

Al-Jazeera releases 1,600 internal documents of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations - davidchua
http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/

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jcr
Exposing corruption is a very difficult and important task, but one can still
hope there is no bloodshed caused by it.

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hieronymusN
Basic question: where are the documents themselves? I see lots of 'analysis'
and commentary, and some links to 'key documents' but where is the directory
of 1,600 PDFs that this site alludes to? I'd like to make up my own mind.

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Samuel_Michon
Good question. As it turns out there are really only 16 PDF documents.
Combined, there may be 1,600 pages in total, but to speak of 1,600 _documents_
seems kind of misleading to me, especially since most of the PDFs are maps and
peace talk minutes.

<http://www.ajtransparency.com/en/>

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forza
As it says that "Al Jazeera will release the documents between January
23-26th, 2011."[1] all of the documents probably haven't been released yet.

[1]
[http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011122...](http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112214310263628.html)

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Samuel_Michon
Ah thanks, I missed that part. And from the same page:

"There are nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence
detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."

That suggests we'll end up with more than 1,600 _files_ , not just a few files
totaling 1,600 pages.

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yread
What the documents really show is what sort of concessions from PA the Israeli
state rejected. They offered to accept almost all settlements (unthinkable!)
and they still said no, because they didn't accept all of them

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wybo
Speaking of a can of worms :)

(and yes, transparency is a good thing in general, as long as no severe
overriding concerns are present)

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viggity
Seriously, what the fuck is this doing on hacker news? I know the guidelines
say not to comment that you flagged a story, but you need to realize that this
has NOTHING to do with anything science, tech and startup. Someone who has
been on HN for almost 500 days should know better. Leave this shit off of
here.

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mcantelon
WikiLeaks, like the Pirate Party, is an organization in which the ideas of
hackers are applied to politics. So there is a connection and related news is
of interest to some hackers.

EDIT: I'd previously misread that Wikileaks was the source of the leak, but
that's incorrect.

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hugh3
Was Wikieaks involved here?

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mcantelon
Actually, I'm incorrect... I'd misread that Wikileaks was the source, but they
actually aren't.

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samuel1604
I wonder if this is going to be biased or completely neutral like the way it
should be.

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moxiemk1
In my experience, Al-Jazeera is remarkably neutral compared to most US news
sources. They do tend to adopt a pro-Palestinian stance, but they're very
professional about it.

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xenophanes
In my experience, the opposite. THe reason you "experience" it that way is
that you are interpreting according to your political biases. People who have
different political views than you read the same article and find in it a lack
of neutrality. You think it's neutral b/c you agree with it, not b/c it is
actually neutral.

I don't want to argue about who is right, I just want to point out you should
be more careful not to make statements basically along the lines of mistaking
your biases for neutrality. You call it experience but it is actually your
political judgment.

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semanticist
The best way to tell if a news source really is neutral is if both sides
accuse it of being biased against them.

I've seen accusations from both sides of the conflict in Israel accuse the BBC
of bias, for example, so I feel happy to trust their reporting.

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MichaelSalib
That doesn't work in general; it might help some in cases where there are
really only two sides that matter and that they're both equally well
represented, but even then it would be iffy.

I find this fetishization of neutrality to be bizarre: true neutrality is
indistinguishable from ignorance. Why would anyone yearn to be ignorant? Is
there not enough ignorance in the world?

~~~
semanticist
I don't think that an impartial presentation of the facts by a news
organisation can reasonably be equated to 'ignorance'.

You, me, and my mother's cat can and should have opinions and biases, but I'd
like my news organisations to at least make a serious and sincere attempt to
avoid them in their reporting.

~~~
MichaelSalib
So, news agencies should report "is the earth flat? opinions differ" and quote
both flat earthers as well as round earthers in the most evenhanded way
possible? I am reminded of a historian who studied the Holocaust and was
mortified to discover that when she went on TV to discuss her latest book, she
was paired up with an opposing viewpoint Holocaust denier. The TV network was
nice and "neutral", they made a very sincere attempt to keep "bias" out of
their reporting...and the result was moral bankruptcy.

You seem to have switched from discussing neutrality to impartiality and to me
those are very different concepts. I expect a judge to be impartial but not to
be neutral: a neutral judge could never make a judgment. The whole point of
analyzing evidence is to become non-neutral, to make a determination of the
state of the world.

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anthonyb
Your separation of "neutral" and "impartial" is wrong, particularly in the
given context.

Also, Godwin's law - you lose.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_Your separation of "neutral" and "impartial" is wrong, particularly in the
given context._

OK. Do you have any explanation? Or does your argument consist of only
assertion?

 _Also, Godwin's law - you lose._

You know that Godwin's law was a positive and not a normative statement,
right? So what exactly have I lost?

I mean, are you saying I'm wrong to criticize a value system that gives lots
of free advertising and social prestige to Holocaust deniers while
marginalizing actual experts?

~~~
anthonyb
> Do you have any explanation?

In the context, the two words are essentially synonyms; they mean that you
favour neither side. Go look up the definitions rather than imposing your own
artificial distinction.

And the point with Godwin's law is that if you need to resort to absurd
comparisons with Hitler or the Holocaust, then you obviously don't have much
of an argument.

Your point above seems to be that one time, somewhere, a TV program took a
ridiculous stand on an issue[1], therefore the whole media artifice is
ridiculously biased and crumbling... or something.

[1] Note - not a neutral stance, because they gave holocaust deniers
disproportionate airtime in comparison to the weight of evidence.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_In the context, the two words are essentially synonyms; they mean that you
favour neither side. Go look up the definitions rather than imposing your own
artificial distinction._

The definitions at dictionary.com support my original claim.

 _And the point with Godwin's law is that if you need to resort to absurd
comparisons with Hitler or the Holocaust, then you obviously don't have much
of an argument._

If you want to fabricate some new phony norm, please give it a unique name
rather than misappropriating a name from a completely unrelated phenomena.

 _Your point above seems to be that one time, somewhere, a TV program took a
ridiculous stand on an issue[1], therefore the whole media artifice is
ridiculously biased and crumbling... or something._

My point is that this was one particularly egregious instance that is part of
a larger pattern. Go read some media criticism: the idea that media
organizations are obsessed with "balance" and "neutrality" to the detriment of
actual truth telling is not something I invented.

 _[1] Note - not a neutral stance, because they gave holocaust deniers
disproportionate airtime in comparison to the weight of evidence._

So, now, in order to be neutral, you have to evaluate competing claims based
on evidence...

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anthonyb
Are we looking at different dictionary.com's or something?

 _impartial - adj: not prejudiced towards or against any particular side or
party; fair; unbiased_

 _neu·tral -adj ... 2. not aligned with or supporting any side or position in
a controversy._

How are these not synonyms?

Ditto with Godwin's Law - go and look at the Wikipedia entry:

 _Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as
a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic
comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of
mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: "I wanted
folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit
harder about the Holocaust," Godwin has written.[10]_

Which (again) is the original point: You have one unattributed example
(involving Nazis!) of biased reporting, which you're trying to build a whole
argument on. That doesn't work - you have an infinity of potential claims (eg.
the FSM did it), so unless you have an infinite amount of time you can't
possibly deal with them all. But you can give them weight/air time according
to the weight of evidence behind them. Framing that sort of judgement as
"inherent bias" is specious reasoning.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_How are these not synonyms?_

The difference is time. Judges are impartial, but they are not neutral: the
whole point of judge's role is to become non-neutral. By the time a journalist
has conducted interviews, done research, assembled their notes, and started
writing a story, they should not be neutral either: they should have come to
some conclusions about the world that a completely ignorant (read: neutral)
reader would not share precisely because they've done research.

 _Ditto with Godwin's Law - go and look at the Wikipedia entry_

You are misrepresenting the article. Read the first sentence: Godwin's law is
a humorous observation... That's it. An observation. That is funny.
Observations are not normative. Your insistence that they are is a category
error.

 _You have one unattributed example (involving Nazis!)_

First of all, the example involves Holocaust deniers, not Nazis. There's
actually a pretty spectacular difference between the two: Holocaust deniers,
vile that they may be, have generally not killed anyone.

Secondly, if you want a cite, feel free to read
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/national/18holocaust.html>

~~~
anthonyb
Neutral and impartial are synonyms, and any differences between the two are
inferred from context. In other words, you're creating distinctions where none
exist.

I could continue to rebut your argument, but I suspect that I'm wasting my
breath.

