CarolC I have to admit I don't know what happens to politicians in the US when they criticise Israel. And though it doesn't really address my point I'd like to hear more particularly about it. I'm guessing they aren't tortured and killed.

    Part of the rationale for war with Iraq seems hypocritical in regard to Israel, but that does not make it the same. We were not previously at war with Israel, and have terms of a cease fire.

It really amazes me how rarely freedom of speech comes up as a basic value among liberals, except in paranoid rants about big brother watching them. It may actually be a new reason here for supporting the war--I was assuming it was in there among humanitarian concerns, but maybe it's a little different. Maybe properly a humanist concern. It seems to often turn up missing in some of equations and parallels people draw. It seems not to weigh anything. Among artists. On an arts forum.

It's all well and good to talk about media manipulation and thought control and Pavlov's dogs. There's some truth in it. But Bush was elected in the first place by a very narrow technical margin, and some people believe the process should change, and that the margin was illegal. I don't know for sure about that, but I still prefer it to anyone elected by 99 per cent of the vote, and all that that entails.

What about the revolutionary war, US and UK, did that do anything? Anywhere? For anyone? Am I so arrogant to think that I know what's better for a culture that I don't begin to understand, that doesn't seem to want or know how to live more freely, without Pavlovian obedience and mindless idol worship? Do I suppose that there's something intrinsically worthwhile somewhere in this seedy rancid stink of sickening western culture? Yes, and yes.