The Death Of Individual Perspective

"While researchers said they were not surprised by the overall level of support for curtailing civil liberties, they were startled by the correlation with religion and exposure to television news.

?We need to explore why these two very important channels of discourse may nurture fear rather than understanding,? Shanahan said."

Why are they surprised?

Most American (and a disturbingly increasing amount of Oz news) focuses on only the most sensational of stories, with no rational backgrounding - I am surprised MORE are not hysterical - especially if they glut themselves on the likes of Fox.

As for the religious - the US has a lot of christian fundamentalists - need I say more?


The sad thing is, the mirror figures in many Islamic countries - even traditionally sane and tolerant ones like Indonesia - are showing a rise in the normal citizenry who support a view that the west is the enemy and supporting the use of terror to defend themselves (a recent poll in Indonesia - whose methods I have not looked up, so I cannot vouch for its absolute randomness etc - but it was expecting to find a very different result - found that 57% of Indonesians polled were now starting to support terrorism to defend Islam against attacks from places like the US and Australia.


Oh brave new world!

Ah yes, shall we return to the days of yesteryear when the motto was Travel to far away distant lands. Meet different and exotic people. And kill them.
Why heck no! Now due to internationalism/multiculturalism we just need to walk down our sidewalk no matter where we live and find different and exotic people who aren't exactly like us. It's like we have fear and hatred catered right to our doorstep supersized.

Another way you could look at this "poll" is that 70% or so did not support requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived.

Nearly 80% do not favor racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats?

70% do not think undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

Hysterical? 3,000 were murdered here and to my knowledge not one mosque or Muslim school was attacked.

Contrast that to one man being murdered by a Muslim in Holland and the numerous mosques, schools and churches that have been burned to the ground there.

Perspective? Indeed.

Not to create a blame game, there are shovel loads of it to be spread in all directions, but a major model for the sensationalism and partisanship that passes for news these days comes out of Ruppert MurdocH's organization, The News Corporation.

Indeed - he started in my home town - and his global octopus was - until this very year - technically centred here.

He's all American now, though, after digging England's gutter press into deeper holes than even it ever imagined. He took out citizenship years ago.

If only we were as easily rid of his media outlets.