Word Choice

If I stand in between them, maybe they won't fight.

Now I know that picking on Bush's words is somewhat cliche, but fear not. This is not another Liberal self congratulatory gotchya at W's expense.

The BBC, emphasizing the importance the White House is placing on the Annapolis summit, states:

US President George W Bush has said "a battle is underway" for the future of the Middle East as regional leaders gathered for a key peace conference.

Uh. Sir? Mr. Bush? I'm not quite sure how to break this to you, but we already know that a battle is underway in the Middle East. In fact, that's sort of (very much sort of) the reason why this summit is being held in the first place.

The importance of good headline writers

Headline Writers are often overlooked, and for good reason. Most stories don't seem that hard to sum up in a few words. But every now and again, or every time you pick up the New York Post, the importance of good headline writing becomes clear. Take this morning's International Herald-Tribune, which boldly declared:

Palestinian says joint statement about peace is within reach

Aparently, we have reached the point where a single Palestinian's belief that peace is within reach constitutes news. Damn.

(The article is actually about the upcoming Anapolis summit, and the Palestinian in question happens to be Yasser Abed Rabbo, senior aide to Mahomoud Abbas. But you knew that.)

A great day to read the news!

There is so much NewsBlues worthy stuff around the "series of tubes" this morning, that I hardly know where to start.

Actually, I do. With FoxNews. Kabobfest beat me to this one, but I thought I'd link the clip anyway. It's just far too brilliant for me to even make a sarcastic comment on. Enjoy!


Now that the Foxies are out of way, let's turn to Pakistan. Now I usually don't like to blog about Pakistan, for the simple reson that I know absolutely nothing about that country. But the BBC is carrying some quotes that are just too good to ignore:

"Did I go mad? Or suddenly, my personality changed? Am I Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?" he asked.

"Have I done anything constitutionally illegal? Yes, I did it on 3 November," he said, referring to his imposition of emergency rule. "But did I do it before? Not once."

He does have a good point, though. I mean, every world leader engages in some 'constitutionally illegal' behavior now and again. Why pick on little old Mushy?


And from Pakistan, we turn to NewsBlues mainstay Israel, which seems to be having an awful hard time relating to European royalty who are also heads of churches. First to Britain, where Prince Charles "snubbed" Israel:

[Deputy Private Secretar Clive] Alderton noted, "Acceptance would make it hard to avoid the many ways in which Israel would want HRH [Prince Charles] to help burnish its international image. In which case, let's agree a way to lower its expectations."

Is it too soon to call this a Royal boycott of Israel? As an aside, HRH is my new favorite acronym.

Pissing off a potential future head of the Anglican Church may be bad, but not as bad as pissing off the Pope. Ha'aretz is quoting Monsignor Pietro Sambi as saying:

"The Holy See decided to establish diplomatic relations (in 1993) with Israel as an act of faith, leaving to latter the serious promises to regulate concrete aspects of the life of the Catholic community and the Church in Israel," Sambi, the Papal Nuncio to the United States, said.

"If I must be frank, the relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic ties," he continued.

Damn! The specific complaints have to do with taxing Church property and failure to lift travel restrictions on Catholic clergy in the West Bank. Said Israel, "well, you know, Islamo-fascista-terrorists might don a collar and try to blow up all of Western Civilization. Every other country would take the same action if their Catholic priests!" Hell, El Salvador did.

A Populist update/apology for my last post

Hugo to Juan Carlos II: "Talk to the hand 'cause the face don't wanna hear it!"

In the name of the Whiskey Revolution, I would like to hereby apologize to my reader(s). My last post was elitist and disrespectful to Hugo Chavez. I should have known that the back-in-three-days leader wouldn't take no lip from nobody, even if they are quite possibly the best King since Ferdinand II.

Al-Jazeera (which has suprisingly good coverage of Latin America), is quoting the Venezuelan President as saying:

"Mr King, did you know about the coup d'etat against Venezuela, against the democratic, legitimate government of Venezuela in 2002?"

Now the King of Spain is a mostly ceremonial post by now, so he probably didn't; but Spain probably did. You never thought that one botched coup could provide so much fun news. It almost makes the reign of Bush II worth it.

The real great thing about Chavez, though, is his possy. I mean, that quote above is a pretty good opening salvo, but leave it to the annonymous Venezuelan man on the street to throw down for el presidente:

"He's insolent. He has to respect a sovereign leader. The king is just a monarch and Spain has been sacking the people of Latin America for the past 500 years.

"President Chavez has more right to say what he pleases than the king because he was elected by the Venezuelan people.

"The king showed a total lack of respect. He wasn't at a nursery school, he was at a summit."

That's gotta burn. Just goes to show that while you may be able to get mad props for restoring democracy after a long dictatorship, you still can't mess with your former colonies. That's just a sore spot that isn't going away. Especially when it is part of the Boliviaran Revolution.

Also, don't mess with soccer fans. Not that it's relevant to the subject at hand, but you can never know when a world leader may be reading this blog.

SHUT UP!

So Spain, Portugal, Andorra, and all of Latin America decided to get together and have lunch. OK, so this was kind of a bas idea from the start. Especially considering how Andorra was invited.

Worse yet, someone put NewsBlues favorite son and anti-colonialist Hugo Chavez at the same table as the Spanish deligation. Big Mistake. Those of you who can understand Spanish should watch the clip above. Those who can't should read this:

King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to "shut up" as the Ibero-American summit drew to a close in Santiago, Chile.

The outburst came after Mr Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist".

Mr Chavez then interrupted Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's calls for him to be more diplomatic, prompting the king's outburst.

The clip is far better for the play-by-play. You should also check out the story from El Mundo. I'm not sure how many of my readers will truly appreciate this story, so I'm including a link to the Wiki page on the King.