Local angle
John Howard is on TV. I’ve missed the start of what he said. There will be a regular military briefing at 11am every day. We should all be united in our hope that the troops will return home safe and sound, whatever we think of the war.
Now there’s questions from journalists:
What time was JH aware? Not going into detail.
Are we at a greater risk of terrorist threats? In speech tonight I’ll put it in context.
Are our troops at risk because of legality? No, even if the war is illegal.
Should public prepare for casualties? Always a risk.
As an aside, he’s used the terms “predeployed” and “deployed” interchangably, showing that the former term is nothing but a propaganda tool to hide the fact we were committed to war a long time ago.
Robert, if you missed it, I’ve got the Shorter John Howard (if that’s possible) over at my blog
In case you missed it Rob, most local libraries have dictionaries explaining “propoganda”. Perhaps Howard (and many others????) have been sloppy about the use of deploy/redeploy; but, naturally, this isn’t as serious a matter as sloppy us e of “propoganda”, is it.
“Propaganda” is used a lot in place of “spin”, because it sounds a lot more sinister. Yeah, Rob probably fucked up by using it like this. That, or it’s a spin thing too.
Either way, it’s hardly worse than saying “predeploy” to insinuate our troops haven’t *actually* been deployed proper yet. It may not be a lesser sin, either: probably they’re the same, although Howard is no doubt influencing more people than Rob Corr.
As apt an example of meiosis as I’ve seen recently Mark, in your final line.
*brow furrows*. Ah, I see.
So did you slave over a hot thesaurus for hours, Norman, or was that just at the top of your head? Either way, very good.
(I assume you mean “understatement”, and not the cellular process)
Sorry for the delay responding, Mark, but for quite a while I couldn’t.
Strange as it may seem, there was a time when many things which now appear obscure, were part of the standard education. In my day, even a working class lad from a broken home could become aware of material now hidden from our students.
My grandmother left school at 13, but [leaving aside problems associated with being long dead] could run rings around many a current University Honours student.