That is sick, demeaning, and derogatory towards women…
…Therefore, I’m offering to rebalance the moral scales by volunteering to become KATE WINSLET’S slave! 
Ranchoth
(Yeah, like you wouldn’t volunteer for that, if you had the chance.)
True, some excellent points have been made. And Spectre’s pretty hard to argue with, except in one regard:
“Cold war.”
Not sure how cold a war it can be, under the circumstances.
Russia didn’t dare start any craziness, because they knew any serious provocation would, if not launch the birds, then certainly get the ball rolling in that direction. Neither side REALLY wanted to incinerate civilization, or even lose their preeminence in global politics. But we were terrified of each other, so the cold war dragged on.
This is a totally different situation. We are not opposing a nation, we’re opposing a psychotic ideology. Don’t forget that the 9/11 gang were from countries allied to the United States. What were we supposed to do, invade Saudi Arabia or Egypt?
There aren’t that many of them, sure, and their resources ain’t much, compared to even the smallest European power… but they can strike in relative safety, simply because who are we gonna hit back?
I’m thinking about how not too long ago, I was hearing reports out of Iran about how the children of the revolution were getting tired of being told what to do by the mullahs… how there were protests, demands for democracy, demands that the Ayatollahs get back in the mosques and out of their faces. The Iranian government didn’t much like this…
…but I bet it’s not happening now. No, no, no, because America is once again the Great Satan, and must be destroyed. Hey, it worked for Hitler: hold your country together by having someone to hate like crazy. And we’re elected, because even if we shut the hell up and get the hell out, we aren’t going to quit supporting Israel. And even if Israel shuts the hell up and evacuates the Gaza Strip, they aren’t going to quit being Israel.
…but there could be change in the wind. The Saudis are beginning to have a MAJOR problem with loony-assed maniacs trying to destabilize their government in order to replace it with a Holy Rollership, and I’ve already mentioned the hassles in Iran. Seems to me that it wouldn’t take much to turn the tide, here. Some time, certainly. A hand in the right direction. A subtle influence.
But it isn’t going to happen as long as America is ruled by a man who understands “foreign policy” the way a pig understands “nuclear physics.”
Well, we could solve the problem by turning the whole area to radioactive rubble, but we won’t.
But Al Sadr et al should read up about the British occupation of India and Cawnpore in particular.
You know, that might really screw up the oil wells and pipelines and loading docks.
Well, it’s not an exact parallel, I’m willing to concede that. But it seems to me that much of the anti-democratic advocacy in the world is now centered in the Mideast, and it’s this ideological divide which is a bit scary. Of course, you might say I’m forgetting China, but it’s been a long time since I heard of a Chinese leader advocating world domination. Among OBL’s crew, though, you actually do have nutjobs wanting a worldwide Islamic state. The Taliban in Afghanistan implemented the most extremely statist society imaginable; virtually everything was outlawed besides whatever would promote their concept of Islam.
[aside] In Los Angeles, most of the old, large, movie houses from the 1910s and 20s on Main Street are now occupied by evangelist churches. Instead of the name of a current movie, the marquee announces Dr. Gene Scott or some other broadcast evangelist. I always imagine that if we had a fundamentalist Christian takeover in this country, it would look like that. There’d be no movies, and the theatres would be given over to sermons.
[/aside]
Yes, scary indeed. To me, the most ominous aspect of this divide is its religious underpinnings. There’s nothing like that good old religion’s “God is on our side” fervor to get the crusade/jihad rolling. Nothing like casting your opponent as Satan’s pawn and a dagger aimed at the heart of your faith and people to demonize that enemy and justify any action in defense of God’s commands.
How hard would it be to recast this familiar hymn in Islamic fundamentalist terms?
[On rereading the whole thread]
Spectre, I agree with you that
What worries me is the threat to those Free World values you cite that is posed by a clash of civilizations founded in part upon differing faiths; where the worst, most repressive aspects of each side’s religion feed and grow strong upon the passions of the combatants.
Damn. Too late for Winslet and Liz Hurley. Can I take Shirley Manson? Hot babe+lead singer+Scottish=Whoa, momma!
Al-Sadr is speaking to Shiites in Basra and the southern regions of Iraq right? Now I understand that that is the area primarily under British control. As for the sex discrimination thing, I would imagine that there’s not much interest in male slaves considering the benefit of their labours may not outweigh the cost of feeding them, and homosexuality is kind of frowned upon there.
Sorry, I don’t know what you mean by this. Are you saying CNN makes the aide lood good by quoting his declaration that female UK soldiers can be kept as slaves?
The “no-name nobody” was described in an ABC article as being Sheik Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, al-Sadr’s chief representative in southern Iraq.Fox, MSNBC and even ABC, the land of Peter Jennings, all carried stories about it.
But still nothing on CNN.
I submit again that this is another example of a media outlet altering their coverage to suit their own purposes. They want to avoid people feeling the way Bippy the Beardless described above, which I repeat here: “Everytime I feel we should leave Iraq, something like this comes along and I realise there is a need to remove such people from positons of power and put them into the insane asylums where they belong.”
Such sentiments are anathema to the good folks at CNN.
Alas, I must prove you wrong, my friend. I’ve just found this story on CNN, which states:
Granted, that paragraph appears about two-thirds of the way down a story headlined:
But there it is, in the “World” section of the website, with a posting date/time of Saturday, May 8, at 8:58 p.m. EDT. Whether the paragraph appeared in preceding wrapups of events in Iraq, I can’t say. I notice that the reward is higher for a captive than a kill. Sounds like the insurgents want their own torture toys to play with.
I’ve also found the female soldiers as slaves item on the website of The Boston Globe, a newspaper often chastised by its right-leaning readers as too liberal.
I’ll say again, my gut feeling is that CNN is giving this lowkey treatment as a matter of tone rather than ideology. It’s my opinion that CNN wishes to be considered the New York Times of televised reporting, while Fox News follows the tabloid philosophy: “If it bleeds, it leads.” As always, YMMV.
Oh, well, if it had to happen, I’m glad it was you! 
Noticed that too, huh?
Perhaps. However, I haven’t noticed a great deal of editorial restraint when it comes to the more sensational aspects of the war whenever it might make Bush, Rumsfield and/or the war effort look bad. But I could be wrong, and I’m sure you’ll point it out if so. 
Good to hear from you again. It’s been a while.
:: picking up gauntlet and admiring its fine embroidery ::
Well, okay, then, how about this?
I can’t link to it because it’s gone now, but a day or two ago, CNN ran a story – in the prime-spot clump of links – about Kerry criticizing Bush’s handling of the war in light of the torture story. The link headline read: “Kerry Bashes Bush on Abuse”.
Now, note that word: “bashes”. A word such as “criticizes” to me would seem neutral, but “bashes”, IMO, carries a negative connotation. Just look at how our loyal (if dwindling ;)) band of Bush-defenders refer to “Bush-bashing” here in the Pit, for example.
So… if CNN is indeed a pit of partisan vipers, why a link-line so pejorative in tone? 
Huh? HUH???
:: Laser pointer in hand ::
As to the conduct of the Iraq war itself, yesterday I came across this story in the Washington Times, stating in relevant part:
There’s more in the Times story about this. I checked out the website for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and it sure doesn’t look like some loonie-leftie think tank. Check out the homepage article links, and the “About Us” page, and judge for yourself. You can download the entire Iraq war report in PDF format from the “Press Box” link on the homepage.
::Picking up the gauntlet and being dazzled by its fine embroidery::
Uh…I’m confused. Isn’t the link-line with its pejorative tone exactly what I’m talking about? Kerry “bashing” Bush, to me, has a much more prejudicial tone against Bush than it does against Kerry. Kerry “critisizing” Bush would carry less of an implication of Bush’s (alleged) wrongdoing than “bashing.” Thus it would seem that CNN was doing exactly what I described.
Now, to me, “bashing” is pejorative to the one doing it, rather than to its target. Hence my reference to accusations of “Bush-bashing” by conservative Dopers against anti-Bush Dopers. My perception is that to say one bashes is to say that one is unfairly attacking. To be bashed is to be clubbed, blindsided, roughed up, with the implication of excessive force. Take a look, for example, at dictionary.com’s definitions, the third definition of the transitive verb.
How very interesting! We both read the same thing and arrive at an exactly opposite meaning. I can see how, in the context of its use on this board, Bush-bashing would appear to be a negative toward the person doing the bashing, but in the context of its use on a news broadcast, it, in my opinion, gives weight to the person doing the bashing. In other words, it conveys anger and outrage and superior judgement on the part of the person doing the bashing, and says by implication that the person being bashed is so much in the wrong that this type of indignant response is justified.
(My apologies for any punctuation and/or grammatical errors. It’s been many years since school and I know I’m talking to a professional.)
You ARE confused. Here’s the dictionary.com def of “bashing”:
Informal. To criticize (another) harshly, accusatorially, and threateningly: “He bashed the… government unmercifully over the… spy affair” (Lally Weymouth).
The clear implication is that Kerry was using the story to attack Bush, it had nothing to say on Bush’s guilt or innocence. The term is pejorative toward Kerry, neutral toward Bush.
Yes, I’m aware of what the dictionary says, but sorry, I still don’t see it. We are reading the same thing and arriving at different meanings. As you said, he’s attacking Bush. How can this be derogatory toward him and neutral toward Bush? Is it really your proposition that CNN wants to denigrate Kerry and be neutral toward Bush by running an article with the headline “Kerry attacks Bush on economy”? If it were true than an attack (or “bash”) would speak ill only of the attacker/basher, why would any politician ever attack/bash his opponent?
I do think it’s interesting (and it speaks of a bit of paranoia in all of us) that we look at the same thing and see it in opposite ways. This must be why conservatives see the media as having a liberal bias, and (some) liberals see the same media as having a conservative bias.
However, I think that the fact that the ratio of conservatives claiming liberal bias vs. liberals claiming conservative bias (in the main, that is…not necessarily just Fox) is roughly 100:1 would pretty clearly show the mainstream media’s liberal bias does indeed exist. (Kidding, kidding…don’t ask for a cite.)
Sorry. That should read: “If it were true *that * an attack…etc.”