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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (82609)	3/16/2003 9:03:07 AM
From: Bris	Respond to of 281500

"From what I am seeing, Main Street is beginning to get just a little pissed off at the economy, and it hasn't bottomed. People always vote by their pocket book to a large extent, particularly in a capitalist society" Yes very true but I believe your family and your well being trump everything

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (82609)	3/16/2003 9:05:57 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

> public wouldn't even be allowed to hear of such things in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russian, Castrist Cuba, Iraq, Iran, China... Morality of events should be judged relative to the era in which they take place. You can go back at most 20 years, if that. The gaps in our collective understanding is too great if you pass beyond that. For example, as it was pointed out on a different thread, as early as 1950 US Army had a rule that blood of a black soldier could not be used to save a white one! This policy remained in effect (I think) till some time during Viet Nam. Today even most racists would not agree with that. So a straight comparison of Bush to McCarthy doesn't hold, imo. Consider that McCarthy lived in an era that memories of WWII were still very fresh in everyone's mind and that forceful mentality of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc had made an impression on everyone's psyche. At the time there was a danger of cold war changing to a sizzling hot one. Now consider all which has happened since then, abolishing segregation, the civil rights movement, women's rights, collapse of communism, political correctness "education", etc, etc. Then tell me if relative to our time and understanding Bush is taking a step forward or backwards? And how big of a step. Frankly, I think if he could have gotten away with more he would have. ST PS as another example of changing times, consider that all politicians in Iran campaign for women's votes. So even in Iran things are not as bad as you imply...and America is suppose to be a few orders of magnitude better.

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (82609)	10/24/2006 11:53:35 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

Dennis, you wrote: "What is essential is the freedom of speech we enjoy here...Mark my words, if this administration goes too far, they will be sanctioned." We are now ranked below Bolivia and El Salvador in freedom of press [see Message 22937781 ]. Have we achieved your threshold yet or do you want us to fall to levels not seen in 60 years first? And please note that US colonies are ranked way at the bottom at 119th position. Who do you blame for those? The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism. Freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was imprisoned when he refused to hand over his video archives. Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April this year.