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Google News, Censorship or Responsible Journalism?
MSTCrow5429 writes to mention an article published by WorldNetDaily attacking the policies and actions of Google News. The author takes issue with the practice of removing sites that offer very frank discussions about radical Islam and terrorism as "hate speech." Several sites have complained about removal including The Jawa Report, MichNews, and most recently The New Media Journal. In the termination email to The New Media Journal Google cited several stories as objectionable in order to further explain the action.
Mich News has appalling layout & a rather distasteful red, white, blue color scheme (why is he so obsessed with the french flag?)
In short, the blogs were not news sources, they were at best aggregators of chauvinistic news, at worst (like the first link), poorly written anti-moslem blogs, that just happen to tie in current events.
Frankly, I new google news was going to hit this sort of trouble as soon as they started indexing this blog.
Anyway, good on you google for not linking to hate as 'news' - the reaction of the moslem haters is as predictable as allways, crying about censorship, but frankly, everyone just thinks you're a bunch of whiners.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
At first I was shocked to read the /. blurb, but then I realised that all of these were mere blogs and thus had no place in a news aggregation site to begin with.
/. starts filtering entires tagged "blog".
Can't wait till
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You will be guilty of the crime of posting while conservative. Enjoy your downmods. Have a nice day.
Conservatism and Islamophobia have nothing in common.
The new media journal is not a conservative rag, it is an Islam-fear-spreading propaganda machine.
Sorry!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I don't think I've ever seen the Drudge Report in Google News, and he actually does get scoops now and then. True he's a bit out there, but he's way down the nutso scale compared to some of the other sites that Google News gives presence to.
I'm sensing a lot of pent up hostility here. Get out the strawmen and have a great time. I call shenanigans....
Today is a good day to code.
Having taken time to read the "The New Media Journal" objectionable stories linked in the summary, I have to say the answer is clear, Google are being responsible. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and of course some will complain that Google have't drawn it in exactly the right place, but IMHO it's perfectly reasonable to take the position that those stories are out-and-out anti-Islamic hate material, with not a shred of responsible journalism.
Oh no... it's the future.
They are opinion pieces at it's best, and certainly contains heavy bashing, trolling and hate speach. I am against censorship as next liberal guy, but these guys don't deserve any kind of additional promotion, in my humble opinion.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Leave it to World Net Daily to assign a political agenda to the actions of Google. Reality really does seem to have a liberal bias.
The content of the articles aside, one has to wonder why an site that is unabashedly slanted towards political commentary can really be considered news in the first place. There is a big difference between political analysis of world events (i.e. what one party is doing, what is going on with legislation, etc.) and political commentary (diatribes about various organized groups, short fictions about the way the world works, etc.). WND comes down in the later camp, it always has, and the fact they were ever included in a 'News' aggregator is troublesome.
I mean, isn't there a line somewhere, where information stops being news and starts being propaganda? I always thought it had something to do with whether or not a story is a recitation of facts or someone's personal opinion. There seems to be some confusion between objectivity and fairness these days, where a plurality of viewpoints (slanted in one direction or the other) is considered a substitute for faithfulness to events in themselves.
M
of far-right self-pity over the media's refusal to abandon its last shreds of decency and publish bigotry as "balance".
I'd like to take a moment to coin a new "law" that I have observed in recent years. Maybe I'm just seeing something "new" where there is nothing. Maybe I'm just wrong. But let me propose that hyperbole has a profound effect on language. As actual occurences of some objectionable activity becomes less and less prevailent in society, the tempation to use hyperbole to imply that some lesser action is equivilent to that objectional activity becomes more common. The above "story" has two examples of it. First, there's Google who have used hyperbole to justify their self interested actions of rejecting some stories. They've claimed something is "hate speech" to make a point that it is not the content they want on their web site. In response, the sites being chucked have used hyperbole to suggest that Google is "censoring" them. Nevermind the fact that no actual hate speech has occured. Nevermind the fact that Google has not stopped these sites from delivering their content directly to interested parties. How does this affect language? If more people are refering to behaviour as "hate speech" when in fact a better description would be a "bitch session", doesn't that change the definition of the word? What if censorship were completely eliminated (as it is in most western societies, with the obvious exceptions to matters of national security) and the word were used to refer to other behaviour, like telling someone to shut the hell up because you're sick of hearing them blabber. "Can you two go argue in the lunch room, you're giving me a headache." "Hey man, you can't censor us!" What's annoying is that these are really important words. You can't talk about keeping the world safe from censorship with a straight face when every idiot is claiming they are being censored.
How we know is more important than what we know.
World Net Daily pushing for accurate and unsensational news reporting.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Real conservatives (i.e.: Buckley, CATO group, Michael Dixon) = good to very good
Current mass of rename-the-US-to-Jesusland-and-ban-everything-fun NeoCons = bad, very bad.
Finding a real conservative in DC is like finding the truth: it's there somewhere, was a bitch to find. So STFU.
Newsbusters says it has observed a pattern of intolerance toward conservative sites that deal with radical Islam and terrorism.
I'm curious to see how these same people would react if Google started indexing sites lambasting Christianity and calling Christ a false prophet and pedophile and whatnot. I'm willing to bet that they'd launch a "Boycott Google" campaign if those sites weren't immediately removed.
This isn't censorship. This is a media outlet choosing not to publish opinion pieces which it thinks would be irresponsible, and possibly contrary to its editorial viewpoint. Should the Times (either of them) publish every editorial sent their way? If not, then why should Google?
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Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
>> but frankly, everyone just thinks you're a bunch of whiners.
Whiners we could probably put up with, but far worse than that, they're spreading racist/nationalist propaganda to further their War on Terrorism agendas.
And of course, they're pure fanboys too, totally unwilling to see or accept the similar sorts of evils that "our side" is doing as well, in the name of keeping the beligerant politicians in power.
Not a pretty package. Good on Google to try to stay clear of the haters.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I understand that your basically a needle in a haystack on the interent - and with out the Google metal detector your unlikely to be discovered... however to call this censorship is the most assenine thing I can think of. The website is still out there, they still have the ability to diseminate their message - Google just refuses to help them. It's no different than if a newspaper decides not to buy a story from the AP news wire for what ever reason. The story is there, someone is willing to run it. I think the real news story here is that Google while may have done nothing technicly wrong has shown their lack of innocence. For years people have believed that Google has been a neutral third party of the internet not caring about what anyone was doing. In recent months it has come to light that Google, just like any other business, is doing things to help shape it's image and protect it's brand presence. While their is nothing wrong with what they have done, the controversy rages mainly because of geeks who are embarased to have been preeching their praises for the last 10 or so years. Get over it - if MSN(BC)/FOX/CNN was doing this no one would care.
Here in the Netherlands there was a big uproar when Hirshi Ali basically said the same thing: Mohammed was a pedophile because he took a 9 year old for a wife. Yet she gets elected Woman of the Year by Times magazine.
What's the difference?
Anyway, I thought Americans were so big on freedom of speech. I'd said get ready for some real rucus, because Hirshi Ali (or Magan actually) is coming your way!
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Only we enlightened "Progressives" can be trusted with the awesome power of free speech.
Now, go back to your MTV and iPods and let us protect you from the evil right-wing neo-con republikkklans.
There is some truth in their stories. Why not leave it "on the news stands" for educated people to determine what is right?
a .htm [hyperhistory.net]
Why can we not look into the bad things muslim extremists do? They do blow stuff up, why should they not be held accountable? Is CNN doing anything like that?
And mohammed was apparently a pedophile, if you believe multiple sources online. There are numerous web sites supporting the "alleged" fact that mohammed was a pedophile. Google "mohammed pedophile" (until they decide to unlink "hate sites")
Some quotes from web pages:
His third wife was 6 years old when he married her and 9 when he consummated the marriage. To say that Mohammed was a demon-possessed pedophile is not an attack. It's a fact." (quoted from Murder for Fun and Prophet) http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b1muhammadc
[T]he Prophet (Muhammed) married her (Aisha) when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death)."
(Hadith, Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64) http://www.geocities.com/AntiJihad/mo_pedo.html [geocities.com]
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64: Sahih Bukhari Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six
years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with
him for nine years (i.e. till his death). http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/muhtpammed.htm [papillonsartpalace.com]
Maybe they are all lies. Maybe the original source books are lies. Whatever. It is out there and may be true. How can you check stuff like that.
Is it racist to have a new site that states "Various online sources are saying blah, here are the sites." ? I think it is bad for google to start censoring news. They should have a little check box (like safe search) in your preferences to allow you to search all sites, not just leftw wing PC sites.
Let me see. They remove those sites because of hate speech (but isn't hate speech still freedom of speech?), yet they leave sites such as The Spoof listed in news.google.com as a source.
Moderate me down if you will. I just wanted to point that out.
By many of the posts I just read, I've got to believe that few of you have either read the Koran or have bothered to learn a little about the so-called "Prophet" Mohammed and Mohammedism history. Is criticizing Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin "hate speech"? I think not. People, mostly those people of the fringe left, are calling anything that disturbs them as "hate speech". I will not allow them to censor me. www.SpelledSideways.com
Fata viam invenient.
I gather you've never ever been in Europe let alone be able to pinpoint it on a map? I live in Europe and have never heard of such a social rule.
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"White" propaganda (as opposed to "black" or "grey") consists of verifiable facts that support your position or discredit your opponent's position.
So even a "propaganda" piece can be good journalism and worth including on a legitimate news site.
Their problem is that they've gone to "black" propaganda in the form of an "opinion" piece. Their "facts" are not facts. Their "news" is nothing more than their opinion. And they don't even bother to attempt to appear "fair and balanced".
I agree, Google did it right when they dropped those postings from their news service.
Now, they might have a point if Google ever drops their sites from the web indexing service. But until then, they should not expect anyone else to accept their rantings as "news".
I didn't have time to fully read these stories, but i did browse through them a bit. One sentence made me agree with Google: "Bush is actually fighting a war on two fronts. One is with Islam, the real enemy". This isn't news. This is stating an opinion, which has no place in reporting the news. Key word here is 'reporting'. Just stick to that. Don't bring your opinion, because it's not the same as all of your readers'.
One person's hate speech is another persons free speech.
If Google is going to eliminate blogs as new sources when receiving complaints about their content they need to remove all of them.
Its always easy to find extreme examples to justify a position. Its just that too often those extreme examples overshadow all else in the discussion.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Should we also stop people talking about the Romans because they used to encourage their children to join in with sex.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
A person I know had a manager that was a proud Liberal Democrat and he was a jerk when it came to taking vacation.
Oh yeah, well a person I know had a manager that was a proud Conservative Republican and was later arrested for brutally sexually molesting more than a half-dozen children!
Sorry, I know two trolls don't make a right! Just couldn't help myself.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Not likely. In the US (unlike Europe) the government (and locals) don't try to expel someone from the neighborhood because that person is getting death threats from terrorists. We go after the people making the threats, not the ones receiving them.
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There are people in America who still do not realize that our country is at war. This is astounding considering all of the threats that Islamic terrorists and leaders have been issuing lately. These unenlightened folks consider President Bush the enemy, so Bush is actually fighting a war on two fronts. One is with Islam, the real enemy, and the other is with American leftists who are more concerned about regaining their power than the safety of the country.
First paragraph, second story. That's not responsible journalism, that's RETARDED. If google are supposed to include this shit as news, then they may as well also include neo nazi blogs and other baseless fringe hate blogs.
we are rapidly turning into a nation of "freedom of politically correct speech" which is a sad state of affairs.
I discount most arguments used any side to any argument when they toss out the terms "hate speech" or "racist". Its the old "boy who cried wolf" syndrom. After awhile the people using the terms so compromise them that they no longer have any real effectiveness.
I think the issue with google news is that it is bending to pressure from outside groups to modify its content. Just as they caved into the Chinese they cave into groups who claim that any non-compliance is the same as supporting hate-speech or racism. It is no different than the blackmail some groups use against corporate interest. Either pay us or we will sully your name.
Discussion is only permitted if you agree with the PC stance. Any deviation from the PC stance and you will be villified. If you fight back you will have the extreme examples tossed at you as if they were the majority and not the minority they are. Favorite phrases will include "you don't like Nazis do you" while comparing the target you are defending to them. Along the lines of "its for the children" to thereby attempt to dissuade any potential objection.
If Google News is going to be unbiased then they need to list all views, even those the staff at Google does not agree with. Anything else reduces the value of their service.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There would seem to be an implicit contract between myself and Goggle that they do their best to find the information I am looking for and not that they are trying to manipulate me. I use Goggle and other search engines to find information not to be protected from it. When Google starts seeing itself in the business of deciding what sites I should or should not see based on their evaluation of the sites content, they become useless to me.
This post is right on the money. I'm a big liberal, and I find the "common man" to be an semi-retarded indebted oaf who is easily manipulated by wealthy people, reactionary politics, and flashy television commercials. Of course all the conservatives agree with me, they just have figureheads like GW Bush (Kerry's Frat Buddy) who can stomach faking the regular guy act.
The "facts" are wrong and just strung together to "support" a heavily biased opinion.Really? Then which political party in the US supports a woman's right to her own body?And where, specifically, would that be?And Bush went to a community college? No?
Yet someone mod'ed your post "Insightful".You might want to look up the word "stereotype".
Someone I know met someone (political/race/gender/age/religion) who was (mean/stupid/arrogant/dirty/immoral).
Yes, the proud tradition of bigotry remains strong. And even gets mod'ed up at times as "Interesting".
Google news includes this disclaimer at the bottom of the page
"The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program."
Yet if sites are excluded then someone had to take action.
While some of us may find WND lacking credibility there are other sites that equally lack creditability in the eyes of many that will be represented.
Who decides?
If Google is trying to pass off Google News as an aggregator of all the news available then they need to take a hands off approach to what is show. If people don't see all sides of an issue, including the uglier sides, how is society ever going to change? If Google is excluding sites then they need to make that policy known. They should provide a list of the sites PURPOSELY excluded and the reason for such.
The real problem is that as soon as groups figure out that sites can be excluded they will act on it. They will find enough "evidence" to get even sites that are generally good excluded. After all, as I wrote elsewhere, one person's hate speech is anothers free speech.
Its like the EU (particulary France) trying to hide the fact that the NAZI party and its supporters still exist. They use the idea of preventing these people from publishing information somehow makes it not exist. Instead it is kept underground where its beyond the public eye. This allows the hate to go unchecked. How is anything to change when its kept hidden. Its the family's dirty little secret. People just nod their head and go on. "Yeah, we know that happens, but if we ignore it it will not affect us". Ignorance does not solve problems.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
... and which sites they include in their search results (including news search) is totally up to them, and not an issue of censorship at all. I doubt the sits in question are concerned with the reasons they were removed from Google's results as much as they are with the effects - decreased ad revenue from fewer visitors.
rooooar
Islamic violence and hate is a fact. News organizations censor facts at the risk of their credibility.
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WorldNetDaily is... not the most reliable or unslanted news site in the world. In fact, I've run into people offering shocking stories off there as fact many times. Upon research, I've found them to be either mostly false, or true in only the most vauge way. For example, they were in the forefront of the recent 'war against Christmas' bull, spreading near-complete falsehoods about that school that 'banned red and green napkins'.
Google News removes 3 sites from its feed which have demonstrated a completely unprofessional (and sometimes hateful) approach to journalism, sites which they originally added in an effort to increase diversity of their news sources. This is censorship how?
Claiming that Google News practices censorship is utterly ridiculous given the amount, diversity, and accomodated bias of their news sources, and the human-out-of-the-loop (as they claim) algorithm that selects the actual headliner stories. You want to fight censorship? Try starting with the US Federal government and its media practices, or if you feel cosmopolitan, a country like Russia where most mainstream media is bought out by the government.
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Here are samples, from all three of the cited articles, of what Google didn't want appearing in news search results:
"Honestly, I cannot open a paper or turn on the television without seeing mobs of Muslim savages celebrating in front of burning embassies..."
"Is it really tacky of me to smile at the nightly scenes on TV showing Arab, Afghani and Pakistani Muslims bombing mosques and killing their Muslim brothers, sisters and children at a brisk pace because that's all they know how to do?"
"Islam is moving across the world like a dark, evil cloud."
"Worshiping a sex-maniac and a child molester? [...] Muslims are true victims of Islam. However, they fail to realize that Islam is a cult, and the prophet was a demon ..."
The funnier thing is watching WorldNetDaily stick up for The Jawa Report. Apparently nobody there has seen Star Wars or watched South Park. "Jawas?""You know, sand people."
These aren't news stories critical of Islam. They're "editorials" with as much credibility as content from Stormfront.org.
Khilafah.com Seems like a double standard to me. If a blog or opinion site is unsuitable, why are Islamist sites allowed to spue and call it "news"?
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/wpopu/2006/wpopu0 60521.gif
If you bothered to read almost any conservative blog on the subject, the complaint is not simply that these sites are removed from Google. The complaint is that these sites are removed from Google while similar sites from another end of the spectrum (say, those blaming Israel for all of the Mideast's problems) continue to be listed. Conservatives recognize that Google is a private company with the right to remove sites as they expect. Conservatives also recognize that if Google applies a subjective or double standard, Google's reputation could be shot. They obviously prefer an objective and uniform standard, but if Google refuses to use one, they will continue to go after Google.
Let us all remember that Freedom of Speech is a two way street. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say it publicly. It just means that they have to defend their lunatic ideas. I don't agree with any of the articles linked, but they should definately be allowed to say it. If we had real spines, we'd just write a letter to the editor or that (or a more reputable) newspaper and fill their silly arguments with holes. But I digress, no one's taking away their rights in this case. But keep this in mind for the discussion.
What you imply is that if a culture suppresses criticism from itself, it should be immune from all criticism. That is a double standard. Further, you imply that the validity of a critique depends not on what it says but on who says it. That's ad-hominem. It's standard leftist ideology, and it's amazing that any person can espouse it and claim to be educated; the cognitive dissonance required to hold it should break any functioning mind.
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This affects everyone and of course most of us are very hypocritical about it because only the other side is a hypocrit. We never are.
Liberals claim that they are tolerant yet seem to be very intolerant of people who are intolerant. Surely tolerant means you must also be tolerant of people who are not tolerant? Or is the so called multi-culture society really a left only culture?
The people on the right are just as bad. I read some of the articles and it seems that the guy claims he never heard of terrorism before 9/11. Tell that to people who run abortion clinics in the US or those who died in the Oklahoma bombing. To say nothing of the countless people who have been lynched by right wingers. If he speaks for the right he seems to condemn muslims as terrorists while having a blind eye for right wing terrorism from his own country (against his own people, just as those "funny" muslims kill each other because that is all the know how to do)
Perhaps being hypocrits is just what you need to be to survive in this world. YOU! Yes you. Do you care that people are starving in this world? Yet here you sit wasting time and resources that could have used to create a better world. If you ever ate more food then you absolutly need to survive and be healthy then you obviously don't care about people starving from hunger. Same with letting the water run till it gets cold. People are dying in the world because of lack of fresh water and you just threw it away?
Yet who of us is not guilty of this and at the same time claims to care when they see images of people dying?
This ordinary hypcrasy is bad enough but it gets even worse when people get it into their heads that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
You see a lot of people on the so called left defend right wingers.I have had more then amusing discussion with young so called lefties (they are left wing right up until the moment they first have to pay their taxes) who seem to think that muslims are the latest hot thing. Not that different from previous generations who worshipped things like the soviet union or were all mushy over india.
Yet when you then ask these left wingers about stuff like women rights, birth control, the freedom of religion, they are almost 100% opposed to agenda of these muslim radicals they seem to be so in favor off.
It is not suprising, the so called muslims that are "the problem" are clashing with the west because they are very right wing while most of the west is amazingly left wing. The really amusing thing is that the bitter enemies of right wing muslims are right wing westerners.
The problem is perhaps the fear we got for religious/racial prosecution. The holocaust, ireland, apartheid, american segregation they are all vivid reminders of how wrong it has gone in the past.
We don't want that to ever happen again. Rightfully so.
So what to do when a group appears who is not compatible with your world views but who is also very clearly of a different religion/race and a lot of their world view are so clearly tied to their religion.
You just dug yourselve a big hole because the moment you even dare to question them in your own mind you are now different from a nazi or a KKK'er or protestant/catholic.
If you are a reasonably leftwing person and basically believe that everyone should be free in their choice of religion and sex prefference how do you deal with a religion that practices hate against homosexuals?
It is one of the problems in Holland. We used to be one of the most liberal countries in the world on this subject. Freedom of sexual prefference. Amsterdam was the gay capitol of the world.
Recently there have been several beatings of gay people. By muslims. In schools muslims are, in the big cities, becoming the majority and this has led to teachers no longer daring to teach about subjects like homosexuality or the holocaust because of violent reactions.
Yet you cannot attack muslim preachers for inciting hatred because if you
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
One of the articles:
"... sitting with them, a dirty rag-towel wearing 'War Lords ' (tell me, isn't that an 7th century concept ?), eating road kill for din-din..."
Anyone see what Google had a problem with?
This is not censorship, anymore than Readers Digest declining to run your Stargate SG1 erotic fan fiction is censorship. The above is a rant in an ed-piece and Google are maintaining a news aggregation. They are free to include and exclude what they wish, and the quality of their selection is what their service is judged on.
If the state was taking down sites or imprisoning people for these opinions, that would be another matter.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
My professional diagnosis is that you're suffering from the disease known as the "Coulter Factor". The only known cure is to remove yourself from the gene pool immediately. Please let us know if you need any assistance.
Censorship is the supression of the speech of others by force (or fraud). In our society, where government does a pretty good job of preventing actual criminals from doing this, it is practically speaking only the government itself which censors (see: campaign finance "reform"). Google has an absolute right to filter whatever it wants from its News site, or its search results, for that matter. Noone has a "right" to force Google to promote their ideas.
On the other hand, Google is clearly irresponsible in its editorial decisions here. Criticism of fanatical Islam is a valid perspective and ought to be published. World Net Daily should be commended for drawing attention to this immoral choice. As has been said by many true proponents of free speech: the answer to bad speech (or non-speech) is more speech, hopefully of the good variety. That is all that one can ask for in a free society.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
In the USofA, the "Free Speech" is about saying the government is wrong and not being arrested for saying that.
There is still "libel" and other other categories where "speech" is not "Free".You seem to have problems with this "category" concept.
A "blog" may contain actual news items. In which case, it is news.
Or a "blog" may contain nothing more than someone's bigotted rantings. In which case it is not news.
So claiming that all "blogs" should be removed from a news site simply because one sub-category was is ignorant.The "discussion" is about the "blogs" and how they do not contain any news. Just some bigot's rantings.
Google is a company, not a government.
You can still find those site via Google's web index. They just aren't listed as news sites on Google's news index. And, again, that is because they don't have any news, just some bigot's rantings.
And if you don't agree that those are the rantings of bigots, then go back and read the article that says Islam is a "cult" and a "false" religion. Then look at the stats for followers of each religion.
In my head I see a snooty American waiter at a five-star restaurant and a lottery winner fresh from the trailer park... Social rules indeed...
Let us all remember that Freedom of Speech is a two way street. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say it publicly.
Not a Freedom of Speech issue.
1) They're still saying it.
2) Google search engine is still linking to them.
3) They've been kicked from a news site because they're not news sites, but hate sites.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I know of no news outlet (in any form) in today's world that do not have some kind of slant. Each outlet now identifies a target audience and caters to it... tells that audience what it believes it wants to hear.
I'm willing to give Google *some* benefit of the doubt and presume that maybe some of the articles are a bit too slanted on one side or the other.
But perhaps, then, shouldn't there be an Editorial Section, as there is in any regular paper?
Even more "mainstream" outlets, such as CNN (which slants to the left) or Fox (to the right) have thier own broadcasters that run against the grain (Lou Dobbs on CNN, Alan Colmes on Fox). They don't get censored, nor do they get put on a "tight leash".
Google should take some time and at least offer some kind of alternate category for thier search results, or an explanation as to why they are doing what they are doing. Perhaps an Editorial category could fill the bill.
Censorship of search results (as is happening currently) will cause Google's clients to take their business elsewhere. And lest Google be so dismissive of this as a non-issue... the Internet was around well before Google came into being. It will still be around long afterwards.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
I wish people would quit misusing termsfor inflammatory purposes: piracy for unauthorized copying is one example. Censorship for editorial selection is another. _True_ censorship is not failing to publish whole works, but publishing them with the naughty bits cut out. Usually fairly small cuts to preserve a greater part of the authors work, but to twist it's meaning. It _is_ reprehensible, because it's simply theft of ideas.
There are certain restaurants that set a minimum standard for dress and behaviour. They're not going to ask you for family credentials, they're demanding that you act in the specific way whatever cliche they're targetting do. I do realise that for some Americans having minimum standards for public behaviour is a strange and unfamiliar concept, so I do understand where your confusion is coming from.
Either way, even if they did, so what? Restaurants are (or atleast should be) serve, or not serve, whoever they want.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
I was talking about the neighbors who took her to court to get her evicted from her residence, and the judge who agreed they had cause, because she was receiving the threats.
Best Slashdot Co
What if a muslim gay basher is beaten up in jail by skinheads? Would you cry for him?
Lots of left-wing people seem unable to fathom the idea that some muslims might just be right wingers who just happen to be muslim rather then protestant and have a slightly darker tan.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend is an old saying and is the way a lot of the world seems to think. Sadly it is also 100% wrong.
It led to a lot america's foreign problems. India was the friend of the soviet union, wich was america's enemy, pakistan was the enemy of india therefore america now finds itself the friend of a military dictatorship and on shaky terms with the world largest democracy.
It led to america being friends with Saddam because he was the enemy of Iran. That all worked out wonderfull didn't it?
Same with the support to Al Queda in their fight against the hated soviets. Another wonderfull case of the enemy of my enemy is my enemy as well.
If you are leftwing you are probably for gay rights. So how do you defend being pro-muslim then a religion that is very anti-gay rights? How come so many leftwingers defend right wing muslims when they would never ever defend a right wing christian?
It is not that all muslims are right wing offcourse. Far from it. In fact a lot of the real refugeee muslims came here precisly because they were left wing. but they tend to keep quiet. Just as in the west it is the right wingers that make the most noise.
But just because they are muslim doesn't mean they are not right wingers and oppose every politcial ideal of left wingers.
Hatred because of someone's religion is very bad, but so is loving someone because of his religion. Judge a person on his political believes. If they are not yours then act like it and don't led the fear of being called a racist stop you from calling them out on their ideas.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This comment represents a popular theme among conservatives at the moment - "EVERYONE's biased, so let's wear our bias on our sleeves!"
...OR, could it be that some of the people marching ARE legal immigrants? Or that they're concerned about the rights of legal immigrants, like these potential "guest workers," as much as they're concerned about the rights of illegal immigrants?
The thing is, it's not true. Mainstream, "liberal" media sources like the New York Times and NPR still strive for objectivity. The parent's example is typical: why didn't they say "illegal" immigrants? OMG bias!
Yeah, you can read this type of thing as a sign of subtle bias, if you're so inclined. But none of the linked articles are anywhere NEAR that subtle. Putting this kind of claptrap in the same category as real news and saying they're just opposite ends of a spectrum is intellectually dishonest.
Google is right to kick them out of their "news" feed, just like they'd be right to eschew the equivalent left-wing nonsense ("Zionist Amerikkka Enriches Jew Bankers!") But of course, they already DO filter out the left-wing wackos, while the right-wing wackos get their own contingent of defenders who have suddenly discovered the rhetorical utility of "open-mindedness."
you gotto love Google :D
Problem is, it comes from a not quaran verse and there are translation issues.
m ate
n nah/bukhari/sbtintro.html
It is a history text written years after mohammed died, so that may make it less "valid" but most sites I read support that mohammed had sex with his nine year old wife. You won't see that on CNN...
http://www.wiki.faithfreedom.org/index.php/Consum
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsu
You use the term "elite." The political economist and economic historian Samir Amin says it confers too much dignity upon them. He prefers "ruling class." Incidentally, a more recent invention is "the ruling crass."
The only reason I don't use the word class is that the terminology of political discourse is so debased it's hard to find any words at all. That's part of the point -- to make it impossible to talk. For one thing, class has various associations. As soon as you say the word class, everybody falls down dead. They think, "There's some Marxist raving again."
But the other thing is that to do a really serious class analysis, you can't just talk about the ruling class. Are the professors at Harvard part of the ruling class? Are the editors of the New York Times part of the ruling class? Are the bureaucrats in the State Department? There are lots of different categories of people. So you can talk vaguely about the establishment or the elites or the people in the dominant sectors.
But I agree, you can't get away from the fact that there are sharp differences in power which in fact are ultimately rooted in the economic system. You can talk about the masters, if you like. It's Adam Smith's word, and he's now in fashion. The elite are the masters, and they follow what he called their "vile maxim" -- namely, "all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else."
NC
Yes, but will the tollerant tollerate the intollerant?
Just one of those things.
all the best,
drew
-----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111123
Seems some think I am trying to corner the market for novels... Imagine.
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
"A mix of illegal immigrant, first generation legal immigrants and 2nd to 10th generation immigrants marched today. No sign of any native americans who when asked to comment said "I wish all the immigrants went home"".
And even that would not be unbiased. Because if there was a black person there he was not an immigrant but a slave. Immigration is done by choice.
But to accuratly describe the mix of protestors is impossible without newspapers becoming a lot thicker.
So the writer has to choose what he thinks is most important about the group of protestors and that is bias.
The weather yesterday was sunny with a few spots of rain. Accurate. To me. I sat out in the sun and was inside during the rain. If someone was inside during the sun and was suprised by the short but heavy rainfall then they would have a slightly different view on its being a okay spring day. A brisk rain is only refreshing if you ain't in it.
Offcourse people tend to think of news as unbiased if it agrees with them. If you are told you are a wonderfull person then obviously that person is unbiased and totally honest even if she happens to be your mother.
On the other hand if your teacher tells you you are the dumbest piece of shit that ever crossed his path then he is obviously biased because you dropped the fingerpaint all over his new suit when you were 18 in kindergarden.
The real trick in reading news is in being able to ask yourselve. "Is this person telling me the truth or just telling me what I want to hear OR am I thinking it must be lies because I don't want it to be the truth?"
This is hard. Just look at an old controversial topic, that of smoking. Look at how people reacted, some still do, to the news that parents smoking in front of their kids are ruining the kids health. Or even worse, pregnant women smoking. Go ahead, tell a smoking preggo she is killing her unborn child. It is fact but she don't want to hear. Smokers don't want to hear. When a study then comes out that shows smoking ain't all that bad they think that is unbiased.
Perhaps they are right and we the non-smokers are just biased.
So read the articles linked and stop for a moment thinkling, "disagree with me therefore they must be wrong because else I would be wrong" and try to ask yourselve what are they claiming, what is their evidence and what is it they carefully avoid saying. Judge it with an openmind.
So far I haven't seen anyone counter the articles with facts. It all seems to be "I don't want to believe that is true so it ain't true."
Even if your right and it is untrue, you are still wrong in thinking like that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Summary of the above...
"I'm a bigot I think its okay to smile at the murder of people if they are Arabs, and every person protesting was an illegal immigrant."
I'm pretty sure that writers do understand the power of words, its the whole point of writing (pen is mightier than the sword).
"Bring us your huddled masses.....", "all men are created equal...."
The problem you do highlight is that in the American media today its not about honesty its about bigotry and shouting, the truth goes out the window in the desire to push a point. I'm pretty sure the founding fathers didn't have that in mind when they created the 1st ammendment.
Maybe you aren't a bigot, but you are certainly reading like all those people who use the phrase "I'm not a racist but...." and go on to prove that they are.
Try searching for Tom DeLay, see what ads pop up on the right. Then try searching for Hillary Clinton.
Support the FairTax
Dutch policy seems to be to cover everything up and hope it goes away.
We hoped WW2 would pass us by too. That worked well.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Or explain to me the violence against gays in amsterdam by muslims and the left/liberal refusal to do anything about except launch yet another round of studies and community talks?
I am with the blue collar workers on this one. Keep your hands of our queers muslims.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
People say "never wrestle with a pig, because people can't tell the difference, and the pig likes it". So good advice to the pig is to wrestle with the best human they can find.
WorldNet Daily is a rag. The Republican corporate media tactic for attacking well-regarded messengers is to find a Republican messenger, no matter how incomparable, with one obvious characteristic in common with the target, then set the two up in their corporate media as "opponents". Like setting up Hillary Clinton with Condoleeza Rice because they're both "women in politics". That competition immediately lowers the higher stature target, and often raises the lower stature target for a bonus.
In this case, they're pairing WND with Google. Fans of the trashy, rightwing WND will happily say that Google loses, and most people, who haven't formed an specific opinion of either, will associate them as peers - to Google's detriment. The few Google fans were lost to the Republicans anyway, especially with the independent reporting Google generally features, but at least they now will get branded as "worse than WND".
These comparisons have nothing to do with Google's actual quality. They have to do with "guilt by association", in the Karl Rove version so popular the past decade called "guilt by opposition".
--
make install -not war
Way to go, Mac Fanboy, a Godwin right on the first post! Can we close this whole thread?
I don't know about this law of enforcing special clothing for non-muslims in Iran, but they do have special clothing laws for women, be they muslim or not. According to the Prophet, the sight of a woman's hair is enough to turn any man mad, therefore under Islamic law women are not allowed to display their hair in public.
Mich News has appalling layout & a rather distasteful red, white, blue color scheme (why is he so obsessed with the french flag?)
So you think websites should be censored according to the colors used in their design?
I'm not American, not Jewish, not Muslim, therefore I'm, in principle, neutral about all this discussion. The only thing where I agree about this whole uproar is that the sites Google expunged cannot be considered "news", they are mostly "editorial" in scope.
OTOH, if the prophet Muhammad had sex relations with a nine year old girl, then he was indeed a pedophile. King David had a man sent to war so that he (the king) could get the other's wife. This is mentioned in the Bible, no Jew or Christian will get into an uproar if someone disapproves the king's morally wrong behavior. What is so wrong in mentioning and disapproving the prophet Muhammad's morally wrong behavior?
If there is a "hate" problem anywhere between Muslims and non-muslims, I think muslims themselves are mostly to blame. When I see hundreds of thousans people marching in the streets burning other countries flags, what explanation other than hate could you give to that?
As a sanity check on how a people under similar circumstances as Iraq today should behave: the USA invaded Germany and Japan in 1945, after reducing both countries to rubble by air bombing. How did the Japanese and Germans react? They said, OK, we had some horrible dictators, now that we got rid of them let's work to reconstruct our countries. Suicide bombing ended when Japan surrendered.
Censorship in the name of preserving public discourse!
May the Maths Be with you!
Many US newspaper readers (and many slashdot readers) seem to be under the misapprehension that so long as you only report facts, your reporting is therefore unbiased and objective. UK broadsheet newspapers are generally more open about the fact that the decision of which stories to run (which facts to report) is as much an editorial slant as the language used to write about them. Thus US readers complain that UK newspapers appear biased in their reporting [rather than just their opinion columns], while UK readers complain right back "so are US newspapers, it's just the UK newspapers are at least open and frank about their editorial position".
And here on Slashdot we have the sudden realisation that in deciding which stories to report and which not to, Google necessarily ends up taking an editorial line.
Google news sold itself as being the first truely machine-based news aggregator. The whole idea was that they were unbiased because they just polled the sites and made their lists based on things like PageRank (and other super-secret factors).
Well, now we see that's not the case. There are actually editorial decisions being made as to what is and is not considered news. There is also some criticism that those decisions are not being applied in a uniform manner. Those may be unfair criticisms mainly because blogs definitely blur the line between news and opinion but many people have seen a lot of major news outlets also willfully blur those lines of late.
So, yes Google has the right to list whatever and whoever they want and it's not a First Ammendment issue as they're not the government. Just if they are going to start filtering then they need to acknowledge it and drop any claims to a pure unbiased machine created news source.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
In Europe, there are still some old social rules that you cannot patronize certain restaurants if a member of the lower class even if you can afford to go there.
Doesn't the U.S. also have private clubs which can more or less deny you access for whatever reason they like?
In the Middle East, the imans or Islamic Religious rulers dictate how you live your life even to the type of clothes you wear such as jeans not being acceptable.
The U.S. has no shortage of conservative church leaders who would be glad to tell you what type of clothes to wear, what activities you may engage in, who to associate with, and who to vote for. We even have some factions which would like to enforce their religious rules on all citizens.
In this country, it is the liberals that have disdain towards common people.
There is no shortage of conservatives who do all of the things you mention. Does that mean that conservatives have disdain toward the common people too? Elitism crosses political, religious, and economic lines. Egos are a part of human nature, and few/none are immune. Elites in the U.S. push policies from all sides. They do not show disdain towards the common people because they are "liberal" or "conservative", but because they view themselves as above the common people. Some of them simply have no understanding of what life as a common person is like. What you may perceive as "disdain" may simply be them looking out for their own interests.
Personally, I think one of the many unfortunate things about the current U.S. political scene is the demonization and redefinition of the word "liberal". In the U.S., we should all be liberals of one type or another. The set of beliefs we supposedly agree on (like the Constitution) are liberal. Conservatives should be opposed to radicals. All of us liberals should be opposed to authoritarians. If I were cynical, I might believe that the demonization of liberalism was done intentionally to widen the door for authoritarianism, which seems to cross political and economic boundaries as well.
If either the "liberals" or the "conservatives" not elitist, why are they discussing getting rid of the "death tax" (which only hits the elite) and not the self-employment tax?
But Google purports to be completely unbiased in its selection.
It's right there in bits and bytes. I'd like to know how throwing these feeds out fits in with the above statement, paticularyly the enbolded part.
May the Maths Be with you!
Search on RELEVANCE, not filter on CONTENT, jackass. A search engine should search for what I tell it to, not filter based on the political biases of some liberal wacko from California.
I would have thought the difference between SEARCH and FILTER was obvious, but apparently you have trouble understanding the difference. A SEARCH is when you LOOK for things based on some criteria. A FILTER is when you EXCLUDE some things based on some criteria.
I, and I assume the original poster, want a SEARCH ENGINE and not a FILTER ENGINE. The difference between the two should be obvious.
Hey, we're just trying to imitate Dear Leader Bush and his approval ratings...
*runs for cover*
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
From the first link to The New Media Journal, "Come to think of it, before 9/11, we never heard of words like Al Qaeda, Taliban, Jihad, Homeland Security..." With the exception of Homeland Security (which didn't actually exist at the time, except as a fictional deptartment in various fiction stories about dystopian, totalitarian futures) all these other things were in the news or elsewhere long before 9/11. Perhaps most glaring is Al Qaeda. It would have been hard to miss when they bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, or when they bombed the USS Cole in 2000, unless, of course, you paid no attention to the news. I even remember thinking after the bombing on the Cole how Al Qaeda kept coming up in the news. So, yeah, I wouldn't exactly trust this guy to report the news. Taking this site out of Google news was almost certainly the right decision.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Uh, "Congress shall enact no laws" actually, and in this case, they haven't. This is a private corporation (it's easy to get those mixed up with gov'ts these days) filtering news content.
Whether you agree with them or not, free speech isn't the issue - private censorship is. And even there it's a tad dicey - is it censorship if blogs (which are not news) are removed from a news aggregator due to racist content?
Also, what is the other side to censor here? If we censor racists, then we must also censor... who exactly?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Here are the headlines from The New Media Journal:
Is this not news? Tell me again, which part is the Islam-fear-spreading propaganda machine. Now, I can't speak for their editorials, but Google doesn't have to link them. However, I don't see them blocking NYT because of their editorial pages.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
3) They've been kicked from a news site because they're not news sites, but hate sites.
In other news. Google launches http://hate.google.com/
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Does your webpage link to these blogs?
Then you're a censor too!
What's special about Google?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
What do you think Google does? Both the search engine and the news service do nothing but FILTER results to be relevant to you. Notice how you say "find the information I am looking for" which means they must NOT find information you are NOT looking for.
Seeing as they are running a news service, one would expect the users of the service to be searching for NEWS. A few blogs that are slightly more read than the average bitchfest apparently do not count as news sites for google anymore.
I understand some people might agree with the drivel posted on those sites, but that doesn't make those sites news. The Google News service is nothing but a FILTER that only shows you sites on the internet that are news.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Majority of Liberals = smart and educated
Majority of Slashdot users = smart and educated
The crossover there means that yeah, of course a lot of slashdot readers will be liberals.
Ohhhhh, that was flamebait and I don't even care it felt goooood!
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
Not a Freedom of Speech issue.
I may not agree with your politics, but you are correct. This is not a freedom of speech issue. Much like the left whines about freedom of speech anytime something doesn't go their way, the right has the same type of people.
The proper conservative response is to inform people, and use a different search engine. Google's bias is clear, they've donated hand over foot to democratic candidates and submit to the whims of communist China. In the end, it's obvious their employees lean twards socalist viewpoints. That is fine, just use another search engine.
1) They're still saying it.
yep.
2) Google search engine is still linking to them.
Yep, just not through the 'news' section.
3) They've been kicked from a news site because they're not news sites, but hate sites.
Well, the front page of their website looks like a news website to me. Are they biased? Sure. So is the New York Times. The articles Google complained about were opinion articles.
So Google won't link to the newmediajournal.us as a news website, but they will link to socialist worker.org?
I'm a left winger and a liberal, and I'm in the military.
What would you expect us to do, just go jump out and start busting heads? That got us stuck in iraq, and it is the mental process behind decades of bad American foreign policy. You do need to act sometimes. You also need to think before you act. If we can combine those, we're doing great.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
When I saw that the complaint was being made by fucking WorldNetDaily, I actually laughed out loud. Those guys are so far gone down the road wacko... I treat their "news" with about as much respect as I give Democrat Underground.
Anybody who mistakes anything they say for actual news is in dire need of medication.
I'm extremely glad that Google might finally be cutting the free publicity for these insane fuckwits.
Whether you like them (us) or not, American Conservatives are here and we are upset by Google's actions.
Sure, us "evil" conservatives are not as concerned with global warming or the plight of the poor insurgents as liberals say we ought to be. But our concern is great for things like our children's future, our country's continuing guiding light in freedom and democracy, and in our nation's ability to combat radical islam.
What would America be if noone cared to keep it up and defend it against the flood of ever-new ideas like communism, fascism, and islamism?
Basically, these blogger are conservatives. Sure they are right-wing, but does that make their speech irrelevant? Google links to Al Jezera, you see their screeds all the time - including very pro-terrorist editorials. You know, the ones that call terrorists martyrs, call America responsible for 9-11, and calling for Israel's immediate destruction.
And yet, when we conservatives point out that Google links to the Islamist side as news, and not the anti-Islamist side... we are called irresponsible. So Google is being "responsible" by showing one half of a very emotional topic.
Fair is fair - maybe us conservatives will consider google news to no longer be news. How would Google News like to lose half its readership?
Dis-heartening though it may sound to liberals, you cannot have it both ways. Google News cannot simply pick and choose liberals and terrorists to listen to without getting news from drudge and jawa as well. That's called bias, "liberal bias", and we conservatives are pretty sick of it.
I can see it now! Fox searchlight! Quick! Get me a trademark so I can get an infusion of cash from Rupert!
That is all.
Such as al-Manar, the official propaganda wing of Hezbollah, the terrorist group, and Khilafa.com, the site of Hizb ut-Tahrir (which is so radical that is has been banned in many countries, including Britain and Germany).
I'm generally suspicious of claims that Google has some sinister political bias, but there's no denying that it's displaying some fairly disturbing double standards here.
Educated and/or well-paid people tend to be more liberal than conservative.
Liberals has traditionaly been used to describe those open to new ideas...and is not new technology and the uses for it 'new ideas'?
Since you are a Conservative (I assume) shouldn't you be embracing Capitalism and starting your own technology site that favors Conservative articles? That would be the true test of whether Slashdot is representative of the Internet as a whole, wouldn't you think?
Blar.
One could easily be tempted to call it "duplicate"
send + more == money?
I tip my hat, sir!
Blar.
And since when is the web supposed to be about censorship?
Google is a search engine. They can certainly decide what ads they run, but they should NOT decide what I can and cannot read. Just because you happen to not like something doesn't mean you should ban it. Censorship is censorship. Hate speech--who really gets to decide if something is hate speech--vs. fact? Let us decide--I don't need daddy google to tell me. It really makes me see why they cozied up to the Chinese government because they do the same thing. They censor their feed to china so those people don't get to read anything from those naughty dissidents! Or anything on religion or other items that get in the way of the government's view of things.
There's a lot of things I don't particularly want to view or read on the web, but I'm not expecting a search engine to filter things out unless I change the settings.
If you found the government was behind this, I'll bet you'd be screaming your head off! But it's okay for a mega-corporation to do this? Let's quit acting like Google is still some warm, fuzzy startup with big dreams.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
both Churhill [sic] and Hitler ...
In Churchill's time, only the elites had the power to broadcast their words. Today, any idiot (including me) has the power to broadcast.
So, the law may be old, but the misuse of "important" words is exponentially more visible today. Even though I'm proud to say I'm liberal, I don't think this is more prevalent on the right or the left. How many times have we seen people on both sides label someone as a Nazi, for example? Occasionally, there's a thoughtful reason behind that label, but usually it's just hyperbole, because an accurate label wouldn't be inflammatory enough.
Google's bias is clear, they've donated hand over foot to democratic candidates and submit to the whims of communist China. In the end, it's obvious their employees lean twards socalist viewpoints. That is fine, just use another search engine.
They have no choice. The Republicans are backing the telecoms in the 'Net Neutrality thing. What do you want Google to do, donate to people advancing financially devastating policies? Corporations don't have a "bias" either way. They want to make money. That's what they do, and they seek the best way to do it period. Get over it.
So Google won't link to the newmediajournal.us as a news website, but they will link to socialist worker.org?
That's what makes you radicals so funny. It's that you cannot understand the difference between two points of view. It seems as though you want to say that all points of view are equal, but they are not. A socialist site reporting that the greedy capitalists are ruining the world is not the same thing as a fundy site reporting that it's fun to watch people execute each other and that their religious figures are pedophiles (apparently these people haven't read the Bible because it makes clear that the entire human race is born of incest). Expressing the view that someone else's religion has historical figures that are pedophiles doesn't express a political view.
. . . knee-jerk leftist sensationalism?
Conservatism and Islamophobia have nothing in common.
Nothing in common except most of their membership, of course.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Regular old fashioned born here legal residents are fighting for our rights as well. And quite a few "legal" immigrants are totally opposed to the illegals "cut in line" aspect to immigration.
A more accurate name for them would be WorldLiesDaily.
Anyway, allow me to illustrate how wrong you are.Hmmm, "critical and frank". Sounds a lot like "fair and balanced", eh?
Now, on to the rebutal...And someone mod'ed that post "Insightful".
Sorry, but anyone who uses the term "Islamofascist" is incapable of judging whether some article about Islam is "critical and frank".
Frankly, anyone who uses the term "Islamofascist" is incapable of rational discussions of religion or politics at all.
Yet some people seem to believe that using the term "Islamfascist" is "Insightful".
The countries that have large muslim populations do not like the west.
Sugar coating news articles and censoring stories on news sites is not going to make the fact go away.
I think part of the issue with these countries is that they are poor, and poverty ridden.
This generates a sort of hopelessness and despair and this soon turns to anger and irrational decisions.
If the West and Far East doesn't do something about correcting this soon, we are going to suffer some serious consequences including waking up one morning and finding Bejing, Los Angelos or Chicago/New York gone in a flash of light.
Some of the things I would suggest would be education. However, some of the countries in question, could chop your head off if you actually became educated. However, I guess getting on the tube and telling your people we need to annihilate a race of people is an exception.
Especially if you are a women living in Iran.
The cultural divide is huge here, and I think if we get rid of the poverty things would fix themselves over time.
Problem is, Iran, Saudi Arabi for example are corrupt, and are not interested in democracy, empowering people in general because the chaos in those countries allows them to make tons of cash.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
they better kick fox news off then.
You have obviously never visited Europe let alone lived there. The reasons why Europeans and most people in the world hate America (i.e. the US administation and its military/industrial complex) is because of its attempt to unilaterally control the entire world. This has involved over the past century the US killing millions of innocent civilians putting, it on a par with Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia.
Europeans don't hate americans, in fact they even quite like individual americans. However europeans have a contempt and pity for a lot of americans as the widespread hypocrisy and double standards applied by the US administration is reflected in the views of a lot of americans. These americans are stupid enough to blame their own problems on "liberalism" rather than on US capitalism and imperialism.
Out in the rest of the world (the real world) a lot of people are out fighting the real evil "liberalism" that is the neoliberalism which is the ideology behind the global economic policies promoted by US capitalism.
So to sum up we don't really hate you we just pity you.
Let us all remember that Freedom of Speech is a two way street. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say it publicly.
This is a very important issue, and I agree with you. Recently a bunch of protesters from a nutjob religious organization started protesting near my home. They carried pictures that were both disgusting and very, very misleading. In response, I made up some signs and some friends and I went out and made them look like idiots with a counter protest. So many people enjoyed our humorous criticism of them, that counter-protesters began to appear regularly. Unfortunately, some of them did not understand the principals of free speech and went so far as to try to obscure the signs held by the religious wackos, using sheets and blankets. I've spoken to a few of them, but most don't seem to understand or care about the free speech issue at all.
I don't agree with any of the articles linked, but they should definately be allowed to say it.
Google removing these links is not a free speech issue. They are still free to publish anything they want. Google is not the government nor is it a monopoly enforced by the government. Google removing these links is no more a free speech issue than my painting over words printed on my house.
Agreed.
In Europe, there are still some old social rules that you cannot patronize certain restaurants if a member of the lower class even if you can afford to go there.
And where, specifically, would that be?
I believe those are called country clubs here in America, and gentlemen's clubs in places like Britain. I take it you aren't a member ol' chap?
I cannot see a good reason why garbage like that should appear on a major news site anyways. There's no original news on any of these sites, the original material consists only of commentaries. All I read were of dubious quality at best. Visiting the site was a complete waste of time. So - whazdabig deal? Yet another storm in a teacup, blown out of all proportion by people who seem to be angry at losing audience. If they are _that_ good, being listed on google won't matter to them anyways.
Google claims they don't edit the news, that they provide an unbiased search engine into news sites.
If they are actually "editing" their news by vetting which sites are added to their search engine, then they can be held accountable for the content of the news articles they present - I don't think they want that.
Clear, Dark Skies
Educated and/or well-paid people tend to be more liberal than conservative.
I know this is a talking point, but it's absolutely false. In fact, the more educated and well-paid people are, the tendency is that they become more conservative.
Liberals have a long history of espousing that they'll help the poor, but in reality they either don't help at all or worse, give them no way out of being poor. Worse, the really radical liberals think that people in countries that support oppressive dictators aren't worth trying to help. I mean, how weird is that? They call conservatives in this country facists, yet they turn around and support facist dictatorships. Doesn't sound too "educated" to me.
Don't give me any lines about "what about universities, they're really educated, and they're liberal". The liberals there have a base camp from which they can't be extracted because they can't be fired. They grant this same status only to people who buy into the same "group think" they do; rarely do conservatives slip past this gauntlet. Look at that kook in Colorado who's been posing as a Native American and has been proven a plagurist. The guy is a complete wack job they STILL can't get rid of him.
Yeah, real "educated".
Can you point me to some news coverage, articles, essays, anything, or is this just your bias talking? Please, enlighten me on how liberals accept gay bashing from muslims.
This is what I love about arguing with conservatives, they will just make things up in order to discredit the other side, and they will never back down or admit they lied. And idiots will believe them and parrot back the lies as if they were truth.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I complained to google news about 2 years ago about MichNews, pointing out that it wasn't news at all but an opinion blog.
When you read shit like this(which is a random article just off the front page representative of their thought), you just really have to question the sanity of not just the publishers of the site, but the readers as well. Yet nobody is stopping any of these moonbats from reading the site. They just aren't getting the free advertising that google news provides.
This complaint is what you call whining. If you think there are other sites aggragated which aren't news, you can complain to google about them. Obviously if they receive enough complaints they'll yank them.
You managed to make the right wing look like idiots while pretending to be one of them. Very subtle.
The whole business is stupid on the face of it. Like other search results, which are weighted based on their relative linkings, they ought to report the news results, and let the popularity of the sources speak for themselves. Right-thinking and right-speaking people will do the filtering. They won't link to idiots. I'm a far right-winger. I read LGF and MM almost daily. I've never heard of the sites that are being argued about here. I'm not particularly worried about what they have to say. The fact that Google feels it's incumbent upon THEM to remove them from their news crawl is telling about THEIR politics, and makes me LESS inclined to respect what they are telling me whenever they say ANYthing.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
"I'll criticise a religion which promotes homophobia (which includes Christianity by the way..."
Please define homophobia.
I ask because, to me, the definition implied by the pieces of the word wouldn't fit in that context. Therefore, your definition must be different than mine.
End of Line
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I suppose it's possible s/he was thinking of the more exclusive sort of private club. But no, it's still not a very familiar picture.
Google News is an aggregator. They have just as much right to cherry-pick their sources as you or I do.
If you want an aggregator that includes more sources, make your own. If there are enough people who agree with you and you don't eff it up, you'll make money. More power to you.
Until then, shut the eff up and stop whining. It's not possible for any action taken by Google to be "censorship". Google isn't the government and they aren't a monopoly. It's called "discretion". It's something everyone practices.
First they banned "zionazi", then people wanted "islamofascist" banned to balance things out. Too bad the didn't stick the "automated-system" excuse.. cause it only goes downhill from here.
If you go down towards the bottom there's a FAQ and they have a link for you to tell them ways to improve google news.
These sites all get recommended to them, and my guess is google doesn't actually go read the content before just putting them in the list.
Although, in honestly. The Spoof and The Onion clearly label themselves as satire, so google can report on them correctly. WND, newsmax, Michnews and such don't properly label themselves as spoofs, on the other hand, even though they are clearly not serious.
- Liberals don't give people a way out of being poor. I suppose you mean 'welfare'. Please describe the Conservative plans which would work better.
- Worse, the really radical liberals think that people in countries that support oppressive dictators aren't worth trying to help. Like where? What about all the Conservatives who love trade with China?
- hey call conservatives in this country facists, yet they turn around and support facist dictatorships. Like whom? What about all the Conservatives who love Saudi Arabia?
Replace 'universities' with 'churches' and for every 'kook in Colorado' (do you even know his name?) I'll give you a Jerry Falwel. Which one is worse?
Blar.
How about banning them for being *wrong*?
I started reading one of the articles, and saw the following:
"The liberal media report that suicides are up within the military, but they fail to report that the suicide rate within the military is less than half that of the general population."
A quick googling found the following:
"That's a suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000, Winkenwerder said. During recent peacetime years, that number for the Army has hovered around 10.5 to 11 per 100,000, Winkenwerder said."
and
"In 2003, 24 soldiers deployed to Kuwait and Iraq committed suicide -- a rate of 17.3 per 100,000. The overall Army suicide rate during the same time period was 12.8 per 100,000 soldiers. This compares to the Army's rate of 12.2 for 2003 and 11.9 from 1995 to 2002."
and several more just like them in contrast to:
"The average suicide rate in the US is about 12 per 100000."
and
"The 2001 age-adjusted rate** was 10.7/100,000 or 0.01 percent."
Jackasses.
I'm posting anonymously so i can call bullshit without being flamed.
Prove that google removed these pieces because of the political viewpoint or ideology expressed in them, and not because they are tripe that doesn't deserve to be reprinted. Go ahead, you keep making that allegation, prove it. Or at least provide some kind of reasoned argument.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nine years old would still have been excessive even then. That's pre-pubescent.
And even so, your argument seems to be that we shouldn't judge Mohammed's actions by modern standards. Fair enough. But it's a poor counterargument when the world contains a billion or so people who seem quite insistent on judging the modern world by Mohammed's standards. Well, if Mohammed's standards are supposed to apply to us today, then I think the 'paedophile' charge stands and needs a better answer.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Your argument rests on a false equivalence between the angry right and the angry left. New Media Journal said (in "How Has Islam Enriched Your Life?"): "It's an entirely new situation now that most of Europe has caved in and the influence and power of the World of Islam is growing at an alarming rate. Mainly because it is common for the men to have multiple wives, and harvest many children with each of his wives to train for martyrdom." Hey, I'm part of the angry left, and I didn't just slander/libel/stereotype the better part of a billion people as polygamist bomber breeders.
Engagement with these sorts of meritless claims of the angry right is to give them a cachet they really don't deserve. That quote betrays an inability to understand the world and a firm concentration on ideology at the expense of reality; for instance, the reality that most Muslims do not blow themselves up, but that a sizable number are pissed at the United States' unjust war of aggression (oh, I mean of stopping an imminent Iraqi attack, or was it disabling a thriving WMD program, or was it regime change or democracy promotion, or I forget, was it to fight the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here, or better yet to strike a symbolic blow at the heart of the war on terror and why do we need permanent military bases to do any of that, or was it all for the oil, or to wedge Iran, or to protect Israel).
So go ahead and call it PC, my refusal (and many like-minded people's refusals) to countenance idiotic arguments like these. I call it not casting pearls before swine.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
parent said:
m
o pagation_of_Virtue_and_the_Prevention_of_Vice
"In the Middle East, the imans or Islamic Religious rulers dictate how you live your life even to the type of clothes you wear such as jeans not being acceptable."
you said:
"The U.S. has no shortage of conservative church leaders who would be glad to tell you what type of clothes to wear, what activities you may engage in, who to associate with, and who to vote for. We even have some factions which would like to enforce their religious rules on all citizens. "
You will be interested to hear about the "The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" in saudi arabia.
These are the people who stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1874471.st
also see this wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_the_Pr
I look forward to you telling me that we in the US are just as bad.
Feh.
"Doesn't the U.S. also have private clubs which can more or less deny you access for whatever reason they like? "
Yes, but this applies to non private resturants. Actually even private clubs can get into trouble for descrimination.
"The U.S. has no shortage of conservative church leaders who would be glad to tell you what type of clothes to wear, what activities you may engage in, who to associate with, and who to vote for. We even have some factions which would like to enforce their religious rules on all citizens. "
true, but we are not arrested for wearing cloths those people don't agree with. Nor are we stoned to death or beheaded for not beliving the religion they push.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I looked at Jawa report and the first blog entry is "Kosfest--"We Hate America!"". Oh okay, the "they hate America" imbecile crowd then. But hey, nevermind that, maybe they're still a "news site", let's give them a chance and see their news, whoa, on their first page, next thing I see, they have this photo of weeping men and they request captions by saying "Caption this photo of Islamofascists realizing that Rusty was there, and they failed to kill him." http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/177712.php What bullshit. News site? Fucking bullshit. This is not a news site, this is a scum site. Scum beyond imagination.
Maybe those complaining should use a different search engine, like that of Fox News. Or is this too liberal for these groups?
Google News doesn't list The Onion! Censorship! Censorship, I yell you!!!
It seems like additional "NewsSearch" could be useful.
The difference between current search in the News and plain vanilla google (pvg) search is the former has a date stamp and News themselves are clustered together by additional (compared to pvg search) algorithms.
The same news-specific algorithms can be (may be?) applied to all sites (or at least those feeding RSS). The only qualifying thing is having a date stamp. All blogs would certainly qualify (I vaguely remember that there was already something like blog specific search announced).
It would be nice to have a list of 4500 (or so) news sources used by news.google publicly available. When I was trying to find this list couple of years ago it did not exist on the Internet.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
At least, that's according to the WorldNetDaily article, which uses the fact to accuse Google of liberal bias.
However, they're ignoring the implication that should be obvious: If Google hires some of the smartest people in the world, and basically all of them are Democrats with a liberal bias...
I suppose you could argue that being smart and voting Democrat is a gigantic coincidence. Gigantic. And I would like to read that argument.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
you should have also pointed out that he was comparing apples (listing on google news) to oranges (being indexed) and is, in fact, even dumber than the average person that uses the term "Islamofascist" to mean "Muslim".
Besides, you only need to read one sentence of each of those stories to understand the author's point.
GN needs to be MORE vigilant in keeping out the nutjobs. The idea that powerline is still listed is somewhat disturbing. And I'd say the same thing about DU.
+&x
Allowing people to keep more of what they earn, both alive and dead. It's hard to build wealth for your family if half of it is taken away simply because you died, especially when a lot of family wealth is accounted for in a business's assets rather that sacks of cash like in Scrooge McDuck's money building.
What about all the Conservatives who love trade with China?
That's hardly a monolithic conservative viewpoint. See Pat Buchanan for example. I would say that there's a difference between Darfur and China myself. One's a staggeringly awful shithole, the other's sort-of staggering in the right direction. And in the case of China, nothing's more helpful to the actual Chinese people than free trade. A war with a billion Chinamen would not be helpful.
What about all the Conservatives who love Saudi Arabia?
Who are these conservatives? I think they're few and far between if they exist at all post-9/11.
Replace 'universities' with 'churches' and for every 'kook in Colorado' (do you even know his name?) I'll give you a Jerry Falwel. Which one is worse?
I'm sorry--when did preachers get legally enforceable tenure?
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
SPLC over-hypes all trends that might increase donations.
There is indeed hate speech. There are indeed KKK, skinhead, etc. types in the world.
But not nearly as many as SPLC would have us to believe.
They are not the only organizations that need fearsome enemies, so there is a systemic bias amplifying our consciousness of tiny groups.
There are almost always much bigger problems we should by paying attention to.
Lew
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
invoking an 80% correct term for someone does not equal hyperbole. Just because a more accurate description may have been used instead doesn't mean that when i call someone a Nazi who fits most of the descriptions doesn't mean that i'm using hyperbole. Hyperbole suggests exaggeration, in calling someone a nazi many times people are not exaggerating anything because a nazi may be no worse than any of the other terms that you may have used but it IS more recognizable to the lay-person which makes it a more effective term to use.
in summary: calling someone a nazi while it may be misleading, is not hyperbole and isn't even misleading to people who don't know the difference.
So, beheading innocent people (that you know are innocent) is equivalent to detaining suspected terrroists? Detention without trial is bad, but at least they are suspected terrorists. I guess that's the real cost of the detentions. It gives the Liberals a reason to defend the terrorists and undermine the efforts to defeat them.
No, that is called news commentary. Attend a basic journalism class for a semester and you'll understand how revolting your claim is.
Please help metamoderate.
Ok. You indicate where I used the word "equivalent", or a synonym, or implied equivalence, and I'll concede your point.
Incidentally, I for one, hold governments to a higher standard of behaviour than murderers, and I'm not going to apologise for that. If we can't fight our enemies without losing the thing that differentiates us from them (a belief in the value of human life), what's the point?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Christianity promotes slavery and keeping women second-class citizens. If I have to I can dig up the New Testament verses referencing that.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I agree, and would mod you if I had points.
The first solution is to avoid - and get everyone you can to avoid - voting for major-party candidates unless they know something about the actual candidates.
But the second is to support Instant Runoff Voting whereever possible.
The two party system can only be strong when the parties can leverage:
1. The feeling that voting for a non-major candidate is "wasting" your vote.
2. the fact that two people running from their party (or even with similar positions) will inevitably give the race to the opponent.
These are true in our current simple general elections, but it isn't true with IRV at all. With IRV a third-party candidate has no artificial barriers to people who just LIKE them voting for them first and their major-party-of-choice second without impacting their major candidate at all. This takes out all the _inherent_ advantage of the major parties. (But not the _inertial_ advantage; they still have lots of money and power.)
Any major change like this can only happen locally - so get your local politicians to adopt IRV!
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
too bad anyone pointing out facts about islam that aren't favorably is labeled Islamophobic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is not cencorship. Google, as a private corporation, has the right to edit the information it presents. It has no obligation, whatsoever, to be balanced or fair. It can link to whatever it wants. Part of freedom of speech is exercising editorial control. Freedom of speech isn't just being able to say whatever you want, but to also not say what you don't want to say.
On the other hand, if it is true (I am not saying that it is true... I am not that familiar with Google News) that left wing bigotry and racism are tolerated while right wing bigotry and racism isn't, that would clearly be a double standard. While Google has the legal right to present any information they want, in any way they want, they do have an ethical obligation not to slant the news presented to be of any one viewpoint.
At the least, Google should publish an objective set of criteria that is used to evaluate if a news source is "acceptable" or "not", and keep the whole process transparent.
Google has announced new changes in their administration since their partnering with China. Thanks for the billion dollars Big Red!!!
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
just for the record we have restaurants exactly like this in the U.S.
Oh, I forgot: You're a Liberal. Words, and speech can be twisted to mean whatever you want them to mean.
The purpose of your statement was to declare equivalency. Show me where I used the word "pinhead" in my first statement. I didn't. But, it's clearly implied.
> what's the point?
Not being brutally murdered! Not having innocent people murdered. That's the point. You Liberals see this war only in the abstract. You think your childish wordplay has an affect on the terrorists. They terrorists want to kill you! I don't care if they're not "official". They must be stopped.
You (Liberals) need to pull your head out of your (collective) ass and see that the enemy with the gun pointed at your head is the high priority.
3) They've been kicked from a news site because they're not news sites, but hate sites.
here lemme just fix that up for you...
3) They've been kicked from a news site because they're not news sites, but opinion sites.
i read the damn articles. they are obvious right-wing opinion pieces. there was no "hate speech" there, there was no racial slurs, there was no suggestion of "they aren't human" or "let's round em' up". there was a lot of "i'm against their ideals, and they should be punished for their violence."
Since when is a right-wing opinion analogous to "hate speech"??
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
I've got two problems with Google's censorship here. The first is that people don't just use Google for "news", but for research of various kinds. That means that they need to find whatever is out there. If you want to understand political attitudes, for example, you certainly need to know the positions and arguments of those with whom you may disagree violently. As a left-wing secular Jew I have not the slightest sympathy for Nazism, but I have read Mein Kampf and think that it should be widely available, precisely so that people can understand the evil of Nazism and how the Nazis rose to power. Similarly, anyone trying to understand such topics as the relationship between the West and the Muslim world or American views on foreign policy needs to look at web sites offering the full range of views, even if some of them are considered by most people to be vile.
The second problem is that Google evidently has an overly broad notion of hate speech, as do many /-ers. True hate speech falsely vilifies a group of people and urges violence or discrimination against them. Criticism of a movement or ideology is not hate speech. Islam is an ideology with both religious and political elements, and it is also a movement (or if you like collection of movements), and it is legitimately subject to criticism just like any other religion or political movement. If it is legitimate to condemn Communism, Neo-Conservatism, Nazism, or right-wing Christian fundamentalism, why is not legitimate to condemn Islam?
One can argue about the accuracy of some of the material in the allegedly objectionable posts - I, for example, wonder about the accuracy of the claims that Mohammed slept with nine=year old girls and had 20 wives - but much of what they say is quite true. In its mainstream forms, Islam is an expansionist movement, it is intolerant of other religions and atheism, it is exclusive, it does advocate theocracy, it does consider the use of force to conquer territory for Islam justifiable, it is oppressive of women, etc. It is by no means the only religion with such properties (Christianity in the forms dominant in the 15th century, for example, had very similar faults), but it is not false and defamatory to raise these issues. We need to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Islam and other ideologies and movements, and deliberate or reckless demonization of particular ethnic groups or followers of an ideology and advocacy of violence against them.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Is it really tacky of me to smile at the nightly scenes on TV showing Arab, Afghani and Pakistani Muslims bombing mosques and killing their Muslim brothers, sisters and children at a brisk pace because that's all they know how to do?
You believe someone saying an entire religion is incapable of doing anything but killing is not hate speech?
Interesting. Where can I subscribe to your newsletter?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What a coward. Be a man and stand behind what you say and do.
Read what I said. Tell me what I backed down on?
Be a sentient being, and don't slag me off for failing to fit your cretinous stereotype.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Words are confusing enough as it is.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
true, but we are not arrested for wearing cloths those people don't agree with. Nor are we stoned to death or beheaded for not beliving the religion they push.
true, and the reason that we are not is because we have a government in place that protects us from that type of action not because our religious fanatics wouldn't be happy to do so if they were able to grab up as much power as the middle-eastern fanatics have, keep in mind that christians used to do this same type of thing when they held more power over the government (ever heard of the inquisition?)
Just a few Pointers: there are Many More
This first cite predates 911:
From LA Times Paid Archives:
Christian Science Momitor - Original URL still active
Care to Proffer Counter Citations? I am awaiting them...
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Before dismissing the complaints of those that speak out against Islam you should perhaps read a few sura from the Qur'an or the Hadiths of Mohammed. Understand that it is taken as the word of Allah, and in addition to religious belief, it is a divinely dictated social and political framework for life, essentially the Sharia (Islamic Law). To be a good Muslim you *must* live by the word of Allah, and by not doing so e.g. living a western lifestyle, apostacy, marrying a dhimmi (non Muslim), or breaking anything else dictated by the Qu'ran or Hadiths makes you a bad Muslim. Thus to follow democracy and the rule of law in a non Islamic state is also impossible for a faithful muslim because it contradicts the word of God in Sharia.
Consider that the following sura, 9:29
"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold forbidden that which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
It is a call for Muslims to fight anyone who is not a Muslim, which is essentially the entire non Muslim world, regardless of whether they are people of the book (Christians, Jews) to create a global Islamic caphilate. The enemy will either die resisting jihad (the struggle) or surrender at which point they have the option of being killed, converting to Islam or paying the Jizyah, a tax by Muslims on non Muslims. Those paying this tax are called dhimmi and are effectively 2nd class citizens, who must live under countless restrictions.
With that in mind, look at every conflict in the world and you will find that nearly all are specifically between Muslims and non Muslims e.g. ethnic cleansing of non Muslims by the government backed Janjaweed in Sudan, killing of non muslims in South Indonesia, increasing ethnic Malaysian suppression of non muslims, Chechnya pushing for independence to form an Islamic state, suppression of Coptics in Egypt by the Islamically led government, suppression of non Muslim persians in Iran.
The liberal immigration policies and welfare in Europe have encouraged mass immigration from south asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, etc) and numerous African countries have brought muslims and non muslims alike, but the key difference across every country in Europe is that while all other immigrants assimilate and follow the laws of the land, Muslims are creating a society within a society, refusing to integrate, while all the time pushing to change the laws of their host (their word not mine) nations to make endless concessions e.g. Islamic banks in Britain, demands for the use of Sharia law in cases between Muslims in Britain, France and other countries rather than the law of those lands, appeasement to the Muslim prison population that toilets be altered so that they don't face Mecca, state funding for faith schools, etc. The list goes on forever.
When they doesn't happen they scream racism and persecution at the hands of their western oppressors. Yet those that try to appease them get nowhere either because of double talk. Those that denounce 7/7 and 9/11 to non Muslims will praise them in Mosque sermons, and when pressed on accusations of doing so will do anything not to answer the question. Here's a very good example which should make any decent person angry.
This lack of integration has caused a rift between the original and assimilated populace and the Islamic slums that is on the verge of exploding, hence the current backlash and rise of nationalist parties within Europe. It is a case of peaceful invasion, using asylum, legal immigration and welfare of the host to reproduce at levels far exceeding those of Europeans, in effect outbreeding the original populace over a period of decades until the Muslim population reaches the tipping point required for forceful change. It is at that point over. Read about the
"which political party in the US supports a woman's right to her own body?" I was unaware that a fetus was a part of a woman's body. DNA doesn't match for sure. The party supporting abortion cares only about one half the combination, the one with a vote. No compassion there, just cold, hard calculation.
You didn't back down. You just weasled out of what you said. In typical Liberal fashion I might add. Your mind tricks have no effect on me. You speak. You take sides. Stand by what you say. Your statements pick sides. Which side are you on? There are two: the terrorists, and the West. You don't get to be opposed to the West's war on terrorism and not support the terrorists. Although, I'm sure you'll argue that point with Typical Liberal "nuance". Those are the two choices in this fight. You don't get to manufacture choices that you wish were there. They aren't there. Critisizing the West _does_ provide aid and comfort to the enemy. And, make no mistake, they are the enemy. More innocent people will die because of it. Maybe not from your single voice, but from the resultant choir of Liberal bullshit. The terrorists want to kill you. They express that without nuance. You are either working toward elliminating that threat or you are supporting it. Take your fancy words that argue to the contrary and shove them.
First - thank you for you comment, it's one of the most thoughtful replies I've had.
So Google won't link to the newmediajournal.us as a news website, but they will link to socialist worker.org?
I don't believe google news does link to socialistworker.org. I can't find anything from them searching news source:socialistworker.org - if I just search for socialistworker.org, there is only one result - for a different site.
Do you think this means that google news is cutting off non-news blogs that parade as news fairly?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
This is blatant censorship of conservative ideas. They still link to the Huffington Post which is one of the most offensive "news" sites I've ever run across.
"Politicians always tell the truth, when they're calling each other liars."
q=Hillary+Clinton:
q=Tom+DeLay:
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Yet more evidence that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?
The difference between calling illegal immigrants "illegal immigrants" and just plain old "immigrants" is negligible, especially because there were more than just illegals in the protests, and it was more than just the rights of the illegals that were at stake. Regular, ol' fashioned immigrants were fighting for their rights as well.
Wrong! The difference between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants is not negligible and the marches going on really aren't about rights for legal immigrants. Check out immigrantsolidarity.com and you'll see many statements about what these marches are about.
The immigration system is messed up but they are against reforming the system and they are against any legislation that fixes the system or that makes it harder for illegals.
If they are coming across legally, troops on the border doesn't affect them from an immigration point of view. It may be a poor direction of resources, but that is not an immigration issue. Troops on the border, from an immigration standpoint, only affects people coming across illegally.
Guess what? If you are here legally you have nothing to fear. They can't make "being an immigrant" a crime, but they can make "being here illegally" a crime.
Again, how would they "crack down" on people who are here legally?
So we shouldn't provide a legal way to come here and work, thus preserving the jobs of illegals?
Can you even spin that into a "this is for legal immigrants" argument? Undocumented = Illegal.
Anyone can be reunified if they do it legally. Should we also lobby for "Yes to federal prisoner family reunification" for all criminals?
The path is humane, but it is not easy. That is part of the reality of moving to a new country.
Living wages are granted to all legal workers. It's called "Minimum Wage". If you do not come into this country legally you are not entitled to the privileges that legal citizens enjoy. And if you want to be paid more than minimum wage, learn English and learn a trade.
The problem with the marches and protests is that they really want the same privileges afforded to illegal immigrants as are afforded to legal immigrants and citizens. Simply put, people who are here illegally do not deserve such privileges. The protesters like to portray themselves as civil rights activists but this isn't about civil rights. Black people not allowed to use a "white" water fountain strictly based on the color of their skin was a human rights violation. People breaking laws and then being worried about the consequences is not a human rights violation.
that was sarcasm right?
"our concern is great for things like our children's future" and yet, somehow, you're "not as concerned with global warming".
And how concerned can you be about "our country's continuing guiding light in freedom and democracy" if you don't care about "the plight of the poor insurgents"?
But if you want to talk about strange attractions:
General Taguba's Non-Classified Part of his Abu Ghraib abuse report given to the Senate listed the following abuses, amongst many others:
Yet after this testimony had been given, Senator Inhofe (R-OK) stated on the Senate Floor, for the record:
This reprehensible piece of unAmericanism is still published on the Senate Republicans' Official Website.
So with the new marriage law vote set for June 6, contemplate this bit of republicanism; it is a horrible sin for two guys to fall in love and play each others butt bongos, but the Republican Senators are so down with the use of sodomy with a foreign object as a interrogatory methodology that they allow Inhofe's ugly remarks to be served from their collective website.
This message has been sposored by:
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are registered trademarks of the RNC, and are protected by
the RIAA, DMCA, MPAA, DoJ, SCOTUS. Don't even think about it,
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Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Why do people get their panties twisted everytime Google does something with their own property. Call me when Google becomes a monopoly and is degrading the rights of people around the world. Until then, let Google be.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
no, its not. you must have a pretty broad definition of what constitutes hate speech dude. you want to see what hate speech is? How about you read oh, ANYTHING that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has to say about Israel? THAT's hate speech. Hate speech encourages violence, or dehumanization of some group of people.
What that IS, is a generalization about a large group of people, whether unsubstantiated or not, but it is most certainly NOT "hate speech".
This is analogous more to saying "white men can't jump", or "men don't understand romance".
Its nowhere near the domain, not even on the same continent with hate speech.
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
The very term "Hate Speech" embodies the hypocrisy and intellectual bankruptcy of the left.
The very essence of the concept of Freedom of Speech is that all speech, whether you agree or not, is valid. That's why the KKK can hold rallies and spout racist crap and why "Peace activists" and the like can call member of our armed forces child killers and animals.
The Left, however, would prohibit speech they disagree with by simply labeling it "Hate Speech". At the same time the Left goes into hysterics because the Bush Administration wants to control its official message by reviewing official science press releases, they have no problem with Google censoring on behalf of China and now apparently Muslim radicals.
The Left is closed minded, tries to stifle speech it doesn't agree with, and even tries to stifle dissent from amount it's own ranks. There is no better example than Slashdot. Just peruse this discussion and note how many opinions that would be considered right of center are modded down to trolls or Flamebait. Also note the number if posts that are clearly leftist flamebait that are modded to "Insightful".
Joseph Farah-fuck, neocon tool and republican party agent, has no business being a "journalist" when he is a bought and paid for yellow journalist hack. Who does this guy thinks he is when his web site is nothing BUT propaganda while bitching about google. Google and the Chinese communists are saints compared to this assorted trash. Yes that was a rant and karma killer but it needed to be said. Fuck the NWO/Republican Party.
If you don't like what the Times includes or excludes, then buy the Post. If you don't like the fact that Google News doesn't carry posts from MyBiasedBlog.com, then become a customer of someone else's news accumulator.
I know that Google censors certain results, usually to avoid lawsuits or because of DMCA takedown notices, but something interesting happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
... "- did not match any documents."
... "- did not match any documents."
I wanted to find a quote that I had heard years ago. It ran along the line of "Imagine a million screaming Mexicans running across the border with one thing on their minds: kill an American." (I know it sounds inflamitory. The quote was supposedly a threat made by an "Aztlan" type of activist.)
So I did the obvious - I googled it. I submitted the terms "screaming mexicans" and "kill an american" (or close variations on those phrases). I got around eight pages of results.
I scanned the first page and didn't see what I wanted. Go to the second page. Still not what I want. Click to the third page. "Your search -"
What? Back up using the browser "back" button. Yep, 8 pages of results.
So on a whim, I simply resubmit the search to start from the beginning (I figured maybe I hit it in the middle of a index update or something). "Your search -"
For the rest of the day, those two terms would not yield any result.
It made me wonder if Google is checking for inflamitory search arguments and flagging them for examination by an operator, who can simply disable results for given parameters.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
...all the MSM sources who are more than happy to report as factual "news" ANYTHING the government propoganda spinmeisters say about critical events. Any. Thing.
I'd like to see a lot more of the MSM sources yell out PROVE IT whenever the government declares such and such is "true facts" and not let them hide behind that catch a-all phrase "national security" and "unnamed sources" and like that. It's well past time to consider that stuff BS as a default.. When they announced "we have clear overwhelming evidence that Iraq is hiding WMD" and they were going to be using "unmanned sophisticated aerial drones to attack the US" and all that other crapola, and similar such like, the stuff they faked out congress and the US people and the UN folks with, the stuff to go to actual *war* on, they offered no proof, just their statements and allusions, and the MSM that google indexes pretty much all fell in lockstep as reporting these tidbits as "fact". How about the government "fat" bin laden tape, remember that one with the pudgy actor in the ay-rab costume? They all reported that as "fact" when it was an obvious phony psyops effort. It was ludicrous. How about the CIA TWA 800 "explanation", that little cartoon they all pushed that defied physics and fell squarely into the beyond junk science realm? I mean this goes so far back I can't remember when it wasn't this way. How about the false "gulf of tonkin" multiple attacks? YEARS later McNamara admits it was "massaged" severely, but it did no good at the time to have the media offer it as "fact" and take their word on it. How about agent orange when they swore up and down it was harmless, but years later it came out they absolutely knew it wasn't harmless, yet the MSM back then all reported it as "scientific data".
It does no good if after the fact of this "news" reporting there are "corrections", when critical votes are at stake shortly in some election or bill considerations and national policies are being set based on delibarately promoted and known falsehoods being pushed as "news". And the news media that is still indexed by google continues to follow this same pattern (generally speaking, of course there are some smaller exceptions). Let the "news" sources start saying "alleged" more, ESPECIALLY when it comes to government statements, from the US government or any other government for that matter, and I would have more respect for them and also google.
It is actually well-documented that Mohammed had sex with a 9-year old. The New Media article may have been inaccurate in parts or rabble-rousing, but it was quite correct about Mohammed having been a pedofile.
h tm (yes, I know it is an Islam-bashing site. But it uses straightforward evidence from islamic scriptures to present the case - it really can't be interpreted any other way).
Documentation backing this is at http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/ayesha.
Yeah the ol' 'estate tax' eh? That's what has been keeping our poor people poor all these years? Come on now.
I'll take your points on China and Saudi, mainly because mine were weak to begin with.
But when Churches give up their right to not pay taxes...then I'll concede the fourth one.
Blar.
I've not heard such double-speak in a while, and so ineffective. No one is buying the bullshit, not Americans, not Google, not Rex Banner, not anyone.
Considering that Islam is one of the most popular and most fractured religions in the world, can you tell me how anyone can speak critically and frankly about the religion as whole? The only way it works is through stereotyping, assumptions, and straw men.
If you would like to speak critically about Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaida, the government of Saudi Arabia, the President of Iran, etc., be my guest. I will read happily. But that's not really about Islam is it? That is about specific people and groups. Once you try to extend your thoughts to encompass all of Islam as a whole--that's when the cross the line into hate speech. It would be like me being "critical and frank" about the religion of Christianity based on the predilection of certain Catholic priests for young boys. That's a foul ball and so is the crap that Google pulled.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Wow I just read Arlene Peck's "How Has Islam Changed Your Life" article that was linked via Slashdot, and...
.. I guess I shouldn't be surprised... at least the article sparks "dialogue". Hah!
Wow.
Is this an educated individual? I couldn't believe the level of ignorance and blind, privileged hatred displayed in that rant.
I sent an email in response, pointing out the irony of her "narrative", in that she manages to come across as a radical, bigoted, hate-filled, bomb-hungry, uncivilized savage, just as she complains the Muslims are that she hates so much. I got a scathing pretentious reply
> ..we in the US are just as bad.
Great, then we kill N-1 [some random ethinic/religious group] and we're ok?
Feh, indeed.
Ah this explains why you hold to arrguments without attribution.
David Horowitz is a hypocrital unrepentant self-admitted American traitor.
Read Davey's own confession.
He willfully divulged classified American Intelligence, not for a higher purpose such as stopping an immoral war, but to just hurt America, and his release of information materially aided two foreign governments, one the USSR. He also committed conspiracy. That is irrelevant since the statute of limitations has run out, but there is no statute of limitations for treason, and this his was a public confession.
And he always seems to be whinning about Fonda. this is what is known as Moral relativism, something the right has always claimed only happens on the left, but it seems that it just travelled over to the other side of the political bipolarity with the people who always played that immoral game, trotskyites and new lefties.
Horowitz is a typical Contemporary Conservative, who thinks responsibility is for everybody but themselves.
His rationalisation for political polarity switch is classic. Well past the time that anybody in their right mind still considered to Black Panthers to be political, after it had become public knowledge that they had become an ongoing criminal enterprise, Horowitz got a friend of his a job with them. The friend was murdered, but David, being what he's always been, a neoposeur, refused to accept personal responsibility in this death, and instead blames the "left", how lame, how positively dialectic of the Maoist.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Hyperbole suggests exaggeration
Yes, so if you label someone with a container they only fill 80%, then your label is 20% hyperbole.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Mat Drudge has his radio show every Sunday night. As a loyal listener to his program, I've often heard Matt rant and rave how Google has been unfair to him. In fact, he's even been outspoken about the whole Google/China fiasco many times. Basically what it boils down to is this... Matt has been black listed by Google. If not i'm not mistaken, it's due to some very personal exchanges between the Google founders and Matt himself. If it's THAT personal, don't expect resolution between these two rivals anytime soon.
Life is not for the lazy.
Keep your hands of our queers muslims.
Without them, how will we know how to dress ourselves, shave, apply "product", and cook hors d' oeuvres? Damn it, we geeks need gays more than most straight men!
Seriously, we need a "Queer Eye for the Muslim Guy." Then they will understand the valuable service homosexuals provide.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What if Google included objectionable content but starred it, indicating: "complaints have been filed suggesting this content contains objectionable material"? It could be based on a threshold system: min. 20 complaints (or varying levels of categorization). If people are searching for the controvercial, they can find it. If they aren't, then they can't blame google for not telling them.
Google has no responsibility to be "unbiased", just like any other company. Companies are profit maximizing agents and will make decisions based largely on that principle. If people do not like what google does, they have no obligation to consume their services.
However, it is unfortunate that the American media in general claim a standard of unbias. The mere order of presentation of facts imposes a bias of a kind, and it is the complacency it inculcates--that I am getting the "whole story" because I've checked the Post, or the NY Times, or FOX News, or even NPR--that has the most insidious effect.
In the UK people know what they are reading. The Guardian and the Times and the Independent make no secret of their bias and, while this is frustrating, the reader is always aware of the missing side of the story. What seems the best policy is to err on the side of ignorance, knowing full well that no issue can ever be presented in an unbiased way, and that there is always more to learn about an issue.
that's not an accurate description of what i said.
m l
n try/hyperbole
If someone agrees to 80% of the views of a Nazi but disagrees w/ 20% then labeling them a Nazi is NOT hyperbole because no one fits any descriptive phrase 100% there are too many specifics that figure into that phrase. By your line of logic everything that is ever said is Hyperbole, the question is if a reasonable person can see how two things could be likened to one-another then doing so is not hyperbole. If i were to make the statement that Kittens are Satan then THAT would be Hyperbole because it's an obvious exaggeration which is the definition of Hyperbole, if it's not an obvious exaggeration then it's not hyperbole. The fact that we are arguing over whether or not the comparison is accurate means that it is by definition...NOT.....waaait for iiiiit.....HYPERBOLE! YAAAAAAAY!
here are a few links to check out before you use that term again i've added multiple in the spirit of variety in case you don't trust one or the other:
http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/hyperbole.ht
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole
and before you even TRY to point out that one of the sites mentions the use of Hyperbole to make a story sound more important than it is look at the example which equates a boxing matches decision to the "crime of the century"
oh yah and lastly. Hyperbole doesn't exist in percentages to say that something is "20% Hyperbole" is only accurate if 20% of the words in a statement exist within the Hyperbole as Hyperbole itself is a literary term describing a specific statement, NOT describing an authors intent or accuracy. word to the wise kids. don't use big words that you don't really understand in order to seem cool we can deal with you using your native language of leetspeak if it will make your word choice less shaky.
Google is right to do as they are doing, AS LONG AS THEY DO THE SAME FOR OTHER RELIGIONS. If they also censor out links to anti-Jewish, or anti-Christian, or anti-Mormon or whatever news items, the fine. If only Moslems get that filtering service, Google is totally wrong.
true, but we are not arrested for wearing cloths[sic] those people don't agree with.
Hahahahaha! Sometimes the truth is so accepted people don't even see it. Put on just a cock ring and go walking down the street. I bet you get arrested. Why is that? Does your near-nakedness harm anyone? Nope, it just violates religious taboos... the same one as the muslims have in fact, just enforced at a different level. The pot just called the kettle black, indeed.
Nor are we stoned to death or beheaded for not beliving the religion they push.
People are stoned to death, castrated, beaten, shot, blown up, stabbed, etc. for not obeying christian beliefs in the US. Try being a homosexual in Kentucky, or a hindi in rural Mississippi.
Now I'm not saying religious persecution is as bad in the US as it is in some predominantly Muslim countries, but it certainly has been in the past and in many primarily muslim countries it was much less in the past. This sort of thing fluctuates with cultural changes and world events. If the southeastern US had just been bombed to hell and back, then conquered by a predominantly Muslim army, you'd see a drastic increase in nationalism and christian hate crimes here.
Yummy!
That's still an editorial decision about what is or isn't news, and it's clear to me that Google is making some pretty questionable decisions on that front.
For example, the Bisexual Resource Center news page was turned down for inclusion in Google News. Why? It looks clearly like news and not comment to me, and it has a pagerank of 7 so it's not as if it's some obscure blog. They include sites with lower pagerank, like pinknews.co.uk which has a pagerank of 4, so frankly the decision is highly questionable.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
the question is if a reasonable person can see how two things could be likened to one-another then doing so is not hyperbole.
I agree, but it should be obvious that by my original comment I meant that I see no reasonability in the vast majority (apply your own percentage; I wasn't intending this to be a math thread) of "he/she's a Nazi" diatribes that seem to be omnipresent in our public discourse.
ou want to see what hate speech is? How about you read oh, ANYTHING that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has to say about Israel? THAT's hate speech. Hate speech encourages violence, or dehumanization of some group of people.
And you see nothing at all on the delisted sites that dehumanizes Muslims, as a group? No calls to "Nuke Mecca" or anything like that?
On second reading during preview, I'm not sure if you're being serious.. but I'll submit the following nonetheless.
You really don't get it. If I were to have a blog about my bowel movements, that would be a news site, although completely uninteresting. If I were to write "I think there should be world peace" and other myopic nonsense like that, that would not be news. Somebody reporting on me saying that - that would again be news.. because it's a fact outside of the reporter's own head. Of course, it would be more interesting if I were a notable person to the general public.
To run around and whine about conservatives not being heard is in my opinion silly. There are plenty of conservatives making themselves heard all over the place. Many do it much more eloquently than you, but more important they are more interesting because they link their arguments to facts in the world. I'm not sure whether conservativism includes rejoicing at the pains of people halfway across the world and provoking for the sake of provoking. What I am sure of is that a well thought-out argument based on facts and personal or institutional principles is much more interesting than verbal wankings-off. Therefore, I'm glad google pulls these blogs from their news aggregation as it improves the signal to noise ratio.
Thank you for your attention.
Answer hate speech with more speech taking down the racists arguments with rational discourse, how hard is that? Why does everyone always jump on censorship as the answer?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
You don't have to look far to find comments by Ward "little Eichmanns" Churchill.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
I suppose that some of this is because in the US, the truth is defense against libel. In the UK, it is not.
- "Piss Christ"
- The elephant-dung Madonna.
- Hateful characterizations of all people who do not practice Wahhabi Islam
I think the Christians include plenty of nutters (people who murder doctors for serving a willing clientele, and those who support them, are way off the scale) but I've never heard of a protest which resulted in the protestors killing each other. You can find Muslims drawing Christians as pigs and Ariel Sharon eating babies all the time (though Sharon has become a less popular subject after his stroke). This not only does not cause violent protests, it passes almost without notice.I find it very ironic that every point you raised as a hypothetical already has evidence which supports the case that Islamic societies (and probably Islam itself) are inherently barbaric even compared to the worst the USA has to offer.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the sites in question were just removed from Google News, not Googles general search? So all they did was refuse to label the sites as "news", which after skimming the three linked articles I would have to agree that they are not.
I must admit I've never looked at Google News until today, so if it really is all opinion then I guess these sites have as much right to say what they will as anyone else. If Google chooses to ban them because it's hate speech (unquestionably), that's Google's choice although I can't say I agree with it.
Is it relevent that I actually found this slashdot thread on google news?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I look forward to you telling me that we in the US are just as bad.
I was aware of the story you present. I agree it is terrible.
Perhaps you will remember the Branch Davidians? Now, in my experience, an armed standoff with the U.S. government tends to end one of two ways, surrender or death. In light of that, the Branch Davidians first used their children as human shields in hopes of forcing a third possible outcome, and in the end allowed their children to be burned alive in support of their religeous and political beliefs. And really, the idea of sacrificing your children in support of your faith is something which is common to Christianity and Islam going back to Abraham. I'm sure both the Davidians and "The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" felt they were following the will of God. And I'm certain I could come up with Muslims and Christians who would say that they were not.
You can find American Christian sects which advocate all sorts of crazy things. Go do some research on dominion theology. Go do some research on Aryan Nations. You will find that there are Christian groups which sound very similar to radical Islamic groups.
My point was not really that "we" are as bad as "them". I was mainly attempting to show that the original poster's assertions did not support his conclusions. It is generally difficult to make broad generalizations about groups as large as Europeans or Muslims which do not end up being true for humanity as a whole.
The original poster said: "In the Middle East, the imans or Islamic Religious rulers dictate how you live your life even to the type of clothes you wear such as jeans not being acceptable."
Israel is in the Middle East. There are Jewish sects where the type of clothes you wear are dictated by religious leaders. In the U.S., there are Christian sects which dictate the type of clothes their followers can wear. Does this mean that Israel, the Hasidim, and the Amish hate America for the freedom afforded the common man? Does this sound like valid reasoning to you?
Let's see...
Those who leave are supposed to be killed.
That seals it IMHO. It's a cult if you can't leave without
getting killed. If that's not cult-like, then what is?
Do you object to the term "cult" ever being used? If there
is a place to use it, this is it.
We don't even need to get into the matter of getting
50 virgins PLUS your wife when you go to Heaven, and
how she or the virgins might feel about that...
Yes, but this applies to non private resturants. Actually even private clubs can get into trouble for descrimination.
Can you cite some examples of state funded restaurants in Europe which exclude people based on class? I imagine there could be some given the legacy of royalty and such, but is this really the result of anything Liberal or Left-Wing, or of conservatives supporting the tradition of monarchy? The original post was suggesting that these restaurants in Europe are evidence of Liberal elitism. Perhaps if someone provided examples it would be more clear.
As for private clubs running afoul of anti-descrimination laws, does that not also happen in Europe? Are the clubs or the laws the results of liberals? Which are more elitist?
but maybe you're not a reasonable person...that would make your opinion of whether or not these statements are accurate null and void :)
okay sorry...now i'm just fuckin' with you
This is a pretty classic example of the type of behavior I've been seeing, both from blogs that represent an extremist viewpoint, and from Google. From Google's angle... like it or not, Google is growing up. They are no longer the idealistic "anything goes" company of the dot.com days. I imagine, in some respects, that there is a legitimate concern among some towards promoting anything that could legally get them in trouble in the future -- including stuff possibly perceived as "hate sites". In this respect, Google appears to be heading towards your typical company -- often overparanoid to a fault. What some might see as "PC" may be, in fact, "CYA" -- a desire not to get sued. So, if enough people complain about being offended, they may make a business decision to remove an offensive site from their news index. That's business after all, in its own way. Is this wrong? I'll let the marketplace decide that. If some news media organization can do better than Google by including your New Media Journals, they are welcome to start. Actually, the opposite seems true -- from all I've heard, Yahoo's editor-selected news pages (which exclude a lot more blogger-news than Google) get well more hits than Google's algorithmic selected stories. Maybe Google feels that the links to heavily opinionated, often unreliable, possibly racist sources hurts them from a business perspective. You tell me. Now, the "censorship" complaints... Part of the appeal of the alternative opinion IMHO is that it is underground. For those with heavy-left or heavy-right viewpoints, there seems to be a legitimate desire to be an "alternative" to what is perceived as standard media. Thus both the extreme left wing and extreme right wing really push the fact that they are being censored all the time, and that you are lucky to get this "true news" that often is extremely slanted bogus information, and that Big Evil Corporate Media is against them. Reality is, usually these types are pushing an opinion that the vast majority of people would disagree with if they have all the information. Even WorldNetDaily's post-apocalyptic, somewhat xenophobic Christian perspective does not fit anything close to the opinion of the majority. Let alone NMJ's heavily-emotion based xenophobic, paranoid stance. These folks are a niche market, and like any niche market they want to feel "special". Personally, I think these complaints are something akin to a special interest group whine. Islam as a religion has some problems for certain, but the blanket condemnation -- and overt racism -- by New Media Journal is ridiculous. All you need to do is travel some, and you'll never become the type of xenophobe that reads stuff like this. Heck, even meeting a single person of the Islam faith (or for that matter, Mexicans, the latest complaint of this bunch, or anyone not of your own race) will change your opinion. If you have an open mind. (Some people don't -- they prefer to blame their own personal problems on anything foreign.) I do not believe in censorship of the paranoid xenophobes. IMHO xenophobia thrives on censorship and oppression by "the government" in order to live. In a country like America, which is more lax than some nations on this sort of stuff, xenophobia has to get by with "vast left-wing conspiracies" and Big Media complaints and the like. Most American xenophobes don't realize how ridiculous they sound. As easy as it is to make fun of America's xenophobes, European xenophobes -- living in a place with harsher censorship laws in this regard -- have done a lot better politically in the last ten years, and I think the overly-nanny laws have helped fuel this. Here in America, decrying Google is what it has come down to for these types. Google is a corporation, it makes business decisions. If you don't like Google's business decisions, well, this is America. Start your own damn news search engine.
"Conservatism and Islamophobia have nothing in common."
Except of course that islamophobia is very fashionable in conservative circles just like homophobia is and racism used to be.
evil is as evil does
Well Said,
First of all, I'm an Aussie (for all you yanks we pronounce it "Ozzy" as in Ozzy Ozzborne).
I don't hate American's I don't pity American's and by American's I mean American people. Most of the yanks I have met have been quiet personable, maybe they are a little loud but having a vocal friend comes in handy at a crowded pub. I have yet to meet a yank I don't like, for the most part you are a polite people if sometimes a little outspoken but you are polite about that.
I do pity anyone living in the American state. A regime that is sometimes more corrupt and self serving than most dictatorships. Now don't take this as an attack on democracy or American ideals which for the most part are very noble ideals (freedom, free speech, liberalism (see European definition)). But even the noblest of ideals are easily corrupted by greedy and selfish people. Your government (even our government to a degree) has become consumed with increasing its own use and more interested in its own survival. The government has started working for the government and when that happens it stops working for the people. If GWB's opinion is so low then why has he not been impeached? Has he not broken enough laws or are people just too afraid.
Now not be rude or to attack anyone but I am glad I don't live in America.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Now tell me how I "weasled out" of it.
You invent meanings that simply aren't there and then accuse me of backing down on those opinions. That's completely fucking retarded. You're accusing me of being a weasle, because your bigotry and stereotyping won't allow you to see past your completely incorrect first impression, and actually read the words I write, or your chronic stupidity and social maladjustment, simply won't allow you to admit you made an incorrect inference.
You, Sir, are a fucking moron, a partisan hack, you don't listen. And you're possibly the least intellectually honest person I've ever had the great, great misfortune to converse with.
Oh, and you're really, really brave sat behind a computer, wheras in fact you're just another cowardly college kid. Go fuck yourself, I'm through here.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Yes. It was supposed to be funny.
Pity the mods thought it was flamebait.
John.
The point raised is that Google had in fact chosen these particular sources as news and then rescinded that choice because of alleged "hate speech". This is an editorial decision based on content. One of those things that if say it happened to silence a site that was promoting direct action to stop global warming would have people here screaming CENSORSHIP!!! so fast your head would spin.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
You oppose torture, because if allowed, it might lead to your own offsprings' torture? Did your ethics development end before you became a teen? This speaks to the immorality, and the willful disregard of the Dreamtime America that has affected Contemporary Conservatism, at its core.
There was once a time in America, when Conservatives had honour. This was when they truly valued liberty, and would sacrifice any and all available political capital for its defense. Even in disagreement, a honest and honourable person held Conservatives in high regards, because they were unafraid to hold to their positions, even in times of adversity. They were immutable.
This was a long time ago.
Now, Contemporary Conservatives defend two-bit political whores from SE Texas with the defense of an eight year old:
These preachers of the righteousness of Original Intent, have now gone so far as to strip the rights of humans away, positing that they are not natural rights at all, but gifts of a generous state to its citizenry.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Please cite for me one, and I repeat for emphasis, just one act of terrorism that has been attributed to Hizb ut-Tahrir, but one stipulation first: any claims made by former Bush ally, Islam 'butcher of Andijon' Karimov, or his kleptocratic regime, Uzbekistan, doesn't count.
Even The Nixon Center's Cent.Asia wonk, Zeyno Baran, who I consider to be one of the most knowledgeable tankers regarding them, admits they aren't violent, even though he offers many valid cautions:
I am always interested in data about Hizb ut-Tahrir, please give up citations to the literature which led you to believe that Hizb ut-Tahrir is dangerously radical.
(i cited a Nixon realist to counter trotskyite dialectic from neoconservatives. i am going out of my mind...)
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
yeah i have to say though...it was hard to tell...there are some jackasses on here who probably seriously believe stuff like that.
Well the editor, Frank Salvato, seems to be a content thief. The flying pig logo he uses on his "The Fifth Column", looks awful familiar to me.
But maybe Salvato is just a dupe and got the graphic from the talentless - Propagandizing PhotoHacktress - thieving - disrespecter of a Navy Corpsman, Linda Eddy, who has No Shame, and is listed as a contributor on the site.
(yeah, it's personsal, i was a lotterywinner_and_conscriptDoc)
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Is it censorship if someone refuses to provide an ADDITIONAL forum for these stories? The stories are already available and as far as I know, Google is not saying that they have to take down their content, only that Google will not provide an additional forum.
The articles cited in this story may not technically be hate-speech, but they need to be blocked in some way. The authors are crackpots and morons, and this points out a significant problem with the internet, namely that these people now have a forum to voice their stupid opinions. They also seem to think that they have some kind of inalienable right to have them broadcast anywhere they please. WRONG! Google is a private company, and they are entitled to select the content that appears on their website. If these Nazi-Bloggers want a place to post freely, they need to start up their own fascist websites and pay for them themselves. Good for you Google--keep up the good work!
Testy, and less than forthcoming.
OK then, chief::
I previously cited your quote:And your post which this was cited from mentioned nothing about
which would have made it extremely difficuilt to read, regardless of my educational level.
But your angrily reactionary response has piqued my curiosity, so I calling your hand.
Proffer some credible citations which directly reference Hizb ut-Tahrir's:
or admit you were bluffing with the big talk,
whilst knowing only rightarded crock.
BTW, i have a large part of the Hizb ut-Tahrir's UK website from about a year ago burned onto a DVD, from when I was doing some research into the org. There was nothing in the way of hate speech on it that i recall, but I do seem to recall that the UK government's treatment of Hizb ut-Tahrir drew some complaints and questions regarding fairness from the British papers.
I anxiously await your enlightening citations...
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
When Greenpeace qualifies for 'faith based charity' funding from the government...I'll accept your position.
Blar.
If google is making an editorial decision because of "hate speech" then wouldn't the decision be to simply remove the speech? (Which they haven't by the way as it is indexed from other sources that they still consider news.)
Silencing an entire source because of a few articles deemed "hate speech" seems worse. 'You're not news because this article isn't news.' would tend to disqualify every paper because of the opinion sections and some of the odious things that get printed in them.
Should google go and exclude every "news source" that linked to Jesse MacBeth's video diatribe? (Especially ones that haven't printed retractions? Current search results)
Obviously Google News isn't perfect, and never will be, but if they're going to claim a lack of bias but shut some sites down for things like "hate speech" then they're going to either have to start really cracking down, stop delisting sites, or drop the no-bias claim.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I haven't read all the replies, but the ones I have read seem to be largely missing the point. Google News is not a political or social research tool. It is a news service. Google have chosen to aggregate other people's news stories rather than writing their own, but the idea behind it is roughly the same - a reliable, mainstream news service.
I wouldn't call what google is doing censorship. They are not blocking the information, just choosing not to list it on the news service. It's debatable (as shown by other posts) whether or not it is news, but that's beside the point. Google news supplies mainstream news, not extreme viewpoints.
I am sceptical about bias. I believe that the "centre" of the political spectrum is defined only by what the majority of people think. Bias then emerges as a rather subjective notion. Any mainstream source can probably be seen as biased either way depending on who is viewing it. What seems left wing to the BNP (Right-wing British political party, if you don't follow me) probably seems right wing to certain South American politicians. From a British viewpoint, the US is right wing and Europe tends to be slightly right wing. Doubtless the US therefore sees Britain as somewhat left wing. The only sense in which something could objectively be called biased is its position relative to the average viewpoint. A - What average? US average? "Western" average? World average? I have little doubt that there are significant differences between these. B - Like any other news services, it is ruled by market forces. If it gives too many articles one side or other of the mainstream, it will lose users to other services. The profitable ground is the middle ground, and you can rely on market forces to keep it there.
Bullshit, there are ways to wage war without selling out America's soul, without destroying the Dreamtime America. War is immoral, and a big lie often told to soldiers is that honour can be found on the battlefield. It cannot, and when the shooting is finished, when the soldiers return home, there is only the honour that remains.
Am I to understand that you're down with the unlawful imprisonment and mistreatment of humans who have never been convicted of anything in a fair and open trial?
You're a real patriot. Such a shame you were refused a chance to fight; failing your enlistment physical. That liberal slant has affected even the military, hasn't it? How dare they say that your uncontrollable bowel syndrome, and incontinence made you unsuitale to serve? You'd even pay for your supply of Depends© out of pocket, wouldn't you. Even so, you'd still have to mitigate your alabaster-hued liver, and jaundiced belly. The nym you chose to post under speaks for you.
To believe that America should take the high road, even when engaging in war is Anti-American?
To say that my government is engaging in illegitimate tyranny when they secretly imprison humans; when they unlawfully strip away their natural liberties, without first obeying the constitution, and securing a conviction against them in a tribunal that follows a constitionally validated due process of law is antiwar?
No, I am a guy who believes GW turned America away from the righteous fight in Afghanistan, up north of the Khyber Pass in Tora Bora, and let America's true enemy walk, so he coulds assuage his Oedipal Desires against Saddam Hussein, the truth notwithstanding..
Barkeep, serve this man another
Official Abu Ghraib Interrogator's Model
Chemical Light stick of GOP Enlightenment®,
and make sure a Bush Man_Date inserts it properly.
It seems his mind still resides in the darkness...
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
No REAL conservative would ever ground the basis for an argument of theirs in a positivist comparison to any act word or deed of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
This stopped being true in 1968, when the Republican Party sold out their soul and pimped out the Party of Lincoln to Richard Milhouse Nixon, who played his 'southern strategy', causing the southern racists to switch parties into the welcoming arms of the Morally Relativistic RNC.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Don't you love it when journalists pose questions to seem unbiased, if it's an either-or question, the second is of course the one you should favor?
For example:
Oil companies: pricing based on supply and demand, or gouging your grandmother to death?
Reupublicans: conservatives, or baby-eating black-hating rich old white mean?
Democrats: a bunch of tree-hugging hippies, or the best political party imaginable?
They are accurately reporting on islam. The islam most muslims don't want the Christian west to know about.
Mohammed was a pedophile. He wanted the girl when she was six. Her parents begged him to wait until she was older. He did, 3 years until she was nine. Then he consumated the marriage.
Some will say "but times were different then". Negative, it has *never* been acceptable for a 52 year old man to marry a child of 9.
The liberal philosphy can be healthy thing but if you're so liberal you think a marriage between a 52 year old man and a 9 year old girl is ok then I'm really hoping you never have kids.
http://knowislam.info/
AC
>You believe someone saying an entire religion is incapable of doing anything but killing is not hate speech?
Is it still hate speech even if it's true?
Mohammed cut off 800 heads of jews in a single day (if you don't believe me look it up). Whether apologists like it or not terrorists are emulating their prophet. [piss be upon him]
Read the quoron it's entertaining. Especially the part about 'strike terror into their hearts'...
Q. What were the last recorded words of mohammed? [piss be upon him]
A. Slay the infidels wherever you find them
http://knowislam.info/
AC
By your logic, you're an ape, since you have more than 80% of your dna in common.
The only people who are Nazis were the Nazis. There are other terms for people share characteristics, such as "fascists" and "racists" etc.
No, Nixon's Southern strategy was intended to get the racist to vote Republican, and it's still considered a valid tactic in the GOP. It's why Zel Miller made it all the way up North to Cincinatti with Bush in '04, but got his ticket home before heading up into Akron and Cleveland.
You resorted to this ditto Byrd screed? How effin original. Byrd was indeed a racist, as well as a KKK member throughout most of the forties, but I mentioned Nixon's Southern Strategy in 1968.
From Wikipedia:
From a 2005 Washington Post Book Review:
The KKK charges at Byrd are an ad hominem attack attempting to downplay his eloquent antiwar sppeches upon the Senate floor, by a grouping of the usual suspects for disinformation's right-sided insertion, most notably in this case Malkin and Horowitz. Horowitz's traitorous past makes him an extremely reprehensible hypocrite in this regard. They cannot refute his antiwar, and instead play an evil game.
Byrd has admitted his mistakes, many times. Horowitz just blames the left for his newlefty evilness. Who is the better man.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
I don't care if a person is Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, or Quaker. I don't care. What I do care about here is that when I use the World's Largest Search Engine that it actually searches the world, not just the tiny portion that it believes is what I should see. I'm all grown up now, tie my own shoes and everything. I actually have a measurable I.Q. I believe I can decide for myself what is of value and what is not. Google now wishes to push it's political agenda. That's fine. But they are no longer a valid search engine. They are lobbyists. I'll just dump Google and give Yahoo a go.