Thursday, March 01, 2007
FISK’S FRIENDS
Hey, US military! Want to capture one of the insurgency’s principal financial supporters? Robert Fisk can help:
In Iraq, as we all know now, they go for the jugular. The old, the young, pregnant women, infants, soldiers, gunmen, murderers. They all die violently, the innocent along with the guilty. One of the insurgents’ principal financial supporters - we had met in Amman, of course, not in Baghad - put it very succinctly to me. “A decision was made that we have to accept civilian casualties. If we attack the Americans, the innocent will die. We know that. What do you people call it when you kill women and children? Collateral damage?”
Of course, there’s always the chance Fisk was making this up.
NYT GUY “NEVER UNDERSTOOD”
Glenn Garvin reviews the career of New York Times foreign correspondent Herbert Matthews, “the first American reporter to interview Fidel Castro and the last to recognize the man as a ruthless and slightly mad totalitarian murderer. He created, fell in love with, and ultimately was devoured by Castro’s mythology without ever really understanding what was happening.”
ALIEN VEHICLE MENACES OREGON
“The_Real_JeffS” emails:
A friend of mine sent this picture, taken in Portland, Oregon, last week on Interstate 84:
We *think* it has something to do with the environmental movement ... but we are not certain. You being an auto expert, I hoped that you might enlighten us.
I’m pretty sure it’s not a hover car, but you just never know.
Hmmm. Looks like it might be associated with Honda’s Formula One program, Jeff. A secret enviroid-technology testbed, perhaps.
(Speaking of Honda and its new Gaia-powered F1 car, by the way, commenters are deeply unimpressed.)
BEAR IMPLICATED IN LIE
Cover caption at the childhood version of Time magazine:
A polar bear tries to hold its ground on the melting sea ice in Svalbard, Norway.
Take a look. It’s just a big fat bear looking for a seal or something.
ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER
Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger has died at 89.
CHILD ABUSE
Attention, Tipper Gore! Your husband is scaring the children:
According to one press report, when Al Gore came to town last week, a mother who had been unable to get tickets called up the University of Toronto and said that her daughter hadn’t been able to sleep since seeing An Inconvenient Truth. She claimed that seeing Mr. Gore in person might make her daughter feel better: that another dose of Gore-y detail would take away the terror that he had inspired in the first place.
Interesting theory. If the kid ever develops concussion-related amnesia, her mother will presumably attempt to cure it with another blow to the head.
Education experts have apparently coined a term, “ecophobia,” for the dread and helplessness children feel when confronted with apocalyptic forecasts. According to a recent British survey, half of the children between the ages of seven and 11 are anxious about the effects of global warming and often lose sleep over it. And that, remember, is without any identifiable effects, since no particular weather occurrence can be linked to anthropogenic climate change, despite all the hysterical invocation of Hurricane Katrina.
Most recently during the Oscars broadcast, when a voiceover announced after Gore’s win for Best Child-Frightening Spookshow that Hurricane Katrina “brought home the threat - and the impact - of global warming”.
UPDATE. Nice line on Algorian limousine liberals from Ann Coulter: “They think they can live in a world of only Malibu and East Hampton—with no Trentons or Detroits.”
(Via Mark E.)