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7,000 SIGNATURES IN AUSTRALIA = NYT COVERAGE
The New York Times is het up about GetUp!:
In a little more than a week, a new grass-roots political movement here has gathered more than 7,000 names of supporters on its Web site in a campaign to free David Hicks, an Australian citizen being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The organization, GetUp!, was founded this month by two young Australians. They collected the names for a letter to the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, demanding that he take action to have Mr. Hicks, 30, brought back to Australia to stand trial ...
“We’re blown away,” Lachlan Harris, a spokesman for GetUp!, said about the response to the campaign. “Signing a letter for someone accused of serious crimes is not something one does lightly.”
GetUp! must take the crimes Hicks is accused of pretty lightly – the organisation’s letter doesn’t mention them at all. Nor does it mention what charges Hicks should face before an Australian court.
(Via Alan R.M. Jones)
Aging Gamer states it more cleverly.
The size of the number never matters. P.J. O’Rourke (I think) once said, you could tack on a couple of zeros to the death tolls reported from third world train wrecks and you’d still get yawns from readers and viewers.
Similarly, tens of thousands can gather in the name of causes the Times disagrees with, and the event may well have never taken place given the coverage. Don’t we get it? The Times decides what is, and what is not, news!
An online petition garners a “whopping” 7,000 signatures and the Old Grey Lady swoons? The blockheads at the Democrat Party mouthpiece don’t know much about online petitions, do they?
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2005 08 28 at 11:19 AM • permalinkI wonder how many of those “names” would fail a simple audit.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2005 08 28 at 12:33 PM • permalinkBruce, those good citizens I.P. Freely and Seymour Butts are just politically active. Their names sure do end up on a lot of petitions.
Posted by David Crawford on 2005 08 28 at 01:52 PM • permalinkBruce Rheinstein — I wonder how many of those signatures were us?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 08 28 at 02:44 PM • permalink“Signing a letter for someone accused of serious crimes is not something one does lightly.”
Au contraire! That Howard war criminal petition debacle of last week was certainly something I took very lightly indeed. And my contribution(s) ended up DELETED. That should be the news of the day.
“Terrorist Teacher tackles Howardian crimes”
So, let me get this straight, this means he should be released, right?
So if Osama can get 7,000 signatures on a petition to leave him alone, we should do that to?
Posted by Quentin George on 2005 08 28 at 05:16 PM • permalinkNot only did they fail to mention what charges Hicks should face before an Australian court but they refuse to respond to that very question I posed to them on the 18th August. Still haven’t received a response. To test the waters I sent an email to ask about submitting a “member profile” for their site and it only took 20 minutes to get a response.
Witness the vibrant intellectual discourse of the left wing folks.Posted by Hank Reardon on 2005 08 28 at 07:34 PM • permalinkGetUp’s shady origins exposed by Glen Milne in The Ausralian:
This self-proclaimed non-partisan, progressive organisation has a website that features advertising campaigns targeting the dangers of unfettered government power in the Senate. But last week, Hewson decided to end his association with GetUp!. His departure followed questions raised in this column about the organisation’s company structure and its aggressive soliciting of money and personal details from subscribers.
With Hewson went GetUp!‘s bipartisan fig leaf. The remaining members of the board are all from the political Left.
As one might expect it’s a crock. Read Glen Milne’s piece here.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 08 28 at 11:02 PM • permalinkWow, 7000 signatures! Hmmmmmm…...Australia has an estimated population of 20,090,437 (CIA World Factbook)....wow, man, that’s 0.035% of the population.
Woo hoo! The liberal left is ascendant once again in Australia! John HoWARd had better start looking for sanctuary!
</sarcasm>
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 08 29 at 01:27 AM • permalinkSortelli, being HEAVY HANDED? Never!! Who woulda thunk that?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 08 29 at 03:55 AM • permalink
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The petition started by Starmen.net to Nintendo for them to revive the Earthbound series (called Mother in Japan) got 10,013 (their goal was 10,000, so it stopped after that).
It even worked (for Japan anyway), where is their NYT coverage? And why can’t GetUp! do better then an old videogame series?