Tim Blair

Nobel Peace Prize nominee

>This is the most serious election that has ever occurred in the history of the human race, without a scrag of doubt,"

She got that right! Had an appeacer like Kerry won, my grandchildren would have been Muslims.

"On the whole the American people don't really understand the dynamics of the right at all. They don't know that Bush et al want to go into Iran next and that they want to dominate the world militarily and that they want to put weapons in space."

WooHoo! Go us!

Vicki

She was equally as sure that Pres. Reagan would be the cause some sort of global nuclear event because of his policies.

Good thing Reagan ignored her.

Pity his daughter did not and was estranged from her dad for years because she believed the hysterics emanating from the left about the dire consequences her dad's policies would bring to the world.

Hmmm.

Deforestation?

Doesn't she know that there are more trees planted today than in 1800?

This is the most serious election that has ever occurred in the history of the human race, without a scrag of doubt,"

I think the 1933 German elections were pretty serious, too, but I'm just an unsophisticated right-winger.

Stupid git.

Nobel Peace Prize nominee? According to this (see under Myth 4), those who can make nominations include "university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy." Perhaps one reason the actual lists of nominees are kept sealed for 50 years is that we would laugh our asses off seeing who such flakes would nominate. I think I know a few who would nominate Marwan Barghouti. And probably Saddam.

How much has she contributed to global warming with her frantic criss-crossing of America over the last 2 1/2 months.

"They [the Bush administration] have been able to con the American people with their extremely brilliant propaganda and brainwashing, with the help of the media"

Aha! So, the whole fake memo thing was actually an evil Karl Rove plot!

Why are republicans wasting their time taking over the world if it's going to end soon?

A contradiction, no?

Someone called the '04 election the 'gift that keeps on giving', oh how right they were.

Helen Caldicott is one of my favorite idiots, whatching her spin around like a shreiking, lunatic dradle alternativly wailing and falling about frothing at the mouth is honest, wholesome fun for all the family. It's educational for the children too, "Look Jimmy, that's a member of the 'Activist Left', once they thundered across the plains in mighty herds! Now we collect their semen in order to propagate their species in Zoos and sheltered workshops and hopefully stave off their tragic extiction. Study hard, because if you don't you might end up with that job instead of being a millionair capitalist exploiter, like daddy. Is that what you want? Is that what you want, you lazy little bastard!?"

Chicken Little jackasses like Caldicott and Paul Ehrlich have made a pretty good living scaring the rubes for the last three decades, but I can't help but feel their hippy string is running out. It's hard for even the reliably lefty Australian periodicals and papers to take them seriously anymore. They tend to damn with faint praise, commending their 'conviction' and 'passion' while tactly admitting that yeah, pretty much everything out of their mouths has turned out to be bullshit, oh well, who knew? Never mind.

Correction to my post (above):

from:
...Reagan would be the cause some sort of global nuclear event because of his policies.

to:
...Reagan would be the cause OF some sort of global nuclear event because of his policies.

It would be interesting to see if any of the current doom-sayers would be willing to back up their theories with more than their words.

A bet, like Tim suggests would be nice. Possibly a donation of $1mil to the political parties they blame for ignoring all their 'words of wisdom'.

People like Ms. Caldicott, and her fellow leftie hysterics, never seem to have any price to pay for helping to fuel the Left's hysteria.

It doesn't seem to matter that they've been wrong. They don't seem to have any self-correction.

Perhaps losing a few $mil would help them be more careful when spewing their theories.

She said the Reagan-era arms build-up would lead to muclear war too. Instead it led to the end of the Cold War and the decomissioning of thousands of nukes.

Stupid cow. It's amazing that people still listen to her.

tim, put me down for $1000 of that bet. I feel lucky today!

Well, we must stress the point that the Republicans are quite literally planning to destroy the world and are very close to succeeding. Because the Republicans are fear-mongers and they're not reality-based. We have to counter their hysterical scare stories with the plain, solemn, unvarnished truth about their intention to sterilize the entire face of the planet.

What frightens me is the wild irrationality of the Right: How could they vote for somebody who, objectively, wants to exterminate the human race? Obviously, they've retreated into an apocalyptic fantasy world ruled by fear. They must actually believe that destroying the world is a good thing! There's no other possible explanation.

About the betting thing, though... If dear Helen is right (and as a very highly respected thinker, unlike all of you ignorant rednecks, she almost certainly is right), she'll never be able to collect, because we'll all be just a puff of radioactive dust on the incandescent breeze.

"It's the threat of what's happening to the environment, the global warming which is occurring rapidly now, to ozone depletion, to species extinction, to deforestation - it's the whole thing"

The whole Guardian reader package in fact.

Global warming AND species depletion AND nuclear vaporization: so little time, so much to worry about.

In the SMH next week, Helen reveals how the Skynet computer nexus will launch humanity's nuclear arsenal against it, then hunt down the remnants of mankind with its fearsome Terminator cyborgs...

Man, that's some good crap right there. Count me in on that bet...what a complete horse's ass she is.

Why do idiots like this sound so much like the muslim cleric idiot below? Could they somehow be of the same mould?

she reminds me of that other noble peace prize nominee, adolf hitler, in that they are both so nondelusional. Time to break that cyanide capsule on your tongue, helen. Sweet Dreams!!!

F451: It's all in the plan, you pathetic sheep. Computers are dehumanizing and unnatural. They are the opposite of the environment, and therefore the opposite of peace. To anyone with a shred of creativity and real intelligence, the Terminator movies are a clear, prophetic, and wholly convincing allegory for the "progress" of so-called "science" -- which, by its own admission, is the opposite of creativity: Scientists merely observe. They do not create. Science is therefore inherently conservative by definition, which explains why it only ever does harm in the world.

The sad thing here is that Helen Caldicott's points are not entirely without merit. It was worthwhile to worry about the effects of Reagan's aggressive stance vis-a-vis the USSR. He was very right, but that doesn't mean it was impossible that he was wrong, or that some aspects of his foreign policy were unwise.

In the same way, it is sensible to concern ourselves with W's aggressive stance vis-a-vis the Axis of Evil. I think he's very right, but that doesn't mean it's impossible he's wrong, or that nothing of what he proposes is unwise. Sensible debate over the details is, well, sensible.

Alas, with dumfuk Chicken Little screeching like this, Dr. Caldicott turns her side into a laughing stock, vide supra, and so a potentially useful and sensible cautionary message is stillborn. If I were on her side, I'd pay to have her sit down and shut up.

it has to be an hormonal imbalance. She must be knee-deep in some menopuasal flashback. there is no other reason for an educated human being to talk this way.

of course, that means chomsky and moore don't have any excuses.

Dearest AArrgghh,

Exactly, specifically WHERE do you get the information that the rest of us seem to lack?

Given that I live in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma probalby qualifies me to be a redneck, but help me out here. I want to be informed, too, but I haven't found where GWB is attempting to destroy the planet.

"it has to be an hormonal imbalance"

No, she's pretty much always been that way.

...she'll never be able to collect, because we'll all be just a puff of radioactive dust on the incandescent breeze.

And that's the beauty of the bet! She can't win!!!!

Caldicott got star billing a few months ago on SBS with a propaganda piece called 'Helen's War'. It was funded by? You guessed it - the Australian Film Commission. I gather it played around the art houses as well. I wrote to SBS and said, in part:

"It is appalling that this demagogic and delusional old woman should be accorded a publicly funded platform from which to disseminate her poison, it is equally appalling that her bigotry and prejudice should be funded (through the AFC) by Australian taxpayers, most of whom find Caldicott an anathema."

So now Mad Helen is a Nobel PP nominee, eh? Well if past winners are anything to go by, she might get it. Right up there with Arafat, Annan and Jimmy Carter, great company. Jesus wept. What a travesty that institution has become.

andrea h: understood.

aargh: you clearly are some sort of humor droid from the year 2213, come back to warn of us future problems, no?

assuming you are not, i will note that although i am dissapointed i am going to die because of bush's policies, i shall at least die rich, having shorted the SP 500 at this level.

also: please don't die yourself. I rarely encounter people so very....very, such as yourself.

I haven't run into "Aarrgghh" before, so I can't say if he's serious or producing finely-calibrated satire.

Now if it's the former, and he honestly believes that science "only ever does harm in the world"...

I have a thirteen-year-old kid, who -- in the good and "natural" course of things -- would have died a painful death at eighteen or twenty-four months of age. Instead, he's alive and kicking, and has prospects of continuing to do so for another twenty-five years -- maybe more. A lot can be learned in twenty-five years, nowadays.

It that's "dehumanizing" and "unnatural," against "the environment" -- well, give me more!

zzx375, Aarrgghh is being sarcastic. Now we only let him out for air and exercise one hour a day, so sometimes it's hard to tell. But trust me.

Whenever I read about one of these chicken littles, I always think about the 7th Day Adventists. The founder of the sect predicted the end of the world, and they all got ready for the second coming.

The day arrived, and nothing happened, so the prophet of the sect checked his calculations and declared that he had made a mistake. The end was really still a few years away.

I've lost track, but I think they're on about the fourth date by now, and the sect has fractured along lines of which prophet really knows the date, with all the others being misguided. If I remember correctly, Koresh and the Branch Davidians were one of the splinter groups.

Anyway, I can't worry about the stuff this lady is talking about. I'm still planning for the Ice Age the doomsayers were predicting a few decades ago, before they discovered it was going to get warmer, not colder. I wish they would make up their minds.

This woman, who is a doctor, is on the wrong self-medication routine and needs to seek the help of professionals in order to get in touch with reality.

Maybe this is a good time for the networks to re-broadcast The Stand.

As a redneck, red-stater that voted for Bush, I was certainly aware that Iran was next. It's part of why I voted for him. Also, we had better be putting weapons in space after all that money we spent on missle defense. And don't we already dominate the world militarily, as well as economically? If we don't, I feel as though I've been lied to by every lefty lunatic I've talked to in the last two years. Maybe Helen still thinks it's 1984.

veryetired,

You've got things a bit mixed up regarding the Adventists.

One adjustment from April to October 1844. After that, they did more study, and decided that they'd been wrong in setting a specific date, and nobody could know the actual date. (You may be confused with Jeohovah's Witnesses, who have issued and retracted several subesequent dates...but they're a different group altogether.)

There were a couple three SDA splinter groups, but they split over other issues, mostly Cult of Personality(tm) notions, and subsequent splinters were splinters from the initial 1930s splinter of Houteff, which includes Koresh's group.

lecture mode/

"Anyway, I can't worry about the stuff this lady is talking about. I'm still planning for the Ice Age the doomsayers were predicting a few decades ago, before they discovered it was going to get warmer, not colder. I wish they would make up their minds."

You're a step behind. They're back to the Ice Age thing again, but with a twist - global warming is causing global cooling.

You can't make this stuff up.

Being Helen Caldicott is tough task. After reading her rant I don't know how she survives herself for one day let alone 4 MORE YEARS.

F451-

Arrrrggghhhhh does very accurate spoofs of moonbats. It's a little hard to see sometimes, but you really have to blame the moonbats for that.

BTW, are you the same F451 that posts in MO? If so, we should invite kpaul over here. He'd be a HUGE hit.

About that self-medication thingy. Boy, that's neat. Wonder if she would share?

Also, is there some sort of scorecard on Helen's predictions versus the actual outcome? Is she, as we would say in the US, below the Mendoza line?

Remember that Paul Ehrlich lost a famous bet on things getting worse (you know, world-wide famine int the '70s, massive increase in the cost of commodities) but that didn't quiet the ravings.

Caldicott is brimming over with hatred to call more 60 million people fascists. Ironic that she would be nominated for the Nobel peace prize. If she were honest, she would disqualify herself.

So now Mad Helen is a Nobel PP nominee, eh? Well if past winners are anything to go by, she might get it. Right up there with Arafat, Annan and Jimmy Carter, great company. Jesus wept. What a travesty that institution has become.

To be fair, there are almost no limits on who gets nominated for the Prize, so the nominees tend to be all over the political spectrum. I know Bush and Blair were both nominated this past year - along with the International Solidarity Movement.

Edgar Whisenant is a reliable and experienced Christian apocalypticist, licensed and certified to serve all your eschatological needs.

Whisenant's 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988 was recommended to me in 1990 by a believer who considered it irrefutable. I showed my appreciation by turning him on to the Club of Rome.

test

test

You people making fun of poor Helen won't be laughing when Rove's jackbooted thugs carry you off to the George and Laura Bush Reeducation Compound near Area 51 in Nevada.

It is a mandate for Bush to do absolutely anything he wants.

Well, at least she's not pushing the stupid lefty line about how Bush's victory wasn't a mandate. Good for you Helen!

BTW, I wonder if she also publicly predicted that humanity wouldn't survive the second Reagan term?

"I know people don't like me using this word but they're fascists." (Emphasis mine.)

If my bullshit sensor wasn't already singing like a tea kettle, this howler would certainly have set it off. Where would the left be without the good-for-every-occasion word "fascist" in their lexicon?

Hmm, I should read the thread first...guess ol' Helen did say exactly that about Reagan. Never mind. :)

Where does this women get the money to continue her mind numbing screed?

Better Broken Arrow, Oklahoma than Lickskillet, Tennessee, I always say...

Yes tim how wonderful to win a Zillion dollars from the arrogant, stupid woman.
However she is no Suha Arafat, and even if she was you would need a reliable stakeholder.
Does anyone know if it was her ridiculous rant of a film that just won an SBS "award" for best doco or other along with scandalous "ode to david hicks, the poor aussie country boy" funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money.

On the whole the American people don't really understand the dynamics of the right at all. They don't know that Bush et al want to go into Iran next...

Iran! I only voted for Bush because I thought he'd go into Syria next then North Korea and save Iran for last! I was taken in again by the Republican controlled MSM! That does it, I'm cancelling my subscription to the NYT, and ending my membership in the Dan Rather fan club!

About 20 years ago I worked at Ford Asia Pacific (FASPAC, Melbourne). A co-worker was a Caldicott in-law. He delighted in telling us that Caldicott was regarded as a loony by her own family.

She must be in her 70s now. To describe her as a paediatrician is rather ingenuous, since she would have retired over a decade ago. It's rather like referring to Malcom Fraser as the Prime Minister.

"Bush Murder Brigades."
Where do I enlist?

This is the most serious election that has ever occurred in the history of the human race, without a scrag of doubt

Just from context, I'd guess ``scrag'' means female genitalia.

Yeah, Tim, I'll take $1000 of that too, but I don't like your chances of getting her to pony up. She never got back to me in 1999 when I offered her the same odds about her declaration that Y2K (remember?) was going to trigger the 'ageing Soviet nuclear arsenal'. Remember, Helen achieved the rare distinction of being voted out of her own lobby group: it takes a special kind of person to do that.

I'm beginning to think the National Enquire is a better source of news than the Guardian or SMH. "Elvis lives!" is a much more believable article than "Bush threatens mankind, says Caldicott". At least the National Enquire staff doesn't really believe the BS they put in their tabloid.

But what does it say about the SMH they saw fit to print these rantings? A lot, actually.

Future schlock dear helen ... get over it !

Is Nobel Prize nominee the same as Nobel Prize rejectee? Like BA(Failed)?

It is amazing that the left's rants against its opponents always jump logical tracks so predictably into shouts of 'fascists!' They toss this word about as if it were garlic meant to ward off some evil vampire. If only they owned a dictionary and even a rudimentary understanding of history...

SteveH,

To be clear, that's the first Koresh, not the Waco wacko. You can see Koresh's story in the classic book by Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.

Glad to see someone on the Left acknowledge that Pres. Bush has a mandate.

I like the part about going into Iran. If only our armed forces were large enough....

I was unsure about the word scrag, so I checked an online dictionary:

scrag
(Food)
n.
1. A bony or scrawny person or animal.
2. A piece of lean or bony meat, especially a neck of mutton.
3. Slang The human neck.
tr.v. scragged, scrag·ging, scrags Slang
To wring the neck of; strangle.
[Perhaps from dialectal crag, neck, from Middle English cragge, from Middle Dutch crghe, throat.]

Now, that makes it all perfectly clear, doesn't it?

Whats a "scrag of a doubt"? And does it taste good?

snap!

That old communist needs to spend more time with her dildo!

Dave S:

Re: "...are you the same F451 that posts in MO?"

I guess I must not be. Oh, well...

We're all doomed! DOOMED I tell ye!

www.google.com

Your search - "scrag of doubt" - did not match any documents.

"Where does this women get the money to continue her mind numbing screed?"
swassociates,
she gets it from book sales, fund raising meetings, Martin Sheen and other Hollywood types.

Let's see, Ms. Caldicott, the right wants to take over the world and then blow it up? Or do they want to blow it up first and then take it over?

Details, details.

Y'know, I remember back in 1984 or '85 attending a lecture by Caldicott in Washington D.C. I know, I know, what the hell was I thinking?

Anyway, she swore then that Reagan was going to blow the world up. No doubt about, swear on it, 100% absolute guarantee from this crackpot that old Ronnie was going to nuke the world.

Hell, we're still here. Hmm, I guess Reagan had a failed presidency after all.

SMG

Weren't we all supposed to die when Reagan got his second term?

What's the hold-up?

Are we sure Caledecott isn't really a Simpson's character? "What about the children?! Won't somebody please think about the children?!"

EddieP-- Aw, man, Area 51 again? They sent my luggage to 61 Sygni the last time...

Mojo

Which "Lickskillet" are you talking about?

Veryetired, "I'm still planning for the Ice Age the doomsayers were predicting a few decades ago, before they discovered it was going to get warmer, not colder. I wish they would make up their minds."

Ah, yes... the Great Ice Age Disaster. I remember that for a specific reason. I was in college when this one was the "latest word", and did a research paper on it for an ecology class.

My paper was on the topic of "Checking Sources". I went back through the works of all the Ice Age predictors, and started checking their sources. Then I started checking the sources' sources. The short version of this is that, through three different threads of inquiry, I came back to the same source... an early-'60s study done in one of the Canadian universities where ice cores were taken once a year on the same date at the same time over a period of ten years. Their conclusion: A new ice age was coming... in about 10,000 years! The glaciers were definitely moving south, but at such a crawl it would take a few millenia for it to make any difference ;).

Of course, I got a D on my paper for focusing on such a narrow target *rolling eyes* LOL!

It looked to me as if some researchers in the US seized upon this obscure journal entry and used it as a basis to apply for grants, forgetting to mention the "10,000 years" thing. When it became clear that we weren't entering an ice age, they switched to Global Warming to keep the grant money flowing.

Now... there may be Global Warming, but there is also global warming on Mars, Jupiter, and Titan, so this is more likely a normal solar cycle than anything else. I seriously doubt mankind is the cause ;).

This girl never grew up.

FWD: richard mcenroe:

With their usual efficiency, these idiots sent the message to the wrong person, and I'm forwarding it to you.
----------------
Dear Sir,
We apologise for misplacing your luggage, which was consigned to 61 Cygni. Apparently it ended up in some alternate reality at 61 Sygni, due to the close proximity of a Galactic Black-Hole sized mass of Invincible Ignorance in the vicinity.
Time-Space Warning Beacons have since been set up around the entity Helen Coldicott to avoid repetition.
Please consult our travellers advisories in the inflight magazine for how to reclaim your lost luggage and/or body parts.

ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS CUSTOMER SERVICE
"To Serve Man..."
--------------

I'm always fascinated by the amount of time America-Haters like Caldicott spend in that despised country.Are they on some sort of left-wing evangelical project or is it that they really would prefer to live there but can't get residency and this causes the anti-American bile to flow especially when they have to return to Australia,the country they really hate.

AEB: LOL! Love the "To Serve Man..." reference! :D

They don't know that Bush et al want to go into Iran next and that they want to dominate the world militarily and that they want to put weapons in space.

Why would Bush want to invade Iran, Helen?

Ahem
When I was a teenager a 'scrag' was, er, a moll, a rough sheila, a tart.
Dunno what a 'scrag of a doubt' is tho.

AEB — :-D Yeah, 61 Sygni is in one of them "red" universes where the iggerint homophobes cant spel good...

I voted for Bush because of global warming. I figured if Bush is melting the glaciers (heard it on the news)then maybe when I retire I won't have to move to Florida with all the elderly left wing New Yorkers.

If she's still a paediatrician, why? Doesn't she believe none of her patients will be alive in four years?

Also, can I quote her that "It is a mandate for Bush"? A lot of folks here have been disputing that recently.

The world is safer now because of Reagan, and it will be safer in the future because Bush stood up to terrorists. Of course, Caldicott could claim that her efforts have staved off Armageddon, kind of like my blogging has kept the elephants away.

If Australia is the "51st state of America", when do we get our tax cuts?

On the whole the American people don't really understand the dynamics of the right at all. They don't know that Bush et al want to go into Iran next and that they want to dominate the world militarily and that they want to put weapons in space.

That's true; I, for one, didn't "understand" this. Though I sure hoped that Bush wanted to disarm Iran and continue the Western military military supremacy over the globe.

I guess not wanting to see nutty Arab dictatorships and Islamic theocracies reaching military parity with civilized Western democracies makes me a "fascist." I can live with that.

The phrase "all over the place like a mad womans piss" keeps coming to mind for some reason.

The old chick has issues on her issues. It's all kinda sad really if one has any empathy at all.

Where I come from a "scrag'' was an old bag, a scrawny harridan.
Someone like, er, Helen Caldicott.

Earth to Moonbats.

In 1994 Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ever since then, call me kooky, the prestige faded.

If we're all still alive four years from now, I'll kill Caldicott personally so she doesn't feel disappointed.

Consider it a favour.

As a child I remember the cuban missile crisis.
Now that I have seen the fog of war I realise that cuba had more than a hundred warheads for their missiles as well as tactical nuclear weapons.
If the americans had landed on the beaches of cuba they would have been incinerated as would have florida with dozens of tactical nuclear missiles.
We were on the verge of armegeddon then,our leaders today have learnt nothing from the past.

marklatham and Kerry have a point: why not unilateral disarmament to make the world safer?

for a millisecond

"Scrag of Doubt" sounds like some old harridan in a "Lord of the Rings" knockoff, wandering around and promoting discord and despair......"I am Helen, the Scrag of Doubt, and I say unto you, you are all doomed by your stupidity!!" Methinks Helen just coined a title for herself.

Great idea, Rob, but I see it as more of a Monty Python thing:

SCRAG: Stop! I am Helen, Scrag of Doubt! Who approaches the Bridge of Death must answer me
these questions three, 'ere the other side he see.
ROBIN: Ask me the questions, Bridge-Scrag. I'm not afraid.
SCRAG: What is your name?
ROBIN: Sir Robin of Camelot.
SCRAG: What is your quest?
ROBIN: To seek the Holy Grail.
SCRAG: What is the capital of Assyria?
ROBIN: I don't know that! Auuuuuuuugh!
SCRAG: Stop! What is your name?
GALAHAD: Sir Galahad of Camelot.
SCRAG: What is your quest?
GALAHAD: I seek the Grail.
SCRAG: What is your favorite color?
GALAHAD: Blue. No yel-- Auuuuuuuugh!

There once was a dame Dr. Helen,
with a hole for a brain some fell in.

No Nukes they implored 'spite the gathering horde,

BUSH IS A FASCIST!

Is lefty loopiness hereditary? I ask because Helen Caldicott and Alison Broniowski are related(aunt and niece?). And there's Anna Broinowski who made the film of homage to batty aunt Helen.

What have we got here - a creeping insanity gene?

Thank you for the information about the various doomsday cults. It's so hard to keep track of all the different ways the world is going to end. All these chicken littles' clucking starts to sound alike after awhile.

>Now... there may be Global Warming, but there is also global warming on Mars, Jupiter, and Titan, so this is more likely a normal solar cycle than anything else. I seriously doubt mankind is the cause ;).

Global warming on Mars? I blame Halliburton.

"...the Australian paediatrician, who runs the Nuclear Policy Research Institute in Washington, has just spent a frantic two-and-a-half months criss-crossing America to deliver her anti-nuclear and anti-Bush message."

I'm betting that she flew.

Just a guess, mind you.

N. O'Brain
Imperial Minister for Useless Information