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.

A 100% bias free post

From watching CNN and FoxNews all the time (no, not really, but bare with me) I know that to be totally unbiased you have to dedicate an even amount of reporting time to the Left and the Right, which are of course totally static and meaningful categories. So here goes:

For the Left-leaning NewsBluesians, the BBC is reporting this totally sensical bit today:

A Palestinian prisoner has died of wounds he suffered in a riot at a jail in southern Israel.

Israeli prison officials said the man had been hit by what they called non-lethal objects fired by guards during Monday's riot.

He died from non-lethal wounds, then?

Never fear Right-leaning readers (who totally exist). I have some news for you too, courtesy of CNN reporting on the arrest over over 100 protesters yesterday in Washington D.C.:

More than 100 people were protesting both the war in Iraq and U.S. policy on global warming. Some were dressed as polar bears and danced on the sidewalk, while others shouted, "No war" and "No warming."

And while they were at it, they decided to protest fur, gun laws, and marijuana laws as well. I mean, once you start with the protests it's hard to call it quits. And I mean, how often do we have people marching on D.C. nowadays? Gotta be efficient in your protesting. I move for more mergers and acquisitions of protest.

Jimmy! Take me on a genocide tour.

An admission: Jimmy Carter has been conspicuously absent from this here blog. And I admit it: I have a certain fancy that stays with me for Carter, despite his Bono-esque Liberalism. It may have something to do with a certain speech he once gave, but I digress.

So what has Jimmy Carter done this time? Published a book with a provocative title that is completely unjustified by its text? Taken me on a genocide tour? No. Worse. CNN is reporting that, in an interview with the 15-time softball Cy Young Award winning Wolf Blitzer (yay newsvertising), Jimmy Carter said:

"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights...We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused."

Now let's think about this. Jimmy Carter was born in 1924, in the great state of Georgia. Think about it. Even in the most generous reading, in which the human rights he is discussing are specifically those of the Geneva Conventions, it is still somewhat, err, problematic.

Jimmy, take some advice from NewsBlues. Stick to what you are good at: building homes and winning Nobel Peace Prizes.

Can I join the Whiskey Revolution?

Look who's back. Back again. Chavez's back. Back again.

Long-time NewsBlues favorite Hugo Chavez is back in the news after quite an absence from these pages. Back on his "hombre nuevo" campaign, Chavez had this to say:

What kind of revolution is this? The Whisky Revolution? The Hummer Revolution? No, this is a real revolution!"

Hmm. Tell me more about this whiskey revolution. Can we compare and contrast it with the Boliviaran Revolution?

CNN added this quirky bit to top it all off:

And during marathon speeches he breaks into song frequently -- so often, in fact, that one aide compiled recordings of him singing on an "All Time Hits" CD, which has yet to be released to the public.

Chanukah is coming up pretty soon. Hint, hint.