Fake victims...
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I'm so deeply disappointed.
I was so hopeful that msfe was finally going to back up one his claims. I guess that I'll just have to conclude that, once again, he's totally full of shit.
I suppose, as I suspected, that what he meant when he claimed that the European media reported things more "correctly" was that they reported things in a way that conformed to his prejudices and biases.
Well... they day is young, here in California anyway. I wonder what the chances are that he'll do something to establish some credibility - either by proving his point or, for the first time in ET history, admitting he made a statement he couldn't justify.
I was so hopeful that msfe was finally going to back up one his claims. I guess that I'll just have to conclude that, once again, he's totally full of shit.
I suppose, as I suspected, that what he meant when he claimed that the European media reported things more "correctly" was that they reported things in a way that conformed to his prejudices and biases.
Well... they day is young, here in California anyway. I wonder what the chances are that he'll do something to establish some credibility - either by proving his point or, for the first time in ET history, admitting he made a statement he couldn't justify.
Well, it's the mid-afternoon now in California, but getting late in Switzerland, or Germany... Still waiting for msfe to prove that, against all appearances and past performance, he possesses some integrity.
I notice his been busy in the meantime on other threads, energetically working up his familiar delusions and illusions. He even managed to make a typically impertinent comment regarding one aspect of an article that I posted on the main subject, an article whose central claim as to the bias in the German media remains uncontradicted. Yet, msfe still hasn't found the time to back up his irresponsible claim that the European media has been reporting events in Iraq more "correctly" than Fox and CNN.
The article I posted dealt with the German media. Here are some observations - of a different type - on the French media - in effect that they've treated their audience much as the Arab media has treated the Arabs. More recent reports from other individuals living in France confirm that, as a BBC reporter put it, the France have larged been "stunned by the welcome American forces received." Now, if the French media were reporting the war "correctly," how could this have happened?
http://www.europundits.blogspot.com/2003_04_01_europundits_archive.html#92080429
I notice his been busy in the meantime on other threads, energetically working up his familiar delusions and illusions. He even managed to make a typically impertinent comment regarding one aspect of an article that I posted on the main subject, an article whose central claim as to the bias in the German media remains uncontradicted. Yet, msfe still hasn't found the time to back up his irresponsible claim that the European media has been reporting events in Iraq more "correctly" than Fox and CNN.
The article I posted dealt with the German media. Here are some observations - of a different type - on the French media - in effect that they've treated their audience much as the Arab media has treated the Arabs. More recent reports from other individuals living in France confirm that, as a BBC reporter put it, the France have larged been "stunned by the welcome American forces received." Now, if the French media were reporting the war "correctly," how could this have happened?
http://www.europundits.blogspot.com/2003_04_01_europundits_archive.html#92080429
Why waste time talking about the French? They are irrelevant. Similar to a buzzing mosquito flying around an elephant. All they want and need desperately is to just be noticed.
Well, in truth they don't really deserve any attention.
C'est la vie!
ps anyone notice how Kofi Annan cancelled his trip to the non-niet-nein conference this week?
Well, in truth they don't really deserve any attention.
C'est la vie!
ps anyone notice how Kofi Annan cancelled his trip to the non-niet-nein conference this week?
Lol, you don't miss a chance to criticize msfe for cutting and pasting op-ed pieces, but it's A OK when you do it.
Anyway, it's interesting that you chose to highlight the above passage. Is it anything more than Ascher's own subjective, unsubstantiated point of view? It's hard to see how you thought it was such a pertinent point that you'd better highlight it lest we missed being enlightened by it.
I don't recall criticizing msfe for pasting op-ed pieces, though I have certainly criticized him for pasting stupid ones, and I have often criticized the pieces themselves in detail. I've also pointed out many times that he never pauses to defend the claims contained within the pieces he posts. Until very recently, he almost never stated his own opinions at all, and, even when he does speak up for himself, he fails to take responsibility.
Maybe you somehow missed it, but he asserted above that the European media has reported events "correctly," while Fox and CNN have merely passed on "Ari Fleischer's primitive propaganda lies." I suggested that this statement merely reflected his own biases, and I challenged him to provide any evidence to back up up his claim. He has failed to do so. Similarly, on another thread he recently made completely untrue accusations against me personally. He was simply fabricating, stating a belief which had no basis in the facts, but which merely happened to suit his prejudices.
I found Ascher's observations interesting in general, and I highlighted the particular passage simply because his observation contradicts msfe's, but directly corroborates the one made by the BBC reporter I also mentioned, and also conforms to observations that I have seen elsewhere as well. In any event, I consider Ascher to be much more persuasive and trustworthy than msfe, who has shown himself to be utterly lacking not just in objectivity, but in basic personal integrity as well.
David Hare: "Don´t look for a reason"
It is a hardy soul who has witnessed without flinching Americans raining down terror from the sky, shooting up Iraqi civilians, British soldiers, children, women - hell, fellow Americans, why not? Inflicting almost as many casualties on their own allies as the ostensible enemy has done. It has been impossible for anyone not to contemplate the disparity between American firepower, the bulk weight of US technology, and the pathetic, disorganised inadequacy of Iraqi resistance and not feel sickened by the unevenness of the fight. And more, beyond that shame at an inequality of means which you cannot even dignify with the name of war, to ask "And to what end? And to what point?"
I understand no more than anyone, no more than this: at some level I believe this administration does not even know why it chose Iraq. I believe it cannot even remember the reasons. The reasons have changed so many times - at least in public - and make so little palpable sense that it is, of course, tempting to believe, as conspiracy theorists will always believe, that there is some hidden reason which is being kept from us. But to me, the more frightening possibility is this: what if no such reason exists? If there is indeed, no casus belli?
If that were the case, then there would be, at least, an explanation for our own inarticulacy, for the failure of our speechmaking. It appears that something so profound is happening in the world that none of us is yet able to grasp it. How can we consider and speak to the possibility that America is deliberately declaring that the only criterion of power shall now be power itself? The introduction of the doctrine of the right to the pre-emptive strike is an event in international history of infinitely more consequence and importance than anything that happened on September 11. Even the transgression of a territorial border and the murder of innocent citizens cannot compare to what is being claimed here: the right to go in and destroy a regime, at whatever cost and without any clear plan for its future, not because of what anyone has done, but because of what you cannot prove they might do.
George Bush is a born-again Christian and a recovering alcoholic. I see in him the uncontrollable anger of the alcoholic, once directed at himself, sluiced away every night into his bloodstream and out into the gutter, now, tragically, directed, via his amazingly aggressive, amazingly triumphant body language, on to whatever poor soul comes into his sights.
The intention to destroy the credibility of the United Nations, and its right to help try and defuse situations of danger to life, is not a byproduct of recent American policy. It is its very purpose. Bush chose Iraq not because it would make sense, but because it wouldn't. He did it, in short, because he could. No better reason than that. "Because I can, I will." The thinness of the justification for this war is, in fact, its very point. As is the arbitrariness of the target. The proliferation of other named targets - Syria, North Korea, maybe Burma, why not China? - adds, in Bush's eyes, only to the deliciousness of the game.
Caught, significantly, chuckling and laughing before a supposedly serious press conference about enemy losses and American advances, Bush comes to represent the man flexing private muscles for no other reason than the feral pleasure of the flex. What is being asserted today is the right to assert, to go in with absolutely no gameplan for how you will get out. Did the Bush administration deliberately omit to put any aid to Afghanistan in its current budget plans? Or, worse, did it simply forget?
Tonight in Jerusalem, next to the Garden of Gethsemane, under cover of war, while the world is not looking, Jewish fundamentalists are moving into an armed apartment block on land which belongs to the Palestinians; in the White House, Christian fundamentalists dream of moving on to murder and mayhem in countries beyond count; and on the stony hillsides of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Muslim fundamentalists dream of moving on to murder and mayhem in countries beyond count. The trade union of international politicians exercises an ever more Stalinist grip, moving countries and armies to wars they do not want. Only the people say no.
It is a hardy soul who has witnessed without flinching Americans raining down terror from the sky, shooting up Iraqi civilians, British soldiers, children, women - hell, fellow Americans, why not? Inflicting almost as many casualties on their own allies as the ostensible enemy has done. It has been impossible for anyone not to contemplate the disparity between American firepower, the bulk weight of US technology, and the pathetic, disorganised inadequacy of Iraqi resistance and not feel sickened by the unevenness of the fight. And more, beyond that shame at an inequality of means which you cannot even dignify with the name of war, to ask "And to what end? And to what point?"
I understand no more than anyone, no more than this: at some level I believe this administration does not even know why it chose Iraq. I believe it cannot even remember the reasons. The reasons have changed so many times - at least in public - and make so little palpable sense that it is, of course, tempting to believe, as conspiracy theorists will always believe, that there is some hidden reason which is being kept from us. But to me, the more frightening possibility is this: what if no such reason exists? If there is indeed, no casus belli?
If that were the case, then there would be, at least, an explanation for our own inarticulacy, for the failure of our speechmaking. It appears that something so profound is happening in the world that none of us is yet able to grasp it. How can we consider and speak to the possibility that America is deliberately declaring that the only criterion of power shall now be power itself? The introduction of the doctrine of the right to the pre-emptive strike is an event in international history of infinitely more consequence and importance than anything that happened on September 11. Even the transgression of a territorial border and the murder of innocent citizens cannot compare to what is being claimed here: the right to go in and destroy a regime, at whatever cost and without any clear plan for its future, not because of what anyone has done, but because of what you cannot prove they might do.
George Bush is a born-again Christian and a recovering alcoholic. I see in him the uncontrollable anger of the alcoholic, once directed at himself, sluiced away every night into his bloodstream and out into the gutter, now, tragically, directed, via his amazingly aggressive, amazingly triumphant body language, on to whatever poor soul comes into his sights.
The intention to destroy the credibility of the United Nations, and its right to help try and defuse situations of danger to life, is not a byproduct of recent American policy. It is its very purpose. Bush chose Iraq not because it would make sense, but because it wouldn't. He did it, in short, because he could. No better reason than that. "Because I can, I will." The thinness of the justification for this war is, in fact, its very point. As is the arbitrariness of the target. The proliferation of other named targets - Syria, North Korea, maybe Burma, why not China? - adds, in Bush's eyes, only to the deliciousness of the game.
Caught, significantly, chuckling and laughing before a supposedly serious press conference about enemy losses and American advances, Bush comes to represent the man flexing private muscles for no other reason than the feral pleasure of the flex. What is being asserted today is the right to assert, to go in with absolutely no gameplan for how you will get out. Did the Bush administration deliberately omit to put any aid to Afghanistan in its current budget plans? Or, worse, did it simply forget?
Tonight in Jerusalem, next to the Garden of Gethsemane, under cover of war, while the world is not looking, Jewish fundamentalists are moving into an armed apartment block on land which belongs to the Palestinians; in the White House, Christian fundamentalists dream of moving on to murder and mayhem in countries beyond count; and on the stony hillsides of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Muslim fundamentalists dream of moving on to murder and mayhem in countries beyond count. The trade union of international politicians exercises an ever more Stalinist grip, moving countries and armies to wars they do not want. Only the people say no.