Freedom of speeches: the press takes some liberties
One major element in my political change process was my loss of faith in the MSM based on something as simple, and easily checkable, as its reporting of the speeches of public figures.
I say “easily checkable,” because, with the advent of the internet, it is. As long as a person is willing to make a small effort and take a little extra time, most MSM reports of what a speaker says can be checked against the actual words he/she did say.
The majority of readers, of course, still don’t do that. But until recently, almost no one did; the effort and resources required, pre-web, were far greater. So it was less apparent then than it is now that the media regularly distorted the words of many public figures (and who knows? Maybe the practice was actually less common back then).
I first learned about the ubiquity of speech misrepresentation in the MSM through my post-9/11 online reading. At the time it shocked me. It no longer does (I’ve come to expect it), although it still angers me.
Now I tend to wonder about its causes: is it a reflection of poor reading comprehension, unconscious distortion, or purposeful and knowing misrepresentation, or some combination/alternation of them all?
Now here’s a review of a book by communications professor Jim A. Kuypers, detailing media bias in reporting Bush’s speeches. It’s entitled Bush’s War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age, and presents an apparently nonpartisan and sobering look at just how incredibly distorted and biased the press has been in distorting Bush’s message:
What has essentially happened since 9/11 has been that Bush has repeated the same themes, and framed those themes the same whenever discussing the War on Terror,” said Kuypers, who specializes in political communication and rhetoric. “Immediately following 9/11, the mainstream news media (represented by CBS, ABC, NBC, USA Today, New York Times, and Washington Post) did echo Bush, but within eight weeks it began to intentionally ignore certain information the president was sharing, and instead reframed the president’s themes or intentionally introduced new material to shift the focus.”
This goes beyond reporting alternate points of view. “In short,” Kupyers explained, “if someone were relying only on the mainstream media for information, they would have no idea what the president actually said. It was as if the press were reporting on a different speech.”
That’s a pretty powerful statement.
In my earlier post today, I spoke of the need for leadership. Part of leadership involves rhetoric, and Bush is obviously no Churchill. But could even Churchill get his message across in the face of such a concerted effort by his own press to distort it?
Consider that journalism attracts a certain type of personality to the profession and as we have come to realize, they never tell an objective story…. But it is human nature to want to control others.
Can you cite an actual case of the press distorting Bush’s words?
Here’s where you can read the raw text of Bush’s speeches, btw:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
It’s rather vauge, to say the least.
I guess you’d have to read the book – but I think it’s a bit premature to say, Neo that the author’s brief conclusion is “powerful” – without the slightest bit of evidence of what he’s talking about.
I mean, have you read the book Neo?
“Can you cite an actual case of the press distorting Bush’s words?”
Well, monkyboy, without too much googling, I came up with this;
“for example, in an opinion column July 16, 2003 by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post :
Kinsley: Who was the arch-fiend who told a lie in President Bush’s State of the Union speech? . . .Linguists note that the question “Who lied in George Bush’s State of the Union speech” bears a certain resemblance to the famous conundrum “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” ”
The British Butler report and the Senate Select Intelligence Committe report have both debunked this claim, as Bush *actually* said:
“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
…which was entirely true. It’s one of the *facts* about the Iraq war which the press has spun endlessly—and *lied* about—such that the general public has grown to believe the conundrum that “Bush lied”…when it was the press that was doing so.
By the way, the citation is from:
http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html
Actually it is a lie – because Hussein didn’t even get to the negogiation part of acquiring uranium from Africa – and it wasn’t Saddam directly either. Maybe it’s not Bush’s lie – but it was completely irresponsible(purposely so)to include a piece of intelligence murky and weak in a speech waxing pure horror at Saddam’s WMD arsenal.
Regardless – an editorial or column digging through the rhetoric of a Presidential speech is not ‘changing’ the speech.
The notion is ridiculous, really….
I seem to remember that the Niger/yellowcake story was a third-hand report of a businessman who claimed to represent Iraq wanted to meet Niger officials to discuss an unnamed subject…quite a stretch to go from there to:
“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Kinsley’s article was an “opinion,” not “news.”
I think part of the problem is that editors have to condense everything down to a few words for the headline…
“Kinsley’s article was an “opinion,” not “news.””
I don’t believe the topic excluded “opinion”—it was discussing how “the press” covers Bush speeches (and “opinion” is part of “the press”)—but nevertheless, despite Anon’s protestations to the contrary, calling the 16 words in the speech “a lie” is most definitely “changing” the speech. Every word of the 16 was TRUE.
“Murky intelligence,” yes, but murk believed by virtually EVERY intelligence agency in the world.
Anyway, I don’t have the time to search for every instance of the press spinning Bush speeches. Read the book.
….just out of curiosity.
Why the hell would the press want to be so anti Bush? or America for that matter. Have they been infiltrated by some Islamofascist conspiracy or are they all the dupes of the same conspiracy?
In short, what do you think is their motivation?
Also, given the enormous resources at his disposal, how come Bush is so hopeless at getting his message across? After all how difficult can it be to persuade us that his foreign policy is a great success when the evidence is clear for all to see?
Hallo Neo, I share your view. It’s also my impression here in Germany that the media is biased (specially about the Bush government). That’s why I frequently read blogs and try to find out other points of view or more information about an issue. I think the combination of international MSM and blogs reflecting and researching on what the mass media report is ok.
Back in the 90’s I watched a lot of c-span – pretty much the only way to get unfiltered news and speeches.
On of the bigger “distortions” of a speech was during one of the times we could not get a budget passed. There was to be a big press conference where it was expected the democrats were (again) going to offer to meet to figure out how to compromise and the (again) the republicans would refuse.
First, the Republicans has several speeches, mostly typical political nothing. The democrats (Kennedy in this Case) had one speech about how they were willing to meet to negotiate if the republicans pre-agreed to their talking points, after all they knew they would be forced to concede them anyway. The republicans refused, said that the democrats have to give some too.
The next day “Republicans refuse to meet and compromise to pass a budget”.
Now, was that a lie? They claim not, after all – the republicans *did* refuse to meet and give in. In fact, it wasn’t even a distortion, much as our anonymous requires some very specific narrow requirements to be able to say “Saddam was seeking to require Yellow Cake uranium” you could set up a certain way of looking at it that you are 100% correct.
Back then there was no way for almost anyone to get the raw information – you had to watch it live on c-span. It went absolutely unchallenged except in a few places. Rush sometimes would if he saw it, but he is easy to dismiss (and he still is). Now, you do have some and it has taken, what, 5-6 years to finally convince people? And even then it was mostly the older people who rely on evening news.
In the end, Kennedy was correct – they got all they wanted and the republicans got raped. They can not do it at all to that extent now, though they still get a good deal of it. In another decade or so when the generations that are used to having the raw information are voting age – it will be near impossible.
Heck, go look through much of the gun control debate – much of it can not even be rationalized away by looking at it a certain way. In at least one case of the “Black Rino Bullets” several reporters and congress men claimed to have *personally* acquired a pre-release sample of them and tested them. They found them to be ultra deadly and do things Bullets couldn’t do and tried to preemptively ban them. Ended up the whole Black Rino Bullet was something made up by a small group of people to catch people lieing in that way. No retraction, no admittance, just drop it.
Many many topics were treated that way (remember the Food Lion lawsuit or Chevys exploding from side impacts due to dynamite they placed in them during the 80’s? The latter was even approved by the head of the News division). The MSM is MUCH more truthful today than it has been since at least 1991 or so.
But the point is being made to say the press has been unfair to Bush – which, I think when you look at the overall picture, isn’t very convincing at all.
I’m making the point about using the term ‘lying’ because I don’t think it’s unreasonable – certainly not evidence of a media campaign against Bush. In the context of all that we know and even in the context of the speech – and Bush being aware that most the intelligence was weak or even false – it’s appropriate to say he lied.
The fact is there is compelling evidence that the Bush admin knew that most of what they were offering as proof was not proof of anything – a lie.
Maybe we should arrest the media for treason and send them down to Gitmo and lock them up in a shower with Bill O’Reilly and a loofah.
Yo, justa….
Please, just for once, let me know what a “legal” war is? Does the Federation have to vote on it, or can one planet just decide to go to war if the Klingons are really, really, unkind?
W/ regard to Saddam’s yellow-cake uranium ore, it could always be argued that he planned to use it to decorate his many palaces. Of course, it had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with WMDs.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/07/about_that_500_tons_of_yellow.html
Reagan knew well that this type of distortion would go on, and his was a pre-web era. I believe that is why he communicated directly to the media in short, simple, ‘impromptu’ sound bites. It was far more difficult to distort his point.
Bush does not do this well, or has not recognized the importance of doing it.
Bush can solve 50% of his media problems by cutting the media out of the loop, remove white house press privileges, and just give DIRECT speeches on YouTube. That’s it. 50% of his troubles would disappear if he did that.
Anon 5:06pm,
We have evidence, i.e. what we have actually seen live or read in transcripts, that show not only that the press has reported incorrectly, but, since they were relying on the same sources, that they KNOWINGLY distorted.
Others have given you a few examples. I’ll give you another one: When Bush decided not to allow government funding for fetal stem cell research, it was routinely, repeatedly reported that the president “banned” stem cell research. Dems still refer to it as a “ban”. This is not a decision of Bush’s that I personally support, but it still really bugs me that it’s so misrepresented. The government still funds adult stem cell reasearch, and fetal stem cell research is fine if it is privately funded. Which is to say, it is still going on, NOT banned!
Anon, you, on the other hand made this statement:
“The fact is there is compelling evidence that the Bush admin knew that most of what they were offering as proof was not proof of anything – a lie.”
If this is a “fact”, please show your evidence. What is this proof that wasn’t proof, and what is your evidence that they knew this at the time?
Is your vague accusation a “fact” jen?
How about a link to a story that uses the word “ban?”
alphie:
How about this one…seeing as how most folks don’t read past the headlines…?
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,46496,00.html
Took me about 3 seconds to find it.
Or maybe this one:
http://time.blogs.com/eye_on_science/2006/08/end_run_around_.html
All of this reminds me of the many times the press castigates the president for “cutting funding” for some pet Dem program, when what is actually happening is that the administration is seeking to limit the INCREASE in budget to less than what the Dems ask for. This is almost always characterized as “cutting funding” rather than limiting a budget increase…giving the impression that those baby-killing Republicans are still out to see that seniors are forced to eat dog food, because that will increase the value of Halliburton stock.
“Yo, justa….”
LOL — thanks I needed that 🙂
“This is almost always characterized as “cutting funding” rather than limiting a budget increase…giving the impression that those baby-killing Republicans are still out to see that seniors are forced to eat dog food, because that will increase the value of Halliburton stock.”
Paula Zahn is the Queen of this.
Halliburton’s stock did go from about $4 a share pre-Iraq to $33 a share today.
Not bad for the company Cheney bankrupted before opting for a government paycheck:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=HAL&t=5y
And the MSM did repeat the moronic story that a tiny Texas company that specialized in doing business with Iran and bribing African dictators was the only company that could build bases for our troops in Iraq.
Black people own stock in Haliburton. Alphie trying to oppress the minority here or something?
Who asked ya
“One major element in my political change process was my loss of faith in the MSM based on something as simple, and easily checkable, as its reporting of the speeches of public figures.”
Fox News and The Drudge Report, before blogging, bore a refreshing perspective through the established MSM, a good place to start your research, at least — at most a reasoned foundation. Still hold true today. You can get this from the other networks in lesser quantities, but why?
And naturally, the bias only goes one way, neo-neocon? You don’t suppose there was a certain marginilization and ignoring of Bush’s critics in the years after 9/11, who turned out to be right on most everything?
One of the reasons Bush has gotten to where he is, is precisely because he kept listening to the people that you hear on this blog, Neo, talking about niger this niger that. People kept trying to poke so many holes in Bush’s WMD story, that all of Bush’s energy was devoted to that. And NOT reconstruction or occupation, that was secondary, even the Democrats thought it was over.
Never believe your enemies when they are trying to help you.
“In short, what do you think is their motivation?”
Power, dude. Power that nobody living in a democracy has. The power to kill anyone they want without consequence, to force people believe anything they want them to believe, and the power to force people to build anyting they want to have built. Bent to the will of an elite group, or even a single perfect and enlightened leader, such power could bring about eternal utopian order worldwide… or so aspiring dictators tend to think.
But that horrible, sleazy, bourgeois US, with its poll-driven system that forces all leaders to bow to the whims of the plebicite mob, and its capitalist economy that rewards results rather than good intentions, has somehow set itself up as the world’s superpower. It could only have happened through treachery most vile, because there’s no way a government that adapts itself to reality, rather than trying to force reality to change to suit it, could ever attain such power.
It’s Not Fair. Thus, it must be destroyed.
One of the reasons Bush has gotten to where he is, is precisely because he kept listening to the people that you hear on this blog, Neo, talking about niger this niger that. People kept trying to poke so many holes in Bush’s WMD story, that all of Bush’s energy was devoted to that.-Ymarsakar
This so true Ymarsakar, Bush was like Jan Brady. “Niger, Niger, Niger!”
The sad thing is that Niger was 100% accurate. The Wilson stuff quoted by the press was opposite his later declassified report. That whole thing was one of the worst of the anti-war stuff. Pure total fabrication from someone who thought their actual report would never be declassified. Had even 1/10 of the dishonesty been in any of the pro-war speeches they would have been totally raked over the coals. Wilson has been proven to be a known and total liar, I can not fathom anyone giving him any credentials, let alone choosing one side of his story as “gospel” and the other as not happening.
In the end, I still believe it will require an attack that is so horrid that anyone that denies it is considered a fool. It will require a few of these – at least until each and everyone of the appeasement crowd’s ideas is tried. Until then, we will have what we do today, about 50% for and 50% against. It just takes a little shift in perception and a “let us just try it” idea to keep us at the status quo (and many times below it).
Until the easy things that we are in control of as something that solves it are shown to be wrong many will never go for it. No matter the evidence (one can rationalize anything), no matter the fallout, it will take that in the end.
-in 40 years, 70% of the population will not even know who Bush was, or Clinton for that matter. Halliburton someone said?? They were doing their thing in the Balkans and gouging on plywood prices so there was a Congressional hearing. One exec only from H. showed up and told the politicians that if they didn’t like the prices, they were free to have someone else go into a war zone and do the building…end of hearing, no print on it, after all, the media’s darling, Billy the cigar man, was at the helm. What a laugh!
Tatterdemalian, in one generation the US as sole superpower status will be gone and it will belong to China and Iran will be the dominant force in the ME. Who is there to stop Iran? The Democrats? The UN? Half our population believes there are no real enemies in life and the other half is unwilling to fight to win. I hope your grandchildren are in no way dependent on any social welfare programs/agencies. The money won’t be there.
goesh, if the US’s status as a superpower is gone, it will be because the US itself is gone. I, and all my descendents, will be gone too, because we will have died trying to save it.
No authoritarian government can adapt to reality like the US can, because no authority is eternal. Not even Allah’s. The US’s power stems, first and foremost, from the ways we adapt to reality. Only by adapting to how the natural world works, can we learn how to manipulate it, without being destroyed by it.
“The sad thing is that Niger was 100% accurate.”
Let’s say it is correct – which is highly unlikely – the claim that Saddam was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger doesn’t mean much in terms of his weapons capability. Would he have liked a nuclear arsenal? Sure he would. Was he ever in a position to acquire one?
Not in his life-time.
And then look at how the Niger claim was used – there were claims about aluminum tubes being only suitable for centrifuges – a clear lie, which was well known(not a ‘mistake’). There were claims of Saddam being a year away from acquring a nuclear bomb etc.
As I’ve said before – the best propaganda mixes truth with lies. And even though in the case of Saddam’s WMDs the lies far exceeded the truthful accusations – there was just enough for people who blindly support any U.S war to continue to insist that Saddam Hussein poised a threat to U.S national security that required invading and occupying Iraq.
Without that there would have been zero support for the war – the neoconservative agenda was offered after the war – and for good reason.
Incidently – how can you say the Niger claim is 100% accurate?
“No authoritarian government can adapt to reality like the US can, because no authority is eternal. Not even Allah’s. The US’s power stems, first and foremost, from the ways we adapt to reality. Only by adapting to how the natural world works, can we learn how to manipulate it, without being destroyed by it.”
And yet the U.S is(and has been)fighting wars under false pretenses; unfairly using it’s power to dominate unsustainable energy sources at the cost of the nation’s security – and most significantly allocating all of it’s resources on these even while the biggest threat to the U.S(global warming)goes virtually ignored.
As some Republican hack said – “we create our own reality” – and that pretty much sums it up.
See you in hell boys….
Read this, won’t make any difference to you, but read it anyway:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html
That the MSM spins, omits, fakes and lies is obvious if you look at information from many sources and compare versions with the original; this takes time, though, since a word for word reading is often necessary to spot the particular word or phrase the newsmen have seized on to spin, drop or misinterpret. The recent discovery of fauxtography has added a new dimension of complexity. It doesn’t even have to be a doctored photograph, it can be a caption that wrongly interprets the photograph or, my favorite, choosing a picture from among the many available that portrays your opponent as unattractive, idiotic or shifty looking, etc. The truth? It gets kicked around, stomped on and eventually ends up crumpled up somewhere on the floor in the house of mirrors. Its very easy to manipulate the truth and, in fact, you could argue that the increased availability of information via the Internet is a two-edged sword because, while it increased people’s ability to check the veracity of news items, it also multiplied the number and volume of available news sources tremendously; you have to wade through the flood of information, all the while trying to ascertain the reliability of all these new news sources.
Ariel – I did read it – but I’m not sure what your point is…
Oftentimes, when someone writes that the WMD issue was the only reason we went to war, they are often unfamiliar with the Joint Resolution which lays out all the reasons.
I read your comment as along that line.
Ariel: Let’s be serious. Aside from the laundry list of “Whereas”, there are only two conditions justifying the use of force. #1 is to use force to protect the US, and #2 is to enforce UN resolutions re: Iraq, which is bogus because the UN did not call for the US to enforce its sanctions, thank you very much.
Therefore the Iraq war comes down to protecting the US, and that justification comes down to the supposed existence of WMD’s.
I’d be willing to hear another interpretation.
Saddaam had and was looking for more uranium.
The NYT recently pitched a fit that the government had put detailed, far too detailed, plans for a nuke on its web. So the govmt pulled it back.
Problem for the NYT was that the plans came from Iraqi documents captured by the carload in 2003.
I guess they figure the contradiction in two ways. One is that their readers are too dumb to notice. Probably true. The other is that their readers suffer from BDS to such an extent that they don’t see any problem with saying Saddam had plans so detailed that they can’t be let out into public, and that he had no plans to build a nuke.
In any event, he had the ore, he had the plans, he had the scientists, engineers, and techs, and he had the money. The money would have increased when the sanctions ended in a year or two more, and the inspectors would be gone, too.
Would have been big trouble.
‘nother possibility. By running the inspectors around the barn on a regular basis, he attempted to lead his neighbors to believe he still had something, when in fact he did not.
Fooled us. My guess is that if he gets up in court and tells the world he was just fooling, his situation won’t improve much.
Wouldn’t it just be easier if you guys came right out and said you don’t like to patronize news outlets that don’t warp the news to fit you worldview?
It would be business suicide for the big news outlets to do what you want them to do.
Fox News doesn’t even pull in as many viewers as Spongebob Squarepants.
Split their market share anymore and the reporters and staff would have to work for free…
Reagan knew well that this type of distortion would go on, and his was a pre-web era. I believe that is why he communicated directly to the media in short, simple, ‘impromptu’ sound bites. It was far more difficult to distort his point. Bush does not do this well, or has not recognized the importance of doing it.
Oh but Bush DID do “it,” Harry. Bush made fewer public pronouncements than his predecessors and what he DID say was kept to bland language that would be difficult to “interpret” in a way than what he actually meant. Difficult but not impossible, as we see with the “Bush Lied” boys. That’s part of the reason there was occasional grousing about the blandness of Bush’s speeches – because they were in such open and simple diction and syntax that it was hard to lie about the content – of course the Bushaters were not REALLY deterred. When you really, really, really hate someone like the MSM does Bush, truth never stops your perfidy. Bush could NEVER speak so “well” that the MSM wouldn’t distort his words, not in a million years. Don’t blame the speaker because others lie about what was said.
Not this time around Tatterdemilian. We are dealing with an islamic monolith, totally patriarchal with a 1400 year history of no central government being able to consistently assert its will over the prophet’s mandates. Add to this lethal combination nuclear weapons and immense oil wealth – it has no choice but to expand, economically and religiously. The only obstacle to the caliphate in the ME is Israel and the key to Israel is Jordan and the key to Jordan lies in asserting destabalizing pressure from the North (Syria) and South via Shi’ite controled Iraq. Jordan has never really faced a dual front before and cannot sustain it. The withdrawal of the US from Iraq opens not only the south of Iraq to Iran for tactical purposes but for significant gain from oil revenues as well. The caliphate’s blueprint reads as such: Iraq to Jordan, Jordan to Israel, Israel to Egypt and the Suez Canal. Do you really believe a nation that wrings its hands over putting a woman’s panties on the heads of enemies and profiling muslims from hostile nations can stop this? Another attack in the America is the last thing the jihadists are focusing on at this time. They don’t need to.
“And yet the U.S is(and has been)fighting wars under false pretenses; unfairly using it’s power to dominate unsustainable energy sources at the cost of the nation’s security – and most significantly allocating all of it’s resources on these even while the biggest threat to the U.S(global warming)goes virtually ignored.”
I’d rather make war on terror, than war on the weather.
“As some Republican hack said – “we create our own reality” – and that pretty much sums it up.”
There are hacks on both sides that believe reality can be changed just by wishing it. No surprise there, it’s a fairly common belief among the uneducated and/or idealistic.
The problem is MSM has the power to decieve people into believing foolish things like that, on an unprecedented scale. I’m no believer in God, but it is interesting how the Bible mentions the divinely inspired as effecting great changes by discovering ways to manipulate their environment, ways that were counterituitive to conventional wisdom but overpoweringly effective in their results. David imposed law over chaos, Moses attained freedom from slavery, Jesus created a respect for compassion despite sacrificing his life to the hateful.
If there is a God, I hope he inspires someone to develop a better way to separate truth from lies, and soon. Science and research are being forsaken all over the world, for no better reason than people like their fantasies more than the cold hard facts that reason unearths.
Let’s be serious. Aside from the laundry list of “Whereas”, there are only two conditions justifying the use of force. #1 is to use force to protect the US, and #2 is to enforce UN resolutions re: Iraq, which is bogus because the UN did not call for the US to enforce its sanctions, thank you very much.
Gee, I find the commentor’s “conditions” are a bit too restrictive – so I’ll ignore them, thanks anyway.
Therefore the Iraq war comes down to protecting the US, and that justification comes down to the supposed existence of WMD’s.
But Saddam DID have WMD. He murdered a bunch of Kurds with it. Remember? I wonder what the commentor thinks happened to Saddam’s WMD that he used to murder the Kurds with? Did it just disappear? Saddam never accounted for it, as was agreed to by him after his first defeat by Bush senior.
There were facilities, equipment, documents and stockpiles. Where did it all go? We found some of it – a nuclear centrifuge was dug up in one of Saddam’s scientist’s BACKYARD. And some documents WERE recovered, as the NYT, in an effort to discredit Bush, revealed. Where’s the rest? Buried in someone else’s backyard no doubt, but if one is determined NOT TO SEE, no amount of evidence will suffice.
“Without that there would have been zero support for the war – the neoconservative agenda was offered after the war – and for good reason.”
The war was neccessary and just because Iraq was imploding towards a Rwanda-like blood bath and Saddam had turned that ward of the international community into a mass grave/concentration camp.
If the world had listened to the antiwar crowd, our democratic allies the Kurds would have been ethnically cleansed, Kuwait would have been raped and annexed, and in the end Iran, Turkey, and Suadi Arab would have step in, thus ensuing the afore mentioned blood-bath. Europe largely would have continued to ignore the situation because they don’t espouse to the humanitarian call of the Enlightenment to save our fellow man. ‘Our fellow man’ as the idea or prerequiste of human liberty – as opposed to pre-Enlightenment attributes like ethic or economic kinship.
At least the U.S. led coalition is ‘holding the ring’ as bloody as it is — it could have been far far worse. All people who claim some trance of true democratic or socialist values do not compitulate to tyrannts, no more – not with what humanity has seen in the 20th century.
For me, a regular reader of scientific journals, this obvious political bias and dumping of standards of professional ethics and scientific rigor is very depressing. It coincides in time with left academics seizing major posts in editorial boards. For example, Donald Kennedy, Editor-in Chief of “Science”, wrote in 2005 three editorials on so-called “global warming”. He is in no position to advocate any opinion on this topic: he never did any research in climatology and simply do not understand the basic terminology of the field. (His field is cytology.) But he misuses his post in leading national scientific journal for politically biased advocacy on subject where he is completely ignorant, with the only aim to slander Bush. And in his own field he also shown reckless neglect of truth: he published a whole series of sensational papers of Korean team on stem cell research. The sensation turned out to be was a fraud, the most scandalous one, all data were faked. It was done by photo-shopped images of embryonic cell lines; not stem cells, but their images were cloned (by Clone instrument, just as in Beirut faked photos). One need not to be a cytologist to recognize the fake; but, again, political bias against Bush made the publication possible.
“Not this time around Tatterdemilian. We are dealing with an islamic monolith, totally patriarchal with a 1400 year history of no central government being able to consistently assert its will over the prophet’s mandates.”
Islam is indeed the greatest threat we are facing now. Not because it has no central government, but because it is designed to conceal its central governing entities behind a nearly impenetrable veil of lies and misdirection.
The central government of Islam is the media. The media controls who gets to be a revered sheik, a noble martyr, or a damned infidel traitor, entirely by fiat. They are the secret government of Islam, and always have been, from the final sacking of the Library of Alexandria to the present day. The absolute power the media holds in Islamic countries has not gone unnoticed by media organizations around the world, and most are now consciously trying to spread the Islamic, or at least Orwellian, social system worldwide, so they can attain the height of absolute power they believe is their due.
To win the war on terror, we will have to deal with the ambitions of the media conglomerates at some point.
Anybody here heard of FAIR, the media watchdog group? If their conclusions dont jive with yours they must be a partisan ,liberal bunch. If the upcoming congressional investigations show pro-war media bias it will only be because they ALL have liberal bias. Only you are keepers of the Truth and everyone out there is part of the vast, left-wing conspiricy.
Grackle: “Gee, I find the commentor’s “conditions” are a bit too restrictive – so I’ll ignore them, thanks anyway.”
To the point: then you are ignoring the actual conditions governing the use of force as stated in the Congressional Resolution. But you have my permission to ignore them.
Saddam used poison gas shells about 12 years before we invaded his country. We did in fact find a few of these shells, but the thing is that gas shells degrade rather quickly. We did not find any significant off-the-shelf chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Iraq, nor did we find any significant evidence that any such had been produced in many years (if it was produced in Iraq at all; you know we sent Saddam poison gas technology in the 1980’s).
Actually, you need not any conspiracy to distort and and ignore the truth. Ideology do this perfectly well. I know it by experience, having lived in Marxist police state for decades; and Western leftist ideology is basically the same that efficiently supressed truth in Soviet Union for 70 years.
Why so many people continue to trust MSM in spite of so many obvious and carefully dissected deceipts? I think the reason is Hypothesis of Collective Imprudence (HCI) by John Derbyshire which stipulates that “no large collectivity of human beings (nation-state or larger) will ever act to avert an obvious calamity until that calamity begins to cause really major, dramatic, unignorable damage.” Conformity of large groups powerfully enhances natural human aversion to accept unpleasant truth (that calamity is imminent), so they go on denial until it is too late to prevent it.
“Guess what? The jury is in. It is happening and the cost of ignoring it will be greater than the cost of dealing with it now.”
Natural law does not bend to popular vote.
Feel free to prove me wrong, I’d love to see the Laws of Thermodynamics repealed. Damn things are positively fascist.
To the point: then you are ignoring the actual conditions governing the use of force as stated in the Congressional Resolution. But you have my permission to ignore them.
As for the commentor’s “permission,” he can put THAT where the sun don’t shine. More to the point – some ACTUAL language from the ACTUAL congressional resolution, in which it seems the Congress thought there was at least one more condition under which Congress authorized force:
Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;
Hmm … Gee, it seems to me that Congress authorized force because of Saddam’s “direct and flagrant” violations – at least that’s what it says in the congressional record.
Whereas in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq’s continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in `material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations’ and urged the President `to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations’ (Public Law 105-235) …
Oops, oh my goodness, here’s still ANOTHER reason that Congress authorized force, namely “material and unacceptable breach of its[Iraq’s] international obligations.” Gee, that’s FOUR reasons, not merely the TWO cited by the commentor. I could go on quoting from the record(which the commentor evidently did not read all the way through) which has still other reasons to topple Saddam but I think my point is made.
We did not find any significant off-the-shelf chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Iraq …
Me, I think finding a nuclear material centrifuge buried in a backyard is “significant.” I’m just funny that way. But I get the idea the commentor wouldn’t admit to Saddam’s guilt no matter what the evidence. Saddam was no threat, would never be a threat and that’s that. He’s made up his mind and a little evidence is not going to change THAT.
“Guess what? The jury is in. It is happening and the cost of ignoring it will be greater than the cost of dealing with it now.”
justa:
Is that why Time magazine ran a scare story in 1974 about the “coming Ice Age” that “meteorologists worldwide” forecast in the next decade, using much the same language as you are using now?
Are you, by the way, an expert in climatology? There are a great many who dispute the *theory* of anthropocentric global warming. Yes, the earth is getting warmer…but nobody is really certain why—and it was warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now.
Are you, by the way, an expert in climatology? There are a great many who dispute the *theory* of anthropocentric global warming. Yes, the earth is getting warmer…but nobody is really certain why—and it was warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now.
stumbley | 12.05.06 – 7:15 pm | #
I’m certainly not – but what I do know that every single scientific organiziation on the planet accepts it as fact – and those who don’t tend to be getting rather hefty pay-checks from Exxon.
It simply is a fact. And you will accept it very soon, as we all will.
I’d rather not believe it, too – doesn’t sound like a whole lotta fun.
It’d be so much easier to believe that things last forever perfectly and that there are no concequences to our actions – as smoker I know the game well.
But at some stage we all grow up and learn the hard way.
It’s just a shame that’s our sons and daughters are the one’s who get stuck with the concequences of our ignorance…
“I’m certainly not – but what I do know that every single scientific organiziation on the planet accepts it as fact – and those who don’t tend to be getting rather hefty pay-checks from Exxon.”
Well, Exxon owes me a shitload of back pay then. I may need to file suit against them, once my suits against Haliburton and The Elders of Zion are resolved.
Anon, these organizations are not scientific – most of them are political advocatcy outlets. Climatology is rather special field, until ten years ago there were hardly more than 200 specialists in this field (mostly in US). And now every environmentalist freak dare to write about global warming – but evironmentalism is a form of mental disorder, it is not science.
See “adaptable iris hypothesis” and other critics of eco-doom mongers.
“Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940) is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology – especially atmospheric waves.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Science and Economic Advisory Council of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy.[1] He previously held positions at the University of Chicago and Harvard University.
Lindzen is identified as a contributer to Chapter 4 of the “IPCC Second Assessment”, “Climate Change 1995″. [2].
He has been a strong critic of anthropogenic global warming theories and wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in April wherein he not only contested media assertions that the Bush administration has been putting pressure on scientists to oppose climate change principles, but insisted that exactly the opposite is taking place: “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse.”[3]”
See also
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
Good grief. DAN RATHER. End of argument.
Aided me a lot, just what I was looking for : D.