Why does reading this story make my saying anything about this editorial seem somewhat superfluous?
WHY I HATE BILL GATES: I just downloaded Internet Explorer 5.2. He swiped my homepage and replaced it with MSN. I wonder how many hits Slate just got. Does Microsoft know how incredibly irritating this is? Every other bookmark is retained – but my homepage. And Mr Gates has to muscle in and change that. It feels like e-burglary. Grrr.
WHAT CHERIE REALLY THINKS: Cherie Blair, Tony’s wife, is a devoted Guardian reader. Like Hillary Clinton, she is to the left of her husband and shares with our Hillary the notion that those people to the right of her are simply tacky, malevolent or stupid. So her remarks yesterday about the latest suicide bombing did indeed represent the classic political gaffe. Cherie said what she believes, which is that the crisis in the Middle East is largely caused by Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Actually, this is what she said: “As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.” She later apologized for her remarks, but she really should not have done. The pretense that European elites think of Israel as a fellow democracy besieged by terrorism should be abandoned. These elites believe that Israel is to blame for the violence, and that Israel must be prevailed upon to make more concessions before any terrorist activity should cease. Suicide bombers are understandable. Israel’s self-defense isn’t. Thanks, Cherie, for clearing the air.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “W has the vocabulary of a 12-year-old, though most 12-year-olds have an infinitely stronger grasp of world affairs. Our spaniel press makes Herculean efforts to pass over the fact in tactful silence, but the truth is that George W. Bush is the laughingstock of the world, by dint of the obvious fact that his maximum level of competence was that of greeter at the ballpark in Arlington, which, as the blues piano player Dave Vest recently remarked, is the only real job he ever had before he met Ken Lay. Nixon had policies, strategies. Bush has notes (often contradictory) from his staff, which he bears no sign of comprehending for longer than the brief moments in which he lurches his way through them in some public forum.” – Alexander Cockburn, New York Press.
THE LEFT AND PATRIOTISM: Anne Applebaum kicks the soccer debate a little further down the field in a stirring little essay in Slate. Her best point is how in Europe, football is increasingly the only venue in which patriotism can be legitimately expressed, and therefore it takes on somewhat fraught forms. She makes an Orwell-like point about the trouble the left still has with simple patriotism, a problem that remains one of the biggest obstacles to a vibrant popular liberalism on both sides of the Atlantic:
Britain, even what Americans would consider to be ordinary patriotism is often suspect. When Tony Blair first entered the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street, in 1997, he staged a little parade of well-wishers, all of whom were waving the British flag, the Union Jack. The British chattering classes howled their disapproval of this unsightly show of nationalism-one friend told me that the Union Jack always made him think of right-wing extremists-just as they had earlier howled their disapproval of the Blair campaign’s brief (and quickly withdrawn) use of the traditional British bulldog. This summer’s Jubilee, the 50th anniversary celebration of the queen’s reign, has been accompanied by some flag-waving-but some opposition, too. One Independent columnist wrote that her friends are “studiously ignoring the event,” since national symbols such as the queen and the flag “bear uncomfortable overtones of racism and colonialism.” Patriotism, she went on, is seen as “profoundly down-market, like doilies and bad diets.”
Or to translate this into American: Love of country? So white trash.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “Aren’t the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other? The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have. The Israelis … they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism.” – Ted Turner, vice-chairman, AOLTimeWarner, the Guardian.
ALASKA RAINES: Thanks for the emails from Alaska. One reader writes:
I did not even bother to read the NYT piece I knew that they would leave out the simple fact that the Van Allen Radiation belts that protect the earth from solar storms are weakest towards the poles and that the sun has been blasting out some of the biggest Coronal Mass ejections ever recorded. The Solar Max period of sun spots and other activity is lasting longer and is more intense than ever. Check out the new book “Storms from the Sun.” The NYT is never to be trusted on any issue where science could get in the way of their politics.
Another Alaskan has nothing but good things to say about the recent warming trend:
Look, if you ask any Alaskan about global warming, the response will be “BRING IT ON!” If it is getting so damn warm these days, why did Anchorage have record snowfall for March? Who does it still get no warmer than 25 in the winter? Look, if it is warmer by a few degrees… it is still freakin’ cold all the live long day!!! It is so easy for New Yorkers to tell us Alaskans what is good for us, heck they have have had a ton of practice with regard to ANWR. My response to the article was whatever!! But don’t get me started about the Spruce bark beatle. The number of dead trees on the Kenai is staggering, and it is truly horrific. But, thanks to stupid Forest Service managers, this is disaster that was permitted to happen. When we could have done something about it (such as spraying, or cutting a swath of forest as a break, or even clearing the dead logs) we were not allowed. No, the policy was completely hands off. I mean, some squirrel or a herd of moose might get bummed out in the process. Quick action was needed about ten years ago. Now, it is just a big fire waiting to happen. And when it does, blame the USFS. There are millions of trees that are waiting to blow up, literally, and burn the entire peninsula. And when it happens, then the healing will begin and the forest will start to grow back. But look to pay around half a billion dollars in the process, because it will not be pretty.
The Dish 