ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS EVAN COYNE MALONEY, on DIY video.
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH says we should stand up to the creeping tyranny of the group, whether we're talking animal-rights fanatics or Islamic terrorists:
Human lives are saved by medicines developed as a result of tests on animals; no comparable good is achieved by the republication of cartoons of the prophet. But the mechanism of intimidation is very similar, including the fact that it works across frontiers and is therefore hard to tackle by national laws or law enforcement agencies.
If the intimidators succeed, then the lesson for any group that strongly believes in anything is: shout more loudly, be more extreme, threaten violence, and you will get your way. Frightened firms, newspapers or universities will cave in, as will softbellied democratic states, where politicians scrabble to keep the votes of diverse constituencies. But in our increasingly mixed-up, multicultural world, there are so many groups that care so strongly about so many different things, from fruitarians to anti-abortionists and from Jehovah's Witnesses to Kurdish nationalists. Aggregate all their taboos and you have a vast herd of sacred cows. Let the frightened nanny state enshrine all those taboos in new laws or bureaucratic prohibitions, and you have a drastic loss of freedom. That, I think, is what is happening to us, issue by issue.
Expecting politicians to protect free speech is probably expecting too much. It's up to us.
Canada has been showered with attention for its oil sands — deposits of thick, sludgy crude in remote parts of northern Alberta — but until now most of that oil has flowed only as far south as Chicago.
This week, crude spun out of Canada's oil sands came all the way to this flat Oklahoma prairie town that's known as the oil pipeline capital of the world.
Enbridge, a Calgary-based oil delivery and storage company, opened the taps to its Spearhead Pipeline, a 650-mile stretch of steel from Chicago to Cushing, and the first western Canada crude sloshed into the company's mammoth Cushing terminal early Thursday.
For years the pipe, which used to be owned by BP, carried Gulf of Mexico crude to northern markets that needed the oil. But as the Gulf slowly but surely plays out, and Canada's oil sands production picks up steam, the crude is flowing in a different direction.
It's a sign of the times. Canada, which is already the biggest exporter of oil to the U.S., outranking Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, will likely double its oil production in the next decade, thanks to production from the oil sands.
Bring it on.
WHILE I'LL BE WORKING HARD to promote the book next week, apparently someone else will be relaxing on the beaches of Southern California, to judge by this sighting report and photo from N.Z. Bear.
The closest I'll get to the beaches of Southern California is being on Tammy Bruce's show starting at 8 Eastern tonight.
ED CONE: "Was the terrifying incident at UNC yesterday an act of home-grown terrorism? Nine people were struck by a Jeep driven by a man who is alleged to have said he was avenging American treatment of Muslims. Fortunately, injuries were minor. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar is reportedly being charged with nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury with intent to kill."
MICHAEL MALONE POSTS a lengthy review of An Army of Davids at ABC's Silicon Insider. Excerpt:
I cannot think of a better book for the average reader to understand just how the Web and other digital technologies are reversing the polarities of modern society — restoring many features of daily life lost with the Industrial Revolution, while at the same time inventing powerful new cultural institutions. And for those of us who make careers out of watching this transformation, no book to date so well summarizes all of the diverse trends in a single narrative.
It's a great review, and I have no complaints. But I'm a bit frustrated -- with myself -- because Malone doesn't see the connection between the final chapters of the book (on nanotechnology, space, and the Singularity) and the earlier chapters on more contemporary phenomena. That's my fault, not his. I thought I had a pretty clear story arc, starting with events today, then explaining how nanotechnology will represent a vast intensification of current trends, leading to vastly (and to a degree, dangerously) empowered individuals, with worries that we'd see either explosive chaos, or a global police state (I invoke Larry Niven's A.R.M., and note that it's actually a rather benign vision of such things) -- with the space bit appearing to explain why we need the safety factor of dispersing people beyond earth, and how the new space frontier will protect values of individualism. I quote Bob Zubrin on that point. (I also discuss the X-Prize, which has a real Army-of-Davids character.)
It seemed clear to me, but Malone's not the only one to miss that, which makes it my fault. Maybe I'll add a few paragraphs to the next edition, if there is one, to make that point clearer.
I meet new blogs all the time, through word of mouth and serendipity, and we have some nice moments together. But I don't usually crave a second date. Life is too short.
But it's nice to get together with someone who's doing it for fun, not for the money.
A BEAT DOWN IN HELL TOWN: The Lukashenko regime in Belarus lives up to the title of Europe's Last Dictator:
When one of the candidates challenging Mr Lukashenko in this month's presidential election tried to get into the People's Assembly, he was knocked to the ground by plain clothes officers and beaten.
Alexander Kozulin was then dragged off and taken into custody.
Outside the police station, a number of his supporters and journalists were detained, too. One newspaper photographer at the scene was beaten up by police. He received concussion and a broken nose.
Later another presidential candidate from the opposition had problems.
Alexander Milinkevich attempted to hold an election rally in the city centre. But the authorities declared it illegal and sent in the security forces: hundreds of riot police blocked off the roads and dispersed a crowd of several thousand Milenkevich supporters.
"The authorities saw that the popularity of the opposition is growing rapidly," Yaroslav Romanchuk of the United Civil Party told me. "That's why they are now trying to block the opposition from campaigning. This isn't an election. It's a sham."
I have seen two very different pictures of Belarus here this week. The first - on a TV screen, painted in pomp and ceremony, depicting Belarus as a haven of stability with a leader adored by the nation. And a second Belarus - an unofficial one, not intended for live broadcast and public consumption; a country where political rivals are beaten and detained by police.
PR AND BLOGGER ETHICS: I talked to a reporter about blogs and PR -- I won't spoil the story, but the gist is that some PR people have been sending stuff to bloggers, and some bloggers have apparently reprinted some of it without attribution.
I think that's bad, but as I stressed in our interview, it's not as if this supports a "bloggers lack the standards of mainstream journalism" conclusion. In fact, here's a bit from The Appearance of Impropriety on that topic:
Thirty-five years ago Daniel Boorstin wrote of what he called "pseudo-events," and noted that much of what passes for news is actually made up of items manufactured by public relations flacks and distributed to the public by way of news organizations. The news organizations, he wrote, go along with this sort of thing out of a need for material, and out of laziness: it's just easier to take predigested material and reprint it than it is to come up with real news. In tones of dismay, Boorstin reported that the National Press Club in Washington was equipped with racks holding the handouts from press conferences throughout the capital, in order to save the reporters the trouble of actually attending. As Boorstin went on to note:
We begin to be puzzled about what is really the "original" of an event. The authentic news record of what "happens" or is said comes increasingly to seem to be what is given out in advance. More and more news events become dramatic performances in which "men in the news" simply act out more or less well their prepared script. The story prepared "for future release" acquires an authenticity that competes with that of the actual occurrences on the scheduled date.
The practice Boorstin described has not gone away: it has expanded into new frontiers. Technology in the early 1960s was primitive, and favored live or minimally-produced television news; as a result, that medium acquired a reputation for realism and immediacy that print reporting lacked. A print story could be made up, but an image on television was real. But nowadays, when many high schools have network-quality television studios, and when videotape is sold at convenience stores, that has changed. Although a "video news release" is still more expensive to produce than a standard paper press release, they have become much more common. According to a recent poll, seventy-five percent of TV news directors reported using video news releases at least once per day.
These releases, with their high quality images and slick production, are produced by companies and groups who want to get their message across, but don't want simply to purchase advertising time. They are designed so that television producers at local stations or (less often) major networks, can simply intersperse shots of their own reporters or anchors (often reading scripted lines provided with the release) to give the impression that the story is their own. Their use has been the subject of considerable controversy within the journalistic profession, although some commentators have claimed that they are used no more often, or misleadingly, than written press releases are used by the print media.
A recent scandal in Britain involved network use of a video news release produced by the group Greenpeace that some considered misleading. But of course for every video news release, or VNR as they are called in the trade, that comes from an environmental group there are hundreds that come from businesses or government organizations. Though a keen eye can usually spot a VNR (hint: the subject matter wouldn't otherwise be news, and it usually involves experts and locales far from the station that airs it) most viewers probably believe that today’s story on cell-phone safety or miracle bras is just another product of the news program's producers – and hence, implicitly backed by the news people’s public commitment to objective journalism. The truth, however, is different.
It is fair to say that the wholesale use of others' work is a major part of modern journalism. But news officials are quick to distinguish that from plagiarism. In a mini-scandal at the San Diego Tribune, a reporter's story was cancelled when editors noticed that it looked very much like a story that had already appeared elsewhere. At first, presumably, it was thought that the story had been taken from the other publication. Then it turned out that both stories were simply near-verbatim versions of a press release. According to the Tribune's deputy editor, that wasn't plagiarism. "If you look up the definition of plagiarism, it is the unauthorized use of someone's material. When someone sends you a press packet, you're entitled to use everything in there."
Certainly this statement seems to capture the attitude of many in the journalistic professions. One public-relations handbook explains it this way:
Most reporters aren’t scoop-hungry investigators. They’re wage earners who want to please their editors with as little effort as possible, and they’re happy to let you provide them with ideas and facts for publishable stories. That is why most publicity is positive for people and their businesses.
You’re still not convinced? Go to the library and glance through a few days’ issues of several newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and some local papers. You’ll discover that the same stories appear over and over again. That’s because they were initiated by the companies being covered, not by an eager young reporter looking for a scoop.
An experiment by a group of journalism students at the University of Tennessee demonstrates just how willing reporters can be to accept facts and story ideas that involve little work. The students concocted a fictitious press release from a group opposing "political correctness" and mailed it to a number of newspapers. Most did not run it, but quite a few did -- and none checked the details one way or another. One newspaper even embellished the story with additional details that were not included in the original press release. When word of the experiment got out, journalists were predictably outraged, with one even saying that it violated the bond of trust (!) between journalists and public-relations professionals. A more likely explanation for the outrage is that the experiment uncovered a pattern of shoddy work that its practitioners would have preferred to keep unexposed. Not plagiarism, perhaps, but something that in many ways is worse.
Every successful system attracts parasites. The blogosphere is a successful system. That doesn't excuse bad conduct, of course. But I hope that nobody will try to pretend that this sort of thing is new or unusual, even if the setting is.
It is far easier to repackage (or sometimes quote verbatim) what someone else is saying, rather than doing the reporting yourself. I fess up to being guilty of this when I interned with a couple airline magazines a few years ago. They basically handed me a bunch of press releases, asked me to hit the Internet, make a couple phone calls, and then craft an article from it.
Trudy Schuett, meanwhile, has thoughts on the subversive potential of republishing press releases while labeling them as such.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Galvin defends the PR industry in a lengthy missive. Click "read more" to read it. I don't deny that PR is valuable, actually. My point was simply that journalists rely a lot more heavily on PR than they admit, and that pointing a finger at bloggers in this case without acknowledging that fact (in a "see, you can't trust bloggers because they lack our journalistic standards" fashion) would be deeply unfair, even dishonest.
Your post on “PR and Blogger Ethics” unfortunately shows a profound misunderstanding of the very important role of Public Relations in our society and economy.
I am part owner of a very small Public Relations/Marketing firm. While my role is strictly graphics and other computer related matters, I’m certainly aware of the PR end. Without Public Relations, you simply would be unaware of many things, many very beneficial.
I’ll give you some examples that you can personally relate to.
Your wife has a serious heart condition and, I believe, had device implanted in her. How do you think the cardiologists heard about that device? Most likely they read about it in a medical journal. In some cases they might have read about it in a newspaper or magazine, or even saw a piece about it on television news.
In all of the above cases the stories about the device were the result of Public Relations. The media outlet received a press kit from a PR firm. That kit contained a press release, and a lot of other vital information about the device. A company spokesman, and possibly several doctors, was made available for interview through the PR firm. TV footage of the spokesman and or doctors might have been made available. Do you think that your local Knoxville newspapers and television stations have the resources to send a reporter, photographer, camera crew, etc across the country to cover this? The medical journals that covered this have even fewer resources.
Are you glad that your wife’s doctors heard about that device? What might have happened if they’d never heard of the device? Yes the company made a sale. More importantly, a life may have been saved.
Another example is your recent purchase of a hybrid auto. Once again, media outlets throughout the country were made aware of the introduction of that car through PR. The auto magazines, the auto writers for general interest news media, the producers at television news outlets, and others all received Press Kits before the car was introduced. Photos of the auto and the power plant were made available to the press. TV footage of the car moving, and footage of the engine compartment were also made available. Test drives were made available. You most likely heard about the car through news coverage. You might have researched it by reading various auto columns online. The reporter got a lot of that info via the PR push. (A number of years ago you read about VW’s introduction of the New Beetle. That was our firm at work. Interestingly, that car was only introduced as a concept car. The interest generated by the press coverage convinced VW to put the thing into production.)
When you read/sea the coverage of major hurricanes approaching a coast, It’s not uncommon to read/sea that outfits like Home Depot and Loewes are prepostioning lumber products for quick delivery to the effected area. Residents of the area will know that materials will be coming. That’s the result of PR by Home Depot and Lowes.
Once again, your local news outlets, and even national news outlets don’t have the resources to provide all this. You seem to be pleased with your auto. Without a very expensive PR push by Toyota, your odds of hearing about that car and being able to research it online by reading reviewer’s columns would have been greatly diminished.
The simple fact is that no news outlets have the ability to fully cover many things, or even find out about them. The cost is beyond comprehension. PR helps them provide coverage. The problem of proper coverage becomes more acute, the further you get from metropolitan areas. Many small towns have a weekly paper with only a few employees. They have to rely on PR firms for material.
Thank you
John Galvin
Jane Bartnett Communications
HOLD THE CONSPIRACY WORRIES: A blogger reports on being unable to find a copy of An Army of Davids at bookstores. Remember, it doesn't officially come out until Tuesday, even though some places are stocking it and Amazon is starting to ship early.
UPDATE: Even if you can't find it, you can read a short excerpt from the book here, courtesy of The New Atlantis.
The stunning investigation of bribery and corruption in Congress has spread to the CIA, ABC News has learned.
The CIA Inspector General has opened an investigation into the spy agency's executive director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, and his connections to two defense contractors accused of bribing a member of Congress and Pentagon officials.
The CIA released an official statement on the matter to ABC News, saying: "It is standard practice for CIA's Office of Inspector General — an aggressive, independent watchdog — to look into assertions that mention agency officers. That should in no way be seen as lending credibility to any allegation."
Stay tuned. Between this and the leaks investigations, there's likely to be a fair amount of action at CIA headquarters.
RAND SIMBERG HAS A SUGGESTION: Replace "Boondocks," which is going on hiatus, with "Day by Day."
Sounds good to me!
DANISH CONSULATE RALLY: Reader Kevin Patrick sends this report from New York:
About 150-200 People in attendance at any one time (some of us are supposed to be working). Friendly crowd handing out danish cheese (even in relatively cold weather). About a half dozen danish flags and even more signs in support of the Danes. Healthy discussions/debates going on as well. Couple of people vocalizing their attendance on behalf of friends serving in Iraq and elsewhere. Police in attendance also managing crowd in an orderly manner. All in all a good showing in suuport of the Danes.
Another reader sends the photo below, which can also be found on his blog.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Pamela at Atlas Shrugs has lots more pictures and promises video later.
Here's one of hers:
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Lots more reporting and pictures at the Resplendent Mango. Here's one:
GOOD IDEA: "New Mexico's 33 counties will switch from a patchwork of voting methods to a single paper-ballot system under a bill signed into law Thursday by Gov. Bill Richardson. The governor, who pushed the proposal through the recent legislative session, said the system would make voting more secure and restore the public's confidence in elections."
Actually, it sounds like a great idea! It's bad news for the manufacturers of electronic voting machines, of course, but they've had years to build in security sufficient to earn popular trust, and they've failed miserably at that task.
POWER LINE'S PODCAST is now new and notable on iTunes. And they're currently #5 in the "politics" category. Hannity's #6.
I'M GETTING LOTS OF EMAIL asking what's happened to Neal Boortz's website. I don't know. If anyone has news, drop me a line.
UPDATE: Here's a not so very informative post from Boortz's radio station. Some people can see the site now, and some can't, which suggests a DNS change is propagating. It should be back soon.
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into online music pricing at the world's major music labels, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Let the subpoenas fly.
IN THE MAIL: The new book by Jerome Armstrong and Kos, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. Obviously I don't think that it will help the Democratic Party to move in the DailyKos direction (though that's not quite what the book advocates), but the book's thesis that the Democratic establishment has gotten out of touch with actual Democrats seems hard to dispute.
Republicans should be worried that the GOP, now that it's in power, seems to be displaying some of the same problems.
Chevron Corp. is doubling down its bet on Alberta's oil sands, saying it aims to spend billions over the next decade to launch a second project.
The company said Thursday it has acquired rights to 73,000 hectares northwest of Fort McMurray — land that Chevron believes holds 7.5 billion barrels of oil.
DAVID BERNSTEIN: "Should being an active member of a racist, anti-gay, anti-semitic organization disqualify someone from serving on a state hate crimes commission? You would think so, but, at least in Illinois, you'd be wrong."
IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN TO TOM MAGUIRE'S BLOG lately, well, you should drop by. Lots of interesting new stuff, including this on Murray Waas's latest "scoop:"
It is reassuring that President Bush got the same news the rest of us did.
Read the whole thing.
I HAVEN'T PAID ENOUGH ATTENTION TO "ABLE DANGER," but now there's an Able Danger blog.
HITCHENS ON HEWITT, talking about North Korea, Francis Fukuyama, and other insoluble problems. Transcript and audio here.
DANIEL DREZNER IS PLEASED with the India nuclear deal. I think that a nuclear India is unlikely to be a threat, and that we're better off with a strong (and even nuclear) democracy in the region.
I WAS ON HUGH HEWITT LAST NIGHT, talking about -- what else? -- An Army of Davids. There's a transcript and audio here if you're interested.
In the hectic, confused hours after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast, Louisiana's governor hesitantly but mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans' protective levees were intact, according to new video obtained by The Associated Press showing briefings that day with federal officials.
MICHAEL BARONE: "Here's a fascinating issue, and one of great importance for the news business: whether the government should prosecute newspapers for printing classified information and government employees for divulging it. Specifically, should the New York Times be prosecuted for its Dec. 16, 2005, story on the NSA surveillance of communications between suspected al Qaeda operatives abroad and people in the United States?"
Is the despised, self-parodying MSM intentionally glossing over this important difference in order to exaggerate the anti-Bush shock value of the video? I don't know--but I do know that the actual "topped" quote was hard to find in print, lending some of the stories an eerie, undocumented quality. Do reporters not print the quote because then they couldn't justify the charge that Bush lied about the "breach"? You make the call. I'm too paranoid at this point. ... P.P.S.: Shouldn't Bush's press operation, rather than Patterico, be pointing all this out?
Bush's operation has relied rather heavily on the Army. Too heavily, I'd say.
JIM BENNETT: "Bush's trip to India, and the deal made there today, may end up being the single most consequential act of the Bush presidency."
JIM GERAGHTY thinks that post-tipping-point politics are going to be ugly, and agrees with me that the Bush Administration's limp response to the Cartoon Wars is part of the reason:
In the USA Today poll, when asked, “Which comes closer to your view about Arab and Muslim countries that are allies of the United States?” 45 percent of respondents said, “trust the same as any other ally”; 51 percent said they trust these countries “less than other allies.”
That’s a remarkably honest poll result. Let’s face it, Americans have been told since kindergarten not to judge ethnic and religious groups differently from one another; now slightly more than half are willing to come out and say, “you know, I just don’t trust those guys as much as I trust others.”
Welcome to Post-Tipping Point politics. There is no upside to doing the right thing – which is to emphasize, as one blogger put it, that there is a difference between Dubai and Damascus. There is tremendous political upside to doing the wrong thing, boldly declaring, “I don’t care what the Muslim world thinks, I’m not allowing any Arab country running ports here in America! I don’t care how much President Bush claims these guys are our allies, I don’t trust them, and I’m not going to hand them the keys to the vital entries to our country!”
And more and more, I think Glenn Reynolds had it right; the entire Tipping Point phenomenon can be summed up as action and reaction. The Bush Administration’s reaction to the cartoon riots was comparably milquetoast. The violence and threats committed over the cartoons shocked, frightened and really, really angered Americans. They want somebody to smack the Muslim world back onto its heels and set them straight: “It doesn’t matter how offensive a cartoon is, you’re not allowed to riot, burn down embassies and kill people over it.”
They’re ashamed that Denmark is leading the fight over this.
When the Bush administration’s reaction was mostly equivocating statements and a failure to confront the Muslim world over its insistence of the worldwide applicability of its blasphemy laws, I suspect a lot of folks whose top issue is the war on terror concluded that Bush was going wobbly. . . . The interesting thing is the post-Tipping Point view on the Muslim world is alien to Bush; I suspect he would find it abhorrent. Unfortunately, that puts him out of step with a large chunk of the public — a vocal, angry chunk that is likely to have plenty of politicians courting it.
I'LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT'S SHOW in just a minute. You can listen live here, though I probably won't hang up on Hugh the way John Zogby just did.
IT'S NOT JUST BILL CLINTON: Reader Daniel Holmes sends this story, which I had missed:
The lobbying of former Senate majority leader Robert J. Dole on behalf of the Dubai-owned company set to take over management of terminals at six major U.S. seaports is creating a political problem for his wife, Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.).
The chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Jerry Meek, yesterday called on Sen. Dole to remove herself from "any congressional oversight" of the Dubai port deal. "The fact that Dubai is paying her husband to help pass the deal presents both a financial and ethical conflict of interest for Senator Dole," Meek said.
It always seems a bit shady to me when former elected officials are paid to represent foreign interests. We're not talking Gerhard Schroeder territory here for either Clinton or Dole, but it's still a bit iffy.
A WHILE BACK, I suggested that lawyers might be overpaid, which led to a stirring dissent from attorney Ronald Coleman. ("It’s the free market, Instapundit.") He makes some good points, though take it from a member of the cartel: the market's not that free . . .
MARC COOPER: "Oh, I can’t tell you how much I love this one. Bill Clinton advising the monarchs of Dubai on how to sell the ports deal. I’d expect no less from Slick Willie. Just happy to see one more confirmation of what absolute, rank opportunists he and the Missus are. It all reminds me of how the Whitewater development project specialized in ripping off working class rubes with bait and switch mortgage deals. Yum-yum!"
He also wonders how Bush is going to get out of trouble on the ports deal. Perhaps it depends on what else happens in the next 45 days.
BLAMING IRAN for the mosque attack. I don't know, but it seems like the way to bet.
UPDATE: Greg Djerejian emails to disagree: "The chances of Iran being involved in the Samarra shrine bombing are somewhere between zero and less than zero. It’s almost as absurd as Ahmadi-Nejad blaming the Jews and Americans for it. . . . The trail is much simpler. It goes to al-Qaeda in Iraq, namely Zarqawi."
ANOTHER UPDATE: Gary Metz thinks that Djerejian is too quick to dismiss the Iranian connection:
First of all, Al Qaeda takes credit for its attacks. They have NOT taken credit for this.
But it is also important to remember that Zarqawi has been spending much of his time inside of Iran.
Lastly, Greg just dismisses the preliminary findings of those on the ground. Hmmmm.
Hard to know. I can certainly see why Iran would want a Sunni-Shia split.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jon Henke looks at some other Iran evidence. And TigerHawk has related thoughts.
In a press conference on the steps of the Capitol Monday, Congressional Democrats announced that, despite the scandals plaguing the Republican Party and widespread calls for change in Washington, their party will remain true to its hopeless direction.
"We are entirely capable of bungling this opportunity to regain control of the House and Senate and the trust of the American people," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said to scattered applause. "It will take some doing, but we're in this for the long and pointless haul." . . . "Don't lose faithlessness, Democrats," Kennedy said. "The next election is ours to lose. To those who say we can't, I say: Remember Michael Dukakis. Remember Al Gore. Remember John Kerry."
Kennedy said that, even if the Democrats were to regain the upper hand in the midterm elections, they would still need to agree on a platform and chart a legislative agenda—an obstacle he called "insurmountable."
"Universal health care, the war in Iraq, civil liberties, a living wage, gun control—we're not even close to a consensus within our own ranks," Kennedy said. "And even if we were, we wouldn't know how to implement that consensus."
Of course, the Republicans' problem is that they've got ideas -- they just don't use them.
CRUNCHY CON WARS: Not being a "con," though I suppose I have my crunchy side, I'm happy to be left out of this.
AS I NOTED A WHILE BACK, I liked Peter Hamilton's book Pandora's Star enough that I immediately ordered the sequel, Judas Unchained. It just showed up!
WE'RE BACK TO HEARING ABOUT KATRINA, which is a pretty good sign the media is trying to gin up another anti-Bush swarm ("While the information in the video has been public for months, and was the subject of hearings and reports by Congress and the White House, the footage is giving new life to charges that the administration was detached and unresponsive in the face of one of the nation's worst natural disasters." In other words, there's no news here, but we hope it'll have traction anyway.) Patterico says that the Los Angeles Times is dishonestly portraying the video's contents, but if you get to the second page of the LAT story you find a bit of a dig at the AP for selective editing:
The AP video does not include footage of Chertoff asking Brown whether he needs any other help or of Chertoff asking whether Brown wants him to approach the Department of Defense. Transcripts show that to both questions, Brown indicated that no additional assistance was needed.
In the transcript of a briefing the following day, Aug. 29, Brown is quoted as saying that Bush "is very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask."
That Aug. 29 transcript showed that hours after the hurricane hit, federal and state officials remained optimistic about handling the disaster and were unaware that the levees in New Orleans were failing.
Katrina taught the media that if they all swarmed Bush at once they could do harm even if -- as turned out to be the case -- much of what they reported was outright false. I've noticed a lot more of that since. The Bush Administration is quite capable of making its own trouble with PR -- see the ports issue, for example -- but it's also quite clear that the media is doing this sort of thing for entirely partisan reasons.
UPDATE: For some history here, it's worth revisiting this post. And this one. Also a reader sends this useful point:
I have to admit, it had me spun up for about a half an hour, too. What did Bush know? When did he know it? Then I stopped and remembered... wait a minute! Didn't we already know that Bush knew about the potential of the hurricane in advance, because he made calls to Mayor Nagin asking him to make the evacuation call?
Where is the actual news, here?
The news is that the port-deal publicity is dying down, Iraq's not in a civil war, and we need something to fill the headlines with anti-Bush stuff.
a shamefully squalid organization whose corruption is almost impossible to exaggerate. If you think—as the media and the left do in this country—that Iraq is a God-awful mess (which it’s not), then try being the Balkans or Sudan or even Cyprus or anywhere where the problem’s been left to the United Nations. If you don’t want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, no need to worry. Whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits—in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece.
Ouch.
PUBLIUS LOOKS at the politics of the Iraqi shrine attack, the questionable role of Al Sadr, and the Iranian influence. Publius seems to have joined the rather large group of people who think that it is time for Sadr to go.
UPDATE: Here's more on the post-shrine attack fallout from StrategyPage. And Mickey Kaus pronounces the perennially doomsaying New York Times one of the major casualties of the attack. "I'm not saying Bill Keller's headline and lede writers were amping up the Iraq hysteria in order to manufacture another Tet. Maybe they just have no judgment or perspective."
The folks at the Times are lucky they've got Mickey to defend them!
March 01, 2006
A DOUBLE-BARRELLED APPROACH: "Bill Clinton, former US president, advised top officials from Dubai two weeks ago on how to address growing US concerns over the acquisition of five US container terminals by DP World. It came even as his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, was leading efforts to derail the deal."
MICKEY KAUS: "I notice my hits have been down a bit this week--must be the lack of Brokeback coverage."
PEOPLE OFTEN ASK where the moderate Muslims are, and why they don't stand up. Well, Tim Blair has noticed something:
The forbidden cartoons of Mohammadness have been published more widely in Muslim countries than in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada combined. In Malaysia alone, three newspapers ran images – compared to just two newspapers in Australia.
AMERICA'S NEWEST FRIEND: Jacques Chirac? "After five years of trying to build an anti-U.S. front with Germany—splitting Europe down the middle—the French president is reaching into his diplomatic toolbox and coming up with initiatives that are increasingly in tune with America's global agenda."
UPDATE: Jim Hoft emails that it's not just Chirac. He says that Silvio Berlusconi is shamelessly using President Bush to get votes.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A couple of readers complain that the update equates Chirac with Berlusconi, who's been a reliable friend all along. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise; I thought that it was interesting that Berlusconi thought Bush was worth votes at home, despite what we hear about US unpopularity in Europe.
I'm happy to say that the medical woes that my family has experienced haven't reached this caliber, but I'm sorry to say that I've learned many of the same things.
Speaking of which, if you're an oncologist and know something about spindle-cell sarcoma, I'd appreciate you dropping me a line. No it's not a problem in my immediate family, but it's a problem in my family nonetheless, alas.
ZEYAD is still unhappy with the security situation in Iraq, and entirely unimpressed with Saddam's trial.
THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE publishes an extensive review of events in Iraq over the past week, and pronounces the media coverage poor. But there's this observation:
There was a step 4 to the plan, by the way. That would be the violent takfiri "response" to the desired Shiite response to the shrine bombing. While that Shiite response was less than anticipated, the response of the media met the planners expectations to the point they could move forward anyway, so we're seeing elements of step 4 enacted now with continuing violence across Iraq. More people are dying, but no, you're not seeing civil war.
And don't offer undue credit to the American troops. You are seeing proof of what they all know to be true - violence is ongoing, but the Iraqis are increasingly capable of handling it themselves. A few more "civil wars" like this one and the troops will indeed be home.
He's particularly hard on the Washington Post's wildly inflated death toll.
A DARK SIDE OF THE ARMY OF DAVIDS? Yankee Muse reads the book and foresees an Army of Mohammeds. Well, as I note in the book, terrorism is an early bad manifestation of technology empowering individuals and small groups. Fortunately, that's not the whole story.
UPDATE: N.Z. Bear emails:
Quick reaction thought to the terrorism as Army of Davids-like --you're exactly right that terrorism was an early manifestation of a similar phenomenon. The key difference, however, is that while we have already seen what happens when destructive technologies become widely available (explosives, etc.), we are now seeing what happens when *constructive* technologies become highly distributed. We're already dealing with the bad side of the coin, now we're at least starting to see some of the good...
BILL STUNTZ says that Harvard is the General Motors of universities: "rich, bureaucratic, and confident--a deadly combination. Fifty years from now, Larry Summers's resignation will be known as the moment when Harvard embraced GM's fate."
It's also clear that, as with GM, making the customers happy with the product is less of a priority than bureaucratic infighting.
UPDATE: Bad news for Harvard -- when you compare it to GM, the GM fans complain! Reader William Girardot emails:
I usually find myself agreeing with your commentary and even when I don't, your views are quite thought provoking. Unfortunately, your opinions on GM and its products don't fall into that category. GM's products, from its new offerings in the Cadillac line to its new convertible roadsters, are eye-catching automobiles that surpass most German engineered cars and are nearly the equal of the Japanese.
Well, it's the arrogant GM of several decades ago that Stuntz was invoking, not the much more eager to please GM of today.
Of course, it's worth noting that it's not just Harvard that's suffering from the problems that Stuntz points out.
ARMY OF DAVIDS UPDATE: Reader Don Hodun reports that his copy has arrived in Seattle: "Looks great!"
I had ordered from Barnes & Noble and that one arrived yesterday, but my Amazon test-order hasn't shown up yet. Since the book isn't officially out until next week, I imagine both shipments and bookstore appearances will be uneven for the next few days. But if you get a copy -- or see it in a bookstore -- let me know! Photos optional.
Meanwhile, Mystery Pollster looks at Zogby's poll of troops in Iraq. Hmm. Apparently it's sort of like an exit poll. Those certainly didn't work out well. . . .
MAX BOOT: "ARE WE WINNING or losing in Iraq? Liberals and conservatives safe at home have no trouble formulating glib answers to that fundamental question. The former can always point to setbacks, the latter to successes. The picture becomes blurrier, the future murkier when you spend time in Iraq, as I did last week."
The administration believes Yale is lucky to have Hashemi. According to the New York Times, Yale had "another foreigner of Rahmatullah's caliber apply for special-student status." Said former Dean of Admissions Richard Shaw, "We lost him to Harvard. I don't want that to happen again." Who was the applicant? A member of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party? A protege of Robert Mugabe's?
Don't expect a word of protest from our feminist and gay groups, who now have in their midst a live remnant of one of the most misogynistic and homophobic regimes ever. They're busy hunting bogeymen like frat parties and single-sex bathrooms. The answer Hashemi gave five years ago when asked about the lack of women's rights in Afghanistan, "American women don't have the right not to find images of themselves in swimsuits on the side of a bus," is the sort of sophistry likely to curry favor among Yale's feminist activists, who make every effort to paint American society as chauvinistic while refraining from criticizing non-Western cultures. To do so would be "cultural imperialism," and we cannot have that at an enlightened place like Yale.
I personally want to know whether Hashemi supports the flattening of homosexuals via brick walls, which was one of the ways the Taliban dealt with gay men. Having written a newspaper column for nearly my entire time at Yale, I suspect some of my peers would like to see me flattened by a wall, but I doubt any of them served a regime that carried out such a practice as official policy.
WRITING IN FOREIGN POLICY,PHILLIP LONGMAN expounds on a theme that James Taranto has been sounding for a while: "Across the globe, people are choosing to have fewer children or none at all. Governments are desperate to halt the trend, but their influence seems to stop at the bedroom door. Are some societies destined to become extinct? Hardly. It’s more likely that conservatives will inherit the Earth. Like it or not, a growing proportion of the next generation will be born into families who believe that father knows best."
I'm somewhat skeptical of demographic arguments like this, but he's a serious guy.
IF YOU'RE IN THE D.C. AREA, I'll be doing a book launch program at the National Press Club on Monday at 6:30, co-sponsored by Reason and TCS Daily. Barry Lynn and Joe Trippi will be debating the whole "Army of Davids" concept with me.
WILL AGING RESEARCH BECOME AN ELECTION ISSUE? My TCS Daily column is up.
IMPORTANT ADVICE ON PORT SECURITY from Frank J.: "Muslim extremists hate cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him), so put an unflattering comic about Mohammed on your door. If anyone tries to kill you over it, treat that person with suspicion." He's got a lot more of 'em.
Last week the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown apart. Sectarian riots followed, and reprisals and deaths ensued. Thugs and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced. Iraqi security forces stepped in with some success. Shaken Sunni and Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a viable coalition government.
But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had exploded. Indeed, Americans more than the Iraqis needed such advice for calm to quiet our own frenzy. Almost before the golden shards of the mosque hit the pavement, pundits wrote off the war as lost--as we heard the tired metaphors of "final straw" and "camel's back" mindlessly repeated. The long-anticipated civil strife among Shiites and Sunnis, we were assured, was not merely imminent, but already well upon us. Then the great civil war sort of fizzled out; our own frenzy subsided; and now exhausted we await next week's new prescription of doom--apparently the hyped-up story of Arabs at our ports. That the Iraqi security forces are becoming bigger and better, that we have witnessed three successful elections, and that hundreds of brave American soldiers have died to get us to the brink of seeing an Iraqi government emerge was forgotten in a 24-hour news cycle.
Yesterday, I crisscrossed Baghdad, visiting communities on both banks of the Tigris and logging at least 25 miles on the streets. With the weekend curfew lifted, I saw traffic jams, booming business — and everyday life in abundance.
Yes, there were bombings yesterday. The terrorists won't give up on their dream of sectional strife, and know they can count on allies in the media as long as they keep the images of carnage coming. They'll keep on bombing. But Baghdad isn't London during the Blitz, and certainly not New York on 9/11. . . .
The bombing made headlines (and a news photographer just happened to be on the scene). Here in Baghdad, it just made the average Iraqis hate the terrorists even more.
You are being lied to. By elements in the media determined that Iraq must fail. Just give 'em the Bronx cheer.
Read the whole thing.
AN EXTRAORDINARY ACT OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE: Some Atlanta students drive the speed limit and videotape the resulting mayhem. As one of them says, "I'm just glad nobody got hurt. It had the potential to be dangerous, which was really, again, the point. We were dangerous because we were obeying the law."
UPDAE: Alan, Esq. thinks that this was against the law, and there's an interesting discussion going on in the comments with some of the students.
After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
12 signatures
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq
Presentations:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, from somilian origin, is member of Dutch parliement, member of the liberal party VVD. Writter of the film Submission which caused the assasination of Theo Van Gogh by an islamist in november 2004, she lives under police protection.
Chahla Chafiq
Chahla Chafiq, writer from iranian origin, exiled in France is a novelist and an essayist. She’s the author of "Le nouvel homme islamiste , la prison politique en Iran " (2002). She also wrote novels such as "Chemins et brouillard" (2005).
Caroline Fourest
Essayist, editor in chief of Prochoix (a review who defend liberties against dogmatic and integrist ideologies), author of several reference books on « laicité » and fanatism : Tirs Croisés : la laïcité à l’épreuve des intégrismes juif, chrétien et musulman (with Fiammetta Venner), Frère Tariq : discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan, et la Tentation obscurantiste (Grasset, 2005). She receieved the National prize of laicité in 2005.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
French philosoph, born in Algeria, engaged against all the XXth century « ism » (Fascism, antisemitism, totalitarism, terrorism), he is the author of La Barbarie à visage humain, L’Idéologie française, La Pureté dangereuse, and more recently American Vertigo.
Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji is a Fellow at Yale University and the internationally best-selling author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith" (en francais: "Musulmane Mais Libre"). She speaks out for free expression based on the Koran itself. Née en Ouganda, elle a fui ce pays avec sa famille musulmane d’origine indienne à l’âge de quatre ans et vit maintenant au Canada, où ses émissions et ses livres connaissent un énorme succès.
Mehdi Mozaffari
Mehdi Mozaffari, professor from iranian origin and exiled in Denmark, is the author of several articles and books on islam and islamism such as : Authority in Islam: From Muhammad to Khomeini, Fatwa: Violence and Discourtesy and Glaobalization and Civilizations.
Maryam Namazie
Writer, TV International English producer; Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran’s International Relations; and 2005 winner of the National Secular Society’s Secularist of the Year award.
Taslima Nasreen
Taslima Nasreen is born in Bangladesh. Doctor, her positions defending women and minorities brought her in trouble with a comittee of integrist called « Destroy Taslima » and to be persecuted as « apostate »
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is the author of nine novels, including Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and, most recently, Shalimar the Clown. He has received many literary awards, including the Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Germany’s Author of the Year Award, the European Union’s Aristeion Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Mantova, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He is a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T., and the president of PEN American Center. His books have been translated into over 40 languages.
Philippe Val
Director of publication of Charlie Hebdo (Leftwing french newspaper who have republished the cartoons on the prophet Muhammad by solidarity with the danish citizens targeted by islamists).
Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq , author notably of Why I am Not a Muslim ; Leaving Islam : Apostates Speak Out ; and The Origins of the Koran , is at present Research Fellow at a New York Institute conducting philological and historical research into the Origins of Islam and its Holy Book.
Antoine Sfeir
Born in Lebanon, christian, Antoine Sfeir choosed french nationality to live in an universalist and « laïc » (real secular) country. He is the director of Les cahiers de l’Orient and has published several reference books on islamism such as Les réseaux d’Allah (2001) et Liberté, égalité, Islam : la République face au communautarisme (2005).
BUSH AND BLOGS: Hey, maybe the message finally got through.
The Glenn and Helen Show: Claire Berlinski on Europe
We interviewed Claire Berlinski, author of Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too, about Europe, Muslim integration (and the lack thereof), and the political, diplomatic, and military consequences thereof. I think it's one of the most important books of the year, and that this is one of the most important podcast interviews we've done. Her advice to the White House and State Department on Europe: "Make contingency plans in case it all goes to hell, because it very well might."
There's also a podcast archive here, and there are low-bandwidth versions for dialup users, etc., here.
Music: "Too Many Goodbyes," by The Defenders of the Faith, from Original Sins, the first album I ever produced. That's the Insta-Brother, Jonathan Reynolds, on guitar along with Hector Qirko, and Doug Weinstein plays drums and Hammond organ.
In the days that followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine, Iraq seemed within a hair's breadth of civil war. But an aggressive U.S. and Kurdish diplomatic campaign appears for now to have coaxed the country back from open conflict between Sunni Arabs and Shiites, according to Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats speaking in interviews on Monday.
In the southwest, where most of Iran's oil, and Arabs, are found, two bombs went off in government offices. There were four injuries. These bombings have been going on since last Summer. The government blames foreign instigators. That may be true, but not the British foreigners the government names, but Iraqi Shia Arabs who feel the connection with their fellow Shia Arabs across the border in Iran. Like the Iraqi Shia Arabs, the Iranian Shia Arabs have not gotten much from all the oil produced around them. The ethnic Iranians (an Indo-European people) control the oil, and the money it brings in. The 1980 war between Iran and Iraq was started when Saddam Hussein tried to "liberate" his fellow Arabs just across the border in Iran, along with the oil they were sitting on. Saddam already had a reputation for treating Shias badly, and Iran's Arabs remained loyal in resisting Saddam's army. But now, the situation is different. Shia Arabs are basically running Iraq. This bothers the non-Arab Iranians, and encourages the Arab Iranians.
There's also this:
Iran would also like to get rid of all the foreign spies. Increasingly, Iranian intelligence is getting reports of more foreigners offering money for information. This is a common intelligence gathering technique in the Middle East, where information is just another item to be bought, sold or bartered. In Iran, where smuggling has been big business for a long time, information is one of the items carried into, and out of, the country. Foreigners want to know about resistance to the government and attitudes towards Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Hmm. I wonder who is behind that.
I'M ON WAMU talking about blogs, the ports, and An Army of Davids until 1:00. Follow the link to stream live.
And speaking of U.S. News, wouldn't it be funny if it used faculty blogging as a factor? There would be all these blogs by lawprofs trying to move their school up the rankings.
Indeed there would.
THREATSWATCH looks at Iran's efforts to gain influence in the Middle East, which seem to be succeeding while the world is occupied with nuke rumors and cartoon wars:
But, typically, the nature of the Iranian nuclear program is not revealed by the UN agency tasked with investigating the crisis, but rather by the swirling events that continue to define it. And while the world remains affixed on the state of the Iranian nuclear countdown and the IAEA as it haplessly tries to get a fix on a moving target, the nature of the Iranian crisis transcends developments on the atomic front. . . .
While the Iranians are seemingly making little progress convincing the world of their ‘peaceful nuclear power program’ save for buying time, they are making considerable progress elsewhere throughout the region with visible, tangible gains in the Palestinian Territories, conditions inexplicably favorable in Lebanon, constant bloody tinkering in Iraq (especially through Basra) and a regional diplomatic ‘charm offensive’ ongoing.
Meanwhile, where it appears Iran is employing a short to mid-term regional strategy, the United States seems entrenched employing long-term strategies of seemingly endless UN-centered wrangling and funding supportive broadcasts into a largely immobile internal Iranian opposition.
I'm afraid that it's going to come to open military action against Iran, sooner rather than later.
It's also worth reading this piece on what Hamas is planning. Meryl Yourish has some further thoughts.
Gurstelle is the author of the popular 
so I expect that there will be a lot of interest in this book. Follow the Amazon link for some cool photos, too. There's even a flying car!
Obviously I don't think that it will help the Democratic Party to move in the DailyKos direction (though that's not quite what the book advocates), but the book's thesis that the Democratic establishment has gotten out of touch with actual Democrats seems hard to dispute.
Looks pretty interesting, and it has forewords by Aubrey de Grey and Robert Freitas.