Should the UK leave the European Union?

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Belindi
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Belindi »

Eduk , irresponsible journalism causes alarm and despondency where its not justified by facts.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Eduk »

Eduk , irresponsible journalism causes alarm and despondency where its not justified by facts.
I agree. What has that got to do with democracy. We have free speech. You are free to lie as much as you wish (within the law). As is the press. What is the alternative?
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Eduk wrote: September 4th, 2018, 11:13 am No intention of answering for Thomas. But there is no law stating that the Daily Mail must be read?
There is no law mandating the reading of Mein Kampf either. But in a state where all you have to read is Mein Kampf then we have a problem.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Eduk »

I have no idea what point you are trying to make Thomas? Neither Mein Kampf nor the Daily Mail are all that there is available to read?
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Eduk wrote: September 4th, 2018, 11:40 am I have no idea what point you are trying to make Thomas? Neither Mein Kampf nor the Daily Mail are all that there is available to read?
That is exactly the point.

MSM is owned by a tiny minority of rich corporate interests and have no hope of representing the people. Aside from Newspapers the ITV is also in the hands of a oligarchy and the BBC has long lost the last vestiges of impartiality.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Eduk »

How did you find out this information Thomas? Did you read it somewhere? Or are you an investigative journalist?
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Eduk wrote: September 4th, 2018, 6:08 pm How did you find out this information Thomas? Did you read it somewhere? Or are you an investigative journalist?
Did I find out that water goes down, or that **** stinks? Do I need to be a journalist to find that out?
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Eduk »

Which is it Thomas. Either the free press are a huge threat to democracy or it is as easy to see their bias as it is to tell water goes down?
It's like you are saying cliffs are a huge threat to all life except for you who can obviously just see them because you are the only awake person.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

Eduk wrote: September 5th, 2018, 2:47 pm Which is it Thomas. Either the free press are a huge threat to democracy or it is as easy to see their bias as it is to tell water goes down?
It's like you are saying cliffs are a huge threat to all life except for you who can obviously just see them because you are the only awake person.
I think there are a couple of false dichotomies in here. Perhaps TH has them also, I haven't followed the whole thing, but I will respond just to what I see here.

Some thing can be easy to notice, for example, if someone can deal with cognitive dissonence. Or if one has had experiences that make one more skeptical of consensus expert or 'expert' opinion. So the ease is dependent on factors in the one noticing.

I had experiences when I was a child with a kind of authority, and expert authority with mainstream consensus support. I noticed that what at first seemed like an exceptional failure was a systematic one. This has made it easier for me to notice inconsistancies, absurdities, etc. in mainstream experts. Someone for whom it would be a current emotional shock to find out that expert consensus is or even might be wrong, is less likely to find it easy to notice.

Also, I am not sure he has asserted that he is the only awake person. IOW you may think it is everybody vs. TH, when in fact this is part of the ongoing constructed myth.

You and I may disagree, but the assumptions should not get hopped over regardless.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Eduk »

Cliffs are not an existential threat to humanity, as a whole, because they are well understood and easily seen and can be allowed for simply. Doesn't seem like a false dichotomy to me.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

Eduk wrote: September 5th, 2018, 7:13 pm Cliffs are not an existential threat to humanity, as a whole, because they are well understood and easily seen and can be allowed for simply. Doesn't seem like a false dichotomy to me.
I may not be getting the metaphor, but it seems to me something can be a threat if you don't notice it, but it can be easy to notice it if you are willing/can deal with what that entails.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Eduk »

That's my point, Karpel, yes. Thomas is saying we live in a state in which only mein kampf is available to read.
Obviously that's a ridiculous statement as through the internet alone I can read almost everything ever written.
Obviously that's a ridiculous statement because even if you take one of the worst offending papers in the UK such as the daily mail it is a long long way from being mein kampf.
Obviously that is a ridiculous statement because if mein kampf were the only available thing to read anywhere then where would you have read criticism for mein kampf? Where would your sources reside?
Thomas said it was obvious that everything is mein kampf, as obvious as water running down. If that is the case then I fail to see the threat.
Everyone is biased. It's impossible not to be biased. The question is biased in which direction and to what extent. For example I am biased towards quality of life.
Also back to the original point. So what if newspaper X is biased. We allow free speech. This is a democracy. The owner of newspaper X is living in the same democracy. You can argue that the owner of newspaper X is a negative influence. You can argue they have undue influence. Personally I am slightly with Thomas in that the threat is obvious. But my conclusion therefore is that perhaps newspaper X only has the influence that it is granted.
I mean I would love to live in a world free from misinformation. But banning free speech is not, I think, a path to such a world.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

Eduk wrote: September 6th, 2018, 3:31 am
Sure, but I took that as hyperbole. And much of what I haven't quoted here that you mention.
Also back to the original point. So what if newspaper X is biased. We allow free speech. This is a democracy. The owner of newspaper X is living in the same democracy. You can argue that the owner of newspaper X is a negative influence. You can argue they have undue influence. Personally I am slightly with Thomas in that the threat is obvious. But my conclusion therefore is that perhaps newspaper X only has the influence that it is granted.
I mean I would love to live in a world free from misinformation. But banning free speech is not, I think, a path to such a world.
For me the problem is not that a rage of opinions and positions are unavailable that there is a massed center that tend to represent certain interests. So yes, you can find the left or righty journal or something online to criticie that massed center, but the massed center effectively marginalizes other ideas to the fringe. A la The Manufacturing of Consent, whch was written way in a time when there was much more diversity in the mainstream.
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Eduk »

For me the problem is not that a rage of opinions and positions are unavailable that there is a massed center that tend to represent certain interests. So yes, you can find the left or righty journal or something online to criticie that massed center, but the massed center effectively marginalizes other ideas to the fringe.
Can you provide me some examples?
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

It is never really talked about that the war in Syria is not a civil war but a proxy war. The US France and Britain wanted to destabilize Syria for a number of reasons and sent either directly or via Saudia Arabia or Turkey weopons and other support to groups that included what became ISIS. They did this even when warned by parts of their intelligence communities that they likely would create something like ISIS and that it would grow. The West is not just standing on the sidelines, helping refugees, and calling for Asad to be moral, but in fact created a civil war with pretty aweful consequences for the country and destabilized relations with Russia to an extreme degree. Then there's the chemical weapons Assad claims. We hear about the claims, but we do not hear how they never manage to get confirmed. And in fact, Hersh, I think it was found solid evidence that the rebels used chem weapons right as Obama was making ground troops noises.

So the whole refugee crisis, right wing populist politicians on the rise, Russia as bad guy in Syria - Russia was the first one to actually go after ISIS like a country with a modern military can - is in a false context. It is not simply happening, it is something that was set in motion because Neo-cons have wanted to get into Syria - they've gottne in a bunch of other places already in accordance with their project for a new century blueprints. None of this means Assad is a good guy or Putin either.

But it is a context that shifts all the debates about the influx of refugees and then the Syria situation itself. And yes, you can confirm most of this in mainstream sources where it is however mentioned very passingly and in the finer print.

There should be huge calls for criticism of Western policies in destabilizing Syria. In fact, the knowledge that this refugee crisis is Western created can actually unify right and left activists and organizations, rather than having them split around populists and lefty anti-populists.

But this is overwhelmed by news that contextualizes the crisis there in other ways.
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