In fact, religion IS politics (in disguise maybe)

well, a tool of the political

Mao called it Opium -but it’s more than that

Do you think we’re all such simpletons? You clearly think I am. I did not say we were to blame. I said that we needed to accept some responsibility for why peope might hate us. Your tendency to blow things out to the most extreme interpretation is not conducive to constructive self-reflection or problem solving.

Do they hate us simpy because we’re not Muslim? Certainly, some use that rhetoric and others are trained from childhood to believe it. But I don’t believe it’s at the core. I do believe that within Islam there is plenty of room for peaceful coexistence. Religion is being used and skewed to serve political purposes.

So, you don’t think we’ve ever done anything to deserve scorn from Middle Easterners? We’ve had a benign or only constructive influence?

It said;

“18% absentia from poles in Nicaraguan election”

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525841951&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

“Israel says BBC not reporting war fairly”

Gil Hoffman, THE JERUSALEM POST

Aug. 10, 2006

“The Foreign Ministry is under pressure from Israeli citizens to resume its boycott of the BBC and to withdraw credentials from its reporters due to “one-sided” reports on the war in Lebanon, Israeli diplomatic officials said Wednesday.

For seven months during a wave of Palestinian violence in 2003, Israeli officials boycotted BBC news programs, declining interviews and excluding BBC reporters from briefings. The boycott was ended after the BBC appointed a panel to oversee its Middle East coverage and to ensure it would be unbiased.

The diplomatic officials said the network had not been reporting the war fairly. Senior diplomatic officials in Jerusalem went as far as saying that “the reports we see give the impression that the BBC is working on behalf of Hizbullah instead of doing fair journalism.”

…….”

Middle Ground in the Middle East?

Audio available at 11:05 a.m.

The war in Lebanon continues. There’s speculation about an expanded conflict involving Syria and Iran. This leads to a question: where’s the middle ground in the Middle East now? Today on Weekday we’ll find out who the moderates are on all sides. And we’ll ask what they’re thinking. What proposals have a chance of bringing the various sides together?

Guests:

Ellis Goldberg is an expert on middle east politics and a political science professor at the University of Washington.

Daniel Levy was a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative.

Walid Jumblatt is a Druze leader who sparked the Cedar Revolution in February 2005. He heads Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party.

http://www.kuow.org/programs/weekday.asp

It will be available as a streaming archive, and it podcasts too.

It will also stream ‘live’ again at 12:00 (Midnight) Eastern (Friday, officially, but Thursday night) / 9:00 PM Pacific (Thursday night) here: http://www.kxot.org

Why do they always have to ruin a good story.Is there any way we can pass legislation outlawing these bloggers.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3288887,00.html

New York Times ‘used fraudulent photo’

“Man seen ‘dead’ in Beirut photo essay appears in other photos from same scene up and walking around, blog blasts ‘unbelievable fraud’”

Yaakov Lappin

I am not suprised that you would blame the US for the attack on the WTC and the murder of 3000.

Try this thought experiment, Ask yourself what if we didn’t do anything to provoke that attack? What if the Islamic murderers blame us for not being Muslim?

How would you handle such a fact.

Do you think we should all become Muslims? Are you ready to live under Shariah? Or are you a Muslim already?

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/ny-times-hezbollah-photo-dust-up.html

The NY Times Hezbollah Photo Dust Up

At the time we were not at war with anyone. and we were not occupying any foreign land. That seems to me to be a somwhat bizzare line of thinking. Wanting to know who did this seems more like a better first thought.