Global News: December 2008 Archives

Column One: The 'realist' fantasy | Columnists | Jerusalem Post

Why do foreign policy 'realists' insist on ignoring the very real threats voiced by the leaders of rogue states? "On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion. Hamas's endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn't feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.... This week North Korea's official news agency threatened to destroy South Korea in a 'sea of fire,' and 'reduce everything treacherous and anti-reunification to debris and build an independent, reunified country on it,' if any country dares to attack its nuclear installations."

Kausfiles : Sanitizing Mumbai?

Mickey Kaus on coverage of the Bombay terrorist attacks and the local constabulary's failures to respond to the attacks: "I'm used to a sort of Liebling-like hierarchy of news sources, with twitterers and bloggers being fastest, but maybe less reliable, while the grand institutions of the MSM weigh in later with more comprehensive and accurate accounts. But that's not what is happening with this Mumbai story. The 'fast' sources are telling you what happened. The 'slow' MSM sources are using their extra time to sanitize what's happened, to build euphemistic assumptions into their very reporting of the events themselves...."