote, I don't know. But it gets better: each day, Kaspar posted calls on his own website urging people to 'help Bush'. These were echoed on other sites, including Little Green Footballs, where the Ueber-Lizard rallied his minions with the battlecry: "Help Drive the German Left Crazy" (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10047_Help_Drive_the_German_Left_Crazy). Charlie-boy then goes on to detail how LGFers who don't speak German can still make an 'informed choice': by selecting "1" and clicking on "abstimmen".

"At the end, the anti-Bush votes came in continuously at a rate of 200 or more per minute. Almost one million votes were "counted"."

In actual fact, the poll was stopped after votes reached 899,593 . That's a mere 100,407 votes short of a million, but who cares about minutae like that...? As elsewhere, David Kaspar displays little regard for facts or honest reporting. Or interesting reporting, but that's another matter...

Here is a translation of the SPIEGEL ONLINE article about 'freeping' (click here for original)

-------------------

You need to click "Abstimmen"

by Frank Patalong

Votes are a fine thing: they're the salt in the news recipe; they
give online media producers feedback on what their readers think of a topic;
such as the fact that 60 per cent of SPIEGEL ONLINE readers think George W.
Bush is a great president. Here's why.

Widow Vivian Freep from Midland (Texas) is "George Bush's biggest supporter".

Good for Bush, say Europeans. But Americans of conservative political inclination
get angry at that accusation, because it is an insult, no more and no less.


It means that Bush's success is based on the help of people who manipulate,
kick up a fuss, and fake elections.

"Freeping" is actually a slang term. It covers the late-night defacing
of election posters, organising loud counter-demonstrations, consciously disturbing
your political opponent's rallies, and - last but not least - forging Internet
polls.

This strange term was conceived at the end of the '90s and can be traced
back to the "Free Republic" website of the ultra-conservative activist
Jim Robinson.

"Freep", as fans quickly came to call the website, sees itself
as a "conservative news forum". Central to the site is a discussion
forum with, at times, pretty strong content.

The conservative click-guerillas

Free Republic began as a site for Clinton-haters but quickly evolved. The
"Freep-Movement" earned its first laurels when the site started
calling on users to "support" conservative candidates at various
elections.

In practice this meant disturbing Democratic events, tearing down or faking
posters, and actively supporting counter-candidates. At a time when Clinton
faced impeachment Freep groups organised "information events" in
various cities and placed ads in newspapers. The term "freeping"
came into being and meant: "outshouting your opponent".

Vote-Manipulation on SPIEGEL ONLINE

Little has changed since then. During the last week SPIEGEL ONLINE came to
the attention of the "freepers", in particular one of the polls
in the section on the US presidential election.

We asked our readers: "For three years George W Bush has been the most
powerful man in the United States - and the World. What do you think of his
term in office up to now?"

The result of this popular vote, which has already drawn over 38,000 votes,
could prove one of two things: either that Germans aren't as sceptical of
Bush as is often claimed; or it could demonstrate the power of the "freepers".

For since 5 March the latter have been calling on their supporters to "freep"
the poll on "Germany's left-left-wing SPIEGEL ONLINE". The extraordinary
thing is that the forum member who initiated this is no conservative American
at all: David Kaspar runs the weblog "Davids Medienkritik", a Forum
for "politically incorrect observations on reporting in the German media"

To Kaspar this means taking a strongly pro-Bush stance against the supposed
prejudice of the German media. Media expert Kaspar is also person who described
DER SPIEGEL as "left-left" - it's all a matter of perspective.

To quote his original posting on Free Republic: "Bush Needs Your Help!"
And further: "As of 5 March, 2004, 1 pm (Berlin time), Bush's results
are rather miserable. Only 3.3 per cent for "1" and 1.47 per cent
for "2""

Thankfully the posting on Free Republic quickly generated a positive response:
within a few hours the "freepers" had turned the poll upside-down.
At 10pm "Berlin time" on 5 March David Kaspar noted: "As of
5 March, 2004, 10pm (Berlin time), Bush's results are EXCELLENT. 41.23 per
cent for "1" (= Bush did a great job as President). Many thanks!!
YOU GUYS ARE DOING JUST GREAT!! The Bush haters at SPIEGEL ONLINE will have
a heart attack tomorrow morning... Keep up the good work!!"

Vote Manipulation: it’s the masses that swing it

Two days later Kaspar announced the "official" result: "SPIEGEL
ONLINE With Large Pro-Bush User Base". A euphoric Kaspar adds an imaginary
interview with an imaginary SPIEGEL-ONLINE editor to his posting about "59
per cent 1's": apparently the poll made DER SPIEGEL recognise that it's
entire "ideology" was wrong.

What is more, the SPIEGEL ONLINE editorial team had employed media consultants
to determine what the "future course" should be.

Literally, the dreamt-up interview goes: "In terms of ideology, everything
is now up for grabs," said the source. "We might even endorse Bush's
re-election. Kerry's is a Knackwurst, anyway."

And so as to make sure that the pressure is maintained Kaspar repeats his
call to manipulate the poll every day: "You could light up our miserable
lives by participating in this little poll! As an aside, you'll hurt the feelings
of some German Bush-haters."

Within a few days this call to manipulate the vote had spread like wildfire,
carried by a strong and previously hardly recognised conservative blogging
scene. Thus "Little Green Footballs" appealed to its audience: "Help
drive the German left crazy".

"Freep this Poll!"

But the masses came through Free Republic. The site has long admitted that
it loves to "freep". A search for the term "freep" on
Free Republic demonstrates how much unpaid enthusiasm Free Republic is able
to generate: On the morning of the 8 March Free Republic published John Kerry's
campaign dates and called on freepers to go to the events and take "more
realistic" pictures of them.

It also releases calls to take action against other "Democrats",
but in particular its users are repeatedly asked to manipulate online polls:
"Freep this Poll!".

The target of one of these campaigns: polls about gay same-sex marriage (56
per cent against). Other polls include the question whether the George Bush's
9/11 campaign ads were tasteless or not, which produce a clear result: at
times 78 per cent thought not, on other polls it's 85 per cent. Even on CNN
it's still 72 per cent.

Normally large numbers of participants prevent polls from being manipulated.
Big websites protect their polls with cookies that make repeated vote-casting
difficult because the cookie has to be deleted between vote-casting. Apart
from this the reliability of a poll depends largely on the number of people
participating in it; a far from secure method of protecting polls, but if
thousands of users take part it at least becomes difficult to manipulate it.

Freepers: on their way into the mainstream?

But freepers have shown that they are capable of mobilising their own masses
in order to overcome the masses of "normal" web users at any time.
From SPIEGEL ONLINE to CNN and the "Times", from various TV stations
to MSN Australia, and of course on the sites of myriad smaller sites, nobody
can rely on an honest poll if the freepers are on the march.

Even the most trivial polls are manipulated. During the last week freepers
placed great emphasis in demonstrating their country's influence: a poll on
a South African website asked whether Haiti's ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide
had left the country of his own free will was manipulated in such a way that
from one moment to the next 68 per cent thought the USA had forced him out.

In a poll on the greenhouse effect 86.5 per cent claimed it either didn't
exist or that it was completely natural. On 2 March Free Republic called on
its users to "freep" a poll at New York state primary schools because
the majority of pupils showed "democratic" voting tendencies.

The only organisations that Free Republic doesn't dare freep anymore are
the large American newspapers: back in 1998 the "Los Angeles Times"
and the "Washington Post" took Free Republic to court for copyright
infringement. Not until June 2002 did "Freep" webmaster Jim Robinson
manage to secure an out-of-court settlement that resulted in the agreement
that he would not quote from the newspapers or from their associated publications
any more on his website.

The "Freep-Movement", which saw a dip in popularity after the impeachment
against Clinton failed, hasn't stopped though: at least since the catastrophe
of September 11 and the resulting radicalisation of political discourse in
the USA the "Freep" is stronger than ever. The movement is seeking
to make in-roads into the mainstream: since the Gulf War "Freeps"
have taken part in demonstrations for the good cause: for Bush and for war.
On 2 September 2003 Free Republic announced that for the first time "one
of our very own", John Armor, would run for the US Congress. Armor would
try to make his forum name come true: up until then he had been known only
as "Congressman BillyBob".

Spiegel Online reacts to LGF poll 'freeping'

After Charles Johnson mobilised his minions to vote for Bush (slogan: 'Sieg Bush!') in a Spiegel Online poll over the weekend (see below), SpOn retaliates with an expose article on the practice of 'freeping': rigging online polls by using message boards to urge people of a similar political opinion to vote in a certain way. Read the SpOn article here: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,289615,00.html (in German).

Charles Johnson the Democrat

Charles Johnson, Mr Ueber-LGF, loves democracy; especially American-style democracy. That is why he supports a 'president' who won the last election through vote rigging. And Charlie-boy even likes rigging votes himself: by asking his mindless minions to vote en-mass in Internet polls the language of which they don't even understand (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10047_Help_Drive_the_German_Left_Crazy).

LGF only tells half the story - as usual

Another rant against the EU on Charles Johnson's weblog today (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10043_EU_UK_Gave_PA_$25_Million): In it he makes it appear as if the evil EU was secretly pumping vast sums of money into a Palestinian organisations whose sole purpose it is to take Israel to the International Tribunal in The Hague because of the Fence.

But Charles fails to mention the following:

"In answer to a parliamentary question in the House of Lords last week, Baroness Amos said: "The purpose of the project was to provide professional legal, technical, policy and communications advice to the PA in preparation for, and during, permanent status negotiations with Israel. Following the breakdown of formal negotiations, the NSU has broadened its role by seeking to encourage the resumption of permanent status negotiations by contributing to a variety of diplomatic peace initiatives."" (From Haaretz)

So, one question to Charles: would he like to see Palestinians negotiate with Israel without adequate resources, unpaid, understaffed, and without international expertise? I expect Charles's answer would be yes, because underlying his high-minded accusations of the EU funding "high-profile legal stunts" is the belief that Palestinians should not be negotiated with, they should be wiped off the face of the Earth.

Charles Johnson's child abuse

LGF supremo Charles Johnson is not known for pulling his punches. Repeatedly Johnson has used the image of Palestinian children - often dressed as 'martyrs' or fighters - on protest marches to denounce Palestinians for abusing their children (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9899. Whatever one's opinion of this practice may be, it is hard not to take into consideration that these are people under immense internal and external pressure, and that such pressure can lead some to do things which outsiders find difficult to comprehend. A parellel can be found in the observations that photographer Jan Grarup made when he visited the Israeli community in Hebron, a predominantly Palestinian town. Numbering only a few hundred they are under constant protection by the Israeli army. The Israeli settlers, under constant threat by Palestinian fighters, have also taken it upon themselves to launch repeated attacks against Palestinian civilians in Hebron. The most infamous of these is the killing of 29 Muslims in a mosque on 25 February 1994 by Baruch Golstein, who has since become a martyr figure for Israeli extremists.

Grarup's pictures (below and here) show the fear and loathing that Israelis have for their Palestinian neighbours.



Settler children look on as an Israeli soldier stands guard amid the rubble of a Palestinian home bulldozed by the IDF.




A settler girl in fancy dress makes her way past an IDF armoured personell carrier.






Jonathan, a 20-year old soldier, is proud to be carrying the same assault rifle that his idol Baruch Goldstein used when he killed 29 Arabs in a mosque. The words "Kill them all, may God choose his own" are inscribed on Jonathan's magazine. A little boy is playing next to him, pretending to be a fighter dressed in a uniform jacket and with a beard painted on his face.






Settler children taking part in an armed march of Israeli settlers protesting against the Palestinians. Some children are dressed as fighters while others brandish machine guns.

Charles Johnson hopes LGFers can't read

Jenny Tonge, a Libdem MP, wrote a report about her visit to Israel and the West Bank for BBC News Online. She opens it with these words: "My remarks last month, expressing empathy with suicide bombers, had been misinterpreted by the tabloids as meaning sympathy and approval." It seems our LGF super-hero, Charles Johnson, likes to stoop to similar levels as the tabloids in his attack on this piece by selectively quoting juicy bits out of context and wilfully reinterpreting what Tonge says (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9882_Jenny_Tonge_Is_a_Disgusting_Woman). Eg: he ignores the opening line, in which she plainly states that she does not sympathise with suicide bombers.

He also ignores the following: "I would challenge anyone to spend a few days here and see the contrasts between modern Israel and its affluent citizens and the third world of Palestine. The blame lies with both sides - I know that - but the ordinary Palestinian has to live in this third world while most Israelis never go there."

What Charles does seize upon is this: "They had heard about my remarks and were pleased that I understood the reasons why they were terrorists, even "proud" of me. This was spine-chilling." Charles is irate. He is beyond himself: How dare she suddenly disavow her comments from the ideology of suicide bombers??! But Charles has an idea. He'll pretend she said the opposite, and hope his minions and casual passers-by never bother to read original quotes. So he simply states: "This incredibly stupid woman sits with terrorists who tell her they’re proud of her, and it causes not one flicker of cognition inside her empty skull." Notice how, even while quoting her as saying she was chilled by the AAB guys words, he says she wasn't moved? Is this some sort of lizardoid doublespeak Charles?

Now back to what Charles ignores. Tonge: "More re-assuring was the statement that they now accepted that Israel had a right to exist and their campaign would stop when Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders, removed settlements and returned Jerusalem to the Palestinians. It is a different message from the one we have been used to." Indeed. It's also something you'll never read on LGF. Because it don't fit their think-patterns. What can you do?

Charles is a master of mis- and half-information. Cutting out the choice bits that fit into his slimy scheme and hurridly overlooking anything that marrs the picture. Like the end of Tonge's piece: "[L]ate in the day, we met a single mother whose 15-year-old daughter had been killed in the local supermarket by an 18-year-old female suicide bomber. Grief-stricken, she had tried to contact the bomber's family, only to find they were "proud" of their daughter. But then she received a letter from a Palestinian mother expressing her condolences and asking for a meeting. Her young, civilian son had been killed by an Israeli soldier. They were going to meet. I left this woman feeling that there was the first sign of reconciliation; we know there are many such people in Israel and Palestine, fed up with the stupidity of their leaders." And the stupidity of Charles Johnson, I hope. Her Charlie, why don't you talk a bit about Tonge's meetings with suicide bomb victim families in Israel? Or are you worried that'll make her look, you know, more intelligent than a hate-filled blogger?

Who is Charles Johnson, Part I

Best-known for his racist weblog 'Little Green Footballs', Charles Johnson is also a musician, cycling enthusiast and website designer. His most recent offering, he tells us, is 'bush-country.com', a site to promote a new book by right-wing New York Post columnist John Podhoretz (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9878_Bush_Country). Well there's a surprise: so much for Chuck's objective commentator position.

LGF relies on National Enquirer

Now I don't know about you, but to me the National Enquirer is a piece of regular pulp fiction: ludicrous tales of sordid encounters, cellulite and sodomy. And of course not to be relied on as a source of information on serious issues. But Charles Johnson, crusader for truth, dregs up the latest copy in a weasly attempt to throw muck at a presidential candidate he doesn't like: John Kerry (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9843_Kerrys_Skeletons_Step_Out). How low can you stoop? Well, lets ask Charles's great hero, George Dubya, about how to make an utter fool of yourself in front of the world. Maybe this served as inspiration for Charles.