Highway 99
Sunday, July 31, 2005
A year ago this month, I wrote a post on how The Economist magazine had recently published some egregious errors that all had one thing in common: They put George Bush and Tony Blair in a bad light. I wondered at the time what the hell was happening to The Economist, which I'd always considered several cuts above other European media.
Well, something similar is happening again.
In the July 2nd issue, on page 29, we read the following:
Yes they were. They were at attention and were forbidden to demonstrate any emotion whatever -- and the media had been informed of this fact.On June 28th George Bush delivered his first nationally broadcast speech on Iraq since his re-election, choosing the martial surroundings of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. [. . .] The public also needs a lot more persuading. The blip of optimism after the elections in January has now flat-lined. More than half those questioned in a Gallup poll released on the day of the speech said sending troops to Iraq was a mistake. His audience at Fort Bragg--750 members of the 82nd Airborne Division and the Army's Special Operations unit--were silent for most of his speech.
Next up: On page 3 of "A Survey of America," between pages 50 and 52 of the July 16th issue of The Economist, we find:
First and foremost, Bush did not confine stem-cell research to existing stem-cell lines. He confined federal funding to projects using existing embryonic stem-cell lines. Embryonic stem-cell research using any stem-cell line is completely free to continue fueled by state and private funding -- and such research has continued. Meanwhile, federal funding is also supporting research using stem cells from sources other than human embryos.Doubts about what America stands for are growing inside the country, too. America has always seen itself, and has been seen, as the land of progress, pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. Yet four years ago Mr Bush confined stem-cell research to existing stem-cell lines, and this summer, when Congress voted to relax his guidelines, Mr Bush threatened to veto the bill. If he carries out his threat, it will be the first veto of his presidency.
And second, I'm not sure where the author is getting the impression that "doubts about what America stands for are growing inside the country." I don't have any such doubts, and to the best of my knowledge neither do any of the people I associate with. Sounds to me like the author is projecting his own problems with America onto some mythical bunch of disillusioned natives.
On page 77 of the same issue, in an article presumably written by a different author, we run into exactly the same idiotic drivel:
Oh for Christ's sake. I'm glad Kennewick Man is finally back in the hands of the scientists, too, and I think we've done far too much kow-towing to the Native American community (or maybe just to its activist spokesmen) on this and other issues. But even so, will the anonymous author of this article please list for me all the branches of science that have been driven out of the United States by religious dogma? I'm not aware of any branch of science having been driven out of America for any reason. Last time I looked, American science and technology dominated the world. Indeed, pick up any issue of The Economist, skim through its "Science and Technology" section, and see how many of the articles deal with inventions and discoveries by Americans. In a lot of issues, every article in the section deals with America. We are not losing our superiority for a long time to come, and it's a damn shame the America-bashing dingbat who wrote the above paragraph is too stupid to realize that.Whether the precedent of Dr Owsley's success in getting his hands on Kennewick Man means such litigation can be settled more speedily in the future remains to be seen. If it does not (and an amendment to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act about to be proposed in the Senate seems designed to abolish the need to prove a connection with an existing tribe), then paleoanthropology could become the next branch of science to be driven out of the United States by religious dogma.
Last but certainly not least, take a look at this gem from page 49 of the July 23rd issue. It's from the column by "Charlemagne" titled "All aboard the freedom train? How Americans and Europeans might come together over spreading democracy in the Arab world:"
Yeah, you read that right. To the genius who hides behind the nom-de-plume Charlemagne, America's ringing moral commitments are compromised by its protection of Israel. Jesus, Europeans are such motherfucking worthless shitheads, it's no wonder their fucking continent is dying. Will somebody please explain to this asshole that protection of Israel IS one of America's ringing moral commitments? (This reminds me of the cover illustration of an issue of The Economist in the weeks leading up to last fall's election. It featured a photo of Bush, looking very cowboy-like, with lines pointing to various parts of his anatomy with the Economist editors' snide commentary. The line pointing to Bush's crotch bore the comment (writing this from memory), "No Cajones: Needs to stand up for the road map to peace and stand up to Ariel Sharon" (or words to that effect). I remember thinking at the time that the way Bush stood up to Arafat and in favor of Israel was proof positive that he had all the cajones one could ask for -- he just wasn't using them in the way the Economist editors recognized or approved of.)[. . .] A senior American official retorts that "we don't want to get rid of the House of Saud." But this produces yet another reason for European scepticism; the feeling that ringing moral commitments will quickly by compromised by America's strategic and other interests, such as oil supplies or the protection of Israel.
This last example isn't just infuriating, it's downright disgusting. I used to believe Europeans had fundamentally changed from what they were in the mid-twentieth century. I no longer believe that. I think a lot of them would love a second Holocaust to occur.
Where the hell are they coming up with all this crap? It's difficult to tell, because with rare exceptions The Economist runs no bylines either for editors or for reporters, but I've gotten the impression that The Economist has been turning to the left over the past two or three years. Maybe they've hired some new people who have changed the magazine's tone. Or perhaps they've been taking behind-the-scenes abuse from their media peers for having editorially supported the invasion of Iraq, and the pressure is getting to them, consciously or not.
I hope that The Economist, which had long been generally if not uncritically pro-American, isn't turning into just another piece of left-wing, anti-American MSM shit.
Mayday, Mayday . . . anybody still out there? To whom it may concern: Thank you for checking out Highway 99, which has been in a coma for several weeks. All my posts for May, June, and July suddenly shifted down beneath the blogroll, which meant you couldn't see any posts at all if you didn't know you had to scroll halfway down the page.
I repeatedly e-mailed customer service at Blogger. Days would go by with no reply, and then the reply would say something like "We've been inundated with requests because of the holiday. If your problem still requires service, please e-mail us again." This was surprising, since, unlike many people I've heard about, my previous experience with Blogger and its customer service reps had always been positive.
Finally, weeks after I first contacted them, a Blogger CSR wrote back explaining that the problem was a side effect of their new feature Blogger Image and that she had fixed it. She also said that there was a patch of code being offered now on their site for people who were having this problem -- which leads me to believe that whatever bug was in the Blogger Image feature must have messed up quite a few blogs besides mine.
Anyway, I'm back, although I find that I've gotten out of the habit of blogging and it might take me awhile to get back into it.
And, concerning events that transpired while I was gone, for the moment let me just state the obvious: that the people of London have my sympathy for enduring the bombings and my admiration for the manner in which they endured them.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Testing 1-2-3. [Update: Ignore this post. Blogger went crazy on me for several weeks, and this was part of my attempt to get my blog working again.]