Loose cannons

Issue 

Nice Cossacks

"In fact, the modern use of horses, while deliberately visually intimidating, involves mainly sideways movement of the horses to jostle the crowd in the direction required." — the Sydney Morning Herald's chief right-wing crank Padraic McGuinness explaining why mounted police tactics against M1 demonstrators can't technically be called "charging".

An insight

"An additional insight into the M1 Alliance's level of sensitivity to real, historical human suffering occurs when, for no obvious reason, they claim that the Australian Government 'interns refugees in concentration camps'." — the Sydney Morning Herald's deputy chief right-wing ranter Imre Salusinszky, trying to smear M1 protesters with the wild accusation that they (shock, horror) support freedom for refugees.

Hooray for Hollywood!

"It goes without saying that [M1 protesters] could not exist without the global culture, the international marketplace and the technologies they claim to despise." — the Sydney Daily Telegraph's chief right-wing ranter Piers Akerman.

Buy Goliath, sell David

"Protest groups like M1 love portraying themselves as the little guys, the socially concerned Davids doing battle with corporate Goliaths. What they conveniently ignore is that most of those Goliaths exist because thousands of average citizens like to buy or use their goods and services." — Christine Jackman, Miranda Devine's right-wing ranter replacement at the Daily Telegraph, April 19, 2001.

Flatly untrue

"Flatly untrue propositions about trends in living standards and the distribution of income between rich and poor countries are presented as fact, while careful refutations of such propositions are rejected as biased or financed by global corporations." — McGuinness again, SMH, May 2, 2001.

Careful refutation

"New evidence suggests that global inequality is worsening rapidly... World income distribution became markedly more unequal between 1988 and 1993 ... the share of world income going to the poorest 10% of the world's population fell by over a quarter, whereas the share of the richest 10% rose by 8%." — London School of Economics professor of political economy Robert Wade, writing in the arch-conservative Economist magazine, April 28, 2001.

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