You have failed us, on both the overseas war situation and on domestic issues like health care reform and the failing economy. And no, you do NOT deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. You should have refused it and nominated someone else.
When I voted for you, I expected you to live up to your stated promise to make changes in Washington, changes I could beleive in. Instead, you have broken many of your own promises and flipped-flopped on several issues important to me. You have also made too many concessions to the Republican opposition, the very people who were put out of power last year. That makes you look weak and unprincipled. You have also lied to us several times.
So much for the hope you once offered us! Do not expect me to support you in 2012. We need a more progressive and honest person than you in the White House!
In my last blog entry, I noted that the New York Times published an article by reporter Brian Stelter claiming that executives at News Corporation and General Electric, the parent companies of FOX News and MSNBC respectively, had arranged a cease-fire between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. Subsequent actions by Olbermann proved that article to be false. So what did Stelter do?
Executives at two of the country’s largest media companies are still trying to salvage what was essentially a cease-fire between MSNBC and the Fox News Channel.
The two cable news channels temporarily resumed their long-running feud this week after The New York Times reported that their parent companies, General Electric and the News Corporation, had struck a deal to stop each other’s televised personal attacks.
Fox News executives felt that MSNBC had broken the deal when Keith Olbermann, in an apparent show of independence, insulted his 8 p.m. rival, Bill O’Reilly, and the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, on Monday. On his show, “Countdown,” Mr. Olbermann called Mr. O’Reilly a “racist clown.”
Mr. O’Reilly responded with his own attack two days later on his program, “The O’Reilly Factor,” where he claimed that G.E., through MSNBC, was “promoting the election of Barack Obama and then seeking to profit from his policies.”
The chief executives at General Electric, whose NBC News division operates MSNBC, and News Corporation, which owns Fox News, reached an unusual agreement last spring to halt the regular personal assaults on each other’s channels.
Eric Burns, the former host of Fox’s media criticism show “Fox News Watch” and the author of “All the News Unfit to Print,” said, “Even in an age where there seemed to be no boundaries, people at the very top of two networks thought, ‘Well, I guess there are boundaries, because they’ve been crossed.’ ”
But the agreement was strained almost from the start, according to employees at the channels, even though it mostly succeeded in stopping the vicious personal attacks lobbed by the two hosts until this week.
Despite the renewed tensions, Mr. Murdoch and his counterpart at G.E., Jeffrey R. Immelt, are still seeking a truce in a feud that has embarrassed both companies, said three employees at the companies with direct knowledge of the situation. Mr. Murdoch was said to be particularly incensed by Mr. Olbermann’s and Mr. O’Reilly’s sniping.
The deal extends beyond the prime-time hour that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly occupy. Employees of daytime programs on MSNBC were specifically told by executives not to mention Fox hosts in segments critical of conservative media figures, according to two staff members. The employees requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters.
In a statement, G.E. said, “While both companies agreed that the tone should be more civil, no one at G.E. told anyone at NBC News or MSNBC how to report the news.”
Some Fox employees said they were told in June and July not to flagrantly criticize General Electric. Fox said in a statement Friday, “This has nothing to do with preventing anyone from practicing journalism or interfering with freedom of speech — this is about corporate responsibility. We’ve never suppressed any stories about NBC or G.E. — both organizations are covered as news warrants.”
Still, some watchdog groups said the months-long cease-fire challenged the claims that the two media companies did not interfere in their on-air content.
The advocacy group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting asked its supporters on Friday to contact G.E., urging it to renounce the agreement with Fox.
Jeff Cohen, the founder of the group, said the deal between the two networks’ parent companies was a reason to be wary of corporate-owned TV news.
“It should remind news consumers of who calls the tune and pays the bills — and that TV reporters and even loud-mouthed commentators have corporate bosses whose interests are often not about unbridled journalism,” Mr. Cohen said.
Joan Walsh, the editor of Salon.com, said Thursday that it appeared that “the owners of two large news organizations colluded to make sure their audience got less, not more, information, and to promote their business interests, not the public interest.”
She asked, “How is it any different from a media organization making a deal with a politician not to expose a scandal in exchange for a political favor? We’d call that corruption, and I think this is the same thing.”
The executives had sought for years to tamp down the attacks by Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly, to little success. Frustrated by the refusal by NBC’s chief executive, Jeffrey Zucker, to halt the attacks on Mr. O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, personally instructed Mr. O’Reilly’s program to aim at Mr. Immelt, people familiar with the situation said.
Peace talks, such as they were, resumed in the spring between G.E. and News Corporation executives. At a lunch in April, Mr. Ailes and Mr. Immelt agreed to tone down the attacks. It was not visible to viewers until after Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch shook hands at an off-the-record conference sponsored by Microsoft in May and word of a cease-fire trickled down to both news divisions.
Mr. Olbermann told viewers on June 1 that he would halt his jokes about Fox News because he believed that Fox had played a part in inciting the death of the abortion doctor George Tiller. Inside Fox, executives chuckled. They knew that a pact had already been struck by Mr. Olbermann’s bosses to end the feud.
In the months after, when MSNBC would say something that strained the agreement, Fox News would respond accordingly, and vice versa.
In July, after Mr. Olbermann condemned Fox’s Glenn Beck for letting a guest assert that a terrorist attack in the United States might be a good thing, Mr. Beck booked a segment about G.E. and declared that a “merger between G.E. and the Obama administration” was “nearly complete.”
After the detente was reported by The Times on Monday, the fighting resumed and Mr. Olbermann claimed there was no deal among the parent companies. That was met by heated skepticism among bloggers.
Two days later, Mr. O’Reilly had his turn. His news hook: The Securities and Exchange Commission had fined G.E. $50 million on charges of misleading investors. And on Thursday, Mr. O’Reilly showed Mr. Immelt’s and Mr. Zucker’s faces and wondered how long they could allow “this barbaric display” — that is an Olbermann reference — “under the NBC News banner.”
Mr. Olbermann and MSNBC declined to comment Friday.
It remains to be seen whether the personal attacks will be halted again. Fox’s stance on Friday suggested that the corporate criticism would not.
“At this point,” a Fox spokeswoman said Friday, “the entire situation is more about major issues at NBC and G.E. than it is about Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann.”
That is simply a load of bogus crap! Here is a clip from Countdown on June 17, 2009, in which Olbermann made yet another long and scathing attack on FOX News:
Which would lead me to ask, “What cease fire?” It looks like it was business as usual, with the exception of any direct references to Bill O’Reilly. Again, it was because of the George Tiller issue that Olbermann felt he should refrain from making fun of his rival. But any attack on FOX News in general would certainly be an attack on O’Reilly by implication. You don’t make several attacks on a rival during a “cease-fire”.
Finally, on July 17, Olbermann attacked the notion of news organizations agreeing to cover up any actual news, calling it “slimy”. So if Stelter was correct, that means Olbermann is one of the world’s biggest hypocrites. By this time, if there HAD been a deal of some kind between News Corp. and G.E., Olbermann should have been fired.
The fighting wasn’t “resumed” because it never ended! BRIAN STELTER LIED!
So now, I will repeat my demand to the publishers of the New York Times: Brian Stelter committed libel and not only refused to apologize for it, but has repeated his offense. Any reporter that wrote as falsely as he did, I’d have fired within a week, and Stelter should be NOW!
The feud between these TV news titans came to a head on June 1, 2009. The previous day, Dr. George Tiller, who O’Reilly had stigmatized for years as “Tiller the baby killer” because he was one of the few doctors who provided late-term abortions, was shot to death at his Lutheran church by an anti-abortion fanatic.
That prompted Bill O’Reilly to attempt some damage control:
At the same time, Keith Olbermann was dealing with the situation in his own way. He made his most bitter attack against O’Reilly and FOX News yet, accusing them of responsibility for Tiller’s death, and declared that FOX News needed to be subjected to a “quarantine”.
Thus, he made the decision to retire his mocking of O’Reilly, merely being content to quote his words. Frankly, I would have done the same. The whole situation was just too disgusting to make fun of.
And that’s where it stood until July 31, when this article was published in the New York Times:
It was a media cage fight, televised every weeknight at 8 p.m. But the match was halted when the blood started to spray executives in the high-priced seats.
For years Keith Olbermann of MSNBC had savaged his prime-time nemesis Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel and accused Fox of journalistic malpractice almost nightly. Mr. O’Reilly in turn criticized Mr. Olbermann’s bosses and led an exceptional campaign against General Electric, the parent company of MSNBC.
It was perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade and by this year, their bosses had had enough. But it took a fellow television personality with a neutral perspective to help bring it to at least a temporary end.
Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.
In early June, the combat stopped, and MSNBC and Fox, for the most part, found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).
“It was time to grow up,” a senior employee of one of the companies said.
The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April.
“We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. “We’re happy that has happened.”
The parent companies declined to comment directly on the details of the cease-fire, which was orchestrated in part by Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, and Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president who oversees corporate affairs at the News Corporation.
Mr. Olbermann, who is on vacation, said by e-mail message, “I am party to no deal,” adding that he would not have been included in any conversations between G.E. and the News Corporation. Fox News said it would not comment.
Civility was not always the aim of Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly, men who, in an industry of thin skins, are both famous for reacting to verbal pinpricks. Both host 8 p.m. programs on cable news in studios a few blocks apart in Midtown Manhattan.
The conservative-leaning Mr. O’Reilly has turned “The O’Reilly Factor” into a profit center for the News Corporation by blitzing his opponents and espousing his opinions unapologetically. He found his bête noire in the liberal-leaning Mr. Olbermann, the host of MSNBC’s “Countdown,” who saw in Mr. O’Reilly a regenerating target he nicknamed the “Bill-o the Clown.”
The 6-foot-4 Mr. Olbermann started sniping regularly at the also 6-foot-4 Mr. O’Reilly in late 2005, sometimes making him the subject of the “Countdown” segment, the “Worst Person in the World.” Mr. O’Reilly was also a stand-in for the perceived offenses of the top-rated Fox News.
By punching up at his higher-rated prey, Mr. Olbermann helped his own third-place cable news show. “Honestly, I should send him a check each week,” he remarked to a reporter three years ago. Fox noticed. Mr. Murdoch remarked to Esquire last year that “Keith Olbermann is trying to make a business out of destroying Bill O’Reilly.” Mr. O’Reilly refused to mention his critic by name on the “Factor,” deeming him a “vicious smear merchant,” but he regularly blamed Mr. Zucker for “ruining a once-great brand,” NBC.
In late 2007, Mr. O’Reilly had a young producer, Jesse Watters, ambush Mr. Immelt and ask about G.E.’s business in Iran, which is legal, and which includes sales of energy and medical technology. G.E. says it no longer does business in Iran.
Mr. O’Reilly continued to pour pressure on its corporate leaders, even saying on one program last year that “If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt.” The resulting e-mail to G.E. from Mr. O’Reilly’s viewers was scathing.
The messages hit nerves on both sides. Mr. Immelt remarked to MSNBC staff members last summer that he would “never forgive Rupert Murdoch” for Fox’s behavior, according to two people who were present. In private phone calls, the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, told NBC officials to end the attacks.
In February, Mr. Zucker told Newsweek what he had told Mr. Olbermann privately: “I wish it weren’t so personal.” The previous year, Mr. Murdoch said that Mr. O’Reilly “shouldn’t be so sensitive” to the attacks lobbed by MSNBC.
Over time, G.E. and the News Corporation concluded that the fighting “wasn’t good for either parent,” said an NBC employee with direct knowledge of the situation. But the session hosted by Mr. Rose provided an opportunity for a reconciliation, sealed with a handshake between Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch.
But like any title fight, the final round could not end without an attempted knockout. On June 1, the day after the abortion provider George Tiller was killed in Kansas, Mr. Olbermann took to the air to cite Mr. O’Reilly’s numerous references to “Tiller, the baby killer” and to announce that he would retire his caricature of Mr. O’Reilly.
“The goal here is to get this blindly irresponsible man and his ilk off the air,” he said.
The next day, Mr. O’Reilly made the extraordinary claim that “federal authorities have developed information about General Electric doing business with Iran, deadly business” and published Mr. Immelt’s e-mail address and mailing address, repeating it slowly for emphasis.
Then the attacks mostly stopped.
Shortly after, Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, told producers that he wanted the channel’s other programs to follow Mr. Olbermann’s lead and restrain from criticizing Fox directly, according to two employees. At Fox News, some staff members were told to “be fair” to G.E.
The executives at both companies, it appears, were relieved. “For this war to stop, it meant fewer headaches on the corporate side,” one employee said.
Tensions still simmer between the two networks, however, and staff members have been unwilling or unable to stop the strife altogether. This week, for instance, the Fox host Glenn Beck called Mr. Obama a racist, prompting rebukes on a number of MSNBC shows. But for now, the daily back and forth has quieted.
“They’ve won their respective constituencies,” said a former member of MSNBC’s senior staff. “They don’t need to do this anymore, really.”
Olbermann was returning from a two week vacation. When he resumed hosting his show on August 3, he addressed that article directly:
He must have been furious! Had he kept his word and never made fun of Bill O’Reilly again, it would have made him look like a corporate shill, not a legitimate newsman. So in this case, he had to break his word in order to preserve his credibility!
And his action proved to be justified on August 11, when O’Reilly attacked General Electric the parent company of MSNBC:
Thus it appears there was no deal on the side of O’Reilly and FOX News as well. Olbermann shot back the next evening:
So now, I have just one question: Has Brian Stelter been fired from the New York Times yet?
Oh and by the way, Keith Olbermann would not need to do damage control if someone was insane enough to kill Bill O’Reilly. He already denounced one such threat made against his rival on August 19, 2008. That’s right, ONE YEAR AGO!
I first took notice of Keith Olbermann when I happened to see a video on YouTube of him condemning President Bush for his conduct during the Iraq War.
I thought that was quite amazing, but then I saw these special reports on Bill O’Reilly, which totally blew me away!
You can’t get more damning than that! There are only two possibilities: Either Olbermann slandered Bill O’Reilly (in which case Bill O and FOX News should have sued Keith O and MSNBC as a matter of honor), or he told the truth (in which case FOX News should have fired Bill O). There is no third option. The fact that no slander lawsuit was ever filed and that O’Reilly works at FOX News to this day shows beyond all reasonable doubt that FOX News is a channel with no integrity whatsoever.
Here’s another example of Olbermann busting O’Reilly for falsehoods relating to World War II:
And unlike Bill O, who never makes an apology for his mistaken statements, Keith O does! One evening, he slammed New York Times managing editor Bill Keller for not firing a reporter who had not only printed a false story, but had committed plagerism to boot!
But the very next night, Keith O apologized for his condemnation of Keller. Appearantly, Olbermann had never worked at that newspaper before and knew nothing beforehand about how it was run. So he practiced what he preached!
There is no question that MSNBC is slanted towards the Liberal perspective. I suspect that was done because of FOX News appealing so much to right-wingers, so MSNBC had to balance it out. FOX News certainly has no business calling itself “fair and balanced”, nor does Bill O’Reilly have any business calling his show a “no spin zone”. Look at how arrogantly he dealt with Richard Dawkins:
….and then with Kirk Cameron, treating him with kid gloves while continuing to bash Dawkins:
And he even got into a shouting match with Geraldo Rivera over illegal immigration and drunk driving! How unprofessional!
Meanwhile, Olbermann took on Wal-Mart for several days to expose its terrible wrongdoing towards a disabled former employee:
Until Wal-Mart was forced to back down:
Now, those blind and moronic FOX News fans who call Olbermann a liar, without specifying what he lied about, are YOU going to file a slander lawsuit against him? Is anyone? If not, SHUT UP! In matters of credibility and honor, Keith Olbermann beats anyone at FOX News hands down! The only reason you distrust Olbermann is political prejudice, the irrational assumption that somehow Conservatives have a monopoly on truth and virtues and therefore anyone non-Conservative must be misguided, dishonest, even evil. WRONG! Grow up and deal with real life and not the nationalistic crap you’ve been spoon fed since you were babies!
When I was a child, I had absolute faith in God, in my parents and my country, like most children tend to have. In 1979, I would watch the news and see reports about American hostages being taken in Iran, about the Shah being deposed, and about Iranians chanting “Death to America!”, and I couldn’t understand why. What had we Americans ever done to Iran? I got the impression that the Iranians were evil people who hated us just because we were different.
But years later, I attended college and it wasn’t until then that I finally learned the truth: that in 1953, we Americans, through the CIA, had helped overthrow a democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran and allowed the Shah to take absolute power there. Why? Because that Prime Minister had attempted to nationalize the oil fields owned and operated by British and American oil companies, in HIS OWN COUNTRY! WHAT ARROGANCE AND HYPOCRISY WE DISPLAYED BACK THEN! NO WONDER THE IRANIANS WERE SO ANGRY! But in 1979, these disgraceful facts were never revealed by the mainstream media. The implication was that the Islamic Revolution of Iran had occured for no logical reason. But that was a lie of omission.
If someone like Keith Olbermann had been around in 1979 reporting the political news and slamming reporters of other networks for screwing with the truth, perhaps we would have learned the truth about the Iranian situation much sooner and we the people would not have been stupid enough to elect Ronald Reagan as the next President of the United States.
In any case, it was me learning the truth about Iran and what we did to it that made me reject forever the Conservative Republican politics of my parents and most of my other relatives. I wised up, and it’s about time millions of Americans did also and stopped acting like SHEEP being led to their slaughter by the pied pipers of FOX News and the Republican leaders.
Keep up the good work, Keith Olbermann. This Honorable Skeptic salutes you and hopes to see you on the air for many years to come!
VenomFangX, aka Shawn, is a teenager (or at least appears to be one) and self-styled Christian evangelist who has made a total @$$ of himself on YouTube for at least a couple of years. He has gained quite a following among his fellow Christians there, as well as redicule and scorn from skeptics who have had the misfortune of dealing with him. And in a battle with one user in particular named ThunderfOOt, he got totally clobbered for engaging in violations of the YouTube terms of service and for legal reasons was forced to admit his wrongdoings on a video for all to see.
Now, if this “Christian” had any sense of honor or humility whatsoever, you would expect him to never bother with Thunderf00t again. But instead, he has just pulled this stunt:
Shawn, Shawn, SHAWN! Ray Comfort is no match for Thunderfoot, and that’s obvious. For you to call Thunderfoot wrong when YOU are the one who engaged in dishonorable behavior against him is totally bogus!
You are a FRAUD and so is your religion, period! If you cannot learn from your mistakes and just GROW UP and live like a man and not like a little boy, you can GO FUCK YOURSELF!
In the description of his video, VenomFangX says:
“Thunderf00t displayed all the weaknesses in the naturalistic philosophy. It robs people of a basic appreciation and value of human life over that of animals, and ultimately all life is seen as nothing more than complex machinery with our consciousness being little else than a spark of electricity. When morality and ethics are brought up, it is impossible for Thunderf00t to articulate a coherent answer, after all, speaking of right and wrong according to an electrical current is pretty silly, don’t you think, Thunderf00t?”
No, what is silly is you engaging in such a lame strawman. The notion that life is merely glorified chemistry is exactly what modern science has revealed over the past few centuries, and if you are too much of a coward to deal honesty with that, that’s your problem. It need not be anyone else’s.
Who are you to assume that because we are an assembly of extremely complex molecules, we have been robbed of anything? That is entirely an unfounded assumption on your part. If you need your delusional religion to feel that you have some dignity in your life, then YOU are the one that is robbed……of rational thinking! People are valuable because we as a species are unique, just as every species is unique and adapted to their environments and lifestyles. You don’t need religion at all to live in harmony with your fellow men or with other species. You just don’t! And how can you imply that putting man on the same level of value with animals somehow makes man worthless? Do you need us all to be as arrogant as you to feel better about yourself? What a terrible weakness!
No wonder your religion is dying, hypocrite!
UPDATE (Jan 7, 2010): After another round of dishonorable behavior, VenomfangX has been called out by another YouTube user, dprjones:
This happened on May 25, 2007. The man being booed and condemned by the graduating seniors of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff under Bush Jr. He took no classes to earn that degree, it was just given to him. He was a major player and promoter of the Iraq War that Bush Jr started.
Such a man getting an honorary degree sends the wrong message: that you can lie to the American people to start a war for shoddy purposes, send thousands of Americans to their deaths in that war, and still be rewarded for that insanity.
An explanation for the awarding of that honorary degree was given here:
Will said…
No, no — the board of trustees awards the honorary degrees. The trustees are political appointees, mostly selected by the recently departed Mitt Romney. They’re about as far removed as possible from sentiment in the “ivory towers” of UMass.
Indeed, that is reason enough to ban the practice of honorary degrees altogether! Politics should have NO bearing on such a thing! Only academic achievement!
Carl Sagan died in 1996, yet he still lives in the hearts of those who knew him, whether personally or as the public celebrity he became.
Now the time has come for science to move on and find a new superhero, someone who can command both the public respect that Sagan did and challenge society for the better. Although Sagan was an agnostic who championed skepticism, he did not come across as openly hostile towards all religion, as Richard Dawkins does. Such hostility, even if justified, can turn gentle souls away from science. So who can possibly succeed Carl Sagan? Who can be the champion of reason, rationality, and tolerance for all?
I will. And so can you. And you, you, you, you and you, if only you just care to be as dedicated to science and to the welfare to humanity as Sagan was. I have championed the philosophy of Honorable Skepticism as my tribute to Sagan. But the best way to honor him is not merely to keep playing his COSMOS series and talking about what he did, but to make our own contributions to science, to EXCEED Sagan’s work, to become superheros of science ourselves. We are not expected merely to blindly follow what Sagan taught, for he was by no means infallible. Because he was human as we, we can carry his vision forward, and we will do it by eliminating the concept of “sacred cows” and seeking change to improve our societies, regardless of what short-term and localized interests get stepped on. They deserve it! And we cannot afford to appease those interests anymore. Having a global and long-term perspective is what will save us, not any religion or political ideology.
Did Bush Jr really think he’d get away with demanding a $700 billion bailout to the banks of America, the same institutions that have been screwing with the American people for decades?! Well, he didn’t! The bill FAILED in Congress and now I can only hope that simular such bailouts never are allowed to be even considered.
Can someone explain to me why we should not give that $700 billion to the American people instead? I have calculated that every man, woman and child would get about $2,300. The last time we got money back from the federal government it was about $600 for every taxpayer. So this begs the obvious question, how could Bush Jr be more generous to the banks that get so much money in interest from credit card debts? How could they still be failing, then???
Let’s not forget that Bush Jr scammed us once before with his false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Are we going to let us be scammed again, especially with Bush’s last term almost up?
OK, let me get this straight
First the Bush Adminstration attempts to define the prisoners at Gitmo as neither criminal suspects nor as POWs. It should be noted that the former class are forbidden to be tortured under the Bill of Rights, while the second class are prohibited from being tortured under the Geneva Conventions. Then to cover their @$$es further, the Bush Adminstration attempts to reclassify waterboarding, excluding it as a form of torture.
What is one supposed to conclude from that? You join the points together and thus conclude that waterboarding, and other forms of torture, are probably being done at Gitmo. And do you not think that’s why those prisoners were sent to Gitmo in the first place, to try to prevent the public from seeing what was about to take place there? Even German or Japanese POWs during World War II were never sent to Gitmo.
If such nonsense was ever done to American citizens by any other government, we’d all be howling in protest about it. But we are Americans who were so hurt by 9-11, so we can do whatever we want to anyone we please. We are special! We are better than all other peoples! We can’t trust THEM to live their own lives out without us looking constantly over their shoulders to make sure they do things OUR way. All because a few extremists nuts rammed a few planes into a few buildings, we go ballistic and throw due process out the window and put ourselves in a perpetual state of “war”. Remember, war is good for business too.
Of course, that doesn’t absolutely PROVE that torture and other human rights violations have taken place at Gitmo. But when the police have probable cause that a criminal suspect has committed a crime, even if it wasn’t done openly, they are duty bound to arrest the suspect. Likewise, we Americans are duty bound by our allegiance to the US Constitution to end the detaining of the prisoners at Gitmo and investigate those who detained them. No one should be above the law!
Silly Old Bear, also known as Henric Jensen, is one of my best online friends. He is Jewish, Swedish, married, a transexual, and one of the best human rights activists I’ve ever known. He was also one of the most hated people in Care2. Hated because he was a firm opponent of Israel-bashing, which he saw as anti-Semetic, and was just as eager to defending men’s rights even before angry feminists who seemed to have a grudge against all men. Continue reading →
there are some discussions pre-loaded with so much faulty premises and inaccuracies and false assumptions, that you just don’t know where to begin. these are the ones that i find are normally too exhausting to get involved in, and the chances of anything constructive coming out of it is extremely small, given that the biased starting premise indicates little to no desire to entertain understanding rather than confrontation. one cannot have a fruitful discussion about another worldview by being firmly anchored in another. so people who do that can’t provide any kind of useful exchange. take it from someone who actually knows at least two worldviews, and can see the one from the other interchangeably.
i’ve always disliked debates in school, you know. even though my teachers are forever nominating me on debate teams. the silliness of picking whatever side of whatever topic with the pre-intention of ensuring your side prevails whatever the truth is, is too philosophically pointless for me to overlook.
It’s not only “philosophically pointless”, it’s downright dishonest, yet most people debate in just that way.
Usually, I don’t. When I debate, I am open to being proven wrong because I ALWAYS rely on FACTS for my positions, not dogma.
(((Because I am honorable, I sometimes willingly concede points made by my opponents in debates with them. This should never be seen as a sign of weakness. When I know I am right about something, I will fight like a pit bull to prove my case and defeat my opponent because in some cases I do see my battles here as a struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, ignorance and knowledge. But I am also willing at times to listen to my opponent and consider his point of view, especially if that person is known by me to be honorable. If we do not listen to others, how can we ever grow in knowledge?)))
JAISALMER: A 13-year-old girl is revolting against a hoary tradition that has crushed many a childhood in Rajasthan – child marriage.
Refusing to crumble under social pressure, Asu Kunwar from Sedhana village, near Pokhran, stood up to her father who was bent on marrying her off to a 40-year-old for Rs 49,000 and a gold chain.
Bhom Singh now has to return the money to his prospective son-in-law in the face of resistance from Asu, who sought police protection.
Bhom Singh struck the deal with Sawai Singh two years ago, promising to give him his daughter’s hand when she was older. He was forced to send back his prospective son-in-law after Asu put her foot down.
Soon she had won her mother over to her side, but the father, who had already taken the bride price of Rs 49,000 tried to push her into wedlock this April, saying a date had already been fixed and a Rajput had to honour his word.
Confronted by the empowered mother-daughter duo, Sawai Singh, meanwhile, reached out to the larger male-dominated community and village panchayat of Sedhana. He also went to the local police to seek their help, but they refused to intervene.
Petitioned by Sawai Singh, the village panchayat met and decided it was only fair that the man be allowed to marry the 13-year-old. Villagers then gathered around the girl’s house and tried to force her to agree to the wedding.
Seeing the community against her, Asu’s mother went to Indu Chopra, a woman official of the local women and child development department.
That’s when the official organised protection for the mother and child and warned the villagers to back off. A police force, which had till then stood as mute spectators, was then forced to step in and caution Asu’s father about the consequences of violating the ban on child marriage.
Bhom Singh, villagers said, has now borrowed money from various sources to pay back the bride price.
It’s illegal to sell babies in most parts of the world and for women to have sex for money (prostitution). Why is it acceptable in ANY society, tradition bound or not, to take money from an older man and then force your daughter to marry that man when she is still a child?! That father should be locked up, along with the prospective groom, and the girl and her mother should be honored as heros for human rights.
One of my biggest concerns is the blatant inequality of wealth in many societies and how that often translates into total injustice. Those who are raised in wealthy families tend to remain wealthy. And where there is wealth, there is also power. Meanwhile, those who come from poor families tend to remain poor. Because there are a finite range of resources in any society, those who already have wealth also have access to the highest technologies sooner than others, thus enabling them to maintain and even increase their wealth still further at the expense of the impoverished. And I’m not just talking about individuals, but about nations as well. The United States is far, far richer than Afghanistan and will probably always remain so. Thus, while America is on the cutting edge of technology, the people of Afghanistan still live largely like they did a century ago, because they simply cannot afford the latest computers, cars, or private jets.In a capitalist economic system without any restraints, the rich will get richer and the poor remain poor until finally you have a few ultra rich and masses of the poor that will never have a chance to get better. And because cash flow then drops to minimal levels due to the tendency of the rich to hoard their fiances while the poor cannot even spend much money, the capitalist system collapses under its own weight.Karl Marx forsaw this. His mistake was to assume there was no way to prevent this and it was actually a good thing. Wrong! A restrained capitalism in which the government taxes the rich highly to prevent them accumulating too much wealth for themselves and does not tax the poor at all is both just and more productive in the long run. That is why I cringe whenever I heard about President Bush taking credit for his tax cuts for the wealthy helping the economy grow. Such growth will not last forever, of course. I’d rather have economic JUSTICE and STABILITY rather than merely GROWTH.
The saying “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is a tragic misunderstanding of a passage of the Book of Proverbs (Proverbs 13:24). The rod referred to that used by shepherds in ancient times to guide sheep to go in a certain direction, but NOT to ever BEAT them! Beating children with anything should be considered abuse, because adults are stronger than children. Therefore, the only thing kids can learn from being beaten is that bullying is acceptable and thus they can get ahead by bulling weaker and smaller people!
A few months ago, I started a discussion in a Care2 group on the need to use scientific methods to test ethical standards. Before you begin reading that, look at this:
I had to deal with three different opponents in this discussion, as well as several others who did not oppose me outright but merely asked questions or made helpful comments. The first opponent was CheWorks L, who is also known as Ted K. His comments were as follows:
CheWorks: “how can we base ethics on what may be a myth? religion has no place in ethics.”
I saw this and went “HUH???” until I remembered that CheWorks was a Communist, who thus regards all religion as serving the upper classes at the expense of the lower classes and thus unethical. Of course, people like Dr Martin Luther King and Mohandas Ghandi might strongly disagree with that simplistic view. I’m always amazed that Communists regard all religion as irrational, yet they themselves are so dogmatic about what Karl Marx wrote.
Dale Husband: “Religion was the ONLY basis for ethics in most ancient societies because there was no conception of science or scientific methods in them back then. So religion served a good purpose then. My argument is that we need to go beyond that now.”
CherWorks: “Maybe you are mixing up religion with spirituality, Dale. Science proves there are ethical standards such as recycling. Would God tell us to recycle? No. But nature, a spiritualist, would tell us that we need to respect the environment. Nowhere more than in the Judeo-Christian tradition do I see a pathetic God trying to gain respect. This has nothing to do with ethics. Nopwadays religion supports wealth at any cost, which menas enslaving 99% of the human population. This is hardly ethical.” (sic)
Later, CheWorks said: “You seem to be everywhere at the same time and rather confusing. Science cannot dictate ethics, but it can demonstrate that some ethical acts are good for the public. For example, free health care provides for a healthy population. I’m not sure if you’re in agreement.”
Dale Husband: “I’m certainly not asking that anyone dictate ethics dogmatically. That’s what religions do. Scientists should not. What I’m calling for is that any ethical ideas be tested scientifically before they be proclaimed to be valid by anyone. Only fear of their values being discredited would motivate, for example, laws against gay marriage by people who insist that homosexuality is immoral without actually dealing with homosexuals as people. If empirical analysis proves that tolerance of homosexuality leads to social disruption, then the anti-gay bigots would have a case. [And] ethical standards of some kind, such as honesty or open-mindedness, are essential for scientists to do their work. That’s why I trust the findings of the scientific commmunity above any religious dogma, because they tend to go where the evidence leads them and are not afraid to challenge conventional ideas, even among themselves. That’s the opposite of what religious communities are known for. Hope that clears things up!”
CheWorks: “We seem to be on a similar page. Can you please explain how science can help homophobes? Is it by showing that they are of the same chromosomes as heterosexuals?”
Interesting that he accepts my premise as valid and moves the discussion forward by bringing in an issue for which it would be a good demonstration of the truth of my idea.
Dale Husband: “Science is still investigating the causes of homosexuality, but if a physical cause was indeed found, it would blow away forever the notion that gays follow a lifestyle that is their free choice, and then there would be no legal basis for them to be punished for expressing their true nature. Homosexuality could no longer rightfully be called a “sin”. But since so many people do not accept evolution as true for religious reasons, they won’t accept those findings either.”
I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned evolution, because I also had to deal with an anti-evolutionist named Freediver who has been a routine thorn in my side for over two years.
Freediver: “Science has no contribution to make to ethics. Those scientists who belive it does just have delusions of grandeur. Stephen Jay Gould agrees with me on this.”
Right from that opening statement, Freediver had already lost the debate. Quite simply, it is a fallacy to make personal attacks against either your opponent or anyone else instead of really dealing with the issues. And appealing to a supposed authority figure like Dr. Gould is another common fallacy. Plus, didn’t Freediver know that Gould is already DEAD?! Finally, for Freediver to state that Gould agrees with HIM about anything seems to stem from an attitude of extreme egotism. I considered ignoring the idiot, but I decided to engage him for a while instead to give him more rope to hang himself with. And as it turned out, I was not disappointed.
Freediver: “Now you definitely don’t know what you are talking about.” “…appeals to reason tend not to work with Dale, who constantly insists that I provide examples of other people who agree with me, rather than focussing on the merits of the argument. It is kind of ironic (or is that hypocritical?) that he would commit this fallacy repeatedly, in it’s truest form, despite me continuously pointing out his error, then pull me up the first time I come close to using it. It shows that he recognises the error, just not when he commits it.”
Freediver was lying here. What I have demanded he do is support his claims about evolution not being a scientific theory by showing websites or other references that indicate that most scientists agree with him about how he defines science, to prove he didn’t make his definition all up on his own. He never did, except for a website he created to showcase his own writings on evolution and other subjects. He knows quite well that most of the references he’d have to make otherwise would be Creationist websites. Most scientists do not follow his narrow standard of what science is, of course.
Dale Husband: “Is it possible that you are motivated, in your opposition to me on both evolution and ethical issues, by your extreme religious bias? In any case, I’m not going to waste any more time attempting to explain what should have been obvious. If you choose not to accept it, that’s your business.” “You don’t appeal to reason, really. You appeal only to the prejudices you happen to have and hope that some people in your audience happen to share. In many cases, you fail to make an impression precisely because most people see right through your empty claims for what they really are. I don’t believe you are really stupid, but you seem to think most of us are if you keep putting out arguments like you’ve been doing all these years and expect them to be taken seriously. You overestimate your own powers of reason by blindly assuming whatever you say must be right. You never learn anything from others with that attitude.”
There followed a long period in which Freediver threw out one argument after another in a desperate effort to save his position. Clearly he was growing frustrated.
Freediver: “I use very simple arguments for you because you can’t follow logic.”
Yep, another personal attack.
Dale Husband: “By the way, Freediver, your constant attitude of absolutist dogmatism is the exact opposite of scientific thinking, a contradiction I’ve always noticed.”
Finally, my third opponent arrived.This one was known as Shadow Bear or Silly Old Bear. Unlike the first two, this one was a friend of mine. He is also Jewish.
Silly Old Bear: “This has me a little concerned – because this reduces a person down to what he or she can produce in terms of what is beneficial to Society. It opens a whole lot of cans, I’d rather see kept closed. It raises the question “Who is to decide what is beneficial to Society?” That has been tried – it didn’t work from a Humane point of view – both the Nazis and the Fascists used this “touch stone” in their politics, and it destroyed a lot of knowledge, experience and human history. The idea that what is good for Society is what a human is worth only works if Society’s basic ethical and moral standards are such that they take into account that we do not always know what is good for Society. What then should be the scientific test to determine this? How do you scientifically measure that which cannot be measured?”
Dale Husband: “As I see it, the Nazis and fascists made a point of judging other races of people as inferior without any empirical justification. That was the opposite of scientific thinking and led to their downfall when they were proven wrong. It is true that we do not know the potential value of people and it cannot be measured empirically. But if we do not come up with an empirical reason to prohibit murder, what can we say to a person who rejects all religion and wants a reason to justify whatever he wishes to do, including murder? And keep in mind that many senseless killings have been done in the name of religion. There is the potential for corruption in all things, which is why free inquiry is so important. If we cannot question authority, it can destroy us.”
Silly Old Bear: “That is not quite true – both the Fascists and the Nazis based their ideas about races of people, disabled – both mental and physical , homosexuals, political and religious beliefs on what they considered to be empirical evidence – such as homosexuals not being likely to reproduce, Jews being a genetic contamination, mental and physically disabled not being productive etc. All based on the science they had access to. Those empirical evidence might not be satisfactory to you and me, but that is only because you and I are measuring the evidence using another scale – based in what we consider ethical. Not because of the science as such.” “Religion is not necessary for making sound ethical decisions or f.i not to murder. I have not always been a religious man – still I have always held the opinion that all people are equal with equal rights to life. This can be arrived at by simple logical deduction. Atheists and Secular Humanists are not unethical, murderous or amoral. It doesn’t exclude that there certainly do exist such atheists or secular humanists, just as there are unethical, murderous or amoral religious people. Let’s not make Science another religion, Dale – it is quite defendable without needing all the trimmings of religion. Simple logic is enough.” “Scientifically it cannot be proven that Homosexuality is not a choice, so if all I had to go on was science I might be inclined to agree with the fundamentalists that homosexuality is indeed a sin according to Torah. There would be nothing to tell me otherwise. But because I do indeed choose what dogmas to incorporate in my ethics I have gone out of my way to find other ways to view homosexuality and Torah, so that the two do not contradict each other. Where there are no scientific data, we still have to make a choice as to how to act ethically.”
Because Silly Old Bear didn’t use personal attacks or other stupid fallacies like Freediver had, I was able to end the debate on a civil note with him.
For thousands of years, people have created for themselves societies to live in and have expressed moral codes to both define those societies and to recommend improvements to them. Because all human beings are imperfect, the moral codes they create are also imperfect, but the principles of free inquiry, experimentation, and empiricism enable us to determine those ethical codes that work better than others in creating and maintaining societies that work for the good of the most people.
The danger comes when misguided people attempt to impede one or more of these processes. They suppress free inquiry though censorship, they cut off social experimentation through political tyranny favoring the status quo, and/or they deny empiricism by invoking religious dogmatism to claim without proof that a certain moral code from ancient times is as applicable today as it was when the moral code was first formulated. The results have been clearly shown repeatedly throughout history: social stagnation leading to violent revolution, leading again to social stagnation. Various forms of bigotry and extremism expressed by people either favoring one group of people over all others, or attempting to be “consistent” with a narrow point of view that itself cannot be supported empirically, result in social divisions that lead to violence when those impulses are not restrained.Science by itself cannot dictate ethics, but it can and should test ethical standards and rules that originate from religion and philosophy to either support or falsify them. The best rules are those that provide for the welfare of the most people over the longest period of time, rather than those that help a group of people in the short term.
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 