Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (7802)	9/12/2003 11:14:12 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793818

Here is a good example of the "Times" printing a "Moral equivalence" article to mark 911 yesterday. They can't wait to remind us they we are morally wrong. A real "Chomsky" approach to the US. Shame on them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- September 11, 2003 The Other Sept. 11 Death came from the skies. A building — a symbol of the nation — collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11. But the year was 1973, the building Chile's White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Now, after decades of silence, Chileans are protesting in the streets for the reversal of amnesty laws that block prosecutions for the killings after the coup. The face of Salvador Allende, the overthrown Socialist president, is everywhere, and now behind La Moneda is a new statue of him wrapped in the Chilean flag. Chile's president, Ricardo Lagos, is proposing a truth commission to look into reports of torture, special judges to find the disappeared, new pensions for victims' families and an amnesty program for former soldiers who tell where the bodies are buried. Chile is not the only country in South America focused today on the crimes of decades ago. In Peru, the truth commission investigating the guerrilla wars of the 1980's and 1990's just released a report concluding that more than 69,000 people were killed or made to disappear. In Argentina, a new president has just annulled two amnesty laws that the military forced through Congress after the "dirty war" ended in 1983. In the United States, Sept. 11 will forever be a day to remember our victims of terrorism. Yet our nation's hands have not always been clean, and it is important to recall Chile's Sept. 11, too. "The Pinochet File," a new book by Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at the nonprofit National Security Archive, presents declassified documents showing that the Nixon administration, which had tried to block Mr. Allende's inauguration, began plotting to bring him down just 72 hours after he took office. Mr. Allende, a Socialist but a democrat, had done nothing to Washington. President Nixon took his election as an affront — "it's too much the fashion to kick us around," he said — and he worried most that a successful Socialist would inspire others. The United States did not directly participate in the coup, but it laid the groundwork for it and supported the plotters. Afterward, even as mass murder ensued, the Nixon administration secretly embraced Mr. Pinochet's regime. Much has changed in 30 years in Chile. Today, a woman, Michelle Bachelet, is the respected defense minister, and she and the army's commander, Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre, are modernizing and depoliticizing the military. General Cheyre has denounced past abuses and vowed they will never be repeated. The courts are trying more than 160 former military men, but retired officers feel betrayed. They still argue that they saved Chile from communism, and they say Chile needs reconciliation. That is code for enforced silence, for forgetting. But the lesson of Chile, Peru and Argentina is that reconciliation requires the opposite. Silence prevents a nation from coming to terms. Real reconciliation comes from what the guilty are trying to avoid: full information, reparations and justice. nytimes.com

To: JohnM who wrote (7802)	9/12/2003 11:17:59 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793818

Molly goes over the line. And to top it off, she pulled a "Blair" and stole the line. Oh well, that's liberals for ya. Safe text Sept. 2, 2003 By Tom Guarisco, Business Report staff The Advocate edits Ivins column Last week, syndicated columnist Molly Ivins wrote this about Arnold Schwarzenegger: "One problem I have with Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts." But if you read her in The Advocate, the opening sentence was not quite as sexy: "One problem I have with Arnold Schwarzenegger is his looks." "We felt like it was inappropriate," said Advocate Executive Editor Linda Lightfoot. "We felt like it was a bit much." Lightfoot said the paper occasionally alters syndicated columns as part of its authority to control content on the op-ed page. "We have done it in the past. I usually take the word 'suck' out," said Lightfoot. The paper also keeps the word "scumbag" off its opinion pages and edits columns for length. At least one of the other 400 papers that carry Ivins, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, altered her opening sentence, but Creators Syndicate didn't know anyone had changed the column in The Advocate until Business Report called, Creators Syndicate editor Kathy Kei said. Some newspapers typically cut profanity from columns, but Creators Syndicate of Los Angeles prefers to be notified when a newspaper is going to change a columnists' words. "It's a touchy subject," Kei said. businessreport.com From KURT BLUMENAU: I would have enjoyed Molly Ivins' condoms-and-walnuts wisecrack a lot more if she'd actually attributed it. It was critic and novelist Clive James who first, and most memorably, compared Arnold Schwarzenegger to "a condom stuffed with walnuts." Granted, you can't copyright wisecracks ... but when someone gets off a line that great, their name deserves to be attached to it, I'd say. poynter.org

To: JohnM who wrote (7802)	9/13/2003 4:38:34 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 793818

September 11, 2003 Posted at 3:31 PM, Pacific hughhewitt.com The variety of reactions to the second anniversary of the attack on America isn't surprising, but much of it is disappointing, none more so than Joshua Micah Marshall's reflection talkingpointsmemo.com that he didn't feel continuity with his admiration for the President from two years ago, but rather "the jarring contrast, the cheap, obvious lies, the hubris, the tough talk for low ends, not so much the mistakes as the tawdriness of so much of what's happened, especially over the last eighteen months. Fred Kaplan has an excellent piece in Slate this week about the missed opportunity of September 12th. 'By the summer of 2003,' writes Kaplan, 'it could fairly be said that most of the world hated the United States, or at least feared the current U.S. government.' That sounds like such an extreme, over-the-top statement. 'Hate' is a pretty subjective word. But it's hard to read the papers regularly and not realize that what Kaplan says is true. It's sickening." This sentiment is itself repulsive, and decency might have obliged Marshall to stay his partisanship at least until the anniversary passed. The attacks of two years ago and the attacks of the coming years --they are inevitable-- could not have been prevented by a greater display of rhetorical or real concern for the oppressed of the world, or a greater attention to European or Third World opinion. The terrorists attacked the United States then and will do so again regardless of who occupies the White House or whether Democrats are attacking in-power Republicans or Republicans are attacking in-power Democrats. All that matters is whether the country is defending itself against the evil forces sworn to kill Americans in as large a number as possible. President Bush has been attacking those enemies, and those enemies and the friends of those enemies and the timid and the politically disadvantaged are all angry with the President. Joshua is among the last group, and I suspect he sees clearly that his party will not be trusted with the nation's security for many, many years to come, and that is the source of great bitterness. He dresses that bitterness up in a concern for the world's opinion of us. Perhaps in addition to the bitterness he really does care what the Germans and the French think. I don't. Nor do I think it is good strategy to care, and I know it is terrible politics to worry more about the opinion of the world than the safety of the country. Here are the two questions that matter: Have we avenged the dead and are the living more safe than they were two years ago? I refer those living in America, by the way, which is my priority, and the priority of the vast majority of American voters. The far better reads, and the ones that speak to the large majority of Americans are not like the small-beer partisan sniping of Josh, but the history-based and on-target summing up of Victor Davis Hanson nationalreview.com and the purpose-and-reality filled essay of Lileks lileks.com. Read these three pieces together and you cannot help but feel sorry for Marshall and those who share his views. They are genuinely divorced from American opinion and American thinking. Citizens, yes, and patriotic in their way, but clueless and not likely to ever be other than clueless. If you cannot understand 9/11, then what can you understand? Nothing that matters, I think, and very little besides.