Top Stories Thursday 12 Dec
The Sideshow reflects on why conservatives think there’s a liberal media:
It’s always so weird reading the comments on these things, with all the “conservatives” leaping out of the woodwork to insist that the media is liberally-biased. What do they mean? Where are they finding all this liberalism in the media? Do they turn on their radios and hear three hours a day of commentators who advocate lifting the cap off of the maximum salary that is subject to Social Security taxes? Does the TV news seem to be advocating a state-paid national health care plan available for free to all? Do they insist on using the proper term for late-term abortion (that was it), rather than “partial-birth abortion”, even?
Shou? talks about memories:
Living in an apartment in Beirut in 1999 and 2000, when Israeli jets bombed the Lebanese power stations to rubble (in Beirut, a 24-hour power supply was restored in 1996, a few years after the civil war), I considered myself lucky when I had power at home for more than eight hours during the day. Living in refugee camps (in 2001 and a few times in previous years), I had to adapt myself to long power cuts a few times a day, and always forgot to fill the water tank on the roof. When I would have had a full water tank on my roof here in Rotterdam, life would have been easier right now. Here in Holland we think it’s normal that everything always works. We don’t even consider the possibility that something could go wrong. We don’t prepare for the worst. In parts of Lebanon you still have to.