Wow, I don’t know if it’s the scandalous lack of sleep or the onset of a cold, but I just don’t have the rage this morning.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed off, but just not really pissed off like most mornings.
But I’ll see what I can do.
Don’t trip as you backpedal
Evidently that whole revolution in Lebanon was, well, not a revolution.
Turns out the pro-Syrian folks in the Lebanese parliament have decided to vote the PM back into power. The more this thing plays out, the more it looks like a political battle between self-interested factions, not the dawning of a new day that the mainstream Canadian media made it out to be last week.
In no big shocker this story was buried across the board. If a huge-ass pro-Syria rally can’t get A1, there’s no chance that a pro-Syrian parliamentary vote will. Shameful, but a guy lit himself on fire in front of Queen’s Park yesterday, this story didn’t stand a chance of getting big play.
The real disappointment in the coverage came, not surprisingly, from the Post.
They still manage to spin this as a failure for Syria – after all, Syria is this season’s Iraq.
The Post story cites comment from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who told Time magazine that he wanted to be involved in the international community. “Please send this message: I am not Saddam Hussein. I want to co-operate,” he said.
Which the Post followed immediately with this:
“Yet on the streets of Damascus yesterday the regime tried to create a Saddam-like atmosphere of victory, with drums, chants, patriotic songs and flag-waving.”
A Saddam-like atmosphere? Was it a Saddam-like atmosphere in Ottawa on the weekend with all those damn Libeal thundersticks, chants and flag waving? What about every Bush rally in the past year? Were they Saddam-like?
When they are stretching so far to draw comparisons between al-Assad and Hussein, it just gets insulting.
Avian Flu!!! DANGER!!!
I won’t go into it in great detail here, but wow has this avian flu ever got a lot of coverage. CanWest in particular likes to run at least two stories per day per paper.
Maybe it is a legit threat, but wow. Remember when SARS was going to kill us all? Or mad cow? Or Norwalk? Or drug-resistant bacteria?
Can we please have some context here?
The Toronto Star continues its cookie-earning ways
The Star has a good little editorial on A20 today. Allow me to quote: “So what do the reprehensible acts of one unstable man have to do with marijuana laws and the gun registry? Despite what the lobbies would have us believe, not very much.”
That’s right, the Star finally realized what some people (ahem, me) were saying days ago. That lobbyists are co-opting this tragedy to cynically advance their own agendas.
They even finally got around to quoting RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, which the Globe has yet to do. The only thing they overlook is that it is not only overzealous lobbyists trying to score points on the corpses of four dead cops, it’s the politicians too.
Earlier this week, Harper promised he would not politicize the deaths of the cops.
Yesterday, Harper said called into question “loopholes” that allowed the killer to roam the streets. He dispatched his deputy, Peter MacKay, to do the real dirty work though. He called the gun registry “a colossal failure that does not save lives.”
But they don’t want to politicize the matter. Fuckers.
And in a strange twist. . .
Something made me excited and happy this morning. The Star (there they go again!) reported that Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire is in line for a Senate seat. They even cited speculation that he’s already accepted.
I can’t put into words what an extremely good idea this is.
Dallaire is a brave, intelligent, compassionate human being who understands the necessity of an army but also the limitations and ethical standards it should be held to.
He’ll compliment the passionate if not overzealous drive of Colin Kenney and together they might actually give us a military we can be proud of.
And it’ll make warrior-turned-columnist Lewis MacKenzie shit bricks. That’s reason enough to do it.
Bonne chance, M. Dallaire. Bonne chance.
This is what I like about working at a weekly newspaper. . . we don’t have to respond to the news as quickly, so we’re less likely to call something a “revolution” before it turns out to be a pissing match. Time is the greatest guarantee against reckless optimism and reckless pessimism.
Also, kudos to Dallaire.
The Carlton Ravens are 2005 OUA champions.