OT: Rating the President

[Krsqk]

Originally posted by E. Albright:
Your numbers are off. Taking a quick look at the UN Charter, we can note that the relevant Chapters are IV and V.

Oops. *prepares to be sued*

One must note something you've failed to mention: the difference is General Assembly v. Security Council decisions. And actually, plenty of people (outside of the mainstream American media, anyway) have commented on the fact that the GA passes resolutions against Israel, but the SC never seems to. See, there's a very simple reason for this: to pass a SC resolution against Israel, the US veto would have to be evaded. And that's NOT gonna happen.

1) You don't win if you don't try; 2) You're not going to get a country to pass a SC resolution demanding things unacceptable to its ally. Great Britain's not going to demand that we return Hawaii to the natives, either, although there's a movement for that.

This does bring up another interesting double standard, however. The media made noise Last fall about how the French or Russian veto threats that were stalling the proposal of anti-Iraqi SC resolutions represented naught but special-interest efforts to benefit a client state. Now, why doesn't the (US mainstream) media talk mention the obvious parallel to a lack of pro-Palestinien SC resolutions? (Aside from the fact that the mainstream US media prefers to forget that the Palestiniens exist, of course...)

I'm not a mind-reader, but it's not for any supposed symapthy for the Israelis on the part of the media. They lean more toward headlines like "Israelis Attack Settlement; 25 Palestinian Children Die." Then, near the end of the article, they bury a half-sentence or so stating that the intended target was the group of gunmen hiding in the middle of the children. I can't seem to find too many articles which "forget" the existence of the Palestinians. The NY Times, for example, seems quite aware of them. The AP and Reuters articles printed in the Orlando Sentinel and its parent, the Chicago Tribune, are also frequently pro-Palestinian.

This brings up a point which always irks me. Papers always defend themselves against claims of bias by pointing to their editorials. No one's complaining of bias on the opinion page; it's the slant of the news that matters. It's like a cattle farmer claiming to run a zoo because he keeps a dog on his porch. "See? We don't just have cows!"

[ February 04, 2003, 15:44: Message edited by: Krsqk ]