I am not being silent. I am just avoiding whatever little game you are playing.
i'm not playing any games, i didn't make the comment. you did. you are the one who came into the thread with the comment " some people here are just so clever in disguising their true feelings"
you made the comment. i asked you to clarify what you meant. why is that so hard?
I am not being silent. I am just avoiding whatever little game you are playing.
i'm not playing any games, i didn't make the comment. you did. you are the one who came into the thread with the comment " some people here are just so clever in disguising their true feelings"
you made the comment. i asked you to clarify what you meant. why is that so hard?
its like the article someone posted that hinted antisemitism hides behind criticism of israel.
its like they can't understand that we actually care about human decency and justice.
I don't know about all the articles posted here (I'm sure I've missed some), but those I posted argued that antisemitism hid behind SOME criticism of Israel (that made by antisemites, not that made in good faith by people just trying to criticize).
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
its like the article someone posted that hinted antisemitism hides behind criticism of israel.
its like they can't understand that we actually care about human decency and justice.
exactly.
we criticize our own country on this forum when we feel it is not living up to our standards of justice and human decency and that does not make us anti-american. so why is it when we criticize another country for doing the same or in some cases worse things, suddenly our "true feelings" are antisemitic? i don't get it, i am just as quick to criticize my own country as any other one...
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
its like the article someone posted that hinted antisemitism hides behind criticism of israel.
its like they can't understand that we actually care about human decency and justice.
exactly.
we criticize our own country on this forum when we feel it is not living up to our standards of justice and human decency and that does not make us anti-american. so why is it when we criticize another country for doing the same or in some cases worse things, suddenly our "true feelings" are antisemitic? i don't get it, i am just as quick to criticize my own country as any other one...
i was born and raised in Australia. spent the first 20 years of my life there before i moved to the US. i love Australia. just love it, i have so many family ties and happy memories. but i'm critical of Australia. i can still love the Country and still be critical of things they do that i strongly disagree with.
Same as the U.S. i can't work and live here without growing to love it. there's so much to love about it. so much. but again, i'm very critical of U.S. foreign policy, i'm anti death penalty, i think it's uncivilized and i hate the terrible fact that 51 million people are now without health Insurance. just to name a few. i post just as much about these things as i do about the Israel Palestine conflict. i don't hate Israelis, i don't hate anyone but i do have huge problems with the Israeli Government and their terrible treatment of the Palestinians. why can't people understand that.
i always thought that patriotism has never been blind allegiance to people or policy. it's loyalty to an ideal - to principle. if you feel that an injustice has been committed, or ideals or principles have been betrayed, you should speak out in defense of them and speak out to preserve what you feel is great and speak out because of what you love about the country. and that goes for any Country.
i do it out of love. because i care, not because i hate. i want a better world for everyone.
i was born and raised in Australia. spent the first 20 years of my life there before i moved to the US. i love Australia. just love it, i have so many family ties and happy memories. but i'm critical of Australia. i can still love the Country and still be critical of things they do that i strongly disagree with.
Same as the U.S. i can't work and live here without growing to love it. there's so much to love about it. so much. but again, i'm very critical of U.S. foreign policy, i'm anti death penalty, i think it's uncivilized and i hate the terrible fact that 51 million people are now without health Insurance. just to name a few. i post just as much about these things as i do about the Israel Palestine conflict. i don't hate Israelis, i don't hate anyone but i do have huge problems with the Israeli Government and their terrible treatment of the Palestinians. why can't people understand that.
i always thought that patriotism has never been blind allegiance to people or policy. it's loyalty to an ideal - to principle. if you feel that an injustice has been committed, or ideals or principles have been betrayed, you should speak out in defense of them and speak out to preserve what you feel is great and speak out because of what you love about the country. and that goes for any Country.
i do it out of love. because i care, not because i hate. i want a better world for everyone.
I love that you assume that anything that comes from a major news source is propaganda. As if the small, politically biased, niche sources often quoted on this board don't have an explicit agenda. At least most major news outlets make a passing effort at objectivity (Fox not included).
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
I love that you assume that anything that comes from a major news source is propaganda. As if the small, politically biased, niche sources often quoted on this board don't have an explicit agenda. At least most major news outlets make a passing effort at objectivity (Fox not included).
even fox supports the state on foreign policy. there is almost no dissent in american media on that front.
That's funny, cause I read a lot of American media, and there is plenty of disagreement. The fact that the overwhelming majority of mainstream opinion rejects the fringe leftism/libertarianism one finds on this board does not mean that mainstream opinion is monolithic.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
That's funny, cause I read a lot of American media, and there is plenty of disagreement. The fact that the overwhelming majority of mainstream opinion rejects the fringe leftism/libertarianism one finds on this board does not mean that mainstream opinion is monolithic.
look at public opinion leading up to the gulf war
look at the people they interviewd on every channel in that same time period
a very large percentage of opinion is not represented in teh news
The news is not supposed to represent opinion. It is supposed to convey the facts of what is happening in the world with as little subjective opinion as possible.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
what i don't get is how some of the best stand up comedians are Jewish yet a lot/some Jewish people have incredibly thin skin when it comes to criticism regarding Israel
The news is not supposed to represent opinion. It is supposed to convey the facts of what is happening in the world with as little subjective opinion as possible.
Doesn't quite work that way though does it?
Anyone would think from reading the above that Chomsky never existed. I suggest you get yourself off to a library some time.
The news is not supposed to represent opinion. It is supposed to convey the facts of what is happening in the world with as little subjective opinion as possible.
Doesn't quite work that way though does it?
Anyone would think from reading the above that Chomsky never existed. I suggest you get yourself off to a library some time.
and when that opinion they do represent serves the will of the state...and leads us to war...its more than just "ah fuck the news sucks" - its criminal. tens of thousands....hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved had the news done its job.
and you can look at any conflict and come to the same conclusion. all it took was a word from washington to stop indonesia's slaughter of east timor.....were the media doing their jobs, lives could have been saved. and hwo knows, if they reported widely about the biggest protests in history, leading up to the iraq war, maybe that war could have been prevented. that's what's so damning about this propaganda, its cost is counted in human lives..
The news is not supposed to represent opinion. It is supposed to convey the facts of what is happening in the world with as little subjective opinion as possible.
see i think all mainstream media, in general, is accurate in the facts they present, its how they choose to present those facts that is so damning. but its presented through an opinion. leading up to the iraq war for example...the opinion they represented almost exclusively supported the push for war.
they were giving americans, and this is almost across the board, from fox to msnbc.......a view of things that weren't representative of reality.
they were presenting a picture that didn't ask "should we go to war?" but "when?" and "how? this despite the fact that a large percentage of americans opposed the war. the majority wasn't represented in mainstream media, still isn't.
its called manufacturing consent, its a form of propaganda.
and its important what facts you present, even if you take all opinion out of it. fox news, even today, is accurate, for the most part, as is msnbc, they have to be. but what facts you present, or how you report them, can shape opinion.
take the Israel/Palestine situation. almost without exception violence committed by Israel is referred to as "in response to" or "in retaliation to", on every outlet, from MSNBC to FOX.. while pelestinians are referred to as militants, even when they're 12. justifying live fire when they are only throwing stones. or how they report on Israeli deaths on a scale of 5-1. Deaths of Israeli children get reported on 100% of the time, while Palestinian children only 20% of the time. the facts presented may be accurate, but how they present those facts, and what facts they choose to report, can shape opinion.
media serves the state, from Fox to MSNBC, true today. and the state is bent on expansion, set to serve israel. media reflects that mentality.
just to use one example. when the 4 settlers were murdered in Hebron recently, the whole world knew about it and it was loudly condemned (and rightly so). every media outlet picked up on it and Hillary Clinton had plenty to say. so did people around here.
a few days later when the elderly Palestinian man, his grandson and another youth were murdered, the world and media were strangely quiet.
any reason why this is not front page news in the US and media outlets and Clinton is not condemning this?
The news is not supposed to represent opinion. It is supposed to convey the facts of what is happening in the world with as little subjective opinion as possible.
see i think all mainstream media, in general, is accurate in the facts they present, its how they choose to present those facts that is so damning. but its presented through an opinion. leading up to the iraq war for example...the opinion they represented almost exclusively supported the push for war.
they were giving americans, and this is almost across the board, from fox to msnbc.......a view of things that weren't representative of reality.
they were presenting a picture that didn't ask "should we go to war?" but "when?" and "how? this despite the fact that a large percentage of americans opposed the war. the majority wasn't represented in mainstream media, still isn't.
its called manufacturing consent, its a form of propaganda.
and its important what facts you present, even if you take all opinion out of it. fox news, even today, is accurate, for the most part, as is msnbc, they have to be. but what facts you present, or how you report them, can shape opinion.
take the Israel/Palestine situation. almost without exception violence committed by Israel is referred to as "in response to" or "in retaliation to", on every outlet, from MSNBC to FOX.. while pelestinians are referred to as militants, even when they're 12. justifying live fire when they are only throwing stones. or how they report on Israeli deaths on a scale of 5-1. Deaths of Israeli children get reported on 100% of the time, while Palestinian children only 20% of the time. the facts presented may be accurate, but how they present those facts, and what facts they choose to report, can shape opinion.
media serves the state, from Fox to MSNBC, true today. and the state is bent on expansion, set to serve israel. media reflects that mentality.
good to see youve been reading your chomsky .
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
The news is not supposed to represent opinion. It is supposed to convey the facts of what is happening in the world with as little subjective opinion as possible.
'News' is presented selectively. Whether one likes it or not. How 'facts' are presented in one country will differ to another, depending on the agenda. The news is a great source of propaganda.
The news is not supposed to represent opinion. It is supposed to convey the facts of what is happening in the world with as little subjective opinion as possible.
see i think all mainstream media, in general, is accurate in the facts they present, its how they choose to present those facts that is so damning. but its presented through an opinion. leading up to the iraq war for example...the opinion they represented almost exclusively supported the push for war.
they were giving americans, and this is almost across the board, from fox to msnbc.......a view of things that weren't representative of reality.
they were presenting a picture that didn't ask "should we go to war?" but "when?" and "how? this despite the fact that a large percentage of americans opposed the war. the majority wasn't represented in mainstream media, still isn't.
its called manufacturing consent, its a form of propaganda.
and its important what facts you present, even if you take all opinion out of it. fox news, even today, is accurate, for the most part, as is msnbc, they have to be. but what facts you present, or how you report them, can shape opinion.
take the Israel/Palestine situation. almost without exception violence committed by Israel is referred to as "in response to" or "in retaliation to", on every outlet, from MSNBC to FOX.. while pelestinians are referred to as militants, even when they're 12. justifying live fire when they are only throwing stones. or how they report on Israeli deaths on a scale of 5-1. Deaths of Israeli children get reported on 100% of the time, while Palestinian children only 20% of the time. the facts presented may be accurate, but how they present those facts, and what facts they choose to report, can shape opinion.
media serves the state, from Fox to MSNBC, true today. and the state is bent on expansion, set to serve israel. media reflects that mentality.
just to use one example. when the 4 settlers were murdered in Hebron recently, the whole world knew about it and it was loudly condemned (and rightly so). every media outlet picked up on it and Hillary Clinton had plenty to say. so did people around here.
a few days later when the elderly Palestinian man, his grandson and another youth were murdered, the world and media were strangely quiet.
any reason why this is not front page news in the US and media outlets and Clinton is not condemning this?
you are right on TA. this is one example of thousands.
and yeah, examples mean nothing, taken individually, even taken as a whole. but to compare them with examples from something we dont' like...then you have a perspective on reality, something that has been done plenty.
You guys are aware of all the times that media has been a check on the state, right? Like, I don't know, Nixon-Watergate comes to mind.
it also had a hand in ending the vietnam war.
but i can still find evidence of propaganda, going back to the late 70's.
but corporations merge and power and opinion consolidate and narrow. interviewed guests are more likely to be business executives or government officials than not.
You guys are aware of all the times that media has been a check on the state, right? Like, I don't know, Nixon-Watergate comes to mind.
Once again, I suggest you read some Chomsky - 'Manufacturing Consent' and 'Necessary Illusions'. If you think that the reporting of the Watergate scandal proves the U.S media is a check on the state, well....
...the C.O.I.N.T.E.L.P.R.O scandal was much bigger than Watergate but hardly anyone's heard of it.
As for Watergate, that had more to do with Nixon's recklessness than with any moralistic heroics on the part of the Washington Post.
QUESTION: Within this framework, how do you interpret the Watergate affair, which has often been presented in France as the "triumph" of democracy?
CHOMSKY: To consider the Watergate affair as a triumph of democracy is an error, in my opinion. The real question raised was not: Did Nixon employ evil methods against his political adversaries? but rather: Who were the victims? The answer is clear. Nixon was condemned, not because he employed reprehensible methods in his political struggles, but because he made a mistake in the choice of adversaries against whom he turned these methods. He attacked people with power.
The telephone taps? Such practices have existed for a long time. He had an "enemies list"? But nothing happened to those who were on that list. I was on that list, nothing happened to me. No, he simply made a mistake in his choice of enemies: he had on his list the chairman of IBM, senior government advisers, distinguished pundits of the press, highly placed supporters of the Democratic Party. He attacked the Washington Post, a major capitalist enterprise. And these powerful people defended themselves at once, as would be expected. Watergate? Men of power against men of power.
Similar crimes, and others much graver, could have been charged against other people as well as Nixon. But those crimes were typically directed against minorities or against movements of social change, and few ever protested. The ideological censorship kept these matters from the public eye during the Watergate period, although remarkable documentation concerning this repression appeared at just this time. It was only when the dust of Watergate had settled that the press and the political commentators turned toward some of the real and profound cases of abuse of state power -- still without recognizing or exploring the gravity of the issue...
...In comparison with Cointelpro and related government actions in the 1960s, Watergate was a tea party. It is instructive, however, to compare the relative attention accorded to them in the press. This comparison reveals clearly and dramatically that it was the improper choice of targets, not improper acts, that led to Nixon's downfall. The alleged concern for civil and democratic rights was a sham. There was no "triumph of democracy."
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19730920.htm '...While public attention was captivated by Watergate, Ambassador Godley testified before Congress that between 15,000 and 20,000 Thai mercenaries had been employed by the United States in Laos, in direct and explicit violation of congressional legislation. This confirmation of Pathet Lao charges, which had been largely ignored or ridiculed in the West, evoked little editorial comment or public indignation, though it is a more serious matter than anything revealed in the Ervin committee hearings.
The revelation of secret bombings in Cambodia and northern Laos from the earliest days of the Nixon Administration is by far the most important disclosure of the past several months...
As for the press, it showed as much interest in the bombings at the time as it now devotes to the evidence that Thai mercenaries in Laos are being shipped to Cambodia and that casualties of fighting in Cambodia have already arrived in Bangkok hospitals.11 The press is much too concerned with past deception to investigate these critical ongoing events, which may well have long-term implications for Southeast Asia.
...Still more cynical is the current enthusiasm over the health of the American political system, as shown by the curbing of Nixon and his subordinates, or by the civilized compromise that permitted Nixon and Kissinger to kill Cambodians and destroy their land only until August 15, truly a model of how a democracy should function, with no disorder or ugly disruption.
Liberal political commentators sigh with relief that Kissinger has barely been tainted -- a bit of questionable wire-tapping, but no close involvement in the Watergate shenanigans. Yet by any objective standards, the man is one of the great mass murderers of the modern period. He presided over the expansion of the war to Cambodia, with consequences that are now well known, and the vicious escalation of the bombing of rural Laos, not to speak of the atrocities committed in Vietnam, as he sought to achieve a victory of some sort for imperial power in Indochina. But he wasn't implicated in the burglary at the Watergate or in the undermining of Muskie, so his hands are clean.
If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder Inc. were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but hardly the main point.'
About linguistics, a lot. About politics...well probably also a lot, but that doesn't mean his interpretation has any validity. There is a reason why everyone not on the extreme left thinks he's kind of a nutbag.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Comments
you made the comment. i asked you to clarify what you meant. why is that so hard?
its like they can't understand that we actually care about human decency and justice.
exactly.
we criticize our own country on this forum when we feel it is not living up to our standards of justice and human decency and that does not make us anti-american. so why is it when we criticize another country for doing the same or in some cases worse things, suddenly our "true feelings" are antisemitic? i don't get it, i am just as quick to criticize my own country as any other one...
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
i was born and raised in Australia. spent the first 20 years of my life there before i moved to the US. i love Australia. just love it, i have so many family ties and happy memories. but i'm critical of Australia. i can still love the Country and still be critical of things they do that i strongly disagree with.
Same as the U.S. i can't work and live here without growing to love it. there's so much to love about it. so much. but again, i'm very critical of U.S. foreign policy, i'm anti death penalty, i think it's uncivilized and i hate the terrible fact that 51 million people are now without health Insurance. just to name a few. i post just as much about these things as i do about the Israel Palestine conflict. i don't hate Israelis, i don't hate anyone but i do have huge problems with the Israeli Government and their terrible treatment of the Palestinians. why can't people understand that.
i always thought that patriotism has never been blind allegiance to people or policy. it's loyalty to an ideal - to principle. if you feel that an injustice has been committed, or ideals or principles have been betrayed, you should speak out in defense of them and speak out to preserve what you feel is great and speak out because of what you love about the country. and that goes for any Country.
i do it out of love. because i care, not because i hate. i want a better world for everyone.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Yeah, but what are your true feelings? :P
look at the people they interviewd on every channel in that same time period
a very large percentage of opinion is not represented in teh news
Doesn't quite work that way though does it?
Anyone would think from reading the above that Chomsky never existed. I suggest you get yourself off to a library some time.
and you can look at any conflict and come to the same conclusion. all it took was a word from washington to stop indonesia's slaughter of east timor.....were the media doing their jobs, lives could have been saved. and hwo knows, if they reported widely about the biggest protests in history, leading up to the iraq war, maybe that war could have been prevented. that's what's so damning about this propaganda, its cost is counted in human lives..
they were giving americans, and this is almost across the board, from fox to msnbc.......a view of things that weren't representative of reality.
they were presenting a picture that didn't ask "should we go to war?" but "when?" and "how? this despite the fact that a large percentage of americans opposed the war. the majority wasn't represented in mainstream media, still isn't.
its called manufacturing consent, its a form of propaganda.
and its important what facts you present, even if you take all opinion out of it. fox news, even today, is accurate, for the most part, as is msnbc, they have to be. but what facts you present, or how you report them, can shape opinion.
take the Israel/Palestine situation. almost without exception violence committed by Israel is referred to as "in response to" or "in retaliation to", on every outlet, from MSNBC to FOX.. while pelestinians are referred to as militants, even when they're 12. justifying live fire when they are only throwing stones. or how they report on Israeli deaths on a scale of 5-1. Deaths of Israeli children get reported on 100% of the time, while Palestinian children only 20% of the time. the facts presented may be accurate, but how they present those facts, and what facts they choose to report, can shape opinion.
media serves the state, from Fox to MSNBC, true today. and the state is bent on expansion, set to serve israel. media reflects that mentality.
just to use one example. when the 4 settlers were murdered in Hebron recently, the whole world knew about it and it was loudly condemned (and rightly so). every media outlet picked up on it and Hillary Clinton had plenty to say. so did people around here.
a few days later when the elderly Palestinian man, his grandson and another youth were murdered, the world and media were strangely quiet.
any reason why this is not front page news in the US and media outlets and Clinton is not condemning this?
http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index ... Itemid=194
good to see youve been reading your chomsky .
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
'News' is presented selectively. Whether one likes it or not. How 'facts' are presented in one country will differ to another, depending on the agenda. The news is a great source of propaganda.
and zinn, mainly inspired howard zinn.
you are right on TA. this is one example of thousands.
and yeah, examples mean nothing, taken individually, even taken as a whole. but to compare them with examples from something we dont' like...then you have a perspective on reality, something that has been done plenty.
there is no doubt, media serves the state.
it also had a hand in ending the vietnam war.
but i can still find evidence of propaganda, going back to the late 70's.
but corporations merge and power and opinion consolidate and narrow. interviewed guests are more likely to be business executives or government officials than not.
Once again, I suggest you read some Chomsky - 'Manufacturing Consent' and 'Necessary Illusions'. If you think that the reporting of the Watergate scandal proves the U.S media is a check on the state, well....
...the C.O.I.N.T.E.L.P.R.O scandal was much bigger than Watergate but hardly anyone's heard of it.
As for Watergate, that had more to do with Nixon's recklessness than with any moralistic heroics on the part of the Washington Post.
http://www.chomsky.info/books/responsibility01.htm
QUESTION: Within this framework, how do you interpret the Watergate affair, which has often been presented in France as the "triumph" of democracy?
CHOMSKY: To consider the Watergate affair as a triumph of democracy is an error, in my opinion. The real question raised was not: Did Nixon employ evil methods against his political adversaries? but rather: Who were the victims? The answer is clear. Nixon was condemned, not because he employed reprehensible methods in his political struggles, but because he made a mistake in the choice of adversaries against whom he turned these methods. He attacked people with power.
The telephone taps? Such practices have existed for a long time. He had an "enemies list"? But nothing happened to those who were on that list. I was on that list, nothing happened to me. No, he simply made a mistake in his choice of enemies: he had on his list the chairman of IBM, senior government advisers, distinguished pundits of the press, highly placed supporters of the Democratic Party. He attacked the Washington Post, a major capitalist enterprise. And these powerful people defended themselves at once, as would be expected. Watergate? Men of power against men of power.
Similar crimes, and others much graver, could have been charged against other people as well as Nixon. But those crimes were typically directed against minorities or against movements of social change, and few ever protested. The ideological censorship kept these matters from the public eye during the Watergate period, although remarkable documentation concerning this repression appeared at just this time. It was only when the dust of Watergate had settled that the press and the political commentators turned toward some of the real and profound cases of abuse of state power -- still without recognizing or exploring the gravity of the issue...
...In comparison with Cointelpro and related government actions in the 1960s, Watergate was a tea party. It is instructive, however, to compare the relative attention accorded to them in the press. This comparison reveals clearly and dramatically that it was the improper choice of targets, not improper acts, that led to Nixon's downfall. The alleged concern for civil and democratic rights was a sham. There was no "triumph of democracy."
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19730920.htm
'...While public attention was captivated by Watergate, Ambassador Godley testified before Congress that between 15,000 and 20,000 Thai mercenaries had been employed by the United States in Laos, in direct and explicit violation of congressional legislation. This confirmation of Pathet Lao charges, which had been largely ignored or ridiculed in the West, evoked little editorial comment or public indignation, though it is a more serious matter than anything revealed in the Ervin committee hearings.
The revelation of secret bombings in Cambodia and northern Laos from the earliest days of the Nixon Administration is by far the most important disclosure of the past several months...
As for the press, it showed as much interest in the bombings at the time as it now devotes to the evidence that Thai mercenaries in Laos are being shipped to Cambodia and that casualties of fighting in Cambodia have already arrived in Bangkok hospitals.11 The press is much too concerned with past deception to investigate these critical ongoing events, which may well have long-term implications for Southeast Asia.
...Still more cynical is the current enthusiasm over the health of the American political system, as shown by the curbing of Nixon and his subordinates, or by the civilized compromise that permitted Nixon and Kissinger to kill Cambodians and destroy their land only until August 15, truly a model of how a democracy should function, with no disorder or ugly disruption.
Liberal political commentators sigh with relief that Kissinger has barely been tainted -- a bit of questionable wire-tapping, but no close involvement in the Watergate shenanigans. Yet by any objective standards, the man is one of the great mass murderers of the modern period. He presided over the expansion of the war to Cambodia, with consequences that are now well known, and the vicious escalation of the bombing of rural Laos, not to speak of the atrocities committed in Vietnam, as he sought to achieve a victory of some sort for imperial power in Indochina. But he wasn't implicated in the burglary at the Watergate or in the undermining of Muskie, so his hands are clean.
If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder Inc. were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but hardly the main point.'