In the News, Week of February 20
The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:
FRIDAY
An alarming development from the NY Times:
ALABAMA ADOPTS THE PEACH, NETTLING GROWERS NEXT DOOR
Alabama legislators have some fences to mend with neighboring Georgia after state representatives passed a resolution Tuesday naming peaches Alabama’s official tree fruit.
“Georgia is the Peach State,” said Robert L. Dickey III, of Musella, Ga., past president of the Georgia Peach Council and a fourth-generation peach grower. “We’re known internationally as the Peach State. We have always been the Peach State, and we think we have the best peaches in the world.”
Representative James M. Martin, a Chilton County Democrat and sponsor of the Alabama resolution, said he did not think Georgia should have a lock on peach pride.
“If you’ve ever tasted Alabama peaches, you’d throw rocks at Georgia,” Mr. Martin said.
—Don’t they understand how quickly this could descend into sectarian violence?
THURSDAY
From the NY Times re: the burgeoning Iraqi civil service:
NEITHER WAR NOR BOMBS STAY THESE IRAQ COURIERS
After the American invasion, postmen received motorbikes to make deliveries, a coveted perk. Now, every day but Friday, they load up with letters — packages must be picked up at the post office — and fan out through the city, steering through the streets and dodging potholes and explosions.
“I talk to him sometimes,” Mr. Hadi said of his motorbike.
—Imagine what happens when an Iraqi goes postal.
WEDNESDAY
From the LA Times about our great leaps toward tolerance:
ANTI-SEMITISM IS ALLEGED IN FRENCH TORTURE-KILLING
PARIS — In a new case of strife and brutality in France’s immigrant neighborhoods, authorities alleged Monday that anti-Semitism influenced a gang that kidnapped a Jewish store clerk, tortured him for more than three weeks and killed him.
The kidnappers, who called themselves “The Barbarians,” beat, burned and mutilated Halimi during 24 days of captivity in the cellar of a tough housing project in Bagneux, southwest of the capital, according to investigators.
The gang taunted Halimi’s family and a rabbi with anti-Semitic epithets and recited Koranic verses during telephone calls and e-mails demanding wildly diverging amounts of ransom that never were collected, investigators said.
— Man, I wish I were a cartoonist right now.
TUESDAY
From the LA Times about a new shift in the Iraq war:
REBELS’ ARSENAL INCLUDES POLITICS
BAGHDAD — Once viewed as a series of scattered cells with unfocused goals, Iraqi insurgents have begun to develop a coordinated political agenda, reaching out to Sunni Arab politicians and distancing themselves from foreign fighters whose attacks against civilians have alienated possible allies in a new government.
The size and scale of attacks against civilians also have declined precipitously. This year there were virtually no attacks on Shiite Muslims celebrating the holiday of Ashura, compared with last year and 2004, when suicide bombers killed dozens of pilgrims.
Such attacks could have undermined efforts to persuade the Shiite government to make concessions to Sunnis.
— It’s just this kind of editorializing that makes me distrust the liberal media.
According to the report, the insurgents have decided that it’s futile to try to hold territory and recommend that fighters slip into the local population, and then leave before U.S. troops can strike.
We can call it a strategy of recoil, redeploy and spoil,” said Peter Harling, an ICG analyst…
— Otherwise known as shit your caftan, run like hell, and fuck someone over.
MONDAY
From the Scotsman about those damn kids:
CHILDREN ‘WRONGLY GIVEN’ RITALIN
THOUSANDS of Scottish children, some as young as six, are wrongly being labelled hyperactive and given controversial drugs to stop anxious parents thinking they are to blame for unruly behaviour, a leading academic has warned.
On the use of Ritalin, the academic added: “This kind of medication for children as young as six is crazy. Their brains are still developing and yet they are being given mind-altering drugs.”
— Yeah, but this prepares them for a lifetime of savage, uncontrollable alcoholism.