Hey… Any pictures from the missiles that landed in Haifa?

How about the ones that landed in the suburbs of Haifa?

I don’t know about you but I didn’t see anything about those either.

So let me guess… The media is biased both ways, huh?

You’re a nice guy, but sometimes you really make yourself look like a moron when you rant.

No Vinny, but if I had ‘em I’d sure as hell post ‘em? If you got ‘em send ‘em.

– and while we’re talking “moron” why don’t you settle your ass into a chair and think about the most important line in the guys email

I am almost certain these pictures won’t be published in the West

And then ask youself why that is?

That’s not the point. He posted the pictures and the commentary about them not showing up in the west.

Well, duh. But we haven’t seen a whole lot out of Haifa or Safed either. So either the media is biased in both directions simultaneously or they just don’t have the pictures.

Repeating stupidity verbatim when it’s so easily debunked is stupid. Period.

Those pictures weren’t published in the west.

Fine.

Neither were the others.

So now, let’s examine what the point is? If the author’s point is that there’s some grand coverup of Israeli brutality, and the evidence of that is that the pictures aren’t plastered all over the western media, then he has to also acknowledge that, since there are NO pictures of Haifa, Safed, or soon-to-be Tel Aviv, I’m sure, then the media is also covering up for the Lebanese.

War sucks. On both sides. Lots of innocent people die. When a guy like this posts pictures of dead kids to make a point that’s easily and thoroughly debunked by anyone with more than two seconds of knowledge about what’s actually going on and in the media, and someone who’s smarter than that runs it, they must therefore be willfully ignorant of facts.

Anyone with half a brain knows we haven’t seen pictures from either side. No dead children in the streets photos from Haifa or Safed. Let the coverup continue, eh?

Please.

Balbulican, your solution is utterly idiotic. This isn’t about tit for tat, it’s about Stageleft posting inflammatory pics and acting as a mouthpiece for someone who has no damned idea what he’s talking about.

I’m sure those military bases that are in people’s homes in Haifa and Safed aren’t really collateral damage. No kids, women, or children died there.

Just Lebanon.

Vinny, you’re creating an agrument for yourself. The author from the Angry Arab said that those particular Associated Press pics wouldn’t be used by western media. He was right, they weren’t. (so far)

If pictures get taken of Israeli casualties will we see them? Probably, either through broadcasted media or on the Internet somewhere, people are morbid that way, I just don’t think there’s been any yet.

Take the tin foil off Vinny, or at least loosen it a bit, it doesn’t matter whether it is Israeli women, kids, and elders, Lebanoese women, kids, and elders, Iraqi women, kids, and elders, Syrian women, kids, and elders, or {pick a nationality any nationality} women, kids, and elders - they are refered to as “collateral damage”… a “something” instead of a “someone”.

If I had been forwarded images of Israeli kids laying dead and burned on the ground they would have gone on into the post. If I had my way about it images of every dead, bloody, maimed, wounded, innocent man, woman, and child on both sides of this crap would be plastered all over the front pages of every newspaper in the world so that the world could see them. If I had my way every orphan and every widow on both sides of this crap would have a picture and name so that the world knows who is suffering.

I want the world to see the uncomfortable, nasty, ugly bloody, severed limbs laying on the ground beside a mangled body, side of what is happening instead of just listening to the news and hearing about nameless, faceless, “civilian casualties” in the same breath as the words “regretable” and “the other guys need to stop first”….. and then tut-tutting a bit while they mutter, gee, isn’t that too bad, and finishing peeling the potatoes for supper.

Seeing pictures of dead children is heart-wrenching. I don’t see any Israelis rejoicing at this tragedy, unlike the Palestinian asswipes who were cheering over body parts of a blown-up Israeli soldier in Gaza today. The Israelis didn’t start this after all… the mad mullahs of Iran & their puppets in Syria did.

Hezbollah sends rockets into Israeli cities loaded with ball-bearings to shower passers-by for maximum damage. You know chemical or biological weapons are next.

Hypocrites like that surrender-monkey Chirac are only concerned that their countries will be choked off from their energy supply, or destroyed by their Islamofascist illegal immigrant populations.

Frankly, all the leftist apologists who do so much to prop up murderous states like Iran & Syria should give their heads a proper shake.

Agreed, and if we’re gonna envoke the classics I would also like to see the occasional “Pinko-Commi” thrown in.

>Stageleft has posted pictures of Lebanese casualties on his site.

Stageleft has posted what are claimed to be pictures of Lebanese casualties on his site. But, it’s bad enough that they are children who appear to have died violently.

Still, it’s a neat trick to have your clothing remain intact in the bed of a burnt-out pickup truck, isn’t it?

Still, it’s a neat trick to have your clothing remain intact in the bed of a burnt-out pickup truck, isn’t it?

Oh, how transparent. To what are you referring exactly?

I’m on the verge of denouncing whole swathes of people as paid propagandists (or alternately, of using Balb’s CIA PropagandBot hypothesis) if I don’t see more evidence back up what certain people are claiming.

It’s the obloguy that sets off my alarm bells. Why can’t people just come out and say what they’re implying? Sure, you open yourself up potential ridicule, but if that’s the worse thing that happens to you today (as opposed to say, getting blown up) consider yourself lucky.

“Why can’t people just come out and say what they’re implying?”

Because what they’re implying is very stupid, and they need to be in position to deny that’s what they were trying to say.

I am curious, though, as to exactly what lrC is trying to suggest.

lrC, is it your contention that:
- there is really no war in Lebanon? Or, if there IS war in Lebanon;
- that civilian children are actually not dying? Or, if civilian children really ARE dying;
- that for some reason people are not taking pictures of the REAL dying children, but of other live children posed to look like the children who are dying?

Enlighten us, please. Your scepticism about the Abu Ghraib pictures turned out to be erroneous, but heck, you can’t be wrong ALL the time. So what are you suggesting here??

Focus, Labby. Try to stay on track.

Ti-Guy, I tried to post this over at MyBlahg, but I keep getting caught up in Robert’s spam-killer…
There is a word for what you are seeing… it’s called

“Agit-prop”

“No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is nither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.” Alan Bullock, in Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives

Suggested reading “Blink”, and pretty much all the works of Alice Miller — About how large numbers of people can so easily get swept up in their worship of authority and authoritarianism — that they are capable of dismissing anything and indeed violently reacting to anybody who dares to utter sounds that resemble that “jarring dissonance”.

You have to understand — these are very lonely people, who until they found blogs, had nobody to talk to about how much hatred they felt towards various peoples and ideas in their lives. Having found communities on-line where it is safe to indulge in their collective “screaming at the TV” together… they bolster each other on into more and more hysterical rage.

Email me, I’ll send you some book titles that might fascinate ya.

>So…in a country where real children are really being killed by real Israeli bombs, where real grieving parents and friends have access to real cameras…someone posed some dead children for propaganda.

Most grieving parents and friends don’t take pictures of their dead as they lay and then push them onto the web with an exhortation to spread the word. But if you haven’t learned not to take still photographs and short film clips at face value at your age, you likely never will.

>You’d be funny if I didn’t suspect your mind actually does work that way.

The way my mind works is that it picks the inconsistency of alternating suspension of disbelief and resolute skepticism according to political and social views.

IrC is trying to introduce that glimmer of doubt that Conservatives love soooo much - it allows them to not have to care.

I take it you only object to children being killed, and if the photos turn out to be arranged that is just cool with you as long as the correct ends are served?

This is sick.

e-mail me, I’ll send you some book titles that might fascinate ya.

Meaghan, I’ve read as many as I need to. Morris Berman’s dour trilogy, Mark Crispin Miller’s take on the dyslexic emperor-moron, Paul Krugman’s lament for America’s economy, Michael Adams’s (of Environics) take in Fire and Ice and American Backlash and of course, Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback, which I read in 1999.

…I won’t mention Chomsky, since he upsets the wingnuts so much…

I can’t tell from the image. From what I can see, the back end of the truck (where the body is) doesn’t look burnt-out.

In any case, your well-known habit of downplaying/dismissing racism, homophobia and global warming just reveals you to be a rightwing propagandist.

>In any case, your well-known habit of downplaying/dismissing racism, homophobia and global warming just reveals you to be a rightwing propagandist.

A different point of view or hypothesis isn’t wrong just because it’s different. You can’t assume away cognitive dissonance.

>So, lrC, HOW and WHY, in your view, are these photos being faked,

HOW: a body is relocated, or a picture of the aftermath of one event is stated to be a picture of the aftermath of another. Note that it isn’t necessary for the photo to be staged.

WHY: as propaganda, to encourage people to draw a conclusion or adopt a view desired by the propagandist.

My observation doesn’t negate the probability that the pictures are entirely as they are claimed to be. It is simply that the uncertainty of provenance should be assumed by a prudent person, particularly when there appear to be anomalies in the image.

How is questioning the verisimilitude of evidence a marginalization of people or disrespect of civil rights? You seem to be reading a lot of your own demons into my skepticism.

What’s to discuss? If the pictures are genuine, what do you propose to discuss about them? I already know innocent people are being killed. Pictures don’t influence how I feel about that, or increase my desire to see the killing end. My view is that the Israelis should have accepted the battle casualties and gone ahead with decapitation strikes against Hezbollah, but apparently Israel has other ideas.

I already know innocent people are being killed.

Knowing something and seeing the same thing are two completely different things, put a human face on that “something” that people hear about and it’s a different story. Everybody knows there are homeless people on the streets, but they don’t look at them when they go by… it’s easier that way, if they don’t see it they don’t actually have to acknowledge it. Neil Gaimon wrote a great book (Neverwhere) based on the invisable people society doesn’t want to see.

Pictures don’t influence how I feel about that, or increase my desire to see the killing end.

There’s a jaded perspective if I’ve ever seen one. Dead kids on the ground and it doesn’t change how you feel or result in an increase in the desire to see less people die… it speaks volumes.

Being able to feel empathy is considered a sophisticated emotion and by all accounts, is usually a trait of moral people. It doesn’t, by itself, confer greater knowledge, but it does open oneself to the possibility of understanding the issues on the other side.

You of course, would know about that, or at least you pretend not to.

It is false to assume overt displays of empathy are necessary to confirm the presence of empathy.

Absence evidence to the contrary, it’s a legitimate assumption. It can be a mistaken assumption, naturally.

Regardless whether empathy is strongly correlated with moral people, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for a person to be moral.

Are you sure? That sounds awfully Randian to me. Ayn Rand made a big production out defining morality objectively, but her legacy reveals that she was a singularly unempathic person and some ways, quite immoral.

Finally, empathy doesn’t imply sympathy or agreement. It’s not the high horse you think it is. A person who feels empathy for someone and allows that to excuse bad behaviour is less moral than a cold fish who believes two wrongs don’t make a right.

You don’t understand the first thing about empathy. Empathy does not entail excusing bad behaviour. Where did you ever learn this? You’re confusing empathy with moral relativism.

So, if I understand you correctly, IrC, you’re saying you’re an insufferable bore.

Is that correct, or am I misreading you?

Hey, let’s vote.

>IrC, what happens if I say that empathy is a prerequisite to sympathy, and compassion and is what seperates the mentally disordered from the sane - although not sufficient for moral behaviour, it is a necessity. Your personal belief vs. mine! MOOAHAHA!.

You can prove anything if you make up your data (ie. your premises). If any of your premises is garbage, your conclusion is unproven. For example: “I say that empathy is a prequisite to sympathy”. If that’s not demonstrably true, then your conclusion is unproven. “I say” is roughly equivalent to, “I pull out of my ass”, so there you go.

>Nothing IrC, with his objectivist, mechanistic worldview can say will change my mind.

Nothing you can say to a die-hard creationist about other theories of genesis and evolution will change his mind. You have your articles of faith, he has his. One is always free to take comfort in beliefs, but unproven beliefs are simply an irrational and hollow refuge of the mind. If you need to lock onto some wierd ideas about empathy and morality in order to promote or suggest some abstract and unsupported sense of superiority, your ego is the personality disorder here.

And once again I note that it isn’t necessary to be a drama queen about empathy in order to have empathy.

IrC: And you’ve proven your beliefs how? Defined morality how? Used what source? Proven that morals are objective how?
My point is identical to yours, in that your opinion regarding morality and empathy is utterly as marked with feces as ours. Morality, dear sir, is not something that we can objectively measure on a scale or with a ruler, which is why they’re STILL fighting it out in philosophy departments. Are we after the maximal good? The individual? Do the ends justify the means, or are the means an end in themselves?

As for empathy being a precursor to sympathy; I was making a side point about how morality and empathy is a matter of perspective, but in terms of straight definitions I could be sympathetic without empathy. On the other hand, empathetic people often end up with a compassionate outlook.

Here, I’ll try again to make the point about relativism: I might well have said “empathy is a precursor to being interesting”. I find sociopathology and lack of imagination deeply boring. And also, in my culture, deeply insane. (Sanity, as any ab.psych student will tell you, is more cultural than scientific. Insane is a legal term.) Dealing with someone who lacks empathy is sort of like dealing with someone stupid. You can explain stuff to them, but it won’t stick.

Would you now like to tell us that the colour red is unenjoyable?

>IrC: And you’ve proven your beliefs how? Defined morality how? Used what source? Proven that morals are objective how?

The way it works is this: you put an argument up for consideration, and it is evaluated on its own merits. “You have no ideas of your own, therefore mine are true” is not a proof.

>My point is identical to yours, in that your opinion regarding morality and empathy is utterly as marked with feces as ours.

No. What I wrote approximates a disproof by contradiction. If the hypothesis is that empathy is a necessary prerequisite for moral behaviour, the disproof only requires one person to exhibit good morals without any particular capability or expression of empathy. The exception disproves the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is that empathy is a sufficient prerequisite for moral behaviour, the disproof only requires one person who has empathy but exhibits weak moral thought. There may be some correlations, but empathy isn’t a gatekeeper criterion for deciding who can be moral or who exhibits stronger patterns of moral thought and behaviour.

>I find sociopathology and lack of imagination deeply boring. And also, in my culture, deeply insane

Good for you. How does that relate to empathy? Some qualities of a person require overt displays - joviality, for example - but empathy isn’t one of them.

You seem to be confusing the objective and subjective ideas of morality. The objective idea is that acts and outcomes are either right or wrong: one can’t redefine good and evil; that part is well-defined. The subjective idea is that one can decide (”define”) whether one will follow those precepts more, or less; that is the part of morality that is whatever you define it to be. When you propose that morality can be defined, you’re simply proposing that there will be rules you’re going to try to follow and rules which you’re going to ignore or discount. You don’t actually change the rules, because you can’t. What is “good” and what is “evil” are determined by deductive reasoning; if a conclusion is sound, the inquiry must arrive at the same conclusion every time you revisit it unless you truly have overlooked a premise.

A person who can examine a situation or proposal and say “that’s good” or “that’s bad” without needing an emotional goad doesn’t need empathy (whether he has it or not) to be moral. Regardless whether he has it, there are no magic credentials to be established by displaying it. There seems to be a misconception among some here that an expressive personality is necessary.

I’m not sure what prompts you to claim that a person who lacks empathy or has little of it, or doesn’t feel bound to express it, lacks imagination. Is there a particular flavour of imagination you meant?

I assume by “antisocial” you mean the clinical definition, and are not just referring to people who simply happen to not be gregarious.