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According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.

Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?

That's how many soldiers ISIS has, where did they get money for weapons, outside support. Where are they getting rations, outside support. Where are they getting vehicles, outside support. It was 20 years ago but I don't remember a Guns for Murders program, I do remember a Jail for Murders program that still continues today. Again it was a long time ago but I don't remember there being support for murders, even congress has better approval numbers then murders. When you look at Muslim support for terror groups and their activities it is much higher then 1994 US support for murders, 32% of Palestinians support Itamar attack which was a brutal murder of 5 family members including a 3 month old. 89% of Palestinians support attacks on Israel. 20% of British Muslims sympathized with the 7/7/7 bombers, 16% of French Muslims support ISIS, 51% of Pakistanis grieved for the death of Osama Bin Laden, only 16% though the killing of Bin Laden was justified, the majority of Muslims in the middle east have positive or mixed feelings of Bin Laden. This is not a small percentage that approves of this behavior it's 25-50% of all Muslims.
sources
http://www.ynetnews.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org
http://www.pewglobal.org
http://www.pewforum.org

The authors of this study surveyed a large number (combined N = 800) of social and personality psychologists and discovered several interesting facts

Oh me oh my! Out of 800 members of the soft sciences, there were some anti-conservative sentiments?!? SAY IT AIN'T SO!!! (/s)

First off, that's not "hatred towards white Christian men" which is what you seemed to be trying to prove. Second, plenty of fields have biases. Go into a chamber of commerce in Arizona and take such a poll and I'm sure you'll find much more vivid hatred against liberals. And latinos. And I'd suggest that the chamber of commerce crowd weilds a lot more power than a bunch of psychologists. Yes, we're all discriminated against, but we're not all equally discriminated against.

On the larger point of bias in the media, sure, journalists might like to call out individual republicans for corruption more than democrats. And I'll give you that journalists are more liberal, it is one of those fields. But lets remember that the country is massively skewed to the right. When it comes down to things that matter the media obeys the republicans,. They marched us into Bush's war without asking questions. They did little cheerleading for obamacare and covered all the crazy bullshit conservatives were coming up with to attack what was essentially their plan.

I'd suggest that if journalists like pointing out shit that republicans do, it's only because their consciences are bothering them for following conservative orders when it actually matters.

The press started working for the government. Not sure when, but the media merged with the government at least during the Iraq invasion. They were all instrumental in starting the war. Once it got going, they fired anyone who dared question whether the war was a good idea.

The white house press corp pretty clearly works for the white house. They take the propaganda verbatim and publish it.

I think that mindset explains why the government thinks media leak legislation is appropriate. They see their employees as misbehaving. For that matter, the media masters are probably accepting it in exchange for goodies. "Tell you what, Obama, we'll accept more muzzling of our reporters. That will go for these online news source up and comers double, right? And you won't have a problem with Rupert Murdoch/whoever taking a complete monopoly over all news, right? He's promised us new mansions."

To be clear, your numbers so off, they are not even wrong.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb09/STARTII_Feb09_rpt.pdf

This report states that roughly 8.5% of Muslims explicitly endorse attacks on American civilians in the US, and another ~10% have mixed feelings.

The current estimate of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is between 3.2 and 4 trillion dollars [...]

Yeah, but at least we found Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons!

Oh, yeah...

well polls suggest that the vast majority of Muslims support strict enforcement of sharia law. I think there's enough evidence of to confirm the GP's statement that we'd need counter evidence to infer anything else.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb09/STARTII_Feb09_rpt.pdf

Considering all the other news outlets in the US pretty much just parrot what the white house/dems put forth...fox just balances them out by going a bit further right....

No, the other news outlets parrot whoever is in power. During the Bush administration, they were pro-Iraq war. Not as bad as Fox news, but the others still got the country to believe Bush's lies.

The media is only biased in favor of liberals in the sense that from time to time it questions the propaganda put out by the right.

I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.

Well, here's hoping the public starts responding to logic and science more than fear and PR. Bees pollinate 90% of the worlds crops, and they're dying out quickly. We need to identify why they're failing and then protect them or else we're going to face big food shortages. I don't care how it gets sold to the public or even IF it gets sold to the public. It's fine with me if tax dollars are spent on this research without the public even realizing it, so long as that doesn't jeopardize it.

If that sounds elitist, sorry, but I really stopped valuing public opinion when public opinion said we should invade Iraq because Saddam had a bunch of WMD and was behind the 9/11 attacks.

See, this is the basic problem with liberals. They do not understand the basic foundations of any other viewpoint. It has been demonstrated in many studies - conservatives can pass a "Turing test" and pretend to be a believable liberal; Liberals cannot pass the same test pretending to be conservatives. (In my opinion, because once you understand the conservative argument it is difficult not to agree with it.)

Without a reliable cite, it's hard to believe the "many studies" are accurate or useful, or even very interesting. If an herbalist can fake being a chemist, but the chemist can't fake being a herbalist, do you really want to believe the herbalist is superior?

The intriguing fact is how easily conservatives agree with, or believe, their own argument. According to When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions (pdf), political people, notably conservatives, are quite susceptible to "motivated reasoning." This states that when confronted with a reality opposed to their views, conservatives become even more convinced of their indoctrination. Which goes some way toward explaining your opinion that "once you understand the conservative argument it is difficult not to agree with it." Conservatives will be inclined to dismiss this study, since it's based on science, which they trust less than their dogma.

Liberals, meanwhile, enjoy the catchy phrase "reality has a liberal bias." Confirmed somewhat by these studies: Misperceptions, the media, and the Iraq War (2003), and Misinformation and the 2010 Election (pdf).

Though the argument should be made that being conservative or liberal are not the only 2 choices. For example there are people who find that science, facts, evidence, and fairness should largely influence political decisions.

See, this is the basic problem with liberals. They do not understand the basic foundations of any other viewpoint. It has been demonstrated in many studies - conservatives can pass a "Turing test" and pretend to be a believable liberal; Liberals cannot pass the same test pretending to be conservatives. (In my opinion, because once you understand the conservative argument it is difficult not to agree with it.)

Without a reliable cite, it's hard to believe the "many studies" are accurate or useful, or even very interesting. If an herbalist can fake being a chemist, but the chemist can't fake being a herbalist, do you really want to believe the herbalist is superior?

The intriguing fact is how easily conservatives agree with, or believe, their own argument. According to When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions (pdf), political people, notably conservatives, are quite susceptible to "motivated reasoning." This states that when confronted with a reality opposed to their views, conservatives become even more convinced of their indoctrination. Which goes some way toward explaining your opinion that "once you understand the conservative argument it is difficult not to agree with it." Conservatives will be inclined to dismiss this study, since it's based on science, which they trust less than their dogma.

Liberals, meanwhile, enjoy the catchy phrase "reality has a liberal bias." Confirmed somewhat by these studies: Misperceptions, the media, and the Iraq War (2003), and Misinformation and the 2010 Election (pdf).

Though the argument should be made that being conservative or liberal are not the only 2 choices. For example there are people who find that science, facts, evidence, and fairness should largely influence political decisions.

NPR gets caught publishing a massive lie by an anti-corporation hipster, and you respond by attacking Fox News?

NPR is publicly apologizing for being wrong. Fox news went to court to defend their right to lie and still call it news. So, yes, that is reasonable given their respective histories. One would have to be naive to hold NPR and Fox as equals. It's certainly not borne out by their viewers. NPR viewers were better informed than the average citizen, while Fox news viewers are significantly less informed than the average, when it came to the Iraq war and the Neocon reasons we were going there. Fox pushed us into a war we didn't need.

And not for nothing, but there's nothing wrong with being anti-corporation. Hipster, yes.

I think this is what you're looking for.

Be careful about asking to shut Fox News down. You'd have to toss MSNBC, PBS, and NPR under the same bus.

If you read the things that people were misinformed about, it seems to be the things they were more likely to believe before watching the news. Fox viewers believed bad things about democrats that weren't true, while MSNBC and PBS viewers believed bad things about republicans that weren't true.

An anwer of "Cut foreign aid" is usually the first sign someone doesn't have a very good grasp of just where our budget goes:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/670.php

Asked to estimate how much of the federal budget goes to foreign aid the median estimate is 25 percent. Asked how much they thought would be an "appropriate" percentage the median response is 10 percent.

In fact just 1 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid.

In terms of percent GDP, the U.S. is already among the more miserly of the developed nations. And don't forget, giving foreign aid is not done simply for humanitarian feel-good reasons. It is often done to secure political and military co-operation from third world nations.

You forgot a couple of things. First, the University of Maryland associated polling organization did the referenced poll in 2003. I went first to the site of the polling organization, and looked for the poll. I couldn't find it. Then I went to the Article and jumped to the referenced poll. Look at the date.

Dude, where on Earth did you get that from?

TFA is here.
It references a summary of the poll, which is dated December 9, 2010.
The summary includes a link to a PDF of the full report, which on page 3 says:

To this end, WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted an in-depth survey of public opinion. The poll was fielded from November 6 to 15, 2010.

I guess people see what they want to see, regardless of how outlandish it is (like believing a poll from 2003 would ask about Illinois state senator Obama... puh-lease!).

You forgot a couple of things. First, the University of Maryland associated polling organization did the referenced poll in 2003. I went first to the site of the polling organization, and looked for the poll. I couldn't find it. Then I went to the Article and jumped to the referenced poll. Look at the date.

Dude, where on Earth did you get that from?

TFA is here.
It references a summary of the poll, which is dated December 9, 2010.
The summary includes a link to a PDF of the full report, which on page 3 says:

To this end, WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted an in-depth survey of public opinion. The poll was fielded from November 6 to 15, 2010.

I guess people see what they want to see, regardless of how outlandish it is (like believing a poll from 2003 would ask about Illinois state senator Obama... puh-lease!).

If you bother to read the full report, you'll see that those questions are not included as "facts".

In most cases we inquired about respondents’ views of expert opinion, as well as the respondents’ own views. While one may argue that a respondent who had a belief that is at odds with expert opinion is misinformed, in designing this study we took the position that some respondents may have had correct information about prevailing expert opinion but nonetheless came to a contrary conclusion, and thus should not be regarded as ‘misinformed.’

Those are calibration questions, designed to examine the respondent's personal prejudices and worldview - they're not counted as things that the respondent may be "misinformed" about.

Not only that, but if you look at the actual study, even non-FOX News viewers believe a lot of crazy stuff, and it's more indicative the personal biases and beliefs of people who choose to watch FOX News, not that FOX News "makes you stupid".

You might find this study an interesting read.

Notable:

"All of the news outlets except Fox News Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABCs World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News Special Report is the most centrist."

...

Ah yes, the (in)famous Groseclose and Milyo study. This study is notable for its highly idiosyncratic classification of what was liberal and conservative - the most liberal media outlet was the Wall Street Journal, the NRA was considered a liberal organization, the ACLU was a conservative one. In general defensible research supporting a claim that a systematic liberal bias exists seems absent.

The largest study attempting to address this (a meta-analysis of dozens of studies spanning decades) found no systematic bias: http://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/cobb/p_courses/ps411/assigned%20readings/dalessio_meta%20analyses%20media%20bias.pdf .

Voters' misinformation included beliefs at odds with the conclusions of government agencies, generally regarded as non-partisan, consisting of professional economists and scientists.

So what are these "non-partisan" government agencies? They are the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of Commerce, and the National Academy of Sciences. The Department of Commerce is blatantly partisan, serving at the behest of President Obama. The CBO is directed in what assumptions (those assumptions being blatantly partisan) it is required to make. As a result, it's conclusions are near useless. The National Academy of Science is the only really non-biased agency.

The press release also conflates opinions of organizations with far larger groups. Because the CBO issued an opinion on the effects of stimulus spending, they say

Though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that the stimulus legislation has saved or created 2.0-5.2 million jobs, only 8% of voters thought most economists who had studied it concluded that the stimulus legislation had created or saved several million jobs. Most (68%) believed that economists estimate that it only created or saved a few jobs and 20% even believed that it resulted in job losses.

The press release does it again while discussing the CBO's conclusions about health care reform. The CBO is not and has never been "most economists". They do a similar thing with the National Academy of Science, claiming that because the NAS reached a certain conclusion then "most scientists" did as well.

The next section isn't quite so bad.

Other key points of misinformation among voters were:

* 40% of voters believed incorrectly that the TARP legislation was initiated under Barack Obama, rather than George Bush
* 31% believed it was proven true that the US Chamber of Commerce spent large amounts of money it had raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates
* 54% believed that there were no tax cuts in the stimulus legislation
* 86% assumed their taxes had gone up (38%) or stayed the same (48%), while only 10% were aware that their taxes had gone down since 2009
* 53% thought that the bailout of GM and Chrysler occurred only under Obama, though it was initiated under Bush

Note that most of the "misinformation" is slanted towards the Democrat side. And the bailout of GM and Chrysler are fully Obama's baby. They happened far to late into the administration to place blame on a previous administration even if that administration may have started a bailout process for them. As for the tax item, it comes from this question:

Q11. Since January 2009 have your Federal income taxes gone up a lot, gone up a little, stayed the same, gone down a little, gone down a lot?

There are more years after January, 2009 than just 2009. If I expect my 2009 taxes to go down, but my income taxes beyond 2012 to go up a lot, what should my answer be? Also there was no measure for determining whether the participates were incorrect or not. If I got a raise or execute some types of financial transactions (eg, turning regular IRA into a Roth IRA), I could see my taxes go up.

In sum, this study (or at the very least, the press release for the study) appears rather pointless except as a bit of propaganda.

Right at the bottom of the World For Public Opinion article is a statement on funding. It's really stretching to throw out some claimed stats for the state and claim that as showing bias for an organization.

"WorldPublicOpinion.org is a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland and funded by the Calvert Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund."

For those that didn't click through from one article to the next, this is the one:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/671.php?nid=&id=&pnt=671&lb=

Has anyone seen a comparitive analysis for accuracy between Fox and Aljaazera? Many dismiss the later without ever having seen it. I recall that when it went one the air there was enough vocal opposition that many cable systems didn't carry it. It would be interesting to hear a variety of informed perspectives on the depth, accuracy and leanings of many sources. Perhaps it is healthy to get exposure to a wide variety of sources and not blindly trust or dismiss any of them.

(some content is on youtube)

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AlJazeeraEnglish#g/u

When it doubt, there's The Daily Show... poking fun at everyone

And here's what I observed: World Public Opinion is sponsored by the Liberal-leaning, socialist-loving University of Maryland (the state where 70% of the government is Democrat)(and 90% of professors are too). So the survey bashing Libertarian-leaning FOX viewers is as unsurprising as a Microsoft-funded survey showing Google Chrome is insecure. BOTH surveys are meaningless bullshit, not worth the paper they are printed on.

If you simply go to the WPO website, the list of supporters is right there. Most telling among the listings is the Tides Foundation, commonly & widely known to be a Soros-controlled and funded Progressive/Left propaganda and financing organization, among the many other Progressive/Left groups and organizations listed.

"WPO is made possible by the generous support of:

Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Tides Foundation
Ford Foundation
German Marshall Fund of the United States
Compton Foundation
Carnegie Corporation
Benton Foundation
Ben and Jerry's Foundation
University of Maryland Foundation
Circle Foundation
JEHT Foundation
Stanley Foundation
Ploughshares Fund
Calvert Foundation
Secure World Foundation
Oak Foundation
United States Institute of Peace"

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/about.php?nid=&id=

Is anyone surprised that such people would view anyone not in lock-step with the Progressive talking points as "uninformed", particularly Fox News viewers?

Nothing to see here, people. Move along, move along.

Strat

According to http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/about.php?nid=&id=#support, World Public Opinion is funded by the Tides Foundation, which is a pet project of George Soros and Al Gore, among others. There is no love lost between Soros and Fox. I'd take this survey with a block of salt.

link to the actual survey summary not alternet's screed review of same: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/671.php?nid=&id=&pnt=671&lb=

Generally the survey shows that misinformation is happening BROADLY (not quite "Fox News is teh pUr3 Ev1lz!"), and there is a correlation with Fox News - "The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican."

I read the full report at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf ...and I don't see that MSNBC comes off smelling any better (although the linked-alternet blog explicitly says so).

link to the actual survey summary not alternet's screed review of same: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/671.php?nid=&id=&pnt=671&lb=

Generally the survey shows that misinformation is happening BROADLY (not quite "Fox News is teh pUr3 Ev1lz!"), and there is a correlation with Fox News - "The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican."

I read the full report at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf ...and I don't see that MSNBC comes off smelling any better (although the linked-alternet blog explicitly says so).

Its ironic that the original study was showing effects of "misinformation". Becuase this slashdot article is a piece of "misinformation in itself.

What's important to keep in mind, is the following facts:

1. The study only picked specific areas of news to analyze.
it so happened (just by accident. yeah, sure) that the majority of areas they picked, showed a bias of misinformation one way.

2. If you actually dig into the specific areas individually (Never forget the mantra, "Show me the raw data!")
you will find areas with the majority of misinformation from the other side. such as :

"Daily consumers of MSNBC and public broadcasting (NPR and PBS) were higher (34 points and 25 points respectively) in believing that it was proven that the US Chamber of Commerce was spending money raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates. "

here's another reference on the research.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/671.php?nid&id&pnt=671&lb

oddly, the top article at slashdot references a DIFFERENT article on worldpublicopinion, about the same study.

Oooooddddddd....

Not only that, but if you look at the actual study, even non-FOX News viewers believe a lot of crazy stuff, and it's more indicative the personal biases and beliefs of people who choose to watch FOX News, not that FOX News "makes you stupid".

You might find this study an interesting read.

Notable:

"All of the news outlets except Fox News Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABCs World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News Special Report is the most centrist."

and

"Based on sentences as the level of observation (the results of which are listed in Table 8), the Drudge Report is the most centrist, Fox News Special Report is second, ABC World News Tonight is third, and CBS Evening is last.

Given that the conventional wisdom is that the Drudge Report and Fox News are conservative news outlets, this ordering might be surprising. Perhaps more surprising is the degree to which the mainstream press is liberal. The results of Table 8 show that the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, and CBS Evening News are not only liberal, they are closer to the average Democrat in Congress (who has a score of 74.1) than they are to the median of the whole House (who has a score of 39.0). ...the New York Times is twice as far from the center as Fox News Special Report, to gain a balanced perspective, one would need to spend twice as much time watching Special Report as he or she spends reading the New York Times. ...Our results contrast strongly with the prior expectations of many others. It is easy to find quotes from prominent journalists and academics who claim that there is no systematic bias among media outlets in the U.S. ... The main conclusion of our paper is that our results simply reject such claims."

Keep in mind that they are ONLY looking at the evening news shows; if you included the opinion/editorial shows from FOX News, which constitutes nearly all of the evening/prime-time programming, I'm not sure what would happen to the results... ;-)

Here are a few citations:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php
http://politics.ohio.com/2010/10/osu-study-suggests-misinformation-and-fox-news-are-linked/
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/08/19/4431138-first-thoughts-obamas-good-bad-news

I know I read one a few years ago that I couldn't seem to find from a quick Googling...anyway, the trend is significant and has been going on for quite some time.

this one shows that as of 2003, 80% of fox news viewers fell for one of three lies the bush administration was pushing (weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, the world liked the US going into Iraq, and Iraq had been giving al-Qaeda support).

To be fair, though.. they may have been convinced by statements by Democratic leaders about Saddam Hussein's acquisition or possession of weapons of mass destruction, instead of Fox News.

I'm really getting tired of the FNC bashing. The other channels (MSNBC, ABC, CBS, etc) are no better.

Citation needed, because this one shows that as of 2003, 80% of fox news viewers fell for one of three lies the bush administration was pushing (weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, the world liked the US going into Iraq, and Iraq had been giving al-Qaeda support). CBS: 71%, ABC: 61%, NBC or CNN 55%, and NPR 23%.

Only 20% of fox news viewers recognized that they were all false compared to 45% for NBC and CNN, and 77% for NPR.

I realize of course that some of that is probably inherent differences in viewing audience, and CBS or ABC aren't -much- better. And there is, in my opinion, something messed up with every 24 hour cable news channel out there. Still, it's ridiculous to say that all are just as bad as Fox. Fox is a thinly veiled propaganda machine, fueling ignorance, hyperbolic partisan politics, and getting us into wars we shouldn't be. Some of the other guys are simply incompetent.

For God's sake, you can't honestly tell me that the channel which hosts Glen Beck is equal to a channel that doesn't. You're deluded.

Actual research disagrees with many of your generalizations. And yeah, the US has considerable freedoms related to free speech while having significantly many other problems. Still, I somehow doubt you've ever lived in the US and are getting all your information from those same people who fed you that 90% fabrication.

The U.S. and its involvements (interference) in the affairs of other sovereign nations is simply not appreciated by the majority of the world and this is especially true more recently. If there is anything that threatens the U.S. national security more than anything else, it is the increased disapproval of the U.S. in the world.

I'd love to see your data for this, because as far as I can tell, you're just making it up, or quoting anecdotal evidence. It's clear that world public opinion of the US has improved over the last year or two.

It's not clear from your post, but assuming you are from Europe, really, the good opinion of France and Germany is not something that matters to US public security. Just like the good opinion of the US doesn't matter to France's national security. We aren't going to attack each other.

The public opinion in Pakistan does maybe matter to national security, but we aren't going to be able to change the opinion of Islamists as long as we are 'sinners' and have things like 'music' and 'women's rights.' So I'm not too worried about that.

Immediately after 9/11 the public criticism was that the government did not know enough. They should have prevented it.

A report suggesting that a terrorist was likely to steal a plane and use it as a missile was fairly well-circulated before the strike. Support for the war overwhelmingly came (comes) from the misled. Support for the U SAP AT RIOT act is very much the same; the government did know enough to know that 9/11 was impending, and deliberately buried the reports to avoid having to do anything about them. Security theater is [relatively] cheap and easy. Actually doing something is hard. We still haven't taken effective measures to prevent terrorism.

The problem is that you can't scream for privacy, yet expect the government to know everything at the same time. Pick your poison. The public clammored for the government to have more power.

Only the misled public. Which was nearly everyone, since the media is overwhelmingly controlled by people in a position to profit from all this nonsense. But since a certain FCC knocked down the rules preventing ownership of multiple media outlets and even types of media outlets by a single corporation, lying to the public has become even easier.

I haven't read the entirety of the bill. (I've only skimmed the table of contents). But I do believe that it was passed with the honest intent of trying to make the nation more secure for foreign threats.

It was passed with the intent of demonstrating to constituents that something was being done about terrorism. It was proposed with the intent of eroding freedom.

In that regard, the name Patriot Act isn't some lie meant to cover up the true insidious purpose.

The name is so jingoistic it is virtually impossible for it to be anything else.

I wouldn't be shocked if the bill was a knee-jerk overreaction that grants too much power to the government.

I'm not shocked that you would support it, but I am dismayed.

Oops, forgot the citation for that. 80% of fox news viewers in 2003 thought one or more of those 3 lies were true, and 45% believed all three.

Just so ya know Israel breaks more UN resolutions than Iraq did. Yet you give them billions to spend on guns and bombs. Infact they've bombed UN shelters. Try again.

Also the appreciation you felt isn't universal. That big symbol of victory and regime change, toppling saddam's statue, staged (dozens of iraqis at best not 1000s took part): http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/185455
For a few years they just left a lump of cement with some rebar sticking up in place of Saddam. Eventually they replaced it with a crappy statue which was quickly graffittied (All done, now go home). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4gM_jg5vQ

The vast majority of the Iraqi populace wants the US gone within 1 year (as of 2006). There are lots of other statistics (much more valuable than your experience) that show Iraqis don't want you there and never fucking did. http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf

We should continue this in email before the comment section of this article closes. For my gmail account name is the same as my slashdot account name.

Then what is the context? Don't say there is more context if you do not know. Say, "I don't know."

If you read what I said, there's conditionals like "if", "bet", etc. I don't know their culture at all, and I don't feel like taking the time to learn it. The difference between you and I is that I assume there is more context because in my experience with old mythologies you need to learn what life is like for the people who practice a religion, or it won't make any sense why they do the things that they do. Unlike me, you assume that there is no cultural context to add to the quote. However, like me, you aren't taking the time to verify 100%.

That is a very long way to say you don't know. And, I don't really want to comment on the culture.

You know, rather than just focusing on the excerpt I decided to read the whole thing [blogspot.com] carefully, should have done that before, sorry again. Hasan [name altered to keep him alive] seems to be a bit off his rocker. Apparently, everything that happens in Iran is due to outsiders.

I was hoping you would. I do agree with your general view that they seem to place excess blame on outsiders.

However, it's less crazy than you think, especially when you consider the tawdry past of the United States' interference in other countries' business. It takes more than one hand to count the number of times that the US has engaged in "regime change" in other countries. In fact, we've already done it to Iran before. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

So Obama has fake police and fake protesters (outsiders) shooting at each other in total chaos. Your right, the U.S. has tried regime change before, I'm sure they would do it just this way. Obama has been on an apology tour for months now and was quite clear he really didn't care about the protesters. They are still trying to make a date with Iran.

I didn't really care for much of whatever else this guy said, because I tend to think that anyone who is trying to place blame on others probably deserves a share of it himself. The Iranian leadership was internally treating their own people pretty brutally, and it's sad that they don't acknowledge it. But the media were making a circus of their protest, just like they made a circus of Iraq, and it was not helping their cause.

The only point I was really interested in was how a Muslim "preacher" manages to deal with his unbeliever brother. It's pointing out how trivial it is to "go find someone who says something on the Internet" - you find one that says kill unbelievers and I find one that says leave unbelievers alone. Who is right, then?

I found two, not one and both were on prominent TV networks. Neither of them are guys doing basement webcasts, they were on major TV networks first. Do you want me to find more? This Death to America Rally from the Islamic Republic of Iran is good. Starring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he's one of those crazies you describe, right? I can find more because I've seen them before. I promise only to find prominent leaders.

I wonder, if we asked all the Muslims one by one, whether they should kill unbelievers, what would be their answer? This concurrent poll (pdf) taken in 2006 doesn't ask exactly that, but it does discover - among other amazing revelations - that Americans are twice as likely to justify attacking innocent people as are Iranians (page 10)

And there is this...

Three out of four Iranians (74%) had an unfavorable attitude toward Osama bin Laden, including 68 percent very unfavorable. Only 10 percent saw him in a favorab

We should continue this in email before the comment section of this article closes. For my gmail account name is the same as my slashdot account name.

Then what is the context? Don't say there is more context if you do not know. Say, "I don't know."

If you read what I said, there's conditionals like "if", "bet", etc. I don't know their culture at all, and I don't feel like taking the time to learn it. The difference between you and I is that I assume there is more context because in my experience with old mythologies you need to learn what life is like for the people who practice a religion, or it won't make any sense why they do the things that they do. Unlike me, you assume that there is no cultural context to add to the quote. However, like me, you aren't taking the time to verify 100%.

You know, rather than just focusing on the excerpt I decided to read the whole thing [blogspot.com] carefully, should have done that before, sorry again. Hasan [name altered to keep him alive] seems to be a bit off his rocker. Apparently, everything that happens in Iran is due to outsiders.

I was hoping you would. I do agree with your general view that they seem to place excess blame on outsiders.

However, it's less crazy than you think, especially when you consider the tawdry past of the United States' interference in other countries' business. It takes more than one hand to count the number of times that the US has engaged in "regime change" in other countries. In fact, we've already done it to Iran before. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I didn't really care for much of whatever else this guy said, because I tend to think that anyone who is trying to place blame on others probably deserves a share of it himself. The Iranian leadership was internally treating their own people pretty brutally, and it's sad that they don't acknowledge it. But the media were making a circus of their protest, just like they made a circus of Iraq, and it was not helping their cause.

The only point I was really interested in was how a Muslim "preacher" manages to deal with his unbeliever brother. It's pointing out how trivial it is to "go find someone who says something on the Internet" - you find one that says kill unbelievers and I find one that says leave unbelievers alone. Who is right, then?

I wonder, if we asked all the Muslims one by one, whether they should kill unbelievers, what would be their answer? This concurrent poll (pdf) taken in 2006 doesn't ask exactly that, but it does discover - among other amazing revelations - that Americans are twice as likely to justify attacking innocent people as are Iranians (page 10)

You deny reality, attacks were ordered and carried out.

Deny reality? Are you kidding me? No, I'm being rational about this. If you watch the video, the very first words out of the host's mouth are "your own leader said 'I condemn the killing of innocent people'". It sounds to me, when watching this interview on BBC, that they went out of their way to find a crazy who could twist words to justify an insane point of view. Notice how there's only one "Mullah", I wonder if that's because he's the only one they found who would spout this non-sense and they didn't want a rational one on who would look at the other guy like he's nuts.

And if that Mullah were serious, why isn't he trying to kill the host sitting across from him?

Please put link in for a well know Christian leader suggesting we should kill Muslims.

Not quite what you asked for, but this describes a group of "former Muslims" who are regularly trotted out by evangelicals to espouse the dangers of Muslims, saying they "all" need to be "converted or eradicated". They've been on Fox News. I found it by googling christians kill muslims.

Show us these prominent crazies y

Read the original post, which mocked someone for watching a comedy show for news. The reality is that someone who watches the Daily Show or the Colbert Report will be far more informed than someone watching Fox News, unless they only watch the O'Reilly Factor.

You introduced the partisan game, I just illustrated what the current score is. For more information on what Americans actually think instead of what is portrayed in the media, you can read polls here. Which is a nice intro for my earlier Colbert quip that he delivered personally to G.W. Bush. (edited for clarity)

Most of all, I believe in this president. Now, I know there are some polls out there saying that this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias. So, Mr. President, please, please, pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point.

But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.

Public Opinion in Iran and America on Key International Issues, page 10 (Attacks on civilians).

The polled question was: "Some people think that bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are
sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified"

The response is that 11% of Iranians felt that such attacks were often/sometimes justified, whilst 24% of Americans thought the same. The same poll in Pakistan showed that 15% thought the same.

The PEW Report Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, page 91, contains the same question asked of Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.

There is more discussion of these results and the media furore surrounding them on Salon.

Feel free to ignore it and read the original research papers.

If you had linked to them, I would have. Since you didn't, I call bullshit.

Instead of calling bullshit, you could have just searched for them yourself. The links weren't particularly hard to find.

Public Opinion in Iran and America on Key International Issues, page 10 (Attacks on civilians).

The polled question was: "Some people think that bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are
sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified"

The response is that 11% of Iranians felt that such attacks were often/sometimes justified, whilst 24% of Americans thought the same. The same poll in Pakistan showed that 15% thought the same.

The PEW Report Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, page 91, contains the same question asked of Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.

There is more discussion of these results and the media furore surrounding them on Salon.

Feel free to ignore it and read the original research papers.

If you had linked to them, I would have. Since you didn't, I call bullshit.

Instead of calling bullshit, you could have just searched for them yourself. The links weren't particularly hard to find.

Disclaimer: I propose that justice involve some pretty radical actions in this post. I am not a lawyer, but note that I do not advocate any of these actions, nor should anybody else. I worry about the potential of this advocacy to land people in jail, and I don't care enough about justice for Iraqi's for that. I would have gone so far as to proxy this all through TOR too, unfortunately slashdot doesn't allow that(wtf?).

We try to do so much good in so many places that all we manage is a barely mediocre achievement anywhere.

I fully encourage you to make an idiot of yourself by trying to name one such place. I'll actually help you out. There's a single one, Somalia, and we gave up there real fast, a lot faster than Iraq, even when it's now obviously a significantly bigger failure. The only times we've done good was in WWI and WWII, and that wasn't a question of "trying to do good" that was a question of a us balancing against an alliance of aggressive great powers, classic political realism, not a speck of altruism. We've always been a predatory nation, from the Mexican-American war to Iraq.

Iraq was simply a question of our corporate leaders deciding they wanted oil, Iraq had it, so we went and took it and awarded it to those corporate leaders, all on the tax payers payroll. This article builds on this a bit

Allow me to quote two key paragraphs

Some 40 companies from around the world had jockeyed for the contracts, but they were being awarded wihttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/weekinreview/29good.html?fta=ythout competitive bids, the report said. Those about to land the deals â" Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total â" had held oil rights in Iraq before Mr. Hussein nationalized the fields and kicked them out more than three decades ago. They all came from countries that had either been stalwart allies of the Bush administration or â" in the case of France, which is home to Total â" had lately increased their support for the American-led campaign to isolate Iran.

Just as striking were the companies that failed to capture a foothold: the Russian oil giant Lukoil, which had signed a deal to exploit a huge field in southern Iraq while Mr. Hussein was still in power, only to see it revoked just before he fell, and Chinese firms with their own claims. Before the 2003 invasion, the Russian and Chinese governments had lent muscle on the United Nations Security Council toward fending off American-led sanctions aimed at the Hussein government.

There were those of us who pointed out the problems with the Iraq war from the beginning and the crimes associated with it. Now it's obvious that we were right, so I don't understand this, how can people HONESTLY STILL BELIEVE we went into Iraq to help!? We invaded a neutral country on evidence that was questionable at best (we're cuplable for having accepted it on face, evidence for war should be carefully scrutinized before being acted upon, ours was decidedly not scrutinized) went in there and systematically destroyed Iraq. We killed one in thirty of these Iraqi's and forced many more to flea the country. Those who remain are in almost perpetual fear of both Americans and fellow Iraqi's never knowing who will shot at them next, whether it will be the religious fundamentalists that have (predictably) found a great battle ground for their cause or the American soldiers that don't give a shit about the locals and who's only wish is to make it home before some suicide bomber rushes their humvee, to whom every Iraqi is a potential enemy. What's more, we remain despite prolonged OVERWHELMING opposition from the local population (Don't let the selective quoting from US news sources fool you, take a look at the statistics, I'm guessing you haven't seen

Of course I do, anyone in favor of the war does - it's called a self sustaining Iraqi government. People like you were saying progress we have seen to date was simply impossible, yet here we are.

I think I do remember people saying that it was impossible that a million dead civilians and several million refugees would result from an invasion and ensuing occupation, but I think they were in the pro-war camp. That's some corpse-alicious progress, there.

That's the way out, to let the Iraqis govern themselves as they will. And you can't have it both ways, if they are a puppet government then how come the leader is making noises about having the government ask us for withdrawl?

The Iraqi people (71% as of last year) want the US to withdraw its forces. The US has not withdrawn, and shows no sign of doing so. The recent agreement splitting up Iraq's oil reserves among foreign oil companies is grotesquely unpopular among the people whose resources are being stolen from under their feet, but quite popular among those who own the companies.

Given all this, it's blindingly obvious--unless you have some reason to stubbornly refuse to see what's right in front of you--that the US holds much more influence over the Iraqi government than the people it supposedly represents do. The Iraqi government is a puppet; the hand up its figurative ass is Uncle Sam's.

It follows from this that the US will not want to let Iraqis determine their own fates. This happened before, with Iran under the Shah, who also didn't represent the wishes of his people, and was ousted by a theocratic revolution, the result of which has not been quite as freedomlicious as you seem to think the wake of an imperial colonizer's departure should be.

Since it potentially empowers the lives of hundreds of millions (when you figure in side effect) for decades to come, I'll just chalk up your statement as being very bad at mather rather than a heartless short-sighted pessimist.

You gloss over millions of dead and displaced Iraqis, and I'm the heartless one because I won't engage in your utterly baseless fantasies of a free Iraq that just happens to act like a good client state for the US? Your fantasizing has only the most tenuous relevance to reality; the only function it has is to provide an excuse for the bloodbath to continue. You disgust me.

You urge others to take a realistic appraisal of the situation out of one side of your mouth, while handwaving away a million corpses--I'm going to repeat that: handwaving away a million corpses--in your urge to spin utopian fantasies out of the other.

I'd extend your method of analysis to explain how thankful we should be for the Holocaust in depth, but I can't quite bring myself to do so.

As always, you may have the last word since you kind just will not have it any other way.

Yes, I suppose "me kind" have a thing about responding when someone is wrong on the internet. Especially when someone is grossly, murderously wrong.

Your transparent attempt to head off criticism should be beneath you, though. We left grade school behind some years past, didn't we?

You make the assertion that stereotypes are "usually" wrong.

Please explain and back that up. Because from where I stand, stereotypes can be dead on accurate. Not all, mind you, but enough of them to make the case there is some basis in reality.

Case in point: women. The stereotype is that they are more emotional beings than men.
...and that is pretty well documented through the sociological and scientific studies in the area. It turns out that women DO think differently than men. So is that stereotype wrong? No, but it might be in some individual, specific cases.

Another case: the stereotype of Fox news watchers is that they are uninformed (or, to be nice: "have misperceptions").
...and it turns out, that is correct. Are all of them that way? No, but enough have "misperceptions" that it is statistically significant.

Stereotypes have been around for a long time, with good reason. They aren't "wrong" anymore than jealousy or anger are wrong. They just are.

Words can't express how little I care for foreigners' opinions. They should worry much more about what we think of them.

-ccm

No matter how much the Latin types insist that they are "americanos" too, nobody outside Latin America pays them the least attention. Nor should they.

I see ccmay is ego-tripping again. No wonder why so many outside of the U.S. see it as a bully-headed nation. This trend is directly related to the juvenile attitude of the current mis-administration with respect to foreign policy. Sure we'll dialog with you as long as you go along with us. The minute you see things differently, we'll turn our back on you and cover our ears and spew "You're either with us or against us". Wow that really is progress and leaves a lot of room for diversity of opinions.

In the eye of God, no life is more valuable than any other be it an iraquian fighting for their life or an american soldier trying to protect hers.

See for yourself the increasing negative opinion of the U.S. at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/ or just ask a few people outside the U.S. for their opinion.

Sigh. This is really a rather unfortunate way to expose people to MMFA, because they're not at all the PC police.

The thing is, there is this vast network of conservative media outlets (like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc.) that most people will never listen to. So what happens is these guys end up preaching to the choir practically exclusively. When the listeners are all toting the same line, they get away with perpetuating a lot of myths that go completely unchallenged, leading a certain segment of the population to believe they're true. Like the 33% of Fox news viewers who believe we actually did find WMDs in Iraq.

MMFA exists to open up these conservative media channels to wider public scrutiny, to say that they are a part of the public sphere and they do have to play by all the same rules as everyone else. There's a tit-for-tat going on here too: The Media Research Center supposedly has a similar mission for liberal media, but their only reliable sources of material seem to be Keith Olbermann and MMFA itself.

It's too bad the rest of the world, besides the Taliban, was not allowed to vote in the 2004 US Presidential Election. Otherwise, Kerry would definitely have won.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3640754.stm
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/ 23/1730241
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/15/10977840 13044.html
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/vi ews_on_countriesregions_bt/91.php?nid=&id=&pnt=91& lb=btvoc

Let's face it. 9/11 was bad. Bush could have used it to make a significant positive change to the world. But guess what. He screwed up. And now the threat of terrorism is more than ever before. And 20 years from now, when all those children orphaned in Iraq grow up and become indoctrinated, you're going to see more sh*t than ever before.

But I don't honestly think you're going to understand. From your post, it looks like you're one of those indoctrinated morons that voted for Bush in 2004. You've got blood on your hands, retard. There were no weapons of mass destruction. And 40,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. F*ck you. And f*ck your president.

What the US did in Iraq was also terrorism. Lying about WMDs and getting into a war that has caused the deaths of 40,000 people is also terrorism. F*ck you.

And don't you f*cking tell me that the war was for democracy. If it was for democracy, why the f*ck is the US in bed with the Saudi monarchy. Why the f*ck did the US make a deal with Ghaddafi? What about Gen. Musharraf?

Expediency? Pragmatism? Take your f*cking hypocrisy elsewhere.

That's why it's very important to demonize the Iraqi resistance. Although 90% of the attacks (according to a recent DIA report) are directed at US Forces, most of the coverage is devoted to attacks on civilians. The resistance is largely ignored compared to the reporting on secterian violence.

Most Iraqis want US forces to withdraw and 61% also approve of attacks on US forces. Interestingly Shia, Sunni and Kurdish groups all hate Osama bin laden.

Full report here: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/I raq_Sep06_quaire.pdf

> They found WMDs in Iraq, though the media has been awfully quiet about it.

Oh, did they ?

Which kind ? Knifes ? Forks ? Chopsticks ?

You are so funny. Maybe there is a reason why media was so quiet about it ? Because it is false ?

Statistically, you are probably watching the fair and balanced Fox News.

"Those who incorrectly believed WMD had been discovered were three times more likely to obtain their news primarily from Fox News than from PBS and NPR ..."

See for yourself:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/in ternational_security_bt/102.php?nid=&id=&pnt=102&l b=brusc

Please refrain from posting or discuss political subjects with your friends and relatives for an extended period of time, during which you should research the subjects you are interesting in. Then, only talk about simple and futile political subjects until you grow enough knowledge to address more important issues.

Also, in the meantime, please refrain voting.

On behalf on the community, thank you in advance.

What Fox News viewers believe

Did you say "almost untrustworthy"?

What Robert Fisk was claiming is that there would be a bloody battle in Baghdad, that the Iraqi forces were clearly ready to resist in the capital, and he had seen their careful preparations to defend the city. Sorry, it didn't quite work out that way.

You sound like you are relishing that prospect, which is pretty sad. Are you on the side of the insurgency?

Iraqis aren't, why are you?

Here's a nice summary of the situation on the ground.

I have read many similar stories, so I'm confident of its accuracy.

Whenever someone tells me the Iraq war was a rotten thing for the people, we bombed them to pieces, they really loved Saddam, etc, I could argue with my own opinions until I was blue in the face. Instead,
I send them the opinion of an ordinary Iraqi.

Have things changed in the long, hard years since then? Not a chance.

So if you think there is something romantic about the insurgency, or that they are the good guys, I hope you'll consider what I've shown you. No matter how much you hate the US military, we're still the good guys in Iraq, and the people are still overwhelmingly on our side:

Hope that helps.

D