Ombuds God

Say it ain’t so, Joe

2003-04-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

Clueless Joe Sobran has been watching too much al-Jazeera. He informs us that “The Arab coverage … shames the American media into showing the war more candidly,” and describes what the world sees. “It sees brave young Arab soldiers desperately fighting a mighty invader.”
posted at 3:50 PM

What PBS doesn't show you
Charles Johnson catches an interesting piece in the anti-American, anti-Semitic Arab News, by one Kevin James, previously profiled on the taxpayor-subsidized Public Broadcasting System:

Remember the blatantly whitewashed commercial for Islam that PBS showed last December, called Legacy of a Prophet? The one that held up a New York City firefighter named Kevin James as a shining example of a patriotic, moderate Muslim?

Today this same Kevin James, who also just happens to be the director of government relations for the New York chapter of CAIR, has a Chomskyesque hate-America rant in the ever-loathsome Arab News, titled Bush's war on terrorism needs to begin with the face in the mirror. This is the first time I’ve seen such a deeply hostile screed openly attributed to a CAIR official, and it makes the agenda of that PBS documentary very, very clear.

A Clinton Legacy Moment: Will Abu Abbas go free?

2003-04-16T00:56:00.000-07:00

Terrorist Abu Abbas, best known for the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in which a wheelchair bound American was murdered and pushed overboard, has been captured in Iraq. The reaction from the Palestinian Authority?

Gaza City - Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat called on Wednesday for the "immediate" release of Palestinian radical chief Abu Abbas, arrested by US forces in Baghdad, saying the arrest violated a 1995 peace accord...

"We ask the US administration for the immediate release of Abu Abbas and for it to respect the 1995 interim agreement between the Palestine Organisation Liberation (PLO) and Israel ... and signed by (former) US president Bill Clinton," Erekat said.

He pointed to one of its clauses that says PLO members cannot be arrested or tried for acts committed before September 1993.

Abbas was tried an convicted in absentia in Itally, so there may be a loophole here. We'll see what happens.

via Damian Penny

UPDATE: According to the BBC:
# "The Israeli supreme court formally declared Abu Abbas immune from prosecution five years ago and allowed him to return to Gaza."
# (Jerusalem :: Simon Wilson :: 0927GMT) "The United States also dropped a warrant for his arrest several years ago but his capture in Iraq is now likely to be used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was supporting terror groups." (Centcom, Qatar :: Dominic Hughes :: 0540GMT )

UPDATE: From the Associated Press:

While out of the limelight for the past decade, Abbas is believed to have continued plying the terror trade from Iraq up to the time of his capture Monday in a raid on the southern outskirts of Baghdad.

Israeli intelligence officials say the PLF faction under Abbas was a conduit for Saddam Hussein's payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Israel reported earlier this year that it captured several Palestinians who trained at a PLF camp in Iraq and were told by Abbas to attack an Israeli airport and other targets.

UPDATE: According to the AP, Abbas will not go free because, "State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said the interim accord involves only Israel and the Palestinian Authority. 'The United States is not a party to that or any amnesty arrangements regarding Abul Abbas.'" However, "Officials said their first priority is to determine through interrogation whether Abbas can provide useful intelligence about Iraqi leaders, plots by terrorist groups and the presence of other terrorists who might have been sheltered by Saddam Hussein." Reportedly the U.S. has not decided whether to try him, but Itally is seeking to extradite Abbas, and according to "the Justice Department's top counterterrorism prosecutor in the mid-1980s," Victoria Toensing,"unless prosecutors have better evidence than existed in the 1980s it would be unwise to go forward."

The “Republic of Fear”

2003-04-15T00:55:00.001-07:00

No, not Iran or Iraq.

According to The Village Voice, New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines:

manages through humiliation and fear. Aside from right-hand men Gerald Boyd and Andy Rosenthal and a core of loyalists, morale is said to be at a new low. There are many rooms in that palace and nobody sees the whole picture. But, says one source, "the old timers who lived through the worst of [former executive editor] Abe Rosenthal say they have never seen anyone be so arrogant, so petty, so mean. Vindictiveness is in." Another source says, "It's no longer about managing down. It's about paying obeisance to the king." Among cognoscenti, 43rd Street is now known as the "republic of fear."

via Drudge Report

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus points out an important aspect of the story:

Raines spiked investigative pieces about New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli that would have run before Torricelli pulled out of his re-election race in October, 2000. Golden's sources subsequently turned to a TV station, which ran the stories that finally appeared to drive Torricelli from the race.

It seems likely that the Times, not WNBC, would have delivered Torricelli's coup de grâce—had Raines not killed key stories in the heat of the election campaign.

Remember -- and, I agree, it seems like six years ago rather than six months -- that at the time control of the Senate was hanging on a single vote. Retaining Torricelli's seat was considered vital for the Democrats. So Raines spikes stories that might have tipped the Senate to the Republicans (just as he or his henchpeople spiked Augusta columns he disagreed with).

Do something about BBC Bias

2003-04-15T00:55:00.000-07:00

Vladimir Bukovsky’s group, bbcbias.org, is holding a one-day seminar on BBC Bias: How Can We Stop It? on Saturday, May 31, 2003 in Canterbury Hall, University of London, Cartwright Gardens, LONDON WC1 (near King’s Cross). Registration closes May 24, 2003.

Bukovsky is:

appalled at the political bias displayed by the BBC. In order to re-establish impartiality he is prepared to withhold his licence fee and face prosecution rather than live with ‘Soviet’ style reporting.

posted at 12:50 PM

Academic freedom pop quiz
You’re President of the University of California. Students complain that their instructors are violating their academic freedom by improperly imposing their political beliefs. Do you:

1) Take the students seriously and remind errant instructors of their obligations under the University of California’s Statement on Academic Freedom. Or, do you

2) Gut the Statement on Academic Freedom?
posted at 11:33 AM

Berkley on the James?
Michael Graham’s QUOTE OF THE DAY:

”I don't really see the difference between [America] and Saddam Hussein. Killing is killing. We aren't more innocent than he is."--Richmond (VA) Vice Mayor Delores McQuinn, last night.

Despite the Vice Mayor's argument, Richmond Mayor Rudy McCollum's resolution calling for immediate withdrawal of US troops in Iraq was defeated by the City Council.

Yes, these are the same Mayor and Vice Mayor who held a press conference last year calling for the state police to patrol city streets because crime is out of control in their city.
posted at 10:16 AM

Al Jazeera as the Arabs see it
Al Jazeera in it’s anti-American and anti-Semitic glory – this is the stuff you won’t find on their English language website. Just page through the cartoons. Julius Streicher would be proud.

via Marduk
posted at 9:58 AM

Go read Biased BBC
Biased BBC has plenty of material to work with these days. For example:

The BBC's bias department seems to have been working overtime in the last week, producing both a report stating that ordinary Iraqis have more to fear from Coalition control of Iraq than the rule of Saddam Hussein, and a documentary that celebrates the lives of four British communist traitors who cost this country the lives of hundreds of its agents.

Perfidious France update

2003-04-14T00:53:00.000-07:00

While France was calling for more time for UN weapons inspections and sanctions to work, Saddam was receiving “an abundant supply” of French weapons. According to Newsweek:

U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache. According to a mortar specialist with the same unit, radios used by many Iraqi military trucks brandished MADE IN FRANCE labels and looked brand new. RPG night sights stamped with the number 2002 and French labels also turned up. And a new Nissan pickup truck driven by a surrendering Iraqi officer was manufactured in France as well.

The French, of course, deny violating the sanctions and insist that “new goods from France found in Iraq were probably illegal deliveries that Saddam purchased on a marche parallel, or black market.”

CNN, media access and Walter Duranty

2003-04-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

What bothers me about the media piling on CNN for trading silence in exchange for access in Iraq is the knowledge that they were not, and are not, alone. In many parts of the world the only way for the press to maintain a presence is to implicitly agree to keep quiet about certain, uncomfortable, facts. They become complicit in the regimes they cover.

Sure, CNN wasn’t reporting the awful things they were learning inside Iraq, but who was? They weren’t the only news agency with offices there. When do we get the other mea culpas?

Too often, in too many different ways, media silence is traded for access. Whether in covering a brutal dictatorship, Capitol Hill or celebrities, compromises are made, and the news outlets most willing to compromise their integrity get the access.

Does anybody remember The New York Time’s man in Moscow -- Walter Duranty?

As Andrew Stattaford observed:

[Duranty] knew. Privately, he told British diplomats that as many as ten million people might have died, "The Ukraine," he admitted, "had been bled white."

Publicly, however, his story was very different. He claimed that tales of a famine were "bunk," "exaggeration," or "malignant propaganda." There was "no actual starvation."

Duranty also reported favorable on Stalin’s show trials, writing that the defendants were genuinely guilty. The New York Times received a Pulitizer Prize in 1932 for Duranty’s reporting from Russia. It has never been withdrawn or returned.

UPDATE: CNN spins:

CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson noted that CNN reporters have frequently been kicked out of Baghdad by angry authorities, most recently a few days after the start of the war.

"The decision not to report these particular events had nothing to do with access, and everything to do with keeping people from being killed as a result of our reporting," she said.

Yeah, that's the problem with reporting the truth about repressive regimes -- people get killed. But not reporting enables those same regimes to survive with the result that many more people die as a result. If CNN couldn't report the truth about Sadam's regime while maintaining an office within Iraq, they should have closed their office. But they were not alone, and Iraq is not the only place where the press strikes this implicit sordid bargain.

UPDATE: Peter Collins recoounts how, back in 1993, he was required by his bosses at CNN to parrot Iraqi propaganda and to "shade the news" in order to help CNN score an interview with Saddam. Eventually he resigned.

A strange coincidence

2003-04-01T00:41:00.000-08:00

Michael Fumento observes that:

First China not only sells Iraq fiber-optic links to improve that country's surface-to-air batteries, but it even provides the workers to install them. The French are caught selling parts to Iraq for F-1 Mirage fighters. Now we've found that the Russians have been selling Saddam anti-tank missiles, night vision equipment, and jamming equipment. What a strange coincidence that these are the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council who threatened to veto a U.S. liberation of Iraq.

posted at 11:14 AM

Reporting both sides of the war
Debra Saunders observes in The San Francisco Chronicle that:

WHEN MAINSTREAM journalists report both sides of racism -- pro and con, with equal weight -- or both sides of having a free press in America, then I'll believe that American media don't take sides on issues, and that there is at least a rationale for American media not rooting for U.S. troops to win in Iraq…

There are certain issues on which thinking Americans don't disagree… Yes, serious people can disagree on whether U.S.-led forces should have gone into Iraq. But serious anti-war Americans understand the consequences of a U.S. capitulation.

A U.S. pullout would send a green light to terrorists everywhere. It would invite global chaos and violence. If that doesn't scare journalists, they should think of how the news media likely would be silenced in a world that welcomes the likes of Saddam Hussein.

There’s a fishy odor at the Special Broadcasting Service

2003-03-31T00:37:00.000-08:00

ABC Watch smells a fish in a “Defense Analyst” for Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “poor ethnic cousin … the Special Broadcasting Service.” His name is Adam Cobb.

UPDATE: The U.S. office of Stratwise, Mr. Cobb's firm, is 4201 Wilson Blvd., #110X, Arlington, VA 22206, which is also the address of Mail Boxes Etc. And the phone campany's never heard of them.
posted at 2:03 PM

A Spanish OmbudsHack
John Chappell alerts us to La Vanguardia’s ombudsman, Josep María Casasús, who is quoted as stating:

The photographs of the faces of the first American prisoners were innocuous. What is a very grave attack against the Fourth Geneva Convention, and against humanity, is that armies kill civilians and cause international havoc.

Apparently Senior Casasús hasn’t considered which army has in recent years wantonly killed civilians with poison gas and engaged in wars of conquest against neighboring states at the cost of millions of lives – both civilian and military.
posted at 11:38 AM

Another low for the Guardian
In today’s Guardian, John Sutherland touts a conspiracy worthy of Mikey Rivero. He alleges that those pictures of “peace activist” and “martyr,” Rachel Corrie, snarling and burning an American flag for the Palestinian kiddies, are of unknown provenance and asserts:

Paranoia suggested [they originated from the] Israeli secret service, which monitors such events. This picture also looked, to some expert eyes, doctored.

Charles Johnson reports that the photographs come from the Associated press and from Corrie’s own organization, “the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace.”

Concludes Johnson, “This is one of the most disgusting pieces of yellow journalism I have ever read, and it exposes the so-called ‘editors’ of the Guardian as the Jew-hating freaks they are.”

The Guardian’s ombudsman, Ian Mayes, declared last June that, “I do not think the Guardian is anti-semitic.” Perhaps Ian should take another look.

via Damian Penny

UPDATE: Bill Herbert reprts that "the intellectual origin for Sutherland's doctored-photo argument" is "the National Vanguard Network," which is a "repository for creamy Turner Diary goodness."
posted at 9:52 AM

CBC Radio and the Paris anti-war protests
Damian Penny observes that while other media are reporting that anti-war protests in Paris are violently anti-American and anti-Jew, CBC Radio’s Paris correspondent is reporting that they are:

not really anti-American … and they certainly don't have anything against the Jews. It's all very peaceful and idyllic and happy with the rainbows and the singing and the dancing and the joy and the bliss and the glaben!!!

UPDATE: CBC's Ombudsman is David Bazay in case any Canadian readers are interested.

Skepticism that cuts only one way

2003-03-30T00:37:00.000-08:00

The Hartford Courant’s Ombudsman, Karen Hunter, explains:

There's nothing like a war to test the news media's principles. The truth has to be separated from propaganda... Calls for blind patriotism have to be answered with the right amount of skepticism.

So how does The Courant react when presented with al-Jazeera photographs purported to be of American POWs? Do they wait to confirm the information? Do they wait until the families have been notified? No.

I'm glad The Courant didn't hesitate in publishing photographs. Perhaps the photos were Iraqi propaganda. The public can judge for itself.

UPDATE: Compare Hunter's description of the attitude adopted by The Courant with the response of The Oregonian, as described by Ombudsman Dan Hortsch:

the Pentagon had asked the U.S. press not to use shots of the POWs or of the dead until their families had been notified.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials also said that taping the prisoners -- which included intimidating, mocking interviews -- violated the Geneva Conventions related to treatment of prisoners...

The conventions apply to governments, not to the news media. However, the media must consider whether their actions further the intent of the captors. In this case, use of footage of frightened, wounded prisoners being asked pointless questions seems to do that.

Editors at The Oregonian decided not to publish photos of the prisoners until families had been informed. They had no intention of showing the bodies.

"We don't want peace. We want the war to come."

2003-03-29T00:36:00.001-08:00

A pacifist gauges the will of the Iraqi people:

I spoke to dozens of people. What I was not prepared for was the sheer terror they felt at speaking out. Over and over again I would be told "We would be killed for speaking like this" and finding out that they would only speak in a private home or where they were absolutely sure through the introduction of another Iraqi that I was not being attended by a minder.

From a former member of the Army to a person working with the police to taxi drivers to store owners to mothers to government officials without exception when allowed to speak freely the message was the same - "Please bring on the war. We are ready. We have suffered long enough. We may lose our lives but some of us will survive and for our children's sake please, please end our misery."

via InstaPundit
posted at 12:21 PM

Mikey Rivero: Iraq democracy, U.S. & Britain are not
Marduk’s Babylonian Musings alerts us to some insightful commentary from a website endorsed by the Toronto Sun’s media columnist, Antonia Zerbisias as, “carefully considered, well crafted and very compelling:”

Dictatorships, afraid of their own people, always ban guns. Hitler banned personal guns, for example. Britain has banned guns. The US has strict gun limits, especially on military style weapons. Yes, those nations all have elections, but since those elections are usually rigged, this does not qualify them to be democracies. The ultimate litmus test of whether a society is a dictatorship or free lies in the access to weapons by the general populace. The people of Iraq have the right to purchase weapons that you or I as US citizens are not allowed to have. Therefore, our government is much more afraid of We The People than Saddam is afraid of the Iraqi people. (www.whatreallyhappened.com)

Is that why Mr. What Really Happened, Mikey Rivero, prefers to publish this rubish from Hawaii instead of Baghdad?

UPDATE: Mikey elaborates:

I am not saying Saddam is a great guy, but there is a serious disconnect between the claims of his being a tyrant and the Iraqi gun laws. Maybe he is a tyrant, just less of one than the ones we live under.

“Vietnam”-think at The New York Times

2003-03-29T00:36:00.000-08:00

The Baseball Crank alerts us that “a search of the New York Times for the term ‘Vietnam’ produces 99 results in the last week.”

Out of curiosity, I performed similar searches on the terms “Republican Guard”and “Fedayeen,” which produced only 98 and 64 results, respectively.

UPDATE: Times Watch has more on the The NYT's coverage of the war.
posted at 9:01 AM

Future brilliant minds of the Fourth Estate
Journalist, and Hunter College Assistant Professor, Karen Hunter reports:

I gave a pop quiz this week in the college journalism class I teach. As a bonus question, I asked: Who is Tommy Franks? Not one student out of 30 could identify the U.S. Army general in command of the war in Iraq.

Ombudsman: “NPR ... hostile to the conduct of the war”

2003-03-29T00:33:00.000-08:00

Responding to “those who ask when will NPR resume 'normal,' (aka pre-Iraq) programming,” National Public Radio Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin responds “possibly not for a while -- if ever. In fact, it is likely that programming really ended on Sept. 11, 2001.”

He observes that:

Looking back at Sept. 11, 2001, it seemed easier then: It was a moment of national and journalistic consensus about the event. If my e-mail is any indication, the war in Iraq has brought many of the long-held contradictions and tensions among the press, the political elites and the people into sharp relief.

And makes this startling admission:

This war will be a challenge for all media -- including NPR. There will be efforts to make the journalism tamer under the guise of a patriotic appeal. Others will push NPR to be more openly hostile to the conduct of the war.

Your tax dollars at work.
posted at 7:42 AM

A new restriction on freedom of the press in Canada
Toronto Star ombudsman Don Sellar reports that under a new law in Canada, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA):

there is one overriding principle: A young offender cannot be identified until a sentence has been imposed, and even then, only in limited circumstances.

The statute also prohibits the naming of a minor victim, unless both parents consent, and prohibits the identification of non-adult witnesses.

Nor are the restrictions consistent, as the law shields “the names of young victims or witnesses only when the crime was committed by a young offender, yet [allows] identification when an adult is to blame.”

Queries Sellar:

Would the law be respected if, say, a mayor's daughter had been murdered, yet media outlets were legally barred from identifying the victim or family?

Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation update III

2003-03-28T00:33:00.000-08:00

In a post entitled “Murder By Telecast,” The Command Post reports that:

The BBC World Service has just signed [Iraqi blogger] Salam Pax's death warrant, live, on air, with a worldwide audience of millions.

Various bits of information about him have been on the web at various times in various places. So much that those of us that care about him were getting increasingly worried. But nobody had built up quite such a comprehensive dossier before, with all the pieces in one place. The BBC World Service then aired it, with the rather snide comment that he hadn't posted recently, and maybe the US Air Force had got him.

Glenn Reynolds observes that “putting up information that [Salam Pax] hasn't seen fit to make public seems to me to be crossing a line,” and promises, “If he turns out to have been killed by Saddam's goons, I'm going to very publicly blame the BBC.”
posted at 12:25 PM

Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation update II
The Guardian reports that “speaking last night at a meeting of Media Workers Against the War, Mark Damazer, the deputy director of BBC News, responds to criticism from the anti-war movement that the BBC is ’shackled’ by the government and military.” For example:

Mr Damazer admitted one of the areas where the BBC had made mistakes was in its use of language, but that it was seeking to put this right.

"If we have used the word 'liberate' in our own journalism, as in 'such and such a place had been liberated by allied forces', that's a mistake," he said.

Hmm. In the interests of truth in labeling, perhaps Media Workers Against the War should be renamed, “Media Workers who oppose their own country in favor of a bloodthirsty, mass-murdering tyrant in time of war.”

Andrew Sullivan observes that:

One thing you have to understand about some of these left-liberal top media honchoes - Howell Raines, Patrick Tyler et al - is that their actual social circle is pressuring them to go even further to the left. Their concern is seeming to be too conservative!

Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation update

2003-03-28T00:31:00.000-08:00

Frank Sensenbrenner reports that:

Every time I've watched the BBC since the crisis, let alone the war, started, the BBC anchor has always asked her correspondent whether the American public is behind the war, and always receives a very nebulous response, bordering on grudging acceptance. I'm apparently missing the bulk of US public opinion over here in the UK, or BBC North America excises that bit. Perhaps they view the number of protestors in front of the White House as indicative of American public opinion. Come to think of it, I've never seen a BBC reporter sending a story in from outside Washington or New York…

posted at 11:40 AM

The “worst medical disaster” du jour
Micahel Fumento writes of the “worst medical disaster” du jour, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), that “there may be no fatal illness that will cause fewer deaths this year than SARS.”

He observes that “malaria kills up to 2.7 million people yearly … tuberculosis, kills perhaps three million more,” albeit few Americans, and that non-SARS “forms of pneumonia kill about 40,000 Americans yearly.”

Why all the attention to SARS? There’s “fame, fortune, and big budgets in sounding the ‘emerging infection’ alarm.”

Life in this here AmeriKKKa

2003-03-27T00:29:00.000-08:00

Proof that writers for The Guardian really do reside in an alternative universe:

Democracy is under threat in the United States; anyone who objects to the conflict in Iraq is not allowed to say so...

The harassment, arrest, detention and frustration of those who are against the war is becoming routine.

Oh, the repression!

via Tim Blair

UPDATE: Or perhaps The Guardian is referring to "The harassment, arrest, detention and frustration of those who are against the war" and lie down in the middle of a busy street.

UPDATE: This is the second time today I've received a monologue from an anti-war co-worker. Both speakers expressed the view that the war is hypocritical because President Bush was "unelected." For a repressed group, they sure feel free to unload their unsolicited political views.
posted at 1:56 PM

Forget the war, somebody shot an elephant!
Our nation is at war. American military men and women have been killed, wounded and captured, reports of civilian casualties are mounting and there are anti-war activists blocking streets. Complaints about biased and misleading press coverage are commonplace.

So today, Chicago Tribune Public Editor Don Wycliff uses his Op-ed page column to tackle a compelling reader complaint:

There's an article in today's Outdoor section about shooting an elephant. This is the most disturbing article I've ever read in the Tribune. ... Please don't print this stuff in the future.

If you’re wondering how Don comes out on this pressing issue, he’s against killing “a magnificent creature like an elephant solely for the pleasure of it,” but declares that he has “nothing in principle against hunting--for food, for self-protection.”

Presumably then it’s okay to kill an elephant so long as you intend to eat it, and then to tell your story to the Tribune. I’m thinking a nice cabernet would go best with elephant.

The war started with 9/11

2003-03-26T00:27:00.000-08:00

Nick Land writes in the Shanghai Star that:

Having suffered an assault more murderous - and certainly more despicable - than the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour, [the U.S.] no longer has the luxury of beginning this new world war, but only the implacable resolve to prosecute it to the end... War is no longer a "last resort" once it has been flagrantly initiated by hostile action.

Those who maintain that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has no connection to the international war on terrorism are in most cases the same people who deny that the anti-terrorist struggle is in fact a "war" at all. This is yet another symptom of the international dismissal of 9/11...

Few seriously doubt that Iraq is a determined enemy of the US and a deceitful terrorist state, one manifestly obsessed with procuring weapons of mass destruction. Its alignment in the already ongoing world conflict is therefore beyond serious dispute...

Much of the world has deliberately blinded itself to the depravity and menace of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Hopefully this cocoon of self-deception will be among the early casualties of the campaign.

via Tim Blair
posted at 11:00 PM

Ledeen: France and Germany in “a deliberate act of sabotage against America in time of war.”
Michael Ledeen reports in The New York Sun that the reason the U.S. and Britain were forced to abandon Turkey as a staging area for a second front against Saddam’s regime “was not an Islamic protest against the American-led coalition, but an act of anti-American intimidation by France and Germany.”

He reports that “Primary blame for the defeat of the measure lies with the opposition — the secular, Kemalist parties that have governed the country since Ataturk,” who were informed by France and Germany “that if they voted to help the Coalition war effort, Turkey would be locked out of Europe for a generation. As one Turkish leader put it, ’there were no promises, only threats.’"

This is only one of a serious of actions by France and Germany that can be seen “only as a deliberate act of sabotage against America in time of war.”

Others include ”exertions of French diplomats to 'convince' African countries to vote against us in the U.N.” and “first joining with us to give Iraq a ‘really, really, last chance’ and then preventing us from acting as if the language of Resolution 1441 meant what it said.”

Ledeen observes that “To take such action, Mr. Chirac must have conceived of a French future not only independent of the United States, but in open opposition to us.”

via The Corner
posted at 10:23 PM

Politically correct rules of engagement
"We don't want to hurt people if we can avoid it but now it has got to be that if you have got a weapon you have become an Iraqi soldier and we can kill you. This rules of engagement crap is making me lose men." – Capt. Waldron, 3rd Brigade Combat Team

“When Rome is strong, the provinces are orderly.” – a Shiite Muslim in Beirut after 9/11

Writing in today’s Times, Michael Gove gets to the core of what’s wrong with how the war is being prosecuted:

As Jacky Fisher, the architect of Britain’s naval superiority at the turn of the past century, put it, “the essence of war is violence, moderation in war is imbecility.” No matter how brittle President Saddam Hussein’s regime may appear, it will not be coaxed into collapse by noises off. It must be smashed. I had hoped that Tony Blair, who has been so admirably resolute in making the case for war, would appreciate that. But I fear that progress towards crushing Saddam’s tyranny has been hindered by the politically correct manner in which he and President Bush have prosecuted this war so far…

As far as the Iraqi population is concerned, any alms we dispense now could become tickets to a torture chamber in future, unless they can be certain the Baathists have gone for good. Once the regime has been smashed we can, and must, turn all our energies to reconstruction of the country. But until then, effort, however well-meaning, diverted from victory is perfume wasted on the desert air.

Reports are that Saddam’s thugs are using hospitals and mosques as staging areas and forcing people to fight at the threat of reprisals to their families. Capt. Waldron reports that most of the Iraqi combatants he’s captured are in civilian clothes. In Basra, Saddam has turned his cannons on his own people.

Rules of engagement are necessary, but we won’t win the hearts and minds of those who hate the United States by imposing absurdly limiting rules on our military. Simply put, they will result in more, not fewer, unnecessary casualties by prolonging the war. The proper and humane thing to do is to win this war as quickly and decisively as possible, and then help the Iraqis build a prosperous, democratic and peaceful future. Neither the war, nor the peace, will be won through half measures.

Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation update II

2003-03-26T00:22:00.000-08:00

The Sun is reporting that:

THE BBC was last night sensationally condemned for “one-sided” war coverage — by its own front line defence correspondent.

Paul Adams attacks the Beeb for misreporting the Allied advance in a blistering memo leaked to The Sun.

And he warned the BBC’s credibility is at risk for suggesting British troops are paying a “high price for small victories”.

On Monday, he wrote from US Central Command in Qatar: “I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering ‘significant casualties’.

“This is simply NOT TRUE. Nor is it true to say — as the same intro stated — that coalition forces are fighting ‘guerrillas’.

“It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas.”

via Rand Simberg
posted at 9:44 AM

Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation update
The Guardian reported on February 23, 2003, that “Senior BBC news presenters such as Huw Edwards and Fiona Bruce and journalists including Andrew Marr have been ordered by bosses to stay away from Saturday's anti-war march in London.” They are, however, “allowing more junior staff to attend the march but only in a "'private capacity with no suggestion that he or she speaks for the BBC.'"

Meanwhile, “The BBC director general, Greg Dyke, has also reminded staff they should remember their duty to be ‘independent, impartial and honest’ in the coming weeks as a possible war with Iraq looms.”

If you have to order reporters not to participate in political demonstrations, your chances of getting "independent, impartial and honest" news from them are virtually nil.

via The Edge of England’s Sword. (In contrast, Iain reports that the BBC Reporters' Log is "quality.")

And we thought France was bad

2003-03-24T00:19:00.000-08:00

Reuters is reporting that not only has Russia been providing Baghdad with forbidden military items, despite American protests, but that the U.S.“discovered Russian technicians in Baghdad aiding the Iraqis with the [Russian supplied] GPS jamming system after the start of the U.S.-led war.” Allied planes, bombs and other equipment rely heavily on GPS information.

via Lucianne.com

UPDATE: Here's the version from The New York Times:

The US on Sunday made public its protest to Moscow over the sales by Russian companies of anti-tank missiles and jamming equipment to the Iraqi military.

The State Department on Sunday voiced its anger at the Kremlin after a series of private requests as recently as last week by senior US government officials to Russia to halt the sales went ignored...

posted at 3:51 PM

Paleos in the news
The Eleven Day Empire reports on columnist Robert Novak:

who writes this morning to defend himself against charges of being "unpatriotic", leveled against him and other "paleoconservatives" by, among others, former Bush speechwriter (and current National Review writer) David Frum.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports that “The conservative movement is in shock and awe over a truly nasty brawl about Iraq.” He quotes Novak, who says:

It really poisons the political discourse to say that if you feel this hasn't been a wise decision on the part of the United States, you're criticizing your country and hoping for defeat.

Kurz then quotes prominent paleo Pat Buchanan, whose presumably non-poisonous political discourse includes such pearls as:

We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars.

posted at 11:30 AM

"The information we give you here is factual"
Tim Blair is reporting that when asked to respond to a piece in The New York Times, Australian Air Marshall Angus Houston replied:

I can't comment on articles that appear in American newspapers. The information we give you here is factual.

No word as to what the question was.
posted at 10:43 AM

An example of the problem with self-selected samples
While The Guardian’s sister publication, The Independent, observes that “Public opinion has swung sharply in support of the war in Iraq following the start of hostilities, Reader's editor Ian Mayes reports that The Guardian’s mail is running strongly against war:

…an analysis of 100 of Wednesday's war letters showed 87 against the war and 13 in support. By noon on Thursday the pro-war correspondence had dropped further.

All of which shows that opinions expressed by people writing letters to The Guardian don’t accurately reflect public opinion as a whole.

Both The Guardian and The Independent have taken strongly anti-war editorial stances.
posted at 10:19 AM

“only the female POW wasn't wearing boots”
Lex Communis on treatment of the female American POW by her captors:

…you can't imagine the cold chill I'm feeling right now. I hadn't attributed anything significant to that bit of information, which has been thrown out with offhand casualness and has not been the source of any exegesis from any news source I've read or heard.

Until now.

Now I get it.

And the Iraqis made sure to film her naked feet, to show that her boots had been removed.

I don’t expect that we’ll hear any outrage from the International Red Cross, though … or the French … or the Germans … or the Russians….

A dozen sites with frequently updating war news

2003-03-23T00:16:00.000-08:00

# The Command Post

# The Corner

# Drudge Report

# MSNBC Latest

# CNN Latest Briefing

# Fox News

# ABC News

# CBS News

# Lucianne.com

# AP Breaking

# BBC Iraq Latest

# The New York Times

UPDATE: The Command Post link now reflects their move to a new new server and new domain name
UPDATE: Make that a baker's dozen. Lex Communis alerts us to The Agonist.
posted at 12:14 PM

“the permanently curled lip”
Glenn Reynolds observes that the BBC’s sneering anti-American coverage hasn’t gone unnoticed in the Blogosphere.
posted at 10:12 AM

The ordeal of Elizabeth Smart
Back on March 13, in a post entitled “I just don’t get it,” Post Watch reflected widespread opinion when he asked of the Elizabeth Smart abduction, “How many of my readers were once 14? Everyone of you, I suppose. How many would consent to being a quietly compliant abductee from your own family at that age?”

The Salt Lake Tribune’s Reader Advocate, Connie Coyne, provides some perspective:

[Elizabeth Smart] now 15, was kidnapped at knife point from her bedroom last June 5, and, according to charging documents, was sexually assaulted the first night of her capture. Police have verified she was held in a hole in the ground covered with boards...

She compares the kidnapping to that of Patty Hearst, who was locked in a closet and repeatedly raped before becoming a participant in the Symbionese Liberation Army.

It's easy to be a legend in your own mind when no one is shooting at you -- or locking you in a closet or abusing you.

And, many members of the newspaper-reading public and some in the news media seem quite clear on how they would behave if they were 14 years old, had been kidnapped at knife point out of their own bedrooms, abused and then buried in a hole as Elizabeth Smart apparently was last June.

Within hours of her recovery, some TV reporters -- and members of the general public -- started asking, "If she had these opportunities to escape, why didn't she?" One reporter asked officials if they intended to give Smart a lie-detector test.

Pretty damn presumptuous, I say.

At least Smart doesn’t have public vilification, prosecution and imprisonment to look forward to, the way Miss. Hearst did.
posted at 9:35 AM

Bizarre
Reader Advocate Debbie Kornmiller reports the Arizona Daily Star axed a Dave Barry column because, according to Managing Editor Bobbie Jo Buel, “the paper needs to take a different tone once the war starts.”

The myth of unfettered press access

2003-03-22T00:15:00.000-08:00

“...a step forward ... from the restrictive policies and tactics the Pentagon has employed in every conflict since Vietnam.” – Ombudsman Michael Getler, The Washington Post

“...for more than a decade and a half after Vietnam, the Pentagon specialized in attempting to manage the American press corps.” -- Ombudsman Connie Coyne, The Salt Lake Tribune

Mike King, ombudsman for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reports that he was contacted by “Wallace B. Eberhard, professor emeritus at the Henry Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia and a retired Army Reserve colonel,” who wrote, of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan, that:

"The mythology . . . is that the press was cooped up and restrained unnecessarily -- with emphasis on the last word. What the press can never rationally discuss is the impact of a thousand journalists running about unwatched in a staging area for a major offensive. The media has tried to build a case for unrestrained access in a combat zone as an historic or legal right. They can't do it. A reporter -- like it or not -- is a guest of the military in a war zone."

It's important to remember, he says, "Soldiers fight to win, heavily dependent on secrecy, sworn to defend the Constitution and follow orders. Journalists hunt for news, obligated to their bosses, their view of what the public needs and wants, and a vague code of ethics.

posted at 8:57 AM

RiShawn Biddle responds to David Frum
RiShawn Biddle takes aim at David Frum (also Mrs. Frum and Jonah Goldberg), who wrote a devastating piece on Unpatriotic Conservatives. Where RiShawn really looses me, though, is his defense of Jason Raimondo. I’ve been following Raimondo off and on for years, and I think that Ronald Radosh had him pegged last October when he wrote in The Boston Globe:

…it seems that Raimondo is now attempting to forge his own Red-Brown alliance, as Europeans refer to the coming together in post Soviet Russia of right-wing nationalists and unreconstructed Communists. In August 2001, he even published an article in Pravda (yes, that Pravda) in which he dismissed the idea that ''America is a civilized country,'' and, referring to World War II, maintained that ''the wrong side won the war in the Pacific.'' As for Israel, last week Raimondo continued to proclaim the myth that ''Israel had foreknowledge of 9/11,'' a claim that puts his Web site in league with the most extreme anti-Semitic canards coming from the Arab world…

Here’s Raimondo’s response in which he accuses Radosh of “red baiting” him, but never really denies the fundamental accusations.
posted at 8:11 AM

Pro and anti-military intervention
An interesting juxtaposition.

Insuring the UN’s continued irrelevancy

2003-03-21T00:14:00.000-08:00

The AP is reporting that:

Jacques Chirac says France will not authorize a U.N. resolution allowing the United States and Britain to administer postwar Iraq.

via The Corner
posted at 2:08 PM

Rachel Corrie, peace activist?
Zachary Cohen has an account of the known facts and conflicting stories about WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO RACHEL CORRIE, the “peace activist” known for teaching Palestinian kiddies how to burn American flags and for getting run over by a bulldozer that was “part of an operation to eliminate tunnels used by Palestinian terrorists to illegally smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza.”

And here’s the young “peace activist’s” paean to “young fighters”, whom she also refers to as “martyrs:”

I would also like to ask you, and those to whom you pass this on, to think about the relative positions of the fighters and occupiers in this monumentally unequal struggle. While the huge force of Israelis have every technical aid invented by the US war machine, the few young fighters have NOTHING BUT THEIR WEAPON (and this not the most modern) - no helmet, bullet proof vest, radio contact or other protection. No back-up, no plane, helicopter, tank, APC, searchlight, dogs, flares, ambulance or refuge - put all the Israeli/American propaganda aside for a few minutes and try to imagine, please, the courage it requires to do what these youngfighters do, knowing that the odds are against escape and that, every time they do succeed in evading death, the odds against a further survival are shortened. Even if the operation is a success the price is always high.

Hate mail may be sent to The OmbudsGod

via Little Green Footballs and Daimnation.
posted at 1:22 PM

Prediction
Television broadcasts of grateful Iraqis, celebrating their liberation from Saddam, are going to make for an interesting juxtaposition with broadcasts of nasty, anti-American European demonstrations.
posted at 11:56 AM

NPR listeners: More bias, please
Last week, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin admitted to an “apparent imbalance on NPR between pro- and anti-war commentators,” in which “NPR appeared to be allowing more voices to reflect anti-war sentiment,” and that “When the opinions expressed were pro-Administration, it was often grudging support and not entirely without moral reservations.”

This week he reports that “a lot of” listeners are complaining that NPR is ignoring “stories that may put the Bush Administration in a bad light.”

This reminds me of The Louisville Courier-Journal’s anti-war ombudsman, Pam Platt, who “made an immediate mental connection between” a Presidential press conference and censoring of the Rolling Stones by “Big Brother, Beijing Office.”

George Condon of Copley News Service observed of criticism of the press conference, “the liberals and the Democrats [are unhappy] because the press doesn't stop the war with their questions.”

In other words, the anti-war crowd isn’t complaining because the press is biased, but because it isn’t biased enough.
posted at 11:21 AM

Interesting editing at the BBC
In Britain, the National Union of Teachers released a statement urging “schools to be ready to deal with any increase in racism particularly Islamophobia and anti-semitism as a result of the possible war,” and cautioning that “Refugee, Muslim and Jewish pupils and staff are at particular risk of being targeted for abuse…”

According to Biased BBC, The BBC’s Newsround dutifully reported the warning, omitting any mention of Jews or anti-semitism. It was only after a complaint from reader Sally Foster, who asked “why aren't Jewish students and teachers considered worth mentioning? Why did you leave them out of the Newsround report?” that the BBC included a new paragraph mentioning Jews and anti-Semitism.

As Ms. Foster observes, the selective editing “cannot be for reasons of space for goodness' sake - we are talking about 2 words!”
posted at 9:44 AM

More of the “Bush is Hitler, Americans are Nazis” moral equivalence
Tim Blair alerts us to this statement from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s The World Today:

JOHN HIGHFIELD: Well the Nazis used to call it "blitzkrieg" when they did it prior to the Second World War, a softening up process. The Americans are calling it "shock and awe".

As Tim observes, “Highfield isn't a guest. He's the fucking host.” (Nice use of Army Creole, Tim!)

Another partisan OmbudsHack

2003-03-20T00:13:00.000-08:00

Referring to such paragons of virtue as impeached Federal judge, now U.S. Congressman, Alcee Hastings, Palm Beach Post ombudsman C.B. Hanif informs us that “blacks often serve as a moral voice for the nation.” He reports that the “moral voice” overwhelming opposes military intervention in Iraq and “seems” to agree with “Harry Belafonte … when he said Mr. Powell no more represents African-Americans than the national security adviser who has an oil tanker named after her.” In other words, African-Americans are a monolithic group and are only “represented” by blacks with the correct, left-wing politics.

Hanif goes on to inform us that this monolithic, racially defined “moral voice” has a “strong affinity with American Jews” and “that large numbers of Jewish people are opposed to invading Iraq.” Jews will undoubtedly be relieved to learn of this new “affinity.” Less than a year ago columnist Larry Elder was reporting that “blacks [are] three to four times more likely than non-blacks to be anti-Semitic” – and was calling on “black leaders” to “reconsider” their anti-Semitism.
posted at 12:10 PM

Paleo-cons or neo-confederates?
In a follow-up to yesterday’s piece on paleo-conservatives, David Frum mentions something that I’ve noticed too – people who describe themselves as paleo-conservatives generally hate Abraham Lincoln:

One subject I did not tackle in my piece was the obsessive hatred that so many of the paleos feel for Abraham Lincoln. I discovered late, though, that Lincoln was not unique: The LewRockwell.com site hates Winston Churchill nearly as passionately. As I read their fulminations, I realized how much the Rockwellites reminded me of the Nazi playwright in the movie, “The Producers”: “Hitler vas a better painter than Shursheel, Hitler vas a better dancer than Shursheel ...”

Years ago when I worked for a small conservative think-tank, one of my co-workers used to comment that his favorite President was Jefferson Davis. He even had a small Confederate national flag (not the battle flag) in his office, which I regarded at the time as more eccentric than offensive. The problem was that I kept running into other conservatives like him, and they all seemed to subscribe to Chronicles.

They’re collaborators not “human shields,” and terrorists not "militants"

2003-03-19T00:12:00.000-08:00

NPR isn’t alone when it refuses to label Hamas as terrorists when they attempt to blow up school busses full of children, and instead refers to them as “Islamic militants,” thereby confusing terrorism with militancy.

Likewise, NPR isn’t alone in applying the term “human shield” to “protestors” who voluntarily travel to Iraq to protect military targets, thereby confusing them with the hundreds of hostages Saddam seized to serve as human shields during the first Gulf War.

It’s time to straighten this out. Groups like Hamas are terrorists, not mere militants, and “protestors” who voluntarily impede military intervention in Iraq are collaborators, not human shields.

UPDATE: It should be noted that most individuals who went to Iraq to act as "human shields" left when it became clear that the Iraqi government would place them at military installations, communications centers, electrical plants and water-pumping stations. Those that remain are being housed and fed at the expense of the Iraqi government. They serve at Saddam's pleasure.
posted at 2:30 PM

American crimes against humanity and other suppressed stories struggle to break free!
Media Minded looks at a Boston Globe piece about “Those brave alternative-media patriots, whose dissenting opinions have been so ruthlessly suppressed during the run-up to a possible Gulf War II.” But there is still hope for the ruthlessly suppressed messages to get out! For example, the Globe tells us that “The Free Speech TV satellite network [will] focus on what a spokeswoman, Linda Mamoun, calls ''the crimes against humanity the United States will perpetuate, and the opposition to it.''

As MM observes, “those on the left who complain about having their voices silenced are actually complaining that their hysterical messages have virtually no traction with the American public.”

The neo-cons strike back!

2003-03-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

For years now we’ve listened as a small band of so called paleo-conservatives argued that they are the true standard bearers of American conservatism and lash out at the majority of conservatives who don’t identify with their movement. As National Review’s David Frum points out, many paleos have not only become anti-war:

But the antiwar conservatives have gone far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies. They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies.

This is the best take-down yet of the paleos that I’ve seen.

via InstaPundit

UPDATE: Peter Sean Bradley has some thoughts on the anti-American tone of the paleo-cons. Money quote:

being an anti-American conservative is a lot like being an American-bashing Country-Western singer. That dog won't hunt. You lose your voice in the discussion in a heartbeat.

posted at 11:32 AM

More on the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation
David Aaronovitch reports in yesterday’s Guardian that in a nation closely divided between pro-war and anti-war sympathies:

the impression has been given, on the BBC in particular, that public and expert opinion is strongly and almost exclusively opposed to military action. This expectation has entered the cultural stratum that the majority of broadcasters exist in, and so dominates that it has become that most dangerous of wisdoms - not so much orthodox, as axiomatic.

What exactly does The Boston Globe propose Bush should have done?

2003-03-18T00:06:00.000-08:00

"Our position is no matter what the circumstances, France will vote 'no.' Because ... there is no cause for war to achieve the objective that we fixed-- the disarmament of Iraq" – French President Jacques Chirac (Chicago Sun-Times, 3/10/03)

“Bush should have done more to win over … France…” – The Boston Globe (3/18/03)
posted at 2:05 PM

Just the same old anti-American communist front groups
Interesting piece in National Review Online by Ion Mihai Pacepa on the Soviet roots of the World Peace Council, which “’participated in or co-organized’ the current worldwide anti-American demonstrations.”

The WPC was created by Moscow in the 1950s and had only one task: to portray the United States as being run by a "war-mongering government."

In the U.S., the primary organizer has been International F.O.R.W.A.R.D., a front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party. Likewise, another organizer, Not In Our Name (NION), has been identified as a front for the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). (also here)

Note: The OmbudsGod recently associated NION with the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which connection MIM denies.
posted at 12:11 PM

Polish jokes are out, French jokes are in
Bill Dennis has a collection of French jokes.

Okay, he seems to be suffering from the dread Blogger archive bug, so just go here and scroll down.
posted at 11:06 AM

Daily Mirror: Gen Tommy Franks is a bumpkin and university dropout
Here is how Britain’s anti-war Daily Mirror headlines a snotty profile of U.S. General Tommy Franks, who will lead allied forces in Iraq:

COUNTDOWN TO WAR: MILITARY MACHINE IS SET FOR CONFLICT: A bumpkin known as Pooh who'll mastermind the war
Mar 18 2003
TOMMY FRANKS, A UNI DROPOUT 4-STAR GENERAL

For the record, after leaving school and serving as an enlisted man in Vietnam, Franks went on to graduate from the University of Texas at Arlington and has a Masters in Public Administration from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

He served in Vietnam (where he received three purple hearts), Korea, Germany and the Gulf War. Buried in the article is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's assessment of the the commander. "Tommy's intelligent and quick and he knows his stuff."

Bumpkin indeed.

UPDATE: It now appears that they've dropped the "bumpkin" part.
UPDATE: But it's still here.
UPDATE: It's gone from there, too.

So this is what France’s obstructionism is all about

2003-03-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

In a Reuters piece headlined “France Says World Against Bush Ultimatum on Iraq,” the office of French President Jacques Chirac is quoted as saying:

"Whatever the objective pursued, France recalls that only the Security Council has the authority to justify the use of force…”

Which means that puny little France believes it has a veto over American military policy, even when that policy is in self-defense or to remove a brutal mass-murderer like Saddam Hussein from power.

The UN has a terrible record of responding to crises. It stood by while hundreds of thousand were slaughtered in Rwanda. A Security Counsel resolution authoring intervention in Kosovo was withdrawn because Russia stated they would veto it. In fact, U.S. intervention in Panama, Grenada, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan all occurred without UN approval.

And France habitually sends its military into Africa without UN approval – most recently to the Ivory Coast after civil war broke out – suggesting that to the French, it is only the U.S. that needs such explicit authorization.

If international law is to be interpreted as requiring the U.S. to obtain approval from Russia and France before using its military, then it is in the words of Charles Dickens, “a ass, a idiot.”
posted at 9:45 AM

Europe favors war by 21 countries to 5
Referring to a piece by Stratfor's George Friedman, Andrew Sullivan has a breakdown by country of where European governments stand on military intervention in Iraq. He observes:

something that should be borne in mind when you hear NPR, the BBC and others tell you that "Europe" opposes the war. By an overwhelming majority of 21 countries to five, Europe backs war, with five countries neutral. And of those 21, you have the second and fourth largest economies, Britain and Italy, the two biggest emerging powers, Spain and Poland, and the entire former Eastern bloc. It would be a huge majority in the future EU. So why isn't the story that Germany and France are now isolated on the continent?

No sex please, we're British soldiers!

2003-02-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Telegraph reports that a new ₤40,000 government-funded study finds sexism exists in the British military. For example, the use of the word “manning” instead of “staffing.” I don’t know, somehow “Staff the guns, the enemy is attacking!” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Another criticism is that “the media image of women soldiers as sexy or tomboyish influenced Army policy and made it difficult for women to integrate.” In other words, in the new feminist Puritanism we mustn’t see members of the opposite sex as “sexy.” Absent castration, that seems unrealistic in the world outside the ivory towers of academia.

Which brings me to my favorite part, the title of the study itself -- Gendered Bodies, Personnel Policies and the Culture of the British Army. “Gendered Bodies?”* I don’t think that too many people are likely to join the military if it means becoming un-gendered.

*According to my Webster’s, gendered means “reflecting the experience, prejudices, or orientations of one sex more than the other.” The authors of the study clearly intended this awkward term as a reference to the masculine culture of the military, which they seek to emasculate in the name of equality.

Fisking done right

2003-02-04T23:59:00.000-08:00

Fisking is a bit like playing the violin. Done badly, it's tedious and annoying. Done right, it’s a pleasure to behold. Tim Blair does it right. Here’s a sample of him Fisking his favorite victim subject, Margot Kingston:

Grace believes many women feel as she does - desperate, helpless, and afraid to speak up because "they're not able to back it up with political analysis".

So they take off their clothes instead? What is this, some kind of elaborate blonde joke?

She says she's never done anything like this before, and the momentum her email has generated "thrills me but scares me as well". She's nervous about stripping off, as are most women who've agreed to come, and she asked me not to reveal the location of the protest for fear of unwanted onlookers.

It's a private protest. The most effective kind.

posted at 11:16 AM

Sacred white elephants in space
One sign that a government program has become a sacred white elephant is when it is above criticism. This is true of the current manned space program.

Instead of exploring the solar system and the cosmos, we are spending tens of billions of dollars on an unreliable space shuttle and “International Space Station” extravaganza of no real scientific merit. The space station exemplifies NASA in general -- it costs a fortune yet just travels around in circles going nowhere.

Meanwhile, real space exploration has come to a virtual standstill. An interplanetary probe costs less than a single shuttle launch and yet can add substantially to our knowledge. But the shuttle/space station program continues to suck funding away from real science and exploration.

Tom Tole’s has an excellent cartoon in today’s The Washington Post about the need to look at the underlying assumptions behind our current manned program, but rather than address his argument NASA's defenders treat any criticism of the current program as an outrage.

Not to pick on The Eleven Day Empire, but here’s an example:

…what he did today is to pull down his pants and piss all over the lives and sacrifice of seven brave men and women; over the hard work and grief of thousands of people who work for NASA; and over the hopes, aspirations and dreams of millions of people in this country and throughout the world.

That is utterly contemptible. It shows Toles to be a heartless, soulless, worthless fuck, a hateful jackal who knows how to do only one thing - smear feces on the wall as a cry for underserved attention from his betters.

If toles' superiors at the Post had the slightest sense of decency or propriety, they would fire Tomes immediately. To their shame, I don't really expect they will.

It’s high time that NASA’s mission was reevaluated and the agency geared away from the shuttle/space station and refocused on exploration and science. And that is in no way disrespecting the lives of the seven astronauts who perished with Columbia – unlike using their memory as a shield to protect NASA from rational oversight.

UPDATE: James DiBenedetto writes:

Just to clarify the comments on my site - I agree that NASA is currently doing is NOT the way to go about manned space flight. I do believe very strongly that we must continue manned space flight, because that is where our future lies, and until we get rational leadership that commits to a PROPER program for the colonization and exploitation of outer space, if our choice is a mismanaged, dead-end shuttle/station program or nothing, I'll take shuttle/station. A poor and dangerous human spaceflight program is better than no human spaceflight program. I know that can be argued, but that's where I stand.

But I do recognize there are other arguments; as I said in the post you cited: "As my comments of the past couple of days should prove, I feel very strongly about space exploration - and colonization - and I don't have a lot of use for the argument that we should turn our back on what I see as our future.

Even so, there are arguments to be made; I disagree utterly with them, but they certainly exist. But there is an appropriate time and place and manner to make those arguments."

It's not JUST Toles' view, it's the way it's expressed. I admit that I'm not a fan of editorial cartoonists generally, and Toles in particular. Bu I saw his column as not an exhortation to take a cold, rational look at our current program, but (1) an attack against ANY manned spaceflight (which may just be a misinterpretation due to my bias showing through, I'll admit), and (2) an obnoxious, poorly-timed, thoughtless and hurtful way to go about getting his point across.

And that's what I reacted so strongly to.

OBG responds:

My own view is that "a mismanaged, dead-end shuttle/station program" ultimately discredits the entire space program by creating a poor and reckless track record. Eventually even Congress is going to question why we're shooting $15 billion a year into space with little benefit. It becomes hard to argue with the "for the cost of a single shuttle mission we can (fill in your favorite social program here)."

NASA's been coasting for a long time and if they want to continue to fire the public's imagination then they need to drastically change their direction.

If the choice is spending $15 billion a year on the shuttle/space station or giving it the axe and spending the money elsewhere, I'd take the axe - and I'll bet that more and more people are coming around to that view.

Astoturfing for prizes!

2003-02-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

The Boston Globe’s ombudsman, Christine Chinlund, reports that:

Four times since mid-October the Globe has unwittingly published letters that were written not by the local folks who signed them, but by the Republican National Committee. The same letters, all praising President Bush, also appeared verbatim (or nearly so) in papers across the country, each signed by a person in that paper's area.

A PR campaign using these letters is known as “astroturfing.” They’re pre-written letters sent out by shills from around the country to media outlets, and the GOP isn’t alone in doing it. Nor does everyone agree that it is unethical. For example:

Michael McCurry, a former Clinton press secretary, finds no fault with the practice. McCurry, whose company offers technical support to client Internet users, tells critics of the letters: ''Grow up and join the Internet Age.''

Meanwhile, the “GOPTeamLeader.com website … rewards those who send letters with points that can be converted into gifts, ‘from coolers to mousepads.’” That’s not much of a reward for selling your credibility. At least McCurry gets real money for selling what’s left of his.

UPDATE: The Angry Cyclist has a slightly different take on the column:

Does anyone else think this would have never hit the Globe's radar screen if this was done by the DemocRATS?

It is unfortunate that GOP-authored letters were published as individual works. I applaud the effort to keep it from happening again. The Globe is blessed with readers who are smart, literate, and passionate about politics. The letters page should be reserved for their heartfelt words, not those of special interests seeking to sway public opinion.

From the mouth of Christine Chinlund, impartial and unbiased Boston Globe ombudsman - The Republican Party is a 'special interest(s)' who are not 'smart, literate, and passionate about politics', hell bent on a deceitful but hopefully quixotic quest to 'sway public opinion'.

UPDATE: Bill Dennis see astroturfing from a more populist perspective:

there is something about the complaints that strikes me as fundamentally elitist. Professional politicians hire professional speech writers and all sorts of spinmasters. No one accuses them of plagiarism, yet that is the charge some critics of astroturfing level at those who send these letters to their editor of their local newspaper. Bull. These letters to the editor were written with the understanding someone else would sign their name to them. Joe Blow citizens should be afforded the same courtesy given to the powerful.

If newspapers really want to stop astroturf letters from dirtying their op-ed pages, a few simple steps can be followed. First, no letter should be printed without verification. That's just basic journalism. It prevents someone from submitting a letter in someone else's name. A newspaper worried about astroturfing can not only get verification for who sent the letter in, they can ask the person submitted the letter if they are in fact the author. If the letter appears elsewhere, ban the letter writer.

Having authored Op-Eds for other people I have some sympathy for Bill's argument. Why should a different standard apply to the letters to the editor than to the Op-Eds? Or is the problem not so much that the letters are authored by professionals, as that the letters aren't unique?
posted at 2:09 PM

Junk science in the service of politics
Iain Murray takes a look at Why They Hate Us, “a new study from two professors at Boston University that supposedly demonstrates a deeply-held dislike of American culture among young people around the world (including the United States)”

He finds that, “There are two major problems with this study of teenagers' attitudes: the methodology and the logic. That doesn’t leave much.” The study makes no pretense at obtaining a good statistical basis from which to draw it’s conclusions – conclusions that result in such odd results as American teenagers rating themselves as negatively as the Pakistanis rated them, and much more negatively than did teenagers from Italy, Argentina and Nigeria.

Even the logic used to arrive at the study’s conclusion is defective:

…teenagers want so much to see American culture, which they despise, that they break their countries' laws to obtain it. Presumably so they can tut-tut and remark how shameful it all is. This argument isn't even circular, it's inherently self-contradictory. This study and the conclusions drawn from it are meaningless in every sense.

Meaningless, yes. But it’ll be cited over and over again by those whose agenda the study furthers. Whatever happened to peer reviews?
posted at 1:07 PM

Rand Simberg lays out a good case for trimming the manned space program
Rand Simberg admits that science isn’t “a good justification for a manned space program. It's simply too expensive, compared to all other federal science programs, particularly the way that NASA goes about it. But more to the point, by focusing on this purpose of the space program, and excluding all others, it allows people to ask questions like ‘why don't we do it with robots?’” And it’s the robot part that rubs him the wrong way.

For Simberg, it’s about becoming a “space-faring nation and planet.” You know, establishing “off-world settlements”, “A new leisure industry, with resorts in orbit or on the moon” and “an orbital infrastructure that can both mine useful asteroids and comets, and deflect errant ones about to wipe out civilization.” Oh my!

In other words, it’s all about allowing a handful of people to play Buck Rogers on the public dime. There’s an enormous opportunity cost to spending tens of billions of dollars a year on NASA, and if this is the best justification they can come up with for the current space shuttle/space station extravaganza, then let’s kill it now and start using the money in a cost-effective way to increase our understanding of the solar system and the cosmos.

If Club Moon can find private investors willing to drop tens of billions of dollars to establish “A new leisure industry, with resorts in orbit or on the moon,” then that’s their business. Just don’t ask Joe taxpayer to foot the bill.

UPDATE: Here's an excellent policy position statement from the Cato Institute.

Space exploration is too important to be treated as a carnival ride

2003-02-02T23:57:00.000-08:00

I withheld comment yesterday on the Columbia disaster because I didn’t want my own opinion of the current space program to impinge on the tragedy of seven lost lives.

This is going to make some people mad, but here goes...

The space program has long attracted the best engineers, pilots and scientists, and has touched the imagination of not just Americans, but much of the world. That said it is largely an expensive boondoggle that has gotten worse since the days of Werner and Marcus von Braun, when we blew untold billions of dollars in order to put a few astronauts on the moon in a publicity battle against the Soviets.

Today, rather than support meaningful space exploration, NASA’s budget is being largely used to build and support a “space station” of little to no scientific value. Manned space travel is expensive and detracts from our goal of understanding our solar system and the cosmos. Far more can be accomplished for far less using unmanned vehicles for which life support systems and manned-flight safety precautions are unnecessary.

There will be a time when sending astronauts to the moon, mars and other extra-terrestrial bodies will make sense from a scientific standpoint, but that time is not yet here, and pouring resources into an ancient fleet of space shuttles and a “space station” discredits the space program and ultimately retards the goal of space exploration.

It’s time to get serious about exploration and not just treat space as an expensive political carnival ride.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg makes an interesting observation:

Gregg Easterbrook says that it's time to end the Shuttle program.

He actually says much with which I agree, but I utterly disagree with his prescription, which is to have NASA build a newer, safer system. He gets it wrong because he continues to fall into the trap of believing that the primary purpose of a space program is for science.

Simberg identifies what I see as the problem, although he obviously does not. The legitimate purpose for using taxpayer money to fund a space program is to advance science. The program needs to become more science and less taxpayer-funded, over-priced carnival ride.

OmbudSunday: a partial roundup of ombudsman columns

2003-02-02T23:54:00.000-08:00

# The Louisville Courier-Journal: Pam Platt tells us what the loss of the shuttle Columbia means to her.

# The Florida Times-Union: Mike Clark quotes “Howard Kurtz, Washington Post media reporter, on the good old days of the news media:”

There was no golden age (of journalism). There was certainly a time when politics and government were treated more substantively and seriously by the media. But what some people mythologize as the good old days was a time when women wrote mainly for what was known as the women's pages, when newsrooms were almost entirely white, when news about Negroes was treated differently than news about whites. Reporters of the Front Page mold may have been more in tune with the people they were writing for, but they were less educated, less specialized, less knowledgeable and sometimes drunker than today's journalists.

Oh, and some media columnist for a European newspaper, famous for its sophisticated use of the words "fuck" and “cunt,” opines that “In the American press, day after day, the White House controls the agenda. The supposedly liberal American press has become a dog that never bites, hardly barks but really loves rolling over and having its tummy tickled.''

# The Washington Post: Michael Getler reports that a “reader sent the following message last Monday:”

I implore you to challenge the paper's editorial staff to question the President's unwillingness to participate in press conferences, especially now when our nation is being led into war. I find it astonishing that so few reporters/columnists have brought the Bush administration's refusal to face the press to the public's attention, because, frankly, this avoidance of accountability is both disturbing and ominous.

While acknowledging that President Bush has held about the same number of news conferences as Presidents Carter and Ford, and more than Nixon, at this point in his first term, Getler (whose anti-war sympathies are seldom far from the surface) calls on the President to hold a “a proper, announced-in-advance, full-scale presidential news conference sometime between now and when the bombs start dropping,” to allow for “concentrated follow-up questioning.”

# The Oregonian: Dan Hortsch responds to a message sent by the state Superintendent of Public Instruction “to nearly 200 school district superintendents. The Superintendent wanted to ‘correct the misleading headline and story’ that appeared that day in The Oregonian.”

The Oregonian piece, headlined "Oregon will set a lower bar for minority, disadvantaged students," is about how the “State Board of Education's adoption of a plan to alter the timelines in meeting some requirements of the No Child Left Behind federal education law” would set “standards for the next decade for low-income, minority and other students [that] would be lower than for nondisadvantaged students.”

Hortsch reports that the piece is fairly accurate, and that state officials believe their approach to be “a sound, gradual approach to closing the achievement gap, rather than set unrealistic targets for schools." He notes that, “state education officials also objected to use of the word ‘lower’ in reference to standards that would be used for students in certain groups. They contend that in fact Oregon would raise standards from the present.”

OmbudSaturday: a partial roundup of ombudsman columns

2003-02-01T23:52:00.000-08:00

# Orlando Sentinel: Observing that, “A newspaper in Lincoln, Neb., staked out some new territory for American Indians this past week when it stopped referring to the professional football team in the nation's capital as the Redskins,” Manning Pynn argues that the issue of using controversial names in a newspaper has “a couple of elements.”

First, he asks, “Is naming a team after a minority group offensive?” The corollary is “Would a team deliberately call itself something it didn't like or respect?” The answer, of course, is no.

Pynn’s “second element has plenty to do with journalism.” It boils down to, “teams, not newspapers, decide what to call themselves.

If a sports team's moniker truly were offensive, though, the newspaper wouldn't cure the problem by keeping that name a secret. If anything, that would help protect the team from warranted criticism and contribute to the offense.”

# The San Diego Union-Tribune: Gina Lubrano appears to take peace marchers at their word when they report 1,200 marchers in their contingent in the January 18th Martin Luther King, Jr., parade. Marchers were “outraged” that The Union-Tribune had reported only that there were “more than 100.” No independent corroboration for the higher number is given, and since we know that the primary organizer of anti-war demonstrations, International A.N.S.W.E.R., is notorious for using inflated numbers, perhaps a little skepticism of numbers reported by the anti-war movement might be in order.

Euro-Anti-Semitism or valid satire?

2003-01-31T23:49:00.000-08:00

The Independent (UK) was recently taken to task in Little Green Footballs, and elsewhere, for publishing a grotesque anti-Semitic cartoon of the Israeli Prime Minister. The cartoon appears to many, including The OmbudsGod, to clearly invoke the ancient blood libel against Jews (that Jews eat and/or drink the blood of non-Jewish children) – which is still in common use in the Arab media.

Today, The Independent asks “the question: was this cartoon anti-Semitic?

Coercive marketing and the PTO

2003-01-31T23:44:00.000-08:00

A lot has changed in school since I was a kid, some of it for the better, a lot for the worse. One thing that is really ticking me off is the use of children as a marketing arm for various goods and services only vaguely related to school.

For example, our local PTO routinely holds “contests” where classes that make a certain sales quota are rewarded with an ice cream or pizza party. In other words, little Jimmy and Sarah and LaToya are being used to coerce Mom and Dad into buying stuff so that the PTO can get a kickback from the ACME Over-Priced Products Company of P.O. Box, New Jersey. This is all coordinated through our local taxpayer-funded schools – attendance mandatory by law.

It used to be just Scholastic that had penetrated this market, and the books they sell are reasonably priced and closely related to education, but it’s gotten worse. For example, Wednesday (or is it Thursday?) is grocery day. Yep, every week you can have your kid schlep home groceries from school, as though his usual load of books and papers isn’t enough. Now they’re selling “discount cards” good for I don’t know what, but if 20 kids (virtually the entire class) sell one they get a pizza party. Guess who little six-year-old Tommy expects to buy this latest swindle?

This isn't just my local school district. An entire industry aimed at marketing through the public schools has cropped up. Only unlike the crops of well-educated students the schools are supposed to be producing, this industry deserves to be ploughed under and the fields salted so that it will never happen again.
posted at 10:56 AM

Going to war without France
Dean Esmay reports that the:

Line of the week comes from Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense:

Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless, noisy baggage behind.

As stated on last night's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

International A.N.S.W.E.R.: "It's us against them.”

2003-01-30T23:41:00.000-08:00

Would an “anti-war” front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party fib about the number of protestors at a demonstration?

Many newspapers have received complaints about under-counting the number of demonstrators at the recent International A.N.S.W.E.R. sponsored demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere. The experience of Minneapolis Star Tribune ombudsman Lou Gelfand appears to be typical of what was happening. Here are samples of the fifty-something “vibrations” he received:

"Your Sunday piece about the protests in Washington mentions that there were only 30,000 people in the march. I attended and there were at least 500,000. C-Span was reporting 700,000." -- Zachary Jorgensen.

"I attended the rally in Washington [and] there were over 700,000…" -- Elizabeth Tellen…

Complainants often said that the Washington Post reported 500,000 rallied.

In fact, as Gelfand notes, The Post reported that:

U.S. Capitol Police suggested the march drew 30,000 to 50,000 people. Protest organizers said that the number was closer to 500,000. The truth might fall somewhere in between the guesses, or it might fall somewhere beyond the edges.

As a rule, the larger the demonstration, the more seriously it is taken. So whose number are we to accept?

I don’t know about the Capitol Police number, but this piece in The Nation, about an experience from an earlier A.N.S.W.E.R. protest, shines some light on the numbers used by the protest organizers:

"I'll make a deal with you," said an ANSWER organizer at the Capitol rally to Terra Lawson-Remer of Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations (STARC), who was coordinating media outreach for the NSYPC event. "We won't play the Mumia tape again"--ANSWER had already broadcast a taped speech by Mumia at the Ellipse--"if you'll tell the press we had 150,000 people here." Lawson-Remer was in a bind; she didn't want them to carry out this threat, but she believed the turnout was in the 50,000 to 75,000 range. The ANSWER organizers pressed the point, arguing that whatever they said, the media would report fewer. This was not a difference of opinion about the truth. "It's not about accuracy. It's about politics. It's not about counting," said ANSWER's Tony Murphy condescendingly. "It's us against them. [The pro-Israel] demonstrators had 100,000 here last week." (Responding to a web version of this article, ANSWER's legal counsel called this account a "disgusting fabrication," but I can attest to its accuracy because I was there.)

ANSWER is notorious for inflating its demonstration numbers…

I certainly know whose numbers I won't be accepting at face value. And if they're willing to lie about basic stuff like this, what else are they willing to lie about?

Analysis of the State of the Union Address

2003-01-30T23:34:00.000-08:00

If you have a little time, rhetoric scholar Andrew Cline analyzes the State of the Union Address.
posted at 12:27 PM

Wycliff’s latest screed against Bush
Don Wycliff, ombudsman for The Chicago Tribune, launches into another of his patented anti-Bush screeds today, focusing on the State of the Union address. After informing us that:

We led the coalition that kicked Hussein (sic) out of Kuwait, devastated his country and his army, clamped a crippling and demeaning regime of sanctions on Iraq and maintained it for the last 12 years. We've bombed his country routinely, cordoned large sections of it off from Baghdad's control and now have breathed new life into the effort to disarm Iraq--by force of arms if necessary.

None of this is any more than Hussein (sic) deserves (although his people do not), but it does give one an idea why he might be angry enough to want to lash out in the nastiest possible way at the United States.

Wycliff then minimizes all this by his misleading characterization that:

There is no evidence that Hussein (sic) has acted on that impulse--at least none that the Bush administration has seen fit to share with the American people.

Hmm. Saddam attempted to assassinate a U.S. President, has enormous stockpiles of deadly weaponized chemicals and biological agents (which he specifically promised to get rid of), is attempting to obtain a nuclear bomb and is known to harbor, fund and supply terrorist groups – several of which have targeted Americans. Nope, no evidence. Move along. Move along.

One curious point Wycliff makes, in an attempt to tar the second President Bush with the first, is that in 1990 Saddam Hussein sounded out the United States about how we would react if he invaded Kuwait, or at least the disputed area then claimed by Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie informed him that:

We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.

When questioned later, she stated:

Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take ALL of Kuwait.

But what this shows is that Saddam does respond to signals. And if the signal is that he can continue to do what he is doing without fear of American intervention, then he will continue. It shows the folly of sending ambiguous or mixed messages to Baghdad.

The unambiguous message must be do as you promised to do at the end of the Gulf War or we will remove you. Had it not been for the ambiguous message Ambassador Glaspie delivered the first time, we probably wouldn’t have had to fight the First Gulf War, or a second one. Now is not the time to be signaling Saddam that we aren’t serious.

As an aside, Saddam’s full name is Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti. He is usually called either Saddam or Saddam Hussein. Hussein is Saddam’s father’s first name. You’d think the ombudsman of a major regional newspaper would get his name right. Yet week after week, month after month, Wycliff persists in calling Saddam by the brutal dictator's father's name.

Oh, and don’t miss Wycliff’s little dig against the U.S. and Israel at the end of his column.

As I listened to the president speak … my mind went back to one of the hit movies of last summer, "The Sum of All Fears."

…the movie depicted a terrorist group's successful effort to acquire and smuggle into the U.S. a nuclear bomb, which is detonated in Baltimore and devastates that city.

Interestingly, the nuke in that instance … was made in Israel, with fissile material supplied by the United States.

It’s a f-ing Hollywood movie, Don. Get real.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet

2003-01-27T23:32:00.000-08:00

Poughkeepsie Journal ombudsman Kathleen Norton advises readers on writing letters to the editor. She cautions that:

Editorial Page Editor John Penney also reminds readers that Internet sources of information are not always credible. He urges readers to state their opinions, but not to state facts in absolute terms unless they are sure they are true.

Sometimes media columnists need reminding, too.

Those sophisticated Europeans

The main fixture of the Dutch football season is the match between Ajax, from Amsterdam, and Feyenoord, from Rotterdam… I had the misfortune once — through an error at the ticket office — to find myself sitting in the midst of the Feyenoord fans. It was a profoundly disturbing experience. Imagine thousands of football supporters screaming ‘Fucking Jews!’, or ‘To the gas chamber!’, or ‘Next stop Auschwitz!’ every time a player from the Amsterdam side touches the ball. Imagine, if you can bear it, thousands of people making hissing noises, mimicking the flow of gas…

Something very strange is going on here…

Ian Buruma in The Spectator.

via Tim Blair

Guardian policy on the Iraq situation
Ombudsman Ian Mayes reports that an “updated statement of the Guardian's position is likely this week to coincide with the Blair-Bush meeting at Camp David.” The current position is that:

We support a multilateral resolution, primarily through the United Nations, involving the final, verified destruction of all and any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's compliance with other UN resolutions, the concurrent phased lifting of non-military sanctions, an end to the no-fly zones and to UN controls on Iraqi oil and the opening of Iraq's borders to free movement...

We have not ruled out our support for the use of force as a means of last resort... We have condemned the Saddam regime on numerous occasions... We support containment, deterrence, diplomatic isolation, targeted sanctions pending a change of government...

But lest you think the Guardian might have a realistic policy for accomplishing all this:

We do not support the US policy of forcible “regime change”; we have condemned targeted assassination...

Mayes informs us that the Editor’s morning conference:

was not an anti-war rally, either in tone or atmosphere, although there were perhaps speakers who had hoped it might be, calling for the paper to declare itself unequivocally against the war in the way that it had declared itself against Suez in 1956…

The leader then…, "The world must be told clearly that millions of British people are deeply shocked by the aggressive policy of the Government. Its action in attacking Egypt is a disaster of the first magnitude. It is wrong on every count - moral, military, and political...”

Which brings us to an observation by Iain Murray, in The Edge of England’s Sword, reminding us of the impact of the Suez debacle:

Let's not forget that it was America's refusal to back Britain, France and Israel over the Suez crisis that is probably the defining moment that set the Middle East along the road to ruin. If Nasser had been dealt with then, we probably wouldn't have Saddam now. Moreover, that incident helped cause the British and French empires to break up prematurely, I think, a process America encouraged, leaving a legacy of suffering and war in Africa and other areas (the legacy is not nearly so bad in areas that had come to independence gradually and thoughtfully, such as India). Finally, it was also the cause of the splitting of France from the Atlantic alliance. Dulles and Eisenhower have a lot to answer for, and simply blaming Europe for it is just not good enough. I also have a suspicion that it will be looked back at by historians as probably the biggest delay in encouraging true Anglospheric feeling. It certainly made at least one generation of British Tories more suspicious than they should be of America.

Forcing an end to the attack, which also resulted in the downfall of the Anthony Eden's government, was arguably the low point of Eisenhower's presidency.

OmbudSunday: a partial roundup of ombudsman columns

2003-01-27T23:16:00.000-08:00

# The Oregonian: Columnist Arianna Huffington has “taken a step too far,” according to The Oregonian’s associate editor Doug Bates, who produces The Oregonian's daily Commentary page, and ombudsman Dan Hortsch agrees. She has formed:

the Detroit Project, in which she personally appeals for money to place broadcast ads on the air.

Her columns, Bates said, remain "snappy and readable." However, he added, "She has dragged herself across the line from being a commentator to being an [anti-SUV] activist . . . . She loses the status of sideline observer."

Huffington disagrees, stating that, “she does not ‘in any way’ see a conflict between her role in the Detroit Project and her role as a columnist. ‘It is a movement to raise awareness.’"
# Fort Worth Star-Telegram: David House reports on the results of a reader survey to determine the popularity of each of the 34 comic strips and eight single panel cartoons they publish daily:

Family Circus appears to be the most-read feature (71.7 percent) followed by For Better or For Worse (65.4 percent) and Hagar the Horrible (65.3 percent).

Rounding out the bottom were new edgier strips:

Get Fuzzy (15.1 percent), Jump Start (12.7 percent) and Frazz (12.2 percent).

The once-entertaining, now annoying, Doonesbury came in at fifth from the bottom with 23.8 percent, and Cathy, which was recently almost dropped from the Salt Lake Tribune before ombudsman Connie Coyne mounted a campaign to save it, came in at seventh from the bottom with 25.1 percent. Changes in the line-up are in the offing.

# Minneapolis Star Tribune: Responding to an AP piece, which quoted the U.S. Capitol Police chief who said, "About 30,000 people moved out on the march route" for the recent anti-war demonstration in Washington, there were “50 or more reader vibrations” reports Lou Gelfand. Zachary Jorgensen wrote claiming “I attended and there were at least 500,000. C-Span was reporting 700,000," which must be news to C-Span. Elizabeth Tellen testifies that, “I attended the rally in Washington [and] there were over 700,000.” Joe Sehl accuses the paper of “minimizing the demonstrations for peace,” and alleges that “The newspaper's conservative slant is showing more and more all the time,” which will certainly come as a surprise to conservative readers.

While crowd estimates can be notoriously tricky, “U.S. Capitol Police suggested the march drew 30,000 to 50,000 people.” The pro-totalitarian Stalinist Workers World Party front, International ANSWER, which organized the demonstration, chose the unlikely figure of 500,000.

Gelfand criticizes the AP piece for lack a paragraph summing up crowd estimates, and notes that, “At Twin Cities rallies where law enforcement often shuns an estimate and the sponsor's figure is suspect, it is the reporter's obligation to estimate the crowd,” which strikes The OmbudsGod as problematic. If you are standing inside a demonstration, even a few thousand protestors can seem like a million because you cannot accurately judge overall crowd density and how much ground is covered.

# Richmond Times Dispatch: Jerry Finch has some thoughts on coverage of the Washington anti-war demonstration and on crowd estimates.

# The Virginian-Pilot: Marvin Lake reports receiving a complaint from a marcher:

[Portsmouth resident Lawrence J.] Fagan saw a conspiracy, an intentional effort on the part of both the Associated Press photographer and the editor who selected the shots to perhaps undermine the anti-war effort.

Go ahead, eat that beef!

2003-01-26T23:28:00.000-08:00

NumberWatch is reporting that:

The ten million deaths once projected for [variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease] vCJD have shrunk according to The Times to a couple of hundred. Is this the end of the CJD scare? goes the headline. It just joins the list of what was called (in Sorry, wrong number!) The incredible shrinking statistic (e.g. US Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala “Soon because of AIDS we might not have any Americans left.”).

In case you’ve forgotten, vCJD is what people were supposed to get if they ate an animal infected with Mad Cow Disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), which had infected large numbers of cattle in the United Kingdom due to the way in which animal feed was being processed.

OmbudSaturday: a partial roundup of ombudsman columns

2003-01-25T23:12:00.000-08:00

# The Washington Post: Michael Getler reports that an inaccurate story in The Post, which reported that “"National security adviser Condoleezza Rice took a rare central role in a domestic debate within the White House and helped persuade President Bush to publicly condemn race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan," prompted Rice to "put out a statement saying, in part, that she agreed with the president's position, ‘which emphasizes the need for diversity and recognizes the continued legacy of racial prejudice, and the need to fight it.' But, she added, 'I believe that while race-neutral means are preferable, it is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body.’"

# The Salt Lake Tribune: Connie Coyne has had it with the Raelians. She acknowledges that “covering a group whose leader sports Star Trek-like uniforms can be a fun diversion. But this latest round of stories is too much. There, I have said it: No more Raelian stories until this group offers some kind of proof about its claims.” She offers her “ personal theory on why this group is getting so much coverage: It's that biologist's teeth. The woman Raelian who heads Clonaid has a set of choppers that could serve as a poster for what will happen if you fail to brush and floss.” You know, I think Brigette Boisselier’s teeth match her eyes and hair quite nicely.

# Toronto Star: If you don’t want to see your name in print, then don’t talk to the press is the unstated lesson in Don Sellar’s piece about the Star’s violating the confidentiality of a dozen “weight-loss challenge participants, including a few who gave their weight or other sensitive personal information.” It seems that a screw-up resulted in publication of their names and hometowns along with their tales of “struggles and successes.”

# Orlando Sentinel: In its never ending quest to identify Americans by dubious categories of race and ethnicity, the “most recent census ... expanded that list to more than 200 groups -- combining race, ethnicity and nationality -- with Hispanics becoming the nation's second-largest population group.”

As Manning Pynn observes, “that complicates things because, although most Hispanics are white, that ethnic category can include people of all races.” What then do government bean counters call the nation’s largest population group? By what it is not, of course. They are Non-Hispanic whites.

Not The OmbudsGod. I refuse to answer questions relating more to the color of my skin than the content of my character. I’m a non-hyphenated American.

# The San Diego Union-Tribune: Gina Lubrano explains that:

When editors select what news stories they are going to use on a particular day, their only agenda is to keep readers informed. Sometimes, of course, they make mistakes and fail to give a story the prominence it deserves or give a story too much prominence.

Those human failings aside, you know when you read a news story that it has been written by a reporter, a professional whose purpose is to gather information, verify it and provide all sides of the story. Reporters know when writing news stories, they are to set their biases aside. And should their biases betray themselves, it is up to editors to make sure they are cut out of stories.

In the Bill’s Content tradition of posting gratuitous pictures in order to boost traffic…

2003-01-24T23:10:00.000-08:00

With Gary Hart (formerly Hartpence) looking to make another run for the Democratic nomination for President, I though I’d beat the rush and post links to some gratuitous pictures of the Senator and a certain Donna Rice, with whom he sailed on the good ship “Monkey Business.” While technically the story was broken by the Miami Herald, as usual you can count on the National Inquirer, which informed readers that the married candidate had asked her to marry him. Here’s the 29 year old “model and actress” getting a nice tan.

Just to be fair, here’s a link to a list that includes Republican indiscretions.
posted at 3:53 PM

Another classic New York Post front page headline
The New York Post is famous, some would say infamous, for its headlines. For example, there’s Headless Body in Topless Bar, The Hunk Flunks and, of course, Gotti’s Greatest Hits.

Taking a clue from Scrappleface, The Post has produced another classic.

via cut on the bias

UPDATE: The Dissident Frogman has new, interesting wall paper
posted at 1:37 PM

Mikey Update
Exposing the Exposer’s Zachary takes issue with What Really Happened’s Michael “evidence links Israeli spies to 9-11” Rivero, who asserts that "Who wants peace? The Palestinians."
posted at 12:00 PM

Anti-war demonstrations and “listeners” who give “NPR a piece of … someone’s mind"
Despite extensive, and I might add very positive, coverage of the recent anti-war demonstrations, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin reports that the website www.democrats.com incorrectly accused NPR of giving only “5 Minutes to Massive Anti-war Protests, and 4 Minutes to the Queen's Trousers," which prompted “more than 500 outraged ‘listeners’” to give “NPR a piece of their -- or someone's -- mind.”

No word on whether NPR mentioned that the demonstrations were organized by a Stalinist group that has favored the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and such brutal despots as Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il and Slobodan Milosevic. Or, for that matter, why causes such as freeing cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal have anything to do with opposing a war against Saddam Hussein.
posted at 10:58 AM

More on the significance of the Workers World Party organizing the anti-war movement
Responding to my debate, with Blog on the Run’s Lex Alexander, about the significance of the Workers World Party sponsoring anti-War demonstrations, Lex Communis’s Peter Sean Bradley observes that:

There is nothing admirable about the Communists that you can't also find in Nazi ideology. Wear a swastika and you're walking leprosy; wear a red beret and it's a fashion statement. You know, I have never met a Nazi or a Klan member, but I went to law school with a card-carrying Communist. Nobody harassed him. He fit right in. But - jeez - the Gulag, the Katyn Massacre, the Ukraine famine, Stalin.....you know, that stuff. Nonetheless, you have to hope that this weekend perhaps saw the start of a healthy process which will result in consigning the Communists to the moral plague ward with the Nazis and the Klan.

Meanwhile, at Front Page Magazine Stephen Schwartz asks who foots the bill for The Workers World Party, “a minuscule Stalinist group” with some rather expensive programs. He observes that Nazi Germany subsidized the American peace movement prior to Pearl Harbor and the Cold War-era peace movement was covertly funded by the Soviet Union. Of the Workers World Party, he inquires:

Who stands behind them? Americans have a right to know, and if these phony peaceniks really desire respectability, they should be willing to publicly account for their financing, especially for air travel and hotel hospitality enjoyed while they serve as camouflage tourists in states committed to terrorism.

To what extent does it matter who organizes the anti-war protests?

2003-01-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

Responding to my post on Sheltering readers from what happens in the world, Lex Alexander, proprietor of Blog on the Run, writes that:

I agree that because ANSWER was the main organizer for the march, its background should have been explored in more detail. Absolutely no argument there.

But I have to wonder how much difference doing so would have made to those who had chosen to be there.

This is sounding familiar -- perhaps you and I discussed this before -- but I think a lot of people who participated in the march did so for reasons that had little or nothing to do with ANSWER's larger agenda. I also think that even participants who agreed in their opposition to attacking Iraq fell at many different places along a spectrum of reasons, terms and conditions. (For one example, see Mary McGrory's column in today's WashPost; the Valerie Lucznikowska quoted therein was my employer in 1982-83.)

We've only got one national capital, and the fact that people felt a need to assemble there in numbers to express their viewpoint does not mean, and should not be taken to mean, that every participant agreed with every other participant, or with the main organizer, on every detail. Besides, how many people do you think a rally consisting only of ANSWER and its sympathizers would have drawn? Surely nowhere near as many as marched this past weekend.

To which I responded:

Yes, but I think that misses the point. Don't you think that conservatives would be justly criticized if they held large demonstrations organized by a front group for the Klan or for the American Nazi Party?

To my mind, the anti-war movement deserves all the opprobrium it is getting for allowing itself to be organized by an odious group. Moreover, the message of speakers at the demonstrations appears to be as much, or more, anti-Americanism than anti-war.

By allowing itself to be co-opted by the Workers World Party, the anti-war movement discredits itself.

I’ll allow Lex the last word:

But -- and we're wandering a bit far afield of journalism here, but I can't help asking -- EVEN IF the whole country had been properly informed about the background and views of the organizing group, is it not possible that many participants might not have cared? I think it is. For one thing, I suspect that many marchers, and perhaps many who did not march and would not have, probably would consider the American Nazi Party and the Klan much closer to being a clear and present danger to the public than ANSWER is or ever has been.

For another, the specific viewpoints of the participants were so varied that I doubt many of them felt it logical or rational to speak of "the anti-war movement" as an entity so cohesive that it could or should worry about its associations. Just among people I know who participated, the viewpoints include:

--No attack on Iraq, period.
--Rebuild Afghanistan and keep after bin Laden and al-Qaeda first, while monitoring Iraq for possible future action.
--Attack Iraq if needed, but only with UN sanction.
--Atack Iraq if needed, but only with UN sanction AND allied military support.

My point is not that the motives of some organizers aren't questionable. But I suspect that a big chunk of the participants didn't know and wouldn't have cared if they had known, because they were there for their own reasons, with their own messages for the government and public.

posted at 2:55 PM

NNNNobody expects the Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty!!!
Responding to the Pythonesque holding of the Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty (shouldn’t they be against dishonesty?), that his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, is “clearly in violation of the norms for good scientific behavior," Bjorn Lomborg defends himself in today’s OpinionJournal.

What makes the committee's holding truly Pythonesque are the procedural irregularities committed by the committee in order to issue its denunciation. To summarize points originally made by statistician Iain Murray:

1. The committee did not reach a consensus on the premise that Lomborg’s book was a work of science. Hence they should not have proceeded to apply standards applicable only to works of science and should have stopped right there.

2. In order to label conduct as “scientifically dishonest,” the committee’s guidelines state that “it must be possible to document that the person in question has acted deliberately or exercised gross negligence in connection with the activities under consideration.” Instead the committee invented a new standard, finding that they had “not found-or felt able to procure-sufficient grounds to deem that the defendant has misled his readers deliberately or with gross negligence.” As Iain observes, the committee ”cannot find him guilty of scientific dishonesty. They therefore invent a distinction between objective dishonesty and subjective dishonesty, thereby inventing a category of unconscious dishonesty.” Iain coincludes that this is “such a blatant contradiction in terms [that the committee’s] work should be referred to the Danish Committee on Philosophical Dishonesty.”

The good news is that rather than burying Lomborg, the committee appears to have done the opposite. He has been defended, inter alia, in the pages of The Economist and, as he notes:

The baseless denunciation by the Danish committee--which some have called Orwellian--has led to an academic outcry. In Denmark alone, 280 professors have signed a petition rejecting the decision.

Seeking to punish an apostate, the Danish committee has instead given him greater prominence than ever. Lomborg's reputation survives the denunciation. The question is will the committee's?
posted at 1:15 PM

Proofread that bill!
One clue that proposed legislation isn’t to be taken seriously is when it’s obvious that no one has proofread it. I count no fewer than four instances in which Rep. Charles Rangel’s bill to reintroduce the draft (HR 163) refers to “reverse” when it should read “reserve.” For example:

DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:

(1) The term `military service' means service performed as a member of an active or reverse component of the uniformed services.

via The Edge of England's Sword
posted at 10:11 AM

Smug and ugly at the BBC?
Cut on the Bias reports on a BBC article on the recent shooting of two Americans in Kuwait. She observes that “It was a fairly straightforward piece, until you get to the very last paragraph,” which she describes as “so flagrantly biased, so clearly opinion, so disgustingly smug and ugly. And it doesn't even make any effort to portray itself as anything but that - it's not a quote, not even an extrapolation from what anyone else said. It's just editorializing in the guise of a hard news story.” The paragraph in question?

Whatever they decide, the expat communities of both countries will chew on the irony that they were probably safer before their nations decided to fill up their adopted homeland with tanks and soldiers.

The tacit assumption the BBC makes is that terrorism against westerners is a result of our buildup in the Middle East, as opposed to a consequence. Yet there is a history of increasing violence against westerners (particularly Americans) in the Middle East that substantially predates the events of 9/11/01 and the subsequent military buildup and showdown with Iraq, so that assumption is questionable at best.

Good catch Susanna!

Sheltering readers from what happens in the world

2003-01-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

Michael Kelly takes issue with the left's embrace of islamofascism and tyranny, and the failure of the media to report that the so-called peace marches are organized by International ANSWER, a front for the Stalinist Workers World Party, which isn't so much pro-peace as anti-freedom and anti-American. He observes that:

Last weekend, the left held large antiwar marches in Washington, San Francisco and elsewhere. Major media coverage of these marches was highly respectful. This was "A Stirring in the Nation," in the words of an approving New York Times editorial, "impressive for the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers."

There is, increasingly, much that happens in the world that the Times feels its readers should be sheltered from knowing. The marches ... were chiefly sponsored .. by a group the Times chose to call in its only passing reference "the activist group International Answer."

via The Corner

UPDATE: Providing another example of "sheltering readers," Thor Halvorssen writes, in The Washington Times, that:

Reporters have so controlled the flow of information and disfigured the truth that their coverage of Venezuela is a caricature of what conservative critics call the "liberal media bias." What we are seeing in media coverage of Venezuela is not liberal bias, but totalitarian bias.

He provides plenty of examples.

via the ever vigilant PostWatch
posted at 1:15 PM

The BBC profiles The United States
# The BBC’s description of America “stinks,” notes Biased BBC reader Monica Law, who describes herself as a “Brit living in France.” Here are some lowlights from the description:racial violence, discrimination and segregation have been and continue to be a feature of American life.
# Without the levels of social welfare enjoyed, for example, in western Europe, this wealth gap could translate into a potential for social unrest
# American foreign policy has always mixed the idealism of its "mission" with elements of self-interest. The latter is exemplified in its international record on the environment
# the US has taken the pre-eminent role in the war on Afghanistan and in attempts to isolate and mobilise its allies against countries which it claims are havens to terrorists.

Take the The WildMonk War Personality Test!

2003-01-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

The OmbudsGod is either a Capitalist Stooge or a Realist depending on your point of view.

via The Truth Laid Bear
posted at 9:16 PM

Mikey update
That’s Mikey Rivero, not Mikey Moore, for any OBG novices out there. Michael Rivero is a Free Republic outcast who has apparently found his new calling by spreading anti-American conspiracy theories. Need a "source" to prove that Washington knew about what was going to happen on 9/11/01 ahead of time, or that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were the work of Zionist agents, then Mikey's your man. Needless to say, he's picked up an eclectic following on both the left and right.

S. Boyle continues his exposure of Mikey. This week we’re back to the recurring theme of Mikey’s anti-Semitism. Responding to a Holocaust denial letter posted on his website, Mikey repeats the discredited claim that Anne Frank’s diaries are a forgery. He also links to a hidden story on Indymedia that “Zionists associated with the Mossad have applied for and now work at Indymedia,” but that “don't let it deter you from your pro-Palestinian activies. The cat is out of the bag! Israel will soon fall like a house of cards…”

Okay, I didn’t know that there are “hidden stories” on Indymedia, either, but apparently if you click on the button labeled “View Hidden Stories” on San Francisco IndyMedia – that’s where they’ve hidden it. Given the crap they often run, I’m surprised that they hide this piece, but then maybe even the Indyidiots are embarrassed by it.
posted at 2:03 PM

Scott Ritter update
According to CBS affiliate WRGB and MSNBC, former weapons inspector, turned Saddam apologist, Scott Ritter was caught twice trying to pick up underage girls through the Internet. In 2001, he tried to lure what he thought was a 16 year old girl to meet him, but the jailbait turned out to be just that – a cop. The charge was dismissed and the case sealed. Four months before that, he was arrested for trying to meet a 14 year old girl he met online, but the cops let him go.

So, not only is Ritter an Internet sexual predator, but an idiot as well, having been nailed not once but twice. The only thing more reprehensible is that he was never truly held accountable for his actions.

via Drudge Report

UPDATE: Tim Blair thinks that "Ritter would fit right in with the UN's present Iraq inspection team..."
posted at 1:06 PM

Banned in Europe!
No stories about German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's affair, please. The "Audi chancellor" (4 wedding rings, get it?), has obtained a German court order barring publication of information by a British newspaper, the Mail, that he is having an affair, on the grounds that such information about the high government official violates his right to privacy. The British press is naturally flouting the order and going to town with the story, which is setting the stage for a showdown on the efficacy of transnational censorship in Euroland.

The penalty for violating the German court’s order is a whopping €250,000, if, of course, it can be enforced.

Considering that, for example, Germany has one of the worst records for honoring foreign child custody decrees, including those from Britain, despite being a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, a finding that European national courts have transnational jurisdiction could have profound consequences for other areas of the law.

Lou’s corner

2002-11-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

This week, ombudsman Lou Gelfand addresses the issue of bias in The Minneapolis Star Tribune. The column appears to have been pulled from the website, but here’s what remains:

Lou Gelfand: Coverage of West Bank hostilities leaves some readers seeing red
Israeli and Palestinian loyalists agreed last week that the Star Tribune's coverage is biased. For different reasons, of course.

I love that language of moral equivalence. Change it slightly and you can see how bizarre it is.

Lou Gelfand: Coverage of Final Solution leaves some readers seeing red
Jewish and NAZI loyalists agreed last week that the Star Tribune's coverage is biased. For different reasons, of course.

Let’s take this a little further. Here’s a quote from the The Star Tribune’s assistant managing editor, Roger Buoen, earlier this year:

We also take extra care to avoid the term “terrorist” in articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotional and heated nature of that dispute.

Applying that same philosophy to another era, we get:

We also take extra care to avoid the term “genocide” in articles about the Jewish-NAZI conflict because of the emotional and heated nature of that dispute.

Eric Olsen took apart a similar argument used by NPR:

Sadly, rather than appearing neutral, which may or may not be their actual goal, NPR appears to favor the Palestinians because there is no definition in any language on the face of the earth that doesn't conclude that ‘terrorism’ is the purposeful killing of noncombatants to frighten said populace into changing policies the ‘terrorists’ don't like. When one appears to be bending over backwards to achieve ‘neutrality’ and said ‘neutrality’ requires contortions, evasions and moral blinders to be maintained, that very ‘neutrality’ becomes evidence of the opposite.

There is no moral equivalence between those who desire to live in peaceful co-existence with their neighbors and those who wish to “drive them into the sea” because of their religion and ethnicity. The inability to recognize the distinction is strong evidence of bias, or worse.

UPDATE: Lou's column is back online.

UPDATE: Here's an Opinion Journal from February making much the same point.

the Minneapolis Star Tribune is willing to call al Qaeda a terrorist organization. But if you murder only Jews, you are not a terrorist--at least in the eyes of those who edit Minnesota's largest newspaper. We wish we were making this up, but it's right there in yesterday's column by Star Tribune ombudsman Lou Gelfand.

Front-page graphic detail of the rape of an 8-year-old
Mike Needs, ombudsman for The Akron Beacon Journal, reports that:

[S]everal readers thought the Akron Beacon Journal crossed [The boundary line that separates reality reporting and reader sensibilities] with a Nov. 16 front-page story that described the rape of an 8-year-old Akron girl. The information provided was far too detailed and far too unnecessary, they said.

One reader wrote: “I am completely outraged at your reporting of the most private details of the young girl's rape. You have moved beyond the realm of decency and human compassion.”

Needs doesn’t say if the girl was named in the article, but regardless her friends and acquaintances will be able to figure out who she is. The Beacon Journal’s story seems to fit into a modern trend of providing more detail about rapes under the rationale of removing “stigma.” Or, as another reader said:

...newspapers need more reporting on rape, not less. “Maybe the publication of such details will assist in educating the public as to the reality of rape as a power/dominance matter rather than a sexual one.”

There are two problems with that argument. First, rape is not merely a “power/dominance matter rather than a sexual one.” Poynter.org’s Bob Steele quotes from author Helen Benedict’s Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes:

Rape is best characterized as torture that uses sex as a weapon. Like a torturer, the rapist uses sexual acts to dominate, humiliate, and terrorize the victim," Benedict writes.

"To deny the role of sexual humiliation in rape is to deny victims the horror of what they have been through. As long as people have any sense of privacy about sexual acts and the human body, rape will, therefore, carry a stigma, not necessarily a stigma that blames the victim for what happened to her, but a stigma that links her name irrevocably with an act of intimate humiliation."

"To name a rape victim is to guarantee that whenever somebody hears her name, that somebody will picture her in the act of being sexually tortured. To expose a rape victim to this without her consent is nothing short of punitive."

Second, while it may be courageous for a 24-year-old victim to come forward with her story, an eight-year-old lacks the maturity to make such a decision. Publishing the graphic details of the young girl’s rape does little to remove stigma, and links “her name irrevocably with an act of intimate humiliation.”

A reader sums it up best. “The Beacon Journal has merely added to the continual degradation of our societal norms. . .”

Taxpayer-funded sex discrimination

2002-11-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

PostWatch is exposing institutions that discriminate on the basis of sex, yet receive Federal funds.

I'm shocked, shocked!

Blackface, the new anti-establishment protest?
According to Erin O’Connor, there appears to be a sort of mini-epidemic of blackface-related incidents on campus:

…I want to stress the highly stylized pattern that surrounds the wearing of blackface on college campuses. It's almost always fraternity brothers who do it; they almost always do it at Halloween; they always incur the righteous wrath of the campus; that wrath doesn't distinguish between dressing as tennis stars and dressing as Sambo; there is always some kind of discipline; often, in the process of doling out the discipline, administrators violate the offenders' constitutional rights; there is also always talk of institutionalized racism--the history of minstrelsy is always invoked, as are the less-than-optimal numbers of black students on the campus in question. To say that blackface episodes signify the presence of unreconstructed racism on campus is to miss the wider picture, which is that the donning of blackface is one scene in a complex campus-wide dramatization of the racial tension built into the multicultural agenda that presides over an increasing number of college campuses.

Fraternity members wear blackface not because they don't know that it will be seen as racist, but because they know it will. They are deliberately flouting campus convention with their costumes; I would argue that blackface says less about the racial awareness of its wearer than it does about his rejection of politically correct codes of conduct. The white male fraternity brother is the emblematic oppressor on campus today--he symbolizes all that the many speech codes, harassment policies, sensitivity workshops, and diversity requirements cluttering up his campus most revile. To use the phraseology of oppression theory, blackface as it is worn on campuses today might more rightly be understood as a form of resistance than a sign of neanderthalism. That doesn't make it right. But it might help explain it.

Study Finds Sex, Pregnancy Link
If you want to read some funny material, go to Bob Levy’s column in today's The Washington Post.

via Media Minded

Life repeats Woody Allen, only without the laughs
In his campy comedy Bananas, Woody Allen goes to the fictional country of San Marcos where there's a revolution. The country's new president soon becomes drunk with power and decrees that the official language of San Marcos is Swedish, that everyone must change their underwear every half-hour, and that they must wear it on the outside of their clothes so the government will be able to check. Eventually San Marcos is invaded by everyone from Americans troops to the Jewish Defense League.

If Joel Soler, director of the documentary Uncle Saddam, is to be believed, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is a real-life version of the leader in Bananas. While the people of Iraq are not required to wear their underwear on the outside (yet), Saddam instructs his subjects on how often to bathe (once a day for men, twice for women) and how to brush their teeth. His sycophants greet him by kissing him on the shoulder in a spot about halfway between his armpit and his nipple. He maintains an elaborate art museum containing only portraits of himself. His office must be maintained at a specified temperature determined by his doctors and he is deathly afraid of germs. And this only scratches the surface.

It would be funny if Saddam’s rule weren’t so tragic for his people, and if his military adventures and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction didn’t make him a threat to the rest of the world. He may not be clinically psychotic, but he’s definitely nuts.

This is just plain gross

2002-11-21T06:29:00.000-08:00

My counter keeps track of the last twenty inquiries to The OmbudsGod. It's not protected so anyone can look at it -- the button is just below the Powered by Blogger button on the left. Some inquiries are interesting, some not, and some are weird. For example, someone from Tehran just found OBG by Googling "decapitating sex women pictures." Now I'm not usually one to criticize a person's sexual proclivities, but this is just plain gross.

What’s up, Joe?
I like to follow up on former National Review senior editor Joseph Sobran from time to time just to see what new frontiers of idiocy he’s exploring. Here’s the latest from his website -- he’s taken a stand on Democracy. Apparently, he’s agin it:

When the media find a Senate contest involving Walter Mondale the most exciting race in the country, it’s time to admit that democracy hasn’t quite lived up to its billing. Why is this a system we should impose on the rest of the world, when it isn’t even serving us very well? Maybe regime change should begin at home.

Conspiracy theories in the news
John Chappell posts an interview from Vanguardia with former Adjunct Secretary General of the UN, Denis Halliday. I wonder how many other Europeans think like this? Example:

Q. Why is [the United States] going to [attack Iraq]?

A. Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the world. It's simply that. The United States wants absolute control of the oil market.

Q. Oil is an obsession of the Bushes.

A. And Bush is ready to do whatever it takes to get control over it. And once it has absolute control, you can be sure that Europe will pay a very high price for that oil.

Q. So why didn't they take over Iraq after they won the first Gulf War?

A. Bush Senior pulled back at the possibility of an explosion of the Kurdish powder-keg and an Iranian intervention. It's a very complex area, very much so.

John speculates Denis is receiving messages in his tooth fillings. If so, he and Mikey Rivero must be tuned into the same frequency.

Actually, that’s not fair. Halliday probably believes this nonsense.

UPDATE: The Blogspot link doesn't work, so I've linked to the top of John's main page. It's the piece posted at 15:55 today.

Don Wycliff on strident hyperpartisan pro-Bush zealots
While admitting that an unflattering picture of President Bush, obtained from Agence France-Presse, “amounted to a Page 1 editorial in which George W. Bush was being labeled an idiot and a clown, unsuited to the presidency,” The Chicago Tribune’s ombudsman still manages to lash out at the “strident hyperpartisanship of those pro-Bush zealots who live to hate Clinton and find evidence of media bias. The zealots probably relished 'that picture' because it confirmed their conviction that the media are against them.”

If the picture didn’t confirm the bias, Wycliff’s column certainly did.

Michael Rivero and the Toronto Star

2002-11-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

I first encountered Michael Rivero in the late ‘90s when he was a common nuisance at FreeRepublic.com, which at that time was the locus of anti-Clinton activity on the web. Rivero seemed a little brighter than your average wingnut, and I always suspected that he was more a con artist than a true believer. Rivero ran a website named Rancho Runamukka to promote his conspiracy theories. He would see a U.S. government plot behind every tree, but didn't seem to share the anti-Semitism of much of the conspiracy crowd.

Rivero has since abandoned Rancho and has another website, whatreallyhappened.com. Whatreallyhappened is a sort of clearinghouse for the conspiracy crowd, and following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 he began promoting increasingly anti-Semitic material. The material is similar to much of the material currently popular with elements of the anti-American Left, and may in fact be a source for them. It has also grown more sophisticated, such that someone inclined to believe the worst about the U.S., and not familiar with Rivero’s reputation, might easily be sucked into treating it as a credible source – at least at first.

Rivero recently hit the jackpot when media columnist Antonia Zerbisias endorsed his website as “carefully considered, well crafted and very compelling” in her column for the Toronto Star, causing something of a stir. Canadian blogger Damian Penny keeps track of Rivero and has the details on his website, but suffice it to say that Zerbisias was alerted to the anti-Semitic nature of Rivero’s site and issued a sort-of apology.

Zerbisias also denounced Bnai Brith for not contacting her before issuing a press release that said, in part:

According to sites recommended by the Toronto Star’s media columnist, Antonia Zerbisias, F. D. Roosevelt orchestrated Pearl Harbour, George W. Bush was part of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Centre, and the Jews were behind a rash of anthrax letters.

Zerbisias reports that:

Today [Bnai Brith] applied direct pressure on me and The Star to retract my column, to criticize the anti-Israeli portions of the site, to take my column off our web site etc.

I refused.

And The Star's ombudsman stands by this decision.
As far as I am concerned, this matter is now finished.

Note that my original column is still on The Star's web site.

The ombudsman is Don Sellar, and in his most recent column he admonished his newspaper not to use the word “crusade” because the “Canadian Islamic Congress and many Muslims” are offended.

Draw your own conclusion.

UPDATE: Check out Rivero's Letters section. His responses to his readers are a font size larger, and it's hard to tell who's nuttier. Sample:

EMAIL FROM A READER:
I just read a letter on your site, from one of your many readers concerning the non-existent Israeli casualties in the WTC buildings following the attack on 911. Like many, I also found this highly suspicious, so I checked web sites with the official casualty list. Sure enough, one Israeli and he was a passenger on one of the Aircraft.

I speak German quite well and had some Jewish friends as a schoolboy, so I am able to discern 'Jewish' names better than most. I took a long, hard look at the names of nearly 3000 persons listed as casualties in the actual buildings. In all there were 76 persons with 'Jewish' names like Birnbaum or Goldstein (actually, there were three persons killed named Goldstein who may have been related) while others had less obviously 'Jewish' names.

But I could come up with no more than 76. I would say those are 95% likely to be accurate. I am aware that some Jewish people, to avoid discrimination Anglicised their names generations ago so I will have missed a few, but not too many.

Equally, It is possible the ones I missed will be offset by those I mistakenly included. Names like Morris are not always Jewish but I included a man named Morris. 76 out of 3000? I'm not an actuary, but it seems to me that a 'random sample' of 3000 persons on a New York STREET one would find a greater percentage of Jews than just 76 in every 3000. That's about one in 40.

Taken on the percentage of New York's Jewish population, 1000 in every 3000 would seem more likely. But a 'random sample' of the percentage of Jews in buildings like the WTC is far more likely to to reflect Jewish domination of the Banking and Finance industries, so it is VERY ODD that the numbers should be so low.

To be frank, there is no doubt in my mind that someone knew something was afoot and they have done everything possible to draw a veil of deceit over the truth. 3000 people murdered in cold blood.

If I'm right, take a moment to think about it and what it means for the American people.

The initial claims made by Israel and Bush referred to "Israeli" victims, meaning citizens of Israel. Use of that term specifically excluded American citizens of Jewish ancestry, and it is important to remain consistant in studing the question why died in the World Trade Towers and who may have received an early warning.

The Odigo case proves beyond all dount that early warnings were sent to Israeli owned companies, and Zim Shipping, an Israeli shipping line that enjoys a close relationship with the Israeli government, broke its World Trade Towers lease, and incurred extra charges for a high-speed move out of the building just weeks before the attacks. Rudy Giuliani also moved his offices out of the World Trade Towers just weeks before the attacks.

A tale of two newspapers

2002-11-19T06:24:00.000-08:00

Toronto Star ombudsman, Don Sellar, reports that the “Canadian Islamic Congress and many Muslims” have complained that the word “crusade” is offensive, even though in common usage it has no religious overtone. Given the prevalence of anti-Semitic and anti-Christian hatred commonly found in Islamic publications, you’d think they’d make an attempt to clean up their own back yard before worrying about their neighbor’s, but apparently that’s not the case. Not to worry, though. Sellar advises the newsroom that “With religion, you can't be too careful. Don't crusade.”

Followers of Islam have no monopoly on hypocrisy, however. Sellar also reports that “the Ontario Press Council last summer upheld an Evangelical Fellowship of Canada complaint that an opinion column in the Star had targeted evangelical Christians in a way that tended to engender bias and hatred toward them.” It determined that in “the context of the column — a spirited rant about intolerance against gays — the term [evangelical] was ‘an unnecessarily hurtful reference to an identifiable group,’ i.e. evangelical Christians.” Yeah, we all know how tolerant evangelical Christians are to that other identifiable group, “sodomites.”

In a splendid display of moral equivalence, “the Star's policy manual walks on tiptoes. ‘Never hold up one religion or set of beliefs as superior to another. In other words, don't be judgmental,’ it advises. ‘Never single out a religion or religious practice for ridicule. In other words, be respectful.’”

Or in other words no religious practice, no matter how odious, may ever be criticized. Requiring women to wear Burqas, or to leap on the burning funeral pyre of their deceased husband, may not be ridiculed or regarded as inferior to taking communion at your local Church. “[D]on’t be judgmental.”

Meanwhile 235 miles away, ombudsman John X. Miller, of the presumably family-friendly Detroit Free Press, faces reader criticism about a prominent, front-page headline, "Warren Santa is charged in killing." The version on their website was even more direct, “Santa's a killer, cops say.” The story was about “why a man who'd dressed up as Santa since 1995 in Warren's holiday parade was charged with killing his daughter in a dispute over Christmas decorations.”

Miller explains that this wasn’t just a last minute slip; “There was discussion among editors about the print version of the story and headline the night it was published, out of concern that the newspaper not go overboard.” The good news is that, “While most of those editors didn't think the newspaper overplayed or sensationalized the story, they said the reactions will make them more carefully consider the sensibilities of our readers.”

Next time maybe they’ll place it on page two.

On pop-up ads and linking
The links on the left side of my website constitute endorsements. I don’t necessarily agree with or approve of the content of a site I’ve linked to, but I consider it interesting or useful enough to merit inclusion on my list. I frequent all the sites on a regular basis.

I’ve removed links before, primarily when a site became inactive, but today I’ve removed one because I can no longer in good conscience refer readers to it. The problem isn’t the content, which continues to be quite interesting, but that clicking on the link triggers multiple pop-up ads, including one that tries to reset the home page on my browser.

Blogs and bloggers come in many different flavors, some more commercial than others. While The OmbudsGod is strictly non-commercial (no donations requested or accepted), I do on occasion make small tips, especially on sites run by professional journalists. I consider blogging to be the best thing that has happened to journalism since the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine, and tipping is a way to encourage the new medium.

If you must use pop-up ads, limit them to no more than one per session, and stay away from anything that would attempt to change a reader’s computer settings. Anything more demonstrates an inexcusable lack of courtesy toward the reader.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics about people without health insurance

2002-11-18T06:23:00.000-08:00

The great justification usually trotted out to justify some form of national health insurance, in addition to Medicare and Medicaid, is that there are 40 million Americans without health insurance. As Iain Murray points out, it is a misleading figure:

that includes people temporarily uninsured for a brief period. The number of chronically uninsured, which is what matters here, is roughly a quarter of that figure. Moreover no-one is ever refused emergency treatment because of a lack of insurance. It is chronic illnesses that cause the most trouble for the chronically uninsured and, need I remind you, the British system of universal health coverage does not do well with chronic illnesses either. Can there be any better indication of the true state of the NHS than the fact that the BBC offers private health insurance to its employees?

Life imitates Monty Python

2002-11-17T06:02:00.000-08:00

In the old Monty Python movie Life of Brian, the Romans and the Judeans had a sort of working arrangement. The Roman’s would always give enough notice of a search so that the Judeans could hide, and would then conduct the most ludicrous of searches, not finding Judeans hiding in the most obvious places.

Substitute UN weapon’s inspectors for the Romans and Iraqi weapons for the Judeans and you have pretty good idea of what the upcoming regimen of disarmament inspections, under UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, will be like in Iraq.

While the Bush Administration is pushing for “intrusive inspections,” Blix has stated that inspection teams should never be "angry and aggressive." And since Iraq is, according to Saddam Hussein, "devoid of weapons of mass destruction," the U.S. has called for a policy of “zero tolerance.” Nothing doing say Blix, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and such dependable U.S. “allies” as France. Iraq will be held accountable only for serious violations.

Presumably anything short of a UN inspector tripping over a hydrogen bomb labeled “serious violation, destination Paris,” will fail to make the standard. A little weaponized anthrax or aflatoxin that the Iraqis have forgotten to hide would be no big deal.

Annan previously distinguished himself in 1994 when, as head of the UN’s peacekeeping department, he dismissed warnings of impending genocide by the commander of peacekeeping troops in Rwanda and prevented searching the Hutu militias for weapons. The UN peacekeeping force was then reduced and an estimated 800,000 additional Rwandans died in the resulting Hutu-perpetrated massacres.

The whole thing would make for a delightful comedy, except that millions of innocent lives hang in the balance while the bureaucrats at Turtle Bay continue to impede the war on terrorism.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan nails the problem with UN weapons inspections much more succinctly than I did -- "I think I have as much confidence in Hans Blix as I do in Jimmy Carter." Exactly.

Non-partisan commentary from PBS, the taxpayer-subsidized network

2002-11-11T05:58:00.000-08:00

…for the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government — the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary — is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate…

It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich.

It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable…

Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming…

Don't forget the money. It came pouring into this election, to both parties, from corporate America and others who expect the payback. Republicans outraised democrats by $184 million dollars. And came up with the big prize — monopoly control of the American government, and the power of the state to turn their ideology into the law of the land. Quite a bargain at any price.

That's it for this week.

For NOW, I'm Bill Moyers.

via Andrew Sullivan

UPDATE: A reader copied me on a letter he has written to PBS management demanding that Bill Moyer's association with PBS be terminated. My own view is that rather than terminate Moyers, PBS should cease to accept taxpayer funding. In that way freedom of speech and of the press is preserved without obligating taxpayers to pay for political broadcasts with which they may disagree. Moyers is merely a symptom of the problem.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
Lillian Swanson, ombudsman for The Philadelphia Inquirer, reports on special “basic training” for journalists assigned to war zones. According to Clark Hoyt, Washington Editor for Knight Ridder (which owns The Inquirer), “we were not going to send anyone into a war zone who had not gone through the training.”

Given the likely fate of American journalists captured by Islamic terrorists, probably the most realistic part of the training came on the second day, when:

There was a boom and a flash of fire. The bus stopped and masked men, wearing fatigues and pointing rifles, got on board, screaming.

Hoods were placed over the journalists' heads, and they were led off the bus. They were forced down on the grass and stripped of their valuables - watches, wallets and wedding rings.

According to Swanson, ”The International Federation of Journalists says more than 50 journalists have been killed this year covering conflict in the world's trouble spots.” She doesn’t say how many would have been saved by this five-day, $2,535 “training.”

OmbudsPrizes!
After reaching a sizeable round number of sales, supermarkets like to create publicity by rewarding a surprised customer with free groceries. Ian Murray, ombudsman for The Guardian, recently rewarded the reader registering this year’s ten-thousandth complaint with a copy of his riveting new book, More Errors and Corrections, which is the sequel to his original hit, Errors and Corrections. Winner John Parker was informed that he would be receiving the book, “whether you wanted it or not.”

Ian helpfully reminds Guardian readers that they, too, can obtain both volumes, for the sum of ₤6.99 each, by calling 0870-066 7850. Sounds like an ideal stocking stuffer for that special obsessive-compulsive someone in your life.

Dreamers

2002-11-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

– Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918.
More of Sassoon’s poetry may be found here.
posted at 10:45 AM

All's quiet on the OmbudsFront
With the election over, OmbudsLand is relatively peaceful this weekend. Here’s a partial rundown:

Over at The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Lou Gelfand treats readers with respect. Even when disagreeing with criticism by journalism student Gary Schwitzer, he observes that, “in principle, Schwitzer makes a good point.” That’s a polite brush-off, Gary.

Karen Hunter, with the Hartford Courant, takes her paper to task for reporting, from an “anonymous source,” the bogus information that "The FBI Has Bugged Our Public Library." The author of that howler is one “former executive director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union,” Bill Olds, who explains, “In the atmosphere of secrecy created by the Patriot Act, my sources misinterpreted what the FBI was doing." Perhaps the tinfoil on your "sources" heads should have given them away, Bill.

Meanwhile, at The Orlando Sentinel, Manning Pynn reminds readers that just because a newspaper sells advertising to a political candidate, including on the bag in which the newspaper is delivered, doesn’t mean that it lacks impartiality. This strikes me as a rather odd subject given that The Sentinel issues political endorsements on its editorial pages – which certainly does create an appearance of lack of impartiality.

Mike Needs, The Akron Beacon-Journal’s resident apologist Public Editor, gives his employer a hickey for not publishing a photograph of an elderly woman and her son grieving over the murder of a neighbor. It seems:

They sent a message through the police asking -- no, pleading -- that the photo not be used. The son explained that his mother feared for her safety and that a photo, combined with the angst of the attack, would be too stressful.

At least the photo didn’t go to waste -- Needs got an entire column out of it.

The Louisville Courier-Journal’s Pam Platt draws a lesson from the TLC network’s show, Trading Places.

I don't think Hilda and Doug, two of the designers who work on ''Trading Spaces,'' could be less interested in the likes and dislikes of the folks whose homes they invade like Normandy.

Sure, they ask for nominal input and get it -- ''Our friends don't like dark colors, they don't want you to touch their furniture and they love their ceiling fan,'' the worker bees are likely to buzz.

In the next instant, the two diva designers are likely to blithely reply, ''OK, great, thanks. We're going to paint these walls black, we're going to shellack (sic) the furniture and that ceiling fan is history.''

In other words, no one listens, and no one is heard and sometimes someone ends up with straw glued to their walls. No kidding.

So when readers want to ''trade spaces'' with me -- that is, phone or email to talk about what's junking up journalism in general and this newspaper in particular, and what needs to be cleared out or spiffed up -- I try not to go all Doug or Hilda on them when they share their likes and dislikes.

Connie Coyne, OmbudsLand’s very own Hilda, dismisses a reader’s complaint about a piece promoting Eminem in The Salt Lake Tribune. She informs the reader that back in the ‘50’s Her parents:

were sure my generation would wind up in the eternal flames because we were dancing to Little Richard, Elvis Presley and -- gasp -- Jerry Lee Lewis (who, as I recall, was married at one point to his 13-year-old cousin).

Hilda’s advice to the reader? “if you don't like the subject of a review, don't read it.”

With advice like that, who needs an Ombudsman?

Gender Equity at Penn: women get tenure, white men do not

2002-11-09T05:52:00.000-08:00

Associate Professor Erin O’Connor reports on the continuing pursuit of Gender Equity at the University of Pennsylvania.

If tenuring patterns in my own department are any indication, white men have been aiding the cause of "gender equity" by getting fired quite a bit over the years. The double standard is as palpable as it is unspeakable. But the bottom line is that women get tenure in my department and white men, more often than not, do not. The disparity has nothing to do with differential levels of accomplishment. Again, more often than not, the men who lose their jobs look as good or better on paper than the women who get promoted. Has this ever been publicly acknowledged? No. We aren't talking about the fact that the graduate program has become a sorority either. Not talking about the problem means, of course, that it does not exist, and so does not need to be addressed. It also means we do not need to ask if this is happening in other departments. And it means that we can all pat ourselves on the back for the great equity work that is being done locally, while at the same time continuing to bitch about the institutional oppression faced by academic women and minorities. Not healthy, not honest, not, quite frankly, conducive to imaginative teaching or inspired scholarship.

It's not just men who are getting screwed by the current academic climate. It's everyone. But last December, when Penn announced its plans to create "concrete incentives and disincentives" to promote the hiring and tenuring of women, no one made a peep (except those who feel that even this is not enough).

The one thing a University typically listens to very closely is its pocket book. Alumni, especially white male alumni, may wish to consider this report when asked to contribute to their alma mater. A few lawsuits by white males who are denied tenure would also be helpful.

via Discriminations
posted at 6:22 PM

Anti-Americanism
Soviet émigré, Jaime Glazov, conducts a symposium for Front Page Magazine on anti-Americanism. The participants are Paul Hollander, Stanley Kurz, Dan Flynn and Victor Davis Hanson. Kurz, Flynn and Hanson all comment on the religious, or almost religious, nature of anti-Americanism. Hollander disagrees:

I would not call anti-Americanism a faith -- it is too negative for that, in fact it is nothing but negativity, rejection and hostility. I agree that in some instances it might reflect failure to find meaning and happiness, but it has many shades and types and not all of it can be said to be a reflection of such states of mind or feeling.

It’s a good symposium and well worth reading.

Losing Endorsement

2002-11-07T05:50:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Michael Getler, autopsies The Post’s list of endorsements, and makes an important point:

...Maryland-based independent pollster Carol Arscott, for one, believes that endorsements "mean less and less every year now, especially with Republican voters, and the further outside the Beltway you get, the less they matter."

As ombudsmen frequently remind readers, there is a “wall” between news reporting and editorials. Getler assures us that:

I can say with confidence that the "wall" between editorial and news seems intact and secure at The Post. But you can't blame readers who are not students of journalism for suspecting otherwise.

He’s probably right. The editorials don’t drive the news reporting, but they do reflect the overall culture of the newspaper. Recent biographies of the two candidates for Governor of Maryland drive home the point.

James DiBenedetto, writing in his weblog, The Eleven Day Empire, reported on the difference in coverage for Republican candidate, Bob Ehrich, and for the Democratic candidate, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend – who The Post endorsed:

While the Kennedy! piece opens with this sentence:

She always wanted to do what was right.

Ehrlich's bio begins with a description of the exclusive (read: elitist, plutocratic, rich, white) country club where Ehrlich is found hosting a campaign event:

Hounds are baying in the twilight. A chestnut mare gleams in a paddock. In a verdant valley in northern Baltimore County, a gubernatorial contender is being feted at Maryland's oldest fox hunting club, the Green Spring Valley Hounds. The sign at the end of the unpaved lane leading to this rarefied enclave is so discreet it is marked with initials -- "GSV" -- because if you have to ask how to get here, you don't belong.

A paragraph later, we're told that:

Inside a white tent, lanky men with chiseled features and family trust funds line up to pay homage.

And while the first words used to describe Kennedy! were "good" followed by "philosophical" and "careful", Ehrlich is first described thusly:

Ehrlich -- whose luck, pluck and football prowess catapulted him from his parents' modest rowhouse to prep school and Princeton...

Good, philosophical and careful versus luck, pluck and football prowess.
There's a full page more of this on the inside pages of the paper, but you get the idea...

I guess it could be worse, though; they did at least find something vaguely positive to say about Ehrlich.

Still, it clearly pales in comparison to the Kennedy! article, whose basic premise is that Kennedy! is too good for the voters; lumpenproles like the Maryland electorate are unworthy of Saint Kathy, but she'll deign to take office as a matter of noblesse oblige.

“Good”, “careful” and “philosophical” Townsend relied heavily on the politics of divisiveness, as when she declared:

Slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination was based on race. Jim Crow was based on race. Affirmative action should be based on race.

Ehrlich relied heavily on the politics of inclusion, as when he selected Michael Steele, an African-American, to run for lieutenant governor. Townsend’s supporters responded by distributing Oreo cookies at a political debate to send a message about blacks (like Steele) who don’t follow the Democratic Party line.

A lot has changed in America since 9/11/01. Threatened by an outside enemy, who kills Americans without regard for race, we have grown together as a nation. Ehrlich reassured supporters during his campaign that, "the first time the race card doesn't work will be the last time it is used."

Despite The Post's biased coverage and an endorsement of his rival, the race card didn't work. Let’s hope that Ehrich's right that, at least in Maryland, this is the last time it will be used.

Ombudsman Don Wycliff and religious tolerance
The Chicago Tribune’s ombudsman, Don Wycliff, has stated:

ask any American for a thumbnail sketch of himself and it's a good bet his religion will be among the items he ticks off. And why shouldn't it be? I can't think of too many things that have been more influential in my world view and intellectual formation than my religion…

How then do we handle a clash of cultures when a religious tradition treats women differently than men?

Here’s the setup from a column entitled “Everyday Ethics:”

The courteous and competent real estate agent I'd just hired to rent my house shocked and offended me when, after we signed our contract, he refused to shake my hand, saying that as an Orthodox Jew he did not touch women. As a feminist, I oppose sex discrimination of all sorts. However, I also support freedom of religious expression. How do I balance these conflicting values? Should I tear up our contract?

According to Wycliff, columnist Randy “Cohen's answer, in short, was yes, tear up the contract.” Further information is provided from a Rabbi that:

Orthodox Jews, both men and women, are forbidden by their modesty ethic to touch a member of the opposite sex. It works both ways.

Wycliff observes that:

Orthodox Judaism, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims and God knows how many other religious groups have restrictions and categories and orders premised on sex, sexual orientation or some other characteristic that, by strict secularist lights, is simply and unacceptably discriminatory.

He concludes by stating that:

my head tells me that Randy Cohen has it right, that in the last analysis separate really is inherently unequal and inequitable, that "resolutely secular" is the only viable approach to these matters in a pluralistic society.

Does this mean that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Wycliff will no longer be doing business with Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Mormons and Muslims?

Anti-war moderates just don’t get it

2002-11-06T05:48:00.000-08:00

Ronald Radosh sees in the current anti-war movement a disturbing parallel with that of the Vietnam War. Just as the earlier anti-war movement was organized by the pro-communist left, the current movement is dominated by pro-Iraqi leaders. He asserts that:

the anti-war moderates don’t get it. Their only criticism of the anti-war movement is that it will not be able to stop the drift toward war with Iraq. Writing on the Web site of Mother Jones magazine, Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at New York University, asserts that this movement "is far too weak and provincial to stop the coming war." What he seeks to build is a "more substantial antiwar movement," and he is saddened that the pro-Saddam orientation of the present movement can only stand in the way of that task. Mr. Gitlin is aghast that the present movement is indicative of "the Old Left at its worst," and he is correct to oppose it. But what upsets him is that with leadership by the likes of [Ramsey] Clark and the Maoist C. Clark Kissinger, "the antiwar movement is doomed."

What Mr. Gitlin, a centrist radical, implies is that the goal of the movement, to stop any planned invasion of Iraq is worthy; the only wrong thing is the movement’s current leadership. If only they stopped comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler, something Mr. Clark did at the March, then perhaps involvement would be worthwhile.

And that is the great error of the new antiwar movement. They may not agree with Mr. Clark when he says any invasion of Iraq "will be genocide again," but they, like him, are also opposed to an invasion. Since Mr. Gitlin presents no alternative to invasion for removing Saddam from power, and no suggestion how he can be forced to disarm, in effect his argument leaves Saddam firmly entrenched just as calls for unilateral American withdrawal in Vietnam assured victory for the Viet-Cong.

The moderates, like the extremists, seem to prefer to vent their anger at the danger supposedly posed by the Bush administration, while ignoring the very real danger posed by Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.

via Discriminations

Fire and Brimstone!
The New Zealand Herald reports that:

CANBERRA - The "lucky country" is unlikely to be so fortunate in the next 100 years as Australia's big cities sprawl even further and the warming Earth dehydrates its resources, hammers health and lashes the continent with a 21st-century equivalent of fire and brimstone.

Two new studies, on population growth and climate change, predict the nation will have a harder time preserving its standard of living as plague, pestilence and disaster increasingly become part of life.

Repent, ye sinners!

More on the D.C. anti-war protests

2002-11-06T05:47:00.000-08:00

Lex Alexander, proprietor of Blog on the Run, sent me an email observing that:

Re the DC protests: Granted, I have found no particular reason to doubt that the event was organized by people inimical to U.S. interests and perhaps even puppets of Iraq.

But ...

Could such a group, in and of itself, have mobilized between 100,000 and 200,000 protestors from as far away as Nebraska and Florida?

Whatever the motives of the organizers, I think a lot of people showed up who were sincere, if misguided. The alternative is to believe ANSWER has a lot more power than anyone ever suspected, and there's just no evidence for that.

He’s quite right. I’m reminded of the well-meaning people who were drawn into peace movements led by Soviet front groups like the U.S. Peace Council. Front groups use their superior organization to latch onto dissatisfaction and to use it. There’s never been a shortage of useful idiots.

UPDATE: The Mother Jones website asks their readers:

Millions of Americans from all points of the ideological compass have expressed deep ambivalence about the Bush administration's rush to preemptive war. Now, a popular antiwar movement is stirring. Can the current leadership of that movement -- and the message they carry -- attract the support of those millions of quiet antiwarriors?

I agree with much of this reply, especially the observation about a segment of the left cutting "loose from the 'national dialogue.'":

Yeah. I'm aware of some of the people behind the current anti-war movement. I find it disturbing. Sadly, I see no possibility for an anti-war movement that does not include these people.

There is a segment of the left that seems to have permanently taken leave of reality. They live in a closed world, an insular world in which only supporting theories are tolerated, and the mental distance between their mindset and that of the rest of society has been growing even more rapidly since September 11th. They've cut loose from the "national narrative", or whatever you want to call it, and are now off in some other bizarre wonderland filled with assumptions strange and bizarre to the rest of society.

Think about the kind of conspiracy theories circulating. Heck, Gore Vidal is now bizarrely asserting that the Bush administration knew about Al Queda's plans and deliberately took no action to stop it. What universe does he live in???? He sounds like a freaking lunatic!

Seriously, these people look like raving psychos to the rest of us, ranting about imperialist plots and capitalist conspiracies and spouting wierd sounding marxist rhetoric.

It would be depressing if it wasn't so scary.
The foam at their mouths is so thick that I'm almost frightened into supporting the war.

Election irregularities update

2002-11-05T05:42:00.000-08:00

Below are some early reports of voting irregularities. I’ll attempt to update them as more information comes in. If you are hearing reliable accounts of irregularities in your area, email me at The OmbudsGod:

► Boston: Reports of union officials entering voting booths and telling people how to vote.
► Georgia: When placing vote, and touching the screen for a Republican candidate, the box is incorrectly checked for the Democrat candidate. Other related problems.
► Montgomery County, Maryland: Word “Democratic” appears improperly in the header on all ballots.
► Duval County, Florida: Technical problems preventing ballots from being counted.
► DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe issues statement accusing "officials at the Republican National Committee and in Republican campaigns across the country [of] leading a coordinated strategy to intimidate voters and suppress the vote."
► Miami: Voter reports to AP that when he reviewed his touch-screen ballot, he saw his vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride show as a vote for incumbent Republican Jeb Bush.
► Seattle: Thousands of voters have not received their absentee ballots.
► Arkansas: Democratic judge enters ex parte order extending voting hours in heavily Democratic Pulaski County only.

11/6/02 UPDATE: So far, despite the cries of the vanquished, by Ameican standards this appears to have been a surprisingly clean election. Nevertheless, I'll continue to update with any new reports of irregularities.

11/7/02 UPDATE: Matt Drudge points us to some newly reported irregularities:
► Broward County, Florida, discovers additional 104,000 votes.
► Shannon County, South Dakota: Reports that election workers were altering ballots, purportedly to make them more readable. (The correct process is to create a duplicate ballot if a ballot cannot be read by machine and to preserve the old ballot). National Review reports that Shannon County has been the focus of allegations of fraudulent voting practices and that last-minute extraordinary returns gave the election to Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson.

NEXT THEY’LL BE ISSUING ORANGE JUMPSUITS

2002-09-29T05:39:00.000-07:00

James DiBenedetto blogs the debate over random drug testing in public schools. I don’t have much to add, other than I think its all part of the same trend toward extreme and unreasonable restrictions on civil liberties by the education establishment that was occurring even before 9/11. (Conservative Justices Thomas, who authored the opinion permitting random testing, and Scalia, who signed on, should both know better.) Public schools may stand in loco parentis, but they are still government actors and students don’t leave their Constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door – especially when the coercive power of the state makes attendance mandatory.

THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK
An important news item was broken by The Washington Post on a Friday evening and received little or no play in the nation’s newspapers. Here’s a brief version:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Election Commission has imposed a record $719,000 in fines against Democrats involved in the party's 1996 fund-raising scandals, according to a published report.

FEC documents described how Democratic fund-raisers demanded illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals in China and other countries in exchange for meetings with then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Ombudsmen Sanders LaMont, of the Sacramento Bee, and Lou Galfand, of The Minneapolis Star Tribune, respond to criticism that the story received little or no play in the newspapers.

LaMont explains why the piece didn’t run in the Bee:

[National Editor Marl] Melnicoe explained that there was "a ton of state/Capitol news" that night, it was a big news day generally and the story moved late for the next day's editions.

The Post wire service did not send out an advisory that the story was coming, standard procedure if they consider stories significant. It also was not on the Post's list of articles it was planning to publish on its front page, a list available to Bee editors working that night.

Melnicoe also states that the piece first moved on the wires at 7:30 P.M. Friday night and that it was “a well-done, comprehensive story that we should have run.”

The Star Tribune did run the piece, but it would have been an unusual reader who would have spotted it, buried as it was in Saturday’s paper on page A15. Gelfand responds to readers who complained that the newspaper buried the story by noting that several other newspapers, including The Washington Post, also chose not to give the story prominent coverage. He notes that The Washington Times chose not to publish the piece at all.

So, why did a story about record fines being levied in relation to a conspiracy that raised millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions, from foreign interests, on behalf of a sitting President, receive such little notice? I think the answer is several-fold. The first is that the story was released on a Friday evening, the traditional time to release embarrassing news so that it will receive light coverage. Second, The Post decided not to give the usual warning that the piece was coming, so that many editors simply missed the piece, or the importance of the piece. Finally the piece is, in a sense, old news, as the illegal acts relate to President Clinton’s Presidential campaign of 1996.

Still it is curious that the matter was released on a Friday evening without the usual warnings. It’s almost as if The Post didn’t want other publications to pick up the story.

James DeBenedetto blogged some of this a week ago.

TAX-DEDUCTIBLE POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS FOR THE RICH
Mickey Kaus picks up on the ramifications of a piece by Rishawn Biddle. It seems someone’s already figured out a giant-sized loophole in the McCain-Feingold anti-First Amendment campaign finance reform law. Perhaps it should now be called the McCain-Feingold tax-deduction-for-wealthy-contributors Act.

THE TWIN TOWERS BEFORE 9/11
Unfortunately when I read Karen Hunter’s ombudsman column, in The Hartford Courant, about a full-spread photograph they published of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, I was suffering from 9/11 overload and didn’t take the trouble to look at the page.

This week, The Richmond Times-Dispatch's ombudsman, Jerry Finch, refers to that photograph as “spectacular.” He’s absolutely right. For the record, the photograph was taken from aboard a commercial airliner by Katherine Weisberger, a photography major at NYU.

Here are some links:
. Weisberger's photograph as a jpeg.
. A .pdf file of Weisberger's photograph as it appeared in The Hartford Courant. My favorite version -- use ([ctrl] [shift] +), once the image loads in Acrobat Reader, for the best view.
. A gallery of photographs related to 9/11, including this one, that sells 11x17 prints.

WHERE’S THE BLACK CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR?

2002-09-27T04:59:00.000-07:00

Media Minded reports that Maryland gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend denounced her opponent, Robert L. Ehrlich, at an NAACP sponsored debate:

"He opposes affirmative action based on race," she said. "Well, let me tell you, slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination is based on race. Jim Crow was based on race. And affirmative action should be based on race."

Well at least it’s out in the open. Ms. Townsend defines people by the color their skin. Since affirmative action is supposed to be about correcting historical patterns of discrimination, shouldn’t Ms. Townsend step aside and allow a qualified black candidate to run for governor? After all, when’s the last time a black served as governor of Maryland?

Oh wait, we're talking about a Kennedy. Never mind.

THE WASHINGTON POST’S PRINCIPLES
According to The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Michael Getler, four retired high-ranking military officers testified on Monday before a Senate committee about war with Iraq. Three retired four-stars generals, Army Generals John M. Shalikashvili and Wesley K. Clark, and Marine Corps General Joseph P. Hoar, urged caution. Hoar warned of high casualties “on both sides” and joined with Clark in speculating that war would “supercharge” terrorist recruiting efforts. Retired three-star Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney urged quick and decisive action against Iraq.

The Post chose not to report any of this on Tuesday. They did, however, report about:

a man named Brian Griffin, who is secretary of the environment in Oklahoma. It seems that Griffin had been randomly selected for search at the Oklahoma City airport as he was checking in for a flight to Washington. Griffin, according to Reliable Source sources, made a vigorous protest, but before he could produce proof of his position, inspectors found "a Ziploc bag filled with condoms." Griffin is divorced and single.

Later in the week, The Post informed readers that a corporate executive had recently visited a strip club.

Getler doesn’t mention it, but The Post is famous for its seven principles, which were promulgated by Eugene Meyer in 1935. The principles are published on The Post’s website and, so far as I know, have never been disaffirmed. They are:

. The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.

.The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.

. As a disseminator of news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.

. What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as the old.

. The newspaper's duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.

. In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such a course be necessary for the public good.

. The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.

By failing to report the testimony of former high-ranking officers regarding war with Iraq, The Post breached its second principle. By publishing news of an unmarried adult possessing condoms and of another private citizen's visit to a strip club, The Post would also seem to have breached the third principle.

Perhaps the editors of The Post should review their principles.

WHAT DID EUROPE DO TO MAKE MUSLIMS HATE US?

2002-09-26T04:53:00.000-07:00

A common theme of anti-Americanism in Europe is that the United States must learn what has made Muslim extremists hate us -- implying that we are at least partially responsible for the terrorist acts of 9/11. Perhaps a better question is what has Europe done to cause young Arab men to hate the west?

The Chicago Tribune’s ombudsman, Don Wycliff, attended a Chicago Council on Foreign Relations lecture given by "Thomas Friedman, The New York Times' three-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and undisputed champion foreign policy analyst among American journalists." Wycliff reports that:

[Friedman] divides the hijackers into two groups, which he calls the Saudis and the Europeans.

The Saudis were the "muscle guys," the ones at the back of the hijacked planes whose role was to intimidate the passengers. These were recruited from among the legions of young, unemployed men in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arab world, men Friedman calls "the sittin' around guys."

The Europeans were not ethnically European--all the hijackers were ethnically Arab--but they had lived in Europe and, owing to the social rejection they experienced there, had become radicalized. "All converted to radical Islam as a result of contact with the West," as a result of being "stiff-armed," Friedman said.

Thus ripened to radicalism, these men--and many others like them--were ready for plucking by bin Laden...

In other words, the radicalization came about through exposure to, and rejection by, European culture. Al Qaeda simply focused that radicalism against America, which is the dominant military and cultural power of the west.

BORROWED THOUGHTS?

2002-09-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

Professor Bunyip has noticed an interesting similarity between the postings of one Clinton Fernandes, on an Internet bulletin board, and the journalism of one Kenneth Davidson, who writes for The Age. For example:

Kenneth Davidson writing inthe Age on September 23, 2002:

"Iraq was a client state or, in polite terms, an ally. Client states are defined, according to US academic Noam Chomsky, by their obedience, not their values. Saddam was given diplomatic cover for as long as he was obedient to US interests. Now, he is damned as a monster.

And now, a July 24 post by a certain Clinton Fernandes on the Postive Futures bulletin board:

"As Noam Chomsky has remarked, client states are called "allies" in polite terms, and they are defined by their obedience, not their values. Saddam Hussein was an "ally" until he became disobedient. While he was obedient, he was armed and given diplomatic cover. When he became disobedient..."

VERY DIFFERENT SPIN ON THE SAME STORY

2002-09-25T04:46:00.000-07:00

The Boston Globe’s ombudsman, Christine Chinlund, and columnist Ann Coulter each discuss the situation which began when a woman overheard a conversation between three Arab medical students. I make no representations as to the accuracy of either version, but they are interesting to compare and contrast. Chinlund’s piece was published on Monday, and Coulter’s appeared today.

Chinlund:

Eunice Stone listened as the men, one wearing a Muslim cap, chatted at a nearby table. She thought she heard them joking about 9/11 and plotting to bring down Miami, so she called the State Patrol. The students, detained a day later, explained they were talking about bringing a car down to Miami from their home in Chicago, to drive while they completed their clinical rotation at a South Miami hospital.

They denied plotting violence or joking about 9/11. They also denied authorities' later suggestion that they spiced up their conversation for Stone's benefit once they realized she was eavesdropping - making them sick tricksters, if not terrorists.

Coulter:

By my count, the Muslims have given at least five versions of what happened. Eunice Stone has given one consistent story. She has been interrogated by law enforcement officials and is corroborated by another witness.

…the [students] first told law enforcement officers they did it on purpose. Stone, they said, was watching them too closely and this [annoyed them]. So they decided to scare her. [Chinlund, by the way, says this was unsourced.]

…Next, the Muslims told reporters that Stone had "put a little salt and pepper into her story." A stunned CNN correspondent blurted out: "Salt and pepper?" He reminded them what Stone had heard them say. "Well, yes, whatever," came the reply.

Third, they tried out the hysterical-woman defense… One of the Muslims tauntingly demanded to know "how many other people witnessed this event that supposedly took place, first of all?" Well, at least one other person. Stone's son was there and he heard the conversation exactly the same way. He just thought the men were playing his mother and him for suckers…

Fourth, the Muslims … advised Americans to "read about other people and read about what they believe before we jump to conclusions."

…it now appears that their final answer is: They were talking about a car. They didn't say anything about 9/11 or 9/13, but the "bring it down" bon mot referred to bringing a car down to Florida. This occurred to them only after meeting with their lawyers….

Chinlund:

It is, of course, possible the medical students did change their story. It's hard to know exactly what was, and wasn't, said at the Shoney's breakfast table. Georgia authorities are still investigating the possibility of a hoax.

To the Globe's credit, its account did include comments from the students' relatives expressing doubt about Stone's allegations. And the paper did set the record straight a day later by publishing the denials - on page A18. But those efforts don't offset the omission of the students' denial in the initial front page story. Their words were essential for a fair portrayal of confusing events.

Coulter:

According to accounts in The New York Times, the men were uncooperative, refused to answer basic questions, gave false information and told contradictory stories. A bomb-sniffing dog reacted to the presence of explosives in both vehicles. After a careful search, however, no explosives were found and the men were released.

…the men and their families accused Americans, especially Southerners, of being ignorant racists. "Just because of the way we look or the way we choose to live our lives, we're persecuted," said the sister of one. Demonstrating her own open-mindedness, she explained the entire incident by saying, "Unfortunately, they stopped in a restaurant in Georgia."

ON A BIZARRE RELIGIOUS RITUAL AND OUTING AN FBI INFORMER

2002-09-24T04:32:00.000-07:00

Gina Lubrano, ombudsman for The San Diego Union-Tribune, covers a couple if interesting issues today. The first entails prominent coverage of a (to me) bizarre ritual, practiced by some Orthodox Jews on Yom Kippur, which involves swinging a live chicken over someone’s head. This is supposed to transfer the person’s sins to the chicken. The bird is then sacrificed and given to the poor. The newspaper ran a photo of the ritual, which prompted a letter from the regional director of the anti-Defamation League who described it as “grotesque,” and wrote that:

It was as if they decided to show a picture that ostensibly represented how the Jewish community prayed on the high holy days by using the most extreme image representing a very small part of Judaism.

Lubrano also quotes from an Orthodox rabbi who, naturally, disagrees.

I suspect that most religions have practices and rituals that would seem bizarre if published with little context in a newspaper. The early Romans misunderstood the Christian sacraments and at least some considered Christians to be secret cannibals. Many Mormons wear “sacred garments” under their clothes. There’s nothing wrong with publishing this information, but it is important that the practices and rituals be explained and placed in proper context for readers. From the description Lubrano gives, that may not have been the case here.

More disturbing is The Union-Tribune’s complicity in revealing that Abdussattar Shaikh, a leader of the local Muslim community, was an FBI informant – an allegation he denies. Shaikh is reported to have unwittingly rented rooms to two of the 9/11 hijackers. The Union-Tribune was not the first source to reveal his status as an informant, that dubious honor going to Newsweek and “television reporters.” Nevertheless the newspaper confirmed that Shaikh was an informant, prompting complaints. One reader cancelled his subscription because the newspaper had placed Shaikh in “jeopardy.”

Lubrano apparently justifies this revelation on the grounds that Shaikh had denied he was an informer and in the context of supposed intelligence failures prior to 9/11. She writes that:

Because of what may be happenstance, Shaikh is in a difficult position. Yet the Union-Tribune's credibility would be at stake if it failed to report the news.

The likely consequences of their revelation are that Shaikh’s life is in danger, his future usefulness as an informer is gone and his example will dissuade other potential informers. If The Union-Tribune believes that Shaikh was duplicitous in his role as an FBI informer then they should come out and say so and put the evidence before their readers. Otherwise the news value of the information escapes me.

Lubrano doesn’t state why The Union-Tribune’s credibility would be at stake if it didn’t confirm to the world that Abdussattar Shaikh was an FBI informer. There is a war going on, and The Union-Tribune is doing their public a disservice by publishing this sort of unnecessary information. Unfortunately they are not alone.

JUST CALL IT “THE VULGARIAN”

2002-09-24T04:27:00.000-07:00

The results of a survey carried out last week show that the [The Guardian’s] title as the world leader is quite secure. It revealed [so far this year] almost 700 stories in which the word fuck had been used, and 35 which had used the word cunt. The Independent still comes a very poor second (184 stories with fuck in them; four with cunt). The others are nowhere.

By comparison, the word wanker appeared in 82 stories, and crap in 392.

This represents an increase from 1998, when:

in the year up to [the end of October] there had been more than 400 pieces in the Guardian in which the word fuck or fucking appeared. In the same period there were 28 references to cunt...

The Guardian is so fond of the infamous c-word that one of their correspondents asked:

I don't want to make too much of this, but do we perhaps have a culture which finds it easier to print 'cunt' than 'vagina'?

Perhaps The Guardian should come packaged in a brown paper wrapper.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
Lou Gelfand, The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s ombudsman, relates a story that I find troubling.

A twenty year-old adult, Michael Pigg, assaulted a 4 year-old boy of mixed race while reportedly directing “racially derogatory names at the child.” Rather than imposing “a traditional jail sentence,” Judge Robert King decided to impose a “ten-month counseling relationship” on Pigg with a retired surgeon, David Harris, who is a member of something called the “Red Wing Human Rights Commission.” For an unstated reason, Gelfand supplies the information that Harris is the grandson of a Jewish immigrant.

Gelfand reports that Pigg and Harris reached an agreement that, while Pigg could not talk to the press about the counseling, Harris was free to do so provided he did “not divulge certain details of Pigg’s life.” Any reason it was felt to be beneficial that Harris would grant “media interviews” about his counseling relationship with Pigg is left unstated.

Anyway, Harris was interviewed by the Star Tribune with the understanding that Pigg’s picture would not accompany the piece, because “the picture would destroy his relationship” with Pigg. It was also planned that the story would appear in the newspaper’s Variety section. Due however to some internal miscommunications, the Star Tribune gave the story front-page placement and used Pigg’s jail booking picture.

According to Gelfand, the story generated positive responses from readers -- at least for Mr. Harris:

"Knowing that even Mr. Harris is still learning and growing and continuing to find tolerance provides me with inspiration."

"You have written graphically about the marvelous involvement by a true man of peace."

"The judge's sentence seems to have been heaven sent for Mr. Pigg."

"While the world may be changed, either for better or for worse, one person a time, articles such as this might speed progress for the better."

Gelfand does leave one important clue that I find troubling. Pigg is quoted as telling Harris that, "I told you that you can't trust the newspaper."

It is appropriate, and even desirable, for a judge to find an alternative to sending a person to jail, when the alternative promises to have some rehabilitative value and the person does not pose a considerable threat to the public safety. A mentoring or counseling relationship may be an appropriate alternative.

In this case, however, Pigg himself was not permitted to talk to the press, and I see no legitimate purpose for Harris to be granting “media interviews” about his relationship with Pigg. Given Pigg’s reaction, “I told you that you can't trust the newspaper,” it’s clear that he was not in favor of Harris talking to the press.

The fact that a reluctant Pigg was being used to generate positive publicity for Harris and for the “Red Wing Human Rights Commission” reflects badly on the judge’s decision. He should insure that it doesn’t happen again.

LEAVE EUNICE STONE ALONE

2002-09-24T04:22:00.000-07:00

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s ombudsman, Mike King, writes that it’s time to leave Eunice Stone alone.

Stone ... reported to police last week that she overheard three men -- whom she described as Middle Eastern -- at a restaurant in Calhoun discussing what seemed like a plan to plant a bomb in Miami on Sept. 13. Her tip sent federal and state homeland security officials scurrying through two states before shutting down a busy stretch of I-75 known as Alligator Alley when they pulled over a car matching the one Stone had described.

It turned out there was no bomb or threat. It was either a misunderstanding on her part or a massively dumb hoax played by three medical students on their way to Florida.

King goes on to report that:

a few TV commentators ... assume she "profiled" the Arab-American men she overheard. Media crews hovered around her for days, so much so that by Monday night she sought emergency treatment for what she thought might be a heart attack.

She probably never expected her actions to generate such scrutiny and suspicion. Her telephone answering machine in Cartersville filled up five times over, her lawyer said. She heard and read reports of accusations that she made up the story. At one point she felt it necessary to hold a news conference to declare she was not a racist.

Then her lawyer said something that every editor should consider when covering a story such as this: "She doesn't understand why this story isn't over."

King says bluntly:

unless someone has some evidence that she lied to police, the story is over.

Note to assignment editors: Leave her alone.

I agree. The treatment Stone has been receiving at the hands of the media will work to dissuade others from reporting suspicious behavior. And when it comes to combating international terrorism that could have disastrous consequences.

THE LAST OF THE DOUGHBOYS

2002-09-23T04:30:00.000-07:00

But No Man's Land is a goblin sight
When patrols crawl over at dead o' night;
Boche or British, Belgian or French,
You dice with death when you cross the trench

-James H. Adkin - No Man's Land

Jerry Finch, ombudsman for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, makes note of a sad passing. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs there are now no surviving veterans of the European Civil War (WWI) living in Virginia, and there are only an estimated 250 alive nationwide. There have been no public ceremonies, no public observances and no parades. The doughboys are mostly gone and largely forgotten.

Just as the American Civil War shaped the United States as we know it today, so too did the European Civil War shape the world order that was to follow. The Second World War was largely an outgrowth of problems created at the end of the First. By comparison, Reconstruction in the South was relatively benign and peaceful.

The last remaining veterans of the American Civil War were greatly honored and celebrated, both North and South. It’s a shame we haven’t done the same for the boys who went to Europe to at least try to make the world, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, “safe for Democracy.”
posted at 2:20 PM

THE SELLING OF THE PRESIDENT, 1996
James DiBenedetto points to a much-overlooked piece in The Washington Post about the Federal Election Commission finally getting “around to meting out punishment for the widespread and brazen campaign finance violations of the Democratic Party and specifically the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996.” One of the more interesting aspects is that, according to The Post:

The FEC documents describe Democratic fundraisers who set specific prices for foreign nationals to make illegal campaign contributions in return for meetings with then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Some of the "contributions" were funneled through dummy corporations with no assets, which served merely as conduits for money from China and other countries. It gets worse.

I credit the fact that so little has been done until now to stonewalling by Janet Reno’s Department of Justice. To my mind this stinks worse than either Teapot Dome or The Whiskey Ring. The Clinton Administration put itself for sale to foreign interests, and the stench goes all the way to the top.

TRUE LIABILITY REFORM, NOT ARBITRARY “CAPS”
Peter Sean Bradley makes good points about medical malpractice awards, although his point about insurance rates being driven by changes in interest rates applies to virtually all types of insurance, not just professional malpractice.

He points out that perhaps no group is as favored by juries as are medical doctors and that liability caps may harm the victims of malpractice by preventing them from receiving appropriate compensation. My experience in Virginia is that the cap does do harm and that victims of serious malpractice may not receive enough to cover future medical expenses that result from the malpractice, let alone any compensation for life-long pain and suffering.

Something worth considering is that the really outrageous civil-liability jury verdicts are in product liability cases, not professional malpractice. And tort reform for product liability needs to be handled at the Federal level. This is because of problems with horizontal federalism whereby standards set by one state can become the de facto standard for all 50 due to interstate commerce and forum shopping. Plaintiff’s attorneys will generally file suit in the state most favorable to their cause, with the result being that citizens of the other 49 states have little say in the standards being applied to products being sold across the country.

The solution is not some arbitrary “cap” on awards. An arbitrary cap may result in gross under-compensation in some situations, and have no effect whatsoever on trivial cases that should never have been brought. True reform requires that liability standards for products in interstate commerce be set at the national level.

JUST CALL IT “THE VULGARIAN”

2002-09-22T04:44:00.000-07:00

LEAVE EUNICE STONE ALONE

2002-09-22T04:34:00.000-07:00

Anti-Israeli Bias

2002-06-09T01:50:00.000-07:00

Gareth Parker addresses his complaint to OBG about the ABC's anti-Israeli bias.

OBG notes that bias in the media is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as the reporting is accurate. For example, the New York Times shouldn't publish fiction by Joseph Stalin's propagandists writing under the nom de plume Walter Duranty. Nevertheless, a thriving marketplace of ideas is essential to a free society, even when those ideas are clearly wrongheaded.

The problem is when there is a breakdown in the market. One way this can happen is through government ownership of the means of communication. Of the major English language government-owned broadcasters -- ABC, BBC and CBC – all three suffer from anti-Israeli bias, as does the western press, in general. Another way is when there is no competition. Many American cities no longer have competing newspapers, so the local paper monopolizes the coverage of the news, effectively shutting out alternative views.

Which brings us to the left-leaning Minneapolis Star Tribune, which rejects use of the word “terrorism” to describe sending human-bombs into crowded pizza parlors in Israel. Managing Editor Pam Fine explains, “This helps us avoid labels that might suggest we’re taking sides...” Not surprisingly, this prime example of cranial-rectal impaction has generated some criticism.

The Star Tribune employs an ombudsman. His name is Lou Gelfand and as Star Tribune reader Steve Meyer explains:

Every Sunday I read his column and he makes me spitting mad! His evasions and occasional halfhearted apologies for the paper's slanted coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are the worst... Is Lou Gelfand an ombudsman or an apologist?

Poor Lou seems genuinely puzzled as to why he receives so many more phone calls from readers on the right than on the left, a phenomenon he attributes to "a sort of cult thinking based on The Washington Times and stories that, sooner or later -- usually sooner -- are on talk radio...” He asks “Why is the political thinking on the left not as perverted or extreme as it is on the right?”

OBG suggests that Lou start by asking, "When is a terrorist not a terrorist?"

Grammar controversy

2002-06-02T01:40:00.000-07:00

Reader M. Brocklehurst supports OmbudsGod in the who vs. whom grammar controversy. A self-described grammar guru, she advises, “Tell them to go and split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition or best of all get a life.” Ms. Brocklehurst addresses the “whom boom” in her soon-to-be-published tome, “Everyday Vital English, A Grammar for the 21st Century,” which she describes as a “delightful read.”

Mrs. OBG recommends that OBG take Ms. Brocklehurst’s advice and stick to The OmbudsGod’s core mission. Otherwise, OBG will be dealing with such unanswerable questions as the one Mrs. OBG already has posed: “Why aren’t they called ‘Ombudspersons?’”

OBG currently is investigating complaints relating to anti-Israeli bias involving the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Minneapolis Star Tribune ombudsman, Lou Gelfand. OBG observes that anti-Israeli bias is pervasive throughout the media and that, as a rule, ombudsmen have failed to fully address the issue. Additional reader input on this and other concerns is encouraged.

OBG sends special thanks to Tim Blair for linking to this site. Keep the hits coming, Tim!

Ombudsman, newspaper

2002-06-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

A reader asks, “To whom do you complain when the ombudsgod forgets the English remnant objective case interrogative pronoun?” He is, of course, referring to my use of the conversational who instead of the stilted whom in my first post. OmbudsGod is reminded of why he chose to major in economics instead of English as an undergraduate.

Nevertheless, alleged grammatical violations by OmbudsGod may be reported to the Word Police.

A newspaper ombudsman, usually a veteran reporter or editor, serves as an external spokesperson for the public and an internal critic for the newspaper. According to guidelines adopted in 1982 by the Organization of Newspaper Ombudsmen (ONO), the ombudsman's duties are to: (1) represent the reader who has complaints, suggestions, questions or compliments; (2) investigate all complaints and recommend corrective action when warranted; (3) alert the newspaper to all complaints; (4) serve as an in-house critic; (5) make speeches or write to the public about the newspaper's policies, attitudes and operations; and (6) defend the newspaper publicly or privately when warranted.

To perform those functions, ombudsmen write newspaper columns, give speeches, circulate memoranda within the staff, and distribute questionnaires to persons mentioned in news stories.

The editorial independence of the ombudsman is a subject of debate in the newspaper field. Some believe that the person in this position should be exempt from contributing editorially to the newspaper for which he works, to preserve his neutrality in serving the interests of both the newspaper and the public; others point to the prohibitive expense of hiring a full-time ombudsman.

Use of the ombudsman in the United States came into existence only recently, the first newspaper ombudsman program having been established in 1967.

Who do you complain to when a newspaper’s coverage is terribly biased and the ombudsman is even more biased than the newspaper? The OmbudsGod!

My thanks to Tim Blair for the inspiration.

SOMEONE IN FINLAND GETS IT, TOO

2002-02-21T04:20:00.000-08:00

Finnish blogger Teemu Lehtonen reports on pro-invasion commentary carried in the pages of a local newspaper, Ilta-Sanomat. Lehtonen translates some choice parts of Juha-Pekka Tikka’s commentary:

"The weapon's inspections in Iraq are a good thing. For example, 25 divisions of extremely well equipped inspectors with air support sounds like an idea that should be acted upon immediately" .. "Or more seriously, the way to inspect for Saddam Hussein's weapons is to first remove him and inspect later"

Well, Saddam did agree “unconditionally” to inspectors, didn’t he?

UPDATE: Lehtonen's website seems to be afflicted with the infamous Blogspot linking bug. Scroll down to the post dated Saturday, September 21, 2002.

MAYBE THERE’S HOPE FOR EUROPE AFTER ALL
Meet Vegard the Bloodthirsty Norwegian.

KISSINGER, IRAQ AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
The American Metternich lays out an excellent case for war with Iraq, the role of the U.S. in the global fight against terrorism and, just to give the Birchers something to chew on, he notes that “President Bush has affirmed America's commitment to a new world order.” (Don’t download the Korean character set. The piece is in English.)
posted at 12:56 PM