Fox News Host Uses London Attacks to Denigrate Suffering in Africa & the Danger Posed By Global Warming

On the day of the London Terror Attacks, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade made the following despicable statement:

And he [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --believe it or not-- was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened.

The statement is not only morally bereft because of its denigration of the danger posed by global warming and the mass death and suffering in Africa, it is disingenuos as a factual matter as well.

The G8 is not the institution best suited to have its sole or main focus being on the War on Terror. The G-8, of course, is not a military coalition nor an intelliegence alliance, it is an economic forum. Even so, it has taken action to come up with strategies to restrict sources of terrorist finance and has, just weeks ago, agreed to an unprecedented plan for the international community to pool terrorism research, computer material and possibly DNA and fingerprint samples. Ironically, a quick search of the FoxNews website yields no stories of the latest G8 efforts in the war on terror --- apparently it was not a top priority for Fox.

Further, the G8 does not have an ordered list of priorities and, more importantly, does not note its top prorities publicly. Even so, any person with even a scintilla of knowledge about the G8 knows neither global warming nor aid to Africa are the G8's top priority. Curbing international restrictions on the ability of multinational corporations to make profits is. Global warming and African aid are simply the issues getting the most public attention because they have been pushed out front for PR purposes. In this case, they receive the most attention because Tony Blair, the host of this year's conference, is highlighting his efforts in an attempt to redeem his sullied reputation.

So why did Kilmeade make the statement? Simply because its the Fox ethos to carry water and constantly spin for the Bush administration. As can be understood from reading this NYT piece, President Bush is exploiting the tragedy to get attention off of global warming (an issue which hurts him) and off Africa aid (an issue in which he is clearly a reluctant participant) and on to an issue upon which he polls best. The Times piece notes:

Although Mr. Blair left for London several hours later, Mr. Bush and the other leaders who had gathered here at the Gleneagles golf resort made a show of sticking more or less to their schedule of meetings and discussing their differences over how to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

But Mr. Bush and the American delegation were clearly focused on the terrorist threat. The American president left a meeting during the middle of the morning and, sitting outside his hotel suite, held a videoconference over a secure line with his national security team in Washington to discuss the possible threat to the United States.

His aides subsequently participated in hourly videoconferences with officials in Washington. During the day, Mr. Bush held informal conversations with some of his counterparts from other nations, and although his aides declined to be specific about what they talked about, they said it would have been natural for him to raise the issue of combating terrorism.

Kilmeade apparently got the memo.

As for Kilmeade's need of proximity as precursor for understanding an issue, maybe he should spend sometime in a burned Darfur village or amongst a brutalized community in Central Africa or in a hospital treating AIDs in South Africa before he takes his next dump on the Africa aid issue.

Mr. Kilmeade, how many Africans suffered preventable deaths today?