Be safe - Move to Iraq
Okay, this post will be terse and to the point. Why would somebody move to Iraq to be safe? There is a War going on there! All I ever hear about Iraq is that the country falling apart. People are getting blown up by IEDs everywhere they turn. The country is in Chaos! I get the feeling that an innocent family can hardly walk to the grocery store without risking their lives of being blown up by a car bomb.
If that is your feeling too, then you better stop listening to the mainstream press. I got this figure directly from here - Rush Limbaugh. But I wanted to repost it here in case the link became invalid soon. I don't know where Rush got the graphic itself, but the statistics are publicly available. Just a note, the statistics are based on a time period completely coinciding with the war in Iraq. Also, its based on an entire year (2004 - 2005), so don't just think that they picked the best possible month for their sample data.
This is what I mean, and everybody else means, when they say that the mainstream media is so out of touch with reality and they don't present you with a honest, objective, picture of reality like they claim. Nobody is free from biasness and nobody can be perfectly objective. The mainstream press attempts to give you an unbiased, perfectly objective news story. In doing so, they have implicitly assume that they have the ability to offer perfectly objective analysis of current events or else they are intentionally distorting the Truth, calling it the Truth, to persuade millions of people that they think are stupid (you and me) of their own personal worldview. As for me, I refuse to listen to them. I prefer to listen to people who are not afraid to tell me who they are and what they believe
posted by Tim @ 10:06 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
No media is fair, unbiased and entirely truthful. At some point a tilt will creep in. But one thing is for certain that the situation in Iraq is not rosy.
Even if Iraq is last on the list of countries in your graph, the fact that it is happening on America's watch which assured it's people that the war would be swift and the troops would be greeted as liberators magnifies the error.
Iraq is controlled by the US. Iraq was a soverign nation that was invaded by the US under false pretences, a different picture after the war was painted to the american people. The voilence continues to happens several months after the end of major conflit was declared by Bush from an aircraft carrier. This is happening after more than 2000 american troops have died in a needless war. The fact is that no credible sources can agree on a list of iraqi dead which runs into tens of thousands and the american news does not dwell on the iraqi dead, men women and children.
The media is toeing the administration line as it is with wonderful shows like the O'reilly Factor, mediapersons like Ann Coulter and corporations like Fox News... that tilt does not seem to bother you at all.
The fact that funding has been cut to cities like NYC to defend themselves under a terror attack attracts no response from the media.... when the US invaded Iraq to secure itself against terror attacks.
People need to be asking tough questions to the administration over it's policy be it domestic, international and financial (gas is 3$ a gallon and oil companies are making record profits).
The media needs to ask Bush why he sat twiddling his thumbs while people drowned in New Orleans despite warnings... people need to ask him why he appointed his college buddy and former stable manager the head of FEMA. The media does not ask them forcefully enough and allows the administration to fob them off.
Instead you pick one story, airbrush over the cause of the conflict, ignore the fact that people are dying in a country controlled by the US, killed by terror bombs and US troops, compare the situation to countries like Venezuela and say that the media is not fair.
Bush has proven to be incompetent at all levels, yet he'll retain his right wing fundamentalist christian base in any election. His constituency needs to realise that a devout president need not necessarily be a competent president, and they close their eyes shut while he runs the country to the ground.
And the amazing thing is that seemingly educated people will apply scientific rigor to their studies and workplace, then fight against stem cell reasearch, abortion and gay marriage. These people have blood on their hands because they allow their personal beliefs to poison government policy.
I hope this does not include you.
I think you missed my point, or at least just didn't really address the main point of my post. Nevertheless, since you took the time to post your thoughts, I'll try to respond.
As for you’re first paragraph, we agree that no media is perfectly fair and unbiased. Biasness does not necessarily mean untruthfulness in my mind either, but we'll go ahead and think that. The main point of my blog, that I didn't seem to make very well, was that because any media consists of humans running it, then the story reported/discussed is always a function of who that person is-no exceptions. So I don't think that a little "tilt will creep in" the stories, I think that the tilt is always there regardless of how hard one tries to remove it. If for no other reason than because they pick which story to present in a limited time frame. Therefore, it (biasness) doesn't need to creep in, it’s already there. It can only creep out, but not entirely. It can't creep out entirely, because the only way to remove the dependency of the function on who a person is, would be to remove the variable, i.e., the person. Then nothing is reported.
As for your fourth paragraph, no, those "tilts" do not bother me at all. And if you would have read my blog post carefully you would know why they do not. They don't bother me precisely because we all know who O'reilly, Hannity, Colmbs, Coulter, and any other of the Foxnew’s panelists are. I know where they stand ideologically, which allows me to properly deal with what they say. Their ideology and whether or not I agree with it aside, I think that Foxnews, with the template that they have of hosting shows where the hosts intentionally make their views known to everybody, is the best way to limit the effect of the biasness. If we know who they are, then we can deal with their ideas accordingly. All the news in this type of template does is inspire people, if they don't agree, to find out why, and that will be an exercise in determining truth. As for the people who like to build up a false reality for themselves, well, there was never any hope for them anyways.
As for your second paragraph, you missed a real opportunity to point out the weakness in my statistical graph in the post. No, the point is not that "it" is happening on the United States watch. Don't you think that the violent crimes in the US cities, New Orleans, Washington D.C., etc, happen on the United States watch? The weakness in my graph is that the sample included the WHOLE of Iraq, not just Baghdad, but the fighting is definitely concentrated in Baghdad. Weren't you concerned a bit about the fact that my graph compared densely populated US cities with the whole country of Iraq? They selected the worst cities in the US, and compared them with Iraq as a whole. If anything is wrong with the graph, it is that fact.
As for your seventh paragraph... Are you crazy? That is all that the media did!!! The media countlessly demanded the answers to your same questions. That’s all I ever heard.
As for your eighth paragraph, I "airbrushed over the cause of the conflict" because that was not the point of my post. I was not giving a defense of the war in Iraq. I don't, in any form or fashion think, that anything I said in my original blog post is a legitimate defense of the war in Iraq.
As for you ninth paragraph, in my mind, Bush has proven to me to be incompetent on SOME levels (not ALL, and not necessarily the war in Iraq/Terror). I say the war IN and not ON because that’s what it is. The war is IN Iraq, but the war is ON terror. In your mind, I would be classified as a right wing fundamentalist Christian. But you already knew that. And you would be absolutely naive to think that people like me make up the whole of supporters of Bush (or even an overwhelming majority).
As for your tenth paragraph, EVERY LAW THAT ANY ENTITY HAS EVER ESTABLISHED HAS A MORAL IMPLICATION!!! Nobody can escape that fact, and if they think they can, they are being naive. Setting my ideology aside as irrelevant to my points here, the only reason why you think that anti-abortionists, anti-gay marriage people, and anti-stem cell research advocates are poisoning government policy is because you have a different set of morals that you wish the government would uphold. That's it, period.
This is not about what morals a government should uphold. The only sentence that sets apart the US declaration of independence is the ‘pursuit of happiness’. Statements like “EVERY LAW THAT ANY ENTITY HAS EVER ESTABLISHED HAS A MORAL IMPLICATION” are absolute and nonsensical, for they cannot be held responsible for any atrocities in the past. Statements like these were used to defend slavery. Pedophilia was de jure in roman times, but it has changed today, hasn’t it?. Mohammed had a 9 year old wife, but no devout muslim would want that for his/her daughter today… things change, and the laws change accordingly. Our perception of how we ought to lead our lives does change and the laws that govern them change. So when you make statements like the one you made, you’re thinking backwards. No religious book can mandate laws.
Morals are subjective, your final statement “the only reason why you think that anti-abortionists, anti-gay marriage people, and anti-stem cell research advocates are poisoning government policy is because you have a different set of morals that you wish the government would uphold.”
My morals may differ from yours, isn’t that the one reason that laws ought not to be based on morals? What happens if someone with different morals writes policy?
The terrorists have morals he/she fervently believes in, morals that are law in countries like Saudi Arabia, how do you defend that? All religions forbid killing, yet that does not explain the crusades, the Spanish inquisition and Islamic terror that were carried out in the name of religion and morals.
Your ideology is not irrelevant here… your ideology drives your opinion, it drives that statement you made, and I quoted in the paragraph above, and it drives statements like ‘nobody can escape that fact, and if they think they can, they are being naïve’. The same applies to me, no doubt. I’m making my ideology clear, am pro-choice, pro-gay and for stem cell research that has the potential to cure diseases. I am not for teaching intelligent design in schools. Let the church teach it. This is one way that ‘morals’ based laws poison government policy. I mean if people want to live in a cocoon, they should feel free to do so. The Amish are doing it, without making their way of life public policy.
Bush is doing a terrible job on the war on terror and in Iraq. If you, with your education cannot see that, then no one can convince you.
I just say that if people who are pro-choice should not thrust their views down other peoples’ throats, and vice versa. If a gay couple wants to have a child, let that not affect people who don’t believe in gay rights, in doing so one is imposing his/her views on someone else.
“I would be classified as a right wing fundamentalist Christian. But you already knew that. And you would be absolutely naive to think that people like me make up the whole of supporters of Bush (or even an overwhelming majority).”
What did I know? That you are one or would be classified as one?
I don’t know what your beliefs are, and my arguments are not based on your beliefs. In my opinion, a reasonable doubt over one’s views is necessary. A little doubt makes you look harder for the truth, recognize that there are grey areas in life (like when a victim of rape/incest wants an abortion), and know that sometimes there are no right answers/paths.
The people who wear their religion on their sleeves and seem to think they bask in the warm glow of god’s kindness and somehow they are on the one and only right path to eternal salvation and the rest are damned to fire and brimstone are welcome to lead their lives they way they want it. Only don’t dictate what other people can do or cannot do. These guys tend to think in absolutes, and there are no absolutes. As they are free to live their lives, so are the others.
I mean how different are they from Bin Laden who is convinced that he is doing the work of god?
I’m always amazed at how they can hold their professional and religious beliefs in watertight compartments
There are fundamental morals behind speed limits, littering laws, or any other law. A government CANNOT establish a law without that law being based on some sort of core principles which can be called morals.
While your ideology remains wonderfully vague, I can guess where your sympathies lie.
pray, what are the morals for banning gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research and evolution theory ?
fundamental morals for speed limits ! german autobahns have no speed limits.
Singapore has draconion laws against littering... you can be fined/caned for eating in public or even chewing gum. This much control stifles freedom...there should be no litter of course, but to go to these lengths is crazy.
No doubt, there are 'morals' behind such laws and you might argue that they are different interpretations seeking to enforce an idea of responsible driving and clean cities.
That merely reinforces the fact that there are no set of 'morals' that can be applied universally.
Narrow worldviews and attempts to fashion the functioning of the world according to religious views or some halfbaked set of morals interpreted from religious books or teachings or some perceived 'pristine' way of life will fail.
No one can legislate virtue. All a society can do is punish crime.
Amsterdam has one of the least number of crimes against women, drug related crimes and muggings. it has legalised prostitution, it's advertising, marijuana use and gay marriage. The US struggles with 'morals' based laws and we can see what is happening.
Lets legalize all anarchist activities. pray, whats the moral for banning it?
Also, about homosexuality, i believe its nothing but extreme pervertism. whats next? Bestial sexuality. I believe the day is not far away when the Dutch legalize that too. Pray, whats the moral for banning it?
holy cow! every time i visit your blog there's always this huge debate cooking up in the Comment scene. gottaluvit
To the person whose comments I deleted,
The comments have completely gotten off of topic from the original post, and I don't want them to, period. It seemed like a perfectly fine place to stop the conversation. You are welcome to continue to post un-obscene, on-topic with original post, non-rude comments.
When there is a topic that I am interested in and would like to discuss on this blog, I will post a topic about it. If you want to publically discuss topics/ideas of your choosing, make your own portal.
Again, I really do welcome your comments subject to my criteria.
whenareyagonnapostsomemorethoughtprovokingposts? it'sgettin'deadin'ere,plswakeusup.
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