Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Back From Costa Rica

I'm back from five days of birding the cloud forests of Costa Rica and am trying to shift gears from peering through binoculars at the unbelievably gorgeous Resplendent Quetzals which inhabit those remote mountain jungles to peering at a computer monitor trying to catch up with current events.

Evidently, the big news is that the MSM has disgraced itself yet again with a bogus story that this time has cost peoples' lives. Of course, bogus news stories are no longer news. Nor, unfortunately, is it news that the people at Newsweek, which ran the story about Americans having desecrated the Koran, were taken by surprise at the violence their story provoked. These people are amazingly naive about the world in which we live and they're oblivious to the harm their recklessness and mendacities do to real people who have to live in a world of gullible savages.

Newsweek has now admitted that its story was unfounded. We wonder whether they feel any remorse for the fifteen deaths which resulted from it, and we wonder what measures they will take to punish those responsible for its publication.

All in all it's a pretty depressing tale, and it makes me want to hop on a plane back to the rain forest. I think I'd much rather be marvelling at the beauty of Costa Rica's birds and other wildlife than read about journalists, eager to discredit the American military, printing stories which incite riots and lead to the deaths of innocents.