[The talk.origins FAQ, reproduced in its entirety from talk.origins. Given the repeated reproduction of the t.o FAQ by many parties in the t.o community, I must assume that its reproduction outside of t.o constitutes acceptable use. As always -- if you think otherwise -- I can be contacted at schoandr@isu.edu and convinced to retract my post]
The following is a list of questions that appear frequently in the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins. Brief answers are given for each question along with a pointer to one or more relevant files.
What is the purpose of talk.origins?
The purpose of talk.origins is to provide a forum for discussion of issues related to biological and physical origins. See the talk.origins Welcome FAQ, the Archive welcome file and the Talk.Origins Archive's Must-Read FAQs.
I thought evolution was just a theory. Why do you call it a fact?
Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time. That this happens is a fact. Biological evolution also refers to the common descent of living organisms from shared ancestors. The evidence for historical evolution -- genetic, fossil, anatomical, etc. -- is so overwhelming that it is also considered a fact. The theory of evolution describes the mechanisms that cause evolution. So evolution is both a fact and a theory. See the Evolution is a Fact and a Theory FAQ, the Introduction to Evolutionary Biology FAQ and the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Don't you have to be an atheist to accept evolution?
No. Many people of Christian and other faiths accept evolution as the scientific explanation for biodiversity. See the God and Evolution FAQ and the Interpretations of Genesis FAQ.
Isn't evolution just an unfalsifiable tautology?
No. Evolutionary theory is in exactly the same condition as any other valid scientific theory, and many criticisms of it that rely on philosophy are misguided. See the Evolution and Philosophy FAQ.
If evolution is true, then why are there so many gaps in the fossil record? Shouldn't there be more transitional fossils?
Due to the rarity of preservation and the likelihood that speciation occurs in small populations during geologically short periods of time, transitions between species are uncommon in the fossil record. Transitions at higher taxonomic levels, however, are abundant. See the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, the Fossil Hominids FAQ and the Punctuated Equilibria FAQ.
No one has ever directly observed evolution happening, so how do you know it's true?
Evolution has been observed, both directly and indirectly. It is true. See the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Then why has no one ever seen a new species appear?
Speciation has been observed, both in the laboratory and in nature. See the Observed Instances of Speciation FAQ and another FAQ listing some more observed speciation events.
Doesn't the perfection of the human body prove Creation?
No. In fact, humans (and other animals) have many suboptimal characteristics. See the FAQ on Evidence for Jury-Rigged Design in Nature.
According to evolution, the diversity of life is a result of chance occurrence. Doesn't that make evolution wildly improbable?
Evolution is not simply a result of random chance. It is also a result of non-random selection. See the Evolution and Chance FAQ and the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Doesn't evolution violate the second law of thermodynamics? After all, order cannot come from disorder.
Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. Order emerges from disorder all the time. Snowflakes form, trees grow, and embryos develop, etc. See the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability FAQ and the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Didn't Darwin renounce evolution on his deathbed?
The Darwin deathbed story is false. And in any case, it is irrelevant. A scientific theory stands or falls according to how well it is supported by the facts, not according to who believes it. See the Lady Hope Story FAQ.
Where can I learn more about evolution?
You might start with the talk.origins FAQs. If, however, you want a thorough understanding of evolution, a library would be a more appropriate place to look. The following FAQs provide some good references: the Creation/Evolution Reading List, the Introduction to Evolutionary Biology FAQ, the "What is Evolution?" FAQ, and the Talk.Origins Archive's Evolution FAQs.
How do you know the earth is really old? Lots of evidence says it's young.
According to numerous, independent dating methods, the earth is known to be approximately 4.5 billion years old. Most young-earth arguments rely on inappropriate extrapolations from a few carefully selected and often erroneous data points. See the Age of the Earth FAQ and the Talk.Origins Archive's Young Earth FAQs.
But radiometric dating methods rely on the assumptions of non-contamination and constant rates of decay. What if these assumptions are wrong?
Radiometric isochron dating techniques reveal whether contamination has occurred, while numerous theoretical calculations, experiments, and astronomical observations support the notion that decay rates are constant. See the Isochron Dating FAQ and the Age of the Earth FAQ.
I heard that the speed of light has changed a lot. This means that light from galaxies billions of light years away might not really be billions of years old. Is this true?
Barry Setterfield's hypothesis of a decay in the speed of light was based on flawed extrapolations from inaccurate measurements, many of which were taken hundreds of years ago. See the C-Decay FAQ.
If Earth is so old, doesn't that mean Earth's decaying magnetic field would have been unacceptably high at one time?
No. The Earth's magnetic field is known to have varied in intensity and reversed in polarity numerous times throughout the planet's history. See the FAQ on the Earth's Magnetic Field.
Isn't the fossil record a result of the global flood described in the Book of Genesis?
No. A global flood cannot explain the sorting of fossils observed in the geological record. This was recognized even prior to the proposal of evolutionary theory. See the Problems with a Global Flood FAQ and the Talk.Origins Archive's Flood Geology FAQs.
What about those fossils that cut through multiple layers?
They have natural explanations: tree-roots that grew into soft, underlying layers of clay, and fossils found in inclined strata. They can also be observed forming in modern environments. See the "Polystrate" Fossils FAQ.
What about those human footprints that appear next to dinosaur footprints?
The "man-tracks" of the Paluxy Riverbed in Glen Rose, Texas were not man tracks at all. Some were eroded dinosaur tracks, and others were human carvings. See the FAQ on the Texas Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy.
Didn't they find Noah's Ark? I saw something on TV about this.
The producers of America's 1993 CBS television show, "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," were hoaxed. Other ark discovery claims have not been substantiated. See the FAQ on Sun Pictures and the Noah's Ark Hoax.
The odds against a simple cell coming into being without divine intervention are staggering.
And irrelevant. Scientists don't claim that cells came into being through random processes. They are thought to have evolved from more primitive precursors. See the Interim Abiogenesis FAQ.
Creationists are qualified and honest scientists. How can they be wrong?
The quality of an argument is not determined by the credentials of its author. Even if it was, a number of well-known creationists have questionable credentials. Furthermore, many creationists have engaged in dishonest tactics like quoting out of context or making up references. See the Suspicious Creationist Credentials FAQ and the Talk.Origins Archive's Creationism FAQs.
What about Immanuel Velikovsky? Didn't he show that Earth has experienced a lot of major catastrophes?
No, he simply claimed that certain written legends must have described real events. See the Talk.Origins Archive's Catastrophism FAQs and the Velikovsky FAQ.
Where can I find more material on the Creation/Evolution debate?
Contact the National Center for Science Education, or see the Talk.Origins Archive and its "Other links" page. Also see the talk.origins Book Recommendations FAQ and the Creation/Evolution Organizations and Periodicals FAQ.
Most of the comments seem to focus on the tremendous amount of evil that could be done through application of this technology. This post is not intended to deny that a genetically engineered plague would be singularly nasty, but -- rather -- to inject some some sanity into the 'Quick! Put the genie back in the bottle!' tone of this discussion.
Top Ten Reasons Man Won't Be Killing Itself With Viruses in the Near Future
10) 'World-killer' viruses have no inherent utility, especially in a world that's becoming increasingly interconnected: the more virulent a disease you produce, the more likely it is to hit you, too.
9) The diseases of today are sufficiently virulent for any conceivable military use. Despite the hype about hemhorragic fevers like Ebola, more 'traditional' diseases -- like anthrax and smallpox -- can be spread for a fraction of the price and have a tendency to kill more civilans (which is invariably the point of weapons of mass destruction)
8) Other aspects of the NBC trinangle are more effective than biological weapons, and -- furthermore -- have more 'prior art' to rely upon. Nuclear weapons, for instance, can do any of the jobs biological weapons can (though they're not half as cheap): neutron bombs can do the job of anthrax; hydrogen bombs can take out entire metropolitan areas; tactical nuclear weapons can be used for surgical strikes. With that much of a portfolio in nuclear weapons, who really *needs* a planet-killer virus?
7) Whereas bacterial infections can afford to destroy entire populations -- if they have a lifestyle to fall back on -- viruses cannot. They can't survive without a host; ergo, the more virulent the virus, the more quickly it will lose its virulence. Take, for instance, the flu that ended WWI: it killed millions of people, then disappeared. Did people suddenly gain resistance to it? No. Of course not. But killing people wasn't a good strategy, so it evolved out of it.
6) The beneficial applications of virus-hacking technology come at less cost than the harmful applications. It's easy to convince your population to help out people with cystic fibrosis: it's difficult to find volunteers to test your new 'death plague v2.0'. Further, the mechanisms by which viruses do harm are less apparent than the mechanisms by which the human body harms itself: viruses act on a microscopic scale; the human body's processes are largely macroscopic.
5) There remain pockets of uninfectable humanity: Antarctica, Polynesia, northern Canada, Sweden, isolated islands in the Carribean... all could conceivably host populations isolated enough to miss the virus -- and, when the virus wipes everyone else out -- repopulate he Earth.
4)To any given disease mechanism, there are people that are immune. There are over five billion unique combinations of human DNA on the earth; studies have shown that there are both East African prostitutes and high-risk white males that remain uninfected by the AIDS virus despite repeated confirmed contact with the disease. Though this has not been directly attributed to genetics, that remains the most compelling possibility.
3) Biotech is not like nuclear. The problem with nuclear technology is twofold: the harmful applications of the technology are more apparent than the helpful, and the defenses against nuclear attacks are far more technically advanced than the nuclear attacks themselves.
Cryptology takes the opposite end of the spectrum: until an unprescedented technological breakthrough, it will always take less computer power to encrypt something than to break the encryption; or, rather, the 'offense' is more technologically costly than the 'defense'.
2) 'High' biotech is more expensive -- and less applicable -- than nuclear attack. To produce a nuclear weapon, you must only construct it. To produce a virus, you must train the scientists, know the technological secrets behind it, and make sure no one knows about it.
1) A lot of money is going into anti-viral technology, due to the AIDS epidemic. Before technology reaches the point that the genie is *truly* out of the bottle, we will have antiviral agents that should be able to keep a segment of the population alive even against the worst-case 'doomsday virus' scenario.
> Every body knows about David Koresh. The > Heavens Gate... When there is a problem, if > nothing is done, people die!!!
Religions thrive on martyrdom: it's the entire principle upon which Christianity, Islam, and -- to some degree -- Judaism are built upon. Even polytheistic religions have elements -- such as the Prometheus and Huitzilapochtli myths (and the 'nine million martyrs' Wiccan myth) -- that promote martyrdom. The harder you crack down on a religion, the more the *religion itself* is going to be seen as a martyr.
It worked for Christianity.
It held the generally fractuous Jews together through millenia of exile.
It caused David Koresh to commit suicide with all his followers.
In short, cracking down on a religion is the worst possible thing you could do to 'fix' the problem of a deviant religion. Further, remember that 'deviant' religions with many members have a tendency to move towards the norm; for instance, Mormonism -- which supported the formation of the nation of Deseret within the borders of the United States -- quickly moved in line with other 'mainstream' religions.
Second: you cannot argue 'information needs to be free' out of one side of your mouth and 'stupid information needs to be controlled by the Firm Hand of Government' out of the other. Excactly how is the moderation of information (in this case, *religious* information) different between the cases you present in the two paragraphs I've commented upon?
> If you naively look at the situation, and > simply assume its another oddity of Chinese > government, then you need to look beyond > American media. If you've been any where in the > world outside of the US, you'll know that the > US main stream media is the LEAST FREE--Even > compared to China.
Here's where my 'BS Detector' light goes off.
Right.
The politics of propaganda go like this: when your government is doing something you prefer the people not know about, you cut off access to alternate viewpoints, ergo restricting the 'info-flow' to a single stream. The Chinese government does this very effectively: they've stifled the underground press, limited 'net access, and even controlled the flow of information by phone. Most of their 'press releases' consist of fabricated stories, spin doctoring, and out of context information.
Further, the Chinese press is composed of Party officials trained to take the Party Line(tm). They do so in every possible circumstance.
The United States does not have the fairest media. Our treatment of the Kosovo situation was egregiously unfair to both the Kosovar, the Serbs, and what was going on. Our treatment of the Air Force incident in Italy glossed over the entire situation. Our press does its best to portray the American viewpoint as the right one, especially within the arena of American foreign policy.
However: there is no such thing as the 'American Media'. A good portion of the information we chalk up to 'America' is actually coming from Canada and the UK -- and, recently, we've been getting a lot of translated articles from Germany. In a worldwide marketplace of information, the 'propaganda' you accuse the government of *cannot* work.
The only place where it becomes sticky is within the arena of American politics, which is largely irrelevant on a large scale. However -- within this arena -- the tenor of articles is generally determined by the political disposition at the time of writing. If that falls along Republican and Democrat party lines, then that's just the opinion of Joe Average.
Slashdot Mirror
[The talk.origins FAQ, reproduced in its entirety from talk.origins. Given the repeated reproduction of the t.o FAQ by many parties in the t.o community, I must assume that its reproduction outside of t.o constitutes acceptable use. As always -- if you think otherwise -- I can be contacted at schoandr@isu.edu and convinced to retract my post]
The following is a list of questions that appear frequently in the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins. Brief answers are given for each question along with a pointer to one or more relevant files.
What is the purpose of talk.origins?
The purpose of talk.origins is to provide a forum for discussion of issues related to biological and physical origins. See the talk.origins Welcome FAQ, the Archive welcome file and the Talk.Origins Archive's Must-Read FAQs.
I thought evolution was just a theory. Why do you call it a fact?
Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time. That this happens is a fact. Biological evolution also refers to the common descent of living organisms from shared ancestors. The evidence for historical evolution -- genetic, fossil, anatomical, etc. -- is so overwhelming that it is also considered a fact. The theory of evolution describes the mechanisms that cause evolution. So evolution is both a fact and a theory. See the Evolution is a Fact and a Theory FAQ, the Introduction to Evolutionary Biology FAQ and the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Don't you have to be an atheist to accept evolution?
No. Many people of Christian and other faiths accept evolution as the scientific explanation for biodiversity. See the God and Evolution FAQ and the Interpretations of Genesis FAQ.
Isn't evolution just an unfalsifiable tautology?
No. Evolutionary theory is in exactly the same condition as any other valid scientific theory, and many criticisms of it that rely on philosophy are misguided. See the Evolution and Philosophy FAQ.
If evolution is true, then why are there so many gaps in the fossil record? Shouldn't there be more transitional fossils?
Due to the rarity of preservation and the likelihood that speciation occurs in small populations during geologically short periods of time, transitions between species are uncommon in the fossil record. Transitions at higher taxonomic levels, however, are abundant. See the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, the Fossil Hominids FAQ and the Punctuated Equilibria FAQ.
No one has ever directly observed evolution happening, so how do you know it's true?
Evolution has been observed, both directly and indirectly. It is true. See the Five Major
Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Then why has no one ever seen a new species appear?
Speciation has been observed, both in the laboratory and in nature. See the Observed Instances of Speciation FAQ and another FAQ listing some more observed speciation events.
Doesn't the perfection of the human body prove Creation?
No. In fact, humans (and other animals) have many suboptimal characteristics. See the FAQ on Evidence for Jury-Rigged Design in Nature.
According to evolution, the diversity of life is a result of chance occurrence. Doesn't that make evolution wildly improbable?
Evolution is not simply a result of random chance. It is also a result of non-random selection. See the Evolution and Chance FAQ and the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Doesn't evolution violate the second law of thermodynamics? After all, order cannot come from disorder.
Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. Order emerges from disorder all the time. Snowflakes form, trees grow, and embryos develop, etc. See the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability FAQ and the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ.
Didn't Darwin renounce evolution on his deathbed?
The Darwin deathbed story is false. And in any case, it is irrelevant. A scientific theory stands or falls according to how well it is supported by the facts, not according to who believes it. See the Lady Hope Story FAQ.
Where can I learn more about evolution?
You might start with the talk.origins FAQs. If, however, you want a thorough understanding of evolution, a library would be a more appropriate place to look. The following FAQs provide some good references: the Creation/Evolution Reading List, the Introduction to Evolutionary Biology FAQ, the "What is Evolution?" FAQ, and the Talk.Origins Archive's Evolution FAQs.
How do you know the earth is really old? Lots of evidence says it's young.
According to numerous, independent dating methods, the earth is known to be approximately 4.5 billion years old. Most young-earth arguments rely on inappropriate extrapolations from a few carefully selected and often erroneous data points. See the Age of the Earth FAQ and the Talk.Origins Archive's Young Earth FAQs.
But radiometric dating methods rely on the assumptions of non-contamination and constant rates of decay. What if these assumptions are wrong?
Radiometric isochron dating techniques reveal whether contamination has occurred, while numerous theoretical calculations, experiments, and astronomical observations support the notion that decay rates are constant. See the Isochron Dating FAQ and the Age of the Earth FAQ.
I heard that the speed of light has changed a lot. This means that light from galaxies billions of light years away might not really be billions of years old. Is this true?
Barry Setterfield's hypothesis of a decay in the speed of light was based on flawed extrapolations from inaccurate measurements, many of which were taken hundreds of years ago. See the C-Decay FAQ.
If Earth is so old, doesn't that mean Earth's decaying magnetic field would have been unacceptably high at one time?
No. The Earth's magnetic field is known to have varied in intensity and reversed in polarity numerous times throughout the planet's history. See the FAQ on the Earth's Magnetic Field.
Isn't the fossil record a result of the global flood described in the Book of Genesis?
No. A global flood cannot explain the sorting of fossils observed in the geological record. This was recognized even prior to the proposal of evolutionary theory. See the Problems with a Global Flood FAQ and the Talk.Origins Archive's Flood Geology FAQs.
What about those fossils that cut through multiple layers?
They have natural explanations: tree-roots that grew into soft, underlying layers of clay, and fossils found in inclined strata. They can also be observed forming in modern environments. See the "Polystrate" Fossils FAQ.
What about those human footprints that appear next to dinosaur footprints?
The "man-tracks" of the Paluxy Riverbed in Glen Rose, Texas were not man tracks at all. Some were eroded dinosaur tracks, and others were human carvings. See the FAQ on the Texas Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy.
Didn't they find Noah's Ark? I saw something on TV about this.
The producers of America's 1993 CBS television show, "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," were hoaxed. Other ark discovery claims have not been substantiated. See the FAQ on Sun Pictures and the Noah's Ark Hoax.
The odds against a simple cell coming into being without divine intervention are staggering.
And irrelevant. Scientists don't claim that cells came into being through random processes. They are thought to have evolved from more primitive precursors. See the Interim Abiogenesis FAQ.
Creationists are qualified and honest scientists. How can they be wrong?
The quality of an argument is not determined by the credentials of its author. Even if it was, a number of well-known creationists have questionable credentials. Furthermore, many creationists have engaged in dishonest tactics like quoting out of context or making up references. See the Suspicious Creationist Credentials FAQ and the Talk.Origins Archive's Creationism FAQs.
What about Immanuel Velikovsky? Didn't he show that Earth has experienced a lot of major catastrophes?
No, he simply claimed that certain written legends must have described real events. See the Talk.Origins Archive's Catastrophism FAQs and the Velikovsky FAQ.
Where can I find more material on the Creation/Evolution debate?
Contact the National Center for Science Education, or see the Talk.Origins Archive and its "Other links" page. Also see the talk.origins Book Recommendations FAQ and the Creation/Evolution Organizations and Periodicals FAQ.
Most of the comments seem to focus on the tremendous amount of evil that could be done through application of this technology. This post is not intended to deny that a genetically engineered plague would be singularly nasty, but -- rather -- to inject some some sanity into the 'Quick! Put the genie back in the bottle!' tone of this discussion.
Top Ten Reasons Man Won't Be Killing Itself With Viruses in the Near Future
10) 'World-killer' viruses have no inherent utility, especially in a world that's becoming increasingly interconnected: the more virulent a disease you produce, the more likely it is to hit you, too.
9) The diseases of today are sufficiently virulent for any conceivable military use. Despite the hype about hemhorragic fevers like Ebola, more 'traditional' diseases -- like anthrax and smallpox -- can be spread for a fraction of the price and have a tendency to kill more civilans (which is invariably the point of weapons of mass destruction)
8) Other aspects of the NBC trinangle are more effective than biological weapons, and -- furthermore -- have more 'prior art' to rely upon. Nuclear weapons, for instance, can do any of the jobs biological weapons can (though they're not half as cheap): neutron bombs can do the job of anthrax; hydrogen bombs can take out entire metropolitan areas; tactical nuclear weapons can be used for surgical strikes. With that much of a portfolio in nuclear weapons, who really *needs* a planet-killer virus?
7) Whereas bacterial infections can afford to destroy entire populations -- if they have a lifestyle to fall back on -- viruses cannot. They can't survive without a host; ergo, the more virulent the virus, the more quickly it will lose its virulence. Take, for instance, the flu that ended WWI: it killed millions of people, then disappeared. Did people suddenly gain resistance to it? No. Of course not. But killing people wasn't a good strategy, so it evolved out of it.
6) The beneficial applications of virus-hacking technology come at less cost than the harmful applications. It's easy to convince your population to help out people with cystic fibrosis: it's difficult to find volunteers to test your new 'death plague v2.0'. Further, the mechanisms by which viruses do harm are less apparent than the mechanisms by which the human body harms itself: viruses act on a microscopic scale; the human body's processes are largely macroscopic.
5) There remain pockets of uninfectable humanity: Antarctica, Polynesia, northern Canada, Sweden, isolated islands in the Carribean
4)To any given disease mechanism, there are people that are immune. There are over five billion unique combinations of human DNA on the earth; studies have shown that there are both East African prostitutes and high-risk white males that remain uninfected by the AIDS virus despite repeated confirmed contact with the disease. Though this has not been directly attributed to genetics, that remains the most compelling possibility.
3) Biotech is not like nuclear. The problem with nuclear technology is twofold: the harmful applications of the technology are more apparent than the helpful, and the defenses against nuclear attacks are far more technically advanced than the nuclear attacks themselves.
Cryptology takes the opposite end of the spectrum: until an unprescedented technological breakthrough, it will always take less computer power to encrypt something than to break the encryption; or, rather, the 'offense' is more technologically costly than the 'defense'.
2) 'High' biotech is more expensive -- and less applicable -- than nuclear attack. To produce a nuclear weapon, you must only construct it. To produce a virus, you must train the scientists, know the technological secrets behind it, and make sure no one knows about it.
1) A lot of money is going into anti-viral technology, due to the AIDS epidemic. Before technology reaches the point that the genie is *truly* out of the bottle, we will have antiviral agents that should be able to keep a segment of the population alive even against the worst-case 'doomsday virus' scenario.
> Every body knows about David Koresh. The
> Heavens Gate... When there is a problem, if
> nothing is done, people die!!!
Religions thrive on martyrdom: it's the entire principle upon which Christianity, Islam, and -- to some degree -- Judaism are built upon. Even polytheistic religions have elements -- such as the Prometheus and Huitzilapochtli myths (and the 'nine million martyrs' Wiccan myth) -- that promote martyrdom. The harder you crack down on a religion, the more the *religion itself* is going to be seen as a martyr.
It worked for Christianity.
It held the generally fractuous Jews together through millenia of exile.
It caused David Koresh to commit suicide with all his followers.
In short, cracking down on a religion is the worst possible thing you could do to 'fix' the problem of a deviant religion. Further, remember that 'deviant' religions with many members have a tendency to move towards the norm; for instance, Mormonism -- which supported the formation of the nation of Deseret within the borders of the United States -- quickly moved in line with other 'mainstream' religions.
Second: you cannot argue 'information needs to be free' out of one side of your mouth and 'stupid information needs to be controlled by the Firm Hand of Government' out of the other. Excactly how is the moderation of information (in this case, *religious* information) different between the cases you present in the two paragraphs I've commented upon?
> If you naively look at the situation, and
> simply assume its another oddity of Chinese
> government, then you need to look beyond
> American media. If you've been any where in the
> world outside of the US, you'll know that the
> US main stream media is the LEAST FREE--Even
> compared to China.
Here's where my 'BS Detector' light goes off.
Right.
The politics of propaganda go like this: when your government is doing something you prefer the people not know about, you cut off access to alternate viewpoints, ergo restricting the 'info-flow' to a single stream. The Chinese government does this very effectively: they've stifled the underground press, limited 'net access, and even controlled the flow of information by phone. Most of their 'press releases' consist of fabricated stories, spin doctoring, and out of context information.
Further, the Chinese press is composed of Party officials trained to take the Party Line(tm). They do so in every possible circumstance.
The United States does not have the fairest media. Our treatment of the Kosovo situation was egregiously unfair to both the Kosovar, the Serbs, and what was going on. Our treatment of the Air Force incident in Italy glossed over the entire situation. Our press does its best to portray the American viewpoint as the right one, especially within the arena of American foreign policy.
However: there is no such thing as the 'American Media'. A good portion of the information we chalk up to 'America' is actually coming from Canada and the UK -- and, recently, we've been getting a lot of translated articles from Germany. In a worldwide marketplace of information, the 'propaganda' you accuse the government of *cannot* work.
The only place where it becomes sticky is within the arena of American politics, which is largely irrelevant on a large scale. However -- within this arena -- the tenor of articles is generally determined by the political disposition at the time of writing. If that falls along Republican and Democrat party lines, then that's just the opinion of Joe Average.
Anyway.
I've rambled on.
-- Dr. Benway