Readers' Comments

All the same it is not necessary to forget that reporters is people too and to them as it is necessary to earn money and to feed the family. And concerning news - it became seems to me that all of them recently somehow more rigidly. Such impression that when you sit to look news as though you go on film of horrors, and the most severe for last some years. Everywhere murders, violence, blood. It can promotes increase in aggression of citizens, can plays on a hand to politics, I do not know.

With best wishes, "Russian Post"
We are always .online for help
[http://www.xnetdot.com Xnet RusPost]

If one is going to try to solve the Palestinian-Israeli Crisis you can only go back so far in the timeline. The Biblical aspect in the timeline must be discounted with the exceptions of the physical locations of the historical religious site of today. Going back further than the 1900’s you will not help find the answers to the problems of today. The early1900's were the beginning the Zionist movement in Europe for a Jewish state and coming into the final years of the Ottoman Empire rule of the Holly Land. The British Empire took over control of the Holy Land until the creation of the Jewish State of Israel in 1947. The 50 years preceding the establishment of the new State of Israel to present time is the important period to understanding the history of the problems today. Historical control of Jerusalem was the golden jewel of the Empires of the old world. Today Jerusalem is at the roots of so much of the tension in the world.

Back in modern history the Jewish people are people of the world not within no one nation or region of the world. The Arab people are of nations within one region and are not people of the world by nature. Both in Islam and Christianity spreading their word of God to other people around the world is the mission of some practitioners. Both religions have different branches of faith with many having a hierarchy giving them the ability to grow in numbers of people. On a global level the Christians and Muslims have a majority in numbers and political control of nations and regions in the world. On the other side the Jewish people are few in numbers all around the world with one newly created nation the State of Israel in a region that they are a small minority.

Understanding the religious significance of the Old City of Jerusalem to so many people around the world in three different religions. The United Nations in Resolution 181 of 1947 outlined the creation of an International National City of Jerusalem section separate from Israel and Palestine. Today 57 years after the creation of the State of Israel the reasoning behind this decision is quite apparent from the endless cycle of war. Footnotes in recorded history of the United States and the State of Israel as well as many other new nations in the world are founded with terrorisms as one of the elements. If the British government had demanded the Zionists stop their acts of terror before they end their occupation of the Holy Land there probably would not be a State of Israel today.

Menachem Begin the leader of Irgun a military underground organization blew-up the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946. Later Irgun became the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Menachem Begin became Prime Minister of Israel. The old saying one side Freedom Fighters are the other side’s terrorists. People that have no nation have no armies that are fighting in gangs and militias for their freedom from domination and oppression are labeled terrorists. On the other hand to often nations with large armies will hire mercenaries to do their acts of terrorisms off the record or they will use their armies calling it war.

My Blog http://www.globalcrier.blogspot.com/

Joe Shumpeter spent most of his time pondering the effect of innovation in distorting supply and demand in economic trade cycles. It's odd that someone purporting to be an economist would cite him because although his ideas were useful in getting other people thinking Shumpeter himself was refreshingly honest in accepting that no predictions ever made using his models ever worked...

One area where I guess he does have relevance to CMD debates is that although he was by no means a lefty, he did think that capitalism would eventually give way to socialism as competition over price eventually gets replaced by competition over innovation.

That said, I still don't have a clue about what Ruggero is talking about...

__________________________
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Well, I'd haven't read Schumpeter, so perhaps you could enlighten us and tell us a bit about his conception of democracy? Then we can discuss why you are skeptical about CMD's use of the term.

I'm not sure I follow your analogy, and the argument you're trying to put forth with it. I think it's something like "a marketing firm cannot be deceitful because doing so would discredit its image". That sounds nice, but 1) it's not true, and 2) the analogy is inappropriate for understanding how modern propaganda works. Falsifying exit polls would be too much of a risk to the marketing firm in question, that is true, but there are many other ways of deceiving the public without resorting to bald-faced lies.

I've never had login difficulties, but I did have the problem where the textbox gets covered partially by the sidebar when posting (Firefox 1.5.0.1). This was fixed easily by resizing the browser, but some people aren't blessed with high resolution desktops.

I guess my nitpicks would be related to visual presentation and organization. Having sidebars on either side is OK for the Topics List, but when you hit a topic the entire thread looks "squished". That would probably be fine if the thread layout was compact, but there's quite a bit of empty space per post, which means a lot of scrolling relative to the amount of content. Posts aren't clearly delineated. The use of text size and color is odd: in this type of forum, you're typically going to have one subject and many followups per topic, yet the subject of each post is heavily emphasized in bold blue letters in each post (and most the time it ends up being the first few words of the post, which means people aren't even bothering to enter one). Other info, like who's doing the posting, is in a small, lightly-colored font, as is the time and date. The former is kind of irritating- it's nice to not have to squint to see who's writing. The latter I wouldn't care about, except that until the user configures it otherwise, followup comments are presented in a newest-first manner, which threw me off- seems to me that it would be logical to present posts in chronological order. Also, when replying, you can only see the post you're replying to- it's nice to be able to reference the entire thread.

None of these are showstoppers, but they don't compare favorably with common forum software such as phpBB, YABB, etc. I think you are using Drupal, which I don't have experience with, but it ought to be configurable enough to fix some of these issues.

Dear all,

I'm wondering if you could specify what is it about the new forums that makes them harder / less welcoming / less conducive to good discussions? If it's something that CMD is able to fix, we will!

And thanks for the input.

- Diane

To paraphrase Emma Goldman: If I can't determine the origin of your press release, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

-- esp

Either way the election played out, Israel and the US win in some way: do we get corrupt, bloated, ineffectual Fatah, or Islamic militant group/terrorists Hamas?

Actually, it could pose quite a problem for both if Hamas was to meet US/Israeli demands, because then Hamas will say "We did it, now let's get down to business negotiating a settlement"- which is the last thing Israel and the US want to do, especially given what happened at Taba. The "formaldehyde", as Sharon's aide Dov Weisglass referred to the Gaza disengagement, has already been applied to the peace process, and they certainly don't want that to change.

Until Hamas does that, though, the US and Israel will attempt to use it as a reason to isolate the PA and starve them of funds (and may well invent new pretexts to do so).

I certainly agree that Israel thinks it needs nuclear weapons- for the record, they say they don't have any- but I don't see why it *does* need them. You're talking about a tiny state the size of New Jersey with the 4th largest military in the world (behind US, Russia, China), and a larger and more advanced airforce than many NATO countries, versus mostly peasant armies using very old technology. Most countries in the region probably hate Israel, that's true, but is that because of the "influence of fundamentalism", or because they don't appreciate seeing their Palestinian brethren humiliated and brutalized on a daily basis for 39 years?

The Palenstinian election results were pretty
predictable. Is it what the Bush Adminstration wanted
or were they too narrowly focused to see it coming?
The same thing will happen elsewhere. Will it be an
excuse to make war everywhere? Or, will it be a
convenient reason to return to isolationism, and save
lots of money. Think about it, cut off financial aid
to lots of countries, that sure will shrink the deficit.

If the same amount of American mass media coverage was given to every time the Israeli Defense Forces or an Israeli civilian killed an innocent Palestinian child as we do the suicide bombers. Then American people might know the truth to this conflict. Only by leveling the playing field will the truth be heard. One of the tools making the playing field level is the Internet. Each side has the ability to transmit and receive information global almost instantaneously. As the Palestinians are out gunned militarily by the Israelis so too are the Palestinians behind on the usage of computer technology and the Internet.

The Arab League should take a leading role in the humanitarian aid that is needed to rebuild Palestine. Starting with the Gaza the international community of nations should help rebuild and upgrade the infrastructure of Gaza. Using the Gaza as model for the West Bank and other deprived Arab communities of people. Every nation and region should have room for the communities of people who want the ways of the new world or of the old world.

Many people are at odds with the ways of their nation. It is managing these differences in a civilized manner that bring people and nations together in peace and times of trouble. It would be much better to bring about the needed changes in the world in a peaceful way rather than in war. This can only be done diplomatically using tools instead of weapons. Today the United States and the rest of the world do not have enough trained forces for these types of humanitarian missions.

For a fraction of the cost of what has been spent on war in the Middle East the needed changes could be made for the better creating more peace and security than any war ever could. Only by taking a sane approach to the problems will the needed changes come about. Israel is not the only problem in the Middle East they are just in the center.

Unless some of the wealthy Arab nations step up and take a leading role in solving some of the problems and issues confronting the poorer Arab people. There will be no end to the civil unrest in the Middle East. The Arab League should use the European Union as their model in trying to resolve some of the problems in the Middle East. Only by people and nations working together can the needed changes be made to bring peace about.

My Blog http://www.globalcrier.blogspot.com/

I strongly agree with regard to rejecting the use of PR tactics to further progressive causes. If progressive social change is to be accomplished by 'understanding and manipulating the group mind' and thus controlling the 'bewildered herd', as two of PR's progenitors put it, we ought to view it no differently than when Republicans, or anyone else, use these methods to further their agendas- that is, an exercise in hypocrisy and deceit.

Of course, we have to be careful what we call 'progressive' in the first place- seems a lot of it consists of folks whose message is basically, "George Bush is a bad, bad man (with the implicit postscript: so go vote for a Democrat instead, because they oppose his policies)." That's a gross misuse of the term progressive as far as I'm concerned, and I'd be very skeptical of any meeting of so-called progressives asking the question "do progressives suck at PR?" and not very quickly reaching the conclusion "yes, intentionally so, because progressives ought not be focused on how to better propagandize the public."