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Today the government of Myanmar allowed some diplomats and locally based journalists inside the courtroom where the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi is underway.
The British ambassador, Mark Canning, told the BBC that Suu Kyi appeared “composed, upright, crackling with energy” and “very much in charge of her defense team”.
Here is a photo of her taken today:
Her house:
This is what Joe Wurzelbacher said about the media:
“I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for ‘em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer, ah, down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.
I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.”
How awfully helpful! Really Joe, go back to plumbing.
We’ve read and heard about Hamas using Palestinians as human shields. But today I read on Laila El-Haddad’s blog that the Israeli army is using Palestinian civilians as human shields too:
My father went on to describe accounts of Palestinians being used as human shields-by the Israelis. The Israeli military has been forcing families out of their homes and making them scope out buildings and rooms for the army to enter and for their snipers to nest in. It is a practice they have used before-in Rafah, where i personally reported on it during Operation Rainbow in 2004, in Jenin, and in Nablus in 2007 (where a young girl and boy were abused) . Btselem has said that “Israeli soldiers routinely used Palestinian civilians as human shields by forcing them to carry out life-threatening military tasks”, despite an Israeli High Court Order prohibiting the practice.
Journalists must be allowed free access. We need reporting from Gaza.
In her recent rush of interviews, Sarah Palin ridiculed the media for insinuating that Trig was not her child. But, really, she was ridiculous - her flying across America and attending a conference after her waters broke was truly irresponsible, silly and in fact not credible.
The Daily Dish referred his readers yesterday to an excellent blog about Palin’s pregnancy, ‘Palin’s Deception: A Biology Lesson’. The blogger, Audrey, has written a very comprehensive essay on the facts of a pregnancy and what would normally happen under the circumstances. She doesn’t believe that Palin was ever pregnant with Trig.
The single specific piece of information that we have that has caused the most scrutiny of her birth saga is that she traveled back from Texas to Alaska on April 17th leaking amniotic fluid. Yet, she has never once, as far as I can tell, been asked pointed questions about the very real specifics of this. It would be a bit like someone calling in sick at work because he has cut his arm very badly, then never showing any physical signs – like blood, or stitches, or going to the doctor, that it ever happened, yet being defensive about having to “prove” it.
The leaking of amniotic fluid is an indisputable, unmistakable sign of the onset of labor. Flying at eight months of pregnancy is ill-advised. Flying at eight months with leaking amniotic fluid is insane, particularly for a woman who has boasted about her easy (past) births.
She concludes that:
If Palin’s story is entirely a lie, and the physical realities of membrane rupture which I have seen and dealt with countless times make me lean very strongly in that direction, then the only answer is she was never pregnant at all.
Read it, it’s a brilliant blog, and as Andrew Sullivan says, where journalists failed, blogs have succeeded.
