Time magazine gives its “Man of the Year” to the person who most affects that year’s events, for better or for worse. The Man of the Year cover on Jan. 2, 1939, pictured Hitler as a church organist playing in front of a St. Catherine’s wheel hung with bodies. The cover’s caption reads, “From the unholy organist, a hymn of hate.”
From the cover story:
Likewise, Time named Ayatullah Khomeini “Man of the Year” after the taking of the hostages at the American embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Yes, let’s talk about killing. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch all estimate that Saddam Hussein’s regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. “Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been ‘disappeared’ by the Iraqi government over the past two decades,” the group said. That averages to 12,000 every year from 1979 to 2003. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands who died in the wars he made against two of his neighbors.
At least one of which (against Iran) was encouraged, funded and armed by the United States. That was back when he was OUR bastard…
No, because we disagree on the premises underlying the opinion.
Oh dear, the French are pissed. Gracious me - whatever shall we do? :eek:
Careful - use the G-word too much, and Aldebaran will accuse us of not having a secular nation.
Regards,
Shodan
Believe me, the irony of a Saudi condeming us for not being secular enough is not lost on those of us who have been following Aldebaran’s charmed if zealous trip on this board. 
Anyway. Ignoring the hijack (and how many times have I had to type that in one of the threads he’s in!), I thought Kerry gave one of the most gracious concession speeches ever. I’ve been to Fanueil Hall plenty of times, of course, and it’s a big inspiring room up there where all the great political figures of history have spoken at one time or another. The giant painting behind Kerry, too big to be properly seen on camera, is of the great Daniel Webster addressing the Senate; I believe it’s the 1830 “Bundle of Sticks” anti-secession speech in reply to John Calhoun, where he said that one stick could break but a bundle of sticks could not.
So, behind Kerry was a picture of Webster delivering the words "“Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable”, the famous closing lines of the speech.
For your information:
Mehitabel, I am married. Start stalking someone else
Salaam. A
I was disapointed in him for conceding so soon. I remain so. He conceded the day after the election on the basis of the official results – ong before we knew if the official results were valid. We’ve known for some time that the electronic voting machines that were widely used in this election cannot be trusted. It therefore follows that, in any state that used these machines in any significant percentage of districts, we cannot trust the official results. Finding out if the official results are valid may take weeks or months. Kerry should not have been so quick to concede.
And I disagree with the characterization of Gore’s response to the Florida fiasco as “political tantruming”. Bush was not the rightful winner. Gore would have been wrong to just meekly accept being unjustly denied the Presidency.
First of all, concessions don’t mean diddly. If the official counts show that he won, and the electoral college votes for him, then he’ll be the President-elect. Second, he didn’t concede until the Ohio Secretary of State’s office declared that it was statistically impossible for Kerry to win. So, he really didn’t concede too soon, and in any case, it doesn’t matter.
What would have been interesting, to me at least, would have been Kerry winning Ohio by a couple thousand votes. That would have left Bush getting more than 50% of the popular vote with some 3.5 million more votes than Kerry while losing the election.
