Short takes, 9/15/06

Today, JoshuaPundit inagurates a new feature : Short Takes. This will encompass stuff I see that I think merits the attention of Joshua's Army members and that I will embellish with a few lines of the wit, wisdom, insight and written insurgency you've come to expect from your pal Freedom Fighter.

This is an attempt to cover more ground in less time and compress a lot into a small space, rather like the young gentleman seen above. This is as opposed to longer pieces, which will continue to be devoted to what I consider are larger and more important stories and issues. This is an experiment, so let's see how it goes. And of course, let me know if this format is to your liking:

Kofi Annan Pays Tribute to Fidel Castro's Leadership - and continues to prove that there's hardly a totalitarian, homocidal dictator that he doesn't approve of.

Our allies, the Poles have once again proven their fidelity to the west by answering NATO's call for more troops for Afghanistan to fight the Taliban with 1,000 of their own. Canada is likewise sending extra troops to Afghanistan, along with a squadron of Leopard heavy tanks. Steven Harper is obviously a very different leader than Chretien.

the EU's head appeasor Javier Solana still insists that he's making `progress' with Iran in the nuclear talks being held in Paris..even though yesterday's meeting was indefinitely postponed and a new date has not yet been scheduled.

I'm certain another meeting will occur..and another...and another..and another..until Iran announces the successful completion of a nuclear missile test. At which point, Iran's Larijani will be able to write another article on how he fooled the west.

Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and actor George Clooney were two of the US activists that were guests of the United States at a special Security Council meeting chaired by U.S. Ambassador John Bolton who pleaded with the Security Council September 14 to act decisively to end the genocide in Darfur.

"We have come to you because I have been moved to despair. We tried everything we could. We knocked on doors, appealed to conscience, implored the wealthy and strong to help the weak and the poor. What else could we do that we haven't done yet," the Nobel laureate said.

Wiesel urged the council to be Darfur's "moral custodian" and stop the violence.

"You can. You can stop it. There are so many ways and you know them all. You have even accepted certain resolutions to that effect," Wiesel said, mentioning economic, political, and cultural sanctions.

"My job is to come here today to beg you on behalf of the millions of people who will die -- and make no mistake they will die - - to take real and effective measures to put an end to this," Clooney said.

While acknowledging that the situation is politically complex, Clooney said, "when you see entire villages raped and killed, wells poisoned and then filled with the bodies of villagers, then all complexities disappear and it comes down to simply right and wrong."

Their sentiments and humanitarian impulses do them credit...but so far, they appear to be talking to the wind.

Over 100 bodies have been found in Iraq over the last three days.US and Iraqi security officials say most were shot dead execution-style with bullet to their heads and many showed signs of torture.

Iraq’s top Sunni leader Adnan Al-Dulaimi said that the Shia militias were behind the communal bloodletting that he warned was propelling the country towards "disaster."

In other news, Iraq is planning on digging trenches surrounding Baghdad and setting up checkpoints to try and contain the violence. And Abu Jaafar al-Liby, who it described as either the second or third most important figure in al-Qaeda in Iraq, was killed by police earlier this week.

A Palestinian Security chief was shot dead in Gaza, along with four other people in what can best be described a s a drive by hit near Hamas PM Haniyeh's offices. Gunmen opened fire on a car carrying Jad Tayeh, Abbas' top intelligence officer and a senior figure in Fatah's Palestinian intelligence services, killing him and four bodyguards.

Obviously either some private score settling, a fall out among theives or a message to Abbas from Haniyeh asserting who's boss. In Gaza, you never know where the next bullet is coming from...

More death throes of the Main Stream Media..the Los Angeles Times editor is openly defying calls for job cuts by the newspaper's owner, the Tribune Corporation. Dean P. Baquet, who was named editor last year, was quoted yesterday in his own paper saying he was defying the paper’s corporate owner in Chicago and would not make the cuts it requested.

The paper, the fourth largest in the country, has eliminated more than 200 jobs over the last five years from an editorial staff that now numbers about 940.

The Times is in a pretty fair amount of disrepute locally because of bogus stories, cooked polls and a rigid leftist stance that belies any notion of objective journalism. The paper's telemarketer's will actually offer you an `ads only' edition to try and sell you a subscription to the paper.

And this is in what's essentially a one newspaper town!

They're going, slowly but surely..or maybe, just maybe they'll wake up one day and remember what their responsibilities of objective journalism consist of.