Important anti-Semitism Alert re: France

Dear Friends, Recent reports out of the Jewish Community in
France are sounding very ominous. The Jewish people in France have had a long
history, and events of the past few years have created an atmosphere of fear and
danger for the 600,000 Jewish citizens who continue to reside there. In a
pattern that is reproducing itself throughout Europe and in some cases beyond
Europe, France's Muslim populations are growing exponentially, (now estimated to
number 5 to 6 million) and the younger members of the Muslim population are
acting to promote extremism and anti-Semites. "Nowhere have the flames of
anti-Semites burned more furiously than in France" declared one member of the
French Jewish Community anxiously in an e-mail he circulated amongst his peers,
trying to raise awareness and take more of a proactive stance in combating the
alarming trend. Here are a few examples of some of the most recent occurrences
that have created such uneasiness for our Jewish brethren living in France.

Here is part of the email that I keep receiving from some of my (good) friends. Following this paragraph is a list of "facts" that happened in France. I am not going argue the veracity of those incidents (even though for some of them, I know they're never occurred) but my point is that we're all facing nowadays one of the dangers of the Internet through that kind of emails. They say whatever we want to hear (here, the bias that France is country full of antisemitics looking to kill Jews) and is written is a way that would call up to the emotion of the reader: Yes, you probably already guessed it:Propaganda.

Prisoners, by Jeffrey Goldberg.

As we’re trying to change the world in terms of trust in the Medias, somebody started before us… His name is Jeffrey Goldberg. Born in the U.S. he grew up Shomer Hatzair (Israeli left wing) and moved to Israel to serve in the Army. He served in an Israeli prison for Palestinians arrested during the first Intifada. Over there he made some “friends” prisoners with whom he keeps in touch until today. It's the story of his life, his questions (he could be defined as centrist ) and his doubts about the political agenda of Israel and the Palestinians today. What’s really impressive is that he always separates himself from the topic (it’s called objectivity) and in one point of the book, while he is in the middle of Gaza talking to one of his friends who tells him how he wants to kill of the Jews, his answer was “But I’m Jewish”. I really appreciated the fact that Goldberg shows us how it is still possible to not be bias to a sensitive topic as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is. (If anybody wants to borrow the book, feel free to ask)

Exposed by Glenn Beck (pay attention to what he says in the beggining... and the rest as well)

"Can one make fun of Nazism?"Walter Moers "No,one MUST do so"

Lapdog

In his article titled “Lapdogs”, Eric Boehlert argues that some MSM are sold to Bush’s administration. He proves that the night before invading Iraq, the press conference was a joke, Bush had all the answers and planned before whom to ask. Eternal debate: Bush is a politician, he would do anything to have the support of the citizens but Bush is also the President and shouldn’t lie or fake press conferences. I’d like to know, according to Boehlert, if he can find a place where power and money aren’t associated to corruption and lies. I am sure he is a very smart man, and his point is like “discovering” that Santa Claus never existed. Yes, Bush manipulates people. What were you expecting? That he would tell you the truth and just the truth? He lives in a world of lies, where around him everybody lies. If he wants to survive, he has to play by the rules.

Free Speech?

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/showbiz/2006/11/19/b.anderson.nword.cnn&wm=10

Hitler's speech.

Freedom of Speech

I know! I was supposed to blog about a particular website... But last night, I went for my second time to The Museum of Tolerance in L.A. And overthere, I saw about Nazi Propaganda. I saw posters, Newspapers, speeches from Hitler.... Propaganda can be irrational and not necessarily calling for emotions, and still works. The Nazi were accusing the Jews of being at the same time Communists and Capitalists, richs and poors, smart and stupid ect. When people are depressed, looking for impossible solutions, they're ready to listen, believe to anything they would be told. Which brings us to the question of freedom of speech. If we know that during those crucials situations, freedom of speech could be employed to propagate some messages of hatred, should we limit the First Amenment? Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that one of the particularity of America was a total freedom of speech. There is no other country in the world like America when it comes to freedom of speech. Should we responsabilze the people and teach them how to use this right? Or the fact to do so would be unconstitutional because it would be considerate like conditionning and thus limiting this right?

Aristotle and the Origine of the Propaganda

One of the aspects of Propaganda is Emotion that O’Shaughnessy describes beautifully through Aristotle’s example. Aristotle distinguished Pathos from Ethos and Logos. In rhetoric, pathos is the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgment. Ethos could be explained as the integrity of the author and its persuasion, while Logos means that the argument is based on rationality. I think it’s interesting to see how the author shows us that propaganda is not something new, but can be found already in the Greek Antique. So often we hear elders saying “back in my time, when we could still read newspapers…” well, after a course like the one we’re taking now this couldn’t be accepted anymore

Sam Brownback in YU

According to Sen. Sam Brownback, the Republicans lost the elections because of the following reasons: 1) War in Irak; 2) Corruption 3) Bringing up big questions to the public like Immigration and not solving them and 4) Most of the times, when it's the last mandat of the President, his party loses at the last Midterms.
What came out good from those elections, according to him, was that the Democrats runned using the Republicans values.
Brownback also point out how interesting it would be if a seat from the Supreme Court would opened withing the next two years, to see what kind of debate will occurs then.

I won't be surprized if that was made by the Republicans...

Propaganda again

Polls Again

Very interesting Polls from Al-Jazeera. Which reminded me our conversations about people read the media that they like (and why do you like them so much???)

In one hand I have this article from The Australian, and in another one I have this video clip from www.crankydocs.blogspot.com . In the video clip, I was told that the Midterms elections are elections were my vote doesn’t count. The percentage of reelection is really high, and the same “representatives” would get an incredible amount of money from the lobbies for their campaign. They’re corrupt and do not mind to use calumny or else to get rid of potentials adversaries. The Australian writes about the Midterm Elections in the U.S. where, according to him, the Democratic Party will win the majority in both houses, and thus because of the unsuccessful war in Iraq, launched by the Republicans. Hold on, I thought people weren’t going to vote (according to that video clip, they don’t.) And even if they do… they don’t matter, because the same people are reelected anyway.
The author continues and warns us that it “would be wrong to suppose that Democratic success will bring an immediate change in US foreign policy, especially on Iraq. President George W. Bush will still be in the White House, and having firmly backed his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, will keep US forces in Iraq until either the chaos is brought under control or an appropriate exit strategy is devised.” Already, we can see an effort from the author to understand the American Political System.
Finally the author concludes two things: the Democratic Party could withdraw the allocation of funds to Iraq, like it was made in Vietnam (but it wasn’t such a happy end). And that objectively, Bush’s Administration did a good job regarding the economy, but it won’t matter, because they’re judge on Iraq.
What was interesting in this article was to see how The Australian could simplify the Midterm Elections in twenty lines. The Democratic Party will win because of Iraq, but it won’t really change anything. It is a way of propaganda towards the Australians readers, who don’t know that much about American Politics and will find this argument suitable to whatever believe they hold.

Approved or not?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/archive/?poll_id=19
How many times have you heard “the President’s approval rating decreased by 5 points”? Have you ever asked yourselves why? Have you ever asked yourselves how the poll was conduct? What kinds of questions were asked? In what order? How many people were parts of that poll? How were they chosen?
In this