"Protector of the free world deserves better..."
"Anti-Americanism has a long pedigree, but that only makes it more irrational,
writes Janet Albrechtsen"
So there I was, writing a few comments at Janet's blog at
The Australian. And I go back to it a few hours later and her essay is no longer where it was when I first came upon it. So I go to her blog page, but it doesn't display the current essay in question. When I do finally find the essay in question, in the "Opinion" section now - and this is the strange bit - the entire comments section is
missing. There were 67 or so comments (I think) when I entered mine, and now they are gone.
Could it possibly have been something I said?
What exactly did I say?
Well she was calling the US the most benign empire the world has ever seen, so I said something like "You think the US is benign, with 1.5 million dead Iraqis over the last 15 years and Iraq polluted forever by depleted uranium? You f**king idiot." So they just could have said "Oops, sorry, no swearing Sir" and dispensed with that one.
And then while reading the other comments - I couldn't bear to read all of her essay - it became clear that the fact that the US saved us from Hitler was one of the points she was making. So my second comment was to do with the fact that Prescott Bush - George W's grandpappy -
did business with the Nazis throughout the 1930's, and well into WWII itself, when the US government finally stopped him. If you want strange,
that is strange. How on earth does the son and grandson of a man who traded with the Nazis until he was stopped (under threat of prosecution) each in turn become Preznit of the US of A? I'd have thought a draft-dodging flag-burning grandpappy would have been a better lineage to have claim to, but obviously not. Have all of those Holocaust museums, memorials and movies been for nothing, I wonder?
Probably, as with Paul Kelly, next week Janet will write something new and the current post, including comments, will go back on display in her blog archive where precisely no one will see it.
Journalist-Blogger Rule Number 3: If you get called out, hide all evidence of it until it is yesterday's news.
Update: A few hours later, we now can find a
page which displays the current blog entry
with comments displayed also, but the comments have started at zero again. The 60 or 70 that were there when I made my first comments have
disappeared, and of course my comments aren't displayed either.
Update 2: Hooray! My second attempt to post a comment was successful! Unfortunately, an hour after mine was posted - comment at 1.12pm (page 1) - there were fully 30 more comments which followed, so I don't think many people will be reading my comment...Strange how so many comments could follow mine, in just an hour, when it's still so difficult to actually navigate to the page which allows for comments.
Update 3: It all becomes clear now - due to "technical problems" JA's blog had to be "rebuilt," resulting in the loss of the first 100 comments. JA even made a special reply to my
1.12pm comment. The use of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq was a "strategic error" according to JA. Funny, to me it looks like
the chosen strategy, not
a strategic error. And even though JA is aware that a war in Iraq beginning in 2003 was always going to be a long and dirty war, according to her the mistake was not in beginning the war, but in Bush seducing people into thinking that the war might be quick and clean.
This lady has balls where she should have brains!Janet Albrechtsen, you are a
fucking idiot!
Final update, hopefully - the day after: Nobody can accuse Janet of not doing the hard yards. Her Bush-praise article was prominent on The Australian's website for a few hours on end the day after it was initially posted. But where is it now? Hidden again, just like Paul Kelly's was - you have to go to the bottom of the first page of her blog (which displays an out-of-date post, not the most recent one) to find it in a list of "recent" and "popular" blog entries. Strangely, she has been very prolific in the last 24 hours. She's made no less than
5 new entries in a single day, when, from what I can tell, she normally only makes 5 entries per month. (Edit: Actually, she's also borrowed other people's posts to include in her list of popular and recent blog entries - the end result being the same, her 2 day old post is very well hidden in cyberspace).
Journalist-Blogger Rule Number 5: You can make embarrassing issues disappear into the past by creating the illusion of time having passed - just add more haystack to the needle - this will serve to quarantine the offending item.
