Badman Anthem

Fruitlootopia: beyond the wingut-opedia

2006-07-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

The problem of badman's heroic endeavour to provide a catalogue of wingnuts on the irish internet is that it's just not fair to bracket all of the lunatics together. On the one hand you have your common-or-garden wingnuts whose styles are entirely "borrowed" from the copious number of US based right wing ~~bigoted ignoramuses~~ political commentators. Waghorne and the rest of his chums in my first think tank / freedom fries institute fit neatly into this category, as does Humphrys. Morgan Stack of Irish 911 ~~insanity~~ infamy fits rather less neatly, as will the next few victims of badman's pokings.

So, to properly group people together in the wingnut-opedia, badman is introducing a sub-categorisation system. In particular, those authors who are mad on a royal scale will henceforth be assigned to Fruitlootopia to show their special status compared to the second-rate morons like waghorne who badman routinely mocks. Morgan Stack is the first recipient of this rare accolade. He wins this prize for attending a SF meeting in Kerry and standing up to scream accusations that Martin Ferris is working for MI5 and is helping to cover up the great conspiracy of 911.

Now you might think that this makes stack as mad as a bag of fannies, and you'd be right, but badman is sorry to inform his gentle readers that the coming weeks will see a far far nuttier cast working its way across across this blog. Tighten your seat belts folks, we're going walkabout in fruitlootopia and it ain't for the fainthearted.

Irish Wingnut-opedia Volume 6: Morgan Stack / 9-11 truth movement.

2006-07-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

Morgan Stack is the single-handed Irish branch of the 9-11 truth movement. He is as mad as a bag of fannies. He posted two hilarious news reports to indymedia Ireland in the past, giving badman the opportunity to demonstrate his extreme loon-spuddery

In this story, he was "oppressed" by the government when he travelled all the way to Dublin to hand out conspiraloon DVDs to TDs and was not allowed to hand them out.

Even madder was to come. He was subsequently oppressed by UCC when they cancelled his 9-11 truth conference. Why? Well it might have had something to do with the fact that he told them that there was a serious chance that his guest speaker might be assasinated by MI6.

Stack: I'd like to book the university for a conference

UCC security: No problem

Stack: MI6 are going to assasinate one of my speakers, so I'll need a team of anti-terrorist security people.

UCC security: Nurse, the screens!

Badman provided some commentary on both occasions, leading us to a series of accusations and counter-accusations about who exactly was the CIA disinformation agent. Possibly Badman's final hour.

His more recent antics have seen him accuse Martin Ferris of being a dinsinformation agent and announcing that he is running for the Dail in Kerry.

The big question is: will the CIA "get at" the Kerry electorate. If they don't, he's a shoe in.

World's biggest Freak

2006-07-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

Somebody (Eoghan Harris / Dickhead Waghorne / Jim Cusack?) has set up a blog which is an exact copy of badman's anthem, just with anthem spelt as "anhtem" and are pretending to be me.

What a freak. No really that's just strange.

The indy-weirdo-stalker no doubt playing some freak-tastic triple bluff.

Edit to add: I've redone the design of the blog to make the phoney site less like my anthem. It's a particularly pathetic attempt to lampoon badman, in fact the grasp of ideas and the poor prose style leads me to believe that he must work for the sindo or the Oirish Mail.

Ciaran Byrne? Jody Corcoran? Peter Nolan? There are so many semi-literate pricks in the Irish media that the list of suspects is infinitely long.

Terry Keane Memorial Tunnel?

2006-06-30T03:35:00.000-07:00

There has been some debate in the Irish media about a proposal to name the port tunnel after our recently deceased ~~gangster-in-chief~~ taoiseach. Why does nobody ever think of the bereaved women folk? Would somebody please think of the grieving women! It would be much more appropriate to remember the dearly departed CJ through the name of his lover.

* gets coat *

Ireland's toughest man: Enda v Michael

2006-06-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

Fine Gael introduced a bill to the Dail trying to facilitate greater violence by homeowners against burglars. This bill has been in the offing for a while and is more or less a direct response to the Nally case last year, where a homeowner, Padraig Nally, was jailed for manslaughter for shooting a wounded traveller in the head at close range after he'd already shot him.

The bill itself was typical of the stupid crap that politicians get up to in the Dail:

It only dealt with acts inside the home, the 'intruder' in the Nally case never entered the house, he was just trespassing on Nally's land.
It would have made effectively no difference since the current law already gives homeowners the right to self-defence in their home. In general, the law mandates that victims should "retreat" wherever possible rather than "having a go", but one is not considered to be able to retreat from one's own home.
There are no known cases of householders who have been prosecuted for using reasonable force against burglars (shooting somebody and pursuing them to shoot them again and kill them is not generally considred a reasonable response to trespass).
The bill was never intended to pass and sure enough it was voted down by the government. It was simple law-and-order willy-waving for the benefit of the tabloids.

But what is even stupider than the whole sorry charade of this ridiculous bill were the claims made by Michael McDowell and Inda Kenny in the debate. Inda claimed that he had fought off two knife wielding muggers, while McDowell had defended his father's house with a poker from two burglars.

As I commented over on indymedia Ireland:

These stories are ridiculously implausible. Enda is an effeminate toff. McDowell is a rich-boy nerd who couldn't even make it onto the rugby team in a small school that is crap at rugby (although you can bet he wanted to, he fancies himself as "manly").

These stories are on the same level as Royston's "my dad was kidnapped by the UDA" and Kevin Myers's "I have received many death threats from the IRA" yarns.

Enda's story is particularly stupid. Anybody who "has a go" at two knife wielding desperadoes is an absolute idiot. The first thing that you learn in most martial arts is "if you encounter a stranger with a knife - no matter how good you are - give them what they want or run away". It is an indication of the pretentious, secondary school, slagging-match atmosphere that permeates the Dail that these idiots are swapping Rambo brags to compete about who's the toughest.

Now it seems that Enda had a Royston moment when he realised that some mischevious journalists were going to fact check this, look for garda reports and so on. He desperately changed his story to claim that the mugging took place in 1994 in Kenya. And how this had reference to Irish law is left unexplained. Also interesting to note that he has never mentioned this mugging in the intervening 12 years, for example in this debate about mugging from 1995, when he was minister for tourism, he names several of the most dangerous countries for mugging, but Kenya doesn't get a name check.

Badman thinks that the bad men are telling pork pies! Can we just cut to the chase and liven up the whole sorry excuse for an election campaign that we'll face for the next year. Inda gets a knife, McDowell gets a poker, all other TDs get molotovs. The floor of the dail is the fighting pit. Let's get it on and settle this like real men!

Black Hats and the Blogosphere

2006-06-26T02:53:00.000-07:00

If you think that badman is a dubious type of dude with a suspicious proclivity to denounce others, you'd be right. On the other hand, a quick look at this brand new Irish Republican Self-Scrutiny blog should be enough to tell you that there are far shadier forces at play in the evolving and uncontrolled world of blogging.

Must try harder.

The problem with bloggers

2006-06-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

Although badman is an avid reader of the Irish blogosphere, he can't escape the fact that the vast majority of political / current affairs blogs are just unbelievably shit. The problem seems to be that everybody attempts to ape the snore-inducingly bland style of the mainstream media as soon as they get to blog (even right wing bloggers ape the mind-numbingly stupid outpourings of prejudice that passes as mainstream US news).

This means that bloggers are, as often as not, falling over themselves to be balanced, sensible and to sound moderate. That's a recipe for an awfully shit blog. It's only really when you get to the comments that there is much of interest in most blogs. There are, of course some honourable exceptions, but that's because they authors don't spend their time trying to sound as if they were a professional hack. Remember, bloggers, mainstream journalism is mostly reheated shite sandwiches.

Waghorne Demands Apology From Irish Times

2006-06-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

Richard Waghorne has demanded that the Irish Times, the BBC, CNN and the rest of the "communist" media issue an apology for spreading disinformation. Speaking to Badman Anthem yesterday, Richard argued that: "for nearly 40 years now the pinko-leftie media have been reporting that the Apollo mission landed on the moon. We now discover that this was a hoax and it was all filmed on a film set in Hollywood".

Richard's revelation followed a friend sending him a link to a website. "There's a guy on this website, called moonmovie.com who has a video which proves everything" Waghorne explained "and he says he's won several industry awards".

In other news, Waghorne is also demanding a "correction" for media reports about the deaths of a group of Palestinian civilians on a Gaza beach. However, experts have dismissed his claims pointing out that "the website which he got this information from is far less credible than the moonmovie.com one, which for all of its problems has at least had some money spent on it. The israelnewsagency.com site, where Richard found this story looks like it has been put together by a 15 year old on speed. Plus, the moonmovie guy is offering to sell you his video, while the israeli video is apparently so "top secret" that nobody will ever see it. You'd have to be some moonbat to fall for that one."

Update Human rights watch finds Israeli shell shrapnel in the blast crater

"Human Rights Watch researchers have visited the site to examine the fatal crater and have interviewed victims, witnesses, security and medical staff. “There has been much speculation about the cause of the beach killings, but the evidence we have gathered strongly suggests Israeli artillery fire was to blame,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and Africa division at Human Rights Watch."

Update 2: Waghorne claims that the never-to-be seen top secret video also contains footage of islamo-fascist lizards planting shrapnel.

Coalition Troops Invade Baghdad

2006-06-14T03:04:00.000-07:00

The BBC is reporting the deployment of 40,000 coalition troops on the streets of Baghdad. It is rumoured that their mission is to distribute sweets among the cheering, stars and stripes waving, freedom-loving populace. Or maybe that was just the fantasy version put about by the neo-cons?

* checks self into guantanamo for re-education *

Waghorne the Weasel

2006-06-13T03:45:00.000-07:00

In an astonishingly hypocritical sequence of posts Richard Waghorne calls for a "decent measure of respect" with regards to the dead crook charlie haughey. Immediately below this he repeats a long list of unproven accusations against the Gitmo suicides as fact. Not even the word "alleged" is used to indicate that the dead men have not been convicted of anything. In this case, not only have they not been convicted of any crimes, there does not appear to be sufficent evidence to even try them on any charges. But sure they're Ay-Rab terrorists anyway.

Respect the dead if they're white, rich and powerful.

Irish Wingnut-opedia volume 5: Mark Humphrys

2006-06-12T04:19:00.000-07:00

Mark Humphrys is a computer scientist who lectures at DCU. He is also a right-wing fruitloop who has been slowly building a crazed web presence over the last few years.

His webpage is a series of incredibly long pages which list the various things he likes (freedom, the right, imperialism...) and the things he doesn't like (islam, the left, commies) according to his own exceedingly simple-minded taxonomy. Many, many things are "anti-west" and "anti-freedom" and all you have to do is look at North Korea to know it. Other things such as Guantanamo bay are apparently pro-freedom. Funny that.

His pages are conveniently written in the style of a stream of consciousness with little or no attempt to move beyond the simple-minded rant. This gives one the impression of one of those US based talk-show hosts whose ravings are of such intensity that they can barely pause for breath in between their denunciations.

The picture on the left and the quote below are probably sufficently typical examples of his style to allow one to get a good idea of his "child with a crayon" approach to political debate.

Pro-free private life: Atheist. Pro-science. Pro-reason. Pro-free speech. Pro-liberal democracy.
Pro-free economic life: Pro-capitalist. Pro-West.
Pro-interventionist: Anti-isolationist. End tyranny everywhere. End communism. End Islamic law.

It all goes to show that being a complete fruitcake is no barrier to getting an academic job. It is, however, a genuine advantage when competing for the Freedom Fries Institute's blog awards.

Eoghan Harris is a world-class gimp

2006-06-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

Eoghan Harris serves as the wafer-thin layer of pseudo-intellectuality that lies on top of the Sindo's mission to provide comfort and praise to the powerful while attacking the powerless and voiceless. Naturally enough, this frequently requires him to engage in some rather liberal use of logic and facts. His modus operandi is to hide the manifest stupidity of his arguments behind a lot of huff and puff about how smart he is and the depth of his political experience.

His most recent article provides a good demonstration of his style:

"Most major Irish political stories have some connection, no matter how slight, with the national question. As I shall now demonstrate by taking the two top political and cultural stories of the past week - the Mr 'A' rape case and the Ken Loach film, The Wind that Shakes the Barley ."

It is written in the style of a proper academic paper, where one's claims are clearly set out in advance and the body of the work is devoted to demonstrating the correctness of the claims. At this stage, we should point out that the Mr A rape case has absolutely nothing to do with the national question (child sexual abuse != national question) while the Ken Loach film (Irish war of independence) is so bloody obviously about the national question that only an idiot would feel the need to "demonstrate" it in order to show their wisdom. Harris is that idiot.

Claim 1: The Mr. A rape case was connected to the national question

Harris starts in the only way he could, by dismissing the facts: "We need not dwell on the details of the Mr 'A' case." Considering the nature of his claim, one could only agree with him that the facts would surely be unhelpful to his case.

Instead, he sets out his stall to defend the minister: "It is ridiculous to regard it as a resigning matter". Why is this opinion ridiculous? He doesn't say. Maybe because there is no such thing as a resigning offence in Irish politics? Maybe because it is Harris's job to defend PD ministers regardless of what they do? Who knows.

But where are the provos? They eventually arrive via Fine Gael and Frank Connolly. Harris implies that the whole thing was some sort of excuse to get at McDowell over his treatment of Connolly:

"Behind the media mob, gangs of greenies were trying to settle scores with the minister who flushed out Frank Connolly. So it was surprising to find Jim O'Keeffe of Fine Gael coming to Connolly's defence. Frank is no friend of Fine Gael."

Aha. QED, I think not.

Claim 2: Ken Loach's film is connected to the national question

"The Wind that Shakes the Barley has more legs. Behind the hype lies the huge hinterland of the national question. "

It's a film about the war of independence and the subsequent partition of Ireland and civil war. Of course it's about the "national question" you moron.

Once again, in making his astonishingly obvious point, Harris characteristically lets us know that he's going to be ignoring the facts: "a film I have not seen"

Then he gets to his point, he doesn't like lefties and Loach is a leftie. However, Loach is also English, so this english leftie making a film about Ireland is neo-colonialism.

"Ignoring Ireland's real interests in order to promote a leftist line in British politics is neocolonialism by any name."

No it's not Eoghan. It's nothing at all like neo-colonialism. It's making a film with a particular point of view about a historical event. How Harris can possibly think this is equivalent to exercising political control over an ex-colonial nation is beyond me (without copious drugs to enable the Harris-like nether regions of consciousness). The claim is so stupid that you can't even really argue against it since the two acts - making a film and controlling a foreign country politically - are so ridiculously dissimilar that you don't even know what to compare. Head bangingly stupid.

Finally, one last piece of top-drawer idiocy:

"Finally, can I beg the barley shakers to stop calling Loach's film "controversial"? How can it be "controversial" when everybody in the Irish establishment is ecstatic about it."

The ridiculous thing about this is that in our media-dominated world, controversy is created by media-pundits, and as the Sindo's resident pseudo-intellectual, Harris is pretty much top of the punditocracy establishment. His assertion thus has two clear factual contradictions within it. It becomes even wronger still (and considerably more stupid too) when you realise that in the very same edition there is an article about the controversy - showing how UK tabloids had carried entirely different takes on it in their Irish and English editions. What's more, Harris's fellow resident of the punditocracy establishment, Ruth Dudley Edwards, had denounced the film the previous day.

How can he be so stupid?

Pete, Rory & Dick: Will Produce Propaganda for Payment

2006-05-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Just noticed this little Gem from the Freedom Institute. Entitled why Hamas is not Sinn Fein, written by Dr Rory Miller, Mr Peter Nolan and Mr Richard Waghorne.

"All three authors are members of the Freedom Institute, Ireland’s leading independent public policy research organisation."

The authors declare their interest but somehow have arrived at the side-splitting delusion that my first think tank
is ireland's "leading independent public policy research organisation". Leading in what sense? They certainly are peerless in the amount of mockery and derision that they have received. In other fields, their performance is saddly, less impressive.

Badman has no idea what the "Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre" is, but he can be very confident that it is some sort of Israeli propaganda outfit. How can he be so sure? Because genuine research organisations don't normally select people who know nothing at all about the subject matter to write reports. Take this piece of classic idiocy from the text:

There existed within the IRA a strong anti-clerical tradition reaching back to the nineteenth century. During the conflict, the IRA’s attitude hardened against the Catholic Church, particularly following the failure of Catholic mediators to secure a compromise from the British government during the hunger strikes of the early 1980s.
Such was the depth of ill-feeling that when secret talks began between IRA leader Gerry Adams and the Redemptorist priest Father Alec Reid, they were kept secret even from Adams’ colleagues on the IRA’s supreme governing body, the Army Council.

Yep, they actually seem to think that the secrecy of the meetings between Adams and the British was down to the presence of a catholic priest! Nothing at all to do with the fact that Adams was talking to the Brits behind the backs of the army council, it was the presence of the priest that was the tricky bit! The funny thing is that some of the freedom friers are actually from Ireland. I didn't realise that it was possible to come from here and to misunderstand the troubles so profoundly. It's the type of idiocy that you would expect from some lunatic neo-con in Ohio. Perhaps it was the fact that they were writing for a foreign publication which allowed the lads to feel that they could get away with making up any old shit without being ridiculed.

Dick's Magill Piece

2006-05-29T03:37:00.000-07:00

Since Dick Waghorne has "disappeared" comments from his site, I'll have to use badman's blog for my review of his piece from Magill magazine.

His piece is typically tightly argued:

"Look at world headlines these days. Much of it comes down to democracy promotion, American leadership, and economic openness."

Of course, few mainstream scholars recognise that "look at world headlines these days" is an acceptable evidence-base on which to build a theory. That's because they're leftist miscreants. One of these leftist miscreants would be likely to, for example, test this claim by engaging in a cursory check. Let's start with today's Irish Times. A grand total of 1 out of 15 articles could possibly be related to dick's three categories - and that is an opinion piece by Charles Krauthammer in which he repeats a number of blatant lies for the umpteenth time in advocating the invasion of Iran. US leadership, maybe, democracy promotion? Only if you think that dead people make good voters!

Ireland can be the poster-boy for emerging democracies around the world, preaching the benefits of opening up, cleaning up democracy

Ireland is a poster-boy for cleaning up democracy!????!! Maybe Dick means that our "democratic" politicians are poster-boys for hoovering up cash from big business, otherwise he's got to be living in an alternative reality.

In relation to what Ireland should have done with respect to Belarus: "Ahern should have been on TV that day stating that Ireland as a small nation emphases with the wish of the Belarussian people to break free of Russia independence and to create their own democracy."

Did they really print this sentence? Do they even employ sub-editors? Do they even realise that emphases is the plural of the noun emphasis and that there is no simple verb derived from empathy (which Dick presumably meant)? What is "Russia Independence"? How does one break free from it?

More sage advice to Dermot: "He should have promised to work with his counterparts to make sure small democracies present a united front on the matter to use their votes in international institutions to pressure the regime" But further on Dick regrets the fact that being "Shackled to the UN, our scope for democracy promotion initiatives limits our options." So which "international institutions" should we be using for our good ol' democracy promotion if the UN is such a shackle? The international alliance of flag-waving lobotomised idiots?

Dick finishes up with a description of the current debate over Iraq:

"Never mind that the US is there under a UN mandate, or at the express request of Iraqi leaders, or with the support of the Iraqi people as repeatedly voiced to pollsters; for a large chunk of our political class, getting America is what counts. It’s almost the only thing that gets discussed."

We can make several observations about this. First of all, the assertion that "getting America" is almost the only thing that gets discussed is hard to sustain when one considers the enormous amount of public debate about health, crime, war, poverty, corruption, property prices and so on. Indeed, I can't recall a single individual who actually advocates "getting America" where will we get it from? Why are we getting it at all? Beats me, ask Dick.

Secondly the assertion that the Iraqi people have repeatedly voiced support for the US occupation to pollsters is stretching the truth just a teensie bit. As long ago as 2004, support for the occupation had collapsed:

A Gallup poll conducted mostly in late March-- before the recent sieges of Fallujah and Najaf-- showed that "a solid majority support an immediate military pullout." (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04-28-poll-cover_x.htm). Fifty-seven percent said the coalition should "leave immediately" rather than "stay longer" (36 percent).

According to a new poll from the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which is partly funded by the State Department and has coordinated its work with the Coalition Provisional Authority, more than half of all Iraqis-- including the Kurds-- want an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, up from 17 percent last October. The same poll found that 68 percent of Iraqis support Moqtada al-Sadr, including a third who say they "strongly support" him (Financial Times, 5/20/04; Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/9/04).

January 2005: 82 percent of Sunni Arabs and 69 percent of Shiites favor US withdrawal ãeither immediately or after an elected government is in place.ä (Zogby)

Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.

The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country. Source

Why has Dick Waghorne Turned off Comments

2006-05-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago badman became an afficando of the sport that is most loved by true conoisseurs of the Irish blogosphere - taking the piss out of Dick Waghorne's pompous musings on his blog. Although this is a minor sport, it is tremendously enjoyable, despite the feeble nature of the intelectual challenge. I'd liken it to going fishing in a particularly well-stocked fish farm with an Uzi.

Dick has put many long and hard years into adopting the affectations of a classically trained oxbridge scholar, a latter day John Hume or Adam Smith. This has left him little time to devote to other, less useful, forms of knowledge such as a rudimentary understanding of logic or a casual acquantaince with facts or evidence. The resultant combination of promethean pomposity and "point and snigger" levels of simple-mindedness make for entertaining commenting.

No longer.

A couple of weeks ago, dick turned off commenting and "disappeared" the archive of piss-taking comments from badman and the small band of like-minded conoisseurs who had happened across this most enjoyable sport in their travels across the tundra of the internet. Dick has yet to profer an explanation for the "silencing" of his critics.

Badman wants to know what happened?

He's been "got at" by "them"
Technical difficulties
He got pissed off at being made look like a moron in public
"Lefties" were suppressing him with death-threats in the comments
Sudden conversion to Stalin's information management policy
Comments are, like, so childish

Hack Watch - the rebirth of smearing

2006-05-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago, the weird nutters who put out indymediairelandwatch suddenly dissappeared from the Internet after Indymedia Ireland put a number of questions to Independent Newspapers about their connection to the neo-nazi linked blog

Now the nutters are back. This time, immediately after an edition of the Sunday Independent which had devoted 3 articles to attacking Vincent Browne, it is the editor of Village magazine who is the subject of their ravings.

The style is uncanningly similar. The author(s) are at the dribbling end of the delusion scale. One of their first revelations is that Vincent Browne wrote something in his SBP column which sort of ressembled an idea expressed by Tony Benn on his RTE radio show. Apparently this is some sort of ethical problem. All ideas expressed in for-profit mediums must not be influenced by ideas expressed in publicly funded media?

One of the obvious truisms about humans is that the vast majority of our ideas are not original. This is one of the features of our species which has allowed us to develop from the stone age. Somebody who relied entirely on their own ideas without any influence from others would be restricted to some sort of stone age existance. Either that or they'd get a job with the Sindo.

Yep, that's the weirdly deluded world that the watch-nutter lives in.

People who think that other people who express less than Rand-ian capitalist opinions should live by bizzarely pure ethical guidelines normally just don't understand the concept of ethics at all because they don't have any.

My high-level sources at indymedia Ireland tell me that some more toneore-tastic revelations are on their way about the watcher(s).

My First Think Tank - The Freedom Institute

2006-05-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

Prior to the creation of this blog, badman has worked the floor over on Indymedia Ireland. One of my favourite targets of criticism was traditionally The Freedom Institute.

The Freedom Institute is a "think tank" set up by a bunch of rich kids in University College Dublin. I think they call it a "public policy research institute" or some similarly grandiose title. In any case, whatever they call it, it's one of those things in life, like bad haircuts or the royal family, that simply demands ridicule.

After reading a few of their "reports", I quickly realised just how embarrassingly bad their "research" was. Each and every one of their reports followed the same predictable pattern. State intervention and anything that could be vaguely considered to be an impediment to the power of rich people to do whatever the hell they like is bad. This is all we need to know about all problems in the world. A particularly embarrassing application of this doctrine sees them reqularly equate all politics to the left of genghis khan with the nazis. Just today, one of their ~~members~~ fellow travellers (who must be about 14 considering his decision to call himself "wulfbeorn" and decorate his site with howling wolves) is equating Sinn Fein with the Nazis on the basis that Sinn Fein's health policy mentions the word "equality" and so does a piece of Nazi rhetoric. Brilliant.

Another amusing bit of nonsense saw them attribute the famine in ethiopia to the fact that ethiopia was "socialist". Their evidence for this claim was that the USA had experienced similar droughts without the same disasterous consequences! Are they sure they've considered all possible differences between the two situations before coming to this conclusion? They don't say.

Rather than being anything similar to a body which carries out research, the freedom institute is a sort of "billionaire boy's club". A bunch of precocious, spoiled, rich-kid undergraduates who have an absolutely unshakeable faith in their own cleverness compared to the rest of the species. Their other defining attitude is that they absolutely detest any argument that might suggest that they are not utterly deserving of their own privilege, indeed they really think that they ought to be applauded for it. Some strange coincidence of the planets must have occured to bring a critical mass of precocious pups with extreme forms of these symptoms together. Such traits are commonly found in dilute form among the pupils of the half-dozen most prominent boys school (and they are virtually all boys) but their delusions of grandeur are normally limited to a bit of pompous posing in the student's union, the debating societies or one of the campus publications. It is rare that it extends to the ridiculous levels of establishing a think-tank, manned by under-graduates who don't even possess the skills to carry out basic research.

In typical vainglorious fashion, they doled out grandiose-sounding titles to their entire membership. Richard Waghorne, one of their members with the greatest willingness to pontificate on subjects about which he is ill-informed, was their "Spokesman on Economics & Infrastructure".

More mocking of the freedom institute to come

Badman's output

2006-05-13T14:26:00.000-07:00

Badman's anthems are cynical screeds about the various things that annoy me.

Expect to see the following feature:
Theists, Trotskyites, Bushites, Conspiraloons, the Irish media, the Irish bloggosphere, Creationists, Bad Science.

These and the various other things that most embarrass me about being a human will be denounced.

Welcome to Badman's Anthem

2006-05-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

In real life badman is a considerate soul. She tries to be fair and suppresses many of her uglier traits.

Not here. Here she is her alter-ego, herself with all of her nasty bits on show. That alter-ego is badman.

This is his anthem.