i’m gunna come break all of your toys, bitch

ahh, thats good stuff.

hahaha

i just got that ‘Sharon’ sounds like a little girls name, and that makes your comment so much funnier!

did you mean to do that?

I wasn’t trying to imply he was a dumbass at all; I’m sorry if that’s the impression I gave. He had stated that he has to go to the BBC to find out about world news because the American media outlets didn’t provide it. But that’s an exaggeration, because we do have international news coverage here. It’s just the BBC provides a different perspective and a more wide ranging coverage. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the depth or quality of said coverage is much better. Just that it’s not dominated by news Americans are interested in; as it is here.

Note: the issue of what news Americans are interested is seperate. I really wish Americans would try to learn about the rest of the world.

The Palestinians can’t go “home”. That’s the point! They go to refugee camps. These were known as Townships in South Africa.

Cobra La Al Queda. It’s all the same.

Oh HELL YEAH! This jailbait brotha knows whut he rappin’ bout! I gits the hos, the waipons, an’ I brings them shits HOME. So fuck all you playa’ hata’s. Word. I eat pork too!

Holla!

p.s. Duke is a pale-ass cracka an’ Cobra Commander is my fun boy. Cain’t come close to the Chrome.

No doubt, it’s one of the most interesting sites I’ve been at. Thanks!
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Jimmy from *\/* phentermine (http://www.phentermine-support.com) *\/*

As the MPs say in British Parliament, here here!

As a journalist and Muslim myself, I couldn’t agree more

But seriously, as this website’s self-appointed resident linguist, what pives is saying is spot- on. Both Arabic and Spanish have tons of phrases like “God willing”, “May God protect you”, or “May God accompany you”. Taken out of context and/or left as *Allah*, these pharses can sound bugged out and fanatical. That’s media coersion for you. In fact, even most educated, secular Arabs and Latin Americans regularly say the above phrases as cultural habits. They don’t mean them literally! But of course, Journalism is a noble and dying art in America and propaganda is experiencing a golden era. Don’t expect Dan Rather or 60 Minutes to do a little research on this and objectively INFORM viewers, even though it’s their fukn job! Research? Objective? Inform? What the hell do those mean?!

Speaking of fundamentalists, has anyone ever counted how many times our presidents invoke God in times of war? Or hang out with backward racist yokels like Pat Robertson? It’s all about proving that they have the Divine Mandate.

So don’t forget, friends: Allah *is* God and all three religions share the Old Testament. Muslims really aren’t all that scary.

God help us all.

a scent of poo is coming from that pile of media

Hey kids, I just pulled a Txillardegi, and composed a comment that ended up being long enough for a new

I think you’re being idealistic. Which is not wrong or even bad. Just not realistic.

No matter how hard people try, it is impossible for one to be completely objective, even as a journalist. Would it be better if they were completely objective? Yes. Can they be? I don’t think so; bias will creep in no matter how hard you try. That’s my opinion, and you won’t be able to change that because it’s based on my personal observations of news reporting over the past 10 years.

As to when journalism was better; no, it’s always been biased. I agree that the past 10-20 years have seen news reporting get egregiously horrid, especially television news (I don’t even watch television news anymore), but even before that, newspapers were not objective in the least and in the early 20th century and before, when newspapers endorsed a political candidate, they openly attempted to promote one over the other in their “objective” reporting. What I find insidious now is that journalists and news outlets will try to maintain this veneer of objectivity while doing essentially the same thing. “Yellow Journalism” is another example that comes to mind. To say that journalism has ever been objective is to ignore history. Which brings me to another point.

You can even see a lack of objectivity in history books. History is supposed to consist of the unvarnished facts, yet historians can still exhibit bias when they give interpretations of events or the significance of events in history. We even have a saying that highlights this “History is written by the victors.” (paraphrased)

Humans are biased creatures and that will not change. This idea that we can somehow be completely objective is a fantasy that can not come to pass. It is better to recognize that, accept the differences, and learn how to filter it. I personally read at least 10 different sources of news a day from the US, England, Australia, and China. They are all biased to a certain degree, but biased in different ways. Thus, a more complete picture can be drawn. If you think the BBC is an unbiased source of news, then I think it’s probably because you agree with the way the BBC is covering the news. The BBC is clearly not unbiased. News reporting and journalists don’t suddenly become objective because the news is being reported outside of the United States.

Now, clearly we view this from two fundamentally different viewpoints. You think that journalism should and can be objective. I think that it should be objective, but I don’t think it can be. I’m actually starting to wonder if it’s impossible for humans in general to be objective and whether or not this is an inherent condition that arises out of different value systems.

I’m sorry for the long post.

You won’t get rid of sloppy or biased journalism. Objectivity in journalism is simply a myth. You’re talking about overlooking of facts, not necessarily bias. That’s sloppy journalism. I was more referring to how bias creeps into stories and how you can’t prevent that because people are human. It doesn’t necessarily have to be omission of fact or one-sided reporting, it can be in the tone of delivery, the words used. That’s the kind of bias that pives was referring to; the fact that Allah is presented as a seperate God from the Christian or Judaic God.

You seem to be insinuating that the media is backing Bush’s agenda, am I correct?

I’d just like to point out. That the 2nd Senator is Arlen Specter.

It’s cause i wrote him a letter. In case you thought letter writing doesn’t have an effect.

or perhaps it’s that YOUR letters have no effect. And my prose seduces people?

last time i checked, PHP was the slowest of all the server side scripting languages.

if you want fast and simple use coldfusion, but unfortunately its proprietary.

another benifit of JSP is that you can easily make servlets for you application, last i checked php hd no buit in version of this.

this is all from someone who left the web industry a few years ago, so pour the usual pinch of salt over all i’ve said.

damn phil, couldn’t have said it better myself

I use both PHP and JSP/Servlets for my personal projects. however, I’ve been favoring JSP/Servlets since any tools I create in servlet form can eventually be used in a stand alone application as well. this simply makes the code more valuable and reusable across a wider spectrum of applications.

heheh

it’s your birthday! Blow my candle!

Happy bday… a day late… but ohwell.

I wish the UN would come in here and take out our dictator, after all he wasn’t elected.

Come on China, put out a resolution.

To think i thought there was no difference between democrats and republicans. I still do, but it’s limited to domestic policy. no democrat would fuckup foreign policy this bad.

btw, thanks for cursing on the site Jeremy. In your b-day post. I think you’ve just opened the floodgates

I would have to disagree that all people know what they want.

I think the most significant and difficult achievement in one’s life is knowing what one truly wants. Not fantastically, but realistically.

I don’t think you can begin to make long-term goals and set your life on a definite track until you know exactly what you want. All you can do in the mean time is try things out.

So, do you know what you want?

damn,

we should organize a protest of people, all with cameras, to go ride septa across the city and take photos.

e) “Septa: Thankless Jodete, at least we have a meter here, not like in Miami!
-babelfish

Beautiful! really interesting.
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[online casino]

these punks is scared

That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me for a while. Even though I do not know you personally I FELT the warmth and sincerity of your expression was aimed at me.

God Bless You. You have made my day perfect.

“I love you.”

There just aren’t enough ways to say it. In German there are two distinctions, “I have love” and “I love.”

.

you know what’s also messed up… there is no record of that interview on any major american news site. I googled for it, and its all middle eastern news sites, and tiny independent american sites.

this is the kind of stuff that NBC should be telling me about the man in charge of the government that gets so much of my tax money.

Is stability the key to peace? I question that assumption. So far the U.S’s attempts at keeping stability have done anything but keep the peace. Look at the long-term affects of most of our interventions since WWII.

Perhaps justice is a bigger key to peace…
perhaps.

Well to rephrase. I think that stability can only be had with Justice. You are not going to stabilize a region if one side of a potential conflict feels treated unjustly. Now, there is no perfect Justice as long as men are involved. But, clearly, decent justice must be served in order to pacify a population. As long as a “side” feels and has significant proof of unjust treatment. That side will not be content. And if the unjust treatment is ongoing, you can forget about it.

Now as for a list of US intervention, I’ll expect Jorge to jump in here. As he has the Dates and could probably fill the page with examples.

Where to start? Where to start? there’s so much to choose from. I also don’t know how much you know, and how much you don’t about US history. (This is not a judgement, but I’m not about to explain every instance)

1954: The CIA engineers the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Guatemala; 30 years of military dictatorship, repression, and violence follow.

1973: The CIA helps overthrow the democratic government of Allende in Chile in favor of a bloody dictatorship.

I’ll leave Cuba to Jorge. and those other Asian countries.

Iran Contras?

How about Cambodia? The US bombed the shit out of Cambodia from 1969 -1973. This bombing radicalized the population and helped the Khmer Rouge to power.
becuase the Khmer rouge was fighting against the vietnamese and by extension the soviets in the 80’s the US tilted it’s policy to back the Khmer Rouge.

So our record of intervention leaves me no faith that the US can leave with stability.

Most recently, let’s look at Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a miserable failure of the US’s policy of extraction/regime change and reconstruction.
Perhaps, if the US could have done this right, there would be more support for a war in Iraq.
Afghanistan is in complete shambles, there is no security for citizens outside of Kabul. The US has done nothing except start it’s plans for a pipeline to “Reconstruct” Afghanistan. now Afghanistan will never have the resources of a postwar Germany, but you would think that the western powers would have learned the lesson well of not putting in good programs of Reconstruction.

Next part, As for “previous unaddressed problems” the US has been funding Israel since at least the 6 day war (perhaps further back?) and you are correct, the previous unaddressed problem is that people living in Palestine were forcibly removed from their homes (and continue to be). Until this problem is addressed, there will be no change in the crisis. As we can see from Sharon’s quotes, his way to solve the problem is complete Genocide. That is one way to do it.

No one expects an overnight solution. At this point in time the only overnight one would be Genocide. that could happen pretty quick given the resources. But since i don’t think we really want to do that.

So your last question is what is Justice to me in this case?

It’s difficult it’s a muddy problem at this point.
1) War crime trial for Sharon (he has too much blood on his hands)
2) 2 seperate states. But the Palestinian state has to be of continous land. It cannot be “townships” divided and small, with no access to each other. They must have neutral and equal access to ports and water supply.
3) The US says it wants to foster democracy around the world then stop funding of all non-democratic regimes with US tax dollars. This includes Israel. Israel is not a democracy or a republic. It is an apartheid state, and should be treated as such until all of it’s citizens and occupants can vote. The Palestinian state may take any refugees from Israel, but if the ones that already live there wanna stay, they can. And they must have full citizenship under the law to get US funding.

That would be more along the lines of Justice for me.