I think one can construe that as an attack on the reporting.

Err… what!?

All we have here is a passing observation that her description of a Hezbollah member was fluffy.

It’s really stretching it to argue that this constitutes an attack on her reporting in general.

“If you’re such a prude that you object to this, goodness knows what you feel in the far more het-up conversations about I/P in general.”
Like most sensible people I tend to avoid them these days. When someone who has fought for Israel like SO Muffin can be called “Kapo” by the more-Zionist-than-thou loonies who seem to wash up here these days, I think it’s fair to say that their educational value to the interested outsider has gone.

“You’re responding to me, which makes you… what?” Someone who pities you.

You’re a really brave guy Alec, sitting hunched over your PC on the hottest night of the year, throwing insults facelessly

What is that I always say about knowing when the vulgar Leninists are narked when they tell you how unliked you are? Accept it, Mike. People speak in different tones to men and women. Malcolm Caldwell’s remarks about North Korean uniforms is rightly ridiculed, just as Antelava’s about how good-looking this murderous antisemitic scumbag is. If you’re such a prude that you object to this, goodness knows what you feel in the far more het-up conversations about I/P in general.

Here, as always, you are engaging passive aggressive mode to deflect attention from the fact that there are murderous antisemitic scumbags who believe they’re in an End Times battle with the Yahood: and that some commenters feel all power-worshippy at that. Seizing on one turn of phrase or minor comment, and worrying it to death rather than discuss the prime issue is a classic definition of trolling.

at someone who really doesn’t care.

Yet you’re responding to me, which makes you… what? Or, will you now scratch your head and pretend not to understand the question?

Obama is the first major Western leader, after Bonaparte, to address Islam as a single bloc, thus adopting the traditional Islamic narrative of dividing the world according to religious beliefs. This ignores the rich and conflict-ridden diversity of the 57 Muslim-majority nations and fosters the illusion, peddled by people such as Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that Islam is one and indivisible and should, one day, unite under a caliphate.
…
By adopting the key element of the Islamist narrative, that is to say the division of humanity into religious blocs, Mr Obama also intends to send a signal to the Middle East’s nascent democratic forces that Washington is abandoning with a vengeance George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda”.

He goes on to say why Obama’s turning from supporting democracy to supporting stability will not create stability.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6410051.ece

Vildechaye
Not sure what you’re on about, but you may have juxtaposed my point with the odd meanderings of Rockall666.

Note to the history: No one apart from Hitler wanted war in 1938; “right left or centre” (Nancy Mitford). None of the Commonwealth countries (who would provide the bulk of ‘British’ forces in the subsequent World War) supported engagement in Europe (Paul Kennedy). Britain is an island (Times Atlas). It shares no borders with Europe. No one who parrot’s the ‘Chamberlain Appeasement’ line can explain how this war was to be fought with whom and to what end; Hitler was not Hitler in 1938. His career got into its stride later. Any ‘war’ would have been maritime (interference with the legitimate trade of neutral countries such as the USA with its profoundly anti-British press led by W R Hearst and Henry Luce)) or arial bombardment, which was technically impossible as well as quite likely ineffective. Czechoslovakia, an invented country (as was Yugoslavia, at Paris in 1919 by Woodrow Wilson) had a large minority German speaking population who resented Czech domination and wanted reunification under German rule. These ethnic Germans were subsequently ‘ethnically cleansed’ by the Allies after 1945; some put the figure of people affected at eight million, which would make it the largest enforced migration in history. In 1940 the ‘Slovaks greeted the ‘invading’ German tanks in German and waving swastika flags and had subsequently a terrible anti-Semitic war record. Czechoslovakia broke up at the first opportunity in 1991, following the post Soviet period.

Chamberlain (that alibi of a great nation – the USA) was far from inept; a skilful and ruthless politician sometimes plausibly compared to Margaret Thatcher. British war preparations, following a long period of disarmament, would be ready by 1941 (see Orwell) according to Chamberlain’s re-armament timetable. Britain was never and has never been a major power and has had to face the fact (since Elizabeth I) that it can never fight a large scale war abroad without allies. These did not rush forward in 1938.

People in Northern Ireland, just as elsewhere, do not like nor do they deserve to have their characteristic speech mocked by literation. Calling Northern Ireland “Norn” Ireland is belittling and objectively disgusting. Perhaps that was the intention.

Maybe so, but her superior resume surely doesn’t mean that she should be beyond criticism – which seems to be the berkish argument you were making.