OT - ?

Ahh... an editorial that tells it like it is.

An editorial in the 'new York Post' - Who cares?

It is a sad story, really ... from whatever point of view.

There's good news, too:

June 8, 2003 Lost Iraqi Treasures Found By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 7 (AP) - The ancient treasures of Nimrud, unaccounted for since Baghdad fell two months ago, have been located in good condition in the country's Central Bank - in a secret vault-inside-a-vault submerged in sewage water, American officials said today.

They also said that fewer than 50 items from the Iraq Museum's main exhibition collection remain missing after the looting and destruction that followed the capture of Baghdad by United States forces.

The artifacts - gold earrings, necklaces, bowls and flasks - were found several days ago when the vault was opened, one official said.

The Nimrud treasures date to about 900 B.C.

An official with the American-led occupation force said at a news briefing that the number of artifacts looted or lost from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad had been exaggerated. Of the 170,000 initially thought missing, about 3,000 objects remain unaccounted for. Of those, only 47 are main exhibition items, the official said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Another good OT article on a slightly similar theme (and one of the best I have seen on this topic) can be found here:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/04/nyt.friedman/

Why the name-calling, Matt? Why should one be called 'pea-brains' for reading, among many others, New York Post? Am I perhaps 'pea-brains' because I am also browsing leftist outlets such as The Nation, the (imo pathetic, but I wanna be informed) Salon.com and even the excellent The New Republic? As respects the substantive, relatively speaking, part of your retort, you probably know just as well as I do that the syllogism you expose, while at least arguably logical, is far from being inexpugnable or self-evident. On the other side of the coin, it may be argued that at times people don't kill primarily because they 'hate' (in that case we would have millions of neighbors murdered in NY every day) but because *they feel they can get away with it*. It seems that the current American administration is doing its best to dissipate this foolishness. How well it works (or not) we shall see.

regards,

Frankly I was more saddened by the horrible indifference manifested in the West in what regards the developments in Congo. (A 'Bravo' to the French though for sending these days UN-correlated peace-keeping forces in the way of harm.)

However, where were the demonstrations of millions in the Western Europe asking for a stop to the senseless, cave-age-like violence in Congo?

It still looks like most European 'pacifists' are hating

Why? Because I have lived with the NY Post for 47 years, and can say first hand that since Murdock took over the paper, it speaks to the lowest common dominator possible. To take the Post seriously is to have left your brain home that day. Even their Sports section is now a sad muddle of uninformed opinion masquerading as reporting (and, yes, they have very much dropped the distinction between a reporter reporting the facts, and a columnist expressing a opinion), and unsubstantiated rumor masquerading as fact. That's why. Buying into this stuff is IMHO bad for humanity and bad for democracy. In comparison, Mort Zukerman's conservative/middle-of-the-road Daily News is a model of journalistic integrity and restraint.

Beyond that, to your political points, all I'm going to say in this group is that I have this very strong feeling that the worm has turned in regard to Mr. Bush, and his reputation in this country is likely to be far lower 2 years from now than it was a few months ago. I'm not going to engage in any long-winded, pointless debate in this group, since it's clear that everyone's mind is already made up, and such a completely pointless effort would also be off-topic.

Matt C

Dominator? Not picking on a slip, just finding it amusing.( :

I am not taking seriously newspapers, only individual journalists. No innuendo on the quality of my brains(:, however eloquent, will have me change that opinion. How can one refer to NYTimes as a completely unserious and unworthy of being read newspaper because of one Jason Blair? How can one dismiss NYPost *completely* as long as at least some of their editorialists are tremendously versed in their topics of choice (e.g., Daniel Pipes)? (I hardly go anywhere else in the pages of NYP.)

However, I am glad to see that, after the first argument 'the pea-brains at the Post (and its readership). . .', one came back and nuanced subtly 'To take the Post seriously is to have left your brain home that day.'

Now I can see the light.( :

regards,

I hate these spell check programs. I have to pay as much attention to them as I do anything else.

Matt C

If this 2-cents opinion is offered as a 'bit' of (profound philosophical?) 'wisdom' to the topic, then I expect the stock in pea-brains to soar. Better pea-brains than no-brains.

Gerrie C

'All good foreign policy has two core aims — to protect the security of the people, and to extend their prosperity.' – Rupert Murdoch