Raoul,

I was truely an exciting milestone when cultures first developed the ability to look at the world through other people points of views, and to look at story from different angle and treat all aspects of cultures and problems the same. However we need to move beyond even that, and go further.

Yes Christinans, Muslims and Jews all have fundamentalist and estremists and need to be watched out for. . . however ONLY ONE is responsible for the bombing in madrid, the uss cole, 2 WTC attacks, and embassy in nigeria, the synagouge in turkey, the taliban, weekly suicide bombing in israel, chechniya (namely the theater that the russian had to gas) and pretty much all other international terrorism since the middle of this century starting with the olympic kidnapping and murder of israeli athletes in berlin. . .

So yes, of course be warry of fundamentalist from ALL religions, but don't deal lightly with the serial killer because you want to come up with a similar attitude for the pick pocket and tax evader.

Frankly I don't know what to call it, but this mindset deserves a name. . . Tom one time pointed out its most absurd form (I'm not accusing you of this) when someone refused to think badly of an amazonian tribe practicing infanticied because he was merely 'tainted' by his western/christian beliefs, or as Tom put it "not looking at infanticide with an open enough mind".

likewise(though moe distanly) I just can't how see how you can put Israelis are on even or lesser moral ground than the palestinians. Yes of course the israelis are doing wrong too, yes I know violence escalates violence, but blowing a bus up of 20 innocent women and children and a targeted assasination of the leader who ordered that attack? HELLO NOT THE SAME CRIME.

I see it in hollywood too, all the time. Its a little more subtle, but ever since 'Dances with wolves'. . . did you see "last Samurai"? The evil tom crews wakes up at night with nightmares of all the indian women and children he slaughtered in his lifetime, yet the japanese are just the Uber noble on the battlefield . . . (yet somehow they honorably slaughtered heaps upon heaps of korean innocents years after when they occupied it)

There has to be a name for this kind of mentality. I want to call it 'double standard', or something, but maybe there a more academic word for how all the European (and I would like to add, some leftist) 'intellectuals' think.

Regards,
-Justin Kelly