This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • TAH on BBC

    Yes, every time something happens, the BBC comes to the guy who has opinions they can’t find anywhere else, so I’ll be on BBC again today between 1 – 3 pm Eastern discussing the shooting in Afghanistan. Of course, they wanted to frame the debate in terms of PTSD and protracted war and I wouldn’t let them get me in that trap. We don’t know who the guy is, so how do we know that his participation in the war had anything to do with it. I also pointed out that these things happen without anyone involved going to war, like Hassan in Fort Hood and the Norwegian nutjob recently. Remember, the initial reports out of Fort Hood were that Hassan had multiple tours in Iraq until we set them straight.

    So, I’m sure I’ll have a raucous time. If you have a chance, tune in here.

    You guys can prep me in the comments.

  • Media hoping to start another round of bloody protests in Afghanistan

    Well, that’s what it looks like when you look at Reuters’ headline;

    The article calls it a “US Shooting Spree” as if all of our soldiers over there were participating. They go on to speculate that “one or more US soldiers” participated in it. With no real evidence.

    Alertnet (a subsidiary of Reuters under the URL trust.org) smears the entire “Western Forces” with the deed;

    Alertnet has already removed the article, but not before I could get a screenshot. I guess the news has been slow in the days since the last protest, so the media is going to fan flames like they did with the urination video.

  • Cy Sun on his military service

    Last month, based on media reports, we briefly discussed the case of Cy Sun, the veteran who won a write-in campaign against the incumbent mayor of Pacific, CA WA, against whom political opponents lodged charges that he was breaking the laws against Stolen Valor. The media, of course, was quick to report on the charges. Mr Sun, came out with the proof of his military claims last week;

    Luckily someone posted the video on the internet, because even though people who were in the room tell me that the media was there, they’re not reporting on it. Go see for yourself. Google Cy Sun’s name and you’ll see the old stories from last month questioning his claims, but none about last week’s meeting in the video. The same search results at KIROTV and the Auburn-Reporter who had reporters in the room but haven’t seen fit to put anything on the internet yet.

    They were quick to put the the anti-Sun stories on the internet, but they’re reticent about clearing his name. But that’s what passes for journalism these days. So this is TAH doing the job for the legacy media, once again.

  • Veterans benefit battle

    Peggy sent us a link from a local Memphis TV station about Tshonba Bernard, supposedly a veteran of the war against terror, even though they don’t mention which battlefields who is unable to get veterans benefits from the VA who says that they can’t find a reason for his claim for PTSD. Here’s a screenshot of his uniform in the video at the link;

    Now, that’s not the uniform of someone who deployed to the war. There’s no combat patch and no campaign ribbons. There’s also no infantry cord, even though there’s an EIB and the brass looks like infantry branch insignia. There would be a CIB if he’d deployed with an infantry unit as his branch insignia indicates.

    AKO says he’s still in the National Guard and a sergeant in B Co. 1/224th Aviation Regiment (unless there is more than one Tshonba Bernard in Tennessee). Now, I’m not sure if NG guys still in the service can get DVA benefits, but it looks like he’s getting treatment from the pile of pills on his nightstand in the video at the link above.

    While I agree that it takes entirely too long for veterans to get the benefits that they deserve, the media should do a better job of picking the veterans they use in their reports.

    Added by Sporkmaster:
    Also if he was National Guard, wouldn’t he get this instead?

    Also did anyone else notice this with the Air Assault Badge?

  • Matthis update

    Matthis made a celebrity appearance at a recruiting station, somewhere. I’m guessing it’s in New York City since his squeeze Elaine Brower is there, and she doesn’t leave the city very often. But, apparently, he’s been busy eating up his VA benefits in college. Those benefits that he didn’t see a value in earning when he was called back to active duty.

    Yeah, the evil military and the evil US government that let him continue his education despite the fact that he answer the call. Ingrate.

    His Facebook page listed a mention of him in the Chicago Tribune. the author of the article, Robert Koehler, mistakenly described him as an Afghanistan veteran in an article about the subject we discussed last week about “war porn”;

    As Matthis Chiroux, an Afghan vet and war resister, pointed out recently in an excellent essay, the phenomenon of “war porn” — the photographic record of desecrated corpses — is widespread within the ranks and aggravated by our long, slow defeat in the war on terror: our inability to impose our will on a living enemy. “Historically, defeated or nearly defeated armies have been guilty of some of the most serious atrocities,” Matthis writes.

    I wrote the author yesterday to inform him that Matthis isn’t an Afghanistan veteran and have yet to get a response from him. I guess what Mathis writes is more important than who he is. But if the messenger is corrupt, the message is corrupt.

  • Study: Conservatives and racists are stupid

    So Joe sent us this link thinking I wouldn’t post it. It’s from NorthwestOhio.com and entitled “Conservatives and racists are actually stupid, study finds” and the title is misleading. What the article actually reports is that the stupid become ideologues;

    A new study bound to stir controversy found that people with a low I.Q. are drawn to prejudice, racism and a socially conservative political ideology.

    I’ll admit that there are some stupid people who are racists and conservative, but that doesn’t translate to all of us conservatives. In fact, I’ve met more liberal racists than conservative racists. And the article, when it quotes the scientists who conducted this study, doesn’t mention conservatives, it only mentions “ideologies”, not being specific about which one;

    The study’s lead author, Dr. Gordon Hodson, told LiveScience that people with lower intelligence scores are attracted to the “structure and order” of these ideologies because they make it easier to comprehend a complicated world.

    So apparently, the study says the racist and stupid are attracted to any ideology that allows them to be intellectually vacant – just knee-jerk reactions to any given discussion.

    The editor who wrote that title must be a racist and a conservative because he’s obviously stupid.

    “Reality is complicated and messy,” Dr. Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia, who was not involved in the study, told The Huffington Post. “Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.”

    Well, which ideology could be simpler than an ideology that involves supporting a government solution all of your problems, and throwing other people’s money at the solutions yet never has there been an instance of government ever solving anything? And still the support never wanes for more government solutions. Or throwing for more money at more problems.

    To prove who the stupid ones are, Joe sent me this article without seeing the obvious flaws in it.

  • TAH in the Washington Post

    I spent a few minutes on the phone with Erik Wemple this morning who writes about the media in the Washington Post. He wanted to hear about how we took down the Leo Webb lie. So I gave you guys props;

    Lilyea says he’s “85 to 90 percent sure” that it was his readers who forced the retractions. To confirm the claim, this blog has reached out to American Public Media (home of Marketplace) and to KQED and is awaiting responses.

    In the meantime, Lilyea will wait for the next faker to emerge. When he launched This Ain’t Hell six years ago, he focused on Iraq war opponents who lied about having served in the military. The Internet, however, insisted that he cast a wider net. “My readers decided I should out phonies everywhere,” says Lilyea. “They’re the ones who click my ads and get my income in, so I go where they send me.”

    But, to me, the big victory in this isn’t our new-found media attention, but Wemple asked me for my DD214 before he published his post. So I think we’re getting through their thick skulls. Trust but verify. I call it winning.

    But read the whole article. I told him that I have the best readers in the world, that no one comes here to read my drivel, they come here to read your comments and the tips you send me. I remind myself of that every morning when I open my laptop and wonder WTF I’m going to write about today and some of you always come through for me.

  • TAH bats 1000

    About our Leo Webb super sniper who saw half of his squadron wiped out. Kevin emailed the senior editor of the Perspectives project and warned him about Webb, to which Mark Trautwein responded;

    Mr. Webb has been subsequently placed in a VA live-in care facility specializing in PTSD so I’m unable to seek his response to your comment at this time.

    Oh, yeah? Really Mr. Trautwein? Then why does the link to Leo’s missive now sport this retraction;

    Editor’s Note: A commentary by Leo Webb, ”Returning veteran has few marketable skills,” prompted questions from listeners about Webb’s account of his service as an Army sniper in Iraq. A subsequent investigation found that the Army has no record of Webb. Webb also said he pitched for a Chicago Cubs minor-league team. Inquiries to the Cubs and to Minor League Baseball found no record of Webb. Marketplace has an obligation to provide accurate information. That was not met in this commentary. It has been retracted and the text and audio have been removed from the web site

    Yeah, so it’s nice that they came clean, but it’s work they should have done in advance. And telling Kevin that the douche was in a VA hospital for treating his PTSD was just bullshit deception. And then they wonder why we want to defund NPR with taxpayer dollars.