Last week, we brought you news that Megadeth's next album will be titled United Abominations. Apparently, front man Dave Mustaine came up with that catchy phrase when he was "watching TV and saw the trucks that said 'UN' on them and said, 'Man, you are so un-cool, ineffective, anything...I thought, wow I got to run with this!'"
It seems that a similar amount of thought went into the album art. Without the flags, this could just as well be another historic New York City landmark.
A couple of weeks ago, many bloggers expressed concern that Ambassador John Bolton decided to sit down for an hour-long interview with Pamela Oshry, whose Atlas Shrugs blog is far outside the mainstream. In the past weeks, attention to Oshry has subsided. Her outrages have not.
"The UN post at Naqoura is barely a kilometre from the Israeli border. Beside it is a sleepy fishing harbour used to bring in supplies and reinforcements.
Since the outbreak of violence in Lebanon last month, the anti-UN crowd has worked overtime tarring the General Secretariat with accusations that it is pro-Hezbollah (and ergo, pro-terrorist). Writing in The Weekly Standard , Lori Lowenthal Marcus mines UNIFIL's press-releases to prove this point.
AP: "A new study finds that very few survivors of Hurricane Katrina contemplated suicide despite the extreme conditions they faced.
While the survivors suffered twice as much mental illness as the pre-storm population, they contemplated suicide far less often than mentally ill people surveyed before Katrina.
BBC: "The UN's most senior humanitarian official has warned that Sudan's Darfur region faces a new humanitarian disaster owing to lack of security.
Jan Egeland spoke as the Security Council considered a US and UK plan to send 22,000 UN troops to Darfur."
NYT: "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Beirut Monday at the start of a Mideast tour to strengthen the cease-fire in Lebanon, saying it was "a very critical time" for the country. During his two-day stay, Annan will meet with Lebanese leaders and visit with U.N. peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon. He also was expected to visit Israel, Syria and Iran."
"I think it's important that I come here myself to discuss with the Lebanese authorities the aftermath of the war and the measures we need to take to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 and to underscore international solidarity," Annan told reporters after being met at the airport by Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh."
"U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday European nations would provide the backbone of a 15,000-strong United Nations peace force for Lebanon and he had asked France to lead it." More
Ever the thinking person's heavy metal front man, Dave Mustaine articulates to Billboard Magazine precisely how he came up with the name of Megadeth's next studio release.
"I was watching TV and saw the trucks that said 'UN' on them and said, 'Man, you are so uncool, ineffective, anything," the singer/guitarist said in a recent Billboard interview. "I thought, 'Wow, I've got to run with this. I got it -- United Abominations, 'cause it's an abomination what they're doing!"