Rumsfeld Fighting Technique

not wanting to get embroiled in the debate, fascinating as it is, but I do feel rumsfeld has as in the past, been a real evil force for divisiveness in the world.
I don't feel 'free' anymore, I don't feel safe, all I hear on the news rammed down my throat, and I resent it, apart from celebrity bollux, is terror, islamists, attacks, killings, bombings.
I deplore the news being limited, the journalists for the programming of it, what they want you to feel, know, think about.
Saturation fear, envy, greed, jelousy, all news is bad news, bad emotion.
I do think bin laden is misunderstood, mis reported, and probably a fascinating person if one could have a talk without the radicals killing you just cos you are from the west.
I wouldn't call him evil, sure he strategically killed 1000s but that doesn't make him totally evil all of the time, sure it was one bad event, but its actually quite easy to strategically plan the deaths and carry killings out if you have the power, witness govts. just pushing a button and it happens. you don't feel it as you are isolated and cutoff from the reality of it.

 

There are a number of web sites where respected journalists write opinion columns of what's going on in the world. They come in various flavours - left, right and centre - and some of them have really interesting and original things to say.

There are also a number of political blogs - again left, right and centre - which pick up on the various news items and discuss them. You can add your own comments if you want.

Not all of the blogs are negative either. For instance there are sites giving the 'good news from Iraq'.

There are people out there who are far better informed than we are, have brilliant political minds and write well too. You just have to search.

So we no longer have to rely on the news being spoon fed to us via the conventional media.

 

steve,
the thing is that 99% of the world either doesn;t know how or can;t be bothered to look and therefore the traditional media is still the main route into the publics consciousness.

as for bin laden being evil well anyone who kills others is evil imho. in fact there is nothing worse you can do. however on the scale of evil men he's rather minor league with some serial killers having a higher body count (probably) compared to him (and al qu'eda) the american govt are one of the most evil organisations ever.
cheers


julian

 

Julian,

As you're well aware, this is a question of judgement and opinion. One has to factor in both intention and technology.

But however, this is factored in, the American government doesn't compare, by any reasonable criteria of what is evil, with Hitler's Nazi regime or Stalin's Soviet Union. In terms of body count, they're hardly in the same league as the Chinese (in terms of what they've done to their own people alone). Neither were the Americans responsible for the Rwanda massacres, the worst post war genocide, nor Sudan, the worst massacres happening as we discuss this.

How the USA compares with other 'empires' is also largely conjecture. Are they so much more evil than the British Empire was? I doubt it. They don't tend to colonize or leave quite such a mess when they're thrown out. You can probably pin much of the blame for the current situation in Israel/Palestine and Iraq on the British.

Time moves so much more quickly these days so the American 'Empire' won't last for very many more years. I'm pretty sure that, if the Chinese take on the mantle, much of the world will look back on the days of American empire with Nostalgia and longing.

This is possibly a more fruitful area for debate.

I predict that conventional media will be surpassed by a cult of following individual pundits. Rather than reading the Times or the Telegraph, we will read our favourite pundits such as Victor Hanson, Noam Chomsky, Charles Krauthammer or (perish the thought) Robert Fisk.

I believe that such habits will permeate into the 99% that make up 'the Great Unwashed' - the non hi-fi buying public - although perhaps in a distilled, sexed-up and redigested form.

I hope that this may result in our being better informed and that easier access to this information, coupled with the more difficult suppression of same, will make it increasingly hard for totalitarian regimes to function.

But then I'm an optimist.

 

I'd much rather read any pundit than the Murdoch sewer that is the Times (a pity really, it used to be a respectable paper) or the Torygraph. Give me a decent paper like the Guardian or Independent any day

Also, I don't know if you'd call him a pundit but I rather like (and tend to agree with) Will Hutton in the Observer (and his books)....but then I suspect you already knew that

Michael.

 

Michael,

Yes, I'd call Will Hutton a pundit - albeit a terribly misguided one.

Seriously, I didn't know that he was a favourite of yours, although I'm aware of the general direction that you're coming from. I'll look out for him.

My current fave is Victor Hanson, although I don't think that he's quite your cup of tea. I suspect that we tend to read the pundits who reflect and inform our own views, treating most others with disdain.

Having said that, I'm aware that views do shift from time to time. Many of today's Neocon Republicans were Democrats disaffected by what they perceived as self-loathing and lack of patriotism.

Seeing as how our own Labour and Conservative parties currently occupy so much of the same ground, I wonder if we'll start to see a situation where British MPs move from one party to the other with the same ease that they seemed to a century ago ...

...or will we see a resurrection of Socialism?