9 December 2005 @ 3:57PM >> Just a few days after Saddam Hussein exposed the brutality he faces in US custody comes word that the imperialist American warmongers are victimizing even more innocent Iraqis:

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s former intelligence chief and one of his most feared sidekicks, also said the food was bad and he was not given blankets. He lost 18 kilos in just two months in captivity, he complained.

“We were detained by one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet it was only after four months in detention that they gave me cigarettes,” said Barzan, charged with crimes against humanity.

“And then they were of the worst quality in the world.”

We gave him cigarettes? What are we trying to do, kill him? What’s the point of even fighting the so-called “War on Terror” if we’ve become just as barbaric and inhumane as the supposed terrorists we’re trying to defeat?

9 December 2005 @ 9:11AM >> At a recent conference on climate change, reporter Richard Ingham of Agence France-Presse apparently became rather agitated when speaking to one of the attendees. In this badgering exchange with Peyton Knight of the National Center for Public Policy Research, the reporter reveals that he has absolutely no prejudices about the topic he’s been assigned to cover:

“Who funds you?” [the reporter] angrily demanded.

I explained that individual donations make up the vast majority of our funding.

“What individuals?” he pressed.

I explained that our supporters are mostly individual Americans who believe in our mission.

Clearly disappointed that our main funding source wasn’t industry, the AFP representative moved on to another line of questioning.

“I see here that you do research. Just what kind of research do you do?” he asked, growing more hostile.

I pointed to the press release in his hand, specifically the bold portion at the top that quite clearly reveals the name of our organization — i.e. The National Center for PUBLIC POLICY Research.

Furious now, he demanded to know The National Center’s stance on global warming. I began to explain to him that it is our view that mankind is not causing the planet to get appreciably warmer. Before I could delve into any specifics, he cut me off, shouting: “Why?! Because it isn’t in the Bible?! It isn’t in Genesis?!”

He then stormed off. He was probably in a hurry to file an honest, unbiased account about the conference... or maybe not.

9 December 2005 >> I remember seeing an old New Yorker cartoon years ago that had a guy in a bookstore telling a clerk, “I’d like a book on chutzpah, and I want you to pay for it.”

Out of that same mold comes this proposal from Joe Mathewson, a journalism professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism:

[N]ewspapers, as important to the civic health of our society as public transportation, have a claim on public allegiance that goes beyond financial measure. Does anyone believe that our society is better, our civic virtue enhanced, by the failure of the Washington Star and the New York Herald Tribune and the Chicago Daily News and all the other fine dailies that have perished for purely financial reasons?

Because declining readership and revenue threaten the newspaper industry, Professor Mathewson recommends converting newspapers into tax-exempt entities. In effect, taxpayers would be underwriting the publishing of newspapers by giving them a free pass on their tax bills.

Just imagine...not only would you have the privilege of choosing to buy the print edition of The New York Times or paying $50 a year for TimesSelect, under Mathewson’s scheme, you’d have the additional privilege of subsidizing the Times through tax breaks, which would underwrite an editorial page that consistently calls for higher taxes. You’d be paying taxes so the Times could lobby for you to pay even more taxes.

Chutzpah indeed!