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The legitimacy of Iran's claims that their current drought has been induced by the pentagon seems more likely than this. I guess we are supposed to forget about stuxnet and listen to fat gerontological cybertards who probably can't convert hex to binary any better than they can fart Chopin, but are eager to have us all shitting our own hard earned non polyester pants in fear of Persian cyberattacks. No Mr. Panini, no. Stick with coups and assassinations. Maybe convince Iraq to invade Iran again. But lay off the cybershit, you fat PNAC pearl harbor pugnacious tub of Clinically Insane Android turds.

"We sacrificed dozens and hundreds during the uprising for our dignity. The Prophet's dignity is more important to us and we are ready to sacrifice millions," said mosque preacher Mohamed Abu Gabal who joined the protest.

Perhaps we had better get started, before more innocent people get the same seemingly random treatment.

A quick google search shows that indeed Israel does openly threaten other countries. I haven't heard the specific threat to exterminate all Arabs, but threatening to invade another country, is of similar severity, in my opinion. The difference between US/Israel vs. Iran is that the US and Israel often back up their threats with actual force.

Yep, it's not at all suspicious after they banned battlefield 3 . Not at all, these people are just asking for a US invasion, or is it our media that's telling us? :)

At this point, it's fairly evident that people will listen to the media of their choosing. If a large segment of the population is out of touch with reality because they think one source has it right and alllll the others are insane, it's really their fault, and our obligation to have to defend their right to speak and vote in a free society where their votes count just as much as ours. We just have to deal with it.

The politicians can try, but I don't see the solution coming from Washington no matter how well-intentioned its proponents may be. Do you want fair and balanced coverage and have some time to spare? Read a larger variety of news sources, from multiple countries, from multiple points of view. You will gain a sense of who's biased how, and make first-hand decisions about who is being more reasonable and honest.

I have my own sites that I follow. Some air a specific point of view, but listening only to the echo chamber will weaken your perspective. Here is one site that I think does a fantastic job of presenting a wide range of views for your consideration.

And then, here are the rounds I usually make:

BBC world news
Google News
The Daily Star, an English-language Lebanese newspaper
The New York Times
The Guardian, a British news source
Le Monde, the English edition
Al Jazeera's English language page, like it or hate it
World Net Daily, if you want to know what the Christian Right is up to

Now, good luck.

I say this as someone who really likes Kucinich and would vote for him anyday.

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:[
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Free websites for the most part

Here are the sites in my News pull down
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.slashdot.org/
http://www.jpost.com/
http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/
http://www.arabnews.com/
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
http://news.google.com/
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm
feed://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_ed it ion/front_page/rss.xml
http://www.globalsecurity.org/

I also hit CNN.com, some of the other British papers on the web, occasionally the local news TV station's websites.

My focus is on the Middle East, so I hit alot of Israeli papers. I go to about 1 blog everyother day, other than Fark.

Personally, I find their reporting to be the very essence of "objectivism", as all good journalism should be.

While I'd mainly agree, you have to admit there must be such a thing as a British world view, or British bias. The BBC, by it's nature is going to be guilty of this. For that reason only getting your news from the BBC can't be a good idea.

From grandparent's list, I'd particularly recomend the Daily Star of Lebonon as a fantastic middle east English language paper (decent RSS feeds too). It's one of the reasons I love Google News - I find such great news sites through it.

You must have missed the fact that the Kurds are fuming about the latest development in Iraq. Some prominent Kurdish leaders have already stated that once again the Kurds have been betrayed.

The war on terror should always have been considered a law enforcement issue, not a military one. Bush's biggest mistake was to believe he could simply use the U.S. unsurpassed military might to make everyone get along with everyone else.

Well, the point is they were right in the seventies (Club of Rome) when they first brought that up and your answer reminds me of the shortsightedness of someone falling from a rooftop calmly contemplating that nothing bad happened for the last 40 floors he passed.

Oil exploration peaked in the sixties, oil production probably peaks about now and - unlike the metapher of falling - oil production won't just stop after that, but will decrease slowly while production costs rise.

There is a lag between exploration and actual production so even miraculous new findings now would hardly solve the coming problem.

But, quite to the contrary, large oil companies adjust their numbers in the opposite direction.

* Where did all the UN Food for Oil money disppear to?
Food for oil, I don't see much money in that deal. No money can't disappear.

Well, you don't walk into a grocery store with 10 gallons of unleaded and trade it for food. Oil gets sold, money buys food, food goes to Iraq... or at least that's what was supposed to happen. The UN got a nice "administation" cut off the top, but no one seems to know exactly where those billions went. And as much as people like to point the finger at Haliburton and claim they're a bunch of war profiteers its interesting how no one brings up the TotalFinaElf scandals and their involvement in some very, very shading dealings in Iraq.

* How much business did France and Germany do with Iraq in violation of UN resolutions?
None that I know of. Of course I have seen a lot of this crap on public forums or frog-bashing sites. But no report of those on any remotely reliable source, not even on Fox News (only exception is an op'ed column by William Safire in the NYT, which allegations have been denied by the US administration itself). Given the unusually aggressive stance the Bush administration has taken against those countries, I guess that any credible lead on that subject would have been leaked to the press in no time.

See the TotalElfFina articles above. Plus, the Germans and the French were trading *a lot* with the Iraqi gov't in the late 90s. It would be interesting to see just how "liberal" their interpretations of the sanctions exactly were. I think its been underreported.

* How the "sactions are killing millions of Iraqi babies" stories were bogus.
Economic sanctions are a useful tool to destabilize a regime or prevent it from endangering its neighbours but you have to admit that the population ends up paying the highest price to them. It might eventually be worth the price (South African Apartheid regime) or not (Cuba comes to mind). In the case of Irak, I guess that the food for oil program somehow prevented the most severe famines but I don't know of hard facts. Do you have them?

This assumes that if there was no oil for food program there would have been "severe famines" which also seems to be a pretty unsubstaciated claim. What looks like what happened was Saddam hyped up and played the "starving" baby angle for all it was worth. The "food" he got for his oil didn't make it to the Iraqi people. If you average $5billion a year in aid and spend $13million on healthcare, that's a lot of money unaccounted for.

* How much of the Arab and some European press were getting paid by Saddam
Come on! You're not saying that any media that voiced opinions differing from the official White House point of view were sold to Saddam, are you?

Not at all. What I am saying is that there were reporters/editors in the Arab press who were getting money (commissions, bribes, call it what you want) from the Iraqi gov't to file reports that were sympathetic to Saddam. There was speculation that some European editor/reporters were pocketing cash. That, as far as I know, hasn't been proven, but the point of this entire /. article is about stuff that hasn't gotten a lot of attention. There's been no followup as far as I know.

And which countries do you target in "some European press". Given your post's general tone, I guess you include France and Germany. But what about Spain, England or Poland. Even thou

the Koran, is still pure. It's written in a living language that has never been lost.

Not necessarily. For one thing, the meaning of words change over time. For example, "barbarian" originally meant foreigner. It took on the meaning of vulgar invaders.

For another, there are those who suggest that some of the original language of the Koran was based on Aramaic, rather than Arabic, and this suggests some radically different translations of key passages.

These were useful during the Afghan invasion: Lebanon, Jordan, Arab News, Gulf News