WIN SOME, LOSE SOME — Almost the same day that foreign ambassadors in Washington received invitations to attend Wednesday’s presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan ruler, they got letters from the Chinese ambassador urging them to boycott the ceremony. Predictably, the decision to honor the Dalai Lama has drawn strong protests from the Chinese government, which controls his mountainous country. The presentation was initiated by the U.S. Congress, and is supported by the Bush administration. But Congress also has plans to declare the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in [...]
Last Sept. 11, German state-owned television ZDF marked the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by broadcasting a prime-time documentary titled “September 11, 2001: What Really Happened.” By enticingly implying a discrepancy between what the film itself repeatedly terms the “official version” of 9/11 and the reality of the events, the mere title of the film already provides obvious grist for the mill of what might best be called “alternative” 9/11 conspiracy-theorizing: “alternative” because in the legal sense of the term, the 9/11 attacks were in fact the product of a conspiracy. On the ZDF Web page promoting the documentary, [...]
