Statement on Intellectual Honesty

Hey,

this post will be rather short as it is merely a reaction to current events. If anyone disagrees with my assessment and interpretation, feel free to point out the flaws in my argumentation. Again, if you are unable to back your views up, I will make fun of you.

Media has in a democracy an absolutely vital role in that the media informs the public and keeps an eye on elected officials. My thesis is that the American media's bias has become so overwhelming that it can no longer fulfill that function. For further reading on this topic I recommend the book "Bias" by Bernard Goldberg.

Because the issue of media bias is so immense, consider that Goldberg has so far written two books on this issue, I will focus on what the media covers and the current Dan Rather controversy.
The various news and media outlets are faced daily by a plethora of news items that need to be covered. A decision then has to be made on what to cover and who to interview. The media's bias here becomes transparent. The Today show on September 13th interviewed in the first hour two authors who wrote anti-Bush books. The second interview was on a woman who claimed that the President snorted cocaine in Camp David, a claim that has been since dismissed as ludicrous with the author's own sources disputing that it ever happened (www.lauraingraham.com is my source on this).

In the last months the Today show gave a lot of airtime to authors criticizing the Bush administration, even ignoring or downplaying evidence disputing those authors' claims. At the same time the Today show not once interviewed Sean Hannity who wrote two New York Times bestellers and Mr. O'Neill who wrote "Unfit for Command" a book that disputes John Kerry's Vietnam claims and which currently is the #1 bestseller on the New York Times. Also, "Vietnam Veterans for Kerry" are frequently mentioned and their activities covered. "Vietnam Veterans for Truth," a group critical of Kerry recently staged a demonstration - which then was ignored by the media. If these people were true journalists, they would look at all sides and report on all strength and flaws regardless of political affiliation. This, the media does not do and in so doing they have let down this country. Today's journalists are not worthy of that name.

The current media crisis has been brought to a point by Dan Rather. Rather broke the story that Bush's commander in the National Guard had suspended Bush because Bush had not obeyed an order to get a physical exam. Rather's evidence were typed memos taken from the commander's file. The problem with this is that the commander's family have now come out to say that the commander a) did not type b) did not keep that kind of records and c) had a high regard for Bush as an officer and pilot. A closer inspection of the memos also revealed that they were written in a font that didn't exist in 1971, when they were supposed to have been written, and that the margins were justified - an ability that government typewriters at that time did not have. In fact, it appears that those memos were written on a PC with Microsoft Word. A good journalist, or at least an intellectually honest one, would have then come out to admit error and investigate the source of those memos. Not Dan Rather. Against all evidence, Rather insists on the authenticity of the documents and appears appalled that anybody would criticize him.

Is this the kind of behavior the modern media wants to condone? Well, they are. I call upon everybody to contact their news outlets (especially CBS and NBC) and complain about media bias. Maybe one day the media will be able to resume their duties as servants to the democracy but until then the media is harming the people by not properly reporting current events.
And Mr. Rather, please just admit for once that you are wrong.

Charles Garman

Statement of Terrorists and Freedom fighters

Hey,

again, I invite everybody and anybody to disagree with me. I just ask that you back your opinions with sound arguments. If you insist on repeating liberal talking points, I will mock you.

Ever hear the saying "One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter?" My thesis is that this concept is inherently wrong because a terrorist can never be a freedom fighter and vice versa. A freedom fighter has the freedom of his/her people at heart and fights for their liberation. A terrorist has his/her own special agenda and employs terror to coerce whoever opposes the terrorist to acquiesce to the terrorists' agenda.

What is a freedom fighter? A freedom fighter is a soldier. A freedom fighter organizes or joins an army in order to engage the occupier in combat. Take the American colonies in 1775. A lot - by all means not all - of the colonists perceived themselves to be oppressed and occupied by the British. As a result, even before the colonies declared their independence, those colonists formed the continental army and militias in order to fight the British. On the other side, the British sent their army and colonists loyal to the Crown joined the British army or formed loyalist militias so that they would not be oppressed by the revolutionaries. The American War for Independence was just that, a war in which armies clashed and ended with a treaty.
Take Texas in 1832. The Texas colonists thought themselves oppressed and formed an army with which they engaged Santa annoys army, in the end defeating it and gaining independence. These are examples on how to fight a war for independence. The war might still be bloody and vicious, but a freedom fighter is a soldier who believes in the cause and then proceeds to attack the enemy soldier. Israel has a similar history. Israel might not be fighting a war for independence but rather a war for survival. And yet, the Israeli army engages military targets, only. Any death of civilians is either accidental, or a strategy of Israel's enemies - to have civilians and children intermingled with military targets.

What is a terrorist? A terrorist is not, even if he/she claims to be, a soldier. A soldier abides by the law of war or is court mortality. A terrorist not only does not abide by the law of war, a terrorist deliberately violates those laws. A terrorist is not interested in engaging the enemies' army or attack military targets. A terrorist kills and murders civilians, men, women, and children. Let me make this clear, a terrorist targets the innocent and has no remorse. When you use a civilian plane with civilians in it to fly into buildings, you are a terrorist. When you storm a school and rape and kill children, you are a terrorist. When you drive a bomb truck into a bar mitzva and murder families, you are a terrorist. When you strap a bomb to yourself and walk into a crowded market and detonate yourself, not only are you a terrorist, so is the person who made you do it.
Most terrorist then claim that since they cannot defeat the enemies' army, they must resort to terrorism - that the oppressor's very presence forces the terrorist to use terrorism. Is that true? Is terrorism as method sometimes inevitable?
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the British Army was nearly unbeatable. At the same time, India was interested in independence. Ghandi saw this and was drafted to help. Instead of resorting to acts of terrorism and trying to force the British out that way, Ghandi found the alternative of passive resistance. In 1947 India became independent.
After the American civil war, black Americans were discriminated against and denied their civil rights. There was no way that black Americans could defeat the police, National Guard, or the US Army. And the way the discrimination was structured, they could not even seek relief at the polls. In addition to this, the Ku Klux Klan did engage in acts of terrorism by whipping and hanging black activists. Martin Luther King saw this and started to help. Instead of fighting fire with fire, MLK advocated passive resistance. In 1964 the president signed Civil Rights legislation and since then Congress and the courts have made law to defend everybody's civil rights.
These are examples where the terrorist would use murder and rape to terrorize the opposing party into submission and where the "freedom fighter" (in this case I use that term loosely) actually achieves the goal without using terror.
Imagine a Palestinian passive resistance movement. How long would it take until there was a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine?

A terrorist is not a freedom fighter and as such a terrorist does not deserve the respect of the international community. Whether it is terrorism aimed at the United States in New York, at Russia in their schools, or at Spain in the Basque land, terrorism must be fought and defeated because true peace will not be established when conflicts are resolved, but rather when terrorists are eliminated.

Free America from terrorism and free the world from it, too.

Charles B. Garman