NYPD counted more than 200,000 people in the New York march.
Nope. Those initial reports turned out to be erroneous.
Listen, let me try to explain this as simply as I can, okay? You are quoting a news story which was subsequently corrected. Okay? Does that make sense to you? Do you understand the words?
You were off by a factor of 100.
In point of fact, the numbers reported by Answer were greatly exaggerated. They were not correct. You are quoting them as if they are correct and then accusing me of having them wrong. That's backwards.
Baseless innuendo from a serial liar.
Baseless? You said that the Iraqi regime didn't commit mass murder on an international scale! You plainly denied the truth! Baseless my ass.
It's nice to know the media is deciding what to let through and what to report "in our best interest".
You unbelievable idiot. You don't even understand what Sumner Redstone was talking about! He wasn't talking about news at all.
I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom.
I don't want to denigrate Kerry, but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people, but from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company.
You want a link to my "International Answer press releases" file folder?
200,000+ protested in Manhattan...
Double-check your figures. Answer said 250,000. NYPD said 50,000.
"In Rome, between 1 million and 3 million people turned out, according to police officials and protest organizers; in London, between half-million and 1 million; in Berlin, a half-million."
Given that the numbers initially reported by CNN were so completely wrong --off by a factor of five! --how much do you trust these numbers gathered from overseas?
Iraq didn't commit mass murder on a global scale, unless you're including the Iran-Iraq war, which was a long time ago, when Saddam was our ally.
The Holocaust deniers have found a new hobby.
Now that I've caught you in a lie, what do you have to say for yourself?
Oooh. Yeah, you're a real badass all right. Digging up refuted numbers with Google like that. You rocked my world, baby.
This is a Radcon technique, to assert something without proof until it is believed to be a fact.
"Without proof?" Remove yourself from under your rock and open your eyes. Emerge blinking into the light of day. There's a whole world out there, ya dumbass.
By the way, is "radcon" another word like "neocon," a modern-day slur? Why don't you just cut right to the chase and call me an uppity nigger?
The poster should be asked to provide proof for such a statement.
How about this? How about you get off your lazy ass and go read? How about you go take responsibility for yourself and get informed? You think Answer is just the bee's knees? Then you go read their press releases for yourself. But remember, you're looking for information that they try really hard to conceal here. You're going to have to read more than just the topic sentence of every paragraph. You're going to have to get down to the stuff where they say that the Baath government of Iraq was better than the government of the United States because at least the Iraqi government wasn't capitalist. That kind of thing.
You've got responsibilities here. If you want to sit there on your ass and say, "Your statements conflict with my prejudices, therefore you are obviously wrong," go right ahead. But don't be smug about it. At least be honest with yourself. At least admit that you're just cramming your head right back under that rock because your own little illusions about the world are oh so much more comforting than all those scary facts.
You just make this stuff up as you go along, don't you?
Yes, that's it. I'm just making stuff up. Whatever you say, Mr. "The Baathists were right!"
As I said, you're the one who wanted to express your dumb opinions about what the protesters were trying to achieve.
That's a good one. "Your dumb opinions." I've gotta write that one down.
Unrelated. We were talking about the marches which involved dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations, and millions of people.
Um. No, we're not. We're talking about Answer. Scroll back, you'll see. I'll wait.
As I've said, I was FOR the marches, but I'm not a member of ANSWER, and I never considered joining, because I didn't think I agreed with their politics.
Good for you. Others were not so lucky.
But, they're not pro-Baathist.
Okay, let's define our terms here. What word do you use to describe a body that has in its mission statement the idea that the Baathist government of Iraq was "a perfectly legitimate government," that it was "sovereign," that it "should be left alone," and that "all acts of aggression--be they military, economic or diplomatic-- should cease"? Those are direct quotes from an Answer press release from February 23, 2003. What word would you use to describe that organization?
How could they really advocate something different from what they were standing up and shouting?
It's the difference between what's on the cover of the pamphlet and what it says inside.
If you're the only genius who figured out ANSWER's hidden agenda
Not even close. I'm not even talking about original work here. This stuff is all well documented. Even your hero Seymour Hersch wrote about it, for cryin' out loud.
Wow, a true neocon.
I don't even know what that word means. I think it's the 21st-century version of "nigger" or "kike" or "wop." I think it just means "a person I hate."
Regardless, you are now home safe and tucked into your bed nightly while Iraq turns into Lebanon only on a much larger scale.
LOL. Do you think you have the foggiest idea what things are like in Iraq? You know what you know because you see it on the news. How many headlines did you see today that read, "Everything's fine in Basra." How many that said, "No violence in Kirkuk?" How many that said, "Just peachy in Umm Qasr?" Or "Quiet night in Tikrit?" Or "Lack of violence rocks Nineva?" Or "Peace breaks out in Sulaymaniah?"
There are 25 million people in Iraq. It's about the size of California, both in land area and population. Is there violence? You bet. Is it widespread? Not at all. It's limited to some very specific areas. Is it getting worse? Actually, no. The rate of incidents goes up and down, but more areas of Iraq are peaceful and safe today than last month, and last month than the month before.
But you think it's hell on earth because you lack perspective. Perspective which the news media should be giving you, but isn't.
Which, if you'll recall, is precisely my point here.
Still waiting for evidence.
If your approach is to sit on your ass and wait for the media -- or complete strangers --to spoon-feed you, you're going to be "still waiting" for a very long time.
Sigh. You keep saying that, but it doesn't make it true. "Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong." "The Baath party is the legitimate government of the state of Iraq." And here's my personal favorite: "The Iraqi people have more reason to invade the US than the US has to invade Iraq! At least Iraq isn't capitalist!" All statements made on the record by members of the International Answer steering committee.
International Answer is a pro-Baathist organization. Their purpose was to demonstrate support for the Iraqi Baath regime --the illegitmate, illegal regime, mind you.
Also, marching against invading Iraq does not make someone pro-Saddam.
Saying things like, "Saddam provides free education and health care. What has Bush done?" makes someone pro-Saddam.
I agree that ANSWER organized the marches. What I am saying is that the marches were an alliance of disparate organizations, all with their own separate agendas, who came together to protest on one issue.
You just contradicted yourself, I think. Which is it? Were they Answer marches or not?
How many times and in how many ways do I have to say it?!
You can say it as many different times using as many different words as you like. It won't make it so. I'm sorry, but you were duped. You were used. You were co-opted by somebody with insidious motives.
Well, okay, not you personally, since you've said repeatedly that you did not participate. But others who continue to insist to this day that they were marching against war, or in favor of abortion rights, or for a free Palestine, or whatever their personal wishlist might have been were actually marching in vocal support for the dictator of Iraq.
You brought it up, by ranting wild-eyed about communist pro-Baathist protestors, who you falsely claim turned out in small numbers.
LOL! That's hilarious. It reminds me of the old joke: "This food is terrible," he says. "Yes," she agrees, "and such small portions."
The biggest pro-Saddam marches of 2003 had, by reliable estimates, a few tens of thousands of participants. These are very small numbers considering that more people than that turn out to watch your average Orioles game.
Ultimately, those tens of millions of peace marchers, who filled the streets of cities around the world, who you snidely deride as pro-Baathist and communist sympathizers, were right.
They were right? Iraq never did anything wrong? They were right? Iraq was a sovereign state with a legitimate government? They were right? The Iraqi regime should have been allowed to continue committing mass murder on a global scale?
Tell me again how you're not pro-Saddam. I'm not seeing it.
The war was a stupid idea thought up by small minds living in ivory towers...
It happens every time. They start out calm and reasonable, then their hate starts to leak out. Next thing you know, they're ranting about how it's all a big conspiracy concocted by Karl Rove and Halliburton. You guys just can't keep your big ol' crazy bottled up, can you?
If you didn't want to talk about the war, you shouldn't have expressed your stupid ideas of what the protesters were trying to accomplish.
"If you didn't want to talk about my insane conspiracy theories, you shouldn't have mentioned cupcakes!"
National sovereignty is a concept of international law.
Not really. The whole notion of "international law" is a myth. International law, unlike actual law, is basically just another word for consensus.
The official position of the United States government is that an illegitimate government cannot, by definition, be sovereign. For example, the Baath government of Iraq pre-2003 was not legitimate, therefore it was not sovereign.
That article I recommended talks about how the recent handover of sovereignty was really a scam
And more with the blah blah blah. Look, I get it. Really, I understand. You really wanna ramble on about how much Bush sucks and how the United States is just an oppressive imperial totalitarian state that oppresses the workers and...I dunno. Whatever else is on your list of talking points. That's fine. But that's not the topic for discussion here. Take it somewhere else, please.
If you went to the websites at the time, you would see the long list of participating organizations, all with disparate agendas.
That's not actually an accurate statement. Answer did an excellent job of trying to blur the line between groups that had actually expressed public support for Answer and groups with which Answer professed "solidarity." You, like countless others, fell for their deception.
In point of fact, Answer was, and remains, a propaganda arm of the Workers World Party, which in turn was formed from the membership of the Socialist Party in 1956 to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Answer is a pro-totalitarian, pro-Baathist organization.
They came together solely to protest the Iraq war
Answer held their first public event on September 29, 2001, in DC to protest a military response to 9/11.
Also I would have participated if it had been more convenient for me to do so, and I by no means agreed with all of ANSWER's politics. It's reasonable to assume that there were many more people like myself.
You're absolutely right. As I said, there are lots of people who got suckered into marching under the banner of an organization the official position of which was that Iraq had done absolutely nothing wrong and that the US had no cause whatsoever to invade. That's why I call Answer's motives insidious. They stood up and shouted "no war!" but what they were really advocating was the overthrow of the Constitution and the abolition of private property. No, I am not just making that up. Seriously, it is their official position.
It's not like the Iraq disaster will ever affect you personally.
Heh. Funny. I spent eleven months there. How many times have you been over there?
Your equating the Swift Boat Liars with Move On shows how screwed up your thinking is.
See what I mean? This is precisely what I'm talking about. When this guy says that the Swift Vets are liars but that Move On is a paragon of truthfulness and light, nobody believes him because we all know what his biases are. But when (for example) the New York Times says it, America believes them because the New York Times is a trusted institution. Americans are therefore shocked to learn that, in point of fact, the Swift Vets' record on truthfulness and accuracy is far, far better than Move On's.
This is precisely what I'm talking about. I'm glad this came up to illustrate my point.
Beg pardon? We can argue about whether I'm any good or not, but I'm decidedly not an amateur. I get paid and everything.
you clearly also pick your battles based on your ideology, and completely ignore others.
I take the assignments as they are given to me. In my unofficial correspondence, I write about whatever the hell I want.
It's nice to see you arguing that skepticism in journalism should be even-handed, but I wonder if you really don't mean that it should apply to liberal media but not, for example, you.
You completely and totally missed my point. You, over there. Point, over there. Woosh.
My point is that the "objective journalism" philosophy --I might even go so far as to call it a myth --is a boondoggle. It's a disaster. It is impossible for anybody to be truly objective. Even if it were possible to be truly objective, it would be impossible to be both objective and present stories in their proper context.
The problem is not that some outlets are less objective than others. All are equally non-objective. Some lie about this while others are honest about it. That's the problem.
Anyway, the marches were not pro-ANSWER, they were anti-war.
Let's be specific here. There were events which, no doubt, were not organized by Answer. I'm sure you can scrounge one up if you look hard enough. But the vast majority of the events were organized by Answer.
I didn't protest, but if I had, I would have been protesting to represent my opinion, which isn't anti-war, but is anti-unnecessary-war.
If you had chosen to march at an Answer event, then you would have been marching in support of Answer's agenda, whether that was your intention or not. I'm sure lots of naive but well-meaning people got roped into being totalitarian socialists for a day in that manner.
Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with.
That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the responsibility of the news media to provide context with their stories, and how the philosophy of "objective journalism" makes that impossible. If you want to spin off into a "BUSH SUCKS" rant, please do it in a reply to somebody else's comment.
There is no national wide-circulation liberal newspaper.
This is obviously a case of confusion over definitions. "Liberal" does not mean "insane crazy Marxist revolutionary pro-Baathist leftist." That position is outside the mainstream of American politics. When Americans say "liberal," they're talking about people who are still quite conservative compare to, say, Fidel Castro, or to the editors of the Guardian.
ANSWER was a prime organizing force, but most of the marchers were not directly affiliated with them.
On what do you base that statement?
Your assertion that peace protesters were marching to support Saddam Hussein is pure demagoguery.
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. It doesn't change the fact that the official on-the-record position of International Answer was --and remains, incidentally --that because Saddam Hussein was a socialist, he was a legitimate sovereign leader and the United States had no right to invade. This isn't hearsay. This is their official position. Did you hear about it on the evening news? Are you even aware of it now? I dare say the answer to both questions is no. Which is exactly my point.
If you want some reading which may challenge your beliefs...
I appreciate that you're scrambling to change the subject, but if you don't mind I'll stick to this one. We're not talking in this context about whether the invasion was right or wrong, good or bad. We're talking about the fact that the "objective journalism" media followed its own tenets about presenting both sides of a story and ended up covering up the actual position of the anti-war organizing coalition. They refused to bring important --I'd say critical --perspective to the story, and they did so ostensibly in the name of objectivity.
Another example: the "objective journalism" media concluded that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were liars. This may or may not be true, but their failure to be equally critical of Move On and ACT is a disservice to the public.
it's probably more of a likely occurance than the banning of the Bible.
You've said that twice now, despite it being an untrue statement. See what I mean about swallowing the big lies?
tell me how taking 'under god' out of the pledge, or wherever, affects the bible.
Tell me why you didn't answer my question. The Democrats are right now campaigning on a big lie: that Republicans will reinstitute the draft. Where's your outrage?
The group International Answer does exist but their agenda does not seem to be to support Saddam Hussein
They do an excellent job of obfuscating their agenda. Look 'em up. They are a pro-socialist, pro-revolutionary, pro-Baathist group. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The group's revolutionary leanings are underreported, so you don't even know that they exist.
A thing may indeed be impossible to achieve, but that does not mean one should not attempt it anyway.
That's a nice platitude, but in this case it doesn't cover the whole story. Some journalists are out there saying they are objective when they are obviously not. This is deceptive and harmful.
In one case, the GOP is saying something that while technically true --liberals might ban the Bible --is almost certainly false. In the other case, the DNC is saying something that while technically true --Republicans might reinstate a draft --is almost certainly false. How is one better or worse than the other?
In fact, at the risk of changing the subject, I dare say that the GOP is on ever so slightly more solid ground here than the Democrats. While Democrats have repeatedly acted to remove references to God, the Bible and Christianity from public life, precisely zero Republicans have said anything, either officially or unofficially, in support of a draft. So while they're certainly both wrong, the Democrats are, in my opinion, even more wrong than the Republicans on this one.
A great many news organizations reject this rule in specific instances of individuals of importance. Nobody refers to Pope John Paul II as "Paul" on the second reference, for instance. Likewise, many newspapers are reluctant to refer to a sitting member of the government by his last name only. So you'll see "President George W. Bush" or "Senator John Kerry" on first reference and "President Bush" or "Sen. Kerry" on second reference.
Whether there's a relationship between the degree of balance in a story and the publication's style guide is an entirely different question.
Which is one of the great things about it. (Not to say that it's a great magazine. I don't read it that often myself, so I wouldn't know.)
Everybody has a bias. Everybody has political leanings. The idea of "objective journalism" is a very new one, only cooked up since the 1950's. The problem with "objective journalism" is that it's inherently impossible. Not just because all people have biases, but because the way "objective journalism" has been concocted is doomed to failure.
A tenet of the "objective journalism" philosophy is that all stories should cover both sides of the issue at hand. If the story is about the fact that Person X says that Thing A is bad, then the story also has to include a mention of the fact that Person Y says that Thing A is good. That's the rule.
But this approach usually ends up portraying a false equivalence. It sends the message that Person X and Person Y are equivalent in every way, and that neither point of view has any merit over the other. This leads to the kinds of absurdities like we saw last year before the invasion of Iraq. Every news story about the preparations for the invasion also included a mention of the fact that people protested the invasion. But they failed to deliver the proper perspective: that the people protesting the war were few in number and insidious in motive. The coverage, therefore, ended up legitimizing the protesters when it should not have.
"Protesters marched today" is not news. It doesn't begin to approach the standard for news. In order to be news, you have to tell who did it and why. Who protested? Members of the radical leftist revolutionary group International Answer. Why? To show their support for Saddam Hussein. These are key facts, but "objective journalism" requires them to be omitted.
Now, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that journalists often ignore the "objective journalism" philosophy when covering their stories. They often do what "objective journalism" expressly prohibits, injecting perspective and context into their stories. This is a good thing.
The bad news, however, is that journalists do not do this all the time. They do it when they feel like it. So a Klan rally, for example, gets covered as "Klan members marched in opposition to civil rights today." This is good. But an anti-war protest gets covered as "Protesters marched today," which is bad bad bad.
Whenever a news outlet, like a newspaper or a magazine, rejects "objective journalism" and covers news events with context and perspective, this is good. Whenever a news outlet purports to hold to the value of "objective journalism" but covers events with context and perspective anyway, this is bad.
If the New York Times would drop the silly pretense of being the "newspaper of record" and simply declare itself to be what it already is --a liberal newspaper --then everything would be fine. People looking for a liberal perspective can read the Times. People looking for a conservative perspective can read the Journal. And people looking for balance can --get this --read both.
That's the wonderful thing about Bush-haters. They might sound reasonable at first, but if you give them enough time, they'll reveal themselves as the raving lunatics they really are.
The best way to defeat the Bush-haters is to get them all microphones.
The White House continues to insist that he served faithfully and deserved an honorable discharge when he did not.
Translation: I hate Bush so much that I will continue to believe malicious lies about him no matter how many times those lies are debunked or how regularly I am revealed as a hypocrite and a bigot.
"I know that I didn't type them," says Knox. "However, the information in those is correct."
Hey, finally you stumble upon what she actually said. Now, ask yourself a couple of questions. Is is reasonable that a member of the office secretarial pool would know whether a direct order was given or not? Is is reasonable that a member of the secretarial pool would know that Killian was under pressure from a superior officer? The answers, of course, are no and no. So this statement by Marian Carr Knox --who loves to tell people how she thinks that Bush was "selected, not elected"--adds up to a hill of beans. She is, to put it bluntly, not remotely credible, and the complete absence of any kind of corroboration from anybody else is damning in the extreme.
How come you can't find anybody or any document to support those claims other than (1) a confirmed liar who recanted his own story then recanted his recantation when the next election rolled around, (2) an elderly former secretary who has a well-known personal grudge against the president, and (3) a set of memos which turn out to be clumsy and obvious forgeries? How come that's the very best you can do? Is this the part where you blame Bush? He somehow -- nobody knows how, mind you--destroyed all the records and coerced all the witnesses and covered up the story despite overwhelming, unprecedented hatred for him by his political enemies, right? He pulled the strings, covered it all up, right?
Ya dumbass.
The truth is that Bush Sr got Bush Jr into the National Guard ahead of a line of people who were sent to Vietnam instead.
Except that that's not the truth. Not only is it not true, it's not even anything that anybody is claiming. Ben Barnes made that claim in 1999, then promptly recanted, putting the blame for exercising influence not on George H. W. Bush but rather on a Bush family friend who was conveniently deceased. The story of who, exactly, is supposed to have exercised this influence has changed repeatedly over the years. The various members of the Bush family have repeatedly denied exercising influence, and the people involved have repeatedly and vocally denied ever being subject to any influence, and yet the story stays alive because...well, duh. Bush = Hitler. Obviously.
Why doesn't that matter to you?
For the same reason that I don't care about that French guy who wrote that the Pentagon was struck by a cruise missile, or that Canadian guy who wrote that Israeli demolitions experts brought down the towers to destroy Enron records, or that other idiot who said that the Bush family has ties to the Saudi royal family. Because insane conspiracy theories don't interest me.
Why don't you care that your president dodged the draft?
How up-in-arms about this were you in 1992 or 1996? If the answer is anything less than "completely fucking rabid," you are a hypocrite and a fool. If that is your answer, then you're just a fool.
Slashdot Mirror
NYPD counted more than 200,000 people in the New York march.
Nope. Those initial reports turned out to be erroneous.
Listen, let me try to explain this as simply as I can, okay? You are quoting a news story which was subsequently corrected. Okay? Does that make sense to you? Do you understand the words?
You were off by a factor of 100.
In point of fact, the numbers reported by Answer were greatly exaggerated. They were not correct. You are quoting them as if they are correct and then accusing me of having them wrong. That's backwards.
Baseless innuendo from a serial liar.
Baseless? You said that the Iraqi regime didn't commit mass murder on an international scale! You plainly denied the truth! Baseless my ass.
You unbelievable idiot. You don't even understand what Sumner Redstone was talking about! He wasn't talking about news at all.
You're deliberately mis-stating my position.
:-)
Your statement was, "They were right!" Exclamation point and all. Who was "they?" International Answer, a pro-Saddam, pro-Baathist organization.
Where did I misstate?
Do you ever stop lying?
I could say "yes" but you wouldn't know whether to believe me, would you?
You have zero credibility.
Coming from Mr. "The Baathists were right!" that doesn't really break my heart all that much. Sorry.
A link would be nice.
You want a link to my "International Answer press releases" file folder?
200,000+ protested in Manhattan...
Double-check your figures. Answer said 250,000. NYPD said 50,000.
"In Rome, between 1 million and 3 million people turned out, according to police officials and protest organizers; in London, between half-million and 1 million; in Berlin, a half-million."
Given that the numbers initially reported by CNN were so completely wrong --off by a factor of five! --how much do you trust these numbers gathered from overseas?
Iraq didn't commit mass murder on a global scale, unless you're including the Iran-Iraq war, which was a long time ago, when Saddam was our ally.
The Holocaust deniers have found a new hobby.
Now that I've caught you in a lie, what do you have to say for yourself?
Oooh. Yeah, you're a real badass all right. Digging up refuted numbers with Google like that. You rocked my world, baby.
There is also the issue of all major media outlets being owned or heavily invested in by conservatives.
LOL! "Ted Turner is not a penniless hippy, therefore he's a conservative!" Careful, your prejudices and bigotry are leaking out around the edges.
This is a Radcon technique, to assert something without proof until it is believed to be a fact.
"Without proof?" Remove yourself from under your rock and open your eyes. Emerge blinking into the light of day. There's a whole world out there, ya dumbass.
By the way, is "radcon" another word like "neocon," a modern-day slur? Why don't you just cut right to the chase and call me an uppity nigger?
The poster should be asked to provide proof for such a statement.
How about this? How about you get off your lazy ass and go read? How about you go take responsibility for yourself and get informed? You think Answer is just the bee's knees? Then you go read their press releases for yourself. But remember, you're looking for information that they try really hard to conceal here. You're going to have to read more than just the topic sentence of every paragraph. You're going to have to get down to the stuff where they say that the Baath government of Iraq was better than the government of the United States because at least the Iraqi government wasn't capitalist. That kind of thing.
You've got responsibilities here. If you want to sit there on your ass and say, "Your statements conflict with my prejudices, therefore you are obviously wrong," go right ahead. But don't be smug about it. At least be honest with yourself. At least admit that you're just cramming your head right back under that rock because your own little illusions about the world are oh so much more comforting than all those scary facts.
You just make this stuff up as you go along, don't you?
Yes, that's it. I'm just making stuff up. Whatever you say, Mr. "The Baathists were right!"
As I said, you're the one who wanted to express your dumb opinions about what the protesters were trying to achieve.
That's a good one. "Your dumb opinions." I've gotta write that one down.
Unrelated. We were talking about the marches which involved dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations, and millions of people.
Um. No, we're not. We're talking about Answer. Scroll back, you'll see. I'll wait.
As I've said, I was FOR the marches, but I'm not a member of ANSWER, and I never considered joining, because I didn't think I agreed with their politics.
Good for you. Others were not so lucky.
But, they're not pro-Baathist.
Okay, let's define our terms here. What word do you use to describe a body that has in its mission statement the idea that the Baathist government of Iraq was "a perfectly legitimate government," that it was "sovereign," that it "should be left alone," and that "all acts of aggression--be they military, economic or diplomatic-- should cease"? Those are direct quotes from an Answer press release from February 23, 2003. What word would you use to describe that organization?
How could they really advocate something different from what they were standing up and shouting?
It's the difference between what's on the cover of the pamphlet and what it says inside.
If you're the only genius who figured out ANSWER's hidden agenda
Not even close. I'm not even talking about original work here. This stuff is all well documented. Even your hero Seymour Hersch wrote about it, for cryin' out loud.
Wow, a true neocon.
I don't even know what that word means. I think it's the 21st-century version of "nigger" or "kike" or "wop." I think it just means "a person I hate."
Regardless, you are now home safe and tucked into your bed nightly while Iraq turns into Lebanon only on a much larger scale.
LOL. Do you think you have the foggiest idea what things are like in Iraq? You know what you know because you see it on the news. How many headlines did you see today that read, "Everything's fine in Basra." How many that said, "No violence in Kirkuk?" How many that said, "Just peachy in Umm Qasr?" Or "Quiet night in Tikrit?" Or "Lack of violence rocks Nineva?" Or "Peace breaks out in Sulaymaniah?"
There are 25 million people in Iraq. It's about the size of California, both in land area and population. Is there violence? You bet. Is it widespread? Not at all. It's limited to some very specific areas. Is it getting worse? Actually, no. The rate of incidents goes up and down, but more areas of Iraq are peaceful and safe today than last month, and last month than the month before.
But you think it's hell on earth because you lack perspective. Perspective which the news media should be giving you, but isn't.
Which, if you'll recall, is precisely my point here.
Still waiting for evidence.
If your approach is to sit on your ass and wait for the media -- or complete strangers --to spoon-feed you, you're going to be "still waiting" for a very long time.
ANSWER is not pro-Baathist. They are socialist.
Sigh. You keep saying that, but it doesn't make it true. "Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong." "The Baath party is the legitimate government of the state of Iraq." And here's my personal favorite: "The Iraqi people have more reason to invade the US than the US has to invade Iraq! At least Iraq isn't capitalist!" All statements made on the record by members of the International Answer steering committee.
International Answer is a pro-Baathist organization. Their purpose was to demonstrate support for the Iraqi Baath regime --the illegitmate, illegal regime, mind you.
Also, marching against invading Iraq does not make someone pro-Saddam.
Saying things like, "Saddam provides free education and health care. What has Bush done?" makes someone pro-Saddam.
I agree that ANSWER organized the marches. What I am saying is that the marches were an alliance of disparate organizations, all with their own separate agendas, who came together to protest on one issue.
You just contradicted yourself, I think. Which is it? Were they Answer marches or not?
How many times and in how many ways do I have to say it?!
You can say it as many different times using as many different words as you like. It won't make it so. I'm sorry, but you were duped. You were used. You were co-opted by somebody with insidious motives.
Well, okay, not you personally, since you've said repeatedly that you did not participate. But others who continue to insist to this day that they were marching against war, or in favor of abortion rights, or for a free Palestine, or whatever their personal wishlist might have been were actually marching in vocal support for the dictator of Iraq.
You brought it up, by ranting wild-eyed about communist pro-Baathist protestors, who you falsely claim turned out in small numbers.
LOL! That's hilarious. It reminds me of the old joke: "This food is terrible," he says. "Yes," she agrees, "and such small portions."
The biggest pro-Saddam marches of 2003 had, by reliable estimates, a few tens of thousands of participants. These are very small numbers considering that more people than that turn out to watch your average Orioles game.
Ultimately, those tens of millions of peace marchers, who filled the streets of cities around the world, who you snidely deride as pro-Baathist and communist sympathizers, were right.
They were right? Iraq never did anything wrong? They were right? Iraq was a sovereign state with a legitimate government? They were right? The Iraqi regime should have been allowed to continue committing mass murder on a global scale?
Tell me again how you're not pro-Saddam. I'm not seeing it.
The war was a stupid idea thought up by small minds living in ivory towers...
It happens every time. They start out calm and reasonable, then their hate starts to leak out. Next thing you know, they're ranting about how it's all a big conspiracy concocted by Karl Rove and Halliburton. You guys just can't keep your big ol' crazy bottled up, can you?
If you didn't want to talk about the war, you shouldn't have expressed your stupid ideas of what the protesters were trying to accomplish.
"If you didn't want to talk about my insane conspiracy theories, you shouldn't have mentioned cupcakes!"
Whatever, dude.
"Charged?" I don't think you're clear on the meaning of the expression.
National sovereignty is a concept of international law.
...I dunno. Whatever else is on your list of talking points. That's fine. But that's not the topic for discussion here. Take it somewhere else, please.
Not really. The whole notion of "international law" is a myth. International law, unlike actual law, is basically just another word for consensus.
The official position of the United States government is that an illegitimate government cannot, by definition, be sovereign. For example, the Baath government of Iraq pre-2003 was not legitimate, therefore it was not sovereign.
That article I recommended talks about how the recent handover of sovereignty was really a scam
And more with the blah blah blah. Look, I get it. Really, I understand. You really wanna ramble on about how much Bush sucks and how the United States is just an oppressive imperial totalitarian state that oppresses the workers and
If you went to the websites at the time, you would see the long list of participating organizations, all with disparate agendas.
That's not actually an accurate statement. Answer did an excellent job of trying to blur the line between groups that had actually expressed public support for Answer and groups with which Answer professed "solidarity." You, like countless others, fell for their deception.
In point of fact, Answer was, and remains, a propaganda arm of the Workers World Party, which in turn was formed from the membership of the Socialist Party in 1956 to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Answer is a pro-totalitarian, pro-Baathist organization.
They came together solely to protest the Iraq war
Answer held their first public event on September 29, 2001, in DC to protest a military response to 9/11.
Also I would have participated if it had been more convenient for me to do so, and I by no means agreed with all of ANSWER's politics. It's reasonable to assume that there were many more people like myself.
You're absolutely right. As I said, there are lots of people who got suckered into marching under the banner of an organization the official position of which was that Iraq had done absolutely nothing wrong and that the US had no cause whatsoever to invade. That's why I call Answer's motives insidious. They stood up and shouted "no war!" but what they were really advocating was the overthrow of the Constitution and the abolition of private property. No, I am not just making that up. Seriously, it is their official position.
It's not like the Iraq disaster will ever affect you personally.
Heh. Funny. I spent eleven months there. How many times have you been over there?
Your equating the Swift Boat Liars with Move On shows how screwed up your thinking is.
See what I mean? This is precisely what I'm talking about. When this guy says that the Swift Vets are liars but that Move On is a paragon of truthfulness and light, nobody believes him because we all know what his biases are. But when (for example) the New York Times says it, America believes them because the New York Times is a trusted institution. Americans are therefore shocked to learn that, in point of fact, the Swift Vets' record on truthfulness and accuracy is far, far better than Move On's.
This is precisely what I'm talking about. I'm glad this came up to illustrate my point.
You have claimed to be an "amateur journalist,"
Beg pardon? We can argue about whether I'm any good or not, but I'm decidedly not an amateur. I get paid and everything.
you clearly also pick your battles based on your ideology, and completely ignore others.
I take the assignments as they are given to me. In my unofficial correspondence, I write about whatever the hell I want.
It's nice to see you arguing that skepticism in journalism should be even-handed, but I wonder if you really don't mean that it should apply to liberal media but not, for example, you.
You completely and totally missed my point. You, over there. Point, over there. Woosh.
My point is that the "objective journalism" philosophy --I might even go so far as to call it a myth --is a boondoggle. It's a disaster. It is impossible for anybody to be truly objective. Even if it were possible to be truly objective, it would be impossible to be both objective and present stories in their proper context.
The problem is not that some outlets are less objective than others. All are equally non-objective. Some lie about this while others are honest about it. That's the problem.
ANSWER is not pro-Bathist
Yes, they are very much pro-Baath party.
Anyway, the marches were not pro-ANSWER, they were anti-war.
Let's be specific here. There were events which, no doubt, were not organized by Answer. I'm sure you can scrounge one up if you look hard enough. But the vast majority of the events were organized by Answer.
I didn't protest, but if I had, I would have been protesting to represent my opinion, which isn't anti-war, but is anti-unnecessary-war.
If you had chosen to march at an Answer event, then you would have been marching in support of Answer's agenda, whether that was your intention or not. I'm sure lots of naive but well-meaning people got roped into being totalitarian socialists for a day in that manner.
Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with.
That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the responsibility of the news media to provide context with their stories, and how the philosophy of "objective journalism" makes that impossible. If you want to spin off into a "BUSH SUCKS" rant, please do it in a reply to somebody else's comment.
why is banning the bible more likely than a draft?
It's not, you idiot. Neither one of them is going to happen.
There is no national wide-circulation liberal newspaper.
...
This is obviously a case of confusion over definitions. "Liberal" does not mean "insane crazy Marxist revolutionary pro-Baathist leftist." That position is outside the mainstream of American politics. When Americans say "liberal," they're talking about people who are still quite conservative compare to, say, Fidel Castro, or to the editors of the Guardian.
ANSWER was a prime organizing force, but most of the marchers were not directly affiliated with them.
On what do you base that statement?
Your assertion that peace protesters were marching to support Saddam Hussein is pure demagoguery.
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. It doesn't change the fact that the official on-the-record position of International Answer was --and remains, incidentally --that because Saddam Hussein was a socialist, he was a legitimate sovereign leader and the United States had no right to invade. This isn't hearsay. This is their official position. Did you hear about it on the evening news? Are you even aware of it now? I dare say the answer to both questions is no. Which is exactly my point.
If you want some reading which may challenge your beliefs
I appreciate that you're scrambling to change the subject, but if you don't mind I'll stick to this one. We're not talking in this context about whether the invasion was right or wrong, good or bad. We're talking about the fact that the "objective journalism" media followed its own tenets about presenting both sides of a story and ended up covering up the actual position of the anti-war organizing coalition. They refused to bring important --I'd say critical --perspective to the story, and they did so ostensibly in the name of objectivity.
Another example: the "objective journalism" media concluded that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were liars. This may or may not be true, but their failure to be equally critical of Move On and ACT is a disservice to the public.
it's probably more of a likely occurance than the banning of the Bible.
You've said that twice now, despite it being an untrue statement. See what I mean about swallowing the big lies?
tell me how taking 'under god' out of the pledge, or wherever, affects the bible.
Tell me why you didn't answer my question. The Democrats are right now campaigning on a big lie: that Republicans will reinstitute the draft. Where's your outrage?
The group International Answer does exist but their agenda does not seem to be to support Saddam Hussein
They do an excellent job of obfuscating their agenda. Look 'em up. They are a pro-socialist, pro-revolutionary, pro-Baathist group. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The group's revolutionary leanings are underreported, so you don't even know that they exist.
A thing may indeed be impossible to achieve, but that does not mean one should not attempt it anyway.
That's a nice platitude, but in this case it doesn't cover the whole story. Some journalists are out there saying they are objective when they are obviously not. This is deceptive and harmful.
there is no way the bible could be 'banned'.
who in congress would vote for it?
There's no way Congress could institute a draft, either. Doesn't stop Kerry from using it to try to scare the undecideds.
what does "under god" have to do with the bible anyway?
Um. Never actually read the Bible, I see?
i don't see a draft as likely, but it's a hell of a lot more likely in the next 4 years than the banning of the bible.
Congratulations. You have drunk every last drop of the Kerry Kool-Aid.
but this is just bullsh!t no matter which side you are on
s -17/1096003906320890.xml
How is that any different than this?
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/new
In one case, the GOP is saying something that while technically true --liberals might ban the Bible --is almost certainly false. In the other case, the DNC is saying something that while technically true --Republicans might reinstate a draft --is almost certainly false. How is one better or worse than the other?
In fact, at the risk of changing the subject, I dare say that the GOP is on ever so slightly more solid ground here than the Democrats. While Democrats have repeatedly acted to remove references to God, the Bible and Christianity from public life, precisely zero Republicans have said anything, either officially or unofficially, in support of a draft. So while they're certainly both wrong, the Democrats are, in my opinion, even more wrong than the Republicans on this one.
So where's your outrage at the Democrats?
A great many news organizations reject this rule in specific instances of individuals of importance. Nobody refers to Pope John Paul II as "Paul" on the second reference, for instance. Likewise, many newspapers are reluctant to refer to a sitting member of the government by his last name only. So you'll see "President George W. Bush" or "Senator John Kerry" on first reference and "President Bush" or "Sen. Kerry" on second reference.
Whether there's a relationship between the degree of balance in a story and the publication's style guide is an entirely different question.
US News doesn't even seem to try to hide its bias
Which is one of the great things about it. (Not to say that it's a great magazine. I don't read it that often myself, so I wouldn't know.)
Everybody has a bias. Everybody has political leanings. The idea of "objective journalism" is a very new one, only cooked up since the 1950's. The problem with "objective journalism" is that it's inherently impossible. Not just because all people have biases, but because the way "objective journalism" has been concocted is doomed to failure.
A tenet of the "objective journalism" philosophy is that all stories should cover both sides of the issue at hand. If the story is about the fact that Person X says that Thing A is bad, then the story also has to include a mention of the fact that Person Y says that Thing A is good. That's the rule.
But this approach usually ends up portraying a false equivalence. It sends the message that Person X and Person Y are equivalent in every way, and that neither point of view has any merit over the other. This leads to the kinds of absurdities like we saw last year before the invasion of Iraq. Every news story about the preparations for the invasion also included a mention of the fact that people protested the invasion. But they failed to deliver the proper perspective: that the people protesting the war were few in number and insidious in motive. The coverage, therefore, ended up legitimizing the protesters when it should not have.
"Protesters marched today" is not news. It doesn't begin to approach the standard for news. In order to be news, you have to tell who did it and why. Who protested? Members of the radical leftist revolutionary group International Answer. Why? To show their support for Saddam Hussein. These are key facts, but "objective journalism" requires them to be omitted.
Now, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that journalists often ignore the "objective journalism" philosophy when covering their stories. They often do what "objective journalism" expressly prohibits, injecting perspective and context into their stories. This is a good thing.
The bad news, however, is that journalists do not do this all the time. They do it when they feel like it. So a Klan rally, for example, gets covered as "Klan members marched in opposition to civil rights today." This is good. But an anti-war protest gets covered as "Protesters marched today," which is bad bad bad.
Whenever a news outlet, like a newspaper or a magazine, rejects "objective journalism" and covers news events with context and perspective, this is good. Whenever a news outlet purports to hold to the value of "objective journalism" but covers events with context and perspective anyway, this is bad.
If the New York Times would drop the silly pretense of being the "newspaper of record" and simply declare itself to be what it already is --a liberal newspaper --then everything would be fine. People looking for a liberal perspective can read the Times. People looking for a conservative perspective can read the Journal. And people looking for balance can --get this --read both.
See what I mean? Completely insane.
That's the wonderful thing about Bush-haters. They might sound reasonable at first, but if you give them enough time, they'll reveal themselves as the raving lunatics they really are.
The best way to defeat the Bush-haters is to get them all microphones.
The White House continues to insist that he served faithfully and deserved an honorable discharge when he did not.
Translation: I hate Bush so much that I will continue to believe malicious lies about him no matter how many times those lies are debunked or how regularly I am revealed as a hypocrite and a bigot.
"I know that I didn't type them," says Knox. "However, the information in those is correct."
...well, duh. Bush = Hitler. Obviously.
Hey, finally you stumble upon what she actually said. Now, ask yourself a couple of questions. Is is reasonable that a member of the office secretarial pool would know whether a direct order was given or not? Is is reasonable that a member of the secretarial pool would know that Killian was under pressure from a superior officer? The answers, of course, are no and no. So this statement by Marian Carr Knox --who loves to tell people how she thinks that Bush was "selected, not elected"--adds up to a hill of beans. She is, to put it bluntly, not remotely credible, and the complete absence of any kind of corroboration from anybody else is damning in the extreme.
How come you can't find anybody or any document to support those claims other than (1) a confirmed liar who recanted his own story then recanted his recantation when the next election rolled around, (2) an elderly former secretary who has a well-known personal grudge against the president, and (3) a set of memos which turn out to be clumsy and obvious forgeries? How come that's the very best you can do? Is this the part where you blame Bush? He somehow -- nobody knows how, mind you--destroyed all the records and coerced all the witnesses and covered up the story despite overwhelming, unprecedented hatred for him by his political enemies, right? He pulled the strings, covered it all up, right?
Ya dumbass.
The truth is that Bush Sr got Bush Jr into the National Guard ahead of a line of people who were sent to Vietnam instead.
Except that that's not the truth. Not only is it not true, it's not even anything that anybody is claiming. Ben Barnes made that claim in 1999, then promptly recanted, putting the blame for exercising influence not on George H. W. Bush but rather on a Bush family friend who was conveniently deceased. The story of who, exactly, is supposed to have exercised this influence has changed repeatedly over the years. The various members of the Bush family have repeatedly denied exercising influence, and the people involved have repeatedly and vocally denied ever being subject to any influence, and yet the story stays alive because
Why doesn't that matter to you?
For the same reason that I don't care about that French guy who wrote that the Pentagon was struck by a cruise missile, or that Canadian guy who wrote that Israeli demolitions experts brought down the towers to destroy Enron records, or that other idiot who said that the Bush family has ties to the Saudi royal family. Because insane conspiracy theories don't interest me.
Why don't you care that your president dodged the draft?
How up-in-arms about this were you in 1992 or 1996? If the answer is anything less than "completely fucking rabid," you are a hypocrite and a fool. If that is your answer, then you're just a fool.
The typist who CBS produced who's definitively stated that she would have typed the memos
That's not what she said, ya dumbass.
Bush dodged the draft with his powerful father's help.
Nobody, not even the freakiest of the freaks, is saying that. You don't even understand the rumor you're trying to spread.