PeterDavid.net

I just can't figure out why they needed a helicopter and missiles. Doesn't Mossad have an assassin capable of making a head shot on a paraplegic in a wheelchair from the top of a nearby building? Barring that, couldn't they use the Vulcan 20-mm autocannon on the Apache, instead of launching explosive-tipped rockets into a residential area?

But if their happy about him being dead - then that means he isn't really a martyr.

Your applying logic to these idiots. Then again I suspect sarcasm is in your words. ^_^

And the UN wants to condemn Israel for blowing up a man complicit in the murders of hundreds of Israelis. I'm curious: Was there a condemnation of Palestinians for cynically manipulating a 14 year old? A ten year old? Just wondering.

Just another example why the UN is worthless.

The definition of martyr has changed over the years. It used to mean dying for a cause, now it mean dying for a cause, but taking as many enemies with you as you can.

One can only wish that people following these terrorists would realize that "Hey, these leaders are saying go blow yourselves up, so why aren't they strapping bombs on and leading the charge?"

Couldn't agree with you more, Peter.

-Dave O'Connell

How about we get a UN resolution saying that any time a person is intentionally killed for any reason it's a bad thing?

Crud. Forgot about Texas.

You know, Israel is just as full of peckerheads-in-power as the Palestinian areas. I think we should preemptively invade the whole country and force a strange form of government on all of them. That will do the trick.

(Sarcasm! WHEE!)

I'am sorry but personally I think that Isarail has gone to far. Since we have gone to war with Iraq, we should now head for Israil. The fact that the rest of the world has let this gone on is appailing. Break down the wall and mix everyone up so that they shoould learn to get along.

I think to become a martyr you have to "knowingly" put yourself in a life threatening situration. has apposed to been blindsided by a sneak missile attack.

but here's what really reeks.
Until recently he had been a prisoner and the old excuse of whoops he fell down a flight of stairs wasn't really going to wash so hey let's release him then blow him up! capital punishment Israelie style.

and in case your not sure

killing people is wrong simple as that
terrorist do so cause their the bad guy's hence they do bad things

governments however are supposed to be the good guy and are supposed to uphold the law hence the UN and people like me condem israel when it take "action like this" that really ain't much different from what the terrorist do themselves.

What I don't get is: both sides have the same diety, the same basic stories in their religon, the same dietary laws, the same everything. The only major difference is who they claim God gave the land to. Can't they just agree it'd be a nice place to live if both sides stopped killing each other?

"governments however are supposed to be the good guy and are supposed to uphold the law"

You're right, of course. They should always just send in cops to arrest someone who has his body wrapped in explosives instead of blowing them up at a distance. (Yes, yes, this leader wasn't, but the point is still valid overall.)
And, besides, the Hamas have unofficially declared war on Israel. Which part of "Israel has the right to end the war as quickly and effectively as possible and beheading the opposition is a good way to start" doesn't make sense?

Jonathon posed: "I just can't figure out why they needed a helicopter and missiles. Doesn't Mossad have an assassin capable of making a head shot on a paraplegic in a wheelchair from the top of a nearby building? Barring that, couldn't they use the Vulcan 20-mm autocannon on the Apache, instead of launching explosive-tipped rockets into a residential area?"

Regarding statement #1 and Question #1, Isreal wanted there to be absolutely no question of how he died and and who did it. They wanted it extremely visible.

Question #2? Hmmm that's tougher, but I'd wager that if you were the Isrealies and had these idiots strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up buses and nightclubs and shopping centers full of non-military targets, you'd say it's time for some severe payback...

As far as the idea that America should invade Isreal now, give me a break. America needs to stay the hell out of other countries business. Notice how we went after Iraq, with only suspected WMD's, but North Korea has proven it's nuclear capabilities yet we leaves them alone....

You see Peter in the twisted logic of martyrdom, you're only really a martyr if you see it coming.

Jess, keep thinking that way. I hope one day someone will listen.

Sorry Jon, I went back to double-check the no "h" between the o and the n, but forgot you use an a rather than an o near the end...

Oh Geez PAD...there is no "right" and "wrong" side to this whole affair for Pete's sake (pun intended). Both sides of this war have committed an untold amount of atrocities - whether they claim it's based on a religious belief or not - it's long since passed that point. Israelis kill Palestinians because "they always have" and visa versa. I've long since given up hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

I'm not sure what's more sad - the actual conflict or the fact that so many Americans find humor in it.

Simplist Answer: They hate Israel and this just fuels the fire.

What I don't get is: both sides have the same diety, the same basic stories in their religon, the same dietary laws, the same everything. The only major difference is who they claim God gave the land to.

I have a feeling that the differences are a lot more pronouced than what you've stated. Yes, there are similarities, but the differences are more than minor points.

Well i think that what terrorist do is wrong, horrible and have no justification but i can't see with good eyes killing anyone, no matter what he have done. And when they kill the terrorist also killed another persons. I think that it's a very complex problem and no one can say there are a good and a bad side. Both sides have done wrong things.
I expected nobody gets upset with my comment is just my oppinion it could be wrong (i'm not the good side)

As far as the idea that America should invade Isreal now, give me a break. America needs to stay the hell out of other countries business. Notice how we went after Iraq, with only suspected WMD's, but North Korea has proven it's nuclear capabilities yet we leaves them alone....

So if we go in, you get mad, and if we stay out, you get mad. At least you're consistent.

Where dod I say I'm mad if America quits intefering in other countries?

C'mon, Clark, I'm really interested!

Clark, if that's how you interpreted my jibs at Herr Bush not invading N. Korea, you're dead wrong, I think we should leave them alone too.

Same with Iran and Lebanon too, until they actually present a credible threat. I hate the idea of America as the sole superpower in the world. I hate the idea of any one country having that much power actually.

It's the fifth horse of the apocolyps!

I agree with both Peter and Bladestar. (And it's a weird feeling, let me tell you...)

Why are the Palestinians upset that Israel blew up the Hamas guy?

Not to get into an Israel argument with you, but this seems to me kind of a callous way to dismiss someone being killed. It's like saying "Why are Al-Qaeda members upset that we offed Osama bin Laden? After all, he was on dialysis so they should consider it a sort of blessing"; or "Why are Catholics so up in arms about that sniper shooting the Pope? After all he's an old man and can barely move, the Church has been responsible for all that bloodshed over the centuries, and it's not like their current stances are doing any favors for women or gays..." No matter how reprehensible someone may seem to non-adherents, if he or she has a fanatic following and someone kills them (again, justifiably or no), that following is going to be upset.

I don't want to say much about what Israel, the Palestinians, the UN or the US should do, have done, not do.

My take on Peter's original question, or at least the way it was put: People all over the world are upset by the deaths of people they know, love, or regard highly. However much they believe in a blessed hereafter: People are upset and grieve. No need for the dead ones to have died martyrs: Christians, too, believe that the departed one has gone to a better world, and still they grieve.

So I think this part of his argument isn't very convincing, even though Peter wrote "upset" rather than "grieve". I guess I'm taking Peter too literally here.

I have a feeling that the differences are a lot more pronouced than what you've stated.

Well, it's probably more like the fact that, like the Christians, Nazi's, and anybody else needing a scapegoat, Jews are the root of all evil, and therefore must be destroyed.

So if we go in, you get mad, and if we stay out, you get mad. At least you're consistent.

And you're making a mockery out of the situation with North Korea.

Bush invades a "soft target" that's no real threat, plays hooky with the Saudis, and we have to "play nice" with North Korea, a country that has directly, intentionally, and repeatedly threatened us?

Yeah, what a @#$^'ing great job Bush is doing.

I'm not sure why the Europeans seem to find it worse when Israel attacks Palestinians than they do when the Palestinians attack Israelis. I suspect it's just good old fashioned European anti-semitism (as the French would say "Il y a des juifs se cachant dans le grenier, mon ami allemand" ("There are Jews hiding in the attic, my German friend."))

Alternatively, it could be that they think of the Palestinians as little more than deluded followers of a death cult and therefore nothing should be expected of them, while the Israelis are held to a higher standard.

Given recent history, I'd go with the former as the more likely scenario.

When...not if but when...Iran or one of the other Middle East countries sets off an A bomb in Tel Aviv the Israelis will settle all accounts with the 50 or so nukes they themsleves have. It will be death on a scale unimagined but who can honestly say they didn't see it coming?

Hope I'm wrong, afraid that I'm not.

So if we go in, you get mad, and if we stay out, you get mad. At least you're consistent.

And you're making a mockery out of the situation with North Korea.

Yeah, it's all my fault.

Bush invades a "soft target" that's no real threat, plays hooky with the Saudis, and we have to "play nice" with North Korea, a country that has directly, intentionally, and repeatedly threatened us?

But which, ultimately, hasn't DONE anything to us or our allies.

Second, an unprovoked war with North Korea may ultimately draw China in against us. That would be BAD. And we gave Iraq 12 years to work things out with the UN, so we can probably wait another eight for North Korea.

What the Israelis have to do to get Europeans and the left in general to actually see the truth is simple.

Tanning beds.

You see this situation is the "lefts" wet dream. Evil rich democratic, capitalist whities vs the poor darkies!

Tanning beds. It'll confuse them. See Sudan where slaves are still kept, but too mux hcaramel, not enough vanilla.

What the Israelis have to do to get Europeans and the left in general to actually see the truth is simple.

Tanning beds.

You see this situation is the "lefts" wet dream. Evil rich democratic, capitalist whities vs the poor darkies!

Tanning beds. It'll confuse them. See Sudan where slaves are still kept, but too mux hcaramel, not enough vanilla.

What's really funny is that there was a story
on the english Al-jazeera webpage that it was
really Israel that strapped the Palestinian boy
with explosives as part of a propoganda hoax and
that Palestinians could never, ever do such a
horrible thing.

Personally I've never head of any of the
Palestinian "freedom fighter" Leadership
having their own kids blow themselves up.
Hear at lot of how they would be proud,
but not anything of actually doing it.
You would think they would want to brag.
Always seems to be someone else's kid.

I'm sorry, but I can't agree that the Israeli action was proper.

I'd like to think that a higher moral ground could be taken, they could arrest and prosecute him with due process, etc., etc.

What the Israeli's have basically done is said that they are at a state of war, and there is no peace process going on. I was hoping for a better outcome than that.

Yes, I agree, let's let due process take its course. While we're at it, let's insist the Taliban extradite bin Laden so we can put him on trial.

/sarcasm.

Actually Rob, substitute Pakistan for the Taliban and that's pretty much what we're doing.

"I think to become a martyr you have to "knowingly" put yourself in a life threatening situration. has apposed to been blindsided by a sneak missile attack."

See, now I thought that, too. That was until I saw the article on the AOL newsfeed about a rally led by the new leadershop of Hamas, in which it was stated:

"Rantissi again vowed Hamas would hit Israel hard over Yassin's slaying. "I remind you that ... we do not forget the blood of our martyrs," he told the crowd, in which many people held up portraits of the elderly, wheelchair-bound cleric."

And Elayne, when you said, "No matter how reprehensible someone may seem to non-adherents, if he or she has a fanatic following and someone kills them (again, justifiably or no), that following is going to be upset"...darlin', you're missing the point. Way missed. Putting on my best Cartman voice, the point is over heah, while you are way, way somewhere over theah. My point, and I do have one, is this...

Once upon a time, I was a 14 year old boy who was convinced he'd never have a girlfriend. I couldn't get a date. I couldn't get a girl even to look my way without derision, 'cause I was this, y'know, fat kid who liked comic books. So I can totally wrap myself around the mindset of that kid from a couple days ago. It's a bad, sad, depressing place to be. It pervades you, gets into you, colors how you view the world and yourself.

And these bastards, these cretins, these slimebags, these motherf**kers, they go to these kids and speak about how wonderful it is to kill themselves. They manipulate them, muck their minds up even more than they already are, prey upon their low self-esteem. Instead of having people telling them, "Adolescence is tough on everyone, but you'll find someone, you really will, just believe in yourself," these kids are getting, "You're right, you'll never get laid, and the only way you'll ever amount to anything is to die."

And over and over Americans say, Well gee, if the organizers really believe that killing themselves is such a great thing, why don't they do it? And the answer clearly lies in the chest pounding and moaning over Yassin's death. Rather than, say, holding a New Orleans-style funeral in celebration--which would make sense if they *really* believed he was cavorting with 72 virgins while leaving behind a useless body--they're flipping out and vowing vengeance.

Which, to me, lays bare the hypocrisy of their vomitous mind-f**king of these kids.

This bastard started a teen suicide cult. That's what it really is. If someone started a teen suicide cult in the United States and Europe, resulting in the death of child after child, and then got killed in an FBI standoff, there'd be no UN condemnation and the world would be saying "Good riddance to bad rubbish."

That's my point.

PAD

What seems to have escaped a lot of people is that, both in the US and Israel, governments no longer seem to be concerned with the issue of the (for lack of a better term) 'moral high ground'.

Terrorists kill innocents, use nasty weapons, and assassinate leaders. Thats what makes them Terrorists.

Governments (at least openly) arrest lawbreakers, conduct trials, use economic leverage, and use overwhelming force in the pursuit of a declared conflict against an aggressor nation.

Israel has now killed innocents, assassinated a leader and depending on your definition, used a nasty weapon. The US has now used overwhelming force against a non-agressor nation (unless anyone can document an Iraqi military force attacking a US target outside of Iraq since Desert Storm, they are not an aggressor. Supporter, probably, aggressor, no.) The US led coalition has also censored (closed down) an Iraqi newspaper.

The lines here are becoming increasingly blurred. To paint yourself as the 'good guys' as both the US and Israel have, then you have to ACT like them, and accept the limitations that role entails, at least in the public arena.

Would it have been more risky to send a squad in to arrest this Cleric? Sure! But then could Israel have claimed that 'look, they are blowing us up, but we follow the law!' by putting him on trial? Would that not have bought them a lot more international support in the long run? Instead, they chose a short sighted path that hurt their international image, for a questionable, if any benefit (recruitment for Hamas is allegedly up a significant percentage).

There are few character traits that people in general dislike more than arrogance. That's a lesson most govts need to learn.

PAD,
Well said. I don't think I have ever agreed with you more.I am all for justice in the Mid-East, and a Palestinaian state should be part of that. But groups like Hamas do NOT want peace. Their hatred of Israel and perversion of Islam is so great all they want is to kill as many Jews as possible. To paraphrase Golda Meir, peace can only come when the extreme Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel. Right now the opposite is true. What is true is that the U.N. is worthless, hopelessly corrupt, and I am proud of my country for being the only one to say "nay" to the resolution condemning Israel.

I have a feeling that the differences are a lot more pronouced than what you've stated. Yes, there are similarities, but the differences are more than minor points.

One religion calls God Yahweh, the other Allah. One calls their law, Halakha. The other Sharia. But both Judaism and Islam are law/deed based religions. And the laws are similar. If this were a religious war, it would be silly, in that there are probably less differences between Judaism and Islam than there are between Catholicism and Protestantism (cf. Ireland). The war is a war between brothers. (If we accept the beliefs of both religions, it is literal, in that Isaac and Ishmael were half-brothers)

But it's not a religious war. It's a war over land. Land that was promised to both by Britain. (It's all really Britain's fault.) Israel, over time, has shown they are willing to trade land for peace. The Palestinians haven't. But I still hold out hope.

I wonder how much the timing of killing this Hamas guy is related to Sharon's upcoming indictment and removal from power?

Parting shot?

Or calculated plan? By planning to make Sharon even more of "the bad guy" than ever before he leaves office by having him kill as many militant leaders (leaders who will never accept peace with Israel under any circumstnaces) then replacing Sharon with someone who will say "It was Sharon, not us". They might then likely try to get back to the peace table with some Palestinian moderates having already sent a strong message to the miltants. Of course Sharon would have to be in on it though.

Pad: I've never agreed with you more than I do right now.

The basest animal on earth protects its children. Only humans could sink this low.

I totally agree with Peter on this one. If Israel had offed Yasser Arafat, the world outcry out be moreso understandable --- Arafat *technically* represents the authentic Palestinian leader, however laughable he or his organization gets at times.

However, Hamas is an organization exclusively dedicated to the extermination of Israel and all its people. If there were an organization solely dedicated to killing the French, I would think the French are quite within their rights to kill the group's leadership.

So Europe's condemnation is nothing but absurd.

Thor

Actually Rob, substitute Pakistan for the Taliban and that's pretty much what we're doing.

The difference being we're dealing there with a fairly lab-abiding, real government, who has shown commitment to peace. Only in some people's wildest fantasies was the Taliban, or the Palestinian govt, ever really committed to any such process.

How can a government attempt to negotiate peace when the majority of the opposing population supports the efforts of terrorist organizations bent on the destruction of said government? And if no one has "control" over these organizations, who do you meaningfully negotiate with?

And let's not forget the fact that you cannot negotiate with terrorists. Because once you do, everybody with an agenda will take up those methods saying, "It worked for those guys."

Why are the Palestinians upset that Israel blew up the Hamas guy?

The same reason al-Qa`ida is pissed about our invading Iraq, despite the fact that it has given them great propeganda and created an anarchic playground for their kind of fanaticism to fester. The same reason the Arab nations rail against Israel for human-rights violations, while abusing their own people's rights all the worse. Once you have taken an absolutist stance, once you have decided that your enemies are absolutely Evil(tm), ANYTHING they do is wrong, and anything that hurts them is right. You have to keep justifying the hatred.

And the UN wants to condemn Israel for blowing up a man complicit in the murders of hundreds of Israelis. I'm curious: Was there a condemnation of Palestinians for cynically manipulating a 14 year old? A ten year old? Just wondering.

Last time I checked, Hamas wasn't a nation-state or a member of the UN. It's like complaining that the USDA doesn't do enough to fix interstate highways. While the UN certainly doesn't condone terrorism, its sphere of authority is primarily the governments of its member nations. There is a difference between individual's acts of violence, and those performed under the authority of a government, in the same way there is a difference between being burgled and having the government perform an unwarranted search.

(Sure, a burgler is probably going to show less regard for your safety and property than the government, you can't call the cops when the cops are the ones doing it.)

Personally, I am less concerned with their blowing up an evil parapalegic, so much as their blowing up several people who happened to be next to him...

I agree completely with PAD and most of the other entries on this thread. The double standard applied to Israel and the Palestinians would be shocking if all of us were not so used to it. Right now we have a ton of finger pointing going on in Washington as to who was at fault for letting Bin Laden go when we had him in our cross-hairs, a tumor removal that might have prevented 9/11. Israel had its chance, took it, and succeeding in turning a monster, much like Bin Laden, into a stain. Bravo.

For those on this thread who can't understand why the two sides don't just talk it out. Forget it, at least for now. Not only Hamas, but even those in the Palestinian "mainstream" are starting to abandon the idea of a 2 state solution, advocating in the alternative a one state "majority rule" of Arabs and Jews together. This is transparently tantamount to the elimination of the Jewish state--Israel-- and its replacement with an Arab controlled "Palestine" in which Jews would find their lives increasingly intolerable and would eventually seek to leave in droves. A de facto destruction of the Jewish nation. Only Israel now seeks a 2 state solution and for obvious reasons. I hope the other side comes back to the table at some point, (and an evaporation of the above-noted double standard might encourage them to get there) but for now there is no reasonable optimistic position.

I seem to remeber a time where someone was angry about a war between two people and decided to do something about it. He took the leaders of the two militaries and asked them to fight it out between themselves. Of course this idea turned out to be moot because one of the leaders said that,"we're not angry at each other!"

I wish this could have been a true story, but it wasn't. It was a product of two guys from Cleveland. The Man was Superman.

Don't you just hate it when comics have better solutions than real people?

Charles F. Waldo

I just want to say that i don't think there is a generalized anti-semitism feeling in Europe, disagreeing whith Israel's goverment doesn't means that you think that jews are evils, or that you want all of them being killed.
Well there are Neo-Nazis groups but they are more interested in attack Black or Arab people.

What I don't get is: both sides have the same diety, the same basic stories in their religon, the same dietary laws, the same everything. The only major difference is who they claim God gave the land to. Can't they just agree it'd be a nice place to live if both sides stopped killing each other?

It isn't, and has never been, a religious conflict. It is a conflict over territory, national identity, and cultural division. Jews fared better in the Islamic world, for most of history, than they did in the Christian world. It was only when the Zionist movement began that conflict erupted, not just over land, but also over the cultural differences between less educated Palestinian Arabs and more modernized, western Jews. Indeed, the first violence against Zionist settlers was performed by Arab CHRISTIANS.

The conflict has been MADE religious by some factions, turned into an article of faith, but this is artificial, just as the conflict in Northern Ireland is not over acknowleging papal authority.

I like to point this out because there is a tendency to assume that this conflict is insoluble because it is supposed to be rooted in fundemental doctrines of faith, or that it has been going on for "thousands of years".

Bill Mulligan posted:
The basest animal on earth protects its children. Only humans could sink this low.

Hate to burst your bubble, but it's a fact that female rodents often have been known to eat their own offspring when other food sources are scarce. Also, a fact that many lion cubs are killed and eaten by a new male taking over the pride--and the females do nothing about it.
Then, too, female turtles lay their eggs on beaches all around the world and just go off (no protection there), and female crocodilians often only protect their offspring until they hatch--depending on the species, the hatchlings may never actually know their "parents".
Even among primates, I've seen enough nature programs to know that protecting one's offspring doesn't always trump the idea of saving one's own skin first.

I mostly agree blackjack, but think on both sides revenge is a large component now.

" my jibs at Herr Bush not invading N. Korea, you're dead wrong, I think we should leave them alone too."

Ah, I see. We should leave alone a nutbar fanatic who is seeing his people starving by the carloads so that he can keep building his military (a military which has a known history of invading neighbours) and who colaims to have actual, working atomic weapons.

I'm not sure I believe him on that last one, but if an unstable child in a crowded tenement building claimed to have dynamite and you'd better be nice to him, would you just shrug and walk away?

Not a terribly responsible way to behave, is it?

Actually, if it was me I'd try to talk him out of the dynamite from outside the building.

Blackjack,
My point, which is certainly different from the one posted to which you respond, is not that the present situation is "insoluble because it is supposed to be rooted in fundemental (sic) doctrines of faith" or even that it has been going on for millennia. The Palestinians are not waging a war of destruction on Israel because of Islam. Some, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, predicate their movements on Islam, but Arafat (like Saddam Hussein) is generally a secular leader and most of the Fattah ruling party are secular and/or Christian. Their desire to get rid of the Jewish state, either by violence or securing a one-state solution with an Arab (not exclusively Muslim) "right of return" is a general desire to rid the region of the Jewish people , whether because of their race, their religious beliefs, their western bent, their level of economic success etc. It is not exclusively tied to the issue of faith, even though Hamas, for example, uses that rhetoric.

So in a sense I agree with you. Where we disagree is when you state it all went bad because of the fledgling Zionist movement. Come on--yes, at some points in history Jews did fare better in Muslim than Christian lands, but as Bernard Lewis and most leading scholars on the subject have well documented, Jews where always "dhimmis" or second class citizens and were often treated brutally in the Islamic world. Centuries of dhmitude lay at the heart of why, in particular, the Arab Muslims will never accept Israel as a nation among them. The Zionist movement formalized in that part of the world a concept of equality for Jews, so in a sense it galvanized both the positive attributes of equality that all are entitled to in the western canon, but in bringing that idea to a world which finds no value in equality, it likewise galvanized the resistance, which we see today in an unwavering opposition to Israel's very existence.

The fact is that the Middle-East is so covered in blood that nothing will ever bring an end to the situation, except the total nuking of the whole area. No more Middle-East, no more problem. As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the whole human race should be exterminated. After all, what other animal plunder the planet as if there was no tomorrow? What other animal fight over ideas? What other animal takes revenge for crimes committed millenia ago? Even attempts to better things have led to tragedies (think of the French Revolution). Frankly, if the will to survive wasn't so ingrained in our minds and souls, it would be enough to just call it quits.

Why does Palestine care? Well...So what if my car is old and busted, I don't want you jumping around on the hood.

Maybe they should've just tried to scare him to death... induce a heart attack or something.

"As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the whole human race should be exterminated."

Blah blah blah. Please don't have children.

"Hate to burst your bubble, but it's a fact that female rodents often have been known to eat their own offspring when other food sources are scarce. Also, a fact that many lion cubs are killed and eaten by a new male taking over the pride--and the females do nothing about it.
Then, too, female turtles lay their eggs on beaches all around the world and just go off (no protection there), and female crocodilians often only protect their offspring until they hatch--depending on the species, the hatchlings may never actually know their "parents".
Even among primates, I've seen enough nature programs to know that protecting one's offspring doesn't always trump the idea of saving one's own skin first."

This isn't "saving one's own skin". This is using children as a weapon of terrorism and it's several magnitudes of evil beyond anything a rodent could conceive.

It's not just the sacrifice of the child--you don't see animals other than human CELEBRATING the death's of one's children. How screwed up is that?

Eisenhower certainly didn't think so.

Second, an unprovoked war with North Korea may ultimately draw China in against us. That would be BAD.

Ahh, I see. We can play big badass country to anybody that we can step on with our big toe.

But heaven-farking forbid we actually do something against somebody that might be able to stand up against us.

And we gave Iraq 12 years to work things out with the UN, so we can probably wait another eight for North Korea.

Eight years for N Korea to build the nukes that Iraq never had...

It isn't, and has never been, a religious conflict. It is a conflict over territory, national identity, and cultural division.

And you don't think religion fits anywhere in there?

What were the Crusades about then?

That blasted piece of land currently known as Israel has been fought over for two thousand years by any and every religious zealot around.

To suddenly think you can just take religion out of the discussion is laughable.

Sure, all those other things factor into it, but I don't think a Palestinian suicide bomber lights the fuse going "damn our cultural differences."

No, they're saying "damn those Jews".

I'm not sure why the Europeans seem to find it worse when Israel attacks Palestinians than they do when the Palestinians attack Israelis. I suspect it's just good old fashioned European anti-semitism (as the French would say "Il y a des juifs se cachant dans le grenier, mon ami allemand" ("There are Jews hiding in the attic, my German friend."))

Well we keep being told it's anti-semitism. Personally I don't think so, but then again, maybe I'm just too close to see the big picture. Frith knows the Israelis are.

I think one of the main problems Europeans have with the current Israeli policies is disappointment. Let's face it, we all know that Yassin was a scumfuck. His behaviour was indefensible. Can we get that out of the way first? I don't want you thinking that I approve of bombing residential neighbourhoods in an attempt to scare innocents into submission.

The problem is that attitude cuts both ways. I see the IDF blowing up people's homes, and I don't see there being any kind of brainwashing going on. This is the product of democracy, justice, rule of law. Slamming missiles into innocent people's homes hoping to snag a scumfuck in the collatoral.

I see the IDF herding Palestinians into ghettos and sending tanks in whenever their political masters demand a pogrom. But they're not bandits, they're educated men from a free and open society.

I could go on, but you've got the point by now.

The Palestinians are living in filth and sqalor, rules by thugs and bandits, and they do terrible things. The Israelis are part of a rich democracy, governed by rule of law. And they do terrible things. For some reason it seems a lot worse when the terrible things are done by the people who should know better.

Alas, as far as I can see both sides are convinced that if only they can stoop to some final act of extreme brutality the others will sit up, take note and realise that they should say 'uncle'. They won't. Pray God they find another way first.

Thank you Peter. I check your Blog regularly because you don't just dogmatically pick one side of the arguments of life and then try and make the other side look stupid. I really enjoy your books (I buy them and borrow all the other things that I read) and have always found your POV to be refreshing.

I'm trying to find Yassar and Ariel's e-mail addresses so that I can forward them your take on this issue. Wish me luck.

Jack

Ok here we go.First let me say the killing on both sides is a bunch of bullshit.My problem is more that by assassinating the man,your making things worse.As far as why the palestinians are upset ,Hamas in a lot of cases feeds,clothes and educates the people with money.Its the same reason that in afghanistan the locals are still under the influence of the warlords.They provide food and money to the people not us ,not the israelis.As far as they are concerned america and the israelis are the enemiesand just killed one of their leaders.Are they brainwashed ??Yeah,misguided ?Definitely.But if all you know is what you are told by the guy giving you food and in your eyes fighting the enemies of your state ,religion and way of life you would be upset too.This is an old tactic also used by the Taliban,Nazis ,KKK and several other hate groups.I dont support the assasination or the response by Hamas and the palestininans and believe me a greater response is coming .
There are really days i wish i was a moron who was happy watching AMERICAN IDOL and THE SIMPLE LIFE instead of reading a paper and watching the news.

Or, perhaps, Nick Eden... it's that the Israelis have a lot more retaliation options open to them than Palestinians. They have the (relative "luxury") of deciding on a response that either minimizes or maximizes the safety of their soldiers, and on the other side of the scale either minimizes or... well, not minimizes... the possible collateral damage among Palestianians.

Palestianians have the luxury of ... ah... bombing or not bombing. Such a varied amount of responses open to them.

And, I'll point out... NO I don't approve of Palestinians bombing, before y'all go calling me antisemitic. They shouldn't be doing that, for as much as my censure does (absolutely nothing).

I really don't think it's unreasonable to point out that, whatever the ethics of the situation, pragmatically, Israel has far more options for dealing with their Palestinian enemies than the Palestinians have for dealing with the Israelis.

F'r instance, I don't read too much about Palestinian helicopter gunships firing missiles into Israeli neighborhoods. Shelling with mortars or personal rocket launchers or attacking with guns or bombs, yeah (I certainly acknowledge that Palestinians attack Israel and settlers etc etc)... but not helicopter gunships or tanks.

I'm just saying, Israel has bigger and better guns, better trained personnel, etc etc.

And is it too much to hope for, as an outside observer, that the side that HAS more options might consider using some of their options to try to minimize (in theory uninvolved) casualties?

That's been Israel's policy at some times in the past.

Perhaps it is too much to hope for. Perhaps even saying that is antisemitic in some of y'alls view.

Ack. I thought I'd edited correctly.

Really, I do know how to spell "Palestinian".

Dean, the killing on both sides is not the same. Hamas, al-Fat'ah, and others of their ilk go for random slaughter, with no point other than to attempt to shock a populace apparently inured to their brand of obscenity. The Israeli army at least attempts to target their killings, aiming at those who have been attempting to destroy their nation.

My only problem is the rather disproportionate use of force, in general and especially in this case. It has been suggested that they used missiles in order to make sure everyone knew who did it. However, had they gone for the neat, precise head-shot with the high-powered sniper rifle, I doubt anyone would have thought immediately of a rival terrorist group - as mentioned above, they like things to be a bit showier than that. Who else could be blamed for the bullet? A Mob hit? [/sarcasm] No, I think Sharon's government is allowing its vision to be blinded by its justifiable hatred and rage for those who want nothing more than to see them dead.

I'm not familiar with the Jewish Scriptures - is the book listed in the Bible as Proverbs included therein? If so, perhaps Ariel should go reread the parts about the dangers of unbridled wrath...

Mr. David, your post hidden inside these long lists of comments is extremely valuable. For those too lazy to look for it, it begins...

"Once upon a time, I was a 14 year old boy who was convinced he'd never have a girlfriend. I couldn't get a date. I couldn't get a girl even to look my way without derision, 'cause I was this, y'know, fat kid who liked comic books. So I can totally wrap myself around the mindset of that kid from a couple days ago. It's a bad, sad, depressing place to be. It pervades you, gets into you, colors how you view the world and yourself."

That is the heart of fanatacism, its source. You convince your recruit that his present life is hopeless, and you offer a chance for him to become impressive and memorable. It worked that way for Hitler, Stalin and the rest. I just feel it's a shame that this post of yours, Mr. D, may be overlooked in the middle of the responses. You put a human face on a phenomenon that most of us can't consider human at all.

It is odd, though. You almost suggest that comic book fans could become fanatical enough to do deadly things. I haven't seen that. Perhaps because comics hold out hope, and often contain a sense of ethics and morality that other geek media don't have. The Columbine killers played Doom and Quake, and the "Vampire: The Masquerade" killers here in Florida played a particular RPG full of violence and despair. But I haven't heard of anyone who went out and killed after reading "The Punisher" or "Fallen Angel" or even "Spawn." (Now watch someone come up with an obscure case and prove me wrong.)

Mr. Reed, I believe you may be drawing a false inference. The Columbine killers did indeed play Doom and Quake - however, they did not commit their crimes because of their taste in video games, any more than my own weakness for "Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now" predisposes me to commit random acts of vehicular mayhem. Rather, they played those games in an attempt to get some sense of power and control in their own lives - a sense regularly stripped from them in the school environment. I'm sure many of us here can empathize, although I'd like to think we all have more self-control than to actually play out the final sections of "Heathers" in real life...

I'd also like to note that "Vampire: the Masquerade" isn't supposed to be all that violent, really. The game the designers were aiming for was one of interpersonal manipulation, not random slaughter. Also, the hopelessness is a matter of individual style, as well. Remember, the game does hold out the hope of achieving Golconda, and mastering the Beast within. (There's also my Malkavian character, the Nightwatch, who believes he was granted his vampiric powers of Potence and Celerity in order to become - dah dah DAAAHH! - a SUPERHERO!!)

This is not to denigrate your main point, which is correct - the best way to recruit a fanatical killer is to find a young person whose life seems nothing but despair and emptiness, and convince him/her that this view is correct, but you can direct them to the One Way to Freedom - violent self-immolation while destroying the Designated Enemy! (As opposed to proper military style, as described by Gen. Patton: "Your job, soldiers, isn't to go out and die for your country - it's to make some other poor bastard die for his.")

Peter, the Palestinians are upset for the same reason some Christians blame the Jews for Christ's crucifixion: They ignore the fact that Jesus was supposed to die, that he wanted to die, and that his death made their redemption possible.

Posted by Bladestar at March 29, 2004 09:32 AM

Where dod I say I'm mad if America quits intefering in other countries?

C'mon, Clark, I'm really interested!

When you spouted off about how America has not gone into North Korea. You sounded mad to me.

Posted by Bladestar at March 29, 2004 09:34 AM

Clark, if that's how you interpreted my jibs at Herr Bush not invading N. Korea, you're dead wrong, I think we should leave them alone too.

Fine, but at least you recognize that it could be interpreted that way.

Same with Iran and Lebanon too, until they actually present a credible threat.

So what does that mean? That we SHOULD attack N. Korea? You said yourself that they've threatened us and you admit they're a credible threat. So, as President, would you go in now, or would you wait until we get attacked first? Is there a certain number of deaths that you'd used to gauge your response, or would the attack alone be enough?

I hate the idea of America as the sole superpower in the world. I hate the idea of any one country having that much power actually.

Would you care to expound upon that statement? I mean, you seem to imply that America, as the sole superpower, can't be trusted. Is there a country you think would be a BETTER lone superpower? How would having more than one superpower that can't be trusted be better? When Russia was a superpower, the world seemed to always be on the brink of World War 3. You think those were better times? I'm assuming that you believe another superpower would balance the power, but what if the other Superpower was Great Britain or some country with good relations to the US? What if they conspired to share control ?

I think it's easy for everyone on this board to Monday Morning Quarterback, especially with 20/20 hindsight. But what would YOU do to stop any or all of the war and death? Would you even try? Would you ignore Israel's right to exist and abandon them to stand alone?

Bladestar: "I hate the idea of America as the sole superpower in the world. I hate the idea of any one country having that much power actually."

EClark1849: "Would you care to expound upon that statement? I mean, you seem to imply that America, as the sole superpower, can't be trusted. Is there a country you think would be a BETTER lone superpower? How would having more than one superpower that can't be trusted be better? When Russia was a superpower, the world seemed to always be on the brink of World War 3. You think those were better times? I'm assuming that you believe another superpower would balance the power, but what if the other Superpower was Great Britain or some country with good relations to the US? What if they conspired to share control ?"

Er, much as I disagree with some of Bladestar's politics, he clearly states that he distrusts *any* nation to act responsibly as a sole superpower. ANY nation. You may reasonably disagree, but don't set up a strawman.

> What were the Crusades about then?

Lead pots. Europeans had stopped using them, more children were growing to adulthood, which meant more heirs... so the Pope and the leaders hatched a big land-grab scheme and sent second, third and fourth sons off to war, hopefully to snag new land for themselves...

(Gotta go to a meeting, or I'd elaborate more... one of my degrees is in medieval history though, it's amazing the things you pick up!)

Victor Davis Hansen:
When should we stop supporting Israel?

The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans the question—at what point should we reconsider our rather blanket support for the Israelis and show a more even-handed attitude toward the Palestinians? The answer, it seems to me, should be assessed in cultural, economic, political, and social terms.

Well, we should no longer support Israel, when…

Mr. Sharon suspends all elections and plans a decade of unquestioned rule.

Mr. Sharon suspends all investigation about fiscal impropriety as his family members spend millions of Israeli aid money in Paris.

All Israeli television and newspapers are censored by the Likud party.
Israeli hit teams enter the West Bank with the precise intention of targeting and blowing up Arab women and children.

Preteen Israeli children are apprehended with bombs under their shirts on their way to the West Bank to murder Palestinian families.

Israeli crowds rush into the street to dip their hands into the blood of their dead and march en masse chanting mass murder to the Palestinians.

Rabbis give public sermons in which they characterize Palestinians as the children of pigs and monkeys.

Israeli school textbooks state that Arabs engage in blood sacrifice and ritual murders.

Mainstream Israeli politicians, without public rebuke, call for the destruction of Palestinians on the West Bank and the end to Arab society there.

Likud party members routinely lynch and execute their opponents without trial.

Jewish fundamentalists execute with impunity women found guilty of adultery on grounds that they are impugning the “honor” of the family.

Israeli mobs with impunity tear apart Palestinian policemen held in detention.

Israeli television broadcasts—to the tune of patriotic music—the last taped messages of Jewish suicide bombers who have slaughtered dozens of Arabs.

Jewish marchers parade in the streets with their children dressed up as suicide bombers, replete with plastic suicide-bombing vests.

New Yorkers post $25,000 bounties for every Palestinian blown up by Israeli murderers.

Israeli militants murder a Jew by accident and then apologize on grounds that they though he was an Arab—to the silence of Israeli society.

Jews enter Arab villages in Israel to machine gun women and children.

Israeli public figures routinely threaten the United States with terror attacks.

Bin Laden is a folk hero in Tel Aviv.

Jewish assassins murder American diplomats and are given de facto sanctuary by Israeli society.

Israeli citizens celebrate on news that 3,000 Americans have been murdered.

Israeli citizens express support for Saddam Hussein’s supporters in Iraq in their efforts to kill Americans.

So until then, I think most Americans can see the moral differences in the present struggle.

If the Palestinians wish to hold periodic and open elections, establish an independent judiciary, create a free press, arrest murderers, subject their treasury to public scrutiny, eschew suicide murdering, censure religious leaders who call for mass murder, embrace non-violent dissidents, extend equal rights to women, end honor killings, raise funds in the Arab world earmarked only to build water, sewer, transportation, and education infrastructure, and pledge that any Jews who choose to live in the West Bank will enjoy the same rights as Arabs in Israel, then they might find Americans equally divided over questions of land and peace.

But all that is a lot of ifs. And so for the present, Palestinian leaders shouldn’t be too surprised that Americans increasingly find very little in their society that has much appeal to either our values or sympathy. If they continually assure us publicly that they are furious at Americans, then they should at least pause, reflect, and ask themselves why an overwhelming number of Americans—not Jewish, not residents of New York, not influenced by the media—are growing far more furious with them.

You beat me to it Dave, thanks.

I'd rather there be three of more "Superpowers" in the world. A governments natural tendencies to look out for it's own interests would preclude too much of a two getting too bubby-buddy scenario.

WWIII never happened as a result of the "Cold War", it was a boogeyman, it wasn't going to happen. There was a balance of power that doesn't really exist any more. Lebanon was never a threat to America, nor was Iran or Iraq, neither is North Korea. They all know that if they were to use a weapon of mass destruction (at least the countries that had them) would mean they'd be anhilated by America and the other outraged nations of the world.

The fact that no one nation could go it alone and survive was a very important balancing factor.

When should we stop supporting Isreal?

Maybe when they stop stealing water from land that does not belong to them? Maybe when they leave land that doesn't belong to them? Maybe when the Isreali army stops using bullets against Palestinian kids throwing rocks? Maybe when they say they are devoted to a two state solution and then build a wall that cuts the West Bank in half?

We give 3 billion dollars to Israel every year. Those helicopters and missles that blew up the Hamas leaders are paid for by Americans. 3 BILLION dollars. EVERY YEAR. Perhaps thatis why some observes say the United STates is a teensy bit biased when it comes to the whole Middle EAstern situation.

And incidently, it is not just about Jews;its about the land. The Arabs historically treated Jews much better than the Christians of the same period ever did. Many Palestinians ARE Jews. Not everyone who denounces Isreal is an anti-semite. Noam Chomsky for example.

Sigh. If only the Zionists had settled for Kenya, or took Ho up on his offer to come to Viet Nam.

Ben Hunt

I really dislike Victor Davis Hanson's writing.

Heh...as a comedian once put it... why couldn't we situate Israel in, say, Idaho? Lots of land, not many people... not surrounded by enemies...

Er, much as I disagree with some of Bladestar's politics, he clearly states that he distrusts *any* nation to act responsibly as a sole superpower. ANY nation. You may reasonably disagree, but don't set up a strawman.

I didn't. I asked him if there were a country BETTER suited to be a superpower than America. I think America has a lot of problems. Doesn't mean I think there's someplace better.

When should we stop supporting Israel?

I've long held the belief that we should've stopped supporting Israel a while ago, when the last peace talks broke down. I think Israel is the biggest abuser of American aid right now. Not even Saudi Arabia is abusing the money given to them by the U.S. like Israel is.

Now, that's not to say we should suddenly support Palestine. Unfortunately, a lot of people will say "If you stop supporting Israel, you support terrorism." Which is, of course, pure bullshit. I'd rather we get out of that area of the world ENTIRELY. Pull out of Israel, lend no quarter to either combatant, and leave them to their affairs.

Unfortunately, that's not the precedent any American president since Reagan has set. Every single one has manipulated things to get their way, and alienated millions of people in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and, yes, Israel and Palestine. The government can't take any leader that doesn't fit in their plan (see the American denouncement of the Spanish elections, if you don't believe me). They still have fits over Fidel Castro, who hasn't been a direct threat in over 20 years and even leases us Gitmo. They go so far as to suspend democratic elections and appoint who they want to lead. Hell, they basically built Al-Qaeda with their bare hands, then turned their backs on them. Knowing that, they could never do what I proposed, because it wouldn't fit their plan. Things may turn out beneficial to them in the long run...but then again, they may not. And the American government can't take that chance. So they'll alienate even more terrorists (more U.S. buildings blown up for Allah) to make certain that this is beneficial to them. THAT supports terrorism far more than just pulling out and letting them duke it out...

What would PDA think if the US or the UN just went into Israel and Palestine, destroyed the terrorist groups, tore down the barriers, established the previously agreed upon boundaries, destroyed all Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, then kept troops there until peace finally came or a new generation of peace-loving Israelis and Palestinians grew up? We'd take out part of the reason for Mideast terror right there!

Stavner

To Jess from way back up there

It's not really just a religious thing. It's both a land thing and a point of perspective. The religious thing just gets used as a way to fight the battle. The land thing is, as pointed out above, the Brit's fault. Also the French. Most of the "Kingdoms" of the middle east didn't exist until the Britt's and the French gave up their empires. Before they left they made promises to everybody that they never meant to keep. Some of this was promising the same land to different people. Problem 1. Other problems were created by the departing Britts when they carved up the country and created the new countries. Many of the countries in the middle east didn't exist 100 years ago or, if they did, don't look like they did then. The creation of new lands created the seats of power for new rulers. The Britts created Royal families to rule the new lands. They made the leaders, not the people. That's one of the reason that so many in the middle east don't respect say, the Saudis' royal family. They're not a long line of kings from the old days. They're a new line that sprung from the "puppets" of the Britts. You've also got the little problem of lands with great holy sights on them. The Israelis don't want to give up their bit of land because it was the sight of one of the great temples. There is a sight there that, some claim, held the Lost Ark that Indiana Jones went through such trouble to keep from the Nazi bad guys. Problem is that it's now the spot where the most holy sight for the Musilums now stands. They want to get back in to claim that spot. That's also one of the big beefs that they have with us. The Saudis let us set up bases in their country and keep men there. Guess where one of the other great holy spots is. Yep. And they don't like our having bases and people (nonbelievers at that) all over one of their most holy spots. Not quite the FOX News line of "The just hate freedom so they hate us" but much closer to reality. The whole thing is a mess from the word go. Drop into the mix the poverty and the human desire to feel that "I've been wronged and they're causing all my problems" and you've got a breeding ground for wackos who have the gift of gab to put together devoted "armies of god" to do really stupid things and believe it's for a greater cause. Throw the religious aspect in and it gets really messed up. There is no way to think in the mind of some of these people. Think about this. You've got Bin Laden, who is richer then any of us will ever be, turning his back on the comforts of a rich life to live in caves, eat bugs and run for his life to fight those he believes to be against his religious ideals. ????????????. You've got people who will die in order to take as many other people with them and are happy to do it. Except those who are, and I'm not just using this as a turn of phrase, brainwashed into it.
Then there's that perspective thing. Israel has fought this fight almost as dirty as the Palestinians. Not always and not as low but they have had their moments. Hell, one of the first acts of the Israelis to claim ownership of the land they now have was to blow up a hotel where the Britts were staying in order to get them out of the country. An act that we would call an act of terror. But the western world sides with Isreal and doesn't get on their case like it does the Palestinians. Thus, the Palestinians get ticked at all of us for jumping them for stuff we give Isreal a pass for (one of those things is not kids strpping bombs to themselves. Isreal hasn't sunk that low and I don't think ever will). And that's just the cliff notes version. It would take me hours to type all the pages it would take to explain the roots of this mess. Go hit your history books and read up on it. Won't clear things up much but it might help a little.
And PAD wants to know why they're upset? Because that's what they need for this moment. No other reason. No logic to it. They need to be upset about his death to rally people to the cause. And so the faithful will rally. Most of them won't even know why they need to other then it's what they must do. And because they're being raised to hate. The BBC had home vids from Palistinian households of three year olds holding daddy's gun and talking in baby talk about killing "them" and how it's good to die for the cause. You don't need a real reason for anger with that. You just need something to claim as a cause. His death would have been that something no matter how it went down. I'm willing to bet that if he died in his bed that the followers would have claimed that it was so bad that he died without seeing the cause finished that now they had to do it to honor him. No reason and no logic. Just death and hate.
And the UN really sucks at this point. They make even less sense then the Palestine vs Isreal thing. I don't even try to figure them out any more.

Oh, by the by

I'm not slagging on the Israelis with that above post. I'm just pointing out that the "one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist" mindset is reall alive and well over there and in some other parts of the world. Please don't take that bit wrong and jump on me about siding with the Palistinians because I'm not.

"Right now we have a ton of finger pointing going on in Washington as to who was at fault for letting Bin Laden go when we had him in our cross-hairs, a tumor removal that might have prevented 9/11."

I do have to say, in fairness, that not only am I not at ALL convinced that the action alone of killing bin Laden would have prevented 9/11, but if we had killed bin Laden and 9/11 had happened (as I suspect it would), al Qaeda would be saying that 9/11 was done specifically *because* the US killed bin Laden and lots of people (including, quite possibly, me) would be finger pointing at Bush (presuming it happened under his watch) and saying, "Damn you, Bush! It's all your fault for provoking them!"

PAD

"Bill Mulligan posted:
The basest animal on earth protects its children. Only humans could sink this low.

"Hate to burst your bubble, but it's a fact that female rodents often have been known to eat their own offspring when other food sources are scarce."

Actually, I'd say that association goes a long way toward explaining what types of animals are running Hamas. I think "rodents" is a fair description. Vermin. Yeah. That works for me.

PAD

PAD says:
"I do have to say, in fairness, that not only am I not at ALL convinced that the action alone of killing bin Laden would have prevented 9/11, but if we had killed bin Laden and 9/11 had happened (as I suspect it would), al Qaeda would be saying that 9/11 was done specifically *because* the US killed bin Laden and lots of people (including, quite possibly, me) would be finger pointing at Bush (presuming it happened under his watch) and saying, "Damn you, Bush! It's all your fault for provoking them!"

PAD, right now I'd vote for you for president. That's one of the most honest bits of nonpartisan logic I've heard in ages. kudos.

"Maybe when the Isreali army stops using bullets against Palestinian kids throwing rocks?"

The same argument was made after the Kent State debacle. People seem to forget that you don't need to be a major league pitcher to kill someone with a thrown rock. Just lucky on where you hit. I agree that rubber bullets might have been a better response, but people die from those, too, sometimes. There are no happy ways out when things get that unpleasant. If you just leave, it only encourages them to keep on doing it. But, if they find out there are serious consequences, some may think twice about doing it again. It's a start.

Bill Mulligan posted:
"This isn't "saving one's own skin". This is using children as a weapon of terrorism and it's several magnitudes of evil beyond anything a rodent could conceive.

It's not just the sacrifice of the child--you don't see animals other than human CELEBRATING the death's of one's children. How screwed up is that?"

Unfortunately none of the above has any bearing on your initial posting which stated simply "the basest animal on earth protects its children". Your statement was simply inaccurate.
As for "evil" that's a purely HUMAN notion which has been used by HUMANS to annihilate not only other humans, but also a wide number of animal species including sharks and wolves and snakes (snakes have it even worse in the "evil" department because of millenia of Western--i.e., Jewish and Christian--religious teachings). Animals recognize neither "good" nor "evil" so that makes your above comments even less relevant to the topic.
I would also point out I don't see any other animals celebrating the birth of their young (as humans so often do), nor do other animals choose to be fixed to prevent unwanted births (as humans can do, unless their religious tenets view that as "unnatural" or "against God's will"). Some animals do seem to mourn stillborn young, but there's very seldom any elaborate ritual practiced nor any apparent long-term depression.
It's also fair to remind you of human infanticide practices--the Spartans were well-known for exposing children perceived to be "weak", and many societies deliberately killed infant girls. I also don't recall any animals deliberately mutilating their young to satisfy bizarre religious practices (circumcision) or cultural notions of beauty (binding feet, flattening foreheads), and humans will treat animals in the same manner (breeding cats and dogs to serve some human sense of aesthetics, regardless of the harm that may be done to the animal--many Persian cats suffer from vision and breathing problems because of humans who want the cats to look a certain way).

Bill Wrote: "I'm not sure why the Europeans seem to find it worse when Israel attacks Palestinians than they do when the Palestinians attack Israelis. I suspect it's just good old fashioned European anti-semitism (as the French would say "Il y a des juifs se cachant dans le grenier, mon ami allemand" ("There are Jews hiding in the attic, my German friend."))"

I guess you have never come to Europe and you konow nothing about us. That's a complete nonsense. Would you say that you were anti-Spanish if you were against Franco's dictatorship? Or would you say you are anti-German if you were against the government of Hitler? So, why do you mean European peoples are anti-semitics because they are against Sharon's government? As a Spaniard, I'm proud of my country's tradicional international policy: the muslims are friends of us and also the jews.

That's a common American comment, always thinking you are the good guys and all the others are wrong, and that hurts me. I'm not anti-semitic, absolutely not, no way. The question is: are you anti-Palestinian?

In my opinion, Sharon wants to blow the peace process up by encouraging Palestinians to do violent acts. Sharon wants to make a Palestinian State trapped by a great wall and that requires to break any peace accord that may exist. Sharon knows tha violence brings more violence, that death causes more death. The monsters on the other side(who don't want the peace eather), the leaders of Palestinian people, are very happy, and I'm sure they're looking forward to killing more jews. There is no good side in this war.

Peter David, don't you understand that your reality, the reality you suffered when you were 14, is completely different? Palestinian youngters can't find a job, they have great problems to eat everyday, they can't study, they feel the jew presence as an humiliation because they can't live in the land of their parents... They are desperate. You can't compare with them, Americans and Europeans can't compare with them because we live in different worlds. Reality is much more complicated than it seems.

I don't want to hurt with my words but, I repeat, facts seem completely different when you see them from outside the USA. Sorry about my English.

I haven`t read any of the comments yet, but I already want to say something now:

I am sure you didn`t mean it that way, PAD, but also people who are parapalegic and have health problems deserve to live and can also have a love life. What you wrote there was really not in best taste. Being disabled, it rubbed me the wrong way.

Another question is, was it right that Israel blew this man up? I am sure, he is guilty of more than enough so that every US state that is willing to punish murderers with the death penalty would execute him if he would be a US citizen. Therefore a much more important question is not if he deserved it but if it was doing anything good.

Israel indeed martyred him with the consequences that should be obvious: More revenge and counter-revenge. More tit for tat murdering of innocent people.

I think what Israel should be condemned for is narrow mindedness and stupidity. I don`t know what the answer is but what Israel did was only making things worse. That the Palestinians do dreadful things as well is obvious but unfortunately I often think nowadays, maybe both sides deserve each other. Nobody seems to be willing to break this insane cycle of violence and move forward. Instead both sides are busy at making things worse.

Victor, you failed to get PAD's point.

Sure, the problems he had growing up were very different, but feeling desperate and/or lonely and/or unwanted/unloved and therefore being modelling clay in a manipulative bastards hands is still very accurate.

Just because the circumstances leading to those feelings are different doesn't change the end results of those feelings.

And your English seems pretty damn good.

I am sure you didn`t mean it that way, PAD, but also people who are parapalegic and have health problems deserve to live and can also have a love life. What you wrote there was really not in best taste. Being disabled, it rubbed me the wrong way.>>

I'm sorry but is everyone being deliberately obtuse? It's obvious that PAD wasn't advocating a Brave New World scenario. He was simply pointing out the flaw in the thinking of fundamentalists like the Hammas leader or the suicide bombers on 9/11. If these people believe that they are bound for better things, then why are they upset that their enemies sent them there? They obviously have no problem with dying because they send children to die for the cause.

But since I'm just repeating what PAD said already (and most people made a point to misunderstand), I feel I'm just wasting everyone's time. Sorry.

Victor says,in response to my little jibe against the French:
"I guess you have never come to Europe and you konow nothing about us. That's a complete nonsense. Would you say that you were anti-Spanish if you were against Franco's dictatorship? Or would you say you are anti-German if you were against the government of Hitler? So, why do you mean European peoples are anti-semitics because they are against Sharon's government? As a Spaniard, I'm proud of my country's tradicional international policy: the muslims are friends of us and also the jews."

Obviously this is just my own personal take on the matter and as such should not cost anyone any sleep, but frankly the weird European double standard as regards to Israel makes one highly suspicious that anti-semitism has something to do with it.

And let's face it, while I'm not trying to put the blame on you for the possible crimes of your grandparents or anything, it's not like European anti-semitism is something we have to reach into the distant past to find. Maybe one of the reasons why Americans seem to be more sympathetic to Jews than other countries is becase we, well, didn't KILL all of ours! Go talk to a few Polish Jews. Of course, you'll need a Ouiji board to do it...

When the Palestinian Authorit condemened some people to death for collaborating with Israelis I didn't see nay of the marches in Europe that convicted cop-killers in the USA get. One suspects that being pro-Israel is, at last, sufficiant grounds for state sponsored killing to our gentle allies.

Victor, I suspect that if the Basque terrorists were as effective and scored as many kills as the PLO and Hamas, the reaction of the Spanish people would be every bit as harsh as the Israelis have been. The same is true for the rest of Europe, as well as the USA. Only Israel is expected to try to work with fanatical murderers. Reach a compromise (be less fanatical while killing? Spare girls under 12? What?)

"Palestinian youngters can't find a job, they have great problems to eat everyday, they can't study, they feel the jew presence as an humiliation because they can't live in the land of their parents... They are desperate."

Look around the world. You'll find people in desperate situations, people who would envy what the Palestinians have. Yet they don't seem to have embraced using their children as walking hand grenades. What's the difference? Probably the lack of indoctrination. It's not the Israeli's fault that a Palestinian kid is fed a constant barrage of vile propaganda straight out of the pages of Der Strummer, taught that Jews are vermin or that salvation and family honor will come from blowing as many of them as possible into small bite sized chunks.

I'd jump in front of a paint truck to push one of my kids out of the way and die happily (if not with a smile) Wouldn't any of us? (If you don't have kids, you will one day know what I mean--their lives are more important than your own. It's not like the love you have for a girlfriend, it's primal and overwhelming and almost scary). To encourage and celebrate the death of a child...of one's OWN child...I'm trying to imagine a degradation of the human soul that could compare to this. As bad as things are for the Palestinians it doesn't come close to explaining or justifying this. Not even close.

A Victor
Gracias por su opinion y su ingles es mas mejor que mi espanol. Espero que tu no perdiste alguien en Madrid.

PAD stated something about the leaders of Hamas being Vermin and rodents. Hmmm...that strikes me as so familiar. Where have I heard it before? Oh, yeah, from Maus, only in connection with the Jews.

Do I defend Hamas or the Martyr's Brigade? No, I do not. I think all terrorism is wrong, and most types of military violence is wrong. That being said, Isreal is also wrong, on a lot of things, and we in the States have a hard time acknowledging it.

And why do we hold Israel up to a higher standard? Because when Ben-Gurion and others founded Isreal, he wanted the nation to be a beacon of hope and civilization to the rest of the world. Isreal was to be the city on the Hill the way america was going to be for the PUritans. These are laudable goals, and goals that all too often seem to have been forgotten in the interim.

Ben Hunt

Bad taste warning*************

Limericks on Yassins death!

http://asmallvictory.net/archives/006334.html#006334

There once was a fighter for Palestine
who encouraged the kids in the martyr line
But Israelis grew tired
On his wheelchair they fired
Now he's roasting in hell like a spitted swine

There once was a fighter for Palestine,
who preached Anti-Jew stuff all the time,
it's a shame his wheelchair
was in the crosshair
and now we can see his intestine..

There Once Was a Fighter for Palestine
Who was blinded by fierce sunshine
But along with the light
Came an explosive fright
As it turned out that sunshine was 3 missiles full of God's own fury that scattered his worthless terrorist bits and pieces farther than he could have crawled his paralyzed ass in a week.

"PAD stated something about the leaders of Hamas being Vermin and rodents. Hmmm...that strikes me as so familiar. Where have I heard it before? Oh, yeah, from Maus, only in connection with the Jews."

For different reasons. The nazis made the comparison because they hated Jews. PAD made the comparison because of the way Hamas acts.

My only problem is that it seems terribly unfair to the rats.

**What were the Crusades about then?**

About a thousand years ago (rimshot)...

I was addressing the present conflict, between a primarily secular Jewish state and a primarily secular Palestinian nationalist movement. There are religious elements involved, but the meat of the issue is national and cultural. Remember, more than a few of the Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories are Christians.

As for the Crusades as a religious issue, well, they were given a religious JUSTIFICATION, but there were an awful lot of economic and political motivations. Remember, the crusaders were more than willing to slaughter Jews, and even Christians (the sack of Constantinople), when they couldn't find Muslims.

Ben Hunt,

Why does Hamas exist???

Jusr asking.

Ben Hunt,

Why does Hamas exist???

Jusr asking.

**Dean, the killing on both sides is not the same. Hamas, al-Fat'ah, and others of their ilk go for random slaughter, with no point other than to attempt to shock a populace apparently inured to their brand of obscenity. The Israeli army at least attempts to target their killings, aiming at those who have been attempting to destroy their nation.**

This is true, and from a moral standpoint, it is a point that should not be minimized. However, from a practical standpoint, Israel is SO much more powerful, militarily and economically, that it kills far more innocent Palestinians ACCIDENTALLY, than the Palestinian terrorist kill innocent Israelis ON PURPOSE. It is like watching a fight between a heavyweight boxer and a homicidal 9-year-old with a knife. The 9-year-old is certainly dangerous, and not acting morally, but he's obviously going to get the crap beat out of him.

I think I've said this before, but Israel has been the target of so much aggression in its 50-odd years that it can't accurately gauge threats. You can't respond to impoverished suicide bombers the same way you respond to simultaneous attacks from half a dozen Arab nations.

"many Persian cats suffer from vision and breathing problems because of humans who want the cats to look a certain way)."-jonathan

Not to get on a tangent or spark a totally unrelated debate, but that simply isn't true. My wife and I do breed persians, so I figure we would have some experience on that matter.

I liked your other points, though, and to a certain extent I agree with what you think about animal breeding, but I'm more concerned with how the animals get treated by most breeders (not myself, obviously) rather than the fact that they are bread to look a certain way.

Monkeys.

Oh, and if particular trait is detrimental to the animal's health, it usually doesn't last because of the various organizations that regulate breeding (at least in the cat world). There are always exceptions to everything, though.

Monkeys

**I am sure, he is guilty of more than enough so that every US state that is willing to punish murderers with the death penalty would execute him if he would be a US citizen.**

Perhaps, but they wouldn't execute the people standing next to him, especially without bothering with a trial...

"Perhaps, but they wouldn't execute the people standing next to him, especially without bothering with a trial.."

WHen someone has done the equivalent of pleading "Guilty" in public, not much of a trial is required. Just sentencing. As for the others, it is a dangerous concept, but there is such a thing as "guilt by association."

From James B:
"Heh...as a comedian once put it... why couldn't we situate Israel in, say, Idaho? Lots of land, not many people... not surrounded by enemies... "

Why didn't the Egyptians or Syrians give the Palestinians some land in either of their countries after they lost their war with Israel? It sure would have been a shorter move than relocating Israel to the middle of the US.

The Palestinians have been used as an excuse to destroy Israel for so long, they are actually beginning to believe that killing themselves is the ways to an end. Only, it's not the "leaders" that are killing themselves. They're managing to talk their youth (and future) into killing themselves.

Look back at all of the peace talks. There have been several different US Presidents, several different Israel Prime Ministers, and Yassir Arrafat. Hummmm.... If there is a major problem, should you start looking at the obvious to fix things?

As for the others, it is a dangerous concept, but there is such a thing as "guilt by association."

1) Not a legal concept, at least in civilized nations.

2) Some of the dead were guilty primarily of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since when is that a capital crime? Or is it crime enough for you that these people were trying to go about their lives as best they could, living between the anvil and the hammer?

Some of the dead were guilty primarily of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I've read comments from people I consider friends (knowing them only online) that think that Israel should be carpet bombing when the Palestinians have one of those street funerals.

I think it's a case of the ends justify the means, in that it would get rid of future and likely potential suicide bombers on the spot, before they can do damage.

I'm not sure it's something I could pull the trigger on, but I can understand the logic behind it.

Anyways.
I went to a book signing a few months back with the author Joel Rosenberg (the political thriller writer, not fantasy one), and he was basically describing Arafat as the Known Quantity.

You know who he is, what he is capable of. The same would apply to the now-deceased founder of Hamas.
Yet, what do we know about Yassin's replacement?
Or would could replace Arafat?

That's the troubling part - what you don't know.

"Perhaps, but they wouldn`t execute people standing next to him, especially without bothering with a trial"

Especially nowadays I am not so sure. A super power that is treating human beings like in Guantanamo Bay is also capable of other things when it is about "The War on Terror".

The mother of all the ways of terrorism today is the affair Israel-Palestine. With the support of the most powerful country of the world, USA, the radical wing of Israel have the license to kill everybody they wants.

It's simple. No peace, (palestine and israeli) terrorism forever.

I don't hate the Israel people. A lot of friends of mine are jews, but they are not the same people of the "Schlinder's List".

Always the U.S. mass media show the jews like victims, but the situation of lot of people is worst today. Why U.S.A. don't attack the genocide governements in Africa o don't condemn the explotation of slave children in the industries in Asia (with funds of the transnational companies)? Why the U.S.A. goverment promote the violation of the human rights of lot of inmigrants inside the U.S.A. borders, making them "citizens of second of third category", without any possibility to make a better future, to progress?

I think Mr. David that your actual condition (you are only human, no more no less) of writer any form of fiction don't let you see the world is more than your confortable life in U.S.A. If more and more of the U.S.A. citizens take a little time to purchase a little more INFORMATION (and with INFORMATION I don't refer to CNN, the biggest maker of lies and desinformation), to make a reflexion and discussion of the caotical world situation, you will become agents of change.

You can change the world Mr. David, you and your people.

The next time you vote, don't elect a liar, drunk, drug-addict, fanatic and ignorant like Mr. George W. Bush.

You will make a better world with that. The presidential election in U.S.A. always affects the entire world, including us, the habitants of the fourth world...

Israel or Palestine? Obligue them to sign a peace treaty now!!!!!!

And you will don't have another 11/09...

Thanks...

Fernando,
Unfortunately all of our media outlets are owned by huge corporations more interested in money and their own propoganda than giving a balanced view. We have a difficult time even finding out the truth about our own government, much less international news.

fernando says:

"Why the U.S.A. goverment promote the violation of the human rights of lot of inmigrants inside the U.S.A. borders, making them "citizens of second of third category", without any possibility to make a better future, to progress?"

Actually, sir, many many of them do indeed make a better future for themselves and their children. That's why, and I'm surprised this did not occur to you, they keep coming here. As opposed to, say, Peru. trust me, these are NOT stupid people, they wouldn't be coming here if they hadn't seen family members who had already made it.

Furthermore, you make the classic mistake of assuming that people disagree with you because they have not tapped into the fountain of knowledge that you yourself seem to have discovered. Maybe, just maybe, they ALSO have access to the facts and just came to a different conclusion that you did.

Off topic--I am impressed how PAD's popularity is a world wide thing. I might have thought that much of what makes his writing so great would be hard to translate into other cultures, the way so much anime humor sails right over our heads.

Why didn't the Egyptians or Syrians give the Palestinians some land in either of their countries after they lost their war with Israel?

They did, after a fashion, in that the Gaza Strip and Golan Heights were Egyptian and Syrian territory, respectively, from 1949 until Israel conquered them in the 1967 war, and the West Bank was Jordanian. Eventually, the Arab nations agreed to give up their claims to these lands and let them be a Palestinian homeland. Of course, it's easier to give up something when you don't control it anymore.

It is a fair question, though. Of the Arab nations, Jordan was the only one that gave citizenship to Palestinian refugees (and got a Palestinian uprising as thanks...) That might be justified 50 years ago on the grounds that they would soon be able to go home, but generations later, it is hard to reconsile with the severity of anti-Israel rhetoric. Likewise, it is difficult to accept criticism of Israel's abuse of Palestinian's rights, when many Arab governments do far worse to their own people.

None of this justifies the mistreatment the Palestinians have received. It isn't OK for them to be abused or ignored just because the other Arab nations have ignored or abused them too. They have been thuroughly screwed by BOTH sides, and by those among their own who perpetuate the violence with pointless acts of mass-murder. Hamas is the worst enemy the Palestinians have right now.

I think it's a case of the ends justify the means, in that it would get rid of future and likely potential suicide bombers on the spot, before they can do damage.

The problem with the ends justifying the means is that nobody is prescient. If we knew for sure that killing 4 innocent people along with a terrorist leader would prevent hundreds from being killed, that might be justified. But we DON'T know that, we can't know that, and, if anything, history shows that this kind of retaliation only encourages further terrorist attacks.

The other problem is that Israeli forces have killed 3 times as many innocent people trying to stop terrorism than the terrorists themselves kill. It is possible that the Israeli military action has prevented so many terrorist attacks that the numbers even out, but it would be a tough case to make. Even a teleological utilitarian would have trouble justifying killing 1000 to save 400.

WHen someone has done the equivalent of pleading "Guilty" in public, not much of a trial is required.

That's not how things work in a democracy. In US capital cases, even someone who pleads guilty gets a trial and mandatory appeals.

Starwolf: WHen someone has done the equivalent of pleading "Guilty" in public, not much of a trial is required. Just sentencing

David Hunt: Actually, in the U.S., a trial IS still required. Public confessions are wonderful evidence to have so they can be presented at trial, but they don't obviate the need for one. A defendant could, while at trial, even state under oath that he had committed the very crime that he was accused of and still plead Not Guilty. He wouldn't have much of a chance of being acquitted, but he could do that. I'm sure the lawyers who read Peter's page could state better than I, but the only things I know of that obviate the need for a trial are guilty pleas...in court.

But killing that guy wasn't about executing a sentence, anyway. It was about serving national interests.

Mr. David said:

>>"I think to become a martyr you have to "knowingly" put yourself in a life threatening situration. has apposed to been blindsided by a sneak missile attack."

See, now I thought that, too. That was until I saw the article on the AOL newsfeed about a rally led by the new leadershop of Hamas, in which it was stated:

"Rantissi again vowed Hamas would hit Israel hard over Yassin's slaying. "I remind you that ... we do not forget the blood of our martyrs," he told the crowd, in which many people held up portraits of the elderly, wheelchair-bound cleric."

mar·tyr ( P ) Pronunciation Key (märtr)
n.
One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles.
One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

[Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin, from Late Greek martur, from Greek martus, martur-, witness.]

Martyrdom came from being killed for stating and living by your (religious) beliefs (being a witness) and being unwilling to renounce them.

Karen and Fernando,
First, our national media has bent over backwards to show the Palestinian side of this conflict. Right after 9/11, CNN's Christiane Amanpour - who has been superbly covering Mideast news since the first Gulf War made her a "star" - cited the opinions of many in the Muslim world that American support for Israel played at least a part in the attacks. For saying this on national TV, she was quickly branded a "war slut" by a NY Post columnist. But she continues to bring up the complex issues, as do many in the media.
The Philadelphia Inquirer - where I have worked in varying capacities for the past six years - was recently denounced as anti-semitic by the Philadelphia Jewish community for what they perceived to be unbalanced reporting in favor of the Palestinians. Whether you agree with Amanpour or the Inquirer or not is beside the point. What is pertinent to this conversation is that there is plenty of information on the Palestinian point of view and the Israeli point of view. People just have to take the time to actually listen and sift through it. It is complex. What is not complex - and what PAD's point is - is that the use by these "leaders" of Palestinian children is not only shameful, disgusting and sickening, and their anger that this "leader" has met a fate that Hamas invites children to embrace is beyond hypocritical. Words cannot describe my outrage.
But again, some would rather rail against our President - amazing how he can be called "a liar, drunk, drug-addict, fanatic and ignorant" yet it's always "conservative Republicans" who are described as "mean-spirited".
BTW, Karen, I agree that the mainstream media is biased and spews propaganda. Of course, what do you expect when 92 percent of reporters, editors and producers voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore and The New York Times hasn't endorsed a republican for president since Eisenhower? Hopefully, more conservatives will fill these positions and make the media more fair and balanced.

EClark1849: I asked him if there were a country BETTER suited to be a superpower than America. I think America has a lot of problems. Doesn't mean I think there's someplace better.

Um, Canada? (He says, facetiously) I'm not saying we're a superpower, I'm saying that if we *were* one, we'd be no worse than the USA- and possibly better, since we have a long history of being more sensitive to international affairs. Of course, there's no way to know for sure, as I think we've developed our national character *because* we aren't a military juggernaut.

Honestly, I've gotta go with Bladestar on this one. The idea that any one country, be they a western democracy or an eastern tyranny, has cornered the market on global military power, quite frankly makes me nervous. The last time one nation had this much power and influence over the rest of the world was the Roman Empire, and we all know what happened there. Historically speaking we all have benefited from the legacy of Rome, and I'm sure that our distant descendants will benefit from the legacy of the USA- I'd just rather not live through the conquests, corruption, slow decline into decadence and finally the Dark Ages that are the fall of a Great Civilization.

What does this have to do with my point above? Well, if there is more than one great power in the world, there's more than one chance for global civilization to survive when the collapse comes. (And it will come eventually. Probably not in our lifetime or that of our children or grandchildren, barring a rogue nuke or two, but it'll come.) If there hadn't been a Cnstantinople, we might've been stuck in the Dark Ages much longer than we were. So following the parallel, if the US is modern Rome, where is our modern Constantinople? I wouldn't say Britain is, since Britain, it seems to me, is in the same position vis-a-vis the US as the Greeks were to Rome- precursors, later allies, but not successors. It's not Canada, 'cause honestly, if y'all sank into barbarism, we'd be dragged down with you. Maybe an eastern nation? I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas out here...

dave,

My guess is that it could be the Chinese--compare the large collective yawn Americans had over the Bush Mars proposal vs the pride the Chinese felt over the recent solo flight by a Chinese national. I don't think Americans are willing to spend the money to make the next big advance in space exploration.

However it is folly to assume the Roman model is the one that will be followed--we are living in very different times. Technology changes all. If America falls it will be either by natural catastrophy (the asteroid hits Chicago) or as part of a global fall of civilization (Every islamofascist organization gets a suitcase nuke). While the idea that the USA is a modern day Rome, conquering nations and building reality show colosseums, it doesn't hold up--the Romans would doubtlessly laugh at the way we give back the countries we defeat to the people who live there.

Jerome,
I was commenting about the lack of international coverage in our media. We do not know a lot about what happens overseas, unless you listen to a BBC or Canadian news broadcast. Our media runs with "if it bleeds it leads." The bias in our media is certainly not liberal, except for a handful of outlets. I've just begun a book called "What Liberal Media", and while I haven't gotten very deep into it, many conservatives admit that in railing agaist the "liberal media" it is another propaganda weapon in the was of words. I used to live in Philly and read the Inquirer. I liked the paper, but very much lamented the day the Bulletin went under. A free press needs competition to get all the news out and with the media conglomerates we have today we are NOT getting the whole story.

"propaganda weapon in the WAR of words." Not was.
Sorry.

Bill,
I disagree. I think we are going way too heavily into the capitalist way of life, just as the communists leaned way too heavily in the other direction. I believe our economy will collapse in the same way, especially as we continue to raise the deficit while cutting taxes. A country should live in some degree of moderation, and we aren't. I also think that while we will hurt the world economy when we fall, they will recover and then demand payback for the way the World Bank has treated them.

I think that the Chinese are going to be the next world power, but it will take them a few more decades to "get their stuff together." Right now, China seems to be transitioning from a socialist, rural agrarian society into a capitalistic, urban, industrial society. The new China is making money hand over fist, but is having to sacrifice some of the social services net that had existed under communism. And they do have a few things to learn about human rights (not a slam, Americans could always use a refresher on the fundamentals).

That being said, China is moving in the right direction. They spend 21%of their GDP on education. They still have methods of harnessing the popular goodwill of the Chinese people. And the Chinese actually seem to care about the peopel in the rest of the world. There isn't a country in Africa (maybe Liberia)that doesn't have a railroad or other work partially paid for by China, or a statue commemorating African-Chinese brotherhood.

They still have a little development to undergo, but in a few decades, they will make a fine world power.

Ben Hunt

First let me see thanks to Blackjack for responding tojonathan (the other one)in regards to the opinion that israel has justifiable hatred for the palestinians.Lets be honest i think shooting missiles at a paraplegic could come under the justifiable hatred banner.The guy aint axctly a moving target for petes sake.My main point is justifiable hatred like anything else is all relative.The bottom line is the endless cycle of car bombings,suicide bombers and assassination is not solving anything but resulting in more escalated acts of violence by both sides.At some point if both sides truly want peace they have to stop this .No im by no means a pacifist but i believe violence should be a last option and at some point the never ending bloodshed needs to stop

Why U.S.A. don't attack the genocide governements in Africa

The situation in many parts of Africa is, imo, worse than the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

These are entire chunks of Africa, not a small area of land, that are controlled by warlords and such.
Much like Afghanistan, just with much less bloodshed atm.

But yes, we have tried. Somalia, 1992, for example.

We went to Kosovo, and today I read an article saying that the Serbian gov't is giving Milosevic a salary while he's on trial! For crying out loud!

Martyrdom came from being killed for stating and living by your (religious) beliefs (being a witness) and being unwilling to renounce them.

Who's making them renounce their religious beliefs?
Beyond perhaps the "belief" that all Jews should be slaughtered like cattle.

See, the difference here is that nobody is making the Palestinians, or any Islamics for that matter, renounce their religion.

So they apparently have a slightly different meaning for the word "martyr" then.

They still have a little development to undergo, but in a few decades, they will make a fine world power.

It would be interested to see how China turns out in the annals of history. I don't think I'll live that long though. :)

Built on Communism, although a slightly different brand than the USSR.

They're turning toward capitalism, but still carry much of the weight of what troubled the USSR, such as human rights (including allowing their people the freedom of speech and getting information), feeding and taking care of it's own populace, and how much time they spend building their military (and threatening Taiwan).

Gideon Levi writes in the Israeli daily Haaretz today,

"Suddenly, Israelis are worried about the bitter fate of a Palestinian child. To judge by the public shock over Hussam Bilal Abdu, who was caught wearing an explosives belt at the Hawara checkpoint, it would seem that nothing of a humane nature is foreign to us, even when it pertains to an enemy and his children. But this is an infuriating show of concern. The fate of a Palestinian child only touches us when it suits us, when it serves our purposes and when our hands are not involved.

The hundreds of children who have been killed, the thousands who have been crippled, and the hundreds of thousands who live under conditions of siege and poverty, and are exposed every day to violence and humiliation - all this has failed to move the Israeli public. Just the child with the belt.

Why weren't we shocked by the killing of Christine Sa'ada, who was shot dead in an IDF ambush while traveling in a car with her parents in Bethlehem, exactly a year ago today? Why was there no public outcry following the killing of Jamil and Ahmed Abu Aziz, two brothers who were riding their bicycles in Jenin in broad daylight when a tank fired a shell at them? How is their killing, which was documented on video, less cruel? Why didn't we show pictures of Basil and Abir Abu Samra, who were killed together with their mother in their vineyard near Nablus, just as we displayed pictures of Hussam Abdu? Why have we never discussed the killing of children at the entrance to the Qalandiyah refugee camp, where a child is killed by Border Police or IDF fire every few weeks? Why is a putting an explosives belt on a child more shocking than firing a shell at him?"

for the full article, go to:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/409293.html

Some commentary from Israel on the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

Uri Avnery: "It is Worse than a Crime, it is Stupid!"

"This is worse than a crime, it is an act of stupidity!" commented Gush Shalom - Peace Bloc's Uri Avnery on the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

"This is the beginning of a new chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It moves the conflict from the level of a solvable national conflict to the level of religious conflict, which by its very nature is insoluble.

"The fate of the State of Israel is now in the hands of group of persons whose outlook is primitive and whose perceptions are retarded. They are incapable of understanding the mental, emotional and political dimensions of the conflict. This is a group of bankrupt political and military leaders who have failed in all their actions. They try to cover up their failures by a
catastrophic escalation.

"This act will not only endanger the personal security of every Israeli, both in the country and around the world, but also the existential security of the State of Israel. It has grievously hurt the chances of putting and end to the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Muslim conflicts."

Avnery mentioned that in the early 1980s the occupation authorities encouraged the founders of Hamas, hoping that they would create a counter-weight to Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Even after the start of the first intifada, the army and the security services gave preferential treatment of Hamas. Sheikh Yassin was arrested only a year after the outbreak.

"There seems to be no limit to the stupidity of our political and military leaders. They endanger the future of the State of Israel."

Translation of Gush Shalom press release:

The assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, with its concomitant careless killing of passers-by, is a mad provocative act by a governnment which lost all restraint. It is the act of a pyromaniac fireman whose method of putting out the fire of terrorism is to pour barrels of gasoline upon it, an act which might cost the life of dozens or hundreds of Israeli citizens in the near future.

Prime Minster Sharon's talk of "withdrawal from Gaza", which had caught the headlines in the past months, is now revealed to be no more than meaningless chatter. Far from seriously meaning to evacuate even a bit of occupied territory, this bankrupt prime minister - faced with police investigations into a myriad of corruption concerning himself and his sons - seems
determined to bequeath to his country a legacy of eternal war with the Palestinians and the entire Arab and Muslim World. Every day that this man remains in power poses a grave danger to the future of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, calls upon all sane and responsible forces left in the international community to intervene, urgently and
forcefully, to save our region at the edge of the abyss and halt the monstrous cycle of bloodshed which now threatens to engulf us.

Gush Shalom website - www.gush-shalom.org

Insert Venomous Rant here. When I'm awake I'll comment.

Travis

I'm leaving the politics of this aside and looking at the actions of the respective parties (given that was the origin of the thread).

It seems when Israel goes after targets it believes to be terrorists it often seem to do so with very little concern for colatteral damage or for those in the immediate vicinity. Innocent people may die and Israel shrugs its shoulders and postulates that if the people were anywhere near then they were either collaborators or unlucky. It openly refutes any criticism from the international community of this method and tells anyone who disagrees to effectively mind their own business.

When Palestine bombers go after targets, they often deliberately choose public places in which to kill. They hope that the international community returns to help broker an agreement.

Maybe there is some moral high ground between those two modus operandi, but it's hardly solid or anything to be proud of. Such disregard for innocent human life makes both sides guilty of having innocent blood on their hands.

Soldiers can be soldiers. Leaders can be martyrs. But all too often it's the people in the streets who end up counting the cost so highly.

The only solution (in most cases) is for the international community to invite *anyone* to a negotiating table once a ceasefire from them has remained in effect for an agreed time. Of course, that's much harder than it sounds and has often failed in that region and others.

John

I don't konw if that has something to do with our common origin, but I agree with Fernando(hola, hermano, es un placer charlar con gente como tú).
The only thing I couldn't have written is the last point: "Israel or Palestine? Obligue them to sign a peace treaty now!!!!!! And you will don't have another 11/09..." The Israel-Palestinian problem is only an excuse to hurt the American great power, not the real cause of this. But, in a way, you are right since the massive support of violent actions like that in some Islamic countries is due to the Palestinian situation.

Someone asked (I think Bill Mulligan, but I'm not sure) why only the Muslims reacts like terrorist against western wolrd and not other cultures. Well, I'm a historian and archaeologist, so History and Culture is my field. I have my own theory about that.

The main problem is the European and North-American imperialism which caused several kind of reactions. In Africa and Oceania there were mostly tribes who lived (and some do still live) only hunting animals and picking vegetables. Their mental structures were totally different from ours. They thought trees talked to them and god was a mountain. What could they do against imperialism? Absolutely nothing, only suffering its consecuences.
In America, there were no problem: Europeans killed millions of natives and destroyed their ancient cultures. Spaniards (my old granparents) destroyed the States of Central and South America, and French and English (your grandparents) killed the North-American natives. Reaction against Europeans was impossible.

Yet, we have Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Islamic civilization. They all had very ancient cultural traditions, sometimes greater that European-American culture. They have enough reasons to be proud of their culture and to go against any cultural, military and political invasion: philosophers, poets, engineers, artists, etc.
Chinese Revolution is the Chinese way to react against the invasion of Western culture. Think of Japan and of some key words: Pearl Harbour, Kamikaze, Second World War... The Indians are especial, because their religion makes them passive and submissive. It's an obligation to accept what the fate has assigned to you if you are Indian.

But Islamic culture and religion encourage them to fight. Not to kill, not to go to the war, not to hurt innocent people. Muslims MUST fight against social injustice, against exploitation, against foreign invasion and agression...

Is it so difficult to understand? Yes it is, because we aren't Indians, Chinese, Japanese, African or Islamic. But we have to make an effort in order to get it. That's what I said to PAD: we can't compare with them because everything (economic and social position, cultural traditions, mental structures, even concepts of Space and Time, or their ideas about Justice and Freedom...) are different.

Sorry about my mistakes writing.

Karen says;
" I believe our economy will collapse in the same way, especially as we continue to raise the deficit while cutting taxes. A country should live in some degree of moderation, and we aren't. I also think that while we will hurt the world economy when we fall, they will recover and then demand payback for the way the World Bank has treated them."

The countries that are sore at the World Bank are mad mostly because they have borrowed money and are not able to pay it back. Not exactly living in moderation.

I'm not worried about the collapse you envision for the same reason I think we are so strong in the first place: it is not a coincidence that the USA ended up so powerful. We are blessed with a land of great variety. Lots of minerals and other natural resources and places like Nebraska which, while living there must be a special kind of hell, makes enough corn to feed the world.

Trust me, the economy will not collapse over tax cuts.

Thinking over the Chinese, it occurs to me that there are two major problems they MUST overcome if they are to make the big step into true world power status--they need a free press to fight corruption and drive politics forward for the benefit of more than the privilaged few and they have to raise the status of women. Any country that writes off half of its population will forever be a backwater, no matter how many bombs it has.

Bill:

I wish I could share your optimism over the eventual fate of the USA. While I think it would be wonderful if western civilization as we know it continued to flourish and evolve, I simply cannot muster the faith that next-to-nothing could bring down the States.

There are so many, many way in which even a prosperous civilization could be brought down- a rapid change in weather patterns, a pandemic (like the one scientists have been saying for years is due any day now), revolution from within, or even a President (not casting any stones here, I'm speaking hypothetically) who wants to hang on to power by any means necessary. These are the things that wake me in the wee small hours every so often.

You mentioned that the analogy of Rome is a poor one- you quite rightly state that the USA isn't going about conquering nations wholesale, nor is it likely to start doing so in the forseeable future. I'd like to point out, though, that a military occupation is not the only form of conquest possible. Both economically and culturally the USA and western nations exert a tremendous amount of influence over the rest of the globe- and I'd posit that the collapse of the west in general (or the USA in particular) would be as devasting to the world of today as the collapse of Rome was to the nations of that era, despite the fact that they aren't physically occupied.

As to the Chinese, I think you and the others who've brought them up have a very good point- they are certainly a nation and culture to be reckoned with in the world today (despite the fact that there's considerable room for improvement) and there's no arguing that they're stable and not likely to disappear anytime soon. I think they'd be a good candidate for playing Constantinople's role in the preservation of knowledge in the event of global collapse.

Karen,
You are writing a book? Congratulations! While you are doing so, perhaps we will continue our debate about the nation's media political leanings sometime in the future. I have researched the topic as well, and between that, what I see daily and first-hand experience being in the newsroom at several papers, I have concluded that our mainstream media is as liberal as the grass is green.
Anyway, for now, the reason I responded to your response to fernando is it seemed as if you were agreeing with him that the reason PAD felt the way he did about the Hamas leader's killing is because his point-of-reference is based on an "American" point-of-view. It's like "If you, Mr. David, had enough INFORMATION you would not be so quick to condemn Hamas."
First, I think that sells PAD well short. From what i know of him, I am quite certain he has viewed and read material sympathetic to the Palestinians' plight. We have done stories in print and TV about it, you know. And quite frankly, I am tired of hearing about the overrated BBC.
Second, last I knew, we spend a lot of time and print talking about immigration issues and economic justice for those who come here and to a lesser degree the other issues he raised. Maybe Fernando SHOULD watch CNN a bit. Or if he hates the Clinton News Channel so much, Fox News Channel, Nightline, MSNBC, and A& E - among others - also discuss complex issues in depth. Third,nowhere in his column can I find any mention of PAD supporting ISRAEL or talking about whether he supported a Palestinian state or U.S. aid to Israel.
He is simply wondering why - if being a martyr as espoused by the hateful Hamas group is so wonderful that young CHILDREN should embrace it, then why all the fuss over sending a man who killed hundreds if not thousands of Jews to his 72 virgins?
They are hateful hypocrites who hate the jews more than they love their own children. That's PAD's point, which is one I share.

It is startling how much this thread has gotten off track from PAD’s original contention. Simply put, should we be mourning or supporting the removal of Yassin. I say “supporting” instead of “celebrating” because I believe that the hardships which continue to plague the region require a steely, sober determination. Indeed, Israelis do not celebrate the death of their adversaries (even monstrous ones like Yassin). Dancing in the streets at the death of others is part of the Palestinian repertoire, not the Israeli.

Those who mourn Yassin, or take this removal to falsely claim moral symmetry are themselves engaging in that which is immoral. Yassin was responsible for the slaughter of many people and justified that slaughter because of who those victims were (the Jews and their supporters)—in American criminal vernacular he would essentially be deemed a mass hate murderer. His contribution to the mid-east peace process was an uncompromising savagery which tolerated no vision of existence for the Jewish people in the region. My original post compared Israel’s need to hunt him down and remove him as exactly the same as our need to take out Osama bin Laden. This was not an act of revenge. Israel doesn’t really do revenge. It does punishment, to an extent, and certainly an integral part of this action was punitive. But at its essence, as we in America seek to take out Bin Laden to eliminate or at least weaken the capabilities of an organization, Al Quaeda, which seeks to destroy us, Israel did the same with rocketing Yassin to his maker. Israel was carrying out a necessary act of prevention, weakening an organization Hamas, which is not only opposed to peace, but Israel’s very existence.

The Palestinian Authority has all too predictably denounced the Israelis, even referring to Yassin as a “moderate.” What remarkable self-delusion. Hamas has poisoned the Palestinian culture—yanking the populace to the side of chaos over order, violence over law, intractable anti-Semitic rage over practical interests of peace, cooperation and even eventual prosperity. Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in the region, like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, are the enemy, not just the “enemy of peace” (a meaningless term, in my view), and not just the enemy of the Jews, but the enemy of the Palestinians as well. The continued respect, even reverence, which so many Palestinians seem to bestow on Hamas, perpetuates terror’s successful dismantling of progress, whether that progress is peace with Israel, democratization of Palestinian society or economic development. As a result of this reverence, both Israelis and Palestinians are paying an awful price, and its cost will resonate for generations.

This is not to say that Israel itself should not or cannot take actions which help bring about these changes in Palestinian society. Henry Kissinger remarked towards the end of the Yom Kippur war in anticipation of Anwar Sadat’s shifting policy towards a full-fledged peace with Israel, that Israel would have to develop a “foreign policy” as opposed to a mere “defense” policy. In essence he meant that once the road to peace was truly offered, compromise and concession would emerge as a necessary ingredient to fruition. Israel did so, not only striking peace agreements with Egypt, but also with Jordan. Although the relations with those countries, especially Egypt, can be considered a “cold peace,” Israel no longer views those relations from a pure “defense” perspective. It now must view its actions which impact those Arab nations in a larger political and historical framework. Jordan and Egypt must do the same with respect to Israel.

In the current situation, Israel seems dominated again by a “defense” or more precisely “anti-terrorist” perspective. Eventually, it must take the broader and bolder steps of finding a permanent political solution.

Removal of Israeli presence from Gaza evinces Sharon's appreciation of this. (In its own way so does the construction of the security fence, which by its very nature anticipates a Palestinian state on the west bank). However, Israel must take such steps on terms which secure a political understanding of the intended future—Israel’s coexistence (ideally peaceful) in the region. Taking out the head of Hamas also supports this larger political/historical objective. If, after all, Hamas is seen as having driven Israel out of Gaza it can claim (as Hezbollah has done, albeit falsely, regarding southern Lebanon) that only by killing Israeli civilians can the Palestinians hope to garner more land and concessions—a dangerous and false lesson. In the end, Israeli relinquishment over any land, must take into account the political dimensions thereof. In the west bank, some “settlements” can be abandoned in the context of positive peaceful exchanges. In Gaza, the removal of Yassin was an essential ingredient in defining the nature of the Israeli withdrawal, a positive step for peace, not a concession or surrender to a murderous thug and his brutal gang.

Actually, I think PAD's original point was that if Hamas actually believes the bullshit they feed the kids they recruit to blow themselves up in Allah's Name, they should be celebrating their leader's arrival in Paradise, not mourning his death. It's kind of like when a Pope dies, and the entire Roman Catholic Church goes into a mourning period, when, if they really believed their own theology, they should be singing and dancing - their head guy just got his express ticket to Heaven punched, and gets to sit at God's Table!

Bill said "The countries that are sore at the World Bank are mad mostly because they have borrowed money and are not able to pay it back. Not exactly living in moderation."

They are angry about the conditions of the loans, not the problems in paying them back.

Jerome,
I am not writing a book, I am reading one by Eric Alterman called " What Liberal Media". For more info go to WWW.whatliberalmedia.com
I meant in my post that we have to work harder to get all the information because the major media does not necessarily dispense it to us. I am sure that PAD is coming from a more informed source and I was only complaing about our lack of resources. I am Jewish and have a heck of a lot more sympathy for Israel than the Palastinians. Terrorism is evil and until the Palastinians decide to leave it out of the equation, there can be no peace.

"It's kind of like when a Pope dies, and the entire Roman Catholic Church goes into a mourning period, when, if they really believed their own theology, they should be singing and dancing - their head guy just got his express ticket to Heaven punched, and gets to sit at God's Table!"

Nope, not even close. Even if one believes in the afterlife, it is totally understandable that we, the living, should mourn the loss of those who we love in this world. We cry because our own lives have been diminished by their leaving it.

Hamas is telling kids that death is a good thing--a great thing! Better for them, better for their families, it's the best thing that they can do with their lives. But when one of these rat bastards gets offed suddenly death is a tragedy once again. Lying dickweeds.

What Liberal Media? is a very flawed book because its main premise is easily disproved: That having lots of money = being conservative. he assumes and never proves that BIG CORPORATIONS are automatically conservative.

When in fact, stats show that the big corporations that own most media outlets overwhelmingly donate to democratic causes.

for more information go to
http://www.thatliberalmedia.com/

Um ... most owners of big media outlets donate overwhelmingly to BOTH sides so as to maintain access.

The people in charge of said corporations, however, hang out with conservatives a lot more than they do with liberals. Was Hearst liberal? Was Pulitzer? Is Rupert Murdoch?

As for columnists, since most people seem to find the NYT overwhelmingly liberal -- geez, is Bill Safire? Tom Friedman? David Brooks? (Paul Krugman and some others, yes.)

I've only skimmed the thatliberalmedia.com site you mention, but so far it doesn't seem to have much in the way of documentation, and certainly doesn't seem to make the point you claim it's making.

TWL

I just scanned through that website. The closest allegation I could find was a claim that "60 Minutes" had gone easy on Richard Clarke in an interview because his book was published by a subsidiary of CBS. I didn't see any documentation to back this up, nor any real evidence that the "60 Minutes" crew "went easy" on Clarke (that last, after all, being an opinion, even if stated as authoritative fact by the author of the blog entry).

As Tim said, Rabid, most major corporations make large contributions to any politician who is, or might well be, in a position to advance their corporate interests. (And one would expect no less - remember, even the US Supreme Court, in tossing out an accusation of treason against a corporation early in this nation's history, stated that a corporate entity cannot, by definition, possess a soul...)

The United States is a capitalist controlled nation. It only reacts when resources or monetary gain are at risk:

Panama Canal (The Panama Invasion)
Serbia-Kosovo
Iraq-Kuwait
The Colombian Oil Reserves (the so-called ongoing war on cartels)

I read a very enlightening book called "Who Rules America by G. William Domhoff that breaks down how the few have the power and how they continue to control it and how they help others in other nations maintain it.

If anyone has seen the documentary "The Panama Deception" it is an excellent example in how the media does not give the whole story. It's not even about who's liberal or conservative. It's all about getting a story. And what a "story" they told.

When it comes to Israel and Palenstine who has the advantage? Israel by far. The money the power and the democracy. Maybe they should consider a new location. The problem with that is that is the US and Britain are far more interested in the Arab world BECAUSE of it's resources.

It's a bit sickening to hear someone suggest they shoot the Palestinian crowds to eliminate possible attacks. ARE YOU GOD? I don't think so. Maybe we should drop a nuke on the whole area WOULD that satisfy your blood-thirstiness??????

Any kind of bloodshed is wrong no matter what side it comes from. It just seems quite a sad situation.

Look for the information. The truth really is out there.

William

Ted Turner is very liberal, and he founded CNN.

Here, this is a better website:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/

Two blatant examples of the blatant bias of The New York Times, which is not just any other paper but considered the nation's "paper of record".

1.)In the early 1970s, the current publisher of The New York Times, Arthur "pinch" Sulzberger, a college student and anti-war activist at the time, was asked by his father, the then-publisher of the Times, whom he would want to see shot if an American soldier came face-to-face waith a North Vietnamese soldier. "I would want to see the American guy get shot," Pinch said, "It's the other guy's country"
Is it any wonder that he now issues editorials that demand Bush get approval from our "allies" (apparently only France and Germany count as important allies) before taking action against terrorists.
After all, it's their country.

2.) The New York Times stylebook REQUIRED the word "unwinnable" be used in any sentence about the Vietnam War. Great balanced, objective reporting there! But who cares when you are determined to demoralize a nation and her troops.

And those are just two.

Jerome,
Are you trying to infer that Vietnam was winnable?

Jerome,
Your examples are from 3 decades ago. Things change.

"The United States is a capitalist controlled nation. It only reacts when resources or monetary gain are at risk:

Serbia-Kosovo"

What exactly did we get from Serbia-Kosovo? Other than avoid yet another mess in Europe's back yard?

i dont understand is this some sort of joke? i just stumbled on this site - does peter david write star trek or something?!
never read such c&*p in all my life - hamas and all terrorist groups are obviously b&*^(rds - but that can never justify a nationstate reacting in such an arbitrary and venomous way. israels obviously entitled to defend itself and did so bravely in the 1968s and 70s, but this isnt war - its a terrorist situation and countries should act responsibily.
all that s*&t about muslim terrorists being pleased to die becasue of a belief in heaven is ignorant and facetious. a belief in the afterlife and a willigness to die for a cause does not mean they should be rejoicing when it happens. if that was true all religious funerals would be parties! dont get me wrong i'm not sticking up for terrorists of any creed but responsible people should keep things in perspective and see things sensibily

But, my trolling friend, it is my contention that all religious funerals should be parties! Don't mourn the body's death - oh, sure, feel sad that you're deprived of this person's company, but really, how many people rend their clothes and sorrow for years because an old friend moves away? Instead, celebrate the idea that your friend is now in Heaven/Paradise/Valhalla/the Hunting Grounds/the Elysian Fields/insert favorite afterlife here.

I've already issued instructions to my wife and friends that, when I die, they are to hold an old-fashioned Irish wake. I want everyone drinking, singing, remembering some of my more spectacularly bad puns, and generally celebrating the life I lived. And hey, if someone decides it needs to evolve (or devolve) into an orgy, so much the better! :)

if you look at it from one point of view peter, sure - the guy was a bastard and he needed to die. and he knew that if the israelis came after him he'd turn into a martyr - plain and simple.

the fact is that these things need to be handled more tactfully instead of going in gung ho and guns raging to the point of overkill. you can easily snipe, and poison the man and he wont be that much of a problem. but lo and behold some tactless idiot in the israeli hierarchy ordered something like this.

yasir arafat was a very unpopular man in the occupied territories right until someone decided to put him under seige.

and guess what happened?

they turned him into a folk hero overnight - simply because - given the state of the palestinian social and economic conditions - it was psychologically feasible. people need a hero in hard times and he became it.

personally speaking the peace process died when rabin was assasinated, which in turn led to a binjamin netanyahu governement (lets face it - shimon peres is as charismatic of a leader as a bed post). i never felt and shall never believe that netenyahu was interested in peace.

there were problems during the time of arafat and rabin BUT the difference was that both were able to see eye to eye on most issues and both were tired of the cyclical violence that they had experienced over the past so many years.

now if youre talking about suicide bombers - given the pathetic state of the 'peace process' we have to angle ourselves to see both sides of the view. oh and i know im going to get burned on this board for this but i try to empathize as much with the palestinians as i do with the israelis.

Luigi Nova

muslims dont believe in the crucifiction of christ.

St. Afarian:

What do you mean by that?

I know many Muslims who would say that Christ was crucified.

Now, they would dispute whether that aact had anything at all to do with a divine plan to redeem humanity from sin, but when you say "don't believe in" you need to clarify what you mean.

"...both were tired of the cyclical violence that they had experienced over the past so many years."

And I shall never believe Arafat was "tired of the cycle of violence". Not when he's quoted as saying that peace for them means the destruction of Israel, in addition to doing nothing to stop the children from being indoctrinated into his "holy war".

Hey wait, wasn't there someone else in History who indoctrinated his country's youth into hatred and destruction of Jews?

It's a bit sickening to hear someone suggest they shoot the Palestinian crowds to eliminate possible attacks.

Well, you are familiar with the phrase "preemtive strike", yes?

ARE YOU GOD?

In my own little world.

Maybe we should drop a nuke on the whole area WOULD that satisfy your blood-thirstiness??????

Well, I've suggested moving both groups and salting the earth. Let nobody live there.

I don't think anybody is going to take me up on that though.

muslims dont believe in the crucifiction of christ.

I thought it was that don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah, that he was only a Prophet (or something to that degree)

This goes along with the Christians saying Jesus was the Messiah, and the Jews are still waiting for theirs.

"Actually, I think PAD's original point was that if Hamas actually believes the bullshit they feed the kids they recruit to blow themselves up in Allah's Name, they should be celebrating their leader's arrival in Paradise, not mourning his death. It's kind of like when a Pope dies, and the entire Roman Catholic Church goes into a mourning period, when, if they really believed their own theology, they should be singing and dancing - their head guy just got his express ticket to Heaven punched, and gets to sit at God's Table!"

Well, no, actually it's not like that at all. The first part of your statement is correct. But mourning the death of, say, the Pope, makes sense, because there's nothing in Catholic theology that says you get a fantastic deal in heaven if you martyr yourself, particularly if you're killing Jews and non-believers while doing it.

Saying Catholics should follow the same logic as my proposed logic for Hamas isn't fair, because the Catholic church is not making an open and public point of embracing the joys and benefits of violence and destruction. Hamas is urging children to commit suicide, for God's sake. Does that sound *anything* like Catholic doctrine?

No, what I'm saying is that on the one hand Hamas makes a big deal of celebrating death, destruction and martyrdom...but only of hand picked kids and suckers. When one of their own (i.e., upper management) buys the farm, suddenly it's "How dare they! Those bastards! They've spilled our blood and must pay for it!" Meaning they're just a bunch of big freakin' hypocrites, which I think we all knew deep down, but it's impressive to see it so starkly brought to the fore.

And Baerbel, honestly, you should know me by now. You should understand my sense of irony, and that what I was putting forward was the proposed reasoning path of sadistic bastards. Not for a moment do *I* truly think that people without full use of their limbs have little if anything to live for. Of course I don't think that.

PAD

Please permit me to make myself more clear, Peter (may I call you Peter?).

The reasoning I was following is as such:

In Catholicism, humans, being such sinful creatures as we are, need some sort of intercession on our behalf in order to get into Heaven. The Pope, however, gets to be infallible on matters of faith and morals; thus, he already has the intercession of the saints going on for him. He gets to go to Heaven without having o spend any time in Purgatory or Limbo, unlike the run-of-the-mill Catholics.

It's by analogy to the Hamas idea of martyrs getting the express lane to Paradise - 72 virgins, no waiting! The true believers in Hamas should also be praising Allah that their guy doesn't have to worry about what happens when the Leaves of the Book are unrolled; his "martyrdom" is supposed to guarantee his eternal bliss, right?

In the case of the Pope, it doesn't mean that, say, Pius IX died for his faith, just that as Pope, he gets the benefit of the doubt from the Keeper of the Gate. Therefore, it also makes little sense to mourn a Pope's death, although it's nowhere near the abhorrent level of hypocrisy being evinced by Hamas...

Karen,
Some things NEVER change.
In the name of "political correctness" or "fairness", the media in general and the New York Times in particular have sought to suppress identifying Muslims who wish to harm Americans as well, Muslims, even if that is pertinent to motive:
To wit:
1.) When Muslim terrorists first attacked the World Trade Center back in 1993, the New York Times ran the headline "Jersey City Man Is Charged In Bombing of World Trade Center."

2.) On July 4, 2002, an Egyptian living in California walked into an El Al terminal at the Los Angeles airport and started shooting Jews. (Not that there's anything unpeaceful about that.)
In the past, Hadayet had complained about his neighbors' flying a U.S. flag, he had a "Read the Koran" sticker on his front door and he had expressed virulent hatred for Jews. The Times reported with a straight face that his motive for the shooting may have been "some dispute over a fare."

3.) The Times also blacked out the information that the terrorists who seized a Moscow theater in October 2002 were Muslims. In a front-page article about the "hostage siege" is Russia, the Times referred to the Islamic terrorists who stormed the theater exclusively as the "captors", the "sepratists" and the "guerillas". Nowhere will you gfind a statement attributing the Moscow hostage crisis to Muslims. The only hint that the "captors' were Muslims was the Times criticizing Russian president Vladimir V. putin's attempt "to cast the rebels as international Islamic terrorists".

christ is regarded as the messiah of his time but he is not regarded as the son of god.

the basic principle behind islam is that the elements of godliness are not divisible.

also try to understand that hamas represents .0000003 percent of the muslim population. to even go out there and say what they preach and do has something to do with islam is like saying:

"gee that guy just robbed a liquor store so it has to do something with catholicism".

also the 72 virgins reference is more of a symbolic reference (look it up). theres hadith (sayings of the prophet muhammad) that will explain things such as evolution and the big bang theory.

if you want to understand islam read the quran and then try to read a few books on hadith, and interpretations. a modern islamic preacher by the name of yusuf islam has some very good writings - check them out.

Arafian, you believe the "72 virgins" thing is symbolic. Similarly, I believe the tale of Creation as given in Genesis is metaphorically accurate, although literally highly unlikely at best. On the other hand, there are those who sincerely believe that the entire sidereal universe was created in six literal 24-hour days, and that I'm going to Hell for not agreeing. Similarly, there are those who believe the virgins are a literal reward awaiting them in Paradise, and that they really can get there faster by dying while killing those their leaders have told them are enemies.

Religious fundamentalists of any stripe make uncomfortable neighbors. I must say, I'd rather live next to you than next to my in-laws' preacher...

Karen,
It gets worse. The media and Times in particular are almost neurotic in censoring terrorists/American traitors Muslim names. When an Arab becomes an American citizen, that is observed by the press, and rightly so. But when a Muslim terrorist/American traitor changes his name to Muhammad, that legal formality is ignored:
1.) Dirty bomber Jose Padilla had his name legally changed to Ibrahim in the mid-nineties. When he was arrested on terrorism-related charges in mid-2002, the media changed it back. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd laughed off the incident and basically called Ibrahim a dumb Hispanic who was incapable of assembling a dirty bomb. Obviously, Times editors gave her special dispensation to portray a "Hispanic" as dumb in order to divert attention from any evidence that the attack was the result of a Muslim extremist.

2.)California traitor "John Walker Lindh" changed his name to Suleyman Al-Lindh in HIGH SCHOOL! When he was captured by the Taliban, he was going by the name Abdul Hameed. He hadn't used the name Lindh for years. But he was identified EXCLUSIVELY in the press as John Walker Lindh.

3.) Thwarted shoe bomber "Richard Reid" was identified by the French police as Tariq Raja. The name he answered to at the time he tried to bomb an airplane was his Muslim name, Abdel Rahim. Naturally, our nation's media called him Richard Reid. The New York Times - surprise! - went an exra step, describing him as Richard Colvin Reid, a British citizen with a "Christian upbringing".
So obviously, the fact that he currently was a Muslim was unimportant to tell people, but making certain the American people realize this violent would-be terrorist had "Christian upbringing" was vital.

In addition, the Qur'an also states rather explicitly that Jesus was not crucified. It says that a look-alike was crucified, and that Jesus was assumed bodily into heaven to be with God. (an-Nisa' 157-158) This is a belief found in various early Christian heresies as well.

Jerome,
You seem to have a true dislike for the Times. I see that it is the only paper you are citing. If you want to convince me that there is a liberal slant to our news, citing one newspaper is not going to do it. Most of the pundits on TV lean toward the conservative perspective. The original "study" that said the media is liberal spoke to 139 journalists in Wash. DC. This is not enough of a sample to get anything but flawed statistics. The conservative pundits took this info and ran with it. It has been said so many times, that people believe it to be true without looking at what is truly out there. If the news were really liberal, wouldn't there be more of an outcry about this administration? Meanwhile, not a day went by that the Clinton adminstration wasn't derided by talk radio, which was then picked up by the major news organizations. And Clinton wasn't even really a liberal. The center has been moved to the right, slowly but surely, until liberals have becomed so marginalized many have changed their name to prgressive to get away from the taint the right wing has given them. There is a propaganda war going on in this country. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the left lost a long time ago. I'd like to see how Air America does. I'm rooting for them. I also hope that by putting some REAL liberal viewpoints out on the airwaves, that people will be able to tell the difference between what we have been fed as "liberal" and what is really liberal.

Karen,
Perhaps worst of all, whe terrorist snipers in Maryland and Virginia turned out to be Muslims, the media treated it as a random crime. The older of the two Muslims had converted to Islam seventeen years earlier, changed his name to John Muhammad, belonged to Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, and cheered the 9-11 terrorist attack. Indeed, he was so gung-ho about the 9-11 attack that three of his acquaintances contacted the FBI, believing he could be a terrorist.
Muhammad registered the getaway vehicle with the DMV on the first anniversary of the 9-11 attack, writing in the time of the registration as "8:52 AM", the precise moment the first plane had hit the World Trade Center.
But what the media saw as the crucial, important fact about sniper John Muhammad was that he was a Gulf War Veteran! CNN insistedon calling John Muhammad by his Christian name (again - violent Muslims=good, Christians=bad) a name he hadn't used for 17 years! The night the snipers' names were first released, CNN's Jeanne Meserve repeatedly called him John Allen Williams.
This is how The New York Times described the snipers: "John Alen Muhammad,41, a Gulf war veteran, and John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican." The only clue to the snipers' religion was the insistence by the Times that Islam had absolutely nothing to do with the shootings. In the three months following the capture of the Muslim snipers terrorizing the capital, the Times ran 128 articles about the shootings. Only 9 even mentioned the word "Muslim".

Karen,
No, it is not just the Times, although I wish you had a valid answer for some of what I've posted already. And there is a big difference between someone like Rush Limbaugh, who never claims to be "objective" and is in the BUSINESS of giving OPINIONS and someone like Dan Rather or Peter Jennings who are supposedly there to give the nation an unbiased objective perspective. The most blatant example I can think of that puts the media's bias into focus is this:
What the Big Three anchors had to say about Clinton's first day in office and that of George W. Bush. As one of President Bill Clinton's first initiatives, he reversed some anti-abortion policies of Presidents Reagan abd Bush the Father. During his first day in office, President George W. Bush reversed a proabortion policy of Bill Clinton's.
JENNINGS ON CLINTON'S FIRST DAY: President Clinton keeps his word on abortion rights. President Clinton kept a promise today on the twentieth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Mr. Clinton signed presidential memoranda rolling back many of the restrictions imposed by his predecessors."
JENNINGS ON BUSH'S FIRST DAY: One of the president's first actions was designed to appeal to anti-abortion conservatives. The president signed an order reinstating a Reagan-era policy that prohibited federal funding of family planning groups that provided abortion counseling overseas."
BROKAW ON CLINTON'S FIRST DAY: "Today President Clinton kept a campaign promise and it came on the twentieth anniversary or ROE vs. WADE legalizing abortion."
BROKAW ON BUSH'S FIRST DAY:"We'll begin with the new president's very active day, which started on acontroversial note..."
RATHER ON CLINTON'S FIRST DAY:"On the anniversary of ROE vs. WADE, President Clinton fulfills a promise, supporting abortion rights. It was twenty years ago today the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark abortion rights ruling, and the controversy hasn't stopped since. Today, with the stroke of a pen, President Clinton delivered on his campaign promise to cancel several antiabortion regulations of the Reagan-Bush years."
RATHER ON BUSH'S FIRST DAY: "This was President Bush's first day at the office and he did something to quickly please the right flank in his party: He reinstituted an anti-abortion policy that had been in place during his father's term and the Reagan presidency but was lifted during the Clinton years."
Any questions?
So President Clinton "keeps his word", "kept a campaign promise", "fulfills a promise". And despite the controversial nature of abortion, none of the anchors called Clinton's move "controversial", as if, of course, any fair-minded, resonsible person would have done the same thing.
But in Bush's case, the anchors' tones appear almost prosecutorial. Bush didn't "keep a campaign promise." No, Bush acted "to appeal to abortion conservatives", "to quickly please the right flank in his party" and he "started on a controversial note".
The not so subtle theme: Clinton practices good government by keeping his promises to NOW, etc. Bush, in contrast, caters to, and becomes the errand boy for the "right flank" of his party.

originally posted by Jerome Maida:

Two blatant examples of the blatant bias of The New York Times...

1.)[Anecdote about NYT publisher]

2.) The New York Times stylebook REQUIRED the word "unwinnable" be used in any sentence about the Vietnam War.

Would you happen to have a reliable source for either of these claims?

The first one is an interesting anecdote, and might even be true. (Certainly there is nothing impossible about someone having said silly or embarrasing things during their teenage years -- although I would like to see a reliable source for the story rather than accept it blindly.)

But the question is not what Sulzberger (or Turner, or Murdoch, or Moon) believed 30 years ago, nor even what they believe today, so much as how their beliefs affect how they run their news organizations.

The media source for which I've read the most complaints by reporters about interference with their reporting is the Washington Times, and these have been about pressure being put on to slant the news in a conservative direction. In contrast, I've seen fewer complaints about management interference with reporting at the NYT (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) and many of these have to do with pro-corporate bias (e.g. directives not to do stories that reflect badly on companies that run ads or that are part of the parent company). Liberals as well as conservatives have complained about the coverage they have received from the NYT, and with about equal justification (i.e. some of the complaints are valid, some aren't, and the valid complaints generally seem to stem from sloppiness rather than deliberate bias).

I am highly dubious of your second claim, that the NYT stylebook requires the word "unwinnable" to be used in any sentence where the phrase "Vietnam War" is used. How sure are you that this is true? Would you be willing to give me a penny for the first exception I can find, 2 cents for the second, 4 cents for the third, 8 cents for the fourth, etc.? I suspect that such an arrangement would make me as rich as Scrooge McDuck...

It is ironic that so many who complain of media bias are often the ones who get fooled by false reporting! I suspect that your second claim, that the NYT stylebook requires the use of the word "unwinnable", is a good example of this.

Sorry, but I have rarely seen any reason to favor either side over the other in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. These are two groups of people that hate each other with a passion that goes back millennia. One group is in charge, one is not. I have no love lost for the Hamas or any fundamentalist muslim group. Their actions are despicable and inexcusable. But I notice that here in america there is a tendency to completely ignore Israel's part in this.

And really, the palestinians have been teated like dirt for generations. Several european countries tried to establish trading deals with palestinian authorities, to build a harbor and help them develop their stance in life and to lessen the poverty. The Israelian government told them the palestinians have no right to trade and it all should go through Israel. Israel has treated them quite similar to how the american settles treated the native americans. Treaty after treaty broken, land after land taken. People point out how Saddam broke 14 UN resolutions. Well, Israel as broken 142.

I see congressmen and senators give long speeches about Israelian children killed by yet another insane suicide bomber and I agree with them. But I fail to see why I should cry any less for palestinian children bombed by Israelian tanks. Really what's the difference? Are the tears of their mothers worth less because they aren't jewish? Innocent people die on both sides. Difference is that Israel only has to say they 'suspected terrorrists' to be at a place and they can level it, with all the civilian casualties they want. Boy does that excuse work for everything these days.

I am neither muslim nor jewish, but I know when I see two groups of people that hate each other. And of course Israel takes out an Hamas leader when they can. Except we are supposed to cheer that. If muslims took out an Israelian politician, those same people would condemn it. Either you accept that these actions are acceptabel in this war or you do not. And when you read up on either Sharon or Arafat it is plain that the title 'murderer' neatly fits both of these men.

Nova Land,
Good arguments. But I think some of what you say proves my point.
The Washington Times was created so there would be an alternative to the Washington Post. They have admitted they have a more conservative bent. It's part of why they have been successful. People are getting stories and a point of view they would not get if the Post were the only game in town. The New York Post is the same way. Murdoch saved it - literally - from death in large part by having a far different perspective than the Times or New York Daily News. Due to this, and breaking stories the other publications MIGHT (I'm trying to be fair)have ignored, the Post is one of only three of the Top 50 papers in America that is actually gaining circulation. I worked in sales at the Philadelphia Inquirer/ Philadelphia Daily News, and that stat just shouted volumes.
So, since most writers in my experience have a liberal leaning, it is only natural they would feel they were interfered with at the Washington Times.
By the same token, if you are a liberal writer at the Times (which is almost all of them. Even safire voted for Clinton in 1992) you will of course have no problem with an editorial board that encourages and pursues liberal slanted stories, and be upset if you can't bash big corporations.
Also, I didn't say the New York Times stylebook STILL requires the word "unwinnable" be used in stories on the Vietnam War. Just while the war was going on.I do remember reading it from a couple credible sources. I will try to track them down. In the meantime, i challenge you to do a Lexis-Nexus search and see how many times from 1968 to the Fall of Saigon those words were used in stories about Vietnam.

"The United States is a capitalist controlled nation. It only reacts when resources or monetary gain are at risk:

Serbia-Kosovo"

What exactly did we get from Serbia-Kosovo? Other than avoid yet another mess in Europe's back yard?"

Nope. You would be wrong. We created that mess. Or perhaps made it worse. Go find the Serbian Kosovo War by Chuck O'Connell CD. It goes pretty clearly into the battle for oil reserves between two significant regions. When the US companies didn't see it coming there way they cooked up 30,000 murders to get a UN action when the actual number was 3000, a significant difference. This is important because larger numbers of people were being killed in the Congo and the US or the UN did not act. There was no strategic or economic interest to do so. They reacted slowly.
Instead they created a nation where Kosovars only represent 10% of the nation. How clever was that? And they had there competition for that oil, Milosevich, arrested. Yep another oil man.

If you look at the last three administrations they all had oil connected people.

Finally "preemtive strike" refers to striking those enemies before they do. In this case you DO NOT KNOW WHO THE ENEMY IS! Do you get it???

William

Nato's Balkan War by Dr. Chuck O'Connell is the correct title of that CD. Find it. You will be surprised.

William

I think the Hulk said it best (to Sabra, after the death of Sahar):

Boy is dead because his people and your people want the same land! Boy is dead because you can't share! Because two old books say that you must kill each other over the land. BUT BOY DID NOT EVEN READ BOOKS!

Sigh. That was written back in 1980. Que sera...

Jonathan (the other one) -

Theres symbolism in every religion. I've always taken time out to read all the texts - there are considerable differences at times in the major monotheistic but at the sametime theyre from the same tree. I view it like an apple tree - just that different trees give out different apples.

Judaism and Islam are a lot closer than Christianity is to either one. there are differences in how the religous code is adminstrated in legal terms (such as polygamy, commerce, etc), whearas christianity is different due to its more organized format (although shiaism is organised, sunnism is not), and the seperation of divine attributes.

My ex's family preached 24-7.

And thats exactly why she's an ex.

Peter - theres a rumor that you might be doing something related to the fantastic X-Factor book you did in the early 90s with Larry Stroman? Is that true?

I can't believe Karen is writing a book when she can't even grasp the notion that the New York Times is the least bit left of center.

CJA

William,

Haven't been too impressed with Dr. Chuck in the past. The usual line of "argument" goes something like "Dick Cheney has oil connections...Afghanistan has oil (or is near someone who has oil, or is known for oily food, or something)...therefore....the war was about oil! Thank you! I'm here all week!"

"Finally "preemtive strike" refers to striking those enemies before they do. In this case you DO NOT KNOW WHO THE ENEMY IS! Do you get it???"

Ummm, yeah. Had I expressed some confusion on the words "preemptive" (the correct spelling btw) or "strike"?

Incidentally, the Congo is rich with mineral and oil resources, so you'd think all of those capitalists would have been swarming over it instead of harassing that swell Milosevich fella. But there you are.

originally posted by Jerome Maida

...The Washington Times was created so there would be an alternative to the Washington Post. They have admitted they have a more conservative bent. It's part of why they have been successful.

I agree that the Washington Times was created to be slanted to the right, and that this has made it popular with people desiring such a slant.

The Washington Times is unusual in being deliberately slanted to the right (or at least in being somewhat blatant about it). But the fact that most other papers are not deliberately slanted to the right does not mean they must therefore be slanted to the left. Based on the evidence I have seen, I do not believe they are.

... since most writers in my experience have a liberal leaning, it is only natural they would feel they were interfered with at the Washington Times.

If a reporter (liberal or conservative) were trying to slant their reporting and their editor edited this to remove the slant, the reporter might perceive (or, rather, misperceive) this as bias. But that does not seem to be the case with the incidents reported about the Washington Times. The incidents I've seen reported on (in places such as Columbia Journalism Review) were examples where the newspaper's management was trying to add rather than remove bias.

This is only "natural" if you accept that a particular media outlet is biased (which the WT seems to be). It should not happen. I believe objective reporting is a worthwhile ideal, one which (like most ideals) may never be perfectly attainable but is still worth striving for.

But you have a good point, that charges of media bias may actually be due to the reporter's own biases. While this does not appear to be true with the complaints against the Washington Times, it may well be true in some other cases, such as some of the charges that have been leveled against CBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. It is worth examining these on a case-by-case basis before concluding whether there is or is not bias. (So far, the one case you've mentioned is the charge about the NYT stylebook requiring the word "unwinnable" to be used.)

As I noted before, I have seen both liberal and conservative complaints about the way the news is reported in the NYT, Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. You seem to think that liberals are happy with the way the news is reported in these sources, but that is not the case. What that indicates to me is that, while the media often gets facts wrong in stories about conservatives (which conservatives view as bias) and often get facts wrong in stories about liberals (which liberals view as bias), the problem is not so much a liberal or conservative bias in the mainstream media so much as it is sloppiness and a lack of work. The media no longer does adequate investigating of the stories it reports, and I believe this is where much of the problem lies.

... if you are a liberal writer at the Times (which is almost all of them. Even Safire voted for Clinton in 1992)...

Voting for Clinton does not make one a liberal, nor does voting for Bush make one a conservative. If Safire (who has long believed himself to be a conservative) is to be counted as a liberal, then you appear to be defining the terms conservative and liberal in such a way that the overwhelming majority of people in this country would be counted as liberals.

...you will of course have no problem with an editorial board that encourages and pursues liberal slanted stories...

Please let me know which editorial boards these are. I have to turn to genuinely liberal media such as The Nation to get such a slant (just as I have to turn to genuinely conservative media such as National Review to get a conservative slant) because the NYT and Washington Post do not provide it.

[Regarding the claim that the NYT stylebook required the use of "unwinnable" in conjunction with use of the phrase "Vietnam War":
I do remember reading it from a couple credible sources. I will try to track them down.

Thank you. I'll look forward to seeing that.

In the meantime, i challenge you to do a Lexis-Nexus search and see how many times from 1968 to the Fall of Saigon those words were used in stories about Vietnam.

I don't have Lexis-Nexus (or if I do, no one has told me), but I can drop by the library next week and look up the NYT on microfilm. I will be glad to see if I can find cases where "unwinnable" does not occur in items about the Vietnam War.

Since your source claimed it was required, I should not be able to find any -- so again I ask, would you be willing to donate 1 cent to Peter's site for the first such instance I find, 2 cents for the second, 4 cents for the third, 8 cents for the fourth, 16 cents for the fifth, etc.?

Media:
I'm curious about what people mean when they call the American media 'liberal'. In what sense? Nineteenth century free market liberal? Or post 1960s 'make love not war' liberal?

After all, I've seen CNN and one thing it isn't is liberal in the latter sense (it is compared to the foaming maniacs at Fox, but then, what isn't?). What's more it's really not that interested in what goes on in the rest of the world. I've met Christiane Amanpour, and her analysis of the Balkan crisis was infantile at best; her interest was in crafting a story that could be easily understood, replete with goodies and baddies. That's hardly the kind of journalism that's likely to accurately reflect reality, is it?

And certainly by European standards the NY Times and Washington Post are pretty much centrist papers, perhaps tilting slightly to the right...

Roamin around...
While the idea that the USA is a modern day Rome, conquering nations and building reality show colosseums, it doesn't hold up--the Romans would doubtlessly laugh at the way we give back the countries we defeat to the people who live there

Well, no, because the Romans used to do that too. It took them a long time to get into the business of actually annexing territory, and sometimes, like in 196, they found it far more amusing to claim to have 'liberated' Greece from the evil Macedonians. Of course, from then on Greece and Macedon were little more than client states...

As far as the Romans were concerned, indirect control was as valid as direct control; wholesale annexation was generally only the option when security reasons or profiteering demanded it.

It doesn't help to see the Romans as successors of the Greeks though; on balance the Romans seem to have contributed little of their own to the world, barring certain engineering techniques; their main achievement was to have filtered and transmitted Greek culture. In that regard, Constantinople a curious Romano-Greek hybrid, a successor to Rome, based in the Greek half of the empire, speaking Greek, yet claiming to be Roman. Odd, I know.

As for Hamas...
Finally, as for PAD's question, 'Why are the Palestinians upset that Israel blew up the Hamas guy?'...

Might it help to rephrase that? It kind of assumes that all Palestinians follow the same brand of Islam espoused by Hamas. I'm sure at least some Palestinians saw him as a leader of one of their resistance organisations, albeit one that favoured desperate and repulsive tactics.

In that case, I can understand them being angered at how Israeli forces had entered their homeland and murdered one of their people, indeed such a prominent one. It's not totally unlike the Irish response after the British executed the leaders of the 1916 Rising.

I'm not so sure why the Hamas crowd are so upset though. That's a fair point. Maybe it's just that he didn't get to choose the manner of his death?

From the wonderful James Lilek's Bleat:

We stopped pretending we would ratify Kyoto. We only spent $15 billion on AIDS in Africa. We did not take dictation from Paris. If we had done these things, it would minimize the world’s anger.

Is the world angry at Russia, which spends nothing on AIDS and rebuffed Kyoto? Is the world angry at China, which got a pass on Kyoto and spends nothing on AIDS for other countries?

Is the world angry at North Korea for killings its people? Angry at Iran for smothering that vibrant nation with corrupt and thuggish mullocracy? Angry at Syria for occupying Lebanon? Angry at Saudi Arabia for its denial of women’s rights? Angry at Russia for corrupt elections? Is the world angry at China for threatening Taiwan, or angry at France for joining the Chinese in joint military exercises that threatened the island on the eve of an election? Is the world angry at Zimbabwe for stealing land and starving people? Is the world angry at Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets? Is the world angry at Libya for having an NBC program?

Is the world angry at the thugs of Fallujah?

Is the world angry at anyone besides America and Israel?

Greg,
First, if you need some examples of the "liberal" standards of the media in this country, you're welcome to look back over my posts.

Second,
I'm not comparing our media to the European media because really, who gives a damn? I'm talking in regard to American political leanings and how such bias either away helps affect the debate and people's perceptions.

Third,
Your criticism of Amanpour is really unfair (amazing that she's also a conservative punching bag for trying to show the complex issued involved in the Mideast, etc. instead of just saying "We're right, the terrorists are evil and that's that."). So she actually likes to make sure her stories are understood by a majority of viewers. How terrible! No, I guess she should tell stories in a way that only the ELITE understand. I have news for you, the majority of publications/ media outlets HAVE to dumb down their news or else they wouldn't have an audience/ readers. Most people in the U.S. still don't understand the Electoral College, for example. Or that a new President doesn't take office the day after the election, but is INAUGURATED the following January.
In fact, dumbing down may be a bit harsh. But most people do not follow the news that closely. They are too busy with their lives. So if she can make a complex situation accessible and understandable to the average viewer, then I see that as a remarkable skill, and far from "infantile". And sometimes things realy are more cut and dried than those who constantly see a shade of grey tend to perceive.
Of course, you betray your leanings when you refer to "the foaming maniacs at Fox". You can alays pick out a liberal because he/she can't talk about conservatives without calling them names.
BTW, Bill O'Reilly is denounced as "conservative" by those who believe the nation's newsrooms accurately reflect the political spectrum. O'Reilly is anti-death penalty and pro-gun control, believes in "global warming", and thought Elian Gonzalez should be sent back to Cuba - not positions generally associated with the Republican Party. Indeed, O'Reilly's only manifest conservative credential is that he strongly disapproves of gasbags, phonies, bullshitters, hucksters and liars.

My criticism of Amanpour is unfair? Have you met her? Were you there when I did? She made it very clear that in order to tell the story you needed a villain, so that people would follow it.

She was more interested in 'the story' than 'the truth'.

Are most people in America really that stupid that things need to be explained to them in such a dishonest fashion? Does the 'average' viewer really not understand things that aren't black and white? Do most Americans really not understand their electoral system? Do they really think that a new President takes office the day after the election? I had always assumed these were just the typical cliches spouted by Anti-Americans.

By the way, I've never heard of Bill O'Reilly, but it sounds like he's a model conservative, in favour of conserving lives, the environment, and the family. What do other conservatives want to conserve?

(Incidentally, that may be the first time anybody has ever called me a Liberal.

The Blue Spider:
I can't believe Karen is writing a book when she can't even grasp the notion that the New York Times is the least bit left of center.

Given that Karen in fact never said she was writing a book and in fact explicitly referred to a book she was reading, I don't really think she's the one having problems grasping seemingly obvious notions.

Jerome:
You can alays pick out a liberal because he/she can't talk about conservatives without calling them names.

Ah, yes. Liberals like William "nattering nabobs of negativity" Safire. Liberals like Newt Gingrich, who sent out talking points to campaigns telling them which negative buzzwords they should always use in reference to liberals.

Those guys?

(And it's really silly to point to Safire voting for Clinton as an example of him being a liberal. Safire has called himself a conservative for decades, and has made no bones about his leanings for the 2004 election.)

If you explain to me how exactly calling liberals "traitors" is less inflammatory than calling conservatives "liars", THEN you can claim the moral high ground on the issue. Until then, it might be better to acknowledge that any issue about which passions run high (which these days is pretty much any of 'em, it seems) is going to bring out strong emotional responses and phrasings on both sides.

TWL

Tim Lynch,
No, I messed up about Safire. I really did. He is jokingly called the Times' "House Republican". the point I meant to get across - which I admittedly did very poorly in this instance, sorry - is that:
a.) With Safire voting for Clinton, it is quite possible that none of their writers and editors voted for Bush the Father. And they HAVE NOT ENDORSED A REPUBLICAN FOR PRESIDENT SINCE EISENHOWER!

B.) Safire admits this. Can you think of a prominent reporter - not a columnist like George Will - who would ever conceivably vote for a Republican? Or ever admit it? (I realize Safire is a columnist too. I am not comparing the "objective" reporters to him. His admission just inspired the comparison.

Can you think of a prominent reporter - not a columnist like George Will - who would ever conceivably vote for a Republican? Or ever admit it?

Assuming you mean at the NYT specifically ... I wouldn't be surprised if Judith Miller did, though obviously I don't know. (She's the writer behind most of the Iraq-WMD stories prior to the war.)

As for "or ever admit it" -- sure, but it depends on the circumstances. My uncle is pretty heavily conservative and certainly voted for Bush in 2000 (though with misgivings; both of us agreed that a Bradley/McCain matchup would be far more energizing than what we got), but doesn't tend to bring it up much at family gatherings since it would probably turn a lot of conversations into debates. We all wear different hats throughout our day. I don't generally wear my politics on my sleeve while I'm teaching, though I'm sure stuff slips out now and then. :-)

If you mean "would X publicly admit to it in a reportorial capacity" -- how many publicly say in writings that they voted for a Democrat? Or a Libertarian? Or a Green? Or mention what they had for lunch?

Given that a reporter's job is generally to keep him/herself out of the story, it's hard to see where that "admission" would come from.

TWL

Greg,
First, any reporter worth their salt is interested in "the story". "The Truth" is also pretty subjective and not carved in stone. Like the saying goes, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. If a company of 500 only employs two minorities in 1999 and in 2000 they increase that total to three, they can claim an increase of 50 percent in minority hiring! But if another company has 500 employees and employs 250 minorities in 1999 and they increase that total to 275 in 2000, they will only be able to truthfully claim an increase of 10 percent in minority hiring. Both statements are true, and someone could actually do a story stating that the percentage is greater for the first company than the second, but does that tell the whole story? Of course not.
You obviously have a mad-on for Amanpour, which again is ironic since many American conservatives blast her for being too sympathetic to the "causes" of terrorism. As stated, a columnist for the New York Post called her a "war slut". I actually find her reports to be thought-provoking and even-handed. So I guess I disagree with both you and the Post columnist.
Finally, if you don't know who Bill O'Reilly is (he only hosts Fox News' highest-rated show, the O'Reilly Factor; has his own newspaper column, and has written two best-selling books in addition to being on talk shows constantly) then you obviously DO NOT WATCH FOX NEWS! In which case your "foaming maniacs" comment reeks of ignorance and bias.
Heck, I watch BOTH Fox News AND CNN.I read books by Ann Coulter AND Michael Moore; Pat Buchanan AND Hillary Clinton; Sean Hannity AND Alan Colmes; and the New York Post and The New York Times. I read Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. You get the idea. I do this to a.) gain different perspectives and b.)so when I criticize one of these outlets or something or someone, I can speak my opinion based on accumulated knowledge and not knee-jerk bias.
Why don't you?

Jerome, keep in mind one thing when pointing out how differntly the major news anchors reported on the first days in office for Bush and Clinton: the controversy/scandal surrounding how Bush even got to have a first day in office.

"So, since most writers in my experience have a liberal leaning, it is only natural they would feel they were interfered with at the Washington Times." -Jerome Maida

You realize that's not really a statistic to base much on, right? I mean, unless you have read or personally know every writer for every paper in the country, it's tough to say "most" and have it mean anything. At least you threw in the "in my experience" bit, but that just furthers my problem with you trying to make a blanket statement about the media. I know in this particular sentence you were referencing a particular paper, but it comes down to your "experience" and not facts. If the particular writers for this paper were indeed "liberals", then it is perhaps natural for them to feel interfered with. But you didn't mention the writers in your "experience" even wrote for this paper.

Monkeys.

I'm going to try something here that didn't really work too well the last time - I suppose I'm hoping that Peter David fans will be able to exhibit at least some degree of introspection of their own ideas...

Simply put, can anyone provide for me their own (extensional, if necessary) definitions of "liberal" and "conservative"? When they're used as pejoratives, it's pretty obvious the correspondent isn't using the classic dictionary definitions. (Of course, that's pretty obvious when someone refers to Dubya as a "conservative", too - there's absolutely nothing conservative about his prosecution of the Iraq situation, nor about his formation of a whole new Cabinet-level department, nor about his proposal of yet another Constitutional amendment, this one aimed at the personal lives of American citizens, nor...)

And no, statements like "You can alays pick out a liberal because he/she can't talk about conservatives without calling them names" don't count - that's kind of a pot/kettle thing there. Just tell me what a "liberal" is, and/or what a "conservative" is, and maybe this whole issue can head toward some sort of resolution. Whaddaya say?

Nope. You would be wrong. We created that mess. Or perhaps made it worse.

Kosovo... hell, the entire Balkans, has been a mess for more than 100 years.

Toby,
The "controversy" on how Bush got into office - in the hands of objective journalists - should have nothing to do with how they report Clinton signing pro-abortion/pro-choice legislation compared to Bush signing pro-life/anti-choice legislation. Both kept "promises" to the voters who voted for them, and abortion is "controversial" no matter how you cut it and which side you are on. This just seemed lost on the networks, and the coverage was very skewed. NOW can be just as fanatical and "single-issue" minded as pro-life zealots. But most journalists not only are for legal abortion, they hardly ever interact with those who disagree. So in their point of view, Bush's signing of pro-life legislation appeases "extremists" because that's the point of view they hold, and very few people in their circle of friends challenge that.

Craig,
Thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Jerome

Toby,
You are right about my "personal experience" at the Philadelphia Daily News being enough to paint with a broad brush. I had just cited the numerous polls of the media which consistently show 92-94% of the mainstream media voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. I also cited examples at other papers that I have gotten information on. So I thought I would just add that judging from my personal experience, I can believe that the polls are accurate.

Toby,
Since you brought the "controversy" on how Bush got into office, let's leave Florida alone for a minute and take a look at election night 2000: Throughout the evening, Gore's wins were posted rapidly, but all of Bush's wins consistently demanded further study. This could perhaps be dismissed as coincidence if liberals hadn't declared war on John Ellis at Fox News for calling Florida for Bush "too soon".
A story by the Associated Press revealed Gore won Maine by 5 percentage points and was declared the winner within 5 minutes of the polls closing. Bush won Colorado by 9 points, and it took CNN 2 hours and 41 minutes to make that call. Even Bush's 15-point margin of victory in Alabama took CNN 25 minutes to project. Bush won North Carolina by 13 points and CNN waited 39 minutes to announce a winner. Bush won Georgia by 12 points and CNN waited 59 minutes.
These were not flukes:
Arizona, Bush by 7 points (51-44) - 2 hrs., 51 min.
Michigan, Gore by 4 points (51-47) - 1 hour, 24 minutes
Arkansas, Bush by 6 points (51-45) - 3 hours, 42 minutes
Pennsylvania, Gore by 4 points (51-47) - 1 hour, 24 minutes
Tennessee, Bush by 3 points ( 51-48) - 3 hours, 3 minutes
Minnesota, Gore by 2 points (48-46) - 1 hour, 25 minutes
West Virginia, Bush by 6 points (52-46) - 3 hours, 16 minutes
Washington, Gore by 5 points (50-45) - 1 hour, 8 minutes
No matter how the projections are compared, there was a consistent rush to declare states for gore throughout the night. Some states were called immediately upon the polls closing. Of those, Gore's average margin of victory was 18 points and Bush's 26 points. It took the networks more time to give Bush states he won by 12, 9 or 7 points than to give Gore a state he lost = Florida in 52 minutes.
It really seems like the election-night coverage was an aggressive partisan campaign on behalf of Al Gore.

Jerome, I'll concede that my 'foaming maniacs' comment was an exaggeration; my experience of Fox News has been limited to occasionally reading articles taken from its website, transcripts of reports and shows. I guess I shouldn't have damned the entire channel on the basis of John Gibson's rantings.*

If I've got it wrong, then I'm sorry.

As for my 'having a mad-on' for Amanpour, my contempt is based wholly upon having met her and her giving a speech where she talked about the necessity of setting up a 'bad guy' in telling stories.

Hmmm. Now let's see. Why did we always hear so much about the Serb villains in Yugoslavia, but basically nothing about how the driving of the Serbs from the Krajina was by far the biggest case of ethnic cleansing in Europe since the Second World War? Oh yes, because every reporter worth their salt is interested in 'the story', and having Serbs as victims didn't fit into their narratives.

She may well have adopted a more sensible approach in reporting on the Middle East; I hope so, and if so, I wish her well. Maybe she's changed.

As for your suggestion that I read stuff I don't agree with so that 'I can speak my opinion based on accumulated knowledge and not knee-jerk bias,' well, all I can say is go to my blogsite and run down the margin to the section entitled 'sources'. Fairly wide-ranging, I think you'd have to agree. Papers from left and right, based in New York, London, Washington, Dublin, Frankfurt, Paris, Athens, and Moscow, not to mention oodles of journals and the odd pundit...

But anyway, do you really think most Americans are as ignorant as you claim?

*(As for Bill O'Reilly, I've done some googling, and he seems comfortably on the right of your political divide. There even have been a couple of cases of his advocating the death penalty, so your claim that he's opposed to it doesn't really stand up)

originally posted by Jerome Maida:

The "controversy" on how Bush got into office - in the hands of objective journalists - should have nothing to do with how they report Clinton signing pro-abortion/pro-choice legislation compared to Bush signing pro-life/anti-choice legislation. Both kept "promises" to the voters who voted for them, and abortion is "controversial" no matter how you cut it and which side you are on.

Were both keeping campaign promises? Before getting too invested in the notion that this case proves media bias, it might be good to review their campaign literature and their campaign speeches. (You know -- the kind of fact-checking which the media should do, in order to present the news fairly and accurately, but too often don't do. Have you done that kind of checking? Or, if you haven't, do you know for a fact that the source you are relying on has?

It's far enough back that I'm not sure how explicit Bill Clinton was with his promises to abortion rights groups of what all he would do if elected, but I'm pretty sure that lifting the gag order (the action talked about in the news coverage you referred to) was one of his explicit and repeated campaign promised.

Likewise, it's far enough back that I'm not sure how explicit George Bush was with his promises to abortion opponents about what all he would do if elected. My memory is of him trying to skirt the issue -- to indicate he was pro-life, but to avoid saying what exactly he would do (other than, as I recall, to say he would not press for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion or try to make abortion illegal).

I think one of the actions Bush did immediately following his inauguaration was to re-institute the gag rule -- something which was deemed as especially newsworthy because it was not something he had said he would do during the campaign.

If so, then the stories are not parallel, and the media would have been correct to cover them differently. If my memory is correct, then Clinton was, in fact, fulfilling a campaign promise, and Bush was, in fact, not. Care to put this to a test? I'd be willing to look up evidence that Clinton's action was, indeed, fulfillment of an explicit campaign promise if you will do the same for Bush. My memory is not infallible, but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this. Interesting, though, that your source wasn't aware of it.

It is easy to come up with supposedly parallel stories where liberals and conservatives were treated differently. Liberals can play that game as easily as conservatives.

Here's why it's so easy. The media likes to do stories that feature the words "however" and "but." That is, if they are doing a story about something that reflects favorably on someone, they like to include a second part to the story, the "however" part, about how maybe it doesn't reflect favorably after all. (Or if they are doing a story that reflects unfavorably on someone, they like to add on a "however" about how maybe it doesn't reflect so unfavorably after all.) By taking two parallel stories, one about the right and one about the left, and comparing the unfavorable comments about one side (from one story) with the favorable comments about the other side (from the other story), it is possible to prove either (a) that the media is biased against the right, or (b) that the media is biased against the left, depending on which way you care to cherry-pick the stories.

This just seemed lost on the networks, and the coverage was very skewed. NOW can be just as fanatical and "single-issue" minded as pro-life zealots.

Not quite. NOW has no equivalent of Paul Hill, David Troesch, nor of the militants such as Michael Bray who advocate and defend the shooting of abortion doctors. However, if we exclude the pro-violence militants in the pro-life movement, then yes, there are people in NOW every bit as fanatical and single-issue as there are in comparable anti-abortion groups. And these people receive the same negative reporting in the media that their Pro-Life counterparts do. Both sides receive both good and bad coverage in the media.

I suspect you are more aware of the negative coverage that people you support get (because you disagree with it and may want to talk back to the tv set) and ditto for positive coverage that people you oppose get (again, because you disagree with it). In contrast, it sounds like you are less aware of the positive coverage people you agree with (because when the media says good things about these people you take it for granted as true and deserved) and ditto for negative coverage about groups you disagree with (again because you feel it is true and deserved).

Many conservatives who charge "liberal media bias", for example, tend to brush off all the negative coverage that Clinton received during his presidency, or that Gore received during the campaign against Bush, since all these negative stories were (by their lights) true and justified.

I think if you counted the number of negative stories per year that appeared about Clinton during his terms in office with the number of negative stories per year about Reagan, Bush I, or Bush II, it would appear that the media is harder on Democrats than Republicans. This, of course, would not necessarily be a fair way of measuring the issue. But neither is the selective cherry-picking your source seems to be doing.

originally posted by Jerome Maida:

Bill O'Reilly is denounced as "conservative" by those who believe the nation's newsrooms accurately reflect the political spectrum. O'Reilly is anti-death penalty and pro-gun control, believes in "global warming", and thought Elian Gonzalez should be sent back to Cuba - not positions generally associated with the Republican Party.

It is not so much that O'Reilly is denounced as a conservative so much as that he (like Safire) self-describes himself as one -- as do many of the people who watch his show, read his books, and agree with many of his positions. If you choose to define conservative in such a way that these people are no longer to be counted in their ranks, then what you seem to be doing is reducing conservatives to an extremely tiny minority of the US population. (In which case, the complaint that they are under-represented in the media evaporates.)

Are you as strict in defining liberals? I know many people who charge media bias want to count Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, et. al. as liberals (not to mention pro-death-penalty NAFTA supporting opponents of gay marriage such as the Clintons). It's silly, I know, but I've even heard the Clintons described as ultra-liberals.

Posted by Jonathan (the other one):

Just tell me what a "liberal" is, and/or what a "conservative" is, and maybe this whole issue can head toward some sort of resolution. Whaddaya say?

Good question! I'll try to post a response tomorrow, as I need to get off-line for a while now. Meanwhile, here's a brief start:

While there are many different varieties of conservatives, and many different varieties of liberals, and these are not necessarily synonymous with right-wing and left wing (although they are often carelessly used that way), I'd suggest as a start that National Review is the journal most widely associated with conservativism in the US and The Nation is the journal most widely associated with liberalism. (American Spectator and Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative would also qualify as good examples of conservative media; and The Progressive and American Prospect would qualify as additional good examples of liberal media.

People who feel at home reading one or more of the conservative set probably qualify as conservatives; people who feel at home reading one or more of the liberal set probably qualify as liberals. Politicians who are regularly praised in one of these media sets probably qualify as belonging to that camp; and politicans who are regularly panned in one of these media sets probably don't.

(Obviously, that's too simplistic. Pat Buchanan says in the masthead of his site, "The conservative movement has been hijacked and turned into a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology, which is not the conservative movement I grew up with." There is a great deal of disagreement among those who call themselves conservatives (and among those who call themselves liberals), not so much about underlying principles as about what courses of action those principles lead to.

The idea that either side has a "party line" is way out of touch with reality. The fact that someone opposes the death penalty doesn't mean they can't be conservative (e.g. Bill O'Reilly, not to mention the Pope) and the fact someone supports the death penalty doesn't meant they can't be a liberal.

But I think there are distinct principles underlying the two movements, and I will attempt to put those into words later.)

"However, if we exclude the pro-violence militants in the pro-life movement, then yes, there are people in NOW every bit as fanatical and single-issue as there are in comparable anti-abortion groups. And these people receive the same negative reporting in the media that their Pro-Life counterparts do."

I have to totally disagree. Whatever one's views on abortion, it's obvious that the view of the media is very skewed toward the hardliner pro-choice view. A "moderate" republican, for example, is one that supports abortion rights to a degree far greater than what the public as a whole supports, whereas one can find people described as "extremist" if they do advocate even the most popular restrictions on abortion (note once again--I'm not arguing the merits of the issue, only how those who do are portrayed).

Whether pro-choice advocates like it or not, the polls, including those run by NOW and MS Magazine and others who have no interest in skewing the results this way show that the public does NOT support anything close to abortion on demand and would be quite willing to accept many restrictions, if not an outright ban. But try to find a character on TV who would espouse such a view...maybe Cartman or Mr Burns...

I'm having a hard time remembering ANY instance of a fanatical or single issue pro choice person being negatively portrayed in the mdeia or news.

Tim Lynch,
Yes, members of both sides of the divide engage in name-calling, but the MEDIA seem to relish perpetuating cruel and harsh assessments of Republicans. here seem to be at least three constants in news coverage about Republicans:
1.) The more conservative or popular they are, the more they'll be described as "dumb"
2.) It's almost mandatory for Republican/conservative women to be called "ugly"
3.) When a Republican like Newt Gingrich wants to reform welfare, he'll be carciatured on the cover of "Time" magazine as Scrooge. When a Democrat like Clinton actually signs it, it will be described as his "signature reform" and a "good idea".
4.) Any Republican/conservative's verbal misteps will be replayed and reprinted a zillion times, but Democrats almost always speak well. If they sat something embarrassing, it's ignored.

Yes, it is true the media love to portray Republicans as dumb. From Eisenhower to Dubya, this has been true. Although I think the obsession with making sure voters feel Bush is dumb and portraying him as such may dwarf similar efforts against ronald reagan, and that's saying something.
The "centrist" New York Times had a story by Richard L. Berke with Rick Lyman, titled "Training For A Presidential Race" on March 15, 1999, in which it was stated "Mr. Bush has embarked on a cram course that could be titled 'What you need to know to run for President'...There may never have been a 'serious' candidate who needed it more". A "correction" issued four days later stated that the last sentence was not supposed to appear in the article, but was a "message between editors after the article was written" that somehow ended up in the article text."
Nope. No bias there at the Times!

Jerome wrote:
"The more conservative or popular they are, the more they'll be described as "dumb"

Bush fit this description long before he registered as a member of the Republican Party. ;)

and...

"Yes, it is true the media love to portray Republicans as dumb. From Eisenhower to Dubya, this has been true. Although I think the obsession with making sure voters feel Bush is dumb and portraying him as such may dwarf similar efforts against ronald reagan, and that's saying something."

The big difference being that Bush reinforces this every time he opens his mouth. Reagan was brilliant on many levels.

Of course, as I said, this all started with Eisenhower, who was only smart enough to get us out of Korea in six months after truman had us stuck there for two and a half years. His "intellectual" opponent, Adlai Stevenson, supposedly was a witty felow and a lover of books. he was constantly referred to as "the Thinking Man's President". It was later discovered that Stevenson was a boob who rarely read books. When he died, only a single book was found on his nightstand: "The Social Register".
This fact has been noted only twice - in a single New York Times article in 2000 and a column by George Will.
As a result the myth of the "intellectual" Stevenson endures.

Grev,
Was looking over old posts and had to respond:
Simply put, if we withdraw our SUPPORT from Israel (you seem to be implying we have troops over there) and "let them settle their dispute among themselves, Israel will be destroyed. No question. They are still surrounded by enemies who despise them and seek nothing less than their total destruction. They are only about the size of Rhode Island. They would be destroyed if we didn't help them. You may not care about that. I do, and do not feel we can let that happen.

Yes, members of both sides of the divide engage in name-calling, but the MEDIA seem to relish perpetuating cruel and harsh assessments of Republicans.

I'm sorry, but I really think this is so general as to be nonsensical. Your alleged "constants" in news coverage?

1.) The more conservative or popular they are, the more they'll be described as "dumb"

I read a lot of news, Jerome. I don't see the word in common usage on EITHER side of the spectrum. Columnists, yes -- but on both sides. Reporters and editorial pages, no. Can you provide any evidence for this?

Let's assume that you mean a more general argument, namely that if X is conservative, he/she will be portrayed as an intellectual lightweight somehow.

Our current president: agreed.

Reagan: agreed.

Gingrich (awfully conservative, I think you'd agree): no.

Schwarzenegger (a very popular Republican): not especially, no -- and I live in a pretty liberal part of the state. The coverage of his governorship to date has been almost overwhelmingly positive.

Dole? McCain? Frist? DeLay? Santorum?

None of these people is routinely portrayed as dumb, Jerome.

Yes, the occasional Republican is portrayed as not overly bright. So is the occasional Democrat. Two examples hardly make a pattern.

(As Bill Mulligan has also pointed out in the past, when liberals DO play the Bush-is-dumb card they often shoot themselves in the foot because they underestimate his political savvy as a result.)

But as long as we're on media portrayals ... how about the savaging Carter took after (a) the "rabbit" incident, (b) the Playboy interview about lust, and (c) the "malaise" speech. Most of the press absolutely couldn't wait to chew on him after that.

Or look at what the media did to the Dean campaign.

2.) It's almost mandatory for Republican/conservative women to be called "ugly"

Can you name even one occasion where that's happened? I think the looks of Republican women aren't typically brought up much at all -- and certainly someone like Ann Coulter is typically referred to as "a major BABE." (Personally, I don't see it.)

Compare, please, to Limbaugh referring to Chelsea Clinton as "the White House dog." Or virtually any depiction at the time of Eleanor Roosevelt.

[Now, in fairness, I do think there's some evidence that Condoleeza Rice is being portrayed pretty badly in the media. I personally think she's one of the worst national security advisors we've ever had, but the picture typically used for stories surrounding her in the past week has been really dreadful.]

3.) When a Republican like Newt Gingrich wants to reform welfare, he'll be carciatured on the cover of "Time" magazine as Scrooge. When a Democrat like Clinton actually signs it, it will be described as his "signature reform" and a "good idea".

This one I can't comment on except that a lot of media outlets certainly did NOT refer to welfare reform as "a good idea" initially, regardless of who proposed them.

However, this one sounds vaguely familiar to me, and is also policy-centered. Good call on your part.

4.) Any Republican/conservative's verbal misteps will be replayed and reprinted a zillion times, but Democrats almost always speak well. If they sat something embarrassing, it's ignored.

As one who donated substantial money to the Dean campaign, can I just call a "bullshit" of epic proportions to that?

When you compare Tim Russert's treatment of Bush on "Meet the Press" versus his and others' treatment of Dean, your argument completely and utterly falls apart. Dean got savaged; Bush was thrown softball after softball, and Russert didn't follow up really obvious avenues after a Bush response.

So that's 1 for 4 as I see it. Hardly overwhelming evidence of bias.

TWL

Tim Lynch,
Nice counter-arguments.
Okay, you want examples. Here we go, starting with Republican candidates for PRESIDENT being routinely portrayed as dumb:
1.) Eisenhower vs. Stevenson I've already covered
2.) From your post above, you obviously agree the media portray Dubya that way and portrayed Reagan in that fashion, so I won't give any more examples re:them
3.)The media couldn't really portray Bush the Father (henceforth Bush41 as dumb, so they made sure to absolutely make sure that his running mate, Dan Quayle, was depicted to the American public as an absolute moron. and this was long before a teacher told him to correct a student by putting an E at the end of "potato". This is a man who at the time was a "rising star", has written two books and pieces of legislation and actually had a sharp wit on talk shows. Yet he was consistently portrayed as a buffoon.
One of the more blatant examples of how the media cite Republicans as dumb yet cover democratic gaffes concerned President Clinton's bungling incomprehension of what the Patriot missile does.
In a campaign speech on September 8, 1992, Clinton said: "We come up with great ideas and then turn them into things like the patriot missile, which will go through doors and down chimneys."
This was an extremely embarrassing error on missile technology. The Patriot is a purely defensive missile: It is a surface to air missile designed to shoot down incoming missiles, not objects on the ground, like chimneys.
Now, the meia is big on events or statements "reinforcing impressions" (Dubya's not being able to name all four world leaders in his infamous pop quiz "reinforced" the idea that he knew little about the world and was therefore unfit for the presidency, for example; his father looking at a watch during a debate "reinforced' the idea he was out of touch). Clinton's mistake, therefore, might have been portrayed as "reinforcing" the belief among many that he knew nothing about the military. Now, i feel that national defense is more important than the proper spelling of potato. But maybe that's just me.
Quayle himself even stated that Clinton had "confused the Patriot with the cruise missile. Bill Clinton knows less about national security than I know about spelling.'
So how did the mainstream media treat Clinton's gaffe and Quayle's retort?
The Los Angeles Times said, "Quayle had to extract both feet from his own mouth. He too had the wrong missile." Time magazine said "Quayle tweaked Clinton for referring in a speech to Patriot missiles going down chimneys during the Gulf War. Ha, said Quayle, 'Bill Clinton knows less about national security than i know about spelling!' The weapons, said Quayle, were cruise missiles. Join the club, Dan. They were smart bombs.
CNN's Frederick Allen said that "neither side had much luck when it came to discussing national security".
So who was right? The Los Angeles Times, Time and CNN - or Dan Quayle? Dan Quayle.
What the meia failed to report is that although we do not use cruise missiles to go down chimneys, they can, and about equaly well as smart bombs. Thus, when talking about weapons that can "go down chimneys and through doors" it WOULD be accurate to refer to either cruise missiles or smart bombs. By contrast, the Patriot missile - identified by Clinton as going down chimneys -has nothing whatsoever to do with precise targeting. But the media was so determined to shift some of Clinton's gafe onto Quayle and portray Quayle as a goof for the zillionth time, they could not bear reporting that they had Quayle had caught Clinton making a mistake. So they simply lied and reported that Quayle was wrong too.

Tim Lynch,
Maybe you can't see it, but believe me, Ann Coulter IS a major babe.
of course, I've always had a thing for strong women ever since i can remember, whther it be a "tough rockers" like Joan Jett and Pat Benatar, to athletes like Chris evert, to butt-kicking babes on TV (Eliza Dushku as Faith on "Buffy"; Mariska Hargitay on "Law and Order:Special Victims Unit"; to comic characters like Tomb Raider, Wonder Woman, Emma Frost and Mystique.
I even had a crush on Susan Estrich 16 years ago, believe it or not!

Tim Lynch,
Can't think of ONE instance where Republican women were attacked. I can name several, especially if they are seen as legitimate threats to Democrats.
Let's start with the most recent and blatant:
Katherine Harris.
When she was thrust into the limelight, the liberal press couldn't wait to attavk her on the basis of her looks. Some of the statements were literally sadistic, in my opinion. To wit:
a columnist for The Boston Globe wrote that unless Harris "was planning to unwind at a drag bar after facing that phlanx of cameras Tuesday night, the grease paint she wore should be a federal offense."
Washington Post reporter - that's reporter, not columnist - Robin Givhans wrote that Harris "seems to have aplied her makeup with a trowel" and "Her skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat. And her eyes, rimmed in liner and frosted with blue shadow, bore the telltale homogenous spikes of false eyelashes. Caterpillars seemed to rise and fall with every bat of her eyelid."
She then made harris' appearance a mater of national concern:
"One wonders how this Republican woman, who can't even use restraint when she's wielding a mascara wand, will manage to use it and make sound decisions in this game of partisan one upmanship. harris is clearly presenting herself in a fake manner...Why should anyone trust her?"

Jerome,

I'm sorry, but I think presenting Quayle as a moron appears to be pretty much correct most of the time.

Consider:

"Pollution isn't harming our environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that do that."

That's not confusing a smart bomb (or cruise missile) with a Patriot -- which I'll grant is certainly an error and should have been called such. It's showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what "pollution" IS.

Clinton got a name wrong. It's not as though he was alluding to technology that didn't exist -- had he done that, I'd be with you in wanting to rip it to shreds. But it's hardly a major offense.

Now, is that an example of media bias? I'll go along with "maybe." But, and I'll say this again, it's not like the media doesn't do the same kind of thing to Democrats.

The news media, television in particular, is not good with nuance -- when everything's reduced to 30-second bits, it basically can't be. As such, television fairly routinely latches on to one bit of characterization it can work with and then projects everything else through that prism.

Hence: Bush II is a moron. Clinton's a womanizing redneck. Carter's over-earnest and ineffectual. Reagan is charming but dim.

Does the media tend to stereotype? Hell, yeah.

Does it do it to Republicans more than it does to Democrats? Not that I see. (Personally, I think the NYT goes a lot softer on Bush than is warranted by the facts -- but I also recognize that no particular news organization is there to exactly match my own viewpoints.)

And as for

Ann Coulter IS a major babe.

You're welcome to her. :-)

TWL

Jerome,
Can't think of ONE instance where Republican women were attacked. I can name several, especially if they are seen as legitimate threats to Democrats.
Let's start with the most recent and blatant:
Katherine Harris.

Point granted in this case. Harris got a LOT of "Wicked Witch of the West" -type comments in 2000, and I'll agree with you that it was inappropriate. I think Harris's case is very much the exception rather than the rule, but you're absolutely right that it's a valid example.

I'll still ask you how this is somehow worse than Limbaugh going after a 12-year-old, though. (I could also ask about various statements Bush himself has made, but if we want to stay focused on the media I'll leave them be.)

TWL

Jerome,
You have hand picked a few items here and there, but have not proven your case for calling the media liberal. Most reporters I read attempt to give the facts in a fair and balanced manner. Most columnists I read have a conservative slant. (George Will and Charles Krauthammer (sp?) for example. There are very few liberal leaning columnists. Shall we discuss the media of talk radio? Until a few days ago when Air America launched, you would not be able to find a liberal voice unless it aired in the wee hours of the morning when few can listen. Air America is not in a lot of markets yet, so it's still not prevalent. The main celebrities on the internet are conservative. Mattt Drudge, anyone? And please don't eliminate these people because they rarely check facts, but voice mostly opinion. They have a very deep affect on the national dialogue.

Tim Lynch,
The media going after Katherine Harris is not worse than Limbaugh's comment on Chelsea. Comments like that are part of the reason I don't listen to Rush anymore. Even the many people I know who absolutely HATE Bill and Hillary's guts and wish they'd both burn in hell never said a mean word about Chelsea. I personally never thought she was really ugly and it shouldn't matter anyway. She didn't ask for the spotlight and never drew attention to herself. So, especially as a kid, she should be left the hell alone. Both Rush and Howard Stern, I feel, have gotten monotonous and REALLY go over the line at times.
In any event, what drives me crazy is that liberal - and even centrist - people cannot see the difference between Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio talk show hosts who are paid to provide their audience with an opinion and are basically preaching to the choir - and the news divisions of ABC,CBS,NBC,USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNN which are SUPPOSED to be objective. People listen to Rush or the others and know they're hearing an OPINION, but read the paper and listen to Dan Rather and think they are getting an unbiased version of the TRUTH. THAT's the difference and I feel it's important.
Oh, and I'm welcome to Ann Coulter? Thanks, I only wish you had some influence in that regard! Oh, well, I can always dream :-)

Anne Coulter scares me.

All the way to the remote and distant little third world country I love in.

I'm glad I've had the benefit of travelling.

(And no I wont look at her picture - I'm just too afraid of looking under the hood)

Karen,
You're back! I am logging off for now, but I will respond to your post shortly. I am enjoying the debate .
Jerome

Jerome,
I agree. I hope some other posters can see that we can disagree without sinking to the level of name-calling and insults. The tone of this thread has been pretty positve, although we have some fundamental differences of opinion.

I must point out that people BELIEVE Rush and his version of events. He helped Bush push past John McCain by branding him liberal. (As one example) While you may not have liked Clinton, Limbaugh had a lot to do with many of the more vicious rumours that swirled around him and made his tenure as president less effective. He has an affect on the publics perceptions and since he never bothers to check the facts, his untruths and half-truths are made a part of public debate. Couple this with the amount of listeners he has and this makes him a very dangerous man.

St. Afarian,
Why, exactly, does Ann Coulter scare you? Because of what she's said? because she's a strong woman? If you've never seen her picture you must not see her too often on TV or read too many of her columns. So, really, what is "scary" about her?
BTW, I'd look "under her hood" any day.

Karen,
1.) Yes, Rush has an effect on the public perceptions. But number one, Doesn't Al Sharpton? Doesn't Jesse Jackson? Don't you think Sharpton has on effect on millions of people as well? And as far as checking facts, he constantly cites our trade "with Asia" as a reason for rescinding NAFTA. Uh, Al, Asia is NOT in North America.

2.) Even if his "dittoheads" are as blindingly loyal to him as you say and hang on his every word, he still has about 20 million listeners. Rather, Jennings and Brokaw are easily in front of 100 million viewers every night. So who reaches more people?

3.) And again, i think you underestimate the impact on the majority of American people who don't follow this stuff that closely the Big Three has. Walter Cronkite almost single-handedly demoralized Americans about the Vietnam War. Because he was considered a "legendary newsman" and "national treasure" when what he relly is is a liberal gasbag. So his words carried enormous weight. If the Big Three focus on homelessness, then al of a sudden my parents will be talking about how bad the homeless "crisis" is. If they say that a single soldier disagrees with the war, they'll say, "It seems a lot of soldiers are unhappy over there. The Big Three networks have an influence the likes of which no single radio - or even TV - talk show host can match. My dad thinks Spike Lee and Al Sharpton are "---holes" when they give their opinions. But he trusts Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw to tell "the truth".

Karen,
Oh, and there are exactly three reasons why the major networks and media fawn over McCain
1.) He is fuzzy on abortion
2.) He's not George W. Bush
3.) His maniacal commitment to campaign finance reform.
Sorry, Karen, the media's interest in campaign finance reform is one of self-interest. And, of course, when you suport a cause the media supports you are described as "fighting powerful interests". Of course, these powerful interests did not prevent the media from throwing parties at the mere mention of McCain's name. Many of these "powerful interests" are little old ladies sending in $20 checks to the Christian Coalition. Even if the "little old lady" is Melinda Gates, i politics power is information, and no "special-interest" group in the history of America has the power our "mainstream" media does (Big Three networks, Time, Newsweek, U.S.News and World Report, NY Times, etc.).
Despite all the passionate - and at times downright hysterical - news accounts of money corrupting politics, what liberals really believe is that the power to influence elections by influencing voters should reside exclusively with the media. Thus, complaining of the campaign fundraising by Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton early in their 2000 race for the Senate, Neal rosenstein of the New York Public Research Group snidely told the Washington Post "Hillary and rudy are already in the paper every day."
Oh, no! You mean they're both getting their message out unfiltered? Can't have that! the media are entitled to shpe the debate!
Not!
And that's one of the main reasons man Republicans/conservatives can't stand McCain.

Karen,
Oh, and before i fire any new rounds, how do YOU explain:
1.) The media bending over backwards to NOT mention criminals/terrorists Muslim names, as I stated in an early post. John Walker lindh hadn't been John Walker Lindh for quite some time!
2.) the discrepancy in Clinton's First Day and Bush's, even though they both signed legislation on the same issue
3.) Caling ststes for gore much quicker for gore with a much lower margin of victory?
Thanks,
Jerome

Jerome,

Once you move into "Cronkite's not a national treasure but a liberal gasbag" territory, it becomes clear that your worldview and mine are not EVER likely to coincide very much.

I'm not especially thrilled with the current anchors (which is one reason of many why I basically don't watch television "news" any more), but Cronkite really was a treasure. Watch his coverage of the JFK assassination or Apollo 11. The man Gets It.

Yes, he's now writing columns deeply criticizing the Bush administration. If that makes you liberal, though, care to explain John Dean? He's beating the impeachment drum, for heaven's sakes -- and he certainly is not someone most people would classify as liberal.

As for the difference between Rush and Rather ... I grant you that one is allegedly supposed to be objective and one is not. One of the places where your connection falls down, though, is that Rush often claims to be objective, in that he often promises his listeners "the truth."

He's not the only one. Bill O'Reilly's "No-Spin Zone" is about as hypocritically named as they come. Fox News's entire slogan basically says "everyone else lies to you and we won't," which is bullshit of the highest order.

As for the Big Three ... first, as I've indicated, I frankly don't think the bias is there to remotely the level you do -- it's a "play-it-safe" bias and a bias towards simple characterizations, not for or against any particular party. I would again ask you to comment on the differences between Tim Russert's treatment of George W. Bush and his treatment of Howard Dean.

Second ... frankly, if anyone expects ANY news source to be 100% objective, they're fooling themselves. Humans write the news and read it, and humans are never totally objective. We all shade the truth a little, pretty much all the time. I don't expect complete and unvarnished truth from anyone -- not you, not my students, not my colleagues, not my friends, not my family, and certainly not some bunch of strangers reading from teleprompters.

News organizations have to make choices all the time, starting with what stories make Page 1 and what stories make Page 37B (if they get covered at all). As soon as you impose any criteria on that beyond "every single word of every single item we ever get", you're going to introduce a bias. Automatically.

I have yet to see evidence of a systematic bias in one direction or another. I've agreed with some of your examples and disagreed with others, but there are also plenty of examples of so-called "conservative bias" in the news media (even ignoring Fox News), some of which I've already provided.

Again, I'm not expecting any news organization to (a) be totally objective, since there ain't no such animal, or (b) completely and totally reflect every preference and bias I happen to possess. That's why we have brains that can read/watch multiple things and evaluate.

Comments welcome.

TWL

Wow, this thread has morphed from a discussion of Hamas to media bias! I'm glad I'm just part of the sports department rather than news; our only claim of bias is from disgruntled parents who don't like the way we cover their annoying kiddies :)And 'bias' is an interesting thing: my uncle is convinced my paper is anti-Israel, yet one of the night editors is Israeli and another top man is an Orthodox Jew. People see bias where they want to in the media more often than not; these days there's no political agenda, just a business one. And no, I don't read the Times, the sports section isn't great and there's no comics :)

-Neil

Tim Lynch,
Sorry, in my humble opinion Walter Cronkite almost single-handedly demoralized the nation in regards to the Vietnam War. He reported our greatest victory - beating the Vietnamese back during the Tet Offensive after they tried to overwhelm us with an incredible assault - into our greatest defeat. "What's going on!?" he exclaimed on the air, "I thought we were winning the war." We were, Walter, and we won that battle too, but lost the war due to people like you.
In fact, according to the book "Americans at War" by Stephen Ambrose, after watching Cronkite's coverage of the Christmas bombing of Hanoi
in December 1972, Ronald Reagan told President Nixon that "under World War II circumstances, the network would have been charged with treason.
Also, in a 2002 interview with larry King he claimed the media were not "adequately skeptical" of the information the Bush Administration was giving and explained the public support for the war by declaring the public was "not very keen, not very aware, not very sophisticated about getting the information it needs."
"It is, i hope, the intention of the united states to take the matter to the United Nations and work with the United Nations."
Not only did he have those feelings about America at war, but he has been quoted more than once as saying Reagan "wasn't very bright" and "didn't really accomplish anything". If he really believed that, don't you think his bias would somehow seep into his news coverage of Reaganesque conservative policies regarding arms buildup, tax cuts, etc.?
Just wondering.
I await your reply. Then it will be time to bring out the BIG GUNS:-}

I'm trying to stay pretty much out of this until we can agree on our terms, as I believe that Jerome's definition of "liberal" might come out to be "anyone who'd to the left of Atilla the Hun". However, this egregious misstatement had to be pointed out -

"Yes, Rush has an effect on the public perceptions. But number one, Doesn't Al Sharpton? Doesn't Jesse Jackson? Don't you think Sharpton has on effect on millions of people as well?"

No, Brother Al is widely regarded as a joke, and has been ever since the Tawana Brawley incident. His followers now consist of those who reflexively blame Whitey every time something goes wrong in their lives. Jesse, on the other hand, is highly influential - in a few East Coast major cities. Neither one of them is highly thought of on the West Coast, and they tend to be actively disdained in the Midwest (except, of course, among that tiny core of followers I mentioned earlier).

Okay, since only one person has been interested in definitions, I now return you to your regularly scheduled slinging of invective and innuendo...

Jerome,

You say about Walter Cronkite:

Also, in a 2002 interview with larry King he claimed the media were not "adequately skeptical" of the information the Bush Administration was giving and explained the public support for the war by declaring the public was "not very keen, not very aware, not very sophisticated about getting the information it needs."

And?

Sorry, but I see no indications of bias in that statement. He's 100% dead-on correct in that assessment. The media DID give Bush a free pass in Iraq, and given polls showing 60+% of Americans believe Saddam orchestrated 9/11, the public ISN'T very aware or very sophisticated about getting the information it needs.

Sorry -- if that counts as bias in your book, then your definitions are so horribly different from mine that we're never going to come to any agreement. (The fact that you're basically calling Cronkite a traitor to his country is further evidence that there may be next to no common ground.)

Well, let me rephrase that. I think we'll both agree that an informed public is a good thing, and that getting news from a wide variety of sources is a good way to ensure that. Fair?

If he really believed that, don't you think his bias would somehow seep into his news coverage of Reaganesque conservative policies regarding arms buildup, tax cuts, etc.?

No. At least, not necessarily.

See, you appear to be equating "has strong opinions" with "cannot relay the facts accurately". I think that's mistaken and misguided.

I can't picture ANYONE getting into the journalism business who doesn't have strong opinions about a lot of what's going on in the world. Rather like teaching, it's certainly not a job one goes into for the money or the status.

It is entirely possible to have opinions and still be accurate. Most of us manage to do it most of the time.

Here's a question for you, Jerome, though I know you're waiting to bring out the "big guns".

What journalists or journalistic institutions DO you find free of bias? Anybody?

If not, then you're simply arguing one side of the story without recognizing the other side's existence, which is itself a rather serious form of bias.

I've raised multiple questions in my letters back to you. You've ignored most of them. Could you perhaps do me the courtesy of dealing with some of the questions of conservative bias before bringing out these alleged big guns of yours?

TWL

Jonathan,
Okay, since only one person has been interested in definitions, I now return you to your regularly scheduled slinging of invective and innuendo...

I'm interested -- I just haven't had any time to come up with mine. :-)

I'm really not sure I can come up with a definition per se, but more of a list.

To me personally, being a liberal tends to mean:

-- being strongly in favor of a safety net for the weakest among us
-- believing that the U.S., while a wonderful country, does not have all the answers and should not ignore everyone else
-- believing in international agencies and institutions in the hope that eventually (i.e. decades or centuries down the line)
-- believing that taxes are a necessary evil and not always a last resort
-- supporting an individual's freedom to live his/her life without discrimination so long as they harm no one in the process (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, and other such hot-button issues)
-- believing strongly in the separation of church and state

Being a conservative tends to mean:
-- being a strong believer in American might and power, and that the U.S. should not have to worry about allies
-- opposing international institutions when they conflict with the above statement
-- generally believing in laissez-faire capitalism (albeit with some safeguards)
-- believing that the tax system is unfair and penalizes the wealthy for being wealthy

I think that's a good start, at any rate. I tried to keep both halves as neutral as possible, though I'm sure others will take issue with how good a job I did.

(Many years ago, I heard someone -- David Brin, I think -- saying that Democrats always live in fear of corporations getting too much power, and Republicans always live in fear of government getting too much power. "The problem, of course, is that they're both right.")

Anyone else?

TWL

Um just momentarily going back to the original topic, has anybody else noticed how Christopher Lee's Saruman appears to have been modelled on the late Ahmed Yassin. No, really! Hell, he even uses suicide bombers...

I find it curious, by the way, that laissez-faire capitalism is now a hallmark of Conservatism; after all it used to be THE defining policy of nineteenth century liberalism. Ireland's 'famine' was perhaps its most notorious casualty...

on the topic of fox news, and conservatism, some while back fox news reported a massive demonstration in my city by 'diehard, pro-taliban, muslim fundamentalists'.

when i went there to go see the thing, it turned out to be twenty old guys with beards infront of our 'parliament'.

Jerome,
You tend toward writing about the NY Times a lot. There a re quite a number of other papers out there with a much more conservative slant. I lived down south for ten years, and let me tell you the news was very conservative. The mid-west papers tend toward the same by all accounts. To base your observations on so few papers does not do your argument much justice. To say almost all the networks report the news liberally is not an argument either. The corporations who own the networks prefer a more conservative slant. The advertisers who support the networks prefer a more conservative slant. The miracle is that we get ANY news with the liberal viewpoint.

As to the definitions of liberal and conservative: I think we are in the midst of a change in perspective. The traditional conservatives, the Republicans, are running up the deficit. The Dems were said to be the free spending ones before. Some of the Republican arguments are in line with their very conservative religious base, while the Democrats have been viewd as more secular. The Democratic Party has moved right and is more squarely in the center than in times gone by. The true left has become ever more marginalized until many believe them to be a fringe group now. I think issues like gun control, the unions, a woman's right to choose and seperation of church and state would be good examples of liberal stands while the right to gun ownership, employers rights, abortion control and faith based initiatives would be examples of the conservative stands.

I am a proud liberal, but I tried to list the issues without predjudice. If I have offended anyone, it was done without malice.

Tim Lynch,
NO journalist or journalistic institution is completely free of bias EITHER WAY. That is precisely my point. No one truly can be, because everyone has a point of reference from which they draw. But The Wall Street Journal ADMITS it is drawing from a conservative perspective. So when they state that having a shorter 35 hour work week like France, it is clear they have a point of view.
When Katie Couric gushes that "the French really get it right, don't they?" she also HAS A POINT OF VIEW. And it is 99.9% to the left. The Wall Street Journal admits it. Katie Couric does not. THAT'S the difference.

Okay, I'm staunchly in favor of the US Constitution, including the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I'm also in favor of the implied separation of church and state matters in the First Amendment. I stand foursquare against official censorship of any sort (while recognizing that this does not itself require any non-governmental individual or organization to promote views not held by that person or organization), and equally firmly in favor of a woman's right to choose (were it up to me to define When Life Begins, I would set it as the moment in which the fetal brainwaves become distinct from the maternal - although some of the children in my apartment complex cause me to lean toward legalizing abortion through the 36th trimester).

In the binary worldview held by so many here, am I "liberal", or "conservative"?

Jonathan (The Other One),
No, my definition of a liberal is not "anyone to the left of Attilla the Hun". That's ridiculous. If you notice, I haven't even stated that being a liberal or having a liberal point of view is necessarily bad. Mike Royko was a liberal columnist and I enjoyed his columns immensely. Jonathan Kozol's books dramatically affected my thinking on education.
What I find dangerous is when such a high concentration of journalists have a particular view of the world and our society and don't really "get" the other side.
That's all.

Tim Lynch,
Which questions do you feel I've ignored? I've been busy, but will answer them now.
BTW, hope i didn't really hit you the wrong way with my judgement of Cronkite. It's just a real sore spot with me.

Which questions do you feel I've ignored? I've been busy, but will answer them now.

The one most immediately leaping to mind is asking you to explain how Tim Russert exemplifies a "liberal bias" given the softball treatment he gave Bush vs. what happened to Howard Dean ... but there are plenty of others. It's not hard to scroll upthread and search for my name.

BTW, hope i didn't really hit you the wrong way with my judgement of Cronkite. It's just a real sore spot with me.

Depends on what you mean by "hit me the wrong way". I'm not mortally offended or sobbing my eyes out, no -- but it's probably likely to color my future evaluations of what you've got to say, yes. Calling Cronkite a traitor is pretty far out there in my book.

I appreciate the hope, though.

TWL

Oh, and Jerome -- you claimed above that the Big 3 network news anchors are "easily in front of 100 million viewers every night."

I'd suggest you take a look at the following:

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2004/mar04/mar29/4_thurs/news5thursday.html

It lists the February-sweeps ratings of various newscasts.

Contrary to your claim of 100 million -- in point of fact, NBC's newscast is the leader of the big 3 with a whopping eleven million viewers. ABC's at about 10 million, CBS a bit under 9 million. (It varies a little bit depending on whether you look at the text or the chart, but not enough to change the point.)

So comparing them to Rush's 20 million listeners (assuming that number is accurate) hardly makes them a monolith he's railing against. He's got more listeners than each of them.

TWL

No, my definition of a liberal is not "anyone to the left of Attilla the Hun". That's ridiculous.

Then what IS your definition, Jerome? Jonathan was making it a point not to wade into the fray as a partisan on either side -- he simply wanted to see whether everyone was in fact using the same general definitions during the discussion in the hopes of finding some common ground.

Karen and I have both given definitions. You've neither given yours nor responded to ours, preferring instead to stay on message and toot the "Media Bias! Media Bias!" duck call again.

If you notice, I haven't even stated that being a liberal or having a liberal point of view is necessarily bad

Except, of course, for "liberal gasbag" Walter Cronkite who "almost singlehandedly demoralized the country during the Vietnam War" and was part of a network that "would have been charged with treason" under WW2 rules for its Vietnam coverage. Your words, and extremely strong ones.

Methinks you are protesting more than a little too much.

TWL

Jonathan:

Okay, I'm staunchly in favor of the US Constitution, including the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I'm also in favor of the implied separation of church and state matters in the First Amendment. I stand foursquare against official censorship of any sort (while recognizing that this does not itself require any non-governmental individual or organization to promote views not held by that person or organization), and equally firmly in favor of a woman's right to choose (were it up to me to define When Life Begins, I would set it as the moment in which the fetal brainwaves become distinct from the maternal - although some of the children in my apartment complex cause me to lean toward legalizing abortion through the 36th trimester).

In the binary worldview held by so many here, am I "liberal", or "conservative"?

I'd take issue with the claim that the worldviews here are binary. The spectrum of political leaning from "liberal" to "conservative" (and beyond on either side) is just that: a continuous spectrum, not a discrete set of positions.

Life is rarely quantized, except in values of h-bar. (Sorry -- physics geek joke.)

That said -- I'd say that your view tends to be mostly towards the liberal side (certainly on the abortion issue and the church-state separation issue), with some ideas that are more traditionally conservative (e.g. the guns).

(The anti-censorship position doesn't really match with either "side" these days, given that both liberals and conservatives have been awfully quick to jump on any speech they don't like.)

TWL

Bill Mulligan: "I'm having a hard time remembering ANY instance of a fanatical or single issue pro choice person being negatively portrayed in the media or news."

Then you must watch even less television than I do.

Let's take fictional representations first. I was very pleased the first time Law & Order did an abortion episode because it was the first time I can recall seeing violence at an abortion clinic dealt with realistically in the entertainment media. Before that, the "liberal" media always seemed to want to provide balance by having suspicion initially fall on the abortion protesters, who would turn out to be intense but sincere, and have the actual criminal turn out to be the clinic owner or abortion doctor (who committed the crime for selfish reasons and then tried to blame it on the protesters). Cagney and Lacey is one example I recall from tv, Ms Tree is an example from comics.

Besides "violence at abortion clinics", I've seen abortion come up as a question characters in a story are wrestling with, with abortion supporters coming off looking bad. For instance, I saw an episode of a show called The Commish that dealt with abortion -- the Commish's wife was pregnant, there was a significant chance of some serious birth defect, and they considered getting an abortion. All the people who counseled against having abortion were portrayed as good and caring, all who counseled for having an abortion were portrayed as thoughtless and selfish, and in the end the Commish and his wife decided abortion was out of the question, an unthinkably wrong choice.

That's one of the problem with the claim of "liberal" media bias. While some conservative tv shows, movies, etc., have little problem stacking the deck and being unabashedly conservative, most liberal shows have a problem being unabashedly liberal. Take a good look at All In The Family, Maude, Murphy Brown, and other liberal shows, and you'll see that while the right gets skewered the left gets skewered as well. (The West Wing was a refreshing exception its first season, not attempting to maintain a forced sense of balance. I haven't seen it in a couple of years, so don't know if that is still the case, but as someone who is generally annoyed by the anti-liberal slant in the media, I enjoyed that first season a lot.) Conservatives seem more comfortable with the idea that things are black and white, right and wrong, and that they (the conservatives) are right. Liberals tend to think life is more complex, that there are shades of gray, that no one is completely right or completely wrong -- so liberals are more inclined to do programs where they (the liberals) turn out to be partly right and partly wrong . Conservatives send out The Executioner to wipe out the bad guys; liberals send out L.A. Law to argue both sides of the case.

Moving along: what about the portrayal of extremist abortion-rights supporters on the news portion of the media? You seem to feel they get a free pass from the media, whereas I think they get portrayed just as negatively as extremist abortion opponents. Let's do a comparison, being careful to match equivalent people from both sides.

For instance, people such as Paul Hill, Michael Griffin, John Salvi, James Kopp, etc., who went out and cold-bloodedly murdered people at abortion clinics have gotten generally negative portrayals in the news. There are no equivalent abortion-rights extremists to compare these people to. But I am reasonably certain that if any abortion-rights person were to go to a Crisis Pregnancy Center, or the offices of National Right to Life, and start shooting people, they would get similarly bad press.

Likewise, there is no abortion-rights equivalent of Clayton Waagner (who robbed banks to finance a war of terror on clinics, who mailed letters to clinics that purported to contain anthrax, who threatened to murder anyone even delivering packages to an abortion clinic, etc.) There is no abortion-rights equivalent of Michael Bray (a convicted abortion clinic bomber who, since being released from prison, has been active in encouraging the murder of abortionists.) There is no abortion-rights equivalent of Neal Horsley (the creator of the "Nuremberg Files" web site).

(NOTE: If you aren't familiar with these names, then the "liberal" media isn't doing a very good job of demonizing Pro-Lifers. Go to http://www.armyofgod.com/heroes.htm and http://www.christiangallery.com to see for yourself what these people are like and whether the negative coverage they received is biased or deserved.)

Is there an abortion-rights equivalent of Randall Terry? One possibility would be Bill Baird, who has been outspoken and abrasive in supporting abortion rights over the years (and who, like Terry, has broken the law for his beliefs). Baird has received plenty of bad press over the years. For example, in a recent item in the New York Times he is called a "male supremacist," "disruptive," an "egotist", "a nuisance and a laughingstock."

I suppose the rough equivalent of Operation Rescue (a militant anti-abortion group which also is active in opposing gay rights) might be Cry Out / Act-Up (a militant gay rights group which also is active in supporting abortion). Act Up and its members, like OR and its members, have received plenty of negative media coverage.

The main area where comparisons seem possible would be the treatment of leaders of lobbying and activist groups. For example, we could compare the treatment of abortion opponents such as Wanda Franz (National Right To Life Committee), Helen Alvare (National Conference of Catholic Bishops), Janet Parshall (Concerned Women for America), and Kay Cole James (Focus On the Family) with the treatment of abortion supporters such as Gloria Feldt (Planned Parenthood), Kim Gandy (National Organization of Women), Frances Kissling (Catholics for a Free Choice), and Eleanor Smeal (Feminist Majority). Give me an example of what you feel was bad treatment in the media of an abortion-opponent (such as the people I listed) and I'll find you an equivalent example of such treatment of one of their abortion-supporter counterparts. (Print media examples would be preferred, as these can be looked up in a library, whereas I have no way to look up old tv or radio news broadcasts.)

One reason some conservatives believe in "liberal" media bias is that they seem to notice negative comments about people with whom they agree more readily than they notice the negative comments about with whom people they disagree. That's human nature. The one sticks in their minds (because it bothers them), and the other glides right by. Hence Jerome Maida is bothered that disparaging remarks were made about Katherine Harris's appearance, but apparently is oblivious to the continuing stream of negative comments that have been made about the appearance of Bella Abzug, Janet Reno, Hillary Clinton, etc. Outspoken feminists have routinely been portrayed as man-haters who only take the positions they do because they are too ugly to land a man -- and yet many conservatives act as if Katherine Harris was the first public figure to be attacked for her appearance. Now that's selective perception!

And note how Jerome Maida kicks William Safire and Bill O'Reilly out of the conservative clubhouse (even though both have been dues-paying members for years) because they deviate on some issues from what he thinks the conservative position should be, but he blithely names Mike Royko as a liberal (even though Royko is not 100% anti-death-penalty, not 100% pro-affirmative-action, etc., etc.) Selective perception at work again! (Guess what? I know a lot of liberals who are not happy that the "liberals" seen on TV are people such as Alan Colmes and Mark Shields.) In determining if someone is a genuine conservative the standard folks who charge "liberal media bias" appear to be using is: are all this person's stands conservative? But in determining if someone is a genuine liberal the standard they appear to be using is: are any of this person's stands liberal? That leads to a distorted view of reality, where the media is dominated by a preponderance of liberals and virtually no conservatives.

Here's another way selective perception distorts some conservatives' perceptions. If the media present something bad about a conservative (even though it also portrays good things) they see it as an attack on conservatism; and if the media portray something good about a liberal (even though it also portrays bad things) they see it as an endorsement of liberalism. In both cases, the coverage presents positive and negative aspects -- but one case is seen as an attack and one is seen as endorsement. Hence some conservatives think the media was soft on Clinton (even though he was subjected to a steady stream of negative press) and that the media is tough on Bush! The conservative complaint about liberal media bias seems largely to boil down to: "Hey! You gave the liberals half-full glasses, but ours are half-empty!"

Why Do People Who Complain Loudest About "Liberal Media Bias" Seem To Be The Ones Most Often Fooled By The Media?

(# 1 in a Series -- Collect Them All!)

Jerome Maida asserted (as an example of alleged "liberal media bias") that from 1968 until 1975 the New York Times stylebook required the use of the word "unwinnable" to be used in conjunction with "Vietnam War". "I do remember reading it from a couple credible sources," he wrote. "I will try to track them down. In the meantime, I challenge you to do a Lexis-Nexus search and see how many times from 1968 to the Fall of Saigon those words were used in stories about Vietnam."

Note that Jerome did not say he had actually done such a search -- he simply challenged others to do so if they doubted this allegation.

I have no idea how to do a Lexis-Nexus search. Fortunately, there is no need to do that! The New York Times has an on-line archive, and searching it is free and easy. Just go to NYTimes.com, register, and search! (The search is free. Reading older articles on-line costs money, apart from a free preview paragraph, but once one knows the date and page of an article it is easy to look up for free at a library.)

Here's what my search of the NY Times from 1968 - 1975 turned up.

(1) A search for all articles containing phrase "Vietnam War" turned up more than 8,000 items.

(2) A search for all articles containing "Vietnam War" and unwinnable turned up 4 items. That indicates that only .05 % of items about the Vietnam War included the word "unwinnable."

(3) Although according to Jerome the stylebook rule was for the phrase Vietnam War, I also tried searching simply by Vietnam. That turned up more than 50,000 items, of which only 25 include the word unwinnable -- again, about .05 %.

(4) To be sure the search engine wasn't somehow defective, I checked a few random reels of microfilm of the Times from that period at the library. As I suspected, the word "unwinnable" did not appear in any of the stories I saw.

Hmm. Sounds like the stylebook rule may not have been very strictly enforced... Or, more likely, there never was any such rule. Which raises the question, "Why did Jerome believe there was?"

Did you actually check this story out before passing it along, Jerome? If so, what were the results you came up with? How many items containing the phrase "Vietnam War" did you turn up doing a Lexis-Nexus search, how many of these items contained the word unwinnable, and how many did not contain the word unwinnable?

If, as it appears, you failed to check this story out, and simply trusted that your media source was telling the truth, then perhaps you need to be more skeptical of the sources you've been relying on.

Why Do People Who Complain Loudest About "Liberal Media Bias" Seem To Be The Ones Most Often Fooled By The Media?

(# 2 in a Series -- Collect Them All!)

According to Jerome Maida, the fact that Clinton and Bush received different coverage for their inaugural actions regarding abortion is evidence of media bias. "Both kept 'promises' to the voters who voted for them..." But this assertion is not true!

Clinton had indeed promised to reverse the gag rule if elected, so Clinton's action was (as reported) the fulfillment of a campaign promise. Reporting it as such was accurate. It was not a surprise, it was an expected action, and was treated as such.

The Bush action was different. Bush, during the campaign, had carefully avoided saying publicly what he would do about the gag rule. His reinstatement of it was not the fulfillment of a campaign promise, it was the first indication of what Bush intended to do now that he no longer had to worry about campaigning. There had been speculation Bush might reinstate the gag rule, but it was newsworthy when it happened for the very reason that Bush was doing something he had not previously said he would do. To cover it as fulfillment of a campaign promise would have been dishonest and biased.

Jerome: when I pointed this out earlier in this thread, I invited you to try to find any evidence that Bush was fulfilling a campaign promise. Everything I can find indicates it was not something he had promised to do during the campaign, it was something he chose to do now that the election campaign was safely over and he was not in jeopardy of losing votes over it. I don't know if your lack of response indicates you looked and were not able to find evidence, or that you have not looked. But I have looked, and it seems clear to me Bush was not fulfilling a campaign promise.

That raises the question of why your sources on this misled you. The obvious possibilities are either your sources were unaware that Bush was not fulfilling a campaign promise, or your sources were so determined to find examples of "media bias" that they didn't care that the comparison they were drawing between coverage of Clinton's action and Bush's was distorted and biased. Either way, it it does not speak well for these sources.

It also raises the question of why you trusted these sources. Whatever the reason, it appears your trust was misplaced.

Why Do People Who Complain Loudest About "Liberal Media Bias" Seem To Be The Ones Most Often Fooled By The Media?

(# 3 in a Series -- Collect Them All!)

According to Jerome Maida: "... Adlai Stevenson, supposedly was a witty felow and a lover of books... It was later discovered that Stevenson was a boob who rarely read books. When he died, only a single book was found on his nightstand: The Social Register."

This appears to be a paraphrase of page 152 of Ann Coulter's book Treason. Here is what she wrote (as quoted -- and analyzed -- at the Public Nuisance web site http://nuisance.blogspot.com/2002_07_07_nuisance_archive.html:

[quoting Coulter]: "It was blindingly obvious... that Stevenson was a boob -- certainly clear to the American people who continually rejected him for President -- only later was Stevenson discovered to be a lowbrow who rarely read books. When he died, only a single book was found on his nightstand: The Social Register."

Here we have several propaganda techniques. A sweeping statement -- Stevenson was a boob -- is 'proven' by one piece of marginally relevant evidence, what he read on the last night of his life. In her footnote, Coulter mentions that in the entire Nexis database, only she and George Will cite this factoid. Possibly because they're the only ones silly enough to think it means anything.

I looked up the George Will column referred to, from October 2000. Most of it is an attack on Al Gore. Here's the relevant portion about Stevenson.

George Will: "In 1952 and 1956 the Democratic nominee was an early prototype of Gore. Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois, was thought — it is now not clear why — to be quite an intellectual. Today Michael Barone, editor of the Almanac of American Politics and of “Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan,” notes that when Stevenson died the only book on his bedside table was the Social Register."

The reason people looked on Stevenson as an intellectual was because of the content of his numerous speeches, articles, and books. A quick browse through his collected speeches, or the 8 volumes of his collected papers, or one of his many books, provides clear evidence that Stevenson was not a boob. Did you take the time to look any of these up before parroting Coulter's charge of "boob"? Or did you just accept her version on faith?

It's interesting that you were willing to accept the notion that Stevenson was a "boob" based simply on which book was on his bedstand when he died. Isn't trying to paint someone as a "boob" based on such flimsy evidence (and in contradiction to the real evidence of Stevenson's life and writings) a classic example of media bias? Once again it looks like you've been deceived by the media you trusted.

Why Do People Who Complain Loudest About "Liberal Media Bias" Seem To Be The Ones Most Often Fooled By The Media?

(# 4 in a Series -- Collect Them All!)

According to Jerome Maida: "Washington Post reporter -- that's reporter, not columnist -- Robin Givhans wrote that Harris 'seems to have aplied her makeup with a trowel' and 'Her skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat...'"

From the way that's written, it sounds as if the Washington Post had printed these comments in a news story by a reporter. Such comments certainly would have been out of place in a news story.

But this is not from a news story. From what I can find out, it appeared in the Style section. The author, Robin Givhan, was a staff writer for the Style section.

It's an opinion piece, meant to provoke and entertain. I remember seeing opinion pieces in newspapers papers during the Clinton years attacking Hillary's fashion taste and hair-cuts, as well as seeing and hearing some pretty vicious attacks on Janet Reno's appearance, Madeleine Albright's appearance, etc., in various places. If left-wing women are fair game for these attacks (and they have been for at least 4 decades) why should right-wing women be exempt?

(I would prefer that no one get attacked this way, for their appearance, but my preference is irrelevant. The fact is, this kind of attack does happen, and feminists have long been the main target.)

I agree that comments such as Givhan's shouldn't appear in the news section -- and they didn't!

Jerome, I assume you are basically an honest person and that if you had known the item you quoted was written by a fashion writer rather than a news reporter, and appeared in the Style section rather than the news section, you would not have written your post the way you did. But that means that, once again, you apparently were too credulous in accepting a biased and misleading report, and that you failed to check it adequately before passing this deception on to others.

[Note: I have not yet seen the Washington Post story itself. I will do that next time I go to the library. My source of information on this is the Jan/Feb 2001 Columbia Journalism Review, which is available to read in their on-line archive at http://archives.cjr.org/year/01/1/laurels.asp. I have found CJR to be reliable in the past and trust them on the matter of which section of the paper this story appeared in. But I do plan to look the story up for myself. After all, that's what I'm criticizing you for -- failing to verify things before confidently passing them on to others. My feeling is that if more people took the time to look up things like this, we'd have a lot less problem with media bias -- or, at least, fewer problems of people being fooled by it.]

Nova Land,
Wow! You have given me a few things to think about. The Bush/Clinton First Day comparison is something I noticed a WHILE back. Until I got on this thread, no one had been able to refute it. Although I still feel my overall theory is correct, your being able to dissect the arguments I've made has made me think about them in a new light.
Thanks,
Jerome Maida