Posted by
Curt Day on Friday, May 23, 2008 3:25:35 PM
Best
The candidates for the best news include: an immigration raid protest in Iowa, multiple calls for a probe of the US shelling of the Palestine Hotel in 2003, an American denial of an Israeli report of our intentions to attack Iran, Bush apologizing for the desecration of the Koran, and the Burmese Juntas allowing UN aid flights. Please note the high percentage of good news items that are about holding others accountable for their actions.
But the winner is that Iran has renewed calls for international talks on several issues from its nuclear development to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Perhaps if we participated in these talks, we could help prevent future conflicts and resolve current ones. Iran has made these offers before and we ignored them. The result is the US gov't's perceived need to threaten Iran.
Worst
I really don't want to go through the list of candidates. It is too depressing. Some of the items have to do with US policies in Iraq that have included the possible sniper killing of an Iraqi journalist, the detainment of Iraqi youths, the Iraqi purchase of arms, and the US gov't 's approval of more money for the war. In addition, we have the growing food crisis partly because of US agribusiness practices that drive local farmers from other countries out of business. In addition, 6 million Ethiopian children are at risk for malnutrition.
The worst news is similar to what we saw during the last two weeks. The death toll from China's earthquake was last reported on Democracy Now at 40,000 with over 32,000 unaccounted for as well as hundreds of thousands injured.
The pot calling the kettle black award goes to President Bush for saying that US occupation of Iraq, what we call American domination, is needed to prevent Iranian domination of the Middle East.