McChesney's book, "The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century" explores the impact of media ownership and what that does to popular democracy in America. "The direct link and control over the media and control over the society is self-evident." The Problem of the Media, p16-17

it is about supporting Israel which is violating the rights of non-Jews

"Ah! Judaphobia!"

Darleen, you are seriously lacking in mental ability if you can take my sentence and think that it means I have a phobia about Jews. You are deliberately or ignorantly engaged in ugly slandering of a person that does not have anything against Jews. What you are doing is wrong Darleen. Let me spell this out for you. If a person thinks the actions of OJ Simpson were wrong, it does not mean the person is a racist. This can't possibly be too difficult for you to grasp. Is it Darleen?

"Obsession with the State of Israel as the central rationale for Islamist terrorism, check."

Guy, what are you trying to pull? "as the central rational"?, Jeff, you clown, for MANY in the Middle East it is the central rationale! if you give a damn about the safety of Americans then you deal with the top reason why people in the Middle East object to US actions in the Middle East. Are you in denial or are you intentionally doing this? The rest of your post is such warped logic it is incredible. "double standards"? what kind of game is this? Could any wrong be addressed and ended if the perpetrators can jump up an down claiming they are being singled out? God, the racists running South Africa could have used people like you, attack those speaking out against South Africa right Jeff? South Africa apologists could have simply claimed that the critics were "anti-white".

Darleen, did you understand my post or not? Did you see how officials OMIT the part that says "in order to ..." Did you see that or not?

Mohammed Atta did not fly a plane into the WTC in order to establish a global Caliphate. Yours is a self serving lie designed to protect the unjust policies. and no wiseass, it is not about women voting, it is about supporting Israel which is violating the rights of non-Jews and it is about propping up oppressive regimes. I lived in NYC on 9/11 and I really find what you are doing extremely offensive. The 9/11 motives are consistent with the motives expressed by terrorists in a letter sent to the New York Times after the 1993 bombing attack of the WTC,  "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building.  This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." Atta talked with friends and this is exactly what he talked about. Take away motive and you dramatically increase the security of the US. This has to do with what we do to people in the Middle East not how we live our lives here. stop playing games!

"in order to" what? Bin Laden says explicitly and US officials and talking heads OMIT IT often. The sentence you quoted is often chopped off. What are they hiding? The part that says why. The part after "in order to liberate ..." please read my page the exposes the deception: Tenet avoids informing the reader about the motives for bin Laden's terrorism

Darleen, what are you trying to argue? That we should continue with the unjust policies?

Very recently bin Laden and Zawahri have again made it crystal clear. See See Osama has said, "Bush is still exercising confusion and misleading you and not telling you the true reason. Therefore, the motivations are still there for what happened to be repeated." and Zawahri Calls for Cooperation with Respect Based on Mutual Interests

Over at the "oh that liberal media" website they are still going on about the display turkey. Apparently to the guys at the "oh that liberal media" website when an article described it as a "fake Thanksgiving turkey" that somehow was not simply a technical mistatement but an example of "liberal bais" I posted over there:

How is saying "fake Thanksgiving turkey" an example of a liberal bias?

It was an actual turkey but it was for show. I can see how a "just for show" turkey can end up getting reported as a "fake Thanksgiving turkey". The bottom line is it was not the real meal, it was just a symbol. I don't think what was reported was incredible and certainly not "liberal" Actually you could read it as a fake Thanksgiving turkey since it was actually a display turkey and not actually a meal turkey. Not that big of a deal, you can see how someone hearing that the turkey is not actually intended to be eaten by the troops could assume that it was no only a display but a fake. The was displays of food are in the windows of some restaurants in NYC. The bottom line is it should be pointed out that the troops did not get to eat that turkey. Not saying so gives the impression that the meal was more fancy than it actually was. Guys, you really think the story was "liberal" bias? Because the person wrote "fake" instead of "display", "show" or "example" turkey?
Check this post out about how the media really is (it really gets to the issue of ownership): The saga

'Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War.'

'And these two men - 1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney - did this by claiming that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work.' http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/analysis/2004/1207terrorhype.htm

but but the reports said that Iraq had weapons you clowns cry. NO THEY DIDN'T, these assholes REMOVED key parts of the intelligence reports. "Nuances, qualifications and caveats were dropped" ( http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=229724 ) Meaning that it wasn't certain, but the motherfucker Donald Rumsfeld said he knew where the WMD were!

"there's no good reason they shouldn't be accurate within statistical limits"
Rob Zaleski: Prof. says vote numbers don't add up

AGAIN motive is mentioned

Five die in Ohio heavy metal band shooting

CHICAGO - A man opened fire on a heavy metal band during a performance at a crowded bar in Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday night, killing four people and wounding two others before he was killed by police, officials said. Sgt. Brent Mull, spokesman for the Columbus police, said the motive for the shooting was not known.

Once again a news story mentions motive,I have seen thsi in story after story reported in the media. but not in the case of the 9/11 attack If you look at the coverage of that day and the days after there was no mention of motive. The above story was reported the same day as the shooting and it mentions motive. Look at the reporting on 9/11 and tell me if any reporter utters the word motive.

see this too:

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - A baby girl who was cut out of her murdered mother's womb and taken from the crime scene has been found alive in the possession of a Kansas woman who police charged with kidnapping resulting in death.
The motive for the bizarre crime remained unknown, investigators said on Friday, though local media in Kansas City reported that the alleged kidnapper had suffered a miscarriage.

In July 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a 500-page unanimous report setting out a long list of instances where the CIA or its leaders made statements about Iraq's WMD and, to a lesser extent, links to al-Qaeda which were significantly more certain than the underlying intelligence reporting and more certain than their earlier findings. In fact, the first overall conclusion on WMD in the SSCI report is that "Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."
from speech Levin Supports Bipartisan Intelligence Reform Bill Despite Key Omissions Strengthening Congressional Oversight
have these facts been adequately reported and made clear to the public?

You wrote, "Israel disavowed terrorism only when it proved no longer useful or viable."

That is not true. The Zionists still use terrorism and they have killed more civilians and injured way more civilians than the Palestinian resistance. Please don't fall into the trap of spreading Zionist lies.

The willingness of Zionist to use terrorism:

“Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war... We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle. First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today...” - Yitzhak Shamir Israeli Prime Minister

And the fact is that Zionist terrorism continues TODAY by Israel:

Physicians for Human Rights USA which investigated the high number of Palestinian deaths and injuries in the first months of the Intifada, concluded that:"the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF [ Israel Defense Forces] use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing."

[Source: PHR USA, 22 November 2000]

This finding was based on "the totality of the evidence" the investigators collected about:

"the high number of gunshots to the head; the volume of serious, disabling thigh injuries; the inappropriate firing of rubber bullets and rubber-coated steel bullets at close range; and the high proportion of Palestinian injuries and deaths."

The findings of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirm this pattern. Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has documented and condemned the targeted use of violence against Palestinian civilians and has found evidence of systematic torture of thousands of Palestinian detainees, including children.

What has been confirmed by human rights groups has also been observed directly by journalists.

In October 2001, Harper's magazine published the "Gaza Diary" of journalist Chris Hedges. Hedges' entry for June 17, 2001 provides even more shocking evidence of the wanton and deliberate killing of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers at Gaza's Khan Yunis refugee camp.

http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2004/04/good-on-you-for-pointing-this-out-pej.html The above proves Israeli terrorism continues today, witnessed by journalists and confirmed by doctors.

Here is "the characterization of General Gur’s remarks by Israel’s most distinguished, and quite hawkish military correspondent Ze’ev Schiff, keeping to Lebanon (though the atrocities Gur cites go far beyond)":

“In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it…the importance of Gur’s remarks is the admission that the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously…the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets...[but] purposely attacked civilian targets even when Israeli settlements had not been struck.” Ha'aretz, May 15, 1978 see Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, p. 181 http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/refuting_horowitz_and_collier/

Also someone made the claim that "the Palestinians always rejected peace", that is a lie. Palestinians have accepted peace plans and offered plans several times. In mainstream media this fact is suppressed. The popular version of history omits the fact that Arafat had been agreeing to peace, Israel and the US refused. The Security Council resolution of January 1976, calling for a settlement in terms of UN 242, was backed by virtually the entire world, including the leading Arab states, the PLO, Europe, the Soviet bloc, the non-aligned countries -- in fact, everyone who mattered. It was opposed by Israel and vetoed by the US, thereby removing it from history. The US veto, repeated later, excluded the Security Council from the diplomacy. The General Assembly continued to pass near-unanimous resolutions in similar terms (the US and Israel opposed); a negative US vote amounts to a veto. The US also blocked initiatives from Europe, the Arab states, the PLO and others. Subsequent and similar initiatives from the Arab states, the PLO, and Western Europe were blocked by the US, continuing to the present. That includes the 1981 Fahd plan. That record too has been effectively vetoed from history, for the usual reasons. http://www.sunship.com/mideast/info/draftres.html#11940 http://www.alternet.org/middleeast/12956/

Basic facts are being suppressed. The suppression of the fact that Sadat offered peace in 1971 is another example. "in its two-page obituary after Sadat's assassination, The Times not only suppresses the actual fats but explicitly denies them, sating that until his 1977 trip to Jerusalem Sadat was unwilling "to accept Israel's existence as a sovereign state." Newsweek refused even to print a letter correcting outright falsehoods on this matter by their columnist George Will, though the research department privately conceded the facts. (Chomsky spoke by telephone with the research department and admitted Chomsky correctly pointed out the facts, which were reported back in 1971 even in Newsweek. But the game is to suppress them now so they did) The practice is standard." See page 31 of "Pirates and Emperors, Old and New : International Terrorism in the Real World"

The outright fraud continues and people unwilling to deal with it continue to suppress it.

Iraqis had been used to having their whole lives decided for them by an autocratic government."

Just curious, do you know what country helped but the Baath party into power, twice?
Did you ever hear that detail mentioned in the mainstream media?
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/">

Dear Josef,

Keeping an open dialog is a good way to arrive at solutions. By all means take care of the pressing issues for you and then give the issues I raised the time they deserve.

There seemed to be only one question in your email, the others were accusations with question marks after them. In the interest of civil discourse I will turn them into questions:

Q 1: Do you defend the Palestinian terrorists?
A: No.

Q 2: Do you justify what Osama bin Laden has done?
A: No.

Q 3: What, you deny 11 September was anything less than an atrocity?
A: No, it was an atrocity. Thank God it was not worse, which is what I was expecting. I was familiar with the background and of course only someone ignorant of recent history did not know about the 1993 attack. I remember in the years leading up to 2001 I thought about how we would get attacked again. I remember telling an Israeli I was friendly with that the US was going to get hit and it could be big. He said he knew and his Jewish friend agreed. I had been fearing a nuclear bomb the size of the "nuclear suitcases" would be set off in downtown Manhattan, the direction my window faced (I could see the downtown sky from my courtyard level window but not any of the buildings.) Sometimes I thought about how a white light could fill my room extremely rapidly and then it would be over. I was in my apartment on 8th street when the attack happened but I didn't know it had happened since I was asleep at that time in the morning. I awoke to my sister calling to me urgently through the answering machine telling me to wake up. I got on the phone and she blurted out that the World Trade Center had been destroyed. She worked downtown and was one of the many people running scared across the Brooklyn Bridge crying. The instant she told me the WTC had been destroyed, I knew what it was about. Another attack that I had been dreading had happened and I knew why. I went outside and walked to the corner to see that where the Twin Towers once stood they no longer did. My sister had told me two planes had crashed into them so I also knew how it happened.

You can't make the claim that justice is served when you kill and injure innocent civilians. I think you should agree that terrorism is unjust and by definition that it is not justified. Some people don't apply this rule universally. Some make the claim that terrorism can be sometimes justified, I say that justice is not served when innocents are killed or injured.

This isn't the first terrorist attack on Americans. In 1831, Nat Turner and his fellow terrorists killed some 60 white people. The terrorist attacks involved killing men, women and children. According to one account I read that was written at the time, all the victims were decapitated. Other accounts don't mention this but do detail horrific acts such as the insurrectionists knocking the brains out of the white children's heads. We can see that this is another case of two wrongs. What Nat Turner and his followers did was wrong and so too was slavery. Not a difficult concept really. Interestingly, this point did not register with the newspaper man I mentioned. I sent him an email in which I explicitly stated that what Nat Turner did was wrong and yet his next response to me accused me of thinking Nat Turner's terrorism was justified! Apparently it is extremely difficult for some people to get out of certain ways of thinking. I did not find him particularly sympathetic to the plight of the slaves and I personally think that accounted for his view. He clearly had a chip on his shoulder and was eager to pigeon hole me as someone that thought Nat Turner's actions were justified. A woman that I mentioned the 1831 attack to and who I found to be very sympathetic to the plight of the slaves could not accept my characterization of Nat Turner's acts as terrorism. She was outraged that I called Nat Turner and his followers "terrorists." And by the way, Patriotic Americans reacted in a rather piss-poor fashion to the terrorist outrages of 1831 too.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-09-Strategic_Communication.pdf

a post on craigslist explians, "Progress on our campaign to win hearts and minds (highlights)":

- American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

- Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

- Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that "freedom is the future of the Middle East" is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World -- but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.

- Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim selfdetermination.

- Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack -- to broad public support.

- What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of "terrorist" groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam

posted at josef-a-k.blogspot.com:
Josef, in case the email I sent you was lost, here it is posted at my blog:
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2004/11/dear-josef-i-hope-you-have-had-time-to.html

http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2004/11/i-dont-think-you-invented-it.html

I hope you take this seriously, there are horrible wrongs that continue and it appears that many of them continue because of lack of character and integrity on the part of some people. You initiated the dialog, I hope you don't abort it because you don't like the facts that are being revealed.

Zawahri Calls for Cooperation with Respect Based on Mutual Interests

Al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri gave America advice in a videotaped statement, The choice for America is to end the polcies that steal from Muslim lands and violate sanctity or to change to polices based on mutual respect. He says the attacks will continue until the United States changes its policies toward the Muslim world.

"We are a nation of patience and we will continue fighting you (United States) until the last hour ... Our final advice to America, although I know they will not heed it: You must choose between two methods in dealing with Muslims. Cooperate with them with respect and based on mutual interests or deal with them as free loot, robbed land and violated sanctity," he said.

abs-cbnnews.com

This book, The Gun and the Olive Branch, has a lot of good info. David Hirst has added facts about 9/11 and other recent events.David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, Nation Books; 2nd edition 2003 pp. 283-284

Just posted this over at stevegilliard.blogspot.com: "Our entire existence in this Arab region was justified, and is still justified, by our suffering" That is nuts. As far as the killings and humiliations, if you know the ruthless background none of this should come as a surprise. Zionists can't possibly claim the high moral ground and it is perverse to claim they are defenders of Judaism or are "victims" collectively. Zionists murdered Jews that they labeled as "traitors" to the Zionist ideology. As early as 1924 these sick racist Zionists killed Jews because they stood in the way of their racist plan. Even a religious Jew was targeted by Zionists as he left his synagogue. The Holocaust has been exploited to the max but it is important to remember that the Zionist agenda started decades before it and has no right to claim it as some sort of excuse for Zionist activities."

The info about the June 1924 murder of a religious Jew by Zionist Jews comes from page 165 of Fateful Triangle. "a religious Jew organizing among the largely anti-Zionist native Jewish inhabitants of Palestine" was assassinated by two Haganah agents "as he left the small synagogue in the 'Shaarey Tsedek' hospital." (Hagana was a Jewish terrorist group) Chomsky points out "the official history of the Haganah describes this "special activity" matter-of-factly, justifying the order "to remove the traitor from the land of the living" on the grounds of his "pathological character"" Chomsky makes the point that this very same kind of thing, killing a person as they leave their house of worship (for example the assasination of King Abdullah of Jordan) is supposed to prove the "inveterate evil" of Arabs which is supposed to be so different from the fabled "purity of arms" of the Jewish Zionists.

"The report says that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies," adding that "when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy."" - from "U.S. Fails to Explain Policies to Muslim World, Panel Says" By THOM SHANKER Published: November 24, 2004
This article is referred to in Ted Rall's 11/29/04 cartoon: Rall Cartoon The man in the second panel reads the info he got that now explains what the US policies are about: "The U.S. arms Israel as a strategic bulwark against oil-rich Arab states in order to keep oil prices low. It is not our fault that Sharon's goons destroyed your home rather than the suicide bomber's house next door, as intended."

report mentioned at new post

Dear Josef,

I hope you have had time to look into the points I raised. You wrote about supposed "conspiracy theories" on my web site. May I suggest that the term "conspiracy theory" is simply a way to avoid looking at the facts. I have seen it used by people who want to abort discussion of things they don't want challenged. I am not suggesting a conspiracy and I do not write about conspiracies at my web site. The facts I point out are not presented for the most part in mainstream media and popular culture not because of a conspiracy but rather because of the way individuals are inclined to act. Inclined to conform the way people do, ideas that challenge the status quo get marginalized or suppressed. And people not inclined to conform are weeded out by simple factors of selection by hiring or rejection because of incompatibility of views.

I can give you a specific example that points out not just Thomas Friedman's dishonesty but how the example gets suppressed and not because of a conspiracy. What I am saying is I gave this specific example to a Mr. Doug Harper ( http://dougharper.blogspot.com/ ) and he omitted it from the email that he quoted on his blog. See how that worked? Friedman lied and this guy Harper is in effect covering for him. Harper doesn't like the fact and so he omits it, he didn't conspire with Friedman or someone else. Harper doesn't like a fact so he omits it and doesn't deal with it.

Here is the example: Friedman writes in his latest book "Longitudes & Attitudes" that Osama bin LAden had not mentioned Palestine until AFTER 9/11. Here is what I pointed out to Mr. Harper: Thomas Friedman is one of the people deceiving the public. Friedman writes, "the fact is that bin Laden never focused on this issue. He only started talking about "Palestine" after September 11, when he sensed that he might be losing the support of the Arab street." (p311 of Longitudes & Attitudes ) and "Osama bin Laden never mentioned the Palestinian cause as motivating his actions until he felt he was losing support in the Arab world." (p361-362 of Longitudes & Attitudes ) What Friedman has written is a flat out lie. To give just one example that disproves what Friedman wrote: "Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame. " - Osama bin Laden May 1998
I also have to wonder how in this invented scenario Friedman knows what bin Laden "sensed" about the Arab street.

The above is another example of Friedman's manipulative lies. What does Harper do when he quotes my email? He leaves the above info out. You could contact him yourself and ask him why he does this. He gets very defensive when his assumptions are challenged, a trait I have seen many people have. As far as how certain facts end up suppressed, George Orwell explained it is not an official ban, facts are kept out of the press "not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact."

I hope that gives you an idea how suppression of facts works for the most part. Friedman suppresses the fact that Osama bin Laden has mentioned Palestine several times before 9/11 by outright lying. Harper does so by omission. He is obviously sympathetic to the same agenda Friedman is and he doesn't want to help expose Friedman so he omits the facts. No central command told him to do so, he wants to keep a lid on it so he does so. Notice how this contributes to the ongoing suppression, once again an opportunity for the truth to be spread is squelched. And no, I don't think Friedman "innocently made a mistake" when he wrote that bin Laden never mentioned Palestine until after 9/11. He has been exposed to too many facts and has easy access to bin Laden's interviews and writings as anyone with an Internet connection does.

I think some people know and "play the game" and others are ignorant and conform with the prevailing views because they are under the impression that they are true. Again, I am not putting forth a "conspiracy theory" as you claim.

So much misery could be ended if people made more of an effort. A critical part of the effort has to be a willingness to examine the assumptions we hold. There are people that see particular wrongs and there are people that can't see them for some reason. If you do the research and take an honest look at the facts, I think you will see that there is a problem.

text of Orwell's Preface to Animal Farm Make sure you buy a copy of Animal Farm with the preface. "Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." CLICK HERE: This copy does include Orwell’s proposed but unpublished preface to the original edition

Chomsky has explained (see p 112 of Understanding Power" ) "So take Tom Wicker at the New York Times: when you talk to him about this kind of stuff, he gets very irate and says, "Nobody tells me what to write." And that's perfectly true, nobody tells him what to write-but if he didn't already know what to write, he wouldn't be a columnist for the New York Times." Chomsky explains that people are either in those positions because they have internalized the understanding that there are certain things not proper to say so they "play the game" automatically or of course sometimes there are people who consciously "play the game."

Latest post to Doug Harper:
Did you figure out the motive for the attacks on about a half-dozen Muslim sites yet? Or can you not admit to yourself that there was a motive?

Will he stubbornly delete it and refuse to deal with the facts again?

“I don't think you invented it.”

So you have looked into it? If you have then you have discovered that people like Thomas Friedman are deceiving the public. As Tanya Reinhart, an Israeli scholar has pointed out, “It is still difficult for many to believe that a deception of such magnitude is possible. Deceptions and false declarations have ben the standard in the politics of the powerful, and certainly are in Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians from the start.” Israel/Palestine by Tanya Reinhart P25
“My question to you is then why didn't Arafat take the 2000 Camp David deal?”

Because it was grotesquely unfair. see link And it is incredible how sleazy the Israeli side was, nothing was put in writing and you may have noticed that “maps were carefully avoided in the US mainstream” medialens. See Reinhart’s book Israel/Palestine Robert Malley revealed, after waiting a year, that the 2000 Camp David offer was not as it has been presented in the mainstream media. He pointed out that “strickly speaking, there never was an Israeli offer ... The Israelis always stopped on, if not several, steps short of an offer” Reinhart quoting Malley p25 Israel/Palestine see “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors” The New York Review of Books August 9, 2001 And there were supposed to be more negotiations, it was the Israeli side that refused to continue the talks.

“And if you want right-of-return so bad, don't you realize that'll kill the Jewish state?”

I think the melodrama and manipulation of using words like “kill” has got to end. As far as a Jewish State, could there be anything more unjust to be imposed upon non-Jews? The whole concept violates basic human rights and is against basic American values. We don’t accept such injustice here in America, we should not be financing it abroad. A state should be of it citizens, not of a privileged class. Do you think Jews in Israel have some special right to set up a discriminatory state? Do you realize Zionists consider equal rights to be “the destruction of Israel” by definition? This is too fanatical an opinion to indulge. All people deserve equal rights regardless of the fact that they don’t belong to a certain religion. At the time the father of Zionism plotted to ethnically cleanse non-Jews, the non-Jews were over 90% of the population of Palestine. In 1947 when the Zionist started the massive ethnic cleansing, non-Jews were approximately 67% of the population. Do you realize that now in America, Christians make up over 76% of the population and Jews less than 2%? But setting up a “Christian State”would be unjust.