[alicebot-aiethics] FWD: War business

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

> The real questions are, how many more people in her area 
> believe as she does, and where are they getting their 
> information.  I would hate to think this is information 
> passed on by her government.

Well, she appears to be from Thailand, so I'd guess that her theory is
not from her government, but rather is the product of her association
with a very large international class of people who have a deep mistrust
of the American government's motives (a group with which I often find
myself sympathetic). Not that I believe a word of the load of crap she's
presenting as "facts" (although it is probably safe to say that American
defense contractors gave each other high-fives and smoked some cuban
cigars in their board rooms on September 12).

Today's episode of the NPR Radio program "This American Life" opens with
an extended interview with a Palestinian-American family who gets their
news exclusively from arab satellite news programs. Very scary stuff -
for example, it was widely believed in the Arab world that 4,000
Israelis didn't show up for work in the WTC September 11 because the
attack was planned by Israel. 
   http://www.thislife.org/ra/196.ram

It made me think of two things:

1) I think it might be a good idea for the US to work a hell of a lot
harder in making sure that the Arab media hears our side of the story,
instead of the US just ignoring the groundswell of anti-American public
opinion. Ironically, the Arab news media is firing up the Arab public.
In this information age can't rely on friendly dictators to quell public
opinion any more. 

2) Although I have almost complete faith that Western news media is the
best and most accurate in the world, and the least likely to publish/air
irresponsible rumors or crazy lies, it still makes you wonder how much
CNN, etc, conveniently ignores certain issues because they think we
don't want to hear it (i.e., how much America is hated).

-Cf