BTW, don’t tell me anyone here actually believes that the “assault weapon” (whatever that is) ban was a good idea? The “assault weapons” ban is one of the most idiotic pieces of legislation ever crafted. It basically says that weapons that “look” bad are banned regardless of the fact that all guns operate basically on the same mechanism. It would be like banning a make of car because it “looks fast” ignoring what’s under the hood.

Ah yes, being “only” semi-auto makes everything okay!

I can’t wait until we start discussing the finer points of “Assault” rifles vs. “Battle” rifles.

Or, people who use the word “clip”, when the correct term is “magazine” (and I have used 5-round strips/clips to load 20-round magazines for an M-14).

thanks

Why are you so worked up about a few government agents with machine guns? This is the desired end-game of gun control. “When guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns.” Are you angry that the “gun free paradise” you live in is actually awash in guns, only they are in the hands of people you dont trust?

I remember when Hinkley shot Reagan – and all of a sudden Uzi’s “appeared” in the hands of several Secret Service agents. Lots of discussion about the “briefcases” some agents carried.

Anyway, I think we can all agree that San Francisco is not Beirut. Of course, neither is the current-day Beirut.

So there is no excuse for some idiot pointing a weapon into a crowd, or for the American escort to tolerate – and thereby condone – such behavior.

We have a fair chunk of wandering Kiwis and Ozzies in my neck of the woods who have NZ or A on their chiddies [a delightful, modern Navajo word]. It may be that the “A” is produced to keep Australians mellow — like the same products offered, Stateside.

I’ll keep looking.

Otherwise, keep lambasting the cop-outs who claim to be journalists.

The trouble is that those who repeatedly make this allegation bloat the amount and really couldn’t care less about a just peace or whether Arafat or the PA is corrupt. Its only real purpose is to undermine (at least in American minds) the legitimacy of the Palestinians’ claim to recover at least the lands stolen since 1967. The PA is corrupt, so Israel has another excuse to keep troops and settlers in the Occupied Territories, another reason for routing the wall outside Israel’s borders, another reason to delay coming to the peace table.

http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/carcodes.htm

the site is in Belgium incidentally…

Just a side note about the car badge, though. If it had an “A” — and also an Austrian flag or the word “Austria” on it, this was something produced for sale to anglophones. The Austrian insurance badge [which is what they are -- confirming your car is insured in the EU] has an “O” on it for Osterreich.

“A” insurance badges are for Australia, I believe.

Otherwise, I can’t comment on your experience without losing my temper even more than usual. I class the thugs who work for thugs somewhere down around car-jackers. I’ve been a bodyguard in a few scary political situations — and know in detail what that requires. It doesn’t include waving around your heat or threatening innocent bystanders. That was a gangster appropriate to the thief he was guarding.

John, there may be a diehard bunch of educated, interested people who will watch news in order to be informed, but most people float in and out of the audience based on their interest in the story.

The glorification of celebrity began and is continued by forces far more numerous and powerful (emotionally, not politically) than news coverage, including our inborn desire for celebrity. To be celebrated just for being us. I really think news organizations are following the culture, not leading it.

Meanwhile, “john”:
Come on. It’s common knowledge in Palestine, let alone the rest of the world, that Arafat, the PA, and Fatah were and are corrupt. Given his reputation with his own followers, he’d be a moron not to have something stashed away. You act like a corruption charge is a horrible slander against his great name.

Talking about Arafat and the Palestinians the way they are, as well as Israelis and the way they are (just as brutal and prejudiced), is not a convenience or mask of the “real issues”. It’s frank assessment of reality, which is the only thing that will allow peace to move forward.

This leads me to read between the lines of “N”’s post above. He wants journalists to “impartially, thoroughly, inform the public”. While I believe British journalism does this better than most in the US, when people say something like this, they usually mean “tell the reader my side’s take on the story”. There’s a lot of pressure to provide more “sophisticated, in-depth” coverage, which invariably means analysis embedded in a story but passing as reporting of facts. The most common example is when the reporter throws in some background information in a sentence or paragragh like “The President has been pressured to blah, blah” or “There’s a growing chorus questioning blah”, which 60% of the time is a fair and necessary summary of the situation, and the rest of the time is debatable and strikes of bias.
I guess I’m saying that in many cases “thorough” and “impartial” can be contradictory goals in reporting, unless the reporter is very disciplined.

But most people don’t care, they just want to hear analysis that jibes with their world-view, so they don’t have to do the analysis themselves, or think about the other side of the issue. OR, not so pathetic, they want to hear opinions (and “reporting/analysis”) from those who share their premises about how the world works. No one wants to hear the rantings of a diehard Communist on why our economy does not work perfectly. Same goes in many cases for most news. No reporting is perfectly impartial, so you might as well get yours from someone whose glasses are tinted the same color as your own.

And editors give them what they want, because Fox News proves that that works for ratings. See first paragraph above.

I have to take issue with you regarding your repetition of the allegation that Arafat had money stashed away. It’s a very convenient pro Israel story and an irrelvance that only serves to mask Israel’s theft of Arab-settled lands and a century of ethnic cleansing.

John

Newspapers are in the business of selling ads. That is reality. Whatever they have to print, to increase circulation, to sell more ads, is what they will do. It is simply a fact that discussing a movie that millions of people want to see has more appeal than discussing an event that only effected a few hundred.

Is this right? Not really. But then again, I don’t read newspapers, so I don’t care. When I travel to the States I actually find all your news sources appauling. Everything (save the Internet) your masses have access to is sensationalistic tripe, often on just this side of propaganda.

I would love it if journalists believed in their duty to impartially, thoroughly, inform the public, and that their editors let them do that, unobstructed. However, now that the MTV generation (yup, that’s me) rules the world, and we’ve become accustomed to comfortably digestable 15 second sound bites, I don’t know that we’re going to want to move to a thoughtful, thinking, debating society. That just doesn’t appear to be the way the tide is turning.