In These Times

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• • 08 Sep 06
  • 9:42 am

  With the Internet enabling writers to seek out the most remote and specialized sources, plagiarism will get much worse. Few big-name non-fiction authors do their own research any more. They employ teams of researchers and "fact checkers" who scour Lexis-Nexis, Dow News Retrieval, Google and the like, for others' research, recast it in their own words and present it as original thinking. Few of us have the time, resources or inclination to fact check or source check the stuff top-earning writers like Coulter use (Lexis, for example, costs $75 a day or $250 a week for credit card access to its …

  Posted to Plagiarists: Catch Your Own Clue

• • 15 Aug 06
  • 3:45 pm

  The media is replete with reports about Iran financing Hezbolla, providing high tech weapons and tactical support to the tune of some $5-6 billion. Hezbolla's fighters have been decimated and large portions of its weapons stores have been expended, rendering it pretty much unfit to press any fight until and unless Iran rearms it. Something Iran is furious about. Professor Beeman's thrust at neocons (I am NOT a necon, as a long time active liberal I'm the farthest thing from it), begs the question. Iran's finger prints are all over this nasty war. Saying otherwise is like fatuously claiming that I.G. …

  Posted to Examining Irans ties to Hezbollah

• • 15 Aug 06
  • 5:44 pm

  Imran's argument might fly if Hezbollah was a sovereign nation that was purchasing its arms from Iran. It is not. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization and effectively a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran. Its weapons came from Iran and Syria; its funding largely comes from Iran (except for the money it makes by drug factories in the Bekaa Valley). Its command and control comes from Iran. This is not prattle from our brain-dead Bush Administration. Iran's support of Hezbollah has been widely reported.

  Posted to Examining Irans ties to Hezbollah

• • 15 Aug 06
  • 9:38 pm

  We know the total and the disribution of deaths in Israel because the Israelis reported them. In Lebanon we know only about civilian deaths (and not even the true facts about those). We have no idea of the numbers of Hezbollah operatives who were killed, because Hezbollah is not part of a national government but rather a secretive terrorist organization that has hidden all the facts about itself, how many deaths, how many wounded, how many Lebanese civilians wounded because Hezbollah purposely used Lebanese civilians as shields, giving not a damn for how many civilian deaths, women and children, they caused. …

  Posted to Examining Irans ties to Hezbollah

• • 16 Aug 06
  • 10:51 am

  Re Accesslaw's comments: To me it is fantasy to think that Hezbollah is a stand alone organization. Whether you call it terrorist or freedom fighter, Hezbollah is armed with the best weapons, war-technology and defensive systems money can buy. This is an army any high-tech state would be proud of and it is not funded by guys with tin cups begging on street corners. If, as Beeman says, Hezbollah is a charitable institution, it is one that hands out butter while using the people it supposedly helps as human shields. At best, Hezbollah gives not a damn for Lebanese citizens except …

  Posted to Examining Irans ties to Hezbollah