Friday, January 16, 2009

Warren Kinsella the Kingmaker... Not


King Iggy, CabiNut and Courtiers
Who is this Warren Kinsella? I know relatively little about him. Is he a Karl Rove drone sent to Canada? Because his tactics are Rovian. I tried to check his bio and found very little, but here is a quote about him:
"Kinsella lifts the veil on what really goes on inside campaigns - and it's not pretty. This is the good, the bad and the ugly of partisan politics, and Kinsella argues that all three are necessary for a healthy and democratic political dialogue."
So the "bad" and "ugly" has entered the ballroom of the Liberal Party. Now everyone will be dancing to a different tune. It looks he has now taken over Liblogs. Does this mean that poor little Cherniak has lost his monopoly? All the provincial political parties are listed on the left bar. I was surprised that Danny Williams was not there. He is the biggest supporter of Liberal Party. Remember him saying "Anyone but Harper." To be fair to Williams though, I like the guy. He stands up what he thinks and what is good for his province. He is not self-serving, but has the best interests of Newfoundlanders in mind. I think Karl Rove, err Warren Kinsella, missed out on that.

With this new control by Kinsella and Liblogs turning into an official Liberal Party site, do not expect any independent thinking. The only reality on Liblogs will be what the political hacks say, the rest becomes invisible in the red smoke engulfing the ballroom, or in this case Liblogs. Any dissenting view will be drowned out by the official line. It is going to be Iggynation causing a lot of indignation. Good luck to Rovians in the party and enjoy your iron fist. With these kinds of tendencies you ain't seen nothing yet. Keep waiting for new episodes to be broadcasted soon.

Recommend this post

50 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:49 pm

    Kinsella is only supposed to control the "war-room".

    I find it odd that a man the ridiculed Stock "walk with dinosaurs" Day by bringing religion to the forefront of Canadian politics has now imported and indirectly promoting strive along Liberals because of Israeli policy.
    Warren is quick to label anti-Semite...

    Warren famously brought Barney out on day...
    I wonder if he would find it acceptable that we mock Jews for their religious beliefs.

    I'm not sure that Liblogs is an official site - but it does seem that Cherniak would like to give it more respectability.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "All the provincial political parties are listed on the left bar."

    And at the top of the list is the Federal Liberal party.

    I think Cherniak & Kinsella are now working in tandem, hand in hand. They went separate ways there for awhile & there was bad blood between them. I think the I/P conflict has brought them back together as they are both ardently pro-Israeli. And I do think that kinsella now has a say in liblogs policy, etc.

    The thought of Kinsella having such influence on Ignatieff, if he does, is very unsettling.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Warren is a good cat. What's more, he puts his name to what he writes, so if you want to get personal - which you obviously do - I invite you to do the same.

    He's someone who will help us win. We should all be happy to have all the help we can get.

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  4. WTF,

    "I'm not sure that Liblogs is an official site - but it does seem that Cherniak would like to give it more respectability."

    No, Liblogs is not an "official" party site but it's looking more & more like one. "Respectability"? *Snort*

    ReplyDelete
  5. James, by the way any relations to David Bowie because he is one of my favourite singers.

    Now Iggy has lot of help:

    Kinsella, Charniak, and then MacParland and Levant of Com.Post. My, my, he got it made. Only the name change of the party is needed.

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  6. Anonymous1:09 pm

    And James explain what is wrong with the Liberal party is so few words....

    Warren is an opportunistic courtier of those in power.
    He's a spin doctor and political strategist that tries to manipulate ignorance.
    Yes, he wants to win but at the expense of political discourse.

    It's all about POWER ain't it? At any cost...

    "Warren is a good cat" - my ass.

    As one blogger once wrote:
    I remember another Kinsella, the one who staged a press conference during which he used a Barney doll to ridicule Stockwell Day's Creationism. Kinsella may have been right to assume that hurling contempt at a fundamental belief of Protestant evangelicalism made for sound political strategy, but it also marked the first time in Canadian history that a federal party had ever deployed a sectarian attack upon another. As such, it was one of the lowest points in our nation's electoral history. Like so many others of his class, Kinsella is devoid of insight and of conscience.

    Cherniak is merely a Kinsella wannabe. He has already shared a good portion of Kinsella's destiny. As a lawyer, he's been initiated into the essentially Nietszchean anti-philosophical and anti-intellectual perspectives of the ambulance-chasing hack--that the truth is irrelevant, that wisdom is an expensive, overrated and possibly subversive luxury, and that glory belongs to he who deploys the full resources of sophistry in order to win on behalf of whoever is paying the bill. Nihilist Cherniaks and Kinsellas infest the organisational apparatuses of all our major parties; they are petty, pusillanimous mediocrities whose advancement is hastened by their expert manipulation of party machinery and adroit navigation of internal party politics. We've seen this kind of slick operator get ahead in our offices: they have no ideas, are deeply incompetent in all the ways that really matter, but they are fully adapted to their toxic environments, and they know how to jack the system. They are the very embodiment of the "small man", the kind who scrambles easily into positions of influence in our era of the Mass Man.

    The example of Noam Chomsky is an apt one when discussing this sad mess, not only because Cherniak used him in his attack upon MyBlagh, but because the consequences of the Cherniak/Kinsella tag-team assault is an excellent example of the process of media control Chomsky has anatomised.

    Like MyBlagh, Chomsky (a Jew) has been accused of anti-semitism (he's been called a "self-loathing" Jew, to be precise) because of his frequent critiques of Israeli domestic and foreign policy. Cherniak joins in on the Chomsky-bashing and indicts the scholar according to an interesting definition of anti-semitism, by which it is an act of "intellectual discrimination against Jews". Cherniak does not say whether he allows for a difference between discrimination against Jews and discrimination about Jews, but the result is the same. If one "singles out" Israel for an observation without simultaneously submitting every other malefactor to an equivalent observation (so says Cherniak), one is being anti-semitic. Cherniak also specifies that this discrimination does not need to be "direct"; it merely has to produce "adverse effects" in order to be anti-semitic.

    The irresponsibility of this definition is appallingly gross. "Singling out" something is always a precondition of its being spoken of. This is what we normally mean by "topic". "Discrimination" merely means "decision"--making a choice about something. Thus, according to Cherniak, making a choice to say something specific about Israel is an anti-semitic act. Furthermore, you are responsible not only for what you say, but also for the unintended "effects" of what you say.

    Thus Cherniak asserts that Chomsky's defence of a Holocaust-denier's right to publish a book is an anti-semitic act, not because Chomsky is motivated by hatred of Jews (although Cherniak doesn't rule that out, using Himmler, bizarrely, as an example of a "Jewish" anti-semite), but because the result of Chomksy's respect for freedom of speech may have "adverse effects". In other words, Cherniak is arguing that freedom of speech should be suspended whenever there's a risk that its use will produce an effect that could be construed as "adverse". We are not told how one could possibly anticipate the total effect--adverse or otherwise--of any given utterance, nor are we given a satisfactory definition of "adverse", but we are told that to think other than Cherniak does on the issue is deeply anti-semitic.

    Presumably, then, a liberal Jewish feminist who denounces Israel (and Judaism generally) as patriarchal, misogynist systems would be anti-semitic according to Cherniak's definition: she has criticised Judaism without also denouncing every other patriarchal system in the process. This is a "discriminatory" act, and it may have "adverse effects". Thus, Cherniak's formula indicts the very philosophical basis of feminism as anti-semitic.

    Naturally, to denounce Israeli human-rights violations without listing the current and past human-rights violations of every other nation on the globe is deeply anti-semitic. Interestingly, Cherniak never bothers to apply his formula to his own discourse. He "discriminates" as a rule. For example, he has often spoken of Islamic extremism and terrorism without mentioning other forms of extremism and terrorism. Why mention 9/11 without also mentioning the Oklahoma City Bombing? Why not mention Basque separatists and the IRA? This discrimination , which may have adverse effects, screams Islamophobia, according to Cherniak's criteria.

    This is all absurd enough, but there is a deeper absurdity: according to his own definition, Cherniak and his Arab-hating mates are, themselves, anti-semitic. Does one not "single out" Isreal among nations when one talks of it as a nation above all others, which, because of its special mission, does not need to follow the rules? Cherniak and those like him who revile Chomsky hate the man because he speaks of Israel as if it were a nation like others. Chomsky fails to place nations in a qualitative hierarchy whereby one is better and is more deserving of our affection and support than another. Chomsky considers aggression against Israel to be as unacceptable as aggression against Ethiopia, Tibet or East Timor--no more, no less. He sees nations as equals.

    This is what infuriates the Cherniaks of our society. They are indifferent as to whether Tibet is destroyed or whether East Timor was invaded or whether the Roma people are oppressed, beaten and killed or whether our Natives live in Third-World conditions and roam the streets of our cities without the barest scraps of dignity. The agonies of these people do not move them, and they let themselves escape the suggestion that they are "anti-Tibetan" or "anti-Roma" or "anti-Native". They have singled out Israel as the only meaningful nation in the world and have decided its fate matters above that of any other nation (including their own: you will not catch Cherniak calling a continentalist or a supporter of Deep Integration an "anti-Canadian"). Given that this irrational hyper-Zionist drive to establish Israel as the centre of the world's nervous system is often used by anti-semites as a sign of the Jewish thirst for world domination, it clearly has "adverse effects". Thus, insofar as Cherniak and his ilk perpetrate an act of intellectual discrimination concerning Israel (which abstracts the nation from the normal web of international relations and singles it out as special), and given that this act clearly has adverse effects, they are anti-semites, according to Cherniak.

    That Cherniak's acquaintance with the basic rules of logic is so faint as to see him caught in the net he weaves for others is testament to the superficiality of the training afforded by our law schools, and that his views are fairly common speaks to the overall degeneracy of current public debate. Sadly, Cherniak and Kinsella are all too representative of this nation's intellectually debauched Ăˆlite.

    Finally, what happened to MyBlagh conforms to the model of media control Chomsky advances. MyBlagh was deleted from Progressive Bloggers because of pressure brought to bear by Warren Kinsella, from his perch on the National Post. Contrariwise, even after members of the Liberal blogosphere (including the owner of and various commenters on this site) demolished the notorious Kim Bolan article as the worst kind of specious, mendacious hack-job, Bolan faced no official reprimand or sanction, is unrepentant, and was never (and never will be) made to explain herself by her mainstream colleagues. She laid her ambush with total impunity, and details of the blogosphere's debunking of her hatchet piece never appeared in the mainstream media.

    Thus, as Chomsky would observe, Kinsella used the power of the corporate media to control the message: knowing that the NDP relies on positive reporting in the MSM and being, himself, part of the MSM monopoly, Kinsella found it easy to blackmail the NDP into getting rid of an oppositional voice (they either cut the blog loose or be trumpeted by Kinsella as a party of anti-semites). Thus despite its anti-establishment posturing, the NDP has no choice but to submit to the perspectives and priorities of the mainstream national media, and Kim Bolan is allowed to get away with flagrant transgressions of basic journalistic ethics, secure in the knowledge that the truth, though it be known to a few bloggers and their readership, will never trespass on the pages of the mainstream press.

    That, my friends, is what Chomsky is talking about. Call it a conspiracy theory--an hallucination--if you wish, but, if you've been awake during the last few weeks, you will have felt that phantom kick you in the jewels.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Cherniak_WTF, thank you, bro. Now I know a lot more about Kinsella and Cherniak. If you will kindly give me link to this blog I may consider posting it up front.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous1:30 pm

    Yes James - anything else to add princess?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi James,

    Can you tell us what you see is good for the Party in Kinsella? Can you list his assets & what he brings? There is little information I can find on him & to be honest I find myself in disagreement with his thoughts, statements, in his posts. I don't mean just the recent ones but going back for quite some time now. He has always come across as a conservative to me & I thought he was one for the longest time.

    ReplyDelete
  10. NVJWNGDT? What the .... it means?

    ReplyDelete
  11. NVJWNGDT

    Lol..you beat me to it LeDaro. What does that mean eh?

    WTF,

    That copy of that post was brilliant. Who wrote it & when?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous1:56 pm

    That copy of that post was brilliant. Who wrote it & when?
    It was written about 2 years ago.

    There was a little more to do such as:

    The Kinsellas of our society are essentially apolitical mercenaries (hence the non-Liberal vibes KNB gets from the man). Their need to win translates into a contempt for losers. Kinsella is fond of Harper because Harper is (currently) a winner. Kinsella is the classic courtier: all he wants is to eat at the head table; it is quite irrelevant to him who is putting on the feast.

    Like most sociopaths, Kinsella is cognitively dissociative. He now swaggers around the Net, serving as the hammer of anti-semitism, quite impressed with himself as an implacable foe of religious intolerance.

    I remember another Kinsella, the one who staged a press conference during which he used a Barney doll to ridicule Stockwell Day's Creationism. Kinsella may have been right to assume that hurling contempt at a fundamental belief of Protestant evangelicalism made for sound political strategy, but it also marked the first time in Canadian history that a federal party had ever deployed a sectarian attack upon another. As such, it was one of the lowest points in our nation's electoral history. Like so many others of his class, Kinsella is devoid of insight and of conscience.


    Since Kinsella is quite litigious it seems, it may have been removed.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Verbal Jousting With Nameless Gutless Dickless Trolls=NVJWNGDT

    James: You should take your brains to a car wash. It is so filthy.

    ReplyDelete
  14. For the uninitiated, NVJWNGDT is No Verbal Jousting with No-name Gutless Dickless Trolls, in this case, you.

    If all you want to do is call people names, then you should use your own name.

    ReplyDelete
  15. James, you have totally gone Con now. They use that kind of language.

    Shame, shame.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Using my real name would leave me vulnerable to the possibility of harrasment, stalking & like situations. It's especially dangerous for women & I know of cases where this has happened in the blogging world.

    And we all have the right to choose whether we want a nick or real.

    James,

    Can you answer my questions? I sincerely want to know why you think Kinsella is great for the party?

    ReplyDelete
  17. "No Verbal Jousting with No-name Gutless Dickless Trolls"

    James, That's quite nasty. Some people here have more "guts" than you realize & your remark is also sexist. I see you joined Liberals Online but also posted a post about it that was a total put down as well. Why did you join if you feel that way about it?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Publish your names and I'll answer your questions.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous2:36 pm

    It is funny how James "Gutless dickless Troll" Bowie comes unto some elses blog, post a few inane comments and accuses the blog owner of being an internet troll....

    James, do you actually know what an internet troll is?
    Could it be that you are pissed because Jason Cherniak and yourself are always giving each other reach arounds and don't like people debating your little "inner circle"?

    I myself started a fake blog once. "Draft Kinsella" was my satirical attempt to expose my friend "The Prince of Darkness" for his support of Stephen Harper over Paul Martin - all the while appearing on TV as a "Liberal." I got an enormous amount of traffic, and Warren and I had a warm conversation about it, remembering it fondly over lunch at a Japanese restaurant.
    So fucking what....

    Really James, you are a petulant little child that ignores the grassroots drunk on your sense of entitlement and self-worth, almost thinking that you are a "better" Liberal...

    It's as if you'd like Liberal bloggers to because one giant echo chambers of Iggy's farts... The air would get rather fetid quickly...

    No one here has just called people names - yes there is some sarcasm, snark, satire and insults BUT there are also arguments and debate in all of those.

    Do you take offence at Jason "blows dead donkeys" for saying and equating that those who find Israeli actions at the moment to be not "right-thinking"?


    penlan (who I had no idea was a woman) is right in expressing that anonymity provides some security from some internet stalkers. It also has the advantage that we can debates and concentrate on ideas and comments instead of gender.

    ReplyDelete
  20. James Bowie, this is the first time I have seen so much bad language on my blog. What does your mommy think about it that you have D*&* in your mouth and mind all the time. Now sure Liberal party and Iggy will do well with crazies like you. I honestly feel sorry for Iggy. With friends like Warren Kinsella, all those National Com.Post guys and you, he is really going to attract lot of votes.

    ReplyDelete
  21. That's coarse James. Threatening even. You are unwilling to share information so therefore you lose the chance to perhaps change people's minds/views.

    Seeing as how you are "dealing" with this & the words you choose to use just reinforces my negative impression of Kinsella.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous2:38 pm

    Publish your names and I'll answer your questions.
    What next? Calling us cowards?

    Cherniak what the fuck - anything else?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous2:42 pm

    James Bowie actually volunteered and worked with the Liberal party -
    If Jason Cherniak and James Bowie are indicative of those working within the Liberals, it's not wonder some a disaffected.

    But don't worry James, I've said I will not be renewing my membership to the Liberals - but I still will be posting about them.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Some people, not all, like to use their real names on their blogs in the hopes of being recognized by Party insiders & perhaps elevated into an inner circle of sorts. It' egotism at it's worst in some cases. They want their 15 mins. of fame. Like Joe the Plumber (who just keeps going & going...lol).

    WTF...Why don't you have your own blog? You have a lot to say & I'm just curious. :)

    ReplyDelete
  25. Penlan and CWTF, I was going to delete this dupe’s comments but he is such a testimony of Kinsella and Iggy’s supporters. By the way I ran into Senator Noel Kinsella few times. He is wonderful, very enlightened and liberal thinking guy. I believe now he is speaker of the Senate. I always wondered why he calls himself Tory. Apparently because he was appointed by Mulroney. Is Warren Kinsella any relations to him? Because W. Kinsella is no liberal and his friends are so lewd.

    I agree that CWTF should have a blog.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Please do keep James' comments. It really shows how ignorant & arrogant he is. This has really surprised me. I never saw him this way before.

    It's scary watching what I thought were sane Libs going through what seems to be some sort of transformation into something that is more Con-like all the time. Remins me of Blogging Tories.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Noel Kinsella was with the old "Conservative Party of Canada" & has always been considered a "Red Tory".

    Can't find any info on whether he & Warren are related. So don't think they are.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Anonymous3:23 pm

    Please do keep James' comments. It really shows how ignorant & arrogant he is. This has really surprised me. I never saw him this way before.
    I've always seen the arrogance - it's seemingly present in Jason Cherniak also.

    It's scary watching what I thought were sane Libs going through what seems to be some sort of transformation into something that is more Con-like all the time. Remins me of Blogging Tories.
    Part of it is the political game. But part of it seems to be adopting the Neo-Con game plan. Instead the Liberals would be better to emulate the positive of what worked for Obama.




    I'm not a blogger because I should review more carefully what I write...

    ReplyDelete
  29. James:

    Good point. Warren is a good cat...

    LeDaro:

    Once again, get over yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Devo, at least you're not rude.

    Are you kidding?

    Now James Bowie has given me all the fodder to do more this stuff. It is guys like him, Warren Kinsella anf Cherniak who provide all the more reasons to be turned off by Iggy.

    ReplyDelete
  31. To everyone on this thread:

    I read all of your blogs/comments and respect you for your work, even when I don't agree with it, but this whole thread is shameful.

    You are all fighting and saying nasty things and it looks horrendous. I don't have a stake in which aggregator makes it and I don't care who wrote what about who, because I don't belong to either one of them, so listen up.

    Penlan is a friend of mine James and she and lots of others use nicknames for a reason. I have personal safety issues, and so do lots of others. You wanna know who I am, I'll buy you a beer at LPC, otherwise, quit the namecalling.

    Warren Kinsella is also a friend of mine and someone who has incredible class and decency and kindness. (Irony alert: in real life, he and Penlan would be friends. So would you all....) You may not agree with his tactics politically, but so what?

    In real life, lots of Liberals disagree with each other about policy and tactics, but guess what---they manage to do it without making it personal.

    I like all of you, and I intend on reading you, but if the personal attacks don't stop, then this new aggregator and all of your blogs will just go down in flames because no one will click on you. No one likes a trainwreck.

    Sometimes, it's not about YOU, it's about the entire party, so grow up and act like the intelligent people I know you are.

    (And CWTF, get a blog fer chrissakes...this has gone on long enough....)

    ReplyDelete
  32. Aurelia,

    Thankyou for your level-headedness.

    Forgetting Cherniak & Liblogs for the moment & the weirdness that went on there recently I'd like to say a few things on what you said.

    "Warren Kinsella is also a friend of mine and someone who has incredible class and decency and kindness."

    There is no way I could possibly know that as I have never met him. A person's public persona & private, personal one can be very different but it is only the public one I see. Therefore my "take" on Kinsella can only be based on that. Perhaps it's unfair to the "whole" person but that's the reality. I read what he writes & I'm offended by it.

    "In real life, lots of Liberals disagree with each other about policy and tactics, but guess what---they manage to do it without making it personal."

    That's true but I think that when people are targetted, as they were at Liblogs, by being called anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas because they do not support Israel for the atrocious acts they are perpetrating in Gaza on the people who live there, it makes it difficult not to "get personal" what with anger, hurt feelings, etc. The people who were attacked are against the killing & do not support the killing & massacres of anyone, anywhere in the world. Cherniak was the 1st one to "get personal" actually & was misunderstanding, & misreading & cherry-picking the point of many of the posts. This being due to his passionate, & blind/tunnel vision support for "anything-Israel" to the exclusion of objectivity & rational reasoning & causing the whole incident to explode. And some of the bloggers are still angry.

    This can cause people to re-evaluate their perception of the Liberal Party & also of Ignatieff (especially when coupled with Iggy's official statement on the conflict & blaming Hamas for the entire nightmare).

    Also, knowing that Cherniak & Kinsella seem to be close, even partners now, & Kinsella is also blindly (or so it appears) supportive of Israel's actions & is now running the "war room" for the Party the policy in this area becomes more grievous as it reveals how deeply entrenched this one-sided view has become. For me it has no balance or fairness.

    "You are all fighting and saying nasty things and it looks horrendous."

    Agreed. And it reflects badly on the Lib party to readers & can be used by Cons as fodder down the road. I will add that Cherniak takes responsibility for this as well. He was the instigator to begin with.

    As far as James Bowie goes I was surprised at his foul language, taunting, & "threats" about revealing our real names. And his inability to answer questions (mine) about what are positive assets that Kinsella has. Instead of just answering them, & perhaps getting converts to a different view, he blew it by insisting we "say our names". In my view he just didn't want to say anything, or perhaps did not want to take the time to do so. Perhaps he has nothing to say that IS positive on Kinsella. Although I don't believe that, but that is the impression he gave. But James has now definitely lowered the respect I once had for him. At the moment it's non-existent. That won't matter to him but it does to me. "Another one bites the dust" comes to mind.

    Hope what I've said is clear & understandable. :)

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  33. One more thing. Just want to point out that with all the emotions running high, & all the fallout from that, we seem to have forgotten the most imortant thing:

    GETTING RID OF HARPER & HIS THUGS!

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  34. Penlan, well put. If friends are wrong then it is our obligation to point that out and if they continue in their self-destruct ways then they can be no longer friends. Kinsella fits that definition. He not only has lost his own credibility but he is giving horrible advice to Ignatieff. Yes we need to get rid of Harper and the gang but quite frankly what next. Are the alternatives any good?

    I think Ignatieff must be challenged for his leadership in May. He was never elected and the Liberal caucus appointed him.

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  35. "I think Ignatieff must be challenged for his leadership in May. He was never elected and the Liberal caucus appointed him."

    Apparently the closing date for candidates for leadership is coming very soon. Which means that if there are no other candidates then he will, by default, have the leadership.

    I wouldn't mind seeing a challenge for leader but there is also the opinion that we need to get our crap, not focus on a leadership race but on platform/policy, etc., together so we can oust Harper in the next election.

    At this point we can only wait to see if anyone else comes forward.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Hi Penlan,

    And LeDaro and everyone else,

    No, there will not be a leadership conflict. I am a strong believer in having a race, because I think that it is good for the party. But that ship has sailed. Yelling about it did nothing for Clinton when she felt she should've had more chances against Obama, and it won't do any good now.

    Iggy is the leader and we all have to accept it and work with it.

    Penlan, I do know the whole saga around this, but again, just because someone calls someone names, doesn't mean we should all keep escalating.

    It's time to deescalate and step back and calm down. We need to stop posting nasty things and calling each other names, even if the other side doesn't. We need to rise above, show some class and dignity.

    Like LeDaro, I think your pictures are mostly funny, but some are pretty shocking, and if Jason and the admins had just asked you to use the technical trick of doing to "click to see the picture" when you had something bloody or gory that might have ended it all right then. (I talk about war with my kids, but I don't want them to see those pics when they click on mom's favourites on the family computer.)

    But they didn't ask you discuss it...and now it's time to just let it go.

    I like Jason personally but yeah, I think this is an emotional issue for him and he leapt to quickly to do lots of things. Things he might not have done if he waited and thought and consulted.

    There are lots of issues that I feel the same about. Things I could never ever in a million years be objective about. So I post about them on my own blog, but I could never moderate on the issue. I would recuse myself. But I would not change my opinion. You can't ask these guys to change their opinions, you ca only change your own actions.

    And LeDaro, publicly embarassing a friend doesn't work when you are trying to influence them.

    Do you really think that people haven't taken Jason and even Warren aside and given them advice? Asked them to tone it down? Asked them to layoff certain things? Happens all the time; just not in public. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but lots of people disagree with them and discuss it quietly.

    FWIW, that works for diplomacy and Israel as well, and lots of other conflicts.

    People do get pretty heated about fights in the real life party, and call each other names, but again, it's not as public as the net, so it's easier for everyone to back down and apologize.

    Again, we can all just deescalate.

    Okay, I have to go take kids to swimming, etc...busy weekend. Let's all just chill and have a beer and think, ok?

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  37. Speaking of Deescalation, CWTF, you need to change your handle if you ever want to be respected.

    Really truly respected.

    Everytime you use that ID, it's like poking Jason in the eye with a stick, not to mention all that stuff you posted in comments about him and Kinsella.

    I know you don't like them, but as long as you continue to use that handle and make them your focus, it dilutes your many smart remarks and lowers your credibility.

    At least in my eyes.

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  38. "I talk about war with my kids, but I don't want them to see those pics when they click on mom's favourites on the family computer".

    Aurelia, I find your statement very disconcerting. You don't want your children to see the slaughter and crimes committed by IDF. What about the children who are slaughtered by the hundred by this criminal IDF and government who is ordering this slaughter? Please, please, spare me of this self-righteous rhetoric.

    Cherniak_WTF is very appropriate handle under the circumstances.

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  39. "I talk about war with my kids, but I don't want them to see those pics when they click on mom's favourites on the family computer".

    LeDaro, Aurelia's kids are very young & it would cause great shock to them. Nightmares, a kind of trauma. I hope you can understand that & actually I'm sure you do. :)

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  40. "And LeDaro, publicly embarassing a friend doesn't work when you are trying to influence them."

    Aurelia, I don't understand that one. Did you mean James instead of LeDaro?

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  41. Penlan, yes I understand. When Palestinians children are being slaughtered
    in front of their parents, Aurelia's children must not be disturbed by the
    pictures of slaughtered and disfigured children.

    Hypocrisy of worst kind.

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  42. LeDaro, Do you have young children? If so have you shown them the really graphic pics? Would you if you don't, at present, have young children?

    Not attacking you here. Respectfully disagreeing with you on this.

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  43. Hmm, looking back on the thread, I think I was referring to when LeDaro said,

    "If friends are wrong then it is our obligation to point that out and if they continue in their self-destruct ways then they can be no longer friends."

    Because yes, I agree that we have an obligation to point it out, but not in public, and a lot of this could have been averted if everyone had done it by email and not in posts and comments.

    It could apply to anyone involved in the entire thing to begin with really though.

    P.S. LeDaro, I'm not sure if you are referring to me in your new post, and hey whatevs, fine...but I am not a guy. I'm female. Just sayin'

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  44. Penlan, no. But at the same time I will never, never, ever use my children to support my argument in this manner. I am condemning a slaughter of children. I think you misunderstood.

    When someone is using his/her children to scuffle the argument that is where it is wrong.

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  45. LeDaro,

    I am mainly a mommyblogger. We always discuss and debate everything in a personal context.

    Always--it's the genre.

    If you don't like the style, that's fine, I certainly could have spoken about a mythical young child who could have seen the screen.

    But in real actual practical terms, what shows up on blogs and websites is accessible to an audience. And sometimes a younger audience can't handle the graphic level an older one can.

    Which is why I thought about the click feature.

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  46. Aurelia,

    You're amazing. On Liblog there are the worst kind of swear words in the headings of bloggers and that does not bother you and your children.

    While ago I saw a picture of bloodied fetus picture (it had something to do with abortion - pro-life and pro-choice discussion) on Liblog and that did not bother you but my pictures bother you. Boggles my mind.

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  47. That did bother me, and if you had looked at my blog before writing that, you would know that it would. That is why I am glad they are trying to make sure pictures don't go through the feed. For both the aggregators.

    Using the click feature would have helped with that. I do click through, and always look. As an adult, I should know what is going on, and I view it as my responsibility to make sure I don't look away from it. But not everyone is an adult.

    As for words---most young kids can't read that. But if they do read, then they know to look at the context, and not repeat it. Swear words are not traumatizing.

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  48. Lot of my pictures are from MSM sources. Such as MSNBC, CNN and Guardian of Britain.

    I am sure you read newspapers and most often they do not have the click features. So you better keep your children away from the computer when you're reading news. Include my blog there too.

    Happy!

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  49. Talking about human shield.
    Child shield?

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