Weekend Miscellany

Just a few random samplings of various stories I took note of over the weekend.

  • The head of UN peacekeepers in Haiti is blaming John Kerry for much of the current unrest. Wowsers.
  • It seems as if quite a bit of the science behid global warming theories may be based on some bad science. Color me not surprised.
  • If you haven’t noticed, underdog browsers have been staging a bit of a coup against IE as of late. Might I suggest you give Firefox a look?
  • Terry Gross’ interview with Matt Stone (of South Park and Team America fame) was quite entertaining. Give it a listen.
  • The Return of the King extended edition is available for preorder now. Check out a preview of the extra features that are included.
  • Club for Growth has a very entertaining anti-Kerry ad that’s ready to go to air.

UPDATE:
The general in question has apparently followed up on his statements. It doesn’t look like a full retraction, nor a full apology to me. He does look like he was surprised by the reactions his comments generated.

5 Comments

per your firefox comment I would go to it if I could get IE off my system and not ever have to go back! Dang, if only I could get comfortable with Redhat! But it doesn’t support alot of the stuff I run. Oh well, maybe they will start independent drivers for more things now that the market is breaking up.

This is silly. To begin with, the general has recanted his comments.
Kerry made the statement more than seven months ago. His statement was also in keeping with what Colin Powell said here:

Mr. Powell called on Mr. Aristide to help defuse the situation by putting in place a political agreement, brokered with other Caribbean nations, to disarm his loyalists, reform the police and welcome political opponents into a new governing council.
Mr. Powell said the United States would not support Mr. Aristide’s removal in a coup.
“We cannot buy into a proposition that says the elected president must be forced out of office by thugs,” the secretary said. [my emphasis]

That’s essentially what happened.
Haiti has a literacy rate of just over 50% according to the CIA Factbook. The language is French and Haitian Creole. The communications infrastructure is devastated.
That dog won’t hunt.

I had not seen the retraction. I’ll update the post.
However, you’ll note that I was simply noting a story, not commenting on the validity of the claims. The retraction that you noted didn’t seem to be a full retraction, though. In particular:

Heleno avoided returning to the question. “The subject is closed! I’ve said what I’ve said”, he said.

That would seem to indicate that he wasn’t so much backing down on his original statements so much as refusing to elaborate on them. I’ll have to take your word on the translation, as my Portuguese is, well, nonexistant.

I would say he is embarrassed, hence his reaction. He also probably knew the comment was the sort of thing a soldier is not supposed to say. He did say his words were misinterpreted and taken out of context which are universal weasel words for “I opened my mouth, said something I regret and wish to apologize.”
Feel free to run the quote through Altavista’s translation bot. I’m fluent in Portuguese and my wife’s Brazilian. She checked my translation.

I’m not saying I mistrust your translation in the slightest – I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
But even given that, his followup to me seems to be more of a “Whoops, shouldn’t have said that out loud”-type comment than a “Whoops, didn’t actually mean what I said” one.
To me, there’s a fairly big distinction…

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