Sarah Palin joins Fox News

[RPGmasterBoo]

Fair enough. For my part I'd recall the way the toppling of Saddam's statue was handled in Western media, which I saw live and then saw butchered by editorial slant into US triumphalism. BUt that doesn't mean everything I see on the news is rubbish. In purely practical terms, unless one believes some information received from outside sources how can you even begin to formulate your moral and personal compass let alone judge the objective truth of subsequent events?

 

You can't. I use western media (much like any other, including local ones) for basic facts. From the basic facts, other more detailed knowledge, previous experience and educated guesses (because there's only so much available information) you formulate your own opinion.

The problem with "humanitarian" interventions or any other sort of conflict is that they turn the media into a cog of the war machine, and everything becomes suspect. Although I must say the media portrayal of the Iraqi war was much more critical than the one of the Balkan wars. Its probably due to the relatively weak international backing the Iraq war had in the first place.

 

Media manipulation was thoroughly analyzed by George Orwell in his day, and not much has changed since.

 

The internet could be a better source of information, (and it is in general) if only it wasn't so chaotic and suffocated by amateurism.

[Calax]

Fair enough. For my part I'd recall the way the toppling of Saddam's statue was handled in Western media, which I saw live and then saw butchered by editorial slant into US triumphalism. BUt that doesn't mean everything I see on the news is rubbish. In purely practical terms, unless one believes some information received from outside sources how can you even begin to formulate your moral and personal compass let alone judge the objective truth of subsequent events?

 

You can't. I use western media (much like any other, including local ones) for basic facts. From the basic facts, other more detailed knowledge, previous experience and educated guesses (because there's only so much available information) you formulate your own opinion.

The problem with "humanitarian" interventions or any other sort of conflict is that they turn the media into a cog of the war machine, and everything becomes suspect. Although I must say the media portrayal of the Iraqi war was much more critical than the one of the Balkan wars. Its probably due to the relatively weak international backing the Iraq war had in the first place.

 

Media manipulation was thoroughly analyzed by George Orwell in his day, and not much has changed since.

 

The internet could be a better source of information, (and it is in general) if only it wasn't so chaotic and suffocated by amateurism.

Thing is that mainstream news can twist the facts totally to the point where it's unrecognizable. Fox News is particularly good at this, evidenced in the other thread where we discussed Mr Beck. (of course they say that their lineup between 2 and 11 pm is just commentary which is odd but)

[RPGmasterBoo]

Yes, they can twist anything, in any way they want. Well, if you don't have some privileged source of information, you just have to go with gut feeling. Knowing other languages and being able to read what the other side is saying is extremely valuable.

[Walsingham]

You can't expect people who are amateurs to behave like professionals, mate. They have to eat, and that means earning a living doing proper work, not travelling to Burutustan to cover a conflict or descending into government archives for days on end to chase a crucial receipt.

 

I'd follow up by asking if you consider the 'problems' with humanitarian intervention outweigh the benefits. Personally I can swallow a lot of BS if it means preventing the deaths of a few million innocent people.

[RPGmasterBoo]

The problem is, there were never millions at stake. Except apparently in Rwanda, but I'll get to that later.

 

To me the problems clearly outweigh the benefits, and not just on a theoretical level, but on a practical one. Eg. Saddam was a typical dictatorial leader. His primary occupation was staying in power. To this end he favored his Sunni muslims and oppressed the Shia and the Kurds. Several thousand people died during his rule because of the way he handled this. I'm reffering to his oppresion of the Shia and Kurds, in retaliation for their uprisings. Uprisings, I might add encouraged by the US. The wars he involved Iraq in are another matter, because they have complex backgrounds.

 

Through oppression he held the volatile nature of Iraq in check. He was good at it, because he knew the people he was ruling, and was pretty much a product of that part of the world. If he wasn't capable he wouldn't have ruled Iraq for more than two decades.

 

Then he was removed.

 

Whatever numbers you favor, the civillian casualties that were the result of the chaos that followed the invasion make Saddam's crimes pale in comparison.

 

My basic logic is this. If I, as a mere student of politics could forsee that once Saddam was gone all hell was going to break loose, its idiotic not to assume that top people in the Pentagon didn't know it as well. They knew it, yet they decided to go through with it. That would mean they simply didn't care, because if they did the most logical course of action would have been to let Saddam fall on his own. Saddam's fall was a matter of time, and it might have been the opportunity for a peaceful change of regime.

 

 

 

The image the media wants you to believe prior to an intervention is that you're preventing another holocaust. Thus, anything you do can't be as bad as what's already happening. This had no grounding in facts, anywhere in the world except Rwanda. Rwanda is the only proven modern genocide, where in the space of 3 months about a million people were killed. Rwanda aside, the interventions in the Balkans, i Iraq etc did nothing but add more fuel to the fire, and made the final solution much more distant.

Edited January 25, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[taks]

Thing is that mainstream news can twist the facts totally to the point where it's unrecognizable. Fox News is particularly good at this, evidenced in the other thread where we discussed Mr Beck. (of course they say that their lineup between 2 and 11 pm is just commentary which is odd but)

beck is a conservative opinion analyst, no different than chris matthews (on the left). i was right, you don't know the difference.

 

taks

[Calax]

Thing is that mainstream news can twist the facts totally to the point where it's unrecognizable. Fox News is particularly good at this, evidenced in the other thread where we discussed Mr Beck. (of course they say that their lineup between 2 and 11 pm is just commentary which is odd but)

beck is a conservative opinion analyst, no different than chris matthews (on the left). i was right, you don't know the difference.

 

taks

I know the difference, but that doesn't mean I have to say "Oh, well he's an opinion commentator" (I'd hardly call him an analyst given he doesn't really analyze as much as manipulate) and simply let anything he says go fairly well unchecked because "It's his opinion". If you have an opinion, you should at least try to back it up with facts if you're going to represent the idea as fact.

 

Also outright lying in your advertising campaigns (No spin zone anyone?) doesn't exactly speak well of programs.

[taks]

I know the difference, but that doesn't mean I have to say "Oh, well he's an opinion commentator"

you said he was reporting the news, he does not. if you are going to pretend to be impartial yourself, you should at least understand why that makes a difference. this is a pretty silly statement.

 

If you have an opinion, you should at least try to back it up with facts if you're going to represent the idea as fact

nonsense.

 

Also outright lying in your advertising campaigns (No spin zone anyone?) doesn't exactly speak well of programs.

lying? isn't this just your "opinion?"

 

sometimes you people really amaze me. you can't STAND IT that other people have their own opinions, and you regularly make your opinions out to be fact. wow.

 

taks

[Calax]

I know the difference, but that doesn't mean I have to say "Oh, well he's an opinion commentator"

you said he was reporting the news, he does not. if you are going to pretend to be impartial yourself, you should at least understand why that makes a difference. this is a pretty silly statement.

 

If you have an opinion, you should at least try to back it up with facts if you're going to represent the idea as fact

nonsense.

 

Also outright lying in your advertising campaigns (No spin zone anyone?) doesn't exactly speak well of programs.

lying? isn't this just your "opinion?"

 

sometimes you people really amaze me. You can't STAND IT that other people have their own opinions, and you regularly make your opinions out to be fact. wow.

 

taks

He reports his opinions as if they're the news. Thus he's (in his mind, and in the minds of some of his mindless fans) being a true newsman rather than just a commentator or opinion person.

 

As to the lying, You yourself stated that the commentators have opinions, and thus are allowed to be partisan. However O'Reilly's show has been advertised as the "No spin zone" when all he is is a conservative spin machine. At least he doesn't try to sell his religion like some of the others on his station (who ostensibly ARE newsmen). I'm fine with Opinions, but represent your opinions as opinions. I have opinions, you have opinions, but to simply discard them, and the fact that my opinions are different than yours about what the news is and how it should be handled, and effectively call the other person an idiot isn't exactly the greatest debate strategy.

 

I gotta say, you're basically being hypocritical here. You're saying that I'm having opinions that I'm making out to be fact and thus I should be put to the torch and burned as a heretic of knowledge, and yet you defend the commentators who do the exact same thing as if they're unable to do no wrong because some guy in a suit came out and said "Well, they're not news, technically" three months ago in a memo to the presses because they got yelled at about not presenting news, or truthful news or something in the past.

 

Similarly you can present opinions that are dead wrong (see: young earth creationism), and even in the face of facts you can basically put your fingers in your ears and yell to drown out what you consider to be the blithering of idiots but that still doesn't make your opinion correct.

 

Are there liberal pundits? Yes, Keith Olberman (or however you spell it) is probably the most obvious of these, I can make no comment on the other gentleman that you mentioned as I don't actually watch his shows/networks.

 

As I showed in the other thread, Glenn Beck in particular is fairly good at taking opinions, making them sound like facts, then twisting those facts to make the folks who he dislikes into demonic entities of some kind. He took a jestful statement by Anita Dunn (after she called fox the research and PR arm of republican party) and twisted it so that she was a zealous follower of Mao Zedong who was going to transform america with her boss into a totalitarian communist state and then effectively tried to link her to Hitler in peoples minds by saying that she loves Mien Kampf. I'm sorry, but even if that's his opinion, he's wrong, and yet you're here defending these actions and others like it because "it's opinion", when it was clearly presented to the audience as facts that Ms. Dunn was a communist follower of Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler.

[Meshugger]

The little that i have seen of Glen Beck is that he is behaving like a incompetent, loud baffoon. Even if his message was peace, love and understanding, he would make me want to napalm a whole village of cute Pikachu's.

[Wrath of Dagon]

He took a jestful statement by Anita Dunn (after she called fox the research and PR arm of republican party) and twisted it so that she was a zealous follower of Mao Zedong who was going to transform america with her boss into a totalitarian communist state and then effectively tried to link her to Hitler in peoples minds by saying that she loves Mien Kampf. I'm sorry, but even if that's his opinion, he's wrong, and yet you're here defending these actions and others like it because "it's opinion", when it was clearly presented to the audience as facts that Ms. Dunn was a communist follower of Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler.

Well, she did say Mao was one of her 2 favorite political philosophers, that's a fact.

[Calax]

He took a jestful statement by Anita Dunn (after she called fox the research and PR arm of republican party) and twisted it so that she was a zealous follower of Mao Zedong who was going to transform america with her boss into a totalitarian communist state and then effectively tried to link her to Hitler in peoples minds by saying that she loves Mien Kampf. I'm sorry, but even if that's his opinion, he's wrong, and yet you're here defending these actions and others like it because "it's opinion", when it was clearly presented to the audience as facts that Ms. Dunn was a communist follower of Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler.

Well, she did say Mao was one of her 2 favorite political philosophers, that's a fact.

Along with MOTHER THERESA! She said that for comic effect, and it's not like she was quoting Mao for some really socialist idea, she was quoting "you fight your war, I'll fight mine". Hell she even got the quote from a republican strategist.

 

As to her favorite, she said that Theresa and Mao were her favorites for getting across that message, not her favorite of all times or "personal hero (In terms of Mao and Beck)".

 

Basically beck took her quote, removed half of it, and added onto it with some of his own stuff to make her sound worse, in the name of smearing a member of the Obama administration.

[Wrath of Dagon]

No, that's not really accurate, here's the exact quote: ""The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before."

 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/16/beck.dunn/index.html

 

There's some context in that too.

[Hurlshort]

Two of my favorite is not my two favorite. There is a dramatic difference in language.

[Wrath of Dagon]

I think it means the same thing here, even if not, she's still saying he's one of her favorite philosophers.

[Walsingham]

Whatever numbers you favor, the civillian casualties that were the result of the chaos that followed the invasion make Saddam's crimes pale in comparison.

 

My basic logic is this. If I, as a mere student of politics could forsee that once Saddam was gone all hell was going to break loose, its idiotic not to assume that top people in the Pentagon didn't know it as well. They knew it, yet they decided to go through with it. That would mean they simply didn't care, because if they did the most logical course of action would have been to let Saddam fall on his own. Saddam's fall was a matter of time, and it might have been the opportunity for a peaceful change of regime.

 

You obviously have had dealings with a different Pentagon to the one I know and love. There were plenty of people who pointed out that there would be serious unrest, but at the top of the pyramid you had Donald Rumsfeld telling everyone to just get on and fix what he saw as mere tactical issues. Which might have been possible had Rumsfeld also not insisted on fighting as lightly as possible. Shock and awe was demonstrably powerful as breaking stuff, but not so good as a force concept for political/social control.

 

I cannot agree with the notion that Saddam would fall internally or that this would be less bloody than we have seen. The forst point is debateable, I will admit, but the latter seems self-evident by your own argument. If his removal caused a power vacuum when we invaded with overwhelming military and economic capital then how much more divided and violent would the sides have been in a domestic conflict? Civil wars are always the worst in any case. Force parity coupled with indiscipline invariably leads to protracted and grotesquely brutal warfare.

 

As for which figures you believe actually that can make a massive difference. I've seen figures of violent deaths under Saddam going around 600k (not counting deaths from sanctions and mismanagement), while anti-war groups have gone as high as 1 million in the post-war, and as low as 40k.

 

On the other hand, and inspite of todays' dead, we now have an Iraq moving purposefully towards its second free elections.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Yeah, there was no post-war plan, that's where we really failed. Of course I saw some Pentagon people claim they did have a plan, but no one bothered to follow it.

[Calax]

No, that's not really accurate, here's the exact quote: ""The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before."

 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/16/beck.dunn/index.html

 

There's some context in that too.

Bolded point for emphasis. Also oppressive people do have good insights, Stalin made a good point about human life "One person dead is a tragedy, on million is a statistic". Does the fact he was an oppressive dictator negate the veracity of his statement? No.

 

Also I'd like to point out that beck in his screaming about her statement he added the word "hero" to what ms dunn stated, and ignored the bit about mother Theresa.

[Wrath of Dagon]

No, that's not really accurate, here's the exact quote: ""The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa -- not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before."

Bolded stuff you're conveniently ignoring.

Edited January 27, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Calax]

again "of my favorite" is not "my favorite". Also "Doing things that haven't been done" doesn't have sinister connotations... If it did, scientific progress would be considered heretical and thus put to a stop except for the possibility of illegal research.

 

Also note that MOTHER THERESA is mentioned... a person who is considered one of the BEST PEOPLE WHO EVER LIVED!

[Tigranes]

As someone who doesn't knwo what any of these people are or what party they belong to or whatever, sounds like the news guy's full of bollocks. It's just typical sensationalism, there's nothing wrong with that Mao quote. Getting worked up about that kind of stuff just makes politics even more suffocating.

[taks]

i can't believe you guys are splitting hairs of degrees of favoriteness. moronic, at best. anybody citing someone else as "my favorite," "one of my favorites," or even "somebody i like" definitely agrees with his/her philosophy.

 

c'mon, let's at least try to employ a little bit less rationalization and a little bit more reality.

 

that said, your position, calax, is clearly your opinion of beck's opinion. he's no more a liar than you are. this is exactly what i was talking about when you people cite opinion as fact. it's just plain silly.

 

taks

[taks]

it all depends upon what the definition of is is. ahem.

 

taks

[Calax]

i can't believe you guys are splitting hairs of degrees of favoriteness. moronic, at best. anybody citing someone else as "my favorite," "one of my favorites," or even "somebody i like" definitely agrees with his/her philosophy.

 

c'mon, let's at least try to employ a little bit less rationalization and a little bit more reality.

 

that said, your position, calax, is clearly your opinion of beck's opinion. he's no more a liar than you are. this is exactly what i was talking about when you people cite opinion as fact. it's just plain silly.

 

taks

Really? stating that adding the word "hero" to a sentence that doesn't include it, and calling that a manipulation of the truth in order to defame somebody is an opinion? Unless you consider editing the truth to be opinion, then you're not exactly correct here.

 

And taks, what you just said allows people to say "You believe in god, so did hitler, you are a fan of the worst person in the US"

Edited January 27, 2010 by Calax

[Hurlshort]

I'm a big fan of Machiavelli and his work, but that doesn't mean I'm actually endorsing it as public policy.