Low Earth Orbit

Politics over aid

[source, source]

Update: Via the Brothers Judd, the original source has retracted the story concerning the comments by the Vatican which were mistranslated. The Vatican statement condemned the Sri Lankan decision to reject aid from Israel, not Israeli decision to abide by the Sri Lankan request. One wonders a bit on how this could have been so badly mistranslated.

So apparently, people who write for the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano have limited reading comprehension skills. They’re claiming Israel refused to help Sri Lanka.

The Vatican newspaper has denounced a decision by the Israeli army to deny emergency help to disaster victims in Sri Lanka.

The Vatican newspaper has denounced a decision by Sri Lanka to reject emergency aid offered by the Israeli government. Sri Lanka declined the Israeli aid because it would have been furnished by a military team.

Calling for “a radical and dramatic change of perspective” among people “too often preoccupied with making war,” L’Osservatore Romano singled out Israeli military leaders for declining a request for emergency medical help chastised the government of the stricken Asian nation for putting unnecessary restrictions on an Israeli offer to furnish medical help. The Vatican paper observed that in what “should be a time for unconditional solidarity,” some world leaders seem incapable of escaping a “small-minded approach that restricts their horizons.”

Here’s the problem. That isn’t what happened. Sri Lanka refused to allow the Israel delegation in.

Contrary to the Vatican report, an Israeli plane carrying 80 tons of food and medical supplies worth $100,000 was set to depart for Sri Lanka Wednesday morning. At the request of the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry, a team of some 150 Israeli medical and security personnel aborted their planned trip to the island nation Tuesday night.

The Vatican paper observed that in what “should be a time for unconditional solidarity,” some world leaders seem incapable of escaping a “small-minded approach that restricts their horizons.”

The fact that the devastation swept across different societies, cultures, and nations should help to reinforce the universal perspective, the paper suggested.

Unless you’re jewish apparently. In which case it’s better for people to die in the jungle, eaten by wild animals, than to allow the nation’s holy soil to be contaminated by “them”. Even the rebels in Aceh have agreed to a cease-fire and help for the disaster. But the Sri Lankan government — they’ve got their priorities.

Old Media credibility watch

Via Little Green Footballs comes this list of 13 different errors in a single paragraph of an article in the Washington Post about the forged memos promoted by CBS. I’m not sure I’ve seen a more efficient degradation of Old Media credibility.

Old Media collaboration watch

Junkyard Blog has a couple of examples of how Old Media is either raising bogus objections to USA military efforts or effectively collaborating with our enemies. These include

• Providing details on a plane presumably used by the CIA for anti-terrorist operations including likely locations and the tail number.
• Objecting to the Pentagon stepping up the use of human intelligence against the caliphascists, because what could human spies tell us that spy satellites can’t?

Why can’t Old Media provide this kind of information about the caliphascists to a world wide audience?