Tendo City

I don't see CNN as being that bad either, but then again I didn't see Fox News as being that bad. Maybe I should be paying attentions to the between lines or something, but as I've said, I tend to phase out pretty much any non-news comments. Oh, and I really don't care too much about then picking and choosing what news to report. News stations are a START of information, not the end of it, if you really want to learn about the world that is. So, if you want to know more of the story, it's up to YOU to start looking it up. I still think it's each and every person's individual responsibility to learn about the world. The news is a nice resource, but it's not some heaping ice cream serving of truth. It's an indicator of what's going on, and anything more you want to know is your own responsibility. A good start is simply to not depend on one news source, but read multiple articles on the exact same thing, and if something doesn't seem right to you, it probably isn't, so look up more info or ask more questions about that. If you are too lazy to do all this, no problem, just don't act like you are super informed just for watching the news.

I don't get the whole anti-war vibe from CNN. It seems pretty straight forward. Perhaps skeptical, but never anti-war. Do you have a quote of some kind?

It's interesting that you got that message out of the Doonesbury cartoon, because I got a completely different message. I got the sense that the cartoonist was saying that while CNN and others were reporting something closer to the truth (no matter how brutal and gritty it might be), Fox News is practically a 24-hour pep-rally for the United States. But no matter how much Fox News uses selective amnesia, the United States public doesn't care. We like to hear that we're "winning." We like to hear that everyone agrees with us, and that whoever doesn't agree with us is a rotten no-good scumbag. We like to hear that we're stopping the bad guys. We like to hear that we're the saviors. It's comforting. It's also biased. But so is Al-Jazeera. The war is certainly more than civilian casualties and an invading force. It is more than a power struggle between the Western civilizations and the Arab World. It is certainly more than oil. Somewhere in between these points is a proper balance of the American and Arab points of view. But you won't find it on American or Arab television. The American public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the Arab point of view without skepticism. In the EXACT SAME WAY, the Arab public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the American point of view without skepticism.

We are more like Arabs than we think. We too have wackos that do terrible things (Oklahoma bombing). The only difference is that their wackos are told that their suffering is the United States' fault. We don't have any clear scapegoat (but we do have a history of making scapegoats). We too have general bias toward our own nation. We too have religious zealots. We too have racism/ethnicism.

But that is not the whole story. We too have moderates that believe that the opposite side is not skewed so much that it has stopped listening. We too have families. We too have faith in God.

What is "biased in the right direction?" I know it was accompanied by a smiley, but your writing before that kind of backs up that you actually believe that. Doesn't "the right direction" completely depend upon your point of view?

For Arabs that wish the United States would stay out of Arab business, isn't the information given out by Al-Jazeera, "biased in the right direction?" You may respond with, "Well, those Arabs are dillusional." But to them, you are dillusional. And they are just as educated as you are (if not more so).

It may seem odd, but for many years Al-Jazeera was considered too left-wing, too willing to show the "other side's" perspective. People that are just like Weltall, but happen to be born in the Arab world, think the following about American television (to quote Weltall's Arab equivalent): "That station represents a people who are...already indoctrinated with a dislike for everything to do with us."

I think that everyone's just trying their best.

And if we were in their shoes, we would probably be thinking what they're thinking, and they would probably be thinking what we're thinking.

*But to them, you are dillusional. And they are just as educated as you are (if not more so). *

Ehh...I harbor some doubt of that...well, I'm not in college yet, but I will be in 4 months...as for these Arabs in America, what of the Iraqis in Michigan who took to the streets thanking America for liberating their country?

Fox News rocks.

Okay, take the case of Mr. Ahmed Kamal Aboulmagd:

The full article is here (from nytimes.com):

Egyptian Intellectual Speaks Of the Arab World's Despair

NYtimes.com

By SUSAN SACHS

Ahmed Kamal Aboulmagd
in his 18th-floor law office in Cairo.

CAIRO, April 6 — Early in the morning, while most of Cairo is asleep, Ahmed Kamal Aboulmagd watches the war on television and despairs over the path taken by the United States. Even in the gloom of 4 a.m., this is not a normal emotion for Mr. Aboulmagd, a sprightly man of 72 who has lived through more than his share of revolutions, wars and international crises, yet has maintained a marvelously sunny outlook.

"We should never lose hope," he remarked the other day from his 18th-floor law office overlooking the Nile, a room crammed with books and brightened with paintings of sailboats on calm waters. "Frustration is not an option."

But in truth, Mr. Aboulmagd admitted, he is just whistling in the dark. Never have America's Arab friends, he said, felt so estranged from the United States.

"People in Egypt and many parts of the Arab world used to love America, and now they have a sense of being betrayed, misunderstood, taken lightly," he said. "And when it comes to the central problem of the Middle East — the Arab-Israeli conflict — we feel that even a minimum of American even-handedness is missing."

Mr. Aboulmagd is one of Egypt's best-known intellectuals, a senior aide to former President Anwar el Sadat, consultant to the United Nations and ever-curious polymath whose interests range across the fields of Islamic jurisprudence, comparative religions, literature, history and commercial law.

Like many educated Egyptians of his generation, he is a man whose views on democracy and political values were shaped by reading the United States Constitution, the Federalist papers and the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson.

For him the United States was a "dream," a paragon of liberal values to be emulated by Arabs and Muslims seeking to have a voice in the modern world.

One of his daughters lived in the United States. Mr. Aboulmagd studied there, earning a master's degree in comparative law at the University of Michigan in 1959. He served as president of the administrative tribunal of the World Bank in Washington. And he has spent more than 20 years of his life working on projects aimed at promoting dialogue between the Western, non-Muslim civilization and the Arab-Muslim world.

Yet these days, in his opinion, something has gone terribly wrong.

"Under the present situation, I cannot think of defending the United States," said Mr. Aboulmagd, a small man with thinning white hair who juggles a constant stream of phone calls and invitations to speak about modernizing the Arab world.

"I would not be listened to," he added. "To most people in this area, the United States is the source of evil on planet earth. And whether we like it or not, it is the Bush administration that is to blame."

When speaking of President Bush and his administration, Mr. Aboulmagd uses words like narrow-minded, pathological, obstinate and simplistic. The war on Iraq, he said bluntly, is the act of a "weak person who wants to show toughness" and, quite frankly, seems "deranged."

Such language from a man of Mr. Aboulmagd's stature is a warning sign of the deep distress that has seized the Arab elite, those who preach moderation in the face of rising Islamic radicalism and embrace liberalism over the tired slogans of Arab nationalism.

Similar opinions can also be heard these days from wealthy Arab businessmen, university professors, senior government officials and Western-leaning political analysts — the people whose support could help advance the Bush administration's professed mission: to bring democracy to the Arab world.

Mr. Aboulmagd has a hand in just about every institution or board that counts in Egypt, including al Azhar, the authoritative institution of Sunni Muslim learning. He is consulted on inter-cultural dialogue by the United Nations, the Arab League and the European Union. He has taught law in universities in Egypt, Sudan and Kuwait.

He is the epitome of the Arab establishment. Sprinkled throughout his conversation are anecdotes about President Sadat and recollections of discussions with luminaries like the United Nations general secretary, Kofi Annan. He receives phone calls from Arab presidents and kings. His office is filled with mementos from trips around the world as a lecturer and consultant. An oversize Koran in a green leather case rests on a coffee table along with a rendition of the scales of justice in brass and alabaster.

He has devoted decades of his life and his writings to the cause of modernizing Islamic life and promoting understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Now those efforts, Mr. Aboulmagd said, have been set back by President Bush's "exaggerated" response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, a response he believes only encouraged mutual enmity and suspicion by painting Muslims and Arabs as potential enemies to be reformed or destroyed.

"I find what is happening to be a serious setback in the endeavors of noble people who have realized the commonalities among different civilizations and nations," he said.

The problem, he said, is that the war on Iraq is widely seen in the Arab world as an attack on all Arabs, meant to serve the interests of Israel with no compensating outreach to aggrieved Arabs.

While the 1991 Persian Gulf war, under Mr. Bush's father, was waged with the understanding that the United States would engage itself in the search for peace, he said, this war was launched without a parallel American effort to compel Israel to forge a genuine peace with the Palestinians.

"The United States has played a destructive role by giving direct or indirect green lights to the Israeli government to do what it pleases," Mr. Aboulmagd said. "This is ruining Israel's future in the area. And whatever, even if all the Arabs sign up, this is a truce, this is a ceasefire, this is not peace. It is not peace. If you want peace you must have genuine desire for peace."

If the Iraq war comes to be seen as an American war against Islam, he added, President Bush may be partly to blame. "He believes he was chosen by the Almighty to fulfill a Christian mission," Mr. Aboulmagd said. "Or at least he was made to believe that by the people around him."

Still, at the end of three hours of discussion, he returned to an optimistic viewpoint — a position that clearly fits his nature.

"Many people are talking about planet earth being no more a safe place for anyone, but I am optimistic," he said. "I believe dialogue is needed now, so we should not give in to desperation, to loss of hope, to pessimism. Rather we should act actively and continue the path of dialogue and the path of understanding, simply because we cannot afford the other consequence."

First, the latest Doonesbury.



Nintendarse, you are completely accurate... but I bet because of their length some people (such as, by his own admission, Darunia) skip over long posts... oh well. No helping them.

Anyway, yeah, I agree with everything in your posts there...

In this conflict, the facts aren't the most important part. What Bush's true motivations for going into Iraq are aren't what really matters. Its what the public's opinion of what his motivations are that does... and, as you show there, the Arabs have one very strong and quite united viewpoint about it. Is it accurate? No. But if they all believe it, its that that matters... along with the fact that all we are doinig with our actions is agrivating the problem... and until the US does something to help alleviate the source of Arab anger, we will never get them to not hate us.

The problem is... the problem of Israel is a hopeless mess and no one can see a way out of it, least of all the morons in charge of the US right now... and they obviously admit it... at least Clinton TRIED! Sure, he failed... but he TRIED!

Quote:It's interesting that you got that message out of the Doonesbury cartoon, because I got a completely different message. I got the sense that the cartoonist was saying that while CNN and others were reporting something closer to the truth (no matter how brutal and gritty it might be), Fox News is practically a 24-hour pep-rally for the United States.

That's exactly what I interpreted it as too...

Quote:But no matter how much Fox News uses selective amnesia, the United States public doesn't care. We like to hear that we're "winning." We like to hear that everyone agrees with us, and that whoever doesn't agree with us is a rotten no-good scumbag. We like to hear that we're stopping the bad guys. We like to hear that we're the saviors. It's comforting. It's also biased. But so is Al-Jazeera. The war is certainly more than civilian casualties and an invading force. It is more than a power struggle between the Western civilizations and the Arab World. It is certainly more than oil. Somewhere in between these points is a proper balance of the American and Arab points of view. But you won't find it on American or Arab television. The American public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the Arab point of view without skepticism. In the EXACT SAME WAY, the Arab public has a bias that understandably favors itself, and would reject a channel that expressed the American point of view without skepticism.

Yup. Most people in any area like to believe that they are correct... which makes sense, but ignores what is really going on. I guess that as I said before impressions of the truth affect the future more than the truth does...

Oh, and you are correct about the media. Arab media protrayed it as an invasion and lots of civilian causualties... not accurate. But neither was the US media's propagandizing... but in war the truth is very hard to find. And I'd say that CNN does try a bit harder than the other US networks to be balanced... they have clear US bias, but do more with waht is truly going on and the effects for the other side...

Quote:We are more like Arabs than we think. We too have wackos that do terrible things (Oklahoma bombing). The only difference is that their wackos are told that their suffering is the United States' fault. We don't have any clear scapegoat (but we do have a history of making scapegoats). We too have general bias toward our own nation. We too have religious zealots. We too have racism/ethnicism.

I'd also say that Bush is just as rightwing as those super-conservative Arab Sheiks... we both have radicals, and in both cases they have lots of power...

Quote:But that is not the whole story. We too have moderates that believe that the opposite side is not skewed so much that it has stopped listening. We too have families. We too have faith in God.

Yes, but right now at least in both cases the conservative radicals have most of the power...

Quote:What is "biased in the right direction?" I know it was accompanied by a smiley, but your writing before that kind of backs up that you actually believe that. Doesn't "the right direction" completely depend upon your point of view?

"Biased in the right direction" means "news that you agree with, irregardless of the facts". And everyone is prone to liking news like that, as you said.

Quote:And if we were in their shoes, we would probably be thinking what they're thinking, and they would probably be thinking what we're thinking.

Absolutely. If Bush was a Arab he'd be one of those hardcore (but popular) anti-American radicals... I see no diffence between, say, Billy Graham or the like and Islamic Mullahs...

The difference of course is that any Islamic moderates or liberals aren't very free to express their opinions...

Nintendarse, you are completely accurate... but I bet because of their length some people (such as, by his own admission, Darunia) skip over long posts... oh well. No helping them.


No need to help them, as there is nothing wrong with them. Sarcastic liberals, on the other hand...'eh...no helping them. And why bother. They don't support anything not liberal, that isn't proposed by their own liberal representatives. I don't recall the anti-war protest about Clinton's admittedly smaller-scale foreign offensives.

Quote:The problem is... the problem of Israel is a hopeless mess and no one can see a way out of it, least of all the morons in charge of the US right now... and they obviously admit it... at least Clinton TRIED! Sure, he failed... but he TRIED!

He tried ONLY because he was out to create a legacy for himself. And what did he accomplish? All he did was make things worse. Clinton wanted to make peace in Israel because he was an abject failure in just about everything else he tried and he needed a good mark on his record. And his peace efforts resulted instead in a second Intifada and an ongoing war that has been going on ever since.

It would have been better if he DIDN'T try. There wouldn't BE a hopeless mess. And, as was obvious from the peace proceedings, there won't be peace there, because Yasir Arafat does not want peace, he wants the destruction of Israel and will settle for nothing less. Barak offered him concessions that no Israeli PM had ever dreamed of offering the Palestinians, and still Arafat refused.

Quote:No need to help them, as there is nothing wrong with them

I completely agree. Sadly, there are people on both ends of the political spectrum that dismiss anything that comes from the "opposition." I hope that I haven't been pegged into that hole yet, because I disagree with ABF on that point. Liberalism and Conservatism are a great balance of thinking. It is stubborness and unwillingness to listen that frustrates me.

On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, your conclusions are dubious, Weltall. No hopeless problem? In a conflict that can be directly traced back to the World War I era, I find it hard to believe that Clinton made a hopeful situaton hopeless. Granted, Yasir Arafat cannot bring peace (partly because he must appease terrorist groups like Hamas), but who is the alternative? From the Arab point of view, Israel has not satisfied its past agreements (UN resolution 242, Israeli settlements), it has acted disproportionately to threats, and it is ruled by an evil man. Whether this skepticism is well-founded is debatable, but the skepticism is a reality that must be dealt with.

Quote:No need to help them, as there is nothing wrong with them. Sarcastic liberals, on the other hand...'eh...no helping them. And why bother. They don't support anything not liberal, that isn't proposed by their own liberal representatives. I don't recall the anti-war protest about Clinton's admittedly smaller-scale foreign offensives.

Uh, I'm not talking about politics with that comment... I'm talking about anyone who ignores long posts (like everyone here except Weltall, in those posts we had a while back... I noticed how only Weltall ever replied to the 6+ page posts of quotes...)... and you said you did...

As for Israel, yeah, I don't see how Clinton made it worse in any way... actually I'd say that he did help, by keeping them talking and not fighing for several years. I very much doubt this administration could have acheived that.