While it's true that, in London, "75% of all victims of firearm homicides and shootings and 79% of all suspects come from the African/Caribbean community", it would be madness to use use data from one city and apply it to the entire country.
Ethnic appearance of principal suspect
Total white: 1,667
Total black: 282
Total Asian: 135
Total Other: 94
Total Unknown: 51
That's just looking at homicides. If you look at the statistics for all crime in England, it is overwhelmingly perpetrated by white people (surprise surprise).
By focusing specifically on gun crime in London, and pointing fingers at the Black/Caribbean community in order to justify a disproportionate share of blacks on the DNA database for the whole of the UK, you're actually supporting the notion that the black population is being unfairly singled out.
All that exists, statistically, is that a greater percentage of the black population can be considered being guilty of a crime relative to the percentage of whites guilty of a crime as a percentage of the white population as a whole, but certainly the number of whites in that database should far exceed all other minorities put together.
I've been following the Wikileaks idea for a bit, every since Cryptome published a bunch of info about it.
I'm in two minds about Wikileaks. On the one hand, the idea is kind of cool - I'm all for whistle-blowers, and think they perform a vital function. It's sometimes important for the public to see information that could be blocked from public release due to legal pressures.
But on the other hand, maybe that information should not be in the public domain, as it could put lives at risk (as was argued in the previous link).
Also, it's ultimately flawed in the same way that business Web 2.0 review-type sites are flawed: you can't trust the information worth a damn. People have a terrible habit of trying to set up someone they feel disgruntled about, or wish to slander a company that they feel treated them unfairly. Or, of course, they could just be out to rubbish a competitor.
Wikileaks is likely to become a stomping ground of disinformation, misinformation, and vendettas, and if they think the wisdom of the crowds is going to be able to judge that a piece of information is, in fact, a forgery, they're fools.
Also, who exactly will be held accountable when it's used, say, to swing an election, only for us to discover that the information in question was bogus? Wikileaks? Will they hand over the leaker?
I can't help but feel that Wikileaks may, in fact, do more harm than good. A few bad incidents at Wikileaks, and it's highly likely that the law (and government, business etc.) is going to come down hard to silence legitimate whistle-blowers under the pretext of protecting themselves from slander and libel.
What's really needed is a system of legal mechanisms to encourage and protect leakers in the real world, as well as allow a system of accountability. The incidents described by leakers who stepped forward regarding corruption in Iraq indicates that there are simply not enough legal avenues open to help and protect whistle-blowers.
... that this story could be true. Everyone knows that if a ninja kicks your arse, no-one would ever live to see it, let alone write about it on the internet. Of course, the writer could be the ninja himself, in which case, DON'T PISS HIM OFF!
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but the article I linked to does not seem (to me, anyway) to be supportive of the Chinese in Tibet, only supportive of of the fact that it abolished the slavery and serfdom of the Dalai Lama's aristocratic regime. As Parenti himself says, "To support the Chinese overthrow of the Dalai Lama's feudal theocracy is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in Tibet... The converse is also true. To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime.... we can advocate religious freedom and independence for Tibet without having to embrace the mythology of a Paradise Lost." Also, I don't see where Parenti calls the Chinese invasion a "liberation" (as you quoted); a serf from the old regime called it thus, not Parenti.
He also notes that "To be sure, there is much about the Chinese intervention that is to be deplored." Hardly an ardent supporter as you make him out to be.
You state that no-one claims it was a paradise. Well, FTA, the Dalai Lama himself tried to paint this picture, stating: "The pervasive influence of Buddhism and the rigors of life amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony." I can almost hear the birds singing.
And while it's true that the Dalai Lama has called for democratic reforms, as Parenti noted, it took a Chinese invasion, and decades of being out of power for him to do so. Sounds to me as if it was okay to call for democracy once he found himself out of power. But considering that he still has friends from the old aristocracy as advisers, one has to wonder whether it would be different with him in power.
Definitely don't disagree that taking Tibet had to do with Nationalism (and I'm not sure where Parenti says otherwise, either), but I can't seem to see exactly where Parenti "supports the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet". Sounds like he supported the end of one brutality, but is still against the one that replaced it.
Spot on. Michael Parenti has a good article about the dubious track record of the Dalai Lama, and Buddhism, and the myths surrounding Tibet. Citing the Washington Post, he refers to a former slave from the old corrupt and aristocratic Dalai Lama regime:
"I've already lived that life once before," said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, "I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave."
Like you say, China's track record is equally dubious, but romanticising about a past that didn't exist isn't going to help Tibetans, either.
It's a silly thing to say, really. This falls in the same category as computer predictions made over the years that were based on current trends and technology. The funny thing about technology is that it tends to progress. What he's describing are current limitations, and while accurate, hopefully things will progressand we'll try to come up with solutions to those problems.
... I have to say that Telkom is absolutely terrible. Have a look here for more info.
Telkom have consistently been a stumbling block to technological progress in the country, especially with regards to internet access. Telkom owns all the international links to the rest of the world from SA, and most of the bandwidth and international calls have to be routed through them. In fact, the price of ADSL has been so prohibitive that many individuals have pursued cellular alternatives, paying per MB, for light browsing instead.
While it's easy to criticise the private companies who have been managing it, Telkom is a parastatal, and not wholly private; roughly 39% is still owned by the South African government, so I'm fairly certain they weren't too unhappy about the affair. There has been evidence of cronyism at the company, too, most likely as a direct result of this: in 2004 a government pension fund was used "to buy telecoms shares for a group of former government officials". This was part of the government's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) requirements that firms need to be 1/4 black owned before 2010, and falls within a pattern shown, by 2004 government surveys, that "68 percent of BEE deals went to just 6 black-owned businesses, all of which were owned by top members of the ANC party."
The whole thing stinks, and Saffas get screwed, as usual.
The ledger of atrocities is about 10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel.
It's this type of thinking that truly galls me (as well as helps what's going on in the Middle East to continue). There's no "scorecard" to look at, and there's no such thing as, well, these atrocities are not as bad as those ones, therefore we should side with these guys. In case you haven't noticed, both sides are equally guilty of atrocities; both are just as bad as the other based on the measurement that they are atrocities. For every atrocity someone picks out about one side, there's certainly something equal to find from the other.
So, let's look at your claim: "10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel". Let's assume, like you do, that there is some sort of scorecard you can use to support this. How do you measure this?
Number of civilians killed? Israel has certainly killed more.
Number of times innocent civilians are targeted intentionally? Israeli Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur admitted in 1978 that Israel intentionally targeted civilian populations. Israeli military analyst Deev Schiff remarked on the comments at the time saying: "In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it... [T]he importance of Gur's remarks is the admission that the Israeli army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously... the army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets...[but] purposely attacked civilian targets even when Israeli settlements had not been struck." The same pattern was again repeated in the most recent Lebanon invasion, echoing the comments of Abba Eban's "rational prospect... that afflicted populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities", terrorism in ever sense of the word.
Number of civilian targets and infrastructure destroyed? Just counting the recent war with Lebanon would put Israel in a clear lead.
What about terrorism, or genocide, or ethnic cleansing, or other human rights measurements such as torture etc.? Is that a measure of how bad an atrocity is? Do some reading about what Israel actually did to the civilian population during the first Lebanon war. For example, most men between 16 and 60 in Southern Lebanon were rounded up and imprisoned without any reason. Countless numbers were tortured, beaten, starved, and killed, quite intentionally, with the laughter and racist insults of their captors ringing in their ears. Or perhaps go further back and look at what Ilan Pappe (Israeli historian) calls "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", detailing quite accurately how the plan to forcibly transfer the Arab population from their land "was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity."
And what about being an aggressor? You imply they've always been on the defence, which is untrue. The 1956 Israeli-French-British attack on Egypt was not defensive. The 1978 invasion of Lebanon was not defensive. The 1973 Arab attack was an Israeli defensive war in that they were defending territory that they occupied. Even the 1967 war is not conclusively one of Israeli defence: Menachem Begin remarked that "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."
The point I'm trying to make here is that blame is not a zero sum game. Until there is some sort of even handedness against both parties - in other words, until there is an embargo against Israel on a par with what has been put in place against the Palestinians - there is simply not going to be peace in that region until one side is exterminated, and at the moment that is likely to be the Palestinians.
In addition to its dozens of assembly lines and dormitories, Longhua has a fire brigade, hospital and employee swimming pool, where Mr. Gou does early morning laps when he is there. Restaurants, banks, a grocery store and an Internet cafe line the company town's main drag. More than 500 monitors around the campus show exercise programs, worker-safety videos and company news produced by the in-house television network, Foxconn TV. Even the plant's manhole covers are stamped "Foxconn."
Is it just me, or could I replace "Longhua" with "Cypress Creek", "Mr. Gou" with Hank Scorpio, and "Foxconn" with "Globex Corporation", and we'd have the world's first living simulation of a Simpsons episode?
I've heard the Chinese were good at imitation, but this seems to be going just a bit too far...
Obviously, Yury didn't bring the alien ship back because he himself is possessed, and the alien-Yury decided it would be much smarter to bring the meteorite back and tell a few oligarchs that it was filled with oil! Yes! So they go and steal it for their own ends, but they'll all get possessed, and the black ooze will be walking in the corridors of Russian power. And all this when there is talk of a new Cold War developing with the West.
... for this is something along the lines of: "Hey, if we recognise them as journalists, and give them equal access, maybe they'll regurgitate the same junk we feed the mass media."
The data shows that even though the sun's activity has been decreasing since 1985, global temperatures have continued to rise at an accelerating rate.
The solar hypothesis was championed publicly in March by the controversial Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. [...] "The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar forcings that people are talking about," said lead author Mike Lockwood at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.
"They changed direction in 1985, the climate did not... [the temperature] increase should be slowing down but in fact it is speeding up." [...] Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a proponent of the solar hypothesis, has tried to rescue the idea by invoking a time lag between changes in the sun and its effect on the Earth's climate. But Prof Lockwood dismissed this as "disingenuous".
"Nobody has invoked that kind of lag before. It's only been invoked now as a way out," he said. Even if the lag were 50 years then he believes we would begin to see the rise in global temperatures slowing down.
When asked to comment on this later finding, the show's producer, Martin Durkin, refused.
A statement from the British Antarctic Survey says:
Much of the programme was based around a diagram, shown several times, that purported to be world temperature for the last 120 years. This showed a curve, labelled "NASA", extending to the year 2003. The curve was produced by NASA nearly twenty years ago. Although it showed data only until 1987, it had been stretched and relabelled to suggest it showed the temperature record to 2003. The resulting distortion excludes the significant warming that has occurred since 1987. Other figures similarly misrepresented the current state of knowledge, especially as regards the influence of the Sun on climate, and the strength of the recent climate warming
Further evidence is presented here that the show intentionally mislabelled and distorted data. In addition to the "NASA" distortion above (which the producer admitted was "a fluff") there are others:
Other graphs used in the film contained known errors, notably the graph of sunspot activity. Mr Durkin used data on solar cycle lengths which were first published in 1991 despite a corrected version being available - but again the corrected version would not have supported his argument. Mr Durkin also used a schematic graph of temperatures over the past 1,000 years that was at least 16 years old, which gave the impression that today's temperatures are cooler than during the medieval warm period. If he had used a more recent, and widely available, composite graph it would have shown average temperatures far exceed the past 1,000 years.
The 1991 data comes from Friis-Christensen who has tried, several times, to prove the solar theory, but each time the theories have been debunked. For example, the journal Eos noted that Friis-Christensen's 1991 theories were based on "incorrect handling of the physical data". Later work seems to suffer from the same problems. Regardless, Friis-Christensen released a statement noting his concerns with usage of data, stating:
We have concerns regarding the use of a graph featured in the documentary titled 'Temp & Solar Activity 400 Years'. Firstly, we ha
Privacy is emerging as the real winner of the Internet search engine war as companies aggressively compete with one another by offering stronger protections for user records
No, no, no, no. Please don't propagate this myth. Seriously. Data Privacy is NOT Data Protection. That's corporate bull-crap to utterly change the meaning of data privacy (and, likewise, privacy). As Roger Clarke points out:
Data privacy Individuals claim that data about themselves should not be automatically available to other individuals and organisations, and that, even where data is possessed by another party, the individual must be able to exercise a substantial degree of control over that data and its use. This is sometimes referred to as 'data privacy' and 'information privacy'.
[...]
The term 'privacy' is used by some people, particularly security specialists and computer scientists, and especially in the United States, to refer to the security of data against various risks, such as the risks of data being accessed or modified by unauthorised persons. In some cases, it is used even more restrictively, to refer only to the security of data during transmission.
These aspects are only a small fraction of the considerations within the field of 'information privacy'. More appropriate terms to use for those concepts are 'data security' and 'data transmission security'.
Likely, he also thought that women were not 100% people, as most of his contemporaries did and that life appeared spontaneously in a dirt pond thus generating frogs and other life forms. Should you quote the parts in his diary where he makes these prejudices obviously apparent?
Your analogy is wrong. You're confusing being prejudiced with actions that are inspired by prejudice. I couldn't really care if he hated women, but if his hatred for women and desire for gold had inspired him to forcibly enslave a massive tribe of Amazonian women in order to mine the gold, and that entire tribe was wiped out as a direct result of those actions, I would like to think that that sort of information would be included in his history.
to highlight his prejudices would have the veiled implication that he was unusual in that way
I disagree with that. It's not about highlighting prejudices, it's about describing the actions of Columbus, and the motivation for it. If it can be described that he went to these places, that he asked for gold, that he thought the Indians peaceful (I'm sure a lot of people thought that, incidentally), then surely it is within reason to describe exactly what he did there to get the gold? The reason he took those journeys was to find slaves, and gold. By omitting the facts, a false impression is being created regarding Columbus.
If inclusion of facts is dependent on the criteria of "unusual", we're in serious trouble.
Yeah, true... I should have worded the last line better, as it was more a case of simply ending my idealistic notions of Wikipedia being less prone to bias, but I can't go back and edit it;)
To be fair, Wikipedia is a great resource. Perhaps the whole thing says more about what my unrealistic expectations were, rather than what Wikipedia really is. I suppose I was hoping for more than what we're (collectively) capable of.
I certainly agree 100% with your points here, but I still stand by the "one of its main contributors", since it's in the Top 10. I suppose I'm using the term simply because of this reason, and not because I'm trying to imply that their money contribution provides them with unprecedented influence.
Well, no, I have that suspicion about everything I read (I would love to think me being 32 still makes me a kid, heh), but I'd never had it happen so blatantly to me before regarding Wikipedia. I suppose what I really meant to say was that it ended my (idealistic) view of what Wikipedia was. Sure, most (if not all) media demonstrate some level of bias, but once in a while, people dream of something better... it's that damn idealist in me;)
While that's strictly true (i.e. it's not the main source), it's certainly one of their main contributors, and far more so than the Republicans. You should do some comparisons between Republican vs. Democrat to understand the Hollywood/Democratic link. (All figures from the websites you linked to).
For example, the contribution of the TV/Movies/Music industry to the Democratic Party is considerably higher than the Republican Party ($6,045,582 vs. $2,434,205), and while the RNC and the DNC are very similar in contributions ($949,844 for the former vs. $1,042,810 for the latter), the NRCC doesn't even register TV/Movies/Music as being a big contributor. The NRSC comes in with a measly $627,684.
Main contributor, no, but certainly one of them, and certainly more pro-Democrat than Republican.
The whole thing reminds me of Bill Hicks' comment: "I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'"
Yep. A similar problem occurred with me when I tried to edit the Christopher Columbus page. Try including quotes from his journal that show he intended to forcibly enslave the native Arawaks, or attempt to write about what Columbus did when he first met them, and it just gets deleted. Instead, the article tries to show him as some well-meaning Christian who found gold in rivers, or politely asked where he could find it. When I queried this many times on the talk page, the response I got was along the lines of, "Yes, we know he enslaved them, and we know he went after gold, but let's not get too caught up on these aspects, because Columbus wasn't unique in doing this." So you have an article where the word slave is mentioned once, and there is not one statement regarding the actions that Columbus and his men undertook to use the Arawaks as slaves to find gold.
I used to love Wikipedia, but that incident made me realise it's nothing more than a starting point to get a very basic idea of a subject and then move on.
Slashdot Mirror
While it's true that, in London, "75% of all victims of firearm homicides and shootings and 79% of all suspects come from the African/Caribbean community", it would be madness to use use data from one city and apply it to the entire country.
According to combined data for 2002/3, 2003/4, and 2004/5:
Ethnic appearance of principal suspect
Total white: 1,667
Total black: 282
Total Asian: 135
Total Other: 94
Total Unknown: 51
That's just looking at homicides. If you look at the statistics for all crime in England, it is overwhelmingly perpetrated by white people (surprise surprise).
By focusing specifically on gun crime in London, and pointing fingers at the Black/Caribbean community in order to justify a disproportionate share of blacks on the DNA database for the whole of the UK, you're actually supporting the notion that the black population is being unfairly singled out.
All that exists, statistically, is that a greater percentage of the black population can be considered being guilty of a crime relative to the percentage of whites guilty of a crime as a percentage of the white population as a whole, but certainly the number of whites in that database should far exceed all other minorities put together.
Probably closer to making the tube layers take responsibility when the tubes get filled with copyrighted material that slow your message down.
I've been following the Wikileaks idea for a bit, every since Cryptome published a bunch of info about it.
I'm in two minds about Wikileaks. On the one hand, the idea is kind of cool - I'm all for whistle-blowers, and think they perform a vital function. It's sometimes important for the public to see information that could be blocked from public release due to legal pressures.
But on the other hand, maybe that information should not be in the public domain, as it could put lives at risk (as was argued in the previous link).
Also, it's ultimately flawed in the same way that business Web 2.0 review-type sites are flawed: you can't trust the information worth a damn. People have a terrible habit of trying to set up someone they feel disgruntled about, or wish to slander a company that they feel treated them unfairly. Or, of course, they could just be out to rubbish a competitor.
Wikileaks is likely to become a stomping ground of disinformation, misinformation, and vendettas, and if they think the wisdom of the crowds is going to be able to judge that a piece of information is, in fact, a forgery, they're fools.
Also, who exactly will be held accountable when it's used, say, to swing an election, only for us to discover that the information in question was bogus? Wikileaks? Will they hand over the leaker?
I can't help but feel that Wikileaks may, in fact, do more harm than good. A few bad incidents at Wikileaks, and it's highly likely that the law (and government, business etc.) is going to come down hard to silence legitimate whistle-blowers under the pretext of protecting themselves from slander and libel.
What's really needed is a system of legal mechanisms to encourage and protect leakers in the real world, as well as allow a system of accountability. The incidents described by leakers who stepped forward regarding corruption in Iraq indicates that there are simply not enough legal avenues open to help and protect whistle-blowers.
... that this story could be true. Everyone knows that if a ninja kicks your arse, no-one would ever live to see it, let alone write about it on the internet. Of course, the writer could be the ninja himself, in which case, DON'T PISS HIM OFF!
If I could I'd mod this up, good response. Didn't get the bit about Krou though, is that a band? Thanks for the great reply.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but the article I linked to does not seem (to me, anyway) to be supportive of the Chinese in Tibet, only supportive of of the fact that it abolished the slavery and serfdom of the Dalai Lama's aristocratic regime. As Parenti himself says, "To support the Chinese overthrow of the Dalai Lama's feudal theocracy is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in Tibet ... The converse is also true. To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. ... we can advocate religious freedom and independence for Tibet without having to embrace the mythology of a Paradise Lost." Also, I don't see where Parenti calls the Chinese invasion a "liberation" (as you quoted); a serf from the old regime called it thus, not Parenti.
He also notes that "To be sure, there is much about the Chinese intervention that is to be deplored." Hardly an ardent supporter as you make him out to be.
You state that no-one claims it was a paradise. Well, FTA, the Dalai Lama himself tried to paint this picture, stating: "The pervasive influence of Buddhism and the rigors of life amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony." I can almost hear the birds singing.
And while it's true that the Dalai Lama has called for democratic reforms, as Parenti noted, it took a Chinese invasion, and decades of being out of power for him to do so. Sounds to me as if it was okay to call for democracy once he found himself out of power. But considering that he still has friends from the old aristocracy as advisers, one has to wonder whether it would be different with him in power.
Definitely don't disagree that taking Tibet had to do with Nationalism (and I'm not sure where Parenti says otherwise, either), but I can't seem to see exactly where Parenti "supports the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet". Sounds like he supported the end of one brutality, but is still against the one that replaced it.
Spot on. Michael Parenti has a good article about the dubious track record of the Dalai Lama, and Buddhism, and the myths surrounding Tibet. Citing the Washington Post, he refers to a former slave from the old corrupt and aristocratic Dalai Lama regime:
Like you say, China's track record is equally dubious, but romanticising about a past that didn't exist isn't going to help Tibetans, either.
It's a silly thing to say, really. This falls in the same category as computer predictions made over the years that were based on current trends and technology. The funny thing about technology is that it tends to progress. What he's describing are current limitations, and while accurate, hopefully things will progressand we'll try to come up with solutions to those problems.
Chewbacca apparently said, "ARRRRGHHH ARRR ARRR ARRR ARRR!" when he heard the news.
Doesn't sound good. Personally, I think NASA are crazy to upset a wookie that can rip your arms off.
... I have to say that Telkom is absolutely terrible. Have a look here for more info.
Telkom have consistently been a stumbling block to technological progress in the country, especially with regards to internet access. Telkom owns all the international links to the rest of the world from SA, and most of the bandwidth and international calls have to be routed through them. In fact, the price of ADSL has been so prohibitive that many individuals have pursued cellular alternatives, paying per MB, for light browsing instead.
While it's easy to criticise the private companies who have been managing it, Telkom is a parastatal, and not wholly private; roughly 39% is still owned by the South African government, so I'm fairly certain they weren't too unhappy about the affair. There has been evidence of cronyism at the company, too, most likely as a direct result of this: in 2004 a government pension fund was used "to buy telecoms shares for a group of former government officials". This was part of the government's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) requirements that firms need to be 1/4 black owned before 2010, and falls within a pattern shown, by 2004 government surveys, that "68 percent of BEE deals went to just 6 black-owned businesses, all of which were owned by top members of the ANC party."
The whole thing stinks, and Saffas get screwed, as usual.
The ledger of atrocities is about 10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel.
It's this type of thinking that truly galls me (as well as helps what's going on in the Middle East to continue). There's no "scorecard" to look at, and there's no such thing as, well, these atrocities are not as bad as those ones, therefore we should side with these guys. In case you haven't noticed, both sides are equally guilty of atrocities; both are just as bad as the other based on the measurement that they are atrocities. For every atrocity someone picks out about one side, there's certainly something equal to find from the other.
So, let's look at your claim: "10 (if not 100) to 1 in favor of Israel". Let's assume, like you do, that there is some sort of scorecard you can use to support this. How do you measure this?
Number of civilians killed? Israel has certainly killed more.
Number of times innocent civilians are targeted intentionally? Israeli Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur admitted in 1978 that Israel intentionally targeted civilian populations. Israeli military analyst Deev Schiff remarked on the comments at the time saying: "In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it ... [T]he importance of Gur's remarks is the admission that the Israeli army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously ... the army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets...[but] purposely attacked civilian targets even when Israeli settlements had not been struck." The same pattern was again repeated in the most recent Lebanon invasion, echoing the comments of Abba Eban's "rational prospect ... that afflicted populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities", terrorism in ever sense of the word.
Number of civilian targets and infrastructure destroyed? Just counting the recent war with Lebanon would put Israel in a clear lead.
What about terrorism, or genocide, or ethnic cleansing, or other human rights measurements such as torture etc.? Is that a measure of how bad an atrocity is? Do some reading about what Israel actually did to the civilian population during the first Lebanon war. For example, most men between 16 and 60 in Southern Lebanon were rounded up and imprisoned without any reason. Countless numbers were tortured, beaten, starved, and killed, quite intentionally, with the laughter and racist insults of their captors ringing in their ears. Or perhaps go further back and look at what Ilan Pappe (Israeli historian) calls "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", detailing quite accurately how the plan to forcibly transfer the Arab population from their land "was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity."
And what about being an aggressor? You imply they've always been on the defence, which is untrue. The 1956 Israeli-French-British attack on Egypt was not defensive. The 1978 invasion of Lebanon was not defensive. The 1973 Arab attack was an Israeli defensive war in that they were defending territory that they occupied. Even the 1967 war is not conclusively one of Israeli defence: Menachem Begin remarked that "In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."
The point I'm trying to make here is that blame is not a zero sum game. Until there is some sort of even handedness against both parties - in other words, until there is an embargo against Israel on a par with what has been put in place against the Palestinians - there is simply not going to be peace in that region until one side is exterminated, and at the moment that is likely to be the Palestinians.
I, for one, welcome ... oh wait, they knew that already.
Funny will do, but if people find it insightful, who am I to judge?
FTA:
Is it just me, or could I replace "Longhua" with "Cypress Creek", "Mr. Gou" with Hank Scorpio, and "Foxconn" with "Globex Corporation", and we'd have the world's first living simulation of a Simpsons episode?
I've heard the Chinese were good at imitation, but this seems to be going just a bit too far ...
Wait a second, it's all so much clearer now.
Obviously, Yury didn't bring the alien ship back because he himself is possessed, and the alien-Yury decided it would be much smarter to bring the meteorite back and tell a few oligarchs that it was filled with oil! Yes! So they go and steal it for their own ends, but they'll all get possessed, and the black ooze will be walking in the corridors of Russian power. And all this when there is talk of a new Cold War developing with the West.
Coincidence? I think not.
... for this is something along the lines of: "Hey, if we recognise them as journalists, and give them equal access, maybe they'll regurgitate the same junk we feed the mass media."
Please excuse my cynicism of an organisation (i.e. the CIA) that relies on disinformation, propaganda, and psychological warfare, and uses the mass media and journalists to spread it.
Oh? Really? Well, here are some responses then.
From New analysis counters claims that solar activity is linked to global warming:
When asked to comment on this later finding, the show's producer, Martin Durkin, refused.
A statement from the British Antarctic Survey says:
Further evidence is presented here that the show intentionally mislabelled and distorted data. In addition to the "NASA" distortion above (which the producer admitted was "a fluff") there are others:
The 1991 data comes from Friis-Christensen who has tried, several times, to prove the solar theory, but each time the theories have been debunked. For example, the journal Eos noted that Friis-Christensen's 1991 theories were based on "incorrect handling of the physical data". Later work seems to suffer from the same problems. Regardless, Friis-Christensen released a statement noting his concerns with usage of data, stating:
Privacy is emerging as the real winner of the Internet search engine war as companies aggressively compete with one another by offering stronger protections for user records
No, no, no, no. Please don't propagate this myth. Seriously. Data Privacy is NOT Data Protection. That's corporate bull-crap to utterly change the meaning of data privacy (and, likewise, privacy). As Roger Clarke points out:
Your analogy is wrong. You're confusing being prejudiced with actions that are inspired by prejudice. I couldn't really care if he hated women, but if his hatred for women and desire for gold had inspired him to forcibly enslave a massive tribe of Amazonian women in order to mine the gold, and that entire tribe was wiped out as a direct result of those actions, I would like to think that that sort of information would be included in his history.
I disagree with that. It's not about highlighting prejudices, it's about describing the actions of Columbus, and the motivation for it. If it can be described that he went to these places, that he asked for gold, that he thought the Indians peaceful (I'm sure a lot of people thought that, incidentally), then surely it is within reason to describe exactly what he did there to get the gold? The reason he took those journeys was to find slaves, and gold. By omitting the facts, a false impression is being created regarding Columbus.
If inclusion of facts is dependent on the criteria of "unusual", we're in serious trouble.
Yeah, true ... I should have worded the last line better, as it was more a case of simply ending my idealistic notions of Wikipedia being less prone to bias, but I can't go back and edit it ;)
To be fair, Wikipedia is a great resource. Perhaps the whole thing says more about what my unrealistic expectations were, rather than what Wikipedia really is. I suppose I was hoping for more than what we're (collectively) capable of.
Do I get extra mod points for being close then? ;)
I certainly agree 100% with your points here, but I still stand by the "one of its main contributors", since it's in the Top 10. I suppose I'm using the term simply because of this reason, and not because I'm trying to imply that their money contribution provides them with unprecedented influence.
Thanks for the reply!
Well, no, I have that suspicion about everything I read (I would love to think me being 32 still makes me a kid, heh), but I'd never had it happen so blatantly to me before regarding Wikipedia. I suppose what I really meant to say was that it ended my (idealistic) view of what Wikipedia was. Sure, most (if not all) media demonstrate some level of bias, but once in a while, people dream of something better ... it's that damn idealist in me ;)
While that's strictly true (i.e. it's not the main source), it's certainly one of their main contributors, and far more so than the Republicans. You should do some comparisons between Republican vs. Democrat to understand the Hollywood/Democratic link. (All figures from the websites you linked to).
For example, the contribution of the TV/Movies/Music industry to the Democratic Party is considerably higher than the Republican Party ($6,045,582 vs. $2,434,205), and while the RNC and the DNC are very similar in contributions ($949,844 for the former vs. $1,042,810 for the latter), the NRCC doesn't even register TV/Movies/Music as being a big contributor. The NRSC comes in with a measly $627,684.
Main contributor, no, but certainly one of them, and certainly more pro-Democrat than Republican.
The whole thing reminds me of Bill Hicks' comment: "I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'"
Yep. A similar problem occurred with me when I tried to edit the Christopher Columbus page. Try including quotes from his journal that show he intended to forcibly enslave the native Arawaks, or attempt to write about what Columbus did when he first met them, and it just gets deleted. Instead, the article tries to show him as some well-meaning Christian who found gold in rivers, or politely asked where he could find it. When I queried this many times on the talk page, the response I got was along the lines of, "Yes, we know he enslaved them, and we know he went after gold, but let's not get too caught up on these aspects, because Columbus wasn't unique in doing this." So you have an article where the word slave is mentioned once, and there is not one statement regarding the actions that Columbus and his men undertook to use the Arawaks as slaves to find gold.
I used to love Wikipedia, but that incident made me realise it's nothing more than a starting point to get a very basic idea of a subject and then move on.
... but can it turn it into wine?
At least we'll be too drunk to care when they get self-replication. I, for one, *hic* ...