Curated knowlege, trenchant insights & witty bon mots
A Dutch court sentenced Mohammed Bouyeri to life Tuesday for the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. At least one columnist — the Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee – has said fanatics like Bouyeri will hate us no matter what we do. “Can such fanaticism ever be defused by altering Western foreign policy? No, it must [...]
Wed, July 27 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
This BBC story talks about how the British government is frustrated tht it can't go about tossing mouthy Islamist imams out of the country with impunity. The story looked at the case of Muhammad al-Massari, a Saudi exile who runs a website that shows videos of suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, including one that showed three [...]
Wed, July 27 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
The NYT's Nicholas Kristoff scolds the U.S. media for paying more attention to Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise than Darfur. An excerpt: I'm outraged that one of my Times colleagues, Judith Miller, is in jail for protecting her sources. But if we journalists are to demand a legal privilege to protect our sources, we need to [...]
Wed, July 27 2005 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
From The Onion: WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush officially responded to the latest round of London transit bombings Monday, challenging terrorists to “do their worst.” Said Bush, in a televised statement from the Oval Office: “The proud and resilient people of London can take anything the forces of evil and cowardice can throw at them. They will [...]
Wed, July 27 2005 » Main Page, Minutiae » Comments Off
Veteran journalist Ron Haggart, writing in Tuesday's Globe and Mail, opines that the news media “failed us miserably in the first days after the fatal shooting at London's Stockwell tube station.” Some of his criticisms deal with the nature of “objective” journalism — and while chafing, methinks those constraints might be a good idea. For example, he [...]