91Èȱ¬

Think we need an apology from Mr Paxman

Television presenter Jeremy Paxman was criticised for dismissing the work of Scotland's national bard as "sentimental doggerel".

Well done Kirsty for not snorting and sniggering during former ambassador Hunter's bonkers contribution. Did you catch the name of his dentist?

Re #17 on Wed's thread. Congratulations dear boy! More of your name-calling aimed at people who, unlike you, can sustain an argument. Marvellous. Do keep it up.

I have to say I found ex-US Ambassador to NATO Robert E. Hunter's interview was so over-the-top and off-the-wall that I almost didn't believe it! What an unreconstructed Cold Warrior and an ex-Democrat to boot?

Russia was written off as 'Saudi Arabia with trees'; and Kirsty Wark should have been a bit more careful before describing Mr Putin
as 'self-styled Prime Minister' of Russia? I
seem to remember there was in fact an election in Russia earlier this year, unlike
Britain where Gordon Brown chickens out.

Towards the end Hunter conceded that a massive blunder seemed to have been made by Georgia attacking S. Ossetia
- but he seemed to regret that NATO
had not been drawn into a nasty war?

For goodness sake let's get objective about this situation. We still haven't heard much about what the Georgians did in S. Ossetia
- flattened the capital according to some
reports? - and while the refugee crisis in Georgia is indeed heart wrenching as is
the looting and disorder, it is a little odd
for Newsnight to have devoted so much
of yesterday's frontline report from Georgia to interviewing the clearly shocked and hysterical participants in a car crash on
the road from Gori - with not a Russian
in sight! Wars kill - but so does careless
driving. Luckily they seemed to survive.

HILLARY

By the end of all that tiresome footage, was anyone in any doubt about Hillary's qualities? Now we shall have proof! Who needs it?

Far better - after the exposure of the New Labour 'boiler room of Machiavellian control', under the Arch Campbell, last time round - to prepare to lay bare just how dishonest and DISHONOURABLE elections are in UK, in time for the next grand exercise in democracy.

The article asserts that the last time there was a build up like this was just before the invasion of Iraq. Russia: Georgian pipelines and a corridor through Georgia and Armenia to aid Iran? Iran, ready to block

HUMAN INTEREST STORIES AREN'T INFORMATIVE

Are these vignettes of civilians wounded or otherwise hurt in the Caucasus conflict (and how they feel about it) really what Newsnight should be covering? After all, we all know that innocent people get hurt in these conflicts. It comes across as emotive propaganda not news.

"They track down a family they met earlier this week just after they were shot at in Gori by South Ossetian militia - they have a terrifying story to tell." Terrifying indeed - but the woman confirmed 1) that they were not absolutely sure who shot them; 2) she said she 'hated Russians' - but then went on to add that she 'also hated the Georgian government' for putting them in this position by attacking South Ossetia.

Tonight's NATO spokesperson was a bit more measured than Hunter - but then
you went off on a tangent with Bridget
Kendall (who is supposed to be the 91Èȱ¬
Russian expert) about kicking Russia out of G8, breaking off diplomatic relations etc etc

No wonder the very articulate, sensible-sounding member of the Duma was a bit
surprised. His comparison with the NATO intervention in The Balkans sounded to me quite persuasive - not least to help try to avoid the breakdown in law and order of the kind that the family who were shot by rogue militias had experienced.

That may be right or it may be wrong - but so far Newsnight viewers have to read the article by Seumas Milne in The Guardian for
context as hawks talk up a new Cold War?

"This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression" by
Seumas Milne (son of a former Director-General of the 91Èȱ¬)

Jeremy has the right of freedom of speech - and if the dictionary's Scottish Editor in Chief (Mary O’Neill) allows him to do it, then that speaks volumes. She even goes on to state that his views “ were not an attack on Scotland." I remember when I did GCSE English back in the Stone Age, we were all encouraged to criticise literature and discuss it. Jeremy has an MA in English from Cambridge, so surely he can analyse a poet's work and give his opinions on it!(Oh and there have been 96 articles printed on the Paxman v Burns story so far!)

I agree with neilrobertson.

I am also dismayed that the US has not once expressed sympathy for the loss of 2000 civilians in South Ossetia. That is not far off the 9/11 tragedy.

Its also unclear to me whether the US is in fact going to get Georgia under control.

Yes, Paxman and his big gobby mouth are entitled to his views, even if his only qualification is from East Anglia Poly - however I'm reminded of the old comment that it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're an idiot, raher than open it and confirm their suspicions!! Paxo has clearly read very little Burns - his comments are akin to saying Shakespeare was a dreadful comedian, as most of the jokes in his texts are lame in the extreme, and 400 years past their sell-by date.....

Well Paxman's pants rant didn't get him very far I worry he is fast becoming a mere "attention seeker "..poor Pax !

OPACITY, TRANSPARENCY AND BLUE FLAG TO A BEAR

"We are still in the negotiating process. ... Russians are trying to justify their invasion and to legalize their presence in Georgia,"

"Without genuine international peacekeepers, without genuine international transparency, these people are going to make much more trouble for us and for the rest of Europe. I think we should take a closer look at it."

He was referring to the 6 point agreement which Rcie is bringing to him. But it's clear that all this talk of 'international' is far from transparent as it refers to his EU, USA and NATO friends-in-waiting. The term 'international' isn't transparent at all, and in the transparency stakes Saakashvili just makes himself appear less and less transparent (in the sense that it is supposed to be used (honesty)), each time that he appears on camera. What should alarm one is the extent to which the neocons egregiously dissemble whilst preaching transparency given that good (international) relations must be premised on trust. With events in and the being as they are, who can blame Russia for being wary/cynical, if not If everyone wants an equitable resolution, why haven't neutral envoys/troops been sent via the UN? Why Sarkozy, Rice, and most provocative of all, USA 'humanitarian aid' via the UA military?

NOT IN THEIR GENES

As to the new qualifications, PISA shows that national standards are dropping (due, I assert, to differential/dysgenic fertility, the low indigenous birth rate, and high compensatory, low-skilled immigration, as I have remarked upon elsewhere many times). The only way they can disguise this is by changing the standards. This won't hide the problem though as it will show up in other ways, e.g. crime or perhaps we should start calling it as it's their broken families don't you know, not in their genes.

SPIRIT OF ENQUIRY

Hi JJ! Love the 'blue flag to a bear' adaptation!

I have been following your genetic points with interest and doing my best to remain neutral. Where are you on Dawkin's 'Memes'? As I work from the 'Ape Confused by Language' standpoint, I am inclined to see much of our difficulty as arising from a 'flight from the natural' due to conflicting invention in the cerebral.
e.g. When 'the word is' that male and female are the same, while Nature is adamant to the contrary, does this not have complex effects on society that might muddy the waters of nature/nurture?

MEMES, SCMEMES

Barrie (#15) Dawkins has always been a populist. Ask NEwFazer if he will e-mail you Skinner's one hour (it's worth it) audio misleadingly entitled 'ON HAVING A POEM' (it used to be available via the Experimental Analysis of Behavior site but has since been made unavailable. This was Skinner's response to Chomsky and accurately represents my views on the role of genes and their expression in relation to the shaping of verbal and other behaviours. Genes are selected by the environment, and the latter also selects shapes behaviour via reinfocement, but how reinfocrcement systems work is again a funtion of genetic diversity in that it's modulated by differences in proteins which comprise CNS transmitter receptors and transporters. Quine's speech at is apposite too. Herrnstein (of 'The Bell Curve') was Skinner's successor. The Experimental Analysis of Behaviour is descriptive and strictly empirical. It is therefore highly politically incorrect and has been treated a such by the usual crowd. Cognitivism is nonsense.

Human sexual dimorphism is a biological fact, it's just that as there is Gaussian diversity here, there is some brain gender overlap as there is between ethnic groups. Argument to the contrary is just politically correct (Gramscite/Lukacian) nefarious rhetoric and ignorance of the logical quantifiers (SOME=NOT(ALL) and ALL=NOT(SOME). Sex and ethnic differences in cognitive ability show up indisputably every year at the population level (i.e on the basis of hundreds of thousands of observations) especially at the tails of the distributions in SATs, GCSEs, GCEs and HESA - but especially in subject CHOICE (don't just go on the percentages of each sex getting grades, they hide the facts of the matter). The international PISA data show this verbal-spatial cognitive dimorphism to be universal. People who say they believe otherwise are either very gullible, don't look at the evidence, are politically motivated or have very little experience of the opposite sex.

Sadly, most of our politicans seem to think that truth is determined in the debating chamber rather than in the laboratories of the world, this is probably because of the sexy subjects they choose to study when young.

Since the PROSPECTS FOR FRIDAY have not appeared, may I suggest this item that contains many strange inconsistencies?



It seems a female al_Quaida scientist was or was not tortured for years at Bagram, but, picked up by four FBI and military officials received three bullets in her torso, etc., etc.

Do check it out and follow the story!.

Jeremy had written a private e-mail to Stuart Rose about the state of their underpants. Note - it was a private e-mail. It had got leaked into the press by an employee! He had not written a column in a red top (or any other paper) and talked about them - so it was hardly "attention seeking."

As for Jeremy's comments on Burns - hasn't it actually made a lot of people, who may not have read Burns' poetry, go and read some? Attention seeking? NO. Thought provoking? Yes.

FALSE FLAG OR JUST BAD REPORTING?

The convoy of 'Russian' armoured vehicles shown trundling down the road allegedly from to Tbilisi (about 60km away) the other night appeared to be flying a Russian flag, but given that the Russian representative to NATO said at the end of Newsnight that night that the 91Èȱ¬ and Western media were reporting false propaganda, just where was that convoy filmed, was it even Russian, and just how far down the road to the East does one have to go to be 'on the way to Tbilisi'?

I may well be wasting my time typing this out, as what I have to say go's against the grain with regards to the information being given by Newsnight, but here goes anyway.

I think that people are quickly forgetting the fact - or are not being told - that Georgian armed forces killed hundreds of civilians on the night of the 8th and early morning of the 9th of this month, during a premeditated offensive, using ground troops and motorized rocket launchers.

Let's say that again. 7 days ago, hundreds of innocent civilians were murdered during a night time attack carried out by Georgian soldiers.

Seems hard to believe doesn't it? It becomes even harder to believe when we hear our own foreign secretary criticising Russian troops for being on Georgian soil.

No mention of the hundreds of innocents killed by Georgian troops as they slept in their beds.

No mention?! NO mention??!

Aiding and abetting a war crime, is a crime in itself.

Not reporting on the crime is even worse - IMHO.

wanabee07 (#20) "It becomes even harder to believe when we hear our own foreign secretary criticising Russian troops for being on Georgian soil."

Really? Personally, I couldn't imagine HIM saying anything else.