I'll try to be gentle: It wasn't clear. The O.P. quoted news about Gaza, the two links pertained to photo editing, and the title is "We're overdue a Mid East thread" ... it might be difficult to limit this tread to just Lebanon. Especially now that Israel/Palestine have already been discussed.
It was clear to me when I started it, though I restated it's purpose to avoid any ambiguity, and did so prior to Stretcher's post, which was in direct response to yours which did relate to Lebanon.
This wasn't really about the photo, I seriously doubt it's the first, or will be the last - it's only distingishing feature is the poor quality of the faking.
The thread was about the escalating situation in Lebanon. The fake photo element was meant to indicate that in terms of mainstream media reporting such events, things are seldom what they seem.
I wasn't and am not trying to limit the discussion to Lebanon I was merely restating it's initial focus because that may
not have been 100% clear.
He's not entirely off-base from a USA perspective. What he wrote alludes to what many Americans believe: the Islamic "silent majority" isn't taking a strong stand against radicalism and terrorism. By being mum or reticent, they're tacitly approving it and therefore culpable. There aren't enough moslems who'll shout "No!" to the radicals and terrorists. That a "right-wing" view and I go along with it somewhat.
It was these that got my attention:
The wife-beating, raping,lying, honor-killing, pedophile-led people who practically invented(or coinvented) suicide-bomb modern terrorism, crocidile tears oppression PR and islamofascism.
What they call culture is teaching kids to blow themselves up(even most animals won't do that), murder women and children and sing songs about blood drinking jews and the infidel. The ones who stand around in western aid bought Nike shoes and burn our flag and defile the holy sites of judeaism and christianity by using the church of the nativity in bethlehem as a urinal(literally).
and later,
I'm anti-muslim, but that doesn't make me racist. I think the religion is stupid and evil.
To me, they're sweeping, simplistic, predjuced generalisations and I called them as such. I did say when I replied that that I noted the post was posted as a rant so I didn't give it too much credence, but it seems he was serious.
To make a crude parallel it's about as sensible as calling all Christians child abusers, homophobes and racists because
some of it's more vocal proponents are and by association condemning the entire religion, all its members
because of those few and, by association the rest for not speaking out loudly enough against such behaviour. That logic would condemn the entire Human Race for
something.
I wasn't commenting on his
perspective or that of the US, merely on the veracity, logic and value of his views as I saw them. Last time I checked, and it's been stated here recently, condemning an entire group by the actions of a few is the definition of predjudice or, at least
this one. We've also had the silence = approval thread recently too and I said there that I thought that principle is fundamentally unsound.
As it happens I do believe that such generalisations are at least in part responsible for perpetuating this situation by hardening attitudes based on them, rather than seeling an objective understanding of the root causes, murky as they may be.
It's anyone's right to have any opinion as it's mine to disagree with it and say so. I wasn't alone in doing so although that's also irrelevant.
No need to be gentle, I won't be.:biggrin1: