Tomorrow's NYT Headline Today: "Syrian Leader Takes Hesitant Move Toward Reform"
This is just downright heartwarming:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday that he and Syria would "build a new world" free of U.S. domination. "We have decided to be free. We want to cooperate to build a new world where states' and people's self-determination are respected," Chavez said after a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad at his presidential palace in Damascus. "Imperialism's concern is to control the world, but we will not let them despite the pressure and aggression," the Venezuelan leader said, speaking through an interpreter.
There are two reasons that we're suspicious about this story:
(1) It's from the Associated Press. They've been known to lie. Not that we've come over to the conspiracy theorists' camp - we still hold as a very basic premise that, all things being equal, even journalists are more likely to tell the truth than they are to tell a lie. We're just saying that as a matter of personal comfort, we wouldn't feel entirely comfortable accepting their assurances that the sun was out during the daytime without some other source of confirmation.
(2) We always thought that the word "free" and the phrase "people's self-determination" were illegal in Syria. Someone alert the New York Times: just the fact that a brutal foreign dictator was allowed to say those words is a super-secret and complex signal (decodable only by certain reliable Washington think tanks) that Assad is in an internal battle for reform with old guard Syrian generals. Obviously.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday that he and Syria would "build a new world" free of U.S. domination. "We have decided to be free. We want to cooperate to build a new world where states' and people's self-determination are respected," Chavez said after a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad at his presidential palace in Damascus. "Imperialism's concern is to control the world, but we will not let them despite the pressure and aggression," the Venezuelan leader said, speaking through an interpreter.
There are two reasons that we're suspicious about this story:
(1) It's from the Associated Press. They've been known to lie. Not that we've come over to the conspiracy theorists' camp - we still hold as a very basic premise that, all things being equal, even journalists are more likely to tell the truth than they are to tell a lie. We're just saying that as a matter of personal comfort, we wouldn't feel entirely comfortable accepting their assurances that the sun was out during the daytime without some other source of confirmation.
(2) We always thought that the word "free" and the phrase "people's self-determination" were illegal in Syria. Someone alert the New York Times: just the fact that a brutal foreign dictator was allowed to say those words is a super-secret and complex signal (decodable only by certain reliable Washington think tanks) that Assad is in an internal battle for reform with old guard Syrian generals. Obviously.
