spin: after spending some time at the New York Times

A brief note before I get to what I want to think about right now: Peter Doran, a professor in earth sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago writes in today's New York Times that his research on Antarctica has been taken out of context by the conservitive moron crew that includes the likes of Ann Coulter and the Hannity guy in regards to global warming, while this is about as surprising as the fact that Russia and China are both big, it does once again show how the Plutocracy assumes, so you don't have to, what the truth should be.

It's quite a popular story, the only story emailed more from the New York Times at the moment is about how your yoga mat might have germs. Be careful.

Germs, everywhere these days - little liberal nabobs of negativity.

Another brief note on the piece process in Lebanon and the attempt to figure out what must happen there: the idea that a cease fire is meaningless, which the U.S. appears to hold, undoes their own logic, oddly enough, that a ceasefire is only a desired end if it leads to peaceful solutions rather than simply a brief cessation of violence.

Without a cease fire a peaceful solution becomes more and more impossible, because who is going to want to bargain with Israel now? Who is going to say, "hey, we got some fair concessions here" now? Regardless of the deal brokered. What Arab can support patience when the Israelis are reportedly using phospherous weapons and who knows what in Lebanon (any weapson really)? Rice's arguments seem semi-logical and responsible on first blush or if you're not paying any attention, but not when you read about individual Egyptians buying 20 posters of Hizbullah's Nasrallah and when you see cartoons of Israeli tanks sitting on the Arab map in the "new Middle East" (Rice quoting from the Oslo accords), then quickly it becomes horribly clear how the U.S. stance makes absolutely no sense. It's really Orwellian, not to lean on an over-used adjective, but they seem to suggest that the one thing that might make their stance possible later is impossible now because it's not their stance. If any European or Arab nation secretly supports the U.S. position, as the New York Times strongly suggests, then what they are supporting is civilian lives now for the POSSIBILITY of a peace settlement later, one that will be made in defiance of the people and which will only do even more to create this groundswell against Israel and for Hizbullah and perhaps other Arab groups that support active violence against Israel. I think the U.S. might be thinking, "well, it's too late now for any real sustainable long term peace, so we might as well let Israel take care of as much of Hizbullah as they can." That seems to be the impetus behind Bush's remarks that seem to indicate he's willing to give the Israelis as much time as they need, not just another week like Time supposed earlier this week.

The New York Times argued in their news analysis that the administration is undoing a year's work of diplomatic re-positioning, but I don't see it. Yes, they have managed not to completely alienate the Europeans over Iran, but I think that has more to do with what Iran is than with how we've handled the situation. I believe the same thing about our "handling" of North Korea. When the New York Times is praising how the Bush Administration has dealt diplomatically with North Korea mere weeks after North Korea tested some missiles in the Sea of Japan, then you have to wonder what the hell they're thinking.

It's odd how the failures of an entire world end up being the deaths in the end of a collection of people who are, after all, simply this person who lives on this street, and that person who grew up here and liked this or liked that.