Re: Joe's anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon 16 Jun 2003 - 22:07:08 GMT

  • Next message: Dace: "Science as Idea & Meme"

    >From: joedees@bellsouth.net
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >Subject: Re: Joe's anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks
    >Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:44:11 -0500
    >
    >From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net>
    >To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    >Subject: Re: Joe's anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks
    >Date sent: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 10:12:10 -0700
    >Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >
    > > > From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
    > > >
    > > > I didn't find Dace's Nazion post particularly illuminating nor your
    > > > biased responses helpful either. Dace comes in with his
    > > > Chomsky-esque bias
    > > against
    > > > Israel and you retaliate with posts which make essays from the
    > > > pro-Israeli magazine _Commentary_ look like opinion pieces from the
    > > > pro-Palestinian _Washington Report on Middle East Affairs_ by
    > > > comparison.
    > > >
    > > > Your respective biases show through. You are each offering apologia
    > > > for
    > > your
    > > > own sides. There's no objectivity there,
    > >
    > > That Israel is systematically oppressing Palestine, in a manner
    > > similar to South African aparthied, is an objectively verifiable fact.
    > > That you cannot accept this fact demonstrates your own bias.
    > >
    > > > I suppose I'll play Switzerland and maintain my neutrality.
    > >
    > > Try to get beyond the Switzerland meme and evaluate which side is
    > > telling the truth and which side is willfully blind to it.
    > >
    >That is indeed Scott's problem; it is incorrect to attempt to be
    >evenhanded between genocidal homicide bombers and the authorities
    >who target them in order to protect their own citizens. One cannot be
    >objective and eithical, and at the same time be morally neutral to the
    >difference. Dace's problem is that he is a terrorist sympathizer, who
    >attempts to rationalize such intentional acts of naked genocide.
    >
    >
    That I'm taking flak from both Joe and Dace (ie- both value-laden extremes) must mean something. Both of you are proving the point that many list members would agree with, that these topics are too hot-buttony to discuss without this forum turning into a wrestling arena. Lawry's recent idea about creating another list for Middle East topics (he actually IIRC was more specific regarding the war in Iraq) may be a way of easing the pressure off the list.

    My contribution will be in not responding either to Joe or Dace with regards to anything biased towards their respective POV's wrt Middle East topics, though I may repond to them on other topics.

    If somebody such as Keith Henson posts something interesting wrt his ideas about terrorism and its ideological etiology or somebody else makes a reasonably objective post in the future along the lines of cultural evolution, ideology and the Arab-Israeli conflict or terrorism in the Middle East, I reserve the right to respond. For instance I think Vincent had made a critique of an abstract (one of many abstracts posted by Derek Gatherer) about terrorism and the media as a putative source of contagion. It would be a bad thing to keep either Keith or Vincent from making cogent posts just because they touch on these issues. That's the problem, where's the line drawn? Wade just made a post about propaganda put forth promoting Saudi Arabia. Is he at fault for this?

    _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon 16 Jun 2003 - 22:15:54 GMT