Two news stories, one which describes the secret history of Helen Thomas and the Reuters news agency‘s removal from its photos of a knife in the hand of a peace activist standing over a bloodstained IDF boarder on the humanitarian flotilla raises the question of what else is out there that we don’t know? How can we estimate whether this is simply an outlier?
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post described his recollection of the Dame of the White House Press Corps, who recently made headlines when she called on Jews to ‘go home’ to Germany and Poland. “‘Frankly, I was shocked,’ said Rabbi David Nesenoff, who was at the White House for a Jewish heritage celebration”. But Kurtz was not. Her attitudes were an open secret among the press corps. It was just that no one took the trouble or felt it was right to write about her attitudes.
While the 89-year-old Thomas is renowned as a trailblazer who aggressively questioned 10 presidents — including President Obama, whom she pressed last month on Afghanistan — her hostility toward Israel has been no secret within the Beltway. Though she gave up her correspondent’s job a decade ago, she retained her front-row briefing-room seat, even as colleagues sometimes rolled their eyes at her obvious biases. …
Mark Rabin, a former freelance cameraman for CNN, said that in a 2002 conversation at the White House, Thomas said “thank God for Hezbollah” for driving Israel out of Lebanon, adding that “Israel is the cause for 99 percent of all this terrorism.”
CBS Correspondent Mark Knoller said “as a columnist she felt totally unbound from any of the normal policies of objectivity that every other reporter in the room felt compelled to abide by, and sometimes her questions were embarrassing to other reporters.” Knoller makes a fair point. Columnists are not ethically bound to be objective and are employed to express an opinion. Anyone who actually listened to Thomas wanted to. But what about hard news agencies? Aren’t they supposed to report the objective truth? Reuters is under fire for removing relevant information from its “news” photos.
The British-based Reuters news agency has been stung for the second time by charges that it edited politically sensitive photos in a way that casts Israel in a bad light. But this time Reuters claims it wasn’t at fault.
The news agency reacted to questions raised by an American blogger who showed that Reuters’ photo service edited out knives and blood traces from pictures taken aboard the activist ship Mavi Marmara during a clash with Israeli commandos last week. Nine people were killed and scores were injured in the clash. …
In one photo, an Israeli commando is shown lying on the deck of the ship, surrounded by activists. The uncut photo released by IHH shows the hand of an unidentified activist holding a knife. But in the Reuters photo, the hand is visible but the knife has been edited out.
The blog “Little Green Footballs” challenged Reuters’ editing of the photo.
“That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo. Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it,” the blog stated.
In a second photo the unedited print issued by IHH showed blood along the ship’s railing and a hand holding a knife as an Israeli soldier lies on the deck. Both the blood and the knife were missing in the photo that Reuters released.
Reuters on Tuesday denied it intended to alter the political meanings of the photographs.
“The images in question were made available in Istanbul, and following normal editorial practice were prepared for dissemination which included cropping at the edges,” the news agency said in a statement. “When we realized that a dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images, Reuters immediately moved the original set as well.”
Reuters has yet to respond to charges about the second photo.
Whoops. So sorry. Unlike the Thomas case, the Reuters omission really matters. The so-called brutal Israeli descent on the peaceful activists has driven up international tension. By distorting the facts, Reuters risks not only inflaming the Middle East, risks not just increasing the chances of war, but an unjust one to boot.
But maybe Reuters just slipped up. After all, to err is human. But to conspire is human too. How can we know whether the omissions of the press aren’t random noise but a superimposed signal? How can we know whether Reuters isn’t wittingly or unwittingly advancing a political agenda? Early in the 20th century, advertisers discovered they couldn’t trust the press. “At the turn of the 20th century, publishers were ungoverned. A practice of inflating circulation figures to win advertising dollars was common. With little recourse, advertisers were forced to buy advertising based on exaggerated circulation claims.” So in 1914 they created the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Faced with the commercial problem of verifying circulation stats, they resorted to auditing.
The methods circulation auditors employ are not very different from any other audit. Basically the watchdogs take a set of claims and hire independent inspectors to go and collect field samples. If the statistics of the sample vary markedly from the claims, a red flag is raised. So for example, a newspaper claiming a circulation in millions but whose publications can’t be found at newstands in any quantity would raise suspicions. Advertisers would stop buying ads in that newspaper and the market would punish the lie. Can the same principles be applied to the news? Can the press be relied upon to audit the press? Can rival sides of the ideological press be trusted to police the other? Or are we left with two separate news narratives neither of which can be regarded as ‘true’?
Open thread.
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“Can rival sides of the ideological press be trusted to police the other?”
What rival sides? Far Left and Even Farther Left?
Most of us have come to recognize that the media has two problems: a low signal-to-noise ratio, and a profound bias in the signal part. The media live in a different world from the rest of us. And I have no interest in their world.
British media is lethally infested with Muslims and Islamic dupes. This is increasingly true in the USA too. Until those Muslim moles and their abettors are purged from our media, the whitewashing of heinous Islam will continue, and the
“The “CARTOON OF MOHAMMAD” has driven up international tension. By distorting the facts, “AFTENPOSTEN” risks not only inflaming the Middle East, risks not just increasing the chances of war, but an unjust one to boot.”
The practitioners of the religion of outrage are a bunch of cheap liars and so are their subordinates’, i.e.: the effete British and their Nancy-boy press. Speaking of romancing the bad-boy, that could easily be said for the English male and his homo-erotic relationship with the Asian alpha-males.
Outlier? Dan Rather tries to use forge documents to bring down a POTUS. MSNBC edits out an armed black man protesting Obama. Aging crone Nancy Pelosi airbrushed to look like a hot 30-something. Thirty pounds airbrushed off Katie Couric.<
Etc, etc, etc.
Lying for socialism. It’s what they do.
One good outcome of this interview with Helen Thomas. she can now go back under her bridge. There is one less Troll in DC.
Morton, don’t keep us in a suspense with a cliffhanger!
Lying for socialism. It’s what they do.
Gerard at American Digest just posted a “blast from the past” when the media were not a socialist megaphone. It’s a comic book version of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom that was published in Look magazine in 1945. According to Gerard, the Look version was made into a pamphlet and distributed by General Motors.
Gerard has reproduced “The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons” in full here:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/enemies_foreign_domestic/the_road_to_serfdom_in_ca.php#010942
Maybe there’s a feedback loop between the media and actors in the real world. Some people manufacture reality by getting it on the news. And in that way they manufacture themselves. How much of Joran is him and how much is the legend in his own mind? Dr. Dale Archer asks, “Did Van der Sloot Kill for Fame?” Did the humanitarian flotilla sail to deliver “relief” or to make the news? If the “peace activists” can kill for fame, why not a psycho? Archer says:
The Dutch are now concerned about a show trial. But maybe the show is the point. “Dutch media expressed concern Tuesday about the prospects of Joran van der Sloot getting a fair trial following his arrest in Peru over the death of a 21-year-old woman.” How many members of this very same Dutch media are even now boarding an airplane for Lima?
Even the Israelis are catching on. Students are organizing a relief flotilla to Kurdistan and Cyprus to help the victims of Turkish occupation there. If the Third World War ends the world you can be sure it will be covered wall to wall on TV.
Morton Doodslag: British media is lethally infested with Muslims and Islamic dupes. This is increasingly true in the USA too.
Sure, Morton, I totally agree! I have a list. Together these seven Muslims/Islamic dupes collectively control ABC, NBC, CBS, the Turner Broadcasting System, CNN, MTV, Universal Studios, MCA Records, Geffen Records, DGC Records, GRP Records, Rising Tide Records, Curb/Universal Records, and Interscope Records.
Gerald “Abdul” al-Levin, CEO and Director of AOL Time Warner
Michael “Hakim” al-Eisner, Chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company
Edgar “Waleed” al-Bronfman, Sr., Chairman of Seagram Company Ltd
Edgar “Najib” al-Bronfman, Jr, President and CEO of Seagram Company Ltd and head of Universal Studios
Sumner Murray “Yassir” al-Rothstein, Chairman and CEO of Viacom, Inc
Dennis “Faisal” al-Dammerman, Vice Chairman of General Electric
Peter “Isma’il” al-Chernin, President and Co-COO of News Corporation Limited
Wretchard said at #8: Maybe there’s a feedback loop between the media and actors in the real world. Some people manufacture reality by getting it on the news. And in that way they manufacture themselves.
Reminded me of Seung-hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, taking a media package to the post office in between his two rampages:
“Between his first and second bursts of gunfire, the gunman . . . mailed a package to NBC headquarters in New York containing photos of him brandishing guns and video of him delivering an angry, profanity-laced tirade about rich kids and hedonism. . . .
NBC said the package contained a rambling and often-incoherent 1,800-word video manifesto on CD, plus 43 photos, 11 of them showing him aiming handguns at the camera.
The package arrived at NBC headquarters in Manhattan two days after Cho killed 32 people and committed suicide in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. It had a Postal Service time stamp showing that it had been mailed at a Blacksburg post office at 9:01 a.m. Monday — about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho first opened fire.”
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=5220434
#8 wretchard
all this TV victimology shit is fine and dandy, but as soon as you run into somebody who just plain doesn’t give a damn what other people think,(and the Turks come to mind)reality will very quickly re-assert itself. I’m not sure who said it(Shakespear?) “Victors do not commit treason,for if they win none dare call it treason” or in the vernacular” everybody loves a winner” or even “people will choose the strong horse”.
we are all waiting for someone to make the first move.that’s where it stands, schoolyard taunting trying to make somebody to take the first swing.
#11 reg
You’re thinking of an epigram by Sir John Harrington (1561-1612, a contemporary of Shakespeare):
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
Thos Sowell quoting Schumpeter: “The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.” Sowell went on to say, “People are never more sincere than when they assume their own superiority.”
Reg: we are all waiting for someone to make the first move.that’s where it stands, schoolyard taunting trying to make somebody to take the first swing.
Master Sun Tzu said winning a hundred battles is not the acme of skill, but to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. And that is precisely what Hamas achieved with this flotilla.
We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege, which is itself becoming Israel’s Vietnam.
“They know, as the song about the Lebanon War suggested (“Lo Yachol La’atzor Et Zeh”) that we, unable to see ourselves in any clarity, are no longer capable of stopping ourselves.”
To which point Sun Tzu also said, “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
-
Instapundit cites a study on Whiskey’s side: http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/100830/
2) The thing I immediately thought of when I first read of Natalie Holloway’s death was that she believed she was safe because she had her cellphone. Women treat them as talismans, and, as we all know, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. Dumb kid, but she did not deserve to die.
Helen Thomas’ remarks about Israel are not controversial in leftist circles, and that includes MSM journalists when you catch them “off the record” such as at one of their parties. Her comments were, in fact, milquetoast compared to what you might hear. Lathered in snark and tending toward the Shavian, Helen’s comments were exactly a “symbolon”, presented as a haughty credential. Go back and look at the tape — she clearly thought she was being clever and daring with her statements. Brazen, envelop-pushing snark is the lingua franca of the realm in which she has lived for how many decades, right in the heart of the beast as queen of the WH Press Room?
Oh, they cast her over the side now and pretend to be shocked and talk about bridges too far. But you should see what goes down in their realm on any given Friday in Georgetown or Capitol Hill. The truth is Helen screwed up and made herself inconvenient, and compounded that problem by being too old and too expendable. That’s a very dumb position to be in as a Washington operator, but then again Helen was never very smart. As a matter of fact, she was always rather obtuse and inconvenient. It is amazing to realize how long the dolt (and she was always a dolt, even when young) has lasted. That amazement ought to last two seconds, until you realize that Helen has always had support because she’s always subscribed and toted water for all the beliefs, the prejudices, and the goals of everybody in that Press Room. She, the strange, marginal, inconvenient figure, pulled it off for ten presidents. Why? Because she always managed to fit in so well, and as what else but the wizened matronly figure, the “wise Latina woman” by another name.
Goodbye, Helen, and, at long last, good riddance. My God how glad I am that when this day came it happened by your blowing it with your obstreperous trap, once again, yet this time, at long last, you got called for it.
Wretchard: Even the Israelis are catching on. Students are organizing a relief flotilla to Kurdistan and Cyprus to help the victims of Turkish occupation there.
They’re welcome to do it, but the point might be lost in translation, and might even backfire. Turkey is not, like Israel with respect to Gaza, blocking everything except a limited array of humanitarian supplies from established aid societies from entering Kurdistan or Cyprus.
Dear Teresita, In 1968 I was a freshman at a university in New Haven, where a substantial fraction of the student population was of New York residents of the Jewish faith or cultural affinity. I remember one afternoon as I served green beans for the students filing past the steam table in the dining hall seeing several such students moving through the line, involved in a spirited discussion of mid-east politics. Several were wearing 2″ buttons supporting al-Fatah, PLO, and Black September.
Mind you, this was during a period when the Palestinian Liberation Organizaton sponsored and carried out thousands of guerilla attacks against Israel.
In my five years at Yale, the support of Jews among the students for arab/Islamic terrorist groups seemed perversely to grow, not subside. One can explain it as the success of the Communists/Leftist/Trans-National Progressivist argument. Maybe in some cases it arose from an actual reasoned sense that Israeli policies were responsible for inflaming Palestinian resentment. Or it could be attributed to a desperate desire to be seen as utterly objective and mature beyond petty self-interest.
Any how, it continues to me to seem a certain sign of suicidal insanity.
So, just because the CEO of a multi-national corporation happens to be descended of the twelve tribes of Israel is no guarantee that person will make any attempt to counter the Jihadist hatred for Jews, or even the milder anti-semitism of many other less fanatical groups.
#14 teresita
Hamas did not plan the flotilla thing- the persians did,they invented chess and they’ve got the patience to think like that.Problem is like the movie Red Dragon when hopkins as Lector says to Ed Norton “I suppose you think you’re smarter than me , as you caught me” “No I had advantages, you’re insane”. people who expect the 12th imam to appear shortly and parade in Tehran in triumph ain’t the most stable and will be likely to believe and do the damndest things.rather like Nazism-perfectly logical-it’s the premises that are insane.
Mad Fiddler: So, just because the CEO of a multi-national corporation happens to be descended of the twelve tribes of Israel is no guarantee that person will make any attempt to counter the Jihadist hatred for Jews, or even the milder anti-semitism of many other less fanatical groups.
There’s a number of articles at Haaretz.com making eloquent criticism of the botched operation against the flotilla, yet they are hardly indicative of suicidal self-hatred. This George W. Bush mindset where you’re either with him or with the terrorists has to go. Even William F. Buckley Jr., Mr. Private Property, soured on the Iraq occupation after the golden mosque was destroyed by Sunnis, which marked a turning point in the war. This flotilla incident marks another turning point. Terrorism exists to further ideological goals. The Palestinians have discovered an effective way to do this by letting the Israelis, and not their own suicide bombers, conduct all the violence and thereby garner world sympathy for their cause. It’s like judo, where the opponent’s own momentum is turned against him. The Gaza blockade has become a net strategic liability. This was the time when Israel had been hoping to have the world line up on their side with sanctions to protect Israel from Iran. Instead, the world is lining up against Israel and may very well bring sanctions against Israel, with Obama leading the way.
wretchard said:
“….the prospects of Joran van der Sloot getting a fair trial…”
A fair trial for him is about 5 minutes long followed by one of the males from her family choking the bastard to death.
Who said this above? “Turkey is not, like Israel with respect to Gaza, blocking everything except a limited array of humanitarian supplies from established aid societies from entering Kurdistan or Cyprus.” Ah, Teresita. Woman – BULSHITE.
Have you ever been there? I have lived in Israel and this is pure unadulterated garbage. Israel lets everything BUT the deadly stuff through contrary to what Commie organs of the state may say. Why don’t you call Helen Thomas for a good blood-libel to amuse us with?
Frakkin’ TROLL. Get back under your bridge.
Teresita– Of course Levin and Eisner were ousted years ago and the Bronfmans sold Seagrams over a decade ago (while still retaining seats on the boards), but don’t let little thing like facts get in the way! Their being Jewish (is that your point?) didn’t stop the corporations they represent from accepting huge investments from trillion dollar sovereign funds in Muslim hellholes like Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait, UAE, etc., nor did it stop them from funding producing and promulgating all all kinds of Islam-friendly anti-Western pabulum. Or do you disagree? Ostentatiously missing from your Stormfront list would be some reference to Sulzberger and the New York Times, no Islam apologizing Israel bashing rag that, wot!? (Of course mentioning Pinch would be soooo obvious it messes up all the fun sarcasm…).
So there’s been absolutely NO Muslim coddling Israeli-bashing bias coming from the NYT, and certainly no anti-American Islam whitewashing movies coming out of the Universal/NBC/GE nexus. That’s 100% true, but only as long as you ignore a steady stream of sewage like “The Kingdom”, “Jarhead”, “Green Zone”, in the film genre, and TV shows like Law and Order which features Christian fanatics beheading innocent Muslims, etc. Again, don’t let facts get in the way!
George Orwell would be interested in this story because believing that a “Peace Activist” with knife in hand standing over a supine man with a bloody abdominal stab wound requires an act of Doublethink.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting both of them… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” George Orwell
Truth: An Islamic terrorist stabbed an Israeli soldier
Lie: The Islamic terrorist is a “Peace Activist”
Teresita @ 18: “Turkey is not, like Israel with respect to Gaza, blocking everything except a limited array of humanitarian supplies from established aid societies from entering Kurdistan or Cyprus.”
T, you have changed! Jewish girlfriend dump you or something? Whatever it was, get a grip.
What Turkey has done to Kurdistan is to occupy it, kill those who resist, bomb them, burn down villages, squash Kurdish culture. If Israel had treated Gaza the way the Turks have treated Kurdistan for decades, Gaza would not be a problem today. What Turkey did to Cypress was invade it, occupy half the island, and hang on grimly — which is what Israel should have done to the West Bank.
Turkey’s support for the “peace” flotilla (peace in the Orwellian sense that peace is war) is totally hypocritical. But the global left-wing media thinks of occupied Kurdistan as often as it thinks of occupied Tibet. Don’t let those media fools think for you, T.
Now go and get your groove back!
RagnarD: Israel lets everything BUT the deadly stuff through contrary to what Commie organs of the state may say.
“In the wake of the Hamas takeover, Israel said it would allow only basic humanitarian supplies into the Strip.”
Don’t take it personally, Ragnar – Teresita’s lies are nothing surprising. One commentator nailed down these scum perfectly in the wake of 9/11 (VD Hanson? Krauthammer?) They LOVE to pity the Anne Franks, Eli Weisels, and other “good Jews” who have suffered & gone quietly. Standing up and fighting, though? Very un-kosher. Jews were meant to be fawned over in the wake of genocide – not to defend themselves against it.
Witness Teresita, for example, whining in a prior thread that the Israeli commandos didn’t let play the game right & let the “Peacemakers” carve them up like Matzoh. Don’t they know their historical role? After all, “his blood be upon our heads”, etc etc.
And what’s with the stupid red herring about the number of Muslims in the mass media? Seriously – deep down even she doesn’t believe her own garbage. Must be fun hiding behind an alternate mental reality, a la our beloved Dear Leader/Commander in Thief.
Our host writes: But maybe Reuters just slipped up. After all, to err is human. But to conspire is human too. How can we know whether the omissions of the press aren’t random noise but a superimposed signal?
That’s easy. Because when the press makes such “mistakes,” they always — always–favor the Left. Why is it you never see a Republican airbrushed to look 20 years younger or 10 pounds lighter? Why aren’t weapons erased from the hands of Israelis? Why isn’t utterly false junk science ever deployed to further Conservative ends?
If it were mere stupidity on their part, you’d expect a pretty even balance of “mistakes” supporting one side or the other. Only thing is, it never happens that way. “Oops, I did it again,” the press says, “and gosh by golly it just so happened to support our agenda. What a coincidence.”
If Vegas would only take bets on the ideological impact of the next press “mistake,” I could be a rich man.
Run Through the Jungle – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Teresita / 21 “The Palestinians have discovered an effective way to do this by letting the Israelis, and not their own suicide bombers, conduct all the violence and thereby garner world sympathy for their cause.”
You have fallen for, and become an agent of, the disgusting evil of moral equivalence. Violence in self-defense (or in defense of human freedom) is necessary and therefore good violence. The violence of our men at Omaha Beach on D-Day was good violence, while the violence of the Nazi defenders of Omaha Beach was evil violence. The violence of terrorism (flying airliners into skyscrapers, beheading journalists, bombing pizza parlors, etc.) is not self-defense – it is evil. “World sympathy for their cause” only reflects the evil of moral equivalence on a massive scale.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness….”
” Turkey is not, like Israel with respect to Gaza, blocking everything except a limited array of humanitarian supplies from established aid societies from entering Kurdistan or Cyprus.” This comparison is obscene. Do you know ANYTHING about Turkish aggression, and Turkish ethnic cleansing, in Cyprus and Kurdistan??? Clearly not. Turks regularly assault and kill people who challenge their hegemony in these Jihadi theaters.. Trying to depict Turkey, which is ruthless and is waging Jihad, as the lesser aggressor compared to Israel, which regularly incurs death in attempts to NOT inflict unnecessary deaths, is obscene. You clearly are out of your mind
Run Through The Jungle lyrics
(J.C. Fogerty)
Whoa, thought it was a nightmare,
Lo, it’s all so true,
They told me, \”Don’t go walkin’ slow
‘Cause Devil’s on the loose.\”
CHORUS:
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Woa, Don’t look back to see.
Thought I heard a rumblin’
Callin’ to my name,
Two hundred million guns are loaded
Satan cries, \”Take aim!\”
CHORUS
Over on the mountain
Thunder magic spoke,
\”Let the people know my wisdom,
Fill the land with smoke.\”
“This George W. Bush mindset where you’re either with him or with the terrorists has to go.”
Teresita, it’s not a mindset, it is a FACT. It is the central fact of un-conventional warfare.
Picture yourself walking up to the main entrance of your bank. You just got a well earned bonus check that the boss wanted to put in your hand to show his appreciation. As you open the door, a man in a mask runs out, knocking you down. He, like the guy behind him is waving a gun and carrying a sack that has money spilling out of it. They both jump in a car waiting at the curb and go squealing up the street, taking the first right.
You are in a state of shock, realizing that you just witnessed a bank robbery. As you pick yourself up, hoping they left enough money to cash your check, a cop car pulls up at the curb and the cop asks you; “Which way did they go?”
You have 3 choices here; “Right” which puts the cops on the trail of the crooks, left which helps the crooks get away or “I didn’t see” which helps the crooks get away.
Insurgency, guerrilla or terrorism is based on the fact that most people don’t want to get involved. If you don’t get involved, you help the terrorist.
Edmund Burks said it best;
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
That is what President Bush was trying to say. Nobody will ever confuse him (Bush) with Mr. Burks.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. They brag about being terrorists. Anybody that is helping Hamas acquire weapons to kill Jews with is guilty of aiding and abetting. Attempted genocide is another possible charge.
What I find droll is that those giving aid and comfort to Hamas say that Hitler was an evil man. Yet they are trying hard to finish the genocide Hitler started.
‘splain me that Lucy!
So the fact is, Teresita, you are either fighting the terrorist, or you are aiding them. No middle ground, no neutral status.
You are either with us or with them. THERE IS NO CHOICE “C”.
http://www.augeanstables.com
So many of the stories and photos come from the same source now – the AP. AP provides “free” coverage to western media which are members of the consortium – but the paying part of the AP coverage is funded by Muslims, buying coverage for aL Jezeera and the like. INcreasing use of AP vice keeping correspondents employed by specific media leads to the annoying uniformity of coverage in the modern press.
“Israel has closed its crossings with Gaza again because of Palestinian rocket fire at Israel, just a day after allowing vital humanitarian supplies in. Palestinian militants fired two Qassam rockets at Israel on Sunday, one on Monday and another on Tuesday, and the crossings were subsequently closed on Tuesday.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-closes-gaza-crossings-again-after-humanitarian-supplies-let-in-1.258228
Look what happens when humanitarian supplies are allowed into Gaza. Gee, do you suppose the closing of border crossings and naval blockades might be related to self-defense? No, no, no – that would be an exercise in common sense – and remember common sense never fits leftist narratives – now the narrative of Terisita whose true colors are on display.
“The heresy of heresies was common sense.” George Orwell – 1984
Teresita:
“to subdue the enemy without fighting … that is precisely what Hamas achieved”
Forgive me while I take another look at the picture included in this very article. (By the way, have the photographs and reports printed in the Arabic and Muslim media caused you any second thoughts regarding your characterization of the Israeli boarding party?)
“There’s a number of articles at Haaretz.com”
In terms of Israeli politics, Haaretz is increasingly like The Nation or The Village Voice. Hardly means that they’re wrong, but they are in no way representative of Israel.
“The Gaza blockade has become a net strategic liability.”
That the blockade has its price is obvious, Einstein. The alternative is Hamas getting rockets that reach Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, and Dimona. Some Israelis might view this as a negative. There are also intelligent analysts who claim that an Israeli capitulation on the blockade will once again strengthen Hamas vis-a-vis the purportedly more moderate Fatah. What a boon that would be for the peace process and Israel’s strategic position! (Would all of you other than Teresita please save yourself the trouble of reacting to “moderate” and “peace process”.)
“This was the time when Israel had been hoping to have the world line up on their side with sanctions to protect Israel from Iran. Instead, the world is lining up against Israel and may very well bring sanctions against Israel, with Obama leading the way.”
Of course! The world was all set to stop Iran, but then Israel went and killed (“point-blank”!) nine people. The obvious response is to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and to impose sanctions on Israel instead!
Oh, and much as it may pain some, let’s give “Mad King Charles” credit where its due.
How can we estimate whether this is simply an outlier?
With all due respect for the American media, no matter how much nano-technology will be required to visualize such a small quantity, the estimation of the probability of this being an outlier is actually fairly simple.
We have literally close to half a century of data to work with. There are only three questions that need to be asked and answered.
1) How many times in the last half century have we seen the MSM, either print or broadcast; either a) slant the coverage of an event against Conservatives and against this country, b) refuse to cover an event that showed either the American Left or this country’s enemies in a bad light, c) totally falsify an event, or evidence, to show this country or conservatives in a bad light, d) violate national security in whole or in part to make a false political point against this country or conservatives, or conversly e) slant the coverage of an event against Democrats and against Leftists anywhere, f) refuse to cover an event that showed either Conservatives or this country’s in a bad light, g) totally falsify an event, or evidence, to show this country or conservatives in a good light, h) violate national security in whole or in part to make a point against Democrats or any Leftists anywhere?
That alone shows where the hearts of the MSM are.
But there is a second question:
2) How many issues of import in the West have been covered, overall, in an even-handed and fair minded manner showing both sides and allowing readers and viewers to make up their own minds without a pre-concieved conclusion that the written articles or broadcasts are written to support?
Back to nano-tech for measurements.
3) How unusual is it for the MSM to have been found in retrospect to have not only falsified coverage [how many Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded for reporting that has been found later to be pure fiction?], but to have actively worked to suppress data that would prove them to be lying?
It is not an outlier. It is well within statistical norms for the MSM to deliberately falsify news, and to cover up the political viewpoint that they are pushing.
As far as the “cropped” picture by Reuters, one only has to look at their past coverage of the Middle East. There is a reason that they are known worldwide as Al-Reuters, literally.
#9 Teresita
The leftwards bias of our media has been documented over time pretty thoroughly. Going back to “The Media Elite” by Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter [the two Lichters got married during the 10 year long longitudinal study that was the basis of the book] ISBN-10: 0917561112, Woodbine House, 1986; it has been fairly well proven. Yes, big corporations own the media outlets. However, back when that study began, it was the standard that the ownership left the news media to run their own shops. The reporters and the editors were definitely to the Left of the rest of the country. Tracing hundreds of reporters and editors over their careers, with a decade of annual surveys from each; there is no doubt as to their sympathies. When 98%+ of those surveyed admitted to voting Democrat regularly, it says something about ideological bias.
Over time, since this study was published, those reporters and editors have moved into management, and indeed are now finishing their careers. They retained their bias as they moved up.
Since 1986, we have seen the role of the media as the tool of what Rasmussen calls the “Political Class” grow. The ties between the media and politicians of the Left are growing tighter, and indeed the main hope of most MSM outlets to survive economically is for them to become branches of the government, and especially the Leftists in government.
The “Financial Reform” just recently passed granted the Federal Trade Commission oversight of the media. The FTC has released a “staff discussion draft” of what they propose. It is basically a making of the media into a wholly owned subsidiary. Reporters’ pay would in part come from the government, and they would also fund all local news coverage.
http://tinyurl.com/29cd4pn
Anybody else remember this phrase?:
Ministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda.
The media is tied to the Democratic Party. The personalities you mentioned are, of course, Jewish; which was the irony that you were deliberately pointing out. However, that does not mean that they will be defenders of Israel, or opponents of Jihadis.
Once again, going to decades of polling and investigations of voting patterns; American Jews identify more closely with the Democratic Party than with the Jewish faith, and are one of their most reliable voting blocs, regardless of policy towards Israel. Right now, with the Democratic Party being the home of both true racism and anti-Semitism [in the colloquial sense, yes, Arabs are Semites too], they shelter their opposition to Israel with the cover of being “anti-Zionist”, but the policy prescriptions are designed to create a second Sho’ah.
The interesting thing that will come out of the Helen Thomas affair will be despite her long-overdue retirement; her views of Jews and Israel will become more and more respectable and mainstream. Already we are seeing it in the blogosphere, and soon you will be hearing stories about how she was cruelly hounded out of her position in the White House, from Democrat operatives.
Subotai Bahadur
The jihad can stop the war any time it wants to, and suffer nothing for doing so. Israel can stop the war any time it wants to, by suffering everything for doing so.
Everything else is chatter.
***
Subotai’s closing remark is true –Helen Thomas just jiu-jitsu’d the pro-Israel position, retiring as per normal for a 90 year old, but setting up the firing of a clearly batty little old lady by the ‘vast right-wing and also BTW Jewish conspiracy’. Yassir would be proud, yassir, he shirley wood.
Storm Rider: Violence in self-defense (or in defense of human freedom) is necessary and therefore good violence. The violence of our men at Omaha Beach on D-Day was good violence, while the violence of the Nazi defenders of Omaha Beach was evil violence
Okay, I think I got it now. Violence of our men at Saratoga and Yorktown was good violence, because it led to the defeat of the foreign occupiers. Violence of Ho Chi Mihn’s men on the Tet holiday and the Nguyen Hue Offensive was evil violence because it led to the defeat of the foreign occupiers. Invading Mexico and tearing off Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona was good violence because it was self-defense. The Cubans defeating the US invasion of the Bay of Pigs was bad violence because it was self-defense. Check!
Subotai (#38): “soon you will be hearing stories about how she was cruelly hounded out of her position”
Well of course! Here we have such a respected member of the press, a veritable icon ferkrhysakes, and she gets nailed to the cross for a mere unfortunate turn of phrase, which she was entrapped into by a Rabbi, no less? Can there be any doubt that the real reason for this veritable lynching is that her courageous and outspoken positions in favor of a Just Peace have angered certain powerful interests who receive their marching orders from Tel-Aviv?
(I can’t be bothered searching through the sewer; does anyone else here happen to know if the infamous JStreet has had anything to say about this affair?)
Teresita: Terrorism exists to further ideological goals. The Palestinians have discovered an effective way to do this by letting the Israelis, and not their own suicide bombers, conduct all the violence and thereby garner world sympathy for their cause.
Except that the Israelis have not ever, and certainly did not in this latest incident, conduct ALL the violence.
William Buckley Jr. may have soured on the Iraq occupation–due, I might posit, to a regrettable and, for him, atypical lack of imagination–but the Sunni destruction of the golden mosque in the end worked to their detriment. Hamas would do well to take note. Israel may decide to let them have things their way, but only up to a point. Meanwhile Hamas will manage to only further destroy the potential of Gaza and all the Palestinians living therein. The Israeli occupation will continue to be blamed as the source of the problem. And some previous supporters may sour on the Israelis as a result. But eventually nothing will matter but survival, a fact even the majority of Palestinians may come to appreciate.
Teresita (#40):
That’s precisely right, Teresita! Ho Chi Mihn (sic) and Castro were fighting “in defense of human freedom.” Well done, Teresita, jolly good!
Bob/43; –but T is right –they were fighting for freedom from freedom! Remember, one man’s Mede is another man’s Persian –
MEANWHILE, Meg Whitman AND Carley Fiorina WIN –California, YES! Recovery is now the trend –and Angle (of the Tea party) in Nevada!
BTW, re Subotai’s thought, the large number of Jews among the financial meltdown Dunbar Number of perps is analogous to the 19 Saudis who took over the 9/11 planes. Many people will say, ‘of course it was the Saudis, because it was the Saudis –or the same with the Jews. In both cases, the idea was to create that thought. Truth is, would an Israeli or Saudi Arabian conspiracy have allowed so many ‘tells’ to point to the center? Of course not –the perps would’ve been Lebanese and Irish in the planes and in the boardrooms.
And Angle of the Tea Party wins in Nevada! Hairy Reed is cooked!
***
Santa Anna voided the Constitution of 1828 –in so doing he in effect threw the whole sovereignty issue up for grabs –
Teresita,
Texas won its independence from Mexico all by itself, without benefit from a US invasion. As a matter of fact, the gringoes in Tejas were once Santa Anna’s biggest fans. But that was when Santa Anna proclaimed himself the “George Washington of Mexico” and sought republican ideals. However, he changed once he gained power, declared himself dictator, and set about on a scheme to become “the Napoleon of the Americas”. That was the point in which Tejas, as a whole, including the “Hispanics” who were there before the “gringoes”, said, collectively, “Santa Anna piss off.”
No US President, no element of the US military, none of that was involved in the ensuing war. Unless you count Davy Crockett & Co, who led the Tennessee Volunteers to his death (execution, actually, as Santa Anna watched) at the Alamo.
The Republic of Texas owes not one modicum of its birth to any political or military manuever of the United States. It was not torn off from Mexico by the United States, it was torn of from Mexico by itself. All of Mexico’s northern provinces were in sympathy, too, in the face of tyranny.
Don’t mess with Texas.
Buddy (#44):
Why do I get the strangest feeling that if I pushed you really hard, you might come up with alternate conspirators who would have been behind both of these events?
(Paging Mr X!)
The Reuters New Agency is a division of the Thomson Reuters Corporation. The majority shareholder in Thomson Reuters is the Canadian Thomson family and Thomson Reuters is headquartered in NYC so calling Reuters British is a little unfair to Her Majesty’s loyal subjects.
I can also assure anyone who is worried about it that the Thomson Reuters management is way too incompetent to manage a deliberate manipulation of the news. This is merely the result of them seeking out the cheapest labor in the furthest backwaters of the third world. When these thugs take over the world Tom Glocer will be hung with the rope he sold them and David Thomson will still be trying to figure out which if any of his heirs he actually fathered. this isn’t a conspiracy just a farce.
Returning to Helen Thomas for just a moment, the blathering about her right to free speech reminds me of the equally asinine comments about how some people are apparently hypocrites for urging democracy on the Palestinian Arabs, and then punishing them for their choices. (I will assume that nobody here is so big a fool as to require elaboration.)
Bob/46; LOL –Mr X; “You wouldn’t have been attacked by that bear if you’d've stayed out of bear country.”
bystander; “But, where is bear country?”
Mr X; “Everywhere the bear is.”
bystander; “oh.”
***
but seriously, on the urging democracy on the Palestinian Arabs, and then punishing them for their choices –if you recall, GWB got punished severly for his early paens to democracy having resulted in some pretty anti-USA-type ideal elections winners. His answer to these skewers was something like “Well, the idea is, if the new guy turns out bad, the next election can vote him out of office.”
So, long/short, what GWB had in mind was the system being permanent; that is, more than just the one actual election, for any given country.
Is this cockroach an outlier?
Teresita is up to her old tricks. She got a little love in the last thread so immediately reverted to her smartest little girl in the classroom persona and started pissing everybody off with ridiculous assertions and too clever by half lame arguments. She just can’t help herself.
The 19 911 villians were composed of 15 traveling on KSA Documents.
However, they were Yemenis!
The original, original black guard for OBL was 100% Yemeni.
Due to the Saudi history of conquest Yemeni tribesmen have ALWAYS been allowed to cross the boarder AND receive KSA traveling documents.
That is how the press has confused the ethnicity of the 911 murderers.
AQ is falling apart in Iraq…
It’s on the ropes in AfPak…
( Irregular warfare used to sustain an invasion has much in common with U-boat War. The players are dead meat the minute their location can be confirmed. Micro-bots are the equivalent of the Hedgehog anti-sub launcher. Smaller, discrete detonations proved much more effective than classic depth charges.
The enemy has lots of dull troopers — but a limited number of clever operators. Doenitz found that high attrition ruined the craft knowledge to such a degree that no successes remained to pass on skill.)
Yemen will be the next key battle space.
blert, how Yemeni were they? Just because they were of Yemeni names or tribes, if they were Saudi citizens and had lived their lives in KSA, then what does it matter?
Hasn’t Iran been more of a problem for, oh, thirty years or so?
Have some of you fallen for the false equation of plebiscite = democracy?
True democracy requires that one election leads to another, that party A can win, and then hold a fair election that party B might win, followed by another that party A can win again. True democracy requires freedom of conscience, of expression, and of assembly. True democracy needs honest courts, reliable enforceable contracts, and the absence of religious persecution (or anti-religious persecution).
A plebiscite is just a vote, and as we all should know by now, this is not the same thing as true democracy. (And please, I know the difference between absolute democracy and representative democracy.)
Our carelessness in our rhetoric leads to conclusions like, “There was a democratic election in Gaza that Hammas won fair and square.” It was NOT a democratic election because the other conditions of democracy were not present. It was merely a plebiscite that installed a brutal terrorist dictatorship.
#12 Pa Cat -
Excellent quotation. It is of course true. One historical example of this is the (now) United States of America; George Washington was a traitor (or perhaps seditionist) by definition. Armed rebellion against your own lawfully constituted government counts as treason, I think.
It was put in a slightly different way, in an old film a bit like “Last Samurai” in that it was set in feudal Japan. “There is no excuse for rebellion.” “Excuse me, but there is.” (Heads turn around rather quickly towards the American ex-soldier, now samurai, saying this). Daimyo says; “And what might that excuse be?” (One can tell that the answer had better be right.) Answer: “Winning.”
Blert – who actually cares? The difference between Yemenis and Saudis is vanishingly small and in any case it doesn’t matter. The money came from Saudi, the bombers were Arabs and they were most certainly all Muslims.
FC/55; The money came from Saudi, the bombers were Arabs and they were most certainly all Muslims –gotta watch that ‘collective guilt’, FC, as the Nuremberg Trials isolated and made clear. The Saudi royals, in particular, depending on USA demand to keep the oil mkt liquid and protected on the high seas and off, and thoroughly invested in the USA economy per the petrodollar/US Treasury recycling system, are extremely unlikely to’ve been happy with 9/11′s existential attack on the USA economy. Whoever was behind the attack certainly wanted the Saudi royals blamed for it by the American street, clear enough by the passports of the direct-action recruits. and since there are 30,000 saudi royals, some discrimination needs be made among the upstairs and the downstairs royals.
A DC Benador Group think tanker named Lauri Mylroie wrote an excellent article titled ”The Baluch Connection” in about 2002 or so, that went into some theory of what was behind Saddam’s Gulf War I looting of the Kuwaiti public records building –making a good case that the first WTC bombing was done by a certain group of Baluchis posing –with documents looted from Kuwait, docs whose actual owners had as part of the op been disposed of –posing as the now-familiar Ramsi Yousef crew, and that we don’t now and never will know who is who amongst the agents sent here to do harm –except that they’re not likely to be who they want to seem, and are likely to be untraceable.
***
found it:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003213
somewhat dated but fascinating –and really, nothing dated about KSM, Eric Holder’s Manhattan Melodrama, erstwhile.
One must know what rocks to turn over to find the roaches.
Yemenis operate in KSA as a sub-caste — particularly in construction. OBL’s big daddy made his billions that way.
You’ll never find a Saudi holding a shovel — or a hammer — or anything constructive.
——-
That the Royals are hip deep in the Golden Chain must be obvious.
Financial and diplomatic pressure is appropriate for them.
But the terrorist field ‘army’ is in Yemen; their contract ‘navy’ is in Somalia.
The rampant piracy sustains AQ directly. Obviously it must be shut down totally.
Well, it seems like not everyone is transfixed in doe-eyed admiration of those spunky democrats in Gaza.
As for “But what about hard news agencies? Aren’t they supposed to report the objective truth?”….well, the joke is on, is on, is on…who, exactly? (And when will the “joke” actually transpire?)
Certainly, one wouldn’t dream of ignoring those sensitive altruists in Turkey. (Talk about slow-motion train wrecks….)
Remember y’all: the key is “speaking untruth to power”!!
(Or is it, “Palestine from the river to the sea!!”…. or, hold on, might it be, ““EUROPE YOU’LL COME CRAWLING WHEN THE MUJAHADIN COME ROARING.”)
As for Helen Thomas, lest one think that the unfortunate woman is down and out—martyred for having the courage to speak out courageously (did I already say that?) against the Zionists (for which she is almost sure to achieve sainthood)—it seems very much within the realm of possibility that her fate, if not her face, may yet launch (another) thousand ships?
Just imagine: the sister ships Helen Thomas and Rachel Corrie….. Shiver me timbers, I know….
“since there are 30,000 saudi royals, some discrimination needs be made among the upstairs and the downstairs royals.”
Why? They are all the enemy. And will be until they aren’t there any more.
Yes, the West needs Saudi oil. No, it doesn’t need the Saudis – just about none of whom, in any case, have anything to do with oil extraction except to take the profits.
The price of the WTC ought to have been the palace of the King of Mordor. With him in it. At an absolute minimum.
FC/60; but what about Prince Alawide –he owns a monster chunk of Citibank, along with the American Taxdairycow, i mean Taxpayer, so, whither he goest so goest us li’l peons –
BM/58; "Untruth to power" –LOL –how 'bout 'speaking power to truth' –as in "senator, did you read the bill?" (senator) "No, I did not" (meaning, "i'd rather be thought an idiot than known a crook").
Eric Holder to hearing "The Arizona Bill is unconstitutional and discriminates unlawfully…."
Hearing to Holder "Mr. Att'y Gen'l, did you read the bill?"
Holder "No I did not."
Hearing "But it's only a few pages!"
Holder "i…I…may have glanced at it…."
Of course, had he admitted having read the bill, then he could not lie about what is in it; so instead he lied about having read it, so that he could falsely claim that he is honestly (rather than dishonestly) lying about what is in the bill.
Got it? if not, there’s hope for you yet.
while on Yemen and Holder, it’s well-known that the law firm Holder is (or was before AG job) partner in, has been from the beginning of the war associated –as court defenders mainly but the role has been broad and active –of the Yemeni Al Queda. Less known is that at the firm, Holder himself defended Chiquita Banana (the case is active iirc) against charges that it had, in Colombia’s outback, hired FARC (the narcoterrorists) to murder a few reps from a competing fruit company. check it out in search. Also check out BP’s & Oxy’s holdings in Colombia, and the FARC troubles the long jungle pipelines and rural oilfields ought to be having but aren’t. Maybe Rahm Emanuel, perhaps in earning his five years of BP-paid apartment rent before the election, has been busy along with Holder mollifying the banana death squads, and maybe BP and Oxy and not the unions are what’s behind Pelosi’s flimsy excuses to keep the Colombia Free Trade bill off the floor of the house, thereby measurably increasing the odds of the success of Hugo Chavez’ continental ambitions for his Bolo Revo. Back channel Rahm/BP and back channel Eric/FARC, and Colombia, and a big banana plantation!
Just like the banana plantation that caused the town to be wrecked by God or Nature for the sin of capitalism and private property and hereditary rights in the book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" –the town invented by a famous Colombian writer, a communist 'magical realist' named Gabriel García Márquez, who gave his made-up town the fanciful, invented name "Macondo", which is, crazily, the name BP bestowed on the well in that block of the Gulf of Mexico over the highly-expectant new large reserves of American oil known as the Mississippi Canyon, where now in Day 51 is a monumental, Old South wrecking (wrecking like the windstorm and four years of rain wrecked Macondo the town) and perhaps "American Power Act" rescuing before November's Dem chill, oil spill from the well named the Macondo Prospect.
(…wahhhh…i want my bush/cheney back….)
Correction for the bad link in #58 regarding ….those sensitive altruists in Turkey.
Apologies.
BL…
MUCH food for thought….
Isn’t it 3rd time enemy action?
“You cracker bastards like oil so much? Well HERE, HAVE some!”
***
Blert/63; yes it is, and that’s just to scratch the surface. if i knew how to type i’d…i’d…hmmm, the post title is ‘the truth shall drive you nuts’ –ah, wretchard, you n yer genius atmospheric detector brain –
Now even Anderson Cooper, the testicle feller, is smelling something. Er, detecting something, i might should say.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/08/oil.rig.warning.signs/?hpt=T2
A question.
We’ve supported Israel, materially and diplomatically, since it’s founding. Many times we’ve been all alone in that effort, and there’s no doubt that it’s cost us a lot.
American Jews support the Democratic Party in overwhelming numbers, yet most of the solid support for Israel comes from the opposite side of the political spectrum. So there’s very little reward for conservatives who support Israel, and there would be very little political pain for withdrawing that support.
The question: what tangible benefit does either the conservative movement, or the country at large, gain from supporting Israel?
I’m curious to hear peoples thoughts on this.
PS, worth mentioning, of course the “American Power Act” now before the senate is sponsored by Sen Kerry (AKA “John the Honest”), its ‘shaper’ (it was Cap & Trade, then Cap & Invest, then Cap & Crunch, and so on) –now it has passed thru Sen Kerry’s hands –and he gives credit to none other than BP (no, not ho chi Minh nor daniel ortega, this time around) for helping make the changes (that double BP’s carbon trade ‘take’) that rebirthed it as “The American Power Act”.
Dr Tim Ball, redoubtable oppo of IPCC fakery, writes about the act at Canada Free Press –take a look –
DTM/65; –there’s the most practical, earthly reason, without going into any supernatural biblical stuff, that the quality of the threat against Israel requires that i either support, or prepare to look on as they try to fight impossible odds –like europe did in the mid-20th century. i don’t think i could stand the latter –in fact i don’t think anybody of any heart and soul could. even tho they may not realize it in time. Life being so determined to distract.
#65
Indeed, since it does appear that it is in American Conservatives’ interest to have an islamicized Middle East, and all the mayhem that that entails (followed in turn by…. an islamicized Europe?), you may well be correct that Israel is a liability. Besides, leaving the subject of American Conservatives aside, can the entire world be wrong that Israel has no right to exist? And should American Conservatives even try to buck the trends of history, or at least history as it is explained to us by so many in the world?
The question is: why, exactly, should American Conservatives care? Moreover, how can America have any influence when it shackles itself to a Jewish State that even American Jewish liberals can no longer support? When it could align itself with all that is hopeful and decent (and popular)?
Indeed, this is precisely the point! Thanks for raising a crucial question.
How can we know whether the omissions of the press aren’t random noise but a superimposed signal? How can we know whether Reuters isn’t wittingly or unwittingly advancing a political agenda?
I can and do know – it is a repeat pattern, not random.
And it is not just Reuters.
dtm/65; it occurs, too, that your premise –that America has helped Israel so much –while almost axiomatic is in some ways not the full truth. “Help” is best defined by who needs how much of it. There were times post WW2 when American power was so great that we could have intalled a permanent repair, we had the right to stop the outrageous now-six-decade-long attack on an ally. but instead, hypnotized by words (‘honest broker’), we drew equivalence between two sides anything but equivalent, and made this strained equanimity our policy point of departure.
Indeed, America has sown much confusion over the years, if perhaps unwittingly, by insisting that it has tried to help or at least wishes to help both Israelis and Palestinians.
In other words, a policy of being even-handed; of being an honest broker.
The problem, however, is one of perception (as anyone involved in the region and the rhetoric of the region should have understood from the onset):
Israel interpreted US “help” as: the US assisting Israel to deter her neighbors from effecting Israel’s destruction, as well as, more recently, assistance in creating a Palestinian state that would not insist on Israel’s destruction (in of itself a contradiction in terms, as will be shown below).
Palestinians interpreted US “help” as: the US ending its assistance to Israel, as Israel understood such “assistance” to be (see above).
And one wonders why the US has had so much trouble articulating its position….
….because as long as the US insisted on interpreting “help” in the same way as the Israelis, the US could not seen to be an “honest broker” by the Palestinians, even while the US insisted mightily that it was trying to be that honest broker. By continuing to defend Israel’s right to exist (and acting on it), the US could and would always be criticized (and distrusted) by the Arabs and anyone who thought like them and/or were sympathetic with their claims.
Now, things are a whole lot clearer.
The Obama administration has decided to end the confusion once and for all and be a true “honest broker,” as understood by the Palestinians and all those myriad others.
For realists who, in their wisdom and expertise, never understood why America would act against American interests by supporting Israel’s version of “help”, the decision has “made their day” (even though Obama, by still trying to reassure Israel of US support, maddeningly seems, in their view, to be kowtowing to the all-powerful “Israel Lobby”. Still unable to withstand that pernicious influence, etc…..).
(Never mind that as part and parcel of this decision, Obama has also said good-bye to any remaining trust between America and its allies, and to any remaining concept of American power—but then, it would be hard not to argue that this hasn’t been the Obama’s goal from day one.)
Israel, it may be understood, is more than a little perplexed.
While the “realists” continue to be grudgingly optimistic….
Many moons ago, at age 12 or so, I found the WWII section in the library. My father and uncles had fought in the war but never talked about it to me so this discovery was impressionable.
The pictures of Auschwitz and the other death camps were from another world that I did not know existed. I distinctly remember that day and the thoughts it provoked. How could this happen? How could so many people willingly participate in such things that were so beyond my understanding of human beings?
I have never learned all the answers but now I have fewer questions. Perhaps the only thing that distinguishes the monsters in those photos from many of the other human beings currently occupying this planet is opportunity.
To those who compute the political calculus of defending Israel, or write lists of Jewish names – you have no soul – no spark of life to inform you how difficult it has always been for men to live together in a civil society – and how impossible when reason is the only guide.
People who will not stand up to defend the light of civilization will not defend anything.
“Violence of Ho Chi Mihn’s men on the Tet holiday and the Nguyen Hue Offensive was evil violence because it led to the defeat of the foreign occupiers.”
There you go with your disgusting moral equivalence between good and evil. Ho Chi Mihn’s violence was no different from Mao Zedong’s, Pol Pot’s, Lenin’s, Stalin’s or Castro’s. Their use of violence was in creation of Totalitarian Communist governments which enslaved their own people. Our involvement in Vietnam was just war – good violence in opposition to Totalitarianism. Ho Chi Mihn’s violence was evil. Teresita, your rhetoric is no different from that of a Totalitarian Communist – or a Totalitarian Islamist.
“The “deKulakization” (War against the Middle Class) of 1930-1932 repeated the policy of “de-Cossackization” but on a much grander scale. Its primary objective, in accordance with the official order issued for this operation was “to exterminate the kulaks as a class.” The kulaks who resisted collectivization were shot, and the others were deported with their wives, children, and elderly family members. Although not all kulaks were exterminated directly, sentences of forced labor in wilderness areas of Siberia or the far north left them with scant chance of survival. Several tens of thousands perished there; the exact number of victims remains unknown. As for the great famine in Ukraine in 1932-33, which resulted from the rural population’s resistance to forced collectivization, 6 million died in a period of several months.”
http://theblackbook.wordpress.com/2006/11/22/excerpt-from-introduction-the-crimes-of-communism-by-stephane-courtois/
“Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger? How many witnesses have been sent to the West in the last 60 years? How many waves of immigrants? How many millions of persons? They are all here. You meet them every day. You know who they are: if not by their spiritual disorientation, their grief, their melancholy, then you can distinguish them by their accents by their external appearance… Coming from different countries and without consulting with one another… they have brought to you exactly the same experience; they tell you exactly the same thing: they warn you of what is already happening. It’s characteristic that communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement…We (in Communist Countries) are slaves there from birth. We are born slaves. I’m not young anymore, and I myself was born a slave; this is even more true for those who are younger. We are slaves, but we are striving for freedom. You, however, were born free. If so, then why do you help our slave owners?.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://www.alor.org/Library/LegacyofTerror.htm
Teresita / 40: “Violence of our men at Saratoga and Yorktown was good violence, because it led to the defeat of the foreign occupiers. Violence of Ho Chi Mihn’s men on the Tet holiday and the Nguyen Hue Offensive was evil violence because it led to the defeat of the foreign occupiers.”
Ho Chi Mihn was a Communist; he was not fighting for the freedom of his people, but for their enslavement to a Marxist Oligarchy. He was a native occupier with an evil political ideology where anything goes – including murder and torture. Equating Ho Chi Mihn with our Founding Fathers is Communist rhetoric – equating evil with good.
“Three young Vietnamese children had been brought to the border by the police of the North Vietnam. Their vocal cords had been cut (or tongues cut out, I forget which) as punishment for treasonable speech. When Dooley asked the guard how children so young could possibly have committed treason, the guard asked him, Dooley, to recite the Lord’s Prayer. When Dooley reached the phrase, ‘And deliver us from evil’, the guard stopped him. “That is the treason”, he declared, “for there is no evil in the People’s Republic of Vietnam.”"
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/02/boomers_and_the_vietnam_shrug.html
Teresita, your anti-American ideas come right out of the Communist Manifesto – where there is no such thing as good and evil.
“The fight of the Germans… against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest. By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to “True” Socialism (Communism) of confronting the political movement (Classic Liberalism) with the socialistic demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality… There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Returning to the question of media bias.
I am reminded of the last conflict between Israel and it’s neighbors to the north (I mean the Hezzies, not the geographical expression known as Lebanon). The MSM poured forth a torrent of photographs that showed how evil those darned JOOOOS were. The greater part of which were faked/altered/ridicously mislabelled alway, ALWAYS, to the detriment of the IDF and in favor of the Hezzies.
http://newsbusters.org/node/6875 has a pretty good dissection of this recurrent nonsense. People have developed a habit of highly uncritical thinking, we are a visual species and are biologically wired to believe and react to what our eyes present, so very few people question the pictures/captions. Most are just too lazy/ignorant to care, it’s easier to “feel the wrong” than carefully parse the lies from the truth. That and there is a new episode of “Idol” on tonite!!!!
The MSM provided with lots of heart-breaking, posed photos of “victims” none of which, oddly, were from Israel (a place, BTW, that was much safer and easier to get into and out of) doesn’t speak well for the even-handedness of the reporting. Deliberately altering photos to report on the “barbarity” or completely fake an event should point to an inability to even pretend to maintain objectivity. Mislabelling photos can be the product of utter ignorance (and given what I have seen from the MSM recently I am hard put to argue for intelligence or competence) so I will give them half of a pass on that.
Thus in two and a half out of three aspects of reliable reporting the MSM fail.
That vile old turd Helen Thomas is but a barnacle on the underside of one boat in the Fleet of Lies that is the MSM. I’m glad she is gone, but there are a few million to go before things can get better.
Regarding the interlinked Jewish Media fantasy, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.
Regarding William F Buckley’s position on Iraq, he was suffering from clinical depression following the death of his wife and it would be most unkind to hold this against him.
Every inch of Turkey is “stolen land” by the criteria used by the Turks to criticize Israel. Much of Turkey, including much of the former Constantinople and the Aegean seacoast was cleansed of Greeks less than 100 years ago.
OT
My suggestion is that we not only ignore the Kremlin Minder and Troll, you may notice that I decline to respond to his posts and anyone who responds to our genial host’s admonition for civility with a baiting attack on “Misha the Tie Eater” is a Troll, but that we do refer in our comments to “Pootie Poot the Pederast Midget” until the managers in the Lubyanka send someone more sociable to replace him.
61. buddy larsen
“FC/60; but what about Prince Alawide –he owns a monster chunk of Citibank, along with the American Taxdairycow, i mean Taxpayer, so, whither he goest so goest us li’l peons –”
And which country is Citibank based in again? It would not be beyond the bounds of possibility to seize all Saudi assets in the USA. Partly as reparations for their act of war against the USA, partly to pay for the damage (property damage that is), partly to pay compensation to the families of the victims, and maybe even partly reparations for the war that has been going on since 622 AD.
Stormrider: Teresita, your anti-American ideas come right out of the Communist Manifesto – where there is no such thing as good and evil.
I am familiar with the philosophy of ethics. Those examples I chose (Saratoga=Tet, etc) were specifically to demonstrate that you can not assign good and evil in warfare, any more than the Seattle Seahawks are good while their rivals the Denver Broncos are evil. Were the Israelites good or evil when they obeyed the Lord’s commandment to “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” ??? None of the above.
Was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor good or evil? It was a tactical victory that furthered their national interest of establishing themselves as a regional superpower, but it was a long-term strategic error because it solidified American resolve. There was a lot of angry, determined men meeting them at Midway. Pearl Harbor can be analyzed on those terms, but when you assign terms of good and evil, you are slipping into an emotivist view of ethics with no content. You are merely stating a moral judgment that does not function as a statement of fact but rather as an expression of your feelings.
You can be a jingoistic cheerleader, or you can be an objective historian, but not both at the same time.
Of course, you paint the objective view as anti-American because of the anti-intellectual streak that runs through what passes for conservatism these days.
77. Fletcher Christian
“..even partly reparations for the war that has been going on since 622 AD.”
That hits the nail squarely on the head and ties in nicely with LOTM’s point about stolen land. The Islamic claim to own any part of the world (beyond an unhealthy bit of rocky scrub-land) is false. All of the land held under Mohhamad was taken at spearpoint. There isn’t a single square inch of the Middle East or of North Africa that didn’t first belong to a different (and gentler) religion. The Byzantines, Sassanids, Visigoths et al certainly had their flaws, but none volunteered to be conquered by blood-mad armies of religious fanatics.
“We were here first” is nothing that Islam can claim. The fact that nobody is willing to raise that point is puzzling. If they claim “right of conquest” then they have no claim on the Golan, the Sinai, southern Lebanon, al Andalus, etc etc. These were all lost to other who can claim “right of conquest”. Or is that a one-way street?
No, Teresita, one can assign good and evil during warfare; there is such a thing as just war, and there is such a thing as unjust war.
Our Founding Fathers waged war to establish the individual’s sacred equal rights to life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness (private property honestly earned through labor). The British Empire had to destroy those individual rights in order to maintain their Oligarchy in power – the same is true for Fascist, Islamo-Fascist and Marxist Oligarchies. The Japanese were mass-murdering Fascists – no different from the Nazis. Our war against both Fascist Japan and Fascist Germany was just – your explanation is simply a Marxist equalization of good and evil. You are a jingoistic cheerleader for the Oligarchic collective. If you are a historian, it should be clear by now that you are an un-objective Marxist historian.
The American Revolution is not anti-intellectual; your Marxist Revolution is anti-intellectual. Modern American Conservatism is simply the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. Modern American Liberalism is now rooted in the Communist Manifesto – and there you are.
It is interesting how you bring religion into this discussion because Marxism is tantamount to a religion. You mock the Bible as you thump your Manifesto. Some of the great anti-Communist dissidents of the Soviet Union understood your religious devotion to Marx.
“The religious aspects of socialism may explain the extraordinary attraction of socialist doctrines and their capacity to inflame individuals and to inspire popular movements. It is precisely these aspects of socialism which cannot be explained when socialism is regarded as a political or economic category. Socialism’s pretensions to be a universal world view comprising and explaining everything also make it akin to religion. A characteristic of religion is socialism’s view of history not as a chaotic phenomenon but as an entity that has a goal, a meaning and a justification. In other words, both socialism and religion view history teleologically… It is certainly true that socialism is hostile to religion. But is it possible to understand it as a consequence of atheism? Hardly, at least if we understand atheism as it is usually defined: as the loss of religious feeling. It is not clear just how such a negative concept can become the stimulus for an active attitude toward the world or how it can be the source of the infectiousness of socialist doctrines. Furthermore, socialism’s attitude toward religion does not at all resemble the indifferent and skeptical position of someone who has lost interest in religion. The term “atheism” is inappropriate for the description of people in the grip of socialist doctrines. It would be more correct to speak here not of “atheists” but of “God-haters,” not of “atheism” but of “theophobia.” Such, certainly, is the passionately hostile attitude of socialism toward religion. Thus, while socialism is certainly connected with the loss of religious feeling, it can hardly be reduced to it. The place formerly occupied by religion does not remain vacant; a new lodger appeared.” Igor Shafarevich
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
78. Teresita
I think you mistake tactics for purpose. Tactics (and the army employing them) can serve a vile and evil purpose if it futhers the aims of a regime that is evil. You may respect Rommel’s brilliant tactics in the battles in North Africa, but in the end he was serving an evil master, and therefore, an evil purpose. His skill and distance from the the perserve seat of power does not change that.
As a tactical ploy the attack on Pearl Harbor was brilliantly conceived, but the overall objective ofthe Japanese regime was evil.
If I were Jeffrey Dahmer’s cannibal chef would I be evil, or simply fulfilling a function?
Most of the comments have expressed my thoughts. I will leave you with three humorous items of satire about the media:
1. Ms. Thomas and the Golden Girls from Brazil:
EVA:
I’m vay ahead of you Leni. Last veek I put an ad on Dolfslist for a new roommate! Look here on der computer. “Vanted: mature retired female 85-105 to share spacious Brazilian condo with three ozzers. Must be quiet, tidy, financially responsible, support global extermination of the vermin Jew. Shuffleboard skills a plus. Respond via email.”
See: The Golden Girls:
http://tinyurl.com/28b8bcg
2. Obama’s media roast:
Shecky Ahmedinejad:
…Let’s talk about the man we’re all here to honor tonight: my pal, Barack Obama.
(applause)
What a mensch this guy is. Total sweetheart. As soon as he was elected, he told me he would come to the negotiating table without preconditions. You know what ‘preconditions’ are? That’s Persian for ‘balls.’ Barack, one look at the stars on the stage proves you still have a knack for community organizing. You’ve brought the entire evil community together, in the spirit of international dialog, to ask you one simple question: how does our @ss taste?
See: You had to be there:
http://tinyurl.com/3xu4uaj
3. The media feeding Obama grapes by the reflecting pool:
In Senatus, Obamacles laid beside the reflecting pool while a coterie of Media fed him grapes.
Again the Oracle appeared to him, this time in the form of a bowl of arugula; it said, “You have done well, hale Obamacles, but your torments are not yet complete. The toughest test of all awaits, and may the gods have mercy on your soul.”
“Do your worst, arugula,” he laughed, “for I am Obamacles, Lord of Illinus, who single handedly conquered the LSATs and disarmed the Chicagomon. What task would you possibly fear me with?”
“You are to led the Demos back to the White Temple, by vanquishing Hildusa.”
At the sound of Hildusa’s name even brave Obamacles was driven to piss his toga.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/08/the-idiossey.html
Best opinion I have found on the blockade busters;
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2010/06/09/arabs_israel_and_strategic_balance_99005.html
Propaganda cannot defeat military power. It can create and direct military power but that is all.
The Arabs are trying that old Papal States ploy of “pointing with alarm”.
{snipped from the above URL”
“The threat posed by intifada, suicide bombers, rockets from Lebanon and Gaza, and Hezbollah fighters is real, but it does not threaten the survival of Israel the way the threat from Egypt and Syria once did (and the Israelis see actions like the Gaza blockade as actually reducing the threat of intifada, suicide bombers and rockets). Non-state actors simply lack the force needed to reach this threshold. When we search for the reasons behind Israeli actions, it is this singular military fact that explains Israeli decision-making.”
Or, as they say at recess, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me”.
To rephrase 33/Roseinate:
You either must oppose the devil or end up working for him, all else is self-deception.
Walter Russell Mead talks about how some of this worked out, in prior wars.
Those examples I chose (Saratoga=Tet, etc) were specifically to demonstrate that you can not assign good and evil in warfare, any more than the Seattle Seahawks are good while their rivals the Denver Broncos are evil.
True about the Seahawks and Broncos. But we can all agree that the Los Angeles Lakers are clearly Satan’s team.
Okay.
Suppose you’re czar of everything. What would you require the media to do to regain the trust of the informed news consumer?
Me either.
LarryD #84
Here, here.
I have stopped pretending that the people who look forward to an attack on Israel – or don’t care are good people who just happen to have a different opinion. The difference between a Hamas led Gaza and the Israelis is too striking to permit that kind of delusional goodwill.
“True about the Seahawks and Broncos. But we can all agree that the Los Angeles Lakers are clearly Satan’s team.”
Actually, that distinction belongs to the Philadelphia Phillies. What is their record since the Commissioner made them stop cheating? 4 and 14 or something like that.
With a strong second place finish to the New England Patriots for cheating their way to 3 super bowls. They would have a lock on first if anyone with a double digit or better IQ actually cared about football.
Lakers are just your average team with a superstar and a hall of fame coach. AND a huge market share.
Ever notice how the pro teams with the biggest market share seem to always be playing in a championship game? Some consider that a co-ink-see-dink. Even though it happens 9 out of 10 years.
For those of you above who are raising “faux realist” “American interest” questions about our support for Israel, may I suggest you consider the following:
The extinction of Israel would be a tragedy for the world, and that little country would be sorely missed. What matters about Israel is not its “Jewishness,” but rather the fact that it is the single most dynamic country in the world with the possible exception of America, and its positive contributions to the world in science and culture and technology make it a towering giant despite its tiny size. It’s neighbors? Vicious, decadent, malevolent losers, whose contributions to the betterment of humanity ended centuries ago.
Israel’s role in the world and the hostility it faces reflects the very nature and position of the Jewish people. They are resented for their success and their outsized abilities. Those are among the very best reasons to defend them and stand by them. And here’s another reason: in recent years America itself has stood alone and been villified unfairly, so we have much in common with our tiny, brave ally. We too are having our sovereignty threatened, and by our very own government, no less.
86. Richard Aubrey
Okay.
Suppose you’re czar of everything. What would you require the media to do to regain the trust of the informed news consumer?
Rending of cloth, plucking of beards? Naw. Hari-Kari is looking pretty fine.
Don Rodrigo: America could pull through if, Heaven Forbid, Israel got nuked to a cinder.
However, if Israel were to capitulate, the rot would take us down just as surely as it did them. And probably not tke too long at that.
Enemy activity is centered on gaining Israeli capitulation. ‘Nuff said.
Dave is right –the power elite of the other side undestands what has happened to Europe since it murdered/exiled an entire upper echelon of brainpower, and it would like to ameliorate this situation. however, the strategy for doing this involves letting loose a pack of ravening wolves, and hoping this’ll chase the brainpower back their way. But if not, if instead the wolfpack catches and gobbles up, oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
***
T/87; You can be a jingoistic cheerleader, or you can be an objective historian, but not both at the same time –what about, jingoistic historian vs objective cheerleader?
LF.
That sounds good as a first step.
Then, what do we do to get honest replacements?
uh the Saudi don’t hire young maids from Marroco and Philipines for raping them, and they don’t finance mosquees and mad imams everywhere in tthe world wide.
No, I haven’t seen videos where young Saudi was rejoicing when young muslims was intimidating a young french french boy
“You are merely stating a moral judgment that does not function as a statement of fact but rather as an expression of your feelings.”
Hence the heartfelt raving about Israeli intransigence earlier. Because, you know, “moral judgments” serve no function.
Like I said earlier – thanks to this mindset, the Van Der Sloots of this world will never want for victims any time soon, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom. Which is fine by me, except that when Van Der Sloot’s enablers happen to rule entire nations, innocent people pay the price. We can only hope that Sapphic half-wits will be exempt from the carnage – right?
In reviewing the video of Thomas inserting her foot in her mouth it strikes as delightfully ironic that a large number of “media savvy” politicians and media professionals that have fallen from on high due to their inability to adapt to modern technology. Thomas got caught making what I am sure she thought was a witty, snarky remark that would not come back to bite her ample backside. Instead she got world-wide veiwing on Youtube. And this idiot is IN the media!
They seem oblivious to the fact that nearly every cellphone is also a video camera. Why do we let such dolts control the media?…..Oh wait a moment, they don’t (anymore)!
Thank God!
Little Green Footballs! I forgot they existed. I was a faithful reader of that site for years after 9/11, until Charles Johnson went all Andrew Sullivan.
(Sorry to jump in totally disregarding the current discussion.)
By electing Obama, Americans were trying to choose a ‘pretty clean’ candidate to restore public trust?
They have an inkling on how bad things (government, elected representatives, and esp. media) were, so Obama was selected to have a strong hand (WH AND both Houses) for sweeping changes.
You have to ask yourself, are we better off now?
/Of course people paying attentions knew all the dangerous signs
Of course, you paint the objective view as anti-American because of the anti-intellectual streak that runs through what passes for conservatism these days.
What an interesting observation. What is an anti-intellectual streak? More to the point, who and what are these supposed intellectuals, and what credentials do you need to be considered one? And why are people against them?
Once you cut it down to the bone the phrase “anti-intellectual” really just means “people who don’t agree with me.” But using the phrase “anti-intellectual” sounds so much more condescending than the actual meaning beneath that phrase. After all, stripping away the euphemisms of language which hide the core meaning can be disastrous for the credibility of the speaker. When it can all be collapsed down to a three year old’s insult of “you’re a Doody Head” it tends to make the speaker look just like a three year old.
As it should.
you can not assign good and evil in warfare
Then why the hell bother abiding by the Geneva Conventions?
Strange that Team 44 will take BP’s campaign contributions and the use of an apartment but will not meet with them now. Probably dont want to be accused of something shady.
Regarding the question above regarding the reasoning behind supporting Israel: I support the people of Israel because that is what my heart and gut tell me is the right thing to do.
Apologies for this long post from a faithful reader and very infrequent commenter:
@ 8 Wretchard and @ 24 Storm-Rider
It is satisfying but not enough to mock “peace activists.” It is time to put Orwell’s arguments to good use and to fight fire with fire. The “Reverse Flotilla” should be the beginning of a “Reverse Gramsci” campaign.
Let us call them “war angels.” Please.
@27 Nine-of-Diamonds
Don’t take it personally, Ragnar – Teresita’s lies are nothing surprising. One commentator nailed down these scum perfectly in the wake of 9/11 (VD Hanson? Krauthammer?) They LOVE to pity the Anne Franks, Eli Weisels, and other “good Jews” who have suffered & gone quietly. Standing up and fighting, though? Very un-kosher. Jews were meant to be fawned over in the wake of genocide – not to defend themselves against it.
I believe you’re thinking of the (formerly “liberal”) playwright David Mamet, who wrote the following in an essay “If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem” (Dec 27, 2002) [it is no longer available on the Forward's site, but you can find it here: http://www.chud.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44787:
Reuters claims that their omission of the knife was totally inadvertent. Fox News wondered if, that being the case, they might be allowed to show the original version. “Absolutely not,” came the perfunctory reply. (According to a report by Megan Kelly not half an hour ago.)
#103. sirius_sir
Reuters claims that their omission of the knife was totally inadvertent. Fox News wondered if, that being the case, they might be allowed to show the original version. “Absolutely not,” came the perfunctory reply. (According to a report by Megan Kelly not half an hour ago.)
Yes, Mr. IRS auditor, my failure to declare the income from my trust fund income in the amount of one million dollars for the last year was wholly inadvertent, a simple mistake that anyone could have made.
You want the records? Sorry– you’re going to have to sue to get those. Did I mention that my Daddy is a US Senator?
89. “They are resented for their success and their outsized abilities”
This winter I worked on a special election campaign for a Jewish candidate, and I spent about 75% of my time talking to Orthodox Jews. I was pretty shocked to see in certain neighborhoods, mansion after mansion, the lady of the manor was my age (27) or younger, with a bunch of kids scooting around her as we talked. I would talk with my fellow workers who noticed the same thing, and we realized that in these neighborhoods, every family had ties to another, business or otherwise, and by keeping the wealth in the community all prospered.
This is different from most neighborhoods in the city. I’ve never talked to voters as nice and well-informed and polite. I really came away from this experience thinking that Jews who keep kosher and live by the Torah just might be the best humanity has to offer. Civilization started where Jews began; Israel will conquer all.
Storm-rider: your explanation is simply a Marxist equalization of good and evil….You are a jingoistic cheerleader for the Oligarchic collective…If you are a historian, it should be clear by now that you are an un-objective Marxist historian….your Marxist Revolution is anti-intellectual…Some of the great anti-Communist dissidents of the Soviet Union understood your religious devotion to Marx
Let me see if I follow your logic from what you have written here.
1. Teresita rejects propositions which do not contain factual content but only express emotional attitudes (such as disapproval of enemy actions in a war).
2. Marxism rejects propositions which do not contain factual content but only express emotional attitudes.
Therefore,
3. Teresita is a Marxist.
This is the fallacy of the undistributed middle. It goes like this:
All Zs are Bs. Y is a B. Therefore, Y is a Z
hepz/102; Mamet elegantly puts the question, but still doesn’t provide the answer –wisely probably, as that would occlude individual’s own thinking through it. here’s a weak shot: maybe those who ‘weep at Sophie’s Choice but sniff at the state of Israel’ are deep down worried about an accusation –not an easy outside accusation but a nagging self-accusation –that evaporates only if Israel is a wrong idea. Thus all the sympathy for Anne Frank and the weeping at Sophie’s Choice would still be correct because the girls would still be victims, but not so much victims of their neighbor’s spiritual collapse as victims of something about the Jews, the race the girls were thru no fault of their own were born into –oh the injustice of that!
–thus guilt transforms to anger at guilt (‘how could it do that to those people?’), and Europeans have their old Dark Ages (appropriately enough in the circumstances) “sin-eater” back.
***
(abrupt off/thread, but for those interstd, BP news @)
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/100900/
#90 LFMayor
Rending of cloth, plucking of beards? Naw. Hari-Kari is looking pretty fine.
Seppuku done properly with both horizontal and vertical cuts and NO seconds to administer a coup d’ grace MIGHT serve, but there are two problems. First, we can assume that those most in need of expiation lack … sorry … the intestinal fortitude, to do the necessary deed. Second, thinking of the recently retired troll, that would require one bloody long blade to get through the excess adipose tissue.
I am thinking of another appropriate example. One of the artifacts of the fall of Berlin in 1945 is a picture of the hastily and incompletely cremated bodies of Dr. Josef Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and his family after they committed suicide to avoid falling into Russian hands.
I am thinking of a variation of the ancient Indian concept of suttee, voluntarily or otherwise. Videos of the process could be shown to the next generation of “journalists” of whatever media as part of the annual courses in “Professionalism” as they get their degrees. Just to show what happens when you declare war on the society that created and supported your privileged position. Once again, not a nice person.
#65 dtmack
The question: what tangible benefit does either the conservative movement, or the country at large, gain from supporting Israel?
I’m curious to hear peoples thoughts on this.
It goes to basic conceptions of the world. If you view the world and humanity as purely competing power groups, whose goals are dominance over everyone else and their submission; and for whom the only restrictions on means to achieve that dominance is a sense of ethics viewed through the lens of moral relativism, then direct cost -vs- benefit ratios govern both group and individual actions. And, of course, the benefits to the group outweigh any cost to the individual, who is expendable whether he or she agrees or not.
The above template seems to fit pretty much ANY form of totalitarian culture; be it inspired by Marx, Mussolini, Hitler, Pope Innocent IV [author of the Papal Bull Ad Extirpanda authorizing torture to find heresy, Timur-i-lang, or Muhammed and his successors. It is the template of those who do not believe in the intrinsic value of the individual.
The natural state of mankind throughout almost all of its history has been tyranny and oppression. There have been a few exceptions that we remember, and have built upon.
Before I continue, I would remind people that I am neither Jewish nor Christian in any of the manifold variations it exists in. Indeed, I am not a particularly spiritual critter at all. The closest thing I have is the spotty performance of various traditional Chinese rites at the appropriate times of the calendar, and a fondness for Kuan Yin the Iron Goddess of Mercy. But culturally, I am a Westerner. When I curse, I use Christian blasphemy, because I speak English as my native tongue.
As somewhat of an outsider observer, and an amateur historian, I have come to some conclusions. Your mileage may vary.
1) There seems to be something in the human psyche that requires a concept of a superior being or Diety. I do not speak to the validity or lack thereof of such belief, because such is not finally provable this side of the Styx; but it seems to exist in varying strengths in all cultures.
2) From what I have seen, in the current world the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only one that grants the individual soul standing, even in the face of the Diety, rights, and free will. The Jewish faith is couched repeatedly in terms of a Covenant. A Covenant implies a standing separate from the Diety, free will, and both rights and obligations. This is carried on in the Christian faith which is derived from Judaism. And it is unique.
3) The very word Islam carries the meaning of "submission". The word of the Diety as reported and transmitted by one specific prophet is absolute, incontrovertible, beyond debate, and not subject to discussion. It may be interpreted by various authorities in ways that make the debate about angels and heads of pins look positively serious; but it is entirely a top down religion and culture that abhors the concept of individual free will.
4) Buddhism and Hinduism are concerned not with the works of man in this world, but rather with the concept of the escape from the world and the absorption of the soul into some formless mass giving up the illusion of individuality.
5) Chinese Confucianism is not a religion but rather a code of conduct that allows a lot of people of one ethnic group and culture to live together in a relatively small space without killing each other.
6) Taoism is as escapist as Buddhism and mystical on top of that. Man only interacts rarely with that mystical world and has no standing.
7) Socialism, which is very much a religion, depends on faith. The Marxist variant requires a belief in the inevitability of history based on "dialectic materialist" analysis. The National Socialist variants all have some form of belief in Blut und Boden to validate their superiority. All of them mandate the use of deadly force in mass to suppress non-belief. All of them exalt the mass over the individual, who is expendable. All of them are intrinsically top-down.
As I said, Mankind's normal state is despotism, poverty, and oppression. Assuming about 25,000 years of human history and pre-history; the existence of a free, Western civilization is but a blink, and an endangered one.
We are the product of an incredible and probably non-reproducable series of events. Our culture has at its base the Judeo-Christian concept of the worth and value of the individual with standing, even in the face of the Diety. This was drawn through Greece, and its historical exaltation of the individual and the generation or so when a form of Democracy ruled Athens. This was overlaid with the order and logic of Rome, and that was modified by the Christian ethos and modified it. When Rome fell, the Romanised Christian church was the only stable institution throughout Europe. As it gained in power, it became corrupt. This was met with the Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation which bloodily corrected the faults. England, set safely across the Channel from the blood and turmoil of Europe took the best of what resulted, and avoided the worst of the mayhem. It was not peaceful, but the entire English Civil War would not have made a good skirmish in the 30 Years War in Germany.
From that stable English civilization, a combination of idealists, dreamers, and ne'er do wells common to frontiers projected onto a functionally empty continent [Native Americans had neither the numbers, the cultural cohesion, nor the technology to resist Europeans, regardless of which country they would have come from.] We are the result of that experiment.
I am not of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and my father came from China, not Europe. But you better believe that I am glad that I live in a country based on that tradition and on what was a Western European culture. In an atavistic sense that should be understood by those who advocate the pure competing power groups view of the world, I have chosen my side, my group, and that for my family.
The forces of freedom and the individual are besieged by the forces of tyranny in many forms; political and religious. Israel, and the Israeli people are at the root of the culture of freedom. And they themselves are intensely devoted to freedom, and a survival as a free people.
I am retired now, but back in the day, when I had the job as a senior SGT; I trained new fish officers. There were a series of “Attitudes” I emphasized. Along with such commonplaces as “We may get our a** whipped, but we are all going to get our a** whipped together!”, and “Failure to move to the sound of the guns when a Blueshirt calls for backup renders you beneath contempt!”, there was one that was descriptive of the Liberal Democrats and sometimes RINO’s who were our political chain of command: “When dealing with sociopaths, pre-emptive surrender is not a viable long term or short term tactic or strategy.”.
We are in a fight for our lives, and the lives of our children. Israel is one of our own. You do not survive by abandoning your own to the enemy. Those who would do so, who would abandon family to the wolves, had better hope that they themselves are not someday deemed expendable.
Subotai Bahadur
Teresita -
I’ve read you here and on other blogs over the years.
Your confusion and childish antics no-longer amuse.
Are you ready to say the same as Helen Thomas – That I, and folks like me should go back to the ovens – ovens that my grandparents did NOT survive?
By the way, with your proclivities, you would not survive either. I truly can’t understand how LGBT can be pro HAMAS etc.
RA: Then, what do we do to get honest replacements?
I’d argue (and hope) that the “institutional memory” of the preceding failures would help to compel better choices from the replacements. I’m going to go back to Heinlein here again, from Starship Troopers, that punishment should be cruel, unusual and public, to promote recollection and reflection.
That book, more a prophecy or a blueprint with each passing year.
PS on #107;
the sin-eater’s non-anti-Semitism of course requires anti-Israelism, as Israel expresses the racial identity that gets those people killed.
So –loftiness achieved, as actual killers fade to mere artifacts –distasteful artifacts to be sure –of the ordinary state of nature.
***
and re the ‘abrupt off/thread’ it wasn’t actually off-thread, see Turkey and the Peace Flotilla steam into the Oil Spill; from the link inside the Instapundit link:
Ex-Im has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the 1,094-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey—again, profiting BP
Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nation/Once-a-government-pet-BP-now-a-capitalist-tool-95942659.html#ixzz0qODZCzTl
109 F47: I asked something along the same lines regarding stoning a few threads back. Don’t hold your breath for an answer, since it won’t fit into the meme. Those idiots love to parade and grafitti their “symbol” around these parts from time to time, the pink triangle. They have no inkling of what it really meant, nor the honor and decency to leave something paid for in blood and suffering alone.
108. Subotai Bahadur. I agree fully sir, I was just being whistful. With this thing, as with all before, the usual people will have to sacrifice to get the job done correctly.
As before it eventually will be done correctly.
and, per your nom de blog. “Fire won’t burn there…”
subotai/108; fantastic –no, wrong word –howbout “excellent, important” –
f47: Are you ready to say the same as Helen Thomas – That I, and folks like me should go back to the ovens – ovens that my grandparents did NOT survive?
No. I don’t understand. Why should I be ready to say that?
By the way, with your proclivities, you would not survive either. I truly can’t understand how LGBT can be pro HAMAS etc
When did I say I was pro-HAMAS? Not guilty.
Subotai: Taoism is as escapist as Buddhism and mystical on top of that.
What the hell are you talking about? Have you ever read the Taoteching? It’s pure laissez-faire capitalism:
75.
When taxes are too high,
people go hungry.
When the government is too intrusive,
people lose their spirit.
Act for the people’s benefit.
Trust them; leave them alone.
My Uncle wore pink at Dora….
Pink =
Political Opponents ( big mouth, even )
Sexual Deviants ( all alternate life styles )
Captured Servicemen out of uniform ( E & E failures )
Religious Opponents ( out spoken bishops, nuns, etc. )
——
You don’t read many ‘Pink’ memoirs because one would have to live to write one.
The bridge at Remagen saved his life. Kamp attitudes towards American servicemen changed overnight.
Teresita, it seems you missed Storm Rider’s point. He/she was saying that your moral relativism is a form of materialistic nihilism, which it most certainly is, and that you are therefore espousing a religion that is precisely equivalent to Marxism, the latter being simply another version of the same materialist faith.
Teresita -
It’s not just the words – it’s the music. When you seem to think that Israel can do no right and her adversaries can do no wrong. When you seem to subscribe to the Jewish cabal theory of history, what else can I think. From reading your comments, in the past, I surmise that you are a programmer (software and otherwise) and seemed to have a clear head to think through difficulties. I’m sad to say, that you have not looked at the tenor of your remarks, here and elsewhere. If you were dispassionate about yourself and reread what you’ve written, you would see why I and others, think that you’ve gone over to the dark side. I am very sad for you.
In conclusion – GROW-UP and stop feeling sorry for yourself.
When taxes are too high,
people go hungry.
When the government is too intrusive,
people lose their spirit.
Act for the people’s benefit.
Trust them; leave them alone.
The Stephen Mitchell translation, one of the very best!
I don’t share your view of the Israeli situation, tho.
“The question: what tangible benefit does either the conservative movement, or the country at large, gain from supporting Israel?”
What tangible benefit was there to insist on the absolute surrender of Japan in 1945, rather than negotiating a settlement leaving them in control of their island as many wished? A negotiated settlement would appear to have a much better cost/benefit to it.
Same goes for Germany. How did it benefit the US for Europe to be free? We could have gotten the same trade benefits through a settlement, at far less cost in lives. We could have stayed strong – we could have kept a bulwark against Stalin, which the Germans wanted. Why did we refuse to do that?
Back further, what tangible benefit was there in insisting that slavery be abolished? In fact, this broke up the country, cost a million lives, and massively damaged the economy for many years to come. (by burning down several major cities, among other things) Wouldn’t it have been far more logical to simply live with it, as many advised? Wouldn’t that course have provided far more “tangible benefits” than the course we followed?
Why protect the weak from the strong when we don’t have to? Why protect the poor from the rich as long as the rich are willing to buy us off? Why not take the position that “justice” is just a word better ignored when the cost is too high or when we’re not involved ourselves?
I put to you this proposition – that benefits gained matter in the mundane transactions and decisions in life, but when it comes to the Truly Great Decisions that need to be made, both personally and as a Nation – material benefits gained or lost count for next to nothing. There must be a moral core to one’s actions, a set of standards for which you will live and die no matter what the cost, no matter what the odds. That core is what makes us men and women of courage, of conviction, of duty. What courage is there in pursuing only one’s own self interests? What conviction in only looking for the best payoff? What comes of “duty” when it can be shirked as soon as it begins to appear inconvenient?
Every soldier who’s ever given his life for this country has already walked this path, and made this choice. And although great benefit came to *Us* because of what they did, this was not the reason they made their sacrifice – and I suggest to you that they themselves would tell you that “benefits” were the farthest thing from their mind at the time.
one final thought:
This is not a clash of nations we are in – this is a clash of Civilisation. We have already lost so much – we either stand and fight for whatever shreds of our civilisation are left, wherever they are – or else all those sacrifices of our fathers will ultimately prove to have been in vain.
Is this an undistributed middle?
All Marxists are Moral Relativists
Marxism claims Absolute Truth
Therefore Absolute Truth is Morally Relative (to Whomever is left standing after the killing stops?)
let me try again
Marxism claims Absolute Truth
Absolute Truth can’t be Relative
Therefore …oh shit, i had it for a sec…oh well
You *did* have it, Buddy, you just need to consolidate it:
Marxism claims Absolute Truth, BUT
All Marxists are Moral Relativists.
Absolute Truth can’t be Relative,
Therefore… All Marxists are Full of Shit.
i think you’ve got it, ollie!
And that’s why they’ve killed 100 million of their fellow citizens –they’re terribly constipated, and they can’t work it out with a pencil!
—seems, if one uses the language carefully, it’ll do a lot of the already-done thinking for you. THANKS, ancestors!
hey Buddy, weren’t you a moral relativist when you defended Saudi Arabia ?
Invading Mexico and tearing off Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona was good violence because it was self-defense.–Teresita (#40)
Your purple prose notwithstanding, Texas seceded from Mexico in 1836, ten years prior to the Mexican-American war. California and New Mexico (of which Arizona was a part) were purchased for 15 million dollars.
Both of the photos of the downed Israeli soldier are heavily “doctored.” The original photo released by Reuters showed a clear unsmeared view of the soldier’s face. The right hand which partially covers his face here is also a later addition. The exposed abdomen of the soldier is also fake. In the real photo, his abdomen is very muscular and lean and matted with black hair, as you might expect. Also, in the original photo, it was apparent that the soldier is of arabic or other middle east extraction, he is dark skinned and the contours of his face reflect the fact. This is probably why he was turned into a European looking person in the doctored photos.
Note that his left hand appears to be bleeding. He probably sustained a defensive wound from a knife attack. Note that his belt has been almost completely removed and his pants pulled down in a probabe search for weapons or protective armor. He appears to be wearing an athletic supporter and he probably had a protective armor “cup.” inside those.
Interesting enough is that there is stripe of blood from what appears to possibly be a cut on his lower right abdomen. This version of the photo seems to show that the elastic of his supporter was also cut, a very clear indication of a stab wound. The original photo was doctored to show that the supporter elastic was not cut, which made it appear that he probably was not stabbed. Someone missed a trick here.
His belt undoubtedly supported a variety of equipment. My surmise is that the knife that is held by one of the attackers in the second photo actually belonged to the soldier. It appears to be one of three possible types and make, all of which are very expensive. I doubt that such a knife would be from the stock available to the Mavi passengers. This would also explain the unusual way the knife is being held. It doesn’t belong to the attacker.
If Reuters now says these photos are the originals, they are lying.
A further, “doctored” issue is that the attackers are now represented as being Turks. The Israelis say different. The attackers were a mixed lot from Yeman, Somalia, and a host of other countries, mostly associated with Islamic terrorists.
Ah, “The Commissar Vanishes.” Great book; thanks, Wretchard.
Regarding Reuters–Gee, it would be easier to believe them if the omissions and misdirections went in both directions, sorta random-like? Instead of ALWAYS the same way.
Regarding Helen Thomas–I guess she was as well-served by the cover-up as was Tiger Woods, huh? Give ‘em enough slack and they feel invincible while they screw the pooch.
jp/126; good work –it really beggars the imagination that after having been caught red-handed so many times already, Reuters would keep on keeping on at it. Talk about a major malfunction on the credibility front, even leaving their inexplicable politics out of it.
MC/124; depends on whether the case is KSA as a bloc of a religion that will not police its aggression, in which case you’re right, or whether the case is re the people as individuals, in which case you’re wrong. I meant it the second way –i was referring to FC’s blanket shorthand, and trying to say that many Saudis are western-oriented friendlies –not to mention military allies –of whom the worst that can be said is that they don’t cut their own throats challenging the jihadist preaching in the corner mosque. And that worst is plenty bad –all Saudis –all Muslims –need to quit looking the other way re the blood-eyed among them. A movement to stop the jihad from the ummah itself could probably do the job in two weeks, and all this mess would be over and done with.
108. Subotai Bahadur
114. buddy larsen
……
the dynamism of the west has been built around two principles about which there is tension.
God is Sovereign
Man has free will.
(ie if God is sovereign then how can man have free will. If man has free will then how can God be sovereign?)
These principles are a paradox that people have constantly tryed to untangle from the beginning of Christianity.
As a result these principles are at the heart of all the great debates in Christendom.
#128 addendum;
But piecemeal, it’s asking a lot to expect anyone able to live an ordinary life by keeping their mouth shut, to step out alone and and attract killers onto the wife and kids in the neighborhood. And why should this hypothetical fella be motivated to do so, when he can read a western blog and find that all sauds are thought to be the same bloody jihadi mind, and need to be eliminated and their oilfields expropriated.
Also, remember the saudi army fought side-by-side against Saddam –and thus finessed that whole propaganda line about an American invasion of Islam.
Also, the oil price thing –OPEC is a cartel yes, but once the KSA fields are dry they’re dry –i’d venture to say the sauds could net better in the long run pricing dearer –it’ll sell eventually, and better the shorter the supply.
Also, they may be ready to normalize with Israel –it’s a slow movement, but we could try to encourage rather than discourage it –and it would certainly be a game-changer, starting with Egypt, which is a-slip possibly.
Also, you’ll note that some are continually trying to drive wedges between KSA and the west –note the 19 passports of 9/11/01 –they do this as part of the oil war, and the motive is to wring the energy out of western power ASAP while the opportunity exists. These people are characterized by a powerful ability to see a great alt energy future, but are somehow totally blind about seeing the decade or two between now and then, and therefore act like that span of time beginning tomorrow and ending with those pastel-hued pictures of joyous people a-frolic (see BP), does not even exist.
***
Charles, what good could we be if we didn’t have a choice to be bad? what accomplishment is it to be subject to gravity, or weather, or time?
108. Subotai Bahadur: Beautifully said.
America -is- the last best hope of freedom in this world and we should stand by those who share our values.
It continues to amaze me that US Jews fear evangelical Christians so much, when they are Israel’s biggest supporters.
Here Teresita, chew on this you fey …….
If You Needed Even More Reasons to Stand with Israel
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/iwar/if_you_needed_even_more_r.php
R/132; here’s a big ‘why’ of your link –i can’t look back at these two children’s gaze without tears coming –i save it to remind –it’s the most heart wrenching photo i’ve ever seen. look how the little girl sits up straight –she’s been taught posture, she’s been raised carefully –and tries for a brave smile, to offer a kindness to the photographer.
http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/poland/zegota_history.html
(click to enlarge)
the tears come, and then i want to kill somebody
Charles/129 God requires that Man have free will.
The idea of free will is inextricable from the notion of time. Free will is merely being ignorant of the future.
Wretchard is such a delight because he always takes a larger context. Because the human mind is not capable of direct experience, what it might consider truth is always an interpretation or inference. What drives us crazy is not being able to experience the larger context.
Thank you all for your responses to my post 65. Very interesting, especially 108-Subotai Bahadur and 120-wws. WWS – you raise further interesting questions that I’ve thought much about lately.
You asked a good question, clearly –lots of response –good timing, what with helen Thomas publicizing the link between first world liberals and third world nazis.
(check out the uncopied hyperlinks in this paste, at instapundit)
***
DON SURBER: Don Surber: There’s more to the Helen Thomas case — American liberals once opposed anti-Semitism.
Related: Rabbi Who Taped Helen Thomas Is Inundated With Hate Mail and Death Threats.
Posted at 10:35 am by Glenn Reynolds
***
“Project Vote will pay them whether cards fake or not – whatever they had to do to get the cards was attitude.” Project Vote pays based on the number of cards and “that’s why they were so reckless,” the report says.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/10/acorn-employees-tell-fbi-of-deliberate-election-fraud-according-to-new-documents/#ixzz0qSyodURb
(ht instapundit)
Speaking of the legitimacy of governments and all –where are the Helen Thomases on THIS? a crisis in their own, you know, nation –
no need to poke snout into another nation’s business, there’s PLENTY of trouble right here in River City!
A pleasure to read Subotai.
I have to agree.
The consequences of throwing our allies under the bus, may be chaos and war.
First they came for the Jews, and gays for that matter. Don’t doubt that they will come for us.
The Reuters fake and the Helen Thomas debacle just show where the different sides line up. For many in the mainstream media, journalism has become a tool of manipulation not information or the truth.
We are are involved in a media war that we are often losing.
For Israel, this loss could threaten her existence.
Buddy (138):
“Rabbi Who Taped Helen Thomas Is Inundated With Hate Mail and Death Threats.”
As a wise man once said, “The truth shall drive you nuts.”
Winslow: The idea of free will is inextricable from the notion of time. Free will is merely being ignorant of the future.
Which means an omniscient God has no free will.
bob, makes ya wonder where the UNtruth shall drive you
***
Teresita, at least as valuable as free will, is free won’t
Were it not for the stricture against ad hominem, I would say your intelligence surpasses your logic.
Omniscience, per se, excludes the possibility of free will.
From my point of view it is unsound to play logic in the realm of the unknown.
To define a thing is to control it, at least so far as it goes in the mind of the definer. Really, the naming too is to place it inside a boundary that excludes what it isn’t, which is that which can’t be contained in any boundary.
That omniscient God which has no free will, or that has excluded its possibility, is defined and named, so is inside that boundary. You can call it the unnameable undefineable and say that those too are names, but that would be to void the truth of the meaning of the words, and i think would approach a break of the Commandment to not take the name in vain.
So what is it that is in our mind waiting there for us to trade and transact and do business with? I dunno –some sort of angel maybe.
Teresita, if she is an historian, is simply following the line of that other great historian, Arnold Toynbee. Other civilizations rose and fell. Only the Jews survived. That screwed up his whole theory. The Jews should be dead. Therefore, the Jews ought to be dead. Therefore, let’s kill all the Jews (or, much more civilized, arrange to have somebody else kill them for us). See how inexorable the logic is?
Mamet nailed it. Jews are supposed to be those children you see holding hands marching to the deportation trains. Or the bodies stacked up like cordwood in the camps. But free, vigorous, thriving, DEFENDING THEIR COUNTRY? Never!!!
BTW, on the Theodicy issue — don’t confuse omnipotence and omniscience with obseqiousness.
Having made us in His image, God gave us free will; we’re like Him in some ways. We are free to choose God or reject God; free to choose good or evil. Giving a lesser creature freedom was God’s free choice; He chose to limit His omnipotence when dealing with us – because we have freedom to choose. Once our race is dead and gone – assuming there are no similar races in the universe – and even so – once they are dead and gone – then God’s omnipotence will be fully restored. God limited Himself on our behalf – so we could be free.
In the same vein, God limited Himself when he created the universe. God made the universe with scientific laws. When the universe is dead and gone, as with us; then God will no longer be self-limited by the laws of science.
I believe God delights in His creation – His temporary restraints. I believe God must be especially happy when men and women freely choose to follow His moral laws. Our Founders really did create one nation under God – because His essential moral and rational laws (not the entire ancient 613) are in our Declaration of Independence.
I’m still wondering ‘ow the dickens the writer of Genesis knew so much about cosmology –the opening descriptions of the void, the Big Bang, the formation of the universe, galaxy, solar system, & Earth’s successive stages of development to the point where humans arrive. it seems too much insight and info to’ve sprung forth whole from a bronze age imagination.
102. hepzeeba
It is satisfying but not enough to mock “peace activists.” It is time to put Orwell’s arguments to good use and to fight fire with fire. The “Reverse Flotilla” should be the beginning of a “Reverse Gramsci” campaign.
Let us call them “war angels.” Please.
“Here, in Israel, are actual Jews, fighting for their country, against both terror and misthought public opinion, as well as disgracefully biased and, indeed, fraudulent reporting. Here are people courageously going about their lives, in that which, sad to say, were it not a Jewish state, would, in its steadfastness, in its reserve, in its courage, rightly be the pride of the Western world.”
Dear hepzeeba,
I have been reading all the comments and I like the heck out of yours. You encapsulated things nicely and thanks for the quotes.
4G/Assymetrical/Criminal/Terrorist methods are about all Hamas/Hezbo/AlQ/Taliban have. The beaury is blowback is beginning. 4th Generation War Angels, F@&k YEAH (Forgive me Team America). When I saw that comment about the Peace Flotilla bound for Cyprus, I too took heart.
I am a Muslim who stands with Israel. I agree wholeheartedly with your post. There are others like me. Can you see why I need anonymity? Can you see why those like me need it too?
Salaam eleikum!
Expand, expand, marzouq –write it out, every step of it, and post it everywhere you can –you are part of the missing link, you can be a force. These are the days of your moment.
i would write more than one essay. i would start with the cloud of today. an essay on trust and Arafat, asking the question of how many years after Arafat can trust be expected of a human being who lived through his era? i would say anything less than fifty years is a triumph of hope over experience, and therefore a gift to all who ever rallied on Arafat.