Well Walter Cronkite and Ted Turner will take care of that! Prepare for gloom and doom! Get ready for:
The concept of Armageddon comes from Revelation, and this revelation is intoned by Walter Cronkite, perfectly cast in the role of anguished patriarch. "Anybody, anyplace could become a victim," he warns.
This production, the initial effort of Ted Turner Documentaries, clearly was assembled with care and a noble sense of purpose. With the subtlety and grace of your garden-variety infomercial, it lays out its litany of insurmountable problems. But unlike the problems in infomercials, these do not have ready solutions. Keeping the world safe from armed zealots is more vexing than developing six-pack abs.
Thus these nightly editions create an almost unbearable tension that may send many viewers fleeing from their televisions in anxiety. (Each program is to end with a related panel discussion led by Frank Sesno, the veteran broadcast reporter now a professor; these segments were not provided for review.)
Tonight's installment is about chemical and biological weapons, which have been part of the world's arsenal since the early 1900's. "Ethical considerations were not a factor," Mr. Cronkite says. The report includes horrifying details of Japan's germ warfare against the Chinese in the 1930's and 40's and Iraq's against the Iranians in the 80's. Graphic pictures of the dying and dead are included.
Recalling the Postal Service's anthrax episode from 2001, the program interviews one postal worker who contracted the disease. "I was so sick," he recalls, "that if the doctors told me that they had to cut off my left arm in order for me to breathe, I would've said yes."
Tomorrow night's focus is nuclear weapons, like the ones sitting in neglected storage in the former Soviet Union. Terrorists could steal some of those, or buy some from North Korea. Graham Allison, a Harvard professor, calls that country the world's most "promiscuous proliferator" (alliteration again), saying it "could become the nuclear Weapons `R' Us." Complete review
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Former President Bill Clinton speaks on war, North Korea while in Twin Cities
For anyone who cares.
I posted this because I saw the Dennis Miller special last night. He was really good and the one thing he said that made me shout, THANK YOU!!, was that he wished the clinton duo, "would just SHUT THE #^%$ UP!!!!!"
The next showing on HBO is Thursday, April 17th @ 10:00pm. The shock value of Dennis turning almost full fledged conservative is worth tuning in the program.
Welcome home Dennis. :-)