More "Brushstrokes", on Snowden and Inconsistencies on Arabic Names
In furtherance of 'painting' a clearer picture of my worldview and political principles, I set forth below 66 brief comments I left today at three news stories on Yahoo!

Re: "NBC's Gregory: Why shouldn't Greenwald be charged?"
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The insanely paranoid crowd is very loud today. Where do these people draw the line on government secrets? Would they have cheered the release of U.S. atomic secrets to German and Japanese media during WWII or Soviet media just after WWII? Where does all this hatred of Government come from? It's a kneejerk reaction nowadays among the Radical Right to assert that the Government is our enemy, not us, selected from among us by us. Where did all this hatred of society come from? It is shocking how many crazy, antisocial fanatics are loose on Internet message boards. I would really like the Government to investigate these people and see if they are up to any insurrectionary, treasonous activity apart from trying to rip society apart and put one group at another group's throat. Collect and trace IP addresses, then check to see if these people are armed and dangerous. Not every Internet loon is harmless. Some have bunkers and survivalist hoards of food and water, and multiple firearms with thousands of rounds of ammunition. I want Government to protect us from them. Get warrants and do it legally, but do it!
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The laws upon which this surveillance program operates were passed under BUSH. There is nothing new here.
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The paranoid, negative, racist people spewing nastiness here would be on the opposite side of the issue if a Republican President were doing the same thing — or even a WHITE Democratic President. Here they are siding with a guy who has fled to TWO Communist countries, when they have always stated their steadfast hostility to Communism! Their outrage is artificial, completely inconsistent with their supposed politics.
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The Govt is NOT listening in on fone calls, just keeping track of who calls whom. Fone records are NOT the telefone subscriber's, but the telefone COMPANY'S. There is no legal expectation that a COMPANY will keep those records away from Government.
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Whether Snowden worked for a private company contracted to provide services to Govt or for Govt directly makes no difference whatsoever. He had an absolute legal duty to keep secrets, secret.
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Xx, do you really think that only private American citizens have received the info Snowden stole and released? Pay attention: the intended subjects of surveillance, for instance, Al-Qaeda, [are] paying very careful attention to this information, and altering their behavior to evade tracking. You may be naive, but the Govt of the U.S. must NOT be.
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If you really believe that Soros owns, e.g., Fox News, you need to commit yourself to a mental institution. If you do NOT believe it, stop aggravating your betters with trolling.
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Gregory asks questions. The Founding Fathers asked questions all the time. Stop being absurd.
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That some people see Gregory as a Liberal and others as an apologist for Republican Conservatives suggests powerfully that he does NOT operate with bias.
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In this story, two different journalists are on different sides of the same issue. How is that "the media" being "blinded by ideology"?
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Douglas, all laws are passed with the consent of the people, because they are passed by elected REPRESENTATIVES of the people. Your suggestion that laws duly passed in accordance with the Constitution are not laws unless you approve of them is absurd. It takes members of Congress, both houses, full-time employment to figure out what proposed laws should say and would do. The people don't have the time to do that due diligence, and could not possibly vote directly on all the laws. You're talking arrant nonsense — and paranoid nonsense at that. Esp. paranoid is your suggestion that the U.S. tortures prisoners in U.S. prisons. Seek professional help. Zarquon, releasing government secrets is illegal no matter who does it. Would you have thought it fine for a reporter who got the plans for D-Day from the equal of Snowden in 1944 to publish those plans in German newspapers? Would anyone regard that as protected First Amendment activity? Stop being so naive.
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Your suggestion that one cannot get different points of view from the hugely diverse media available to Americans by radio, TV, and Internet is indefensibly absurd. This very story was about two different points of view in ONE TV public-affairs show.
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Seek professional help. Paranoia is treatable.
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You fool no one. It is only the Radical Right that seeks to divide us, esp. along racial lines.
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There is no right of media to expose classified information. Period.
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Perhaps you don't understand WHO classifies information and who has the right to DE-classify it. The President (and, more broadly, the Administration operating under the President's control and with his approval) is the keeper of Govt secrets, and can declassify any it wishes at any time, for any reason.
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And the responsible editors at the Times, along with Ellsberg, should have been executed. Had that been done, we would have a lot less trouble keeping secrets now.
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And we all know why you don't like President Obama, that black man in the White House.
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Gregory asks questions. That is not editorializing and not campaigning for any candidate. You just can't stand the rough-and-tumble of question-and-answer. Go away.
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Idiotic trolling. Goebbels did NOT approve of media having independence and asking hard questions and permitting adamant answers contrary to the government line.
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Samuel, your comment is nonsense, and everyone knows it. David Gregory asks questions. His guests answer. How is that being anyone's pawn? Be quiet.
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You fool no one as to your bias, which is manifest from your use of the insulting Republican term "Democrat party".
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Plainly neither you nor Jeff believes for an instant that the Govt tracks Internet activity or you wouldn't dare say that on the Internet!
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I don't know what media you are watching, but very few videos from the BBC appear on the three major TV networks of the United States. You may be confused by the fact that these networks hire some people with disgusting British accents — which they should not — but those foreign reporters work directly for the U.S. network unless the particular story is identified as coming from another source.
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I don't know who funded Snowden's flite, so the media have not done a very good job with this story.
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What rights, Jeff? The right to plot to blow up Americans? The right to conspire to kill Americans? Be quiet.
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Edward R. Murrow lived during WWII and the Cold War. NEVER did he expose Govt secrets. There, you have your answer.
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Believe it or not, the Founding Fathers passed laws against espionage, and HANGED people for spying.
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The media did not elect — and re-elect — that black man in the White House you have such problems with.
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Are you suggesting that Tim Russert was all in favor of people entrusted with Govt secrets exposing them to the world, including Al-Qaeda? I reject that notion, and do not recall any incident in his history at MEET THE PRESS in which he in any way condoned espionage against the Govt of the United States.
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You do not for an instant believe the Govt is reading these comments, or you wouldn't dare to say anything against the Govt. Res ipse loquitur.
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We don't have military coups in the U.S., because the military, unlike some people, is loyal to the Constitution, and knows that it is NEVER authorized to oust a duly elected President. Do you REALLY trust the MILITARY to guard citizens' rights? Of COURSE NOT. So why do you post such nonsense?
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What is that supposed to mean? You want a Nazi movement to displace the Govt of the U.S.? Or is that "Communist" Obama really a Nazi, the opposite of Communist? Make up your mind. And then be quiet.
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Translation: President Obama is black, so could not possibly be the legitimate President of the United States. Shut up and go to Stormfront, where you belong.
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Yes, the free, competitive press is all incompetent or in cahoots with the Govt. Sure, sure (backing away). See a shrink.
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DW, you need professional help if you think Congress is not authorized to write legislation. Check yourself into a mental hospital, posthaste.
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The second Greenwald reports on something you don't like, you will turn on a dime and condemn him.
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And the Rosenbergs were patriots, right?
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Since when is trying to interrupt terrorist plots "political spying"?
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If Greenwald were doing the same thing under the Bush Administration, you would be on the other side. It is YOU who have no principles.
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It's news because someone entrusted with Govt secrets violated that trust.
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The Bush Administration was not just keeping track of fone records and email exchanges but arresting people and sending them to foreign countries to be tortured.
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No, the NSA needs to abide by relevant laws. It is NOT a "villain" for doing what it is supposed to do and authorized by Congress — the people's representatives — to do.
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So the Liberal media are spying on a Democratic Administration? What an interesting, nutso worldview you have.
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David Gregory was in fact NOT charged during the Bush Administration, so what you say is nonsense.
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I suspect that even knowingly receiving classified information is a violation of law.
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The free press was commercial during the time of the Framers of the Constitution. But the Founders were not fools, and knew the difference between freedom and license.
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That [David Gregory] was in fact NOT charged for his theatrics [in brandishing a loaded gun] shows that he did nothing wrong.
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Congressional legislation cannot be illegal. Stop talking nonsense.
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No one who uses the absurd term "sheeple" has any credibility with serious people.
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Most of the ranting here is by Radical Rightists, paranoid about the Govt, which they regard as the enemy, not by Liberals at all.
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Asking a question is not cheerleading.
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Seek professional help. The sky is NOT falling, and NOT everybody is against us.
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You hear only what you want to hear. Be quiet.
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You're full of it. Gregory asks questions and listens respectfully to the answers. YOU are the one who is bringing unfairness into your LISTENING.
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You have not been paying attention. News reports say that Snowden's revelations have helped Al-Qaeda and other enemies of the U.S. to evade surveillance.
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Responsible, intelligent people do not smile upon espionage.
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So you are indignant at Gregory's wanting to know how it could happen that the V.P. could shoot somebody in the face? Weird.
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No, Snowden took an oath to protect secrets and violated it. He is guilty of espionage as well as a violation of his secrecy agreement.
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You are not a judge — you can't even spell "amendment" — and actual judges have NOT found wrongdoing with the way the Govt is acting to interrupt terrorist plots. I'll trust the courts, not you.
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Espionage is not journalism.
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But there he is, host of MEET THE PRESS, and you? You are NOTHING in media (and probably in life).
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Legitimate journalists operate according to a canon of ethics. You do not. And slander is not protected by the First Amendment, nor shield laws.
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"Barely mention" this story? It has been the subject of HOURS and HOURS of news coverage.

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"Analysis: For Obama, a world of Snowden troubles"

Dictatorships respond only to STRENGTH. Obama has got to impose CONSEQUENCES for Chinese and Russian defiance of U.S. interests. We should impose a 5% cut in Chinese access to the U.S. market for each offense against us. The people of China will literally be starving again — and willing to rise in another revolution, this time against the Communist regime — if we end this unintended foreign aid to a Communist government. Russia should be warned that we will resume encirclement of Russia by U.S. missile defenses, and remind Putin that we broke up the Soviet Union, so may very well be able to break up the Russian Federation. Would Putin like us to train, arm, and financially support separatists and terrorists in Chechnya, Dagestan, and elsewhere within Russia? Putin should be shaking in his boots at U.S. power, not sneering with contempt at Obama's weakness.

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"Egypt's army says it's ready to save nation"

Why does this story write "Mohammed Morsi" when there is no O in the Arabic alphabet? That is why we are now supposed to write "Muslim", not "Moslem". If "Mohammed Morsi" is OK, let's just go back to "Moslem". If we have to write "Muslim", then we also have to write "Muhammed Mursi".

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:18 AM

 
More Brushstrokes
I have said that I don't always have time to develop a lengthy, unified essay on a single topic, but that I do leave comments at news stories that, over time, 'paint a portrait' of my political philosophy, as myriad brushstrokes combine to form a complete painting. Today's post comprises about 110 comments on three different stories at Yahoo! news. There is some repetition among these comments, but often slitely differently expressed, while hitting again and again points that need to be made repeatedly to sink in to people who have heard contrary points of view all life long. You really cannot adequately answer in one utterance things that people have heard thousands of times. People who encounter objectionable assertions in comments areas might like to use some of these points and even verbatim expressions in reply.
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The first article I commented at was "Multinational military exercises launch in Jordan".

Why a hyphen in "nonsense"? There is nothing nonsensical about promoting democracy, and all Administrations of both parties have been doing so for half a century.
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Jordan has a limited monarchy, and the U.S. is not propping up "dictatorship" but promoting further democratization of all of the nations of the Middle East.
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Inaction in the face of massive war crimes is itself a crime. There are times when one must defend, and that is all that is at issue in this article. No invasion of Syria, at least for now, not even by air.
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Keep your dopy Biblical nonsense to yourself.
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That is supremely stupid. One comment by the U.S. Secretary of State started the Syrian civil war? Don't be ridiculous.
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The U.S. has done NOTHING in Syria, so why are you blaming the current civil war on us?
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What about Obama's Peace Prize? Do you think that being unprepared for war prevents war? Or does it invite war? The U.S. is NOT involved in the Syrian civil war, so what is your comment even supposed to mean? Nothing, that's what it means. Nothing.
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Flagged. Keep your vile bigotry and incitements to mass murder to yourself.
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There is no God. Grow up.
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The creation of Israel may be the single stupidest thing ever done in politics, and Israel can be 'trusted' only to use the U.S. to commit crimes against its neighbors and stain OUR honor.
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Jordan is a LIMITED, constitutional monarchy, and the U.S. has been promoting greater democratization in Jordan. As for threats, the people of Jordan show no desire to overthrow their constitutional monarchy, and YES, Syria IS a threat from outside.
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No sane person on Earth agrees with your statements regarding King Hussein and his son [being terrorists].
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This is not the place for lunatic, racist, anti-Obama lies and slanders. Take it somewhere else, like Stormfront.
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No, you know perfectly well that the U.S. is not training Al-Qaeda. So why do you say such idiotic and contemptible things?
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No election has been held on U.S. policy regarding Syria, and a military exercise in JORDAN is NOT getting involved in the Syrian civil war.
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Pls cut the Radical Zionist garbage. You may believe it, but most Americans now understand that Israel is not our ally, and not our friend, but uses us for its own evil purposes.
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[Commenter] "David" is a Radical Zionist propagandist, actively disloyal to the United States, and out to poison U.S. relations with the Arab world. He says he trained with Saudis. When did Saudi pilots ever attack the United States? On the contrary, ISRAELI pilots attacked the U.S.S. Liberty, and Israelis are constantly trying to make the U.S. fite for Israel, to the last American.
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Because Syria has sole control of the air, and is using one-sided airpower to slaughter enemies of the regime; the Russian anti-aircraft missiles would be used to oppose the imposition of a no-fly zone by the United Nations, which is to say, to violate international law.
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There is no God, and no decent person believes in a God who smiles upon mass murder.
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Why would any American Administration or corporation want "sharia law, sectarism, christians genocide, violence and terrorism" in Syria? Seek professional help.
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"Different" does not take "to".
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Supporting JORDAN is not supporting Israel. As for military costs, defense preparedness works AGAINST the outbreak of war. "A stitch in time saves nine."
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Only a fool would think that a remark or two by Hillary Clinton produced the Syrian civil war. Be quiet.
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There is no such prophecy, because several of those countries did not exist in Biblical times. And there is no God, so just keep you dopy fantasies to yourself.
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So when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Nazi Germany declared war on the United States, we should just have done nothing? Shut up.
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There is no such thing as the Antichrist. There was no such thing as Christ, only a man. There is no God. It's all nonsense.
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That is a dopy thing to say. The U.S. military is not credible? Shut up.
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There is no such thing as Armageddon. Keep your dopy supernatural fantasies to yourself.

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The second story I commented on today is "'No Nile, no Egypt', Cairo warns over Ethiopia dam".

The Moslem Brotherhood is not even close to the be-all and end-all of Egypt.
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If the dam is only for the generation of electricity for export, and the filling of a reservoir behind it would cause economic devastation to countries downriver, the project should be forbidden in international law. There must be ways to divide the flow, sending part into the reservoir and part downriver. Things don't have to be all-or-nothing.
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Yes, once the reservoir behind the dam is full, excess water does go downriver, along with the water that is sent past turbines. But during the period when the reservoir is filling, unless there is provision to let some of the water pass around the dam, water IS cut off from nations downriver. And it could take YEARS for a reservoir to fill, depending on the topography. Egypt cannot afford years without the bulk of the Nile's flow.
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You're living in the past. Oil is not the only source of energy for a modern economy. Not even close. And this story has NOTHING to do with oil, but only with water and hydropower — one of those other sources of energy that modern economies employ.
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The article says plainly that past efforts by Egypt to stir up revolts in Ethopia have failed.
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There is no "hate" involved in defending water rights.
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I seem to recall 19 Moslems who sacrificed their lives to injure their enemy in NYC, Washington, and rural Pennsylvania. They didn't run away from what they regarded as their duty. Why the slander? Do you think it's good practice to insult people who might then try to get even?
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Ethiopia is not a neighbor to Egypt. Check a map.
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International agreements on water rights are subject to international law. No one party is entitled to violate the water rights of the other parties.
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Who would be sending in Al-Qaeda? Stop talking nonsense. We certainly don't control Al-Qaeda; nor does Egypt. Be quiet.
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Dollars don't grow food or supply drinking water. The U.S. is NOT sovereign upon this planet, and lots of things are done every day without any kind of U.S. permission.
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The Great Lakes, except for Lake Michigan, DO extend to Canada.
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Why not check the Internet before asking a needless question? Ethiopia is 33.9% Moslem, 62.8% Christian.
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Flagged. Keep your mass-murderous hatred to yourself. And seek professional help from a shrink or ethical counselor/clergyman.
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I doubt that grasshoppers comprise any significant part of Ethiopians' diet, and the article says that the purpose of the dam under construction is hydropower, not water for irrigation.
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Both Ethiopia and Egypt are massively overpopulated, and the prime effort of both countries should be to REDUCE the population, not provide for ever more people.
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Global warming? Where were you this past winter and spring, when a town in Upstate NY had THREE FEET of snow in mid-May? Deutsche Welle and other major media have reported that "global warming" has stalled, and its extent was overreported.
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There are ways that dams can be constructed sensibly, with, for instance, only part of the stream diverted to a reservoir and the other part allowed to continue to send water downriver.

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The last story I remarked upon is "Israel official: No Palestinian state in '67 lines".

There is no God. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. Canaan was occupied when the Jews invaded. Everything you say is wrongheaded.
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Your analogy is exactly correct. It turns out that historians now agree that there never was a mass Exodus from Egypt to Canaan, so everything that flows from that fable is nonsense. But it has been used to justify TWO attacks upon people who lived in that region, by outsiders intent on stealing their country right out from under them.
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(a) Jesus didn't hate anybody, and tried to teach us to live without hate in our heart. (b) The Exodus of the Jews to Canaan is fiction. Wikipedia says plainly, "The consensus among biblical scholars today [is] that the story is best seen as theology, a story illustrating how the God of Israel acted to save and strengthen his chosen people, and not as history. (c) What God Protector of His Chosen People would allow 6 million of them to be slautered? It's all nonsense, nonsense that people have got to STOP repeating.
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You have it exactly backwards. Arabs did not invade Europe in the 20th Century and take away land owned by Jews.
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Scripture proves nothing but the credulity of fools in nonsense written thousands of years ago, for other fools.
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You apparently believe in the old "negotiating" ploy of the evil: "What's mine is mine. What's yours is negotiable."
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Plainly there can be no two-state solution. Only a reunified Palestine in which no one has special rights and no one is discriminated against is the only guarantor of real peace. Jews and Arabs got along in Palestine for hundreds of years before invading European Jews upset the applecart.
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The word "survival" has no place in discussions of nation-states. It is intended to make people think that the disappearance of the "State of Israel" would be, and could only be, accomplished by genocidal ethnic cleansing of Jews from Palestine. But the Soviet Union and East Germany were destroyed without mass death. All that changed were the political arrangements and names on the map. The way to be treated fairly is to do justice, not injustice. This is something that most American Jews who REFUSED to move to Israel understand.
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The way to achieve an end to Israeli injustice to the Palestinians is to end all U.S. support of every kind to Israel. Tell Netanyahu that if Israel does not negotiate in good faith, without preconditions, the U.S. will cut its foreign aid by 5% a month, and if after 20 months, and all U.S. taxpayer foreign aid is ended, the government of Israel has still refused to do justice, then the U.S. will start to cut off all inflows of private aid from American sources (United Jewish Appeal, Israel bonds, trees for Israel, Hadassah support, etc.), until absolutely NO money flows from the U.S. And if Israel still insists on doing injustice, and has not completely collapsed from the end of U.S. subsidies, we should then demand repayment of all the "loans" "forgiven" in the past. There is no reason the U.S. should subsidize bigotry and discrimination. Let Israel stand or fall on its OWN resources, not the largesse of U.S. taxpayers.
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There is no God, and NO group is specially "chosen". The Jews' God did wonders for them against the armies of the Nazi Party, didn't He? Be quiet.
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Why should "Israel" be the surviving entity of a merger of the two severed pieces of Palestine? Why not "United ..." or "Unified Palestine"?
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... As for the cellphone, Israelis did NOT invent it. Quite the contrary, it is the product of many inputs, starting with miniaturization of electronic components in Bell Labs in 1947.
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The guilt of the Rosenbergs is beyond doubt, despite denials from family members. KGB records released in the post-Soviet era plainly identify the Rosenbergs as Soviet spies.
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Christians did NOT invent "anti-Semitism". Long before Christianity began, the first "Israel" was destroyed by Assyria, and the population carted off and dispersed across the Assyrian Empire. In other times and countries, the Jews gathered hatred to themselves by holding themselves aloof from and pretending to be better than their non-Jewish neighbors, speaking a foreign language to exclude their fellow-citizens from their conversations — which of course made people wonder what they were hiding — calling themselves "God's Chosen People", which of course meant that non-Jews were NOT God's Chosen, etc.
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Cutting off aid to the rich (Israelis) and poor (adjoining Arabs) is NOT fair and evenhanded.
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Egypt makes no claim on Gaza, and indeed has an enforced border against it. Jordan makes no claim on the West Bank. Try again.
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Influence upon policy is what people talk about when they speak of Jewish control. There are six times as many Jews in the U.S. Senate as their 2% of the population should have; media are heavily Jewish, in terms of both ownership and editorial control; AIPAC is perhaps the single most powerful lobby (after only the NRA); etc.
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Spare us your endless conspiracy-theory nonsense. We know who was responsible for 9/11, and it wasn't Mossad. There are plenty of wrongful deeds by Mossad. You don't need to invent others.
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Israel withdrew from Gaza because Gazans were killing the occupiers, not as a goodwill gesture.
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Nobody is buying your crazy conspiracy-theory nonsense, so stop wasting your time and energy posting fiction here.
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Really? You're still "swift-boating" Kerry? Shut UP.
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The U.S. needs to encourage fairness and nondiscrimination. We can't leave these things to savages to sort out by war among themselves.
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There is no God/gods, so that is not a concern. Justice has to be the concern, not religion.
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Some Jews do believe in God; but there is indeed a high rate of agnosticism/atheism among ethnic Jews.
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So only Arab preconditions are unreasonable?
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The British were always very good at disposing of OTHER people's lands.
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Do you have any idea how tiny Gaza is? [It could not accommodate the entire Palestinian people, esp. if a "right of return" were established.]
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Anyone who is not angry about injustice is less than human.
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Outrite denial of mass murder of Jews by the Nazis is absurd. What we need to do is put that into context, with all the non-Jews also murdered by the Nazi regime.
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There is no God, and only crazy talk like yours maintains that fiction. Palestinians want the invaders to go back where they came from. That's unreasonable? Only decent Jews who wish only to be equals with their fellow-citizens in a reunited Palestine should be permitted to remain. Everyone else, go back where you started.
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Disrespecting Islam as an ideology rather than religion is BIGOTRY, pure and simple. Of course, Mr. [Geert] Wilders is entitled to be a bigot, but must answer for it.
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This fiction of an Arab will to mass-murder Jews has got to end. It was never true. Palestinians just wanted to keep their land from being stolen right out from under them, and force the invaders to go back where they came from.
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Oil in Arab lands is ARAB oil, not ours. U.S. problems with Moslems were TRIVIAL until after the insane creation of the unjust "State of Israel". Radical Zionists are incapable of telling the truth about Arabs in general and Moslem Arabs in particular, because truth would reveal the monstrous injustice done to them.
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You'd think that any responsible public official would see his duty as being to ALL the people, wouldn't you?
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There is nothing atheistic about the Assad regime. And a fair assessment of the situation would find NO advantage for Russia in bolstering Assad.
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Judaism is not a race.
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Scott, you are LOSING this argument, esp. since you falsify the issue by injecting race. Islam and Judaism, Israeli and Palestinian, are not races.
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Why do people outside Palestine have any obligation to give up their own land to Palestinians? Stop displacing the guilt from the Zionists.
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The U.S. is NOT propping up dictators in the Middle East, but has been promoting democratization throughout the region for decades.
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Actually, a lot of Israelis do not see a brite future for "the Jewish State". It is losing a lot of people to emigration.
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European powers had no right to dispose of any part of Palestine.
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There is no such thing as holy. But human dignity should be inviolable.
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Drivel. Israel receives $3B a year from a total foreign-aid budget of perhaps $14B (tho it's hard to get to hard figures about total aid, because of obfuscation by the U.S. Government, which doesn't even list Israel in its first table of expenditures!).
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That is a perfect "Big Lie". It completely reverses the truth, and makes the Jews, who (according to the Jews' own narrative) stole the land from the Canaanites, into victims of theft. Actually, the Exodus is pure fiction, as most Biblical scholars now admit.
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Off-topic drivel. None of that has anything to do with this article, and I'm not taking your word for anything.
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Why do Radical Zionists keep asserting that Palestinians don't exist? Nobody wants to hear such dirvel. Just shut up.
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The "subjugation of females" that you attack Islam for started with JUDAISM, as did most of Islam's negative features. The rest of your slanderous nonsense condemns itself.
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You are not entitled to discuss anything we cannot check in THIS article. Stay on-topic.
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So Israelis are real, but Palestinians are imaginary. Be quiet.
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Israel has killed THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of Arabs itself, and forced the U.S. to kill over a MILLION more. No restraint, only lies.
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Ashley, you and all the other deniers of the existence of Palestinians need professional help for your delusions and pathological lying.
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What are you talking about, the same "lightening" that stopped Adolf Hitler's attacks on Jews within his reach?
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There is no God, no Exodus, no justification for the theft of Canaan or Palestine.
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Put it more personally: if YOU have thousands of dollars, others have the RIGHT to take 1/85th of your wealth, right? More to the point, Israel stole 70% of Palestine right out from under the people who had lived there for hundreds of years.
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Sending Jews back where they came from would suffice. Europe can certainly accommodate a few million Jews better than can Palestine.
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There is no God, so you want a temple to nothing. Dopy.
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Radical Zionists never consider the morality and practicality of their stance that Israel owns Palestine by right of conquest. So if the Arabs, backed by Russia and China, and with the U.S. standing aside out of disgust with Israeli behavior, should manage to conquer Israel, they would be entitled to expel the bulk of Jews and impose a harshly discriminatory occupation on those who remain, right?
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No one needs to make up abuse of Arabs by Israel. The facts are plain to everyone not wearing Radical Zionist blinders.
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No one has said that Palestine needs to be "Jew-free". Decent Jews who are willing to live at peace and equality with their Moslem and Christian Arab neighbors were welcome to live in Palestine. What was NOT permitted was CONQUEST and the imposition of unfairness by Jewish invaders.
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"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" about Israeli settlers, eh?
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Israel pays no attention to the U.S. because there is no penalty to disobeying. If we reduced foreign aid to Israel by 5% each time Israel disobeyed us, and abstained from anti-Israel resolutions in the UN, Israelis would indeed listen.
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Israel/Palestine is not "vast" but tiny. And it doesn't matter whether these housing starts are in new settlements or old. They are all stolen land.
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The Biblical narrative of Exodus is FICTION. Never happened.
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Nonsense. There is no God, so God didn't give the Jews ANYthing. "Exodus" is FICTION, disowned by modern Biblical scholars. If God had existed and wanted to give the Jews land, it would have been EMPTY land, not occupied by Canaanites or anyone else. It's all arrogant, stupid self-justifying nonsense.
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Yahoo, pls ban all hate speech from these boards.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:17 AM

 
Islam's Alcohol Problem
It occurs to me that one big reason the Moslem world is filled with tumult, extremism, and violence is that Moslems are forbidden to drink alcohol, a substance that is renowned for relieving anxieties, lowering inhibitions, easing social interactions, and generally allowing people to relax and put their troubles aside for a while. Once a person can put pressing worries and urges to one side, he might be able to see things from a whole new perspective, and realize that what he had built up in his mind to monumental size isn't really so big after all.
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Islam's alcohol problem is not that Moslems drink too much but that they don't drink at all.
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Moslems need to drink. They need to work out interpersonal problems over a few beers or mixed drinks with the people they see as causing them difficulties, and talk to each other candidly and in good faith, without defensiveness and self-justifying indignation. Alcohol can help people let go of such negative emotions.
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Islam is notoriously inhibited about all things sexual, outside of marriage (be it single or multiple marriage), again because men have to deal with their urges in isolation. Islam's absolutely unrealistic restrictions on even sexual thoughts is related to Islam's very dim view of human nature. To think is to do; to want is to covet and plan to take, by force if need be. To drink a little is to become a roaring alcoholic. No, none of that is true.
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Islam needs to grow up, and realize that adults who are allowed to grow up and learn self-control, have mechanisms in place to prevent them from overdoing things. The view of the human creature in Islam seems to be based on the urges of a teenage boy whose raging hormones confuse his mind and impel him to do things without thought of the future or concern for the consequences. That is a very stupid view of the human creature, and by embracing that view, and forbidding people from even thinking about things that they shouldn't do, Islam stilts the very growth that would produce self-control.
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Moslems need to drink socially and derive the benefits that other societies derive from the ability of alcohol to lower anxieties and inhibitions, and connect people with their own feelings and the feelings of others. Islam needs to end its ban on intoxicants, and go back to its first teaching on alcohol, that it is improper for people to attend to prayers while drunk (Koran 4:43), but OK to imbibe in moderation. If Moslem societies can learn to use alcohol for its beneficial effects, the levels of frustration and violence in Moslem societies should plummet.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:20 PM