11 August 2003

NY Times credibility watch

[source, source]
We missed this last week, but it's so stunning that it's worth highlighting even a few days late. The corrections column of Thursday's New York Times carried the following "editor's note": p(qq). An article on Sunday about attacks on the American military in Iraq over the previous two days, attributed to military officials, included an erroneous account that quoted Pfc. Jose Belen of the First Armored Division. Private Belen, who is not a spokesman for the division, said that a homemade bomb exploded under a convoy on Saturday morning on the outskirts of Baghdad and killed two American soldiers and their interpreter. The American military's central command, which releases information on all American casualties in Iraq, said before the article was published that it could not confirm Private Belen's account. Later it said that no such attack had taken place and that no American soldiers were killed on Saturday. p(qq). Repeated efforts by The Times to reach Private Belen this week have been unsuccessful. The Times should not have attributed the account to "military officials," and should have reported that the command had not verified the attack. Consider that: The New York Times is acknowledging that it published a fabricated account of American casualties in Iraq. There's no reason to doubt the Times' contention that its source, as opposed to its reporter, was behind the original fabrication, but it seems fair, based on the paper's account, to say that the Times "sexed up" its reporting by promoting a single private to "military officials" (plural) and by failing to note Centcom's doubts, much less wait for confirmation before running with the story. (The original article is no longer available free on the Times Web site)
Gosh, the ??NY Times?? took the word of what now appears to be an anonymous trooper about US casualties in Iraq and didn't feel any need to verify that report. It's the Paper of Recordings - "quagmire! quagmire! quagmire!"
Posted by orbital at 7:10 PM | View 1 Comments | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

California: Falling in to darkness?

[source, source]
A discovery that two municipal workers convicted of workers' compensation fraud were still on the city's payroll prompted City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo to push two proposals Friday that would allow the city to fire employees who commit fraud. The ordinances are set to be introduced to the City Council next week by West Valley Councilman Dennis Zine. "Employees who commit workers' compensation fraud, I believe, forfeit the privilege of employment with the city of Los Angeles," Delgadillo said in a letter sent to the council. Those two workers have since left the city, but it underscored that there has been no automatic trigger for cutting employees who have found to have filed fraudulent workers' comp claims, officials said. "The policy was, there was no policy," said Delgadillo's spokesman, Matt Szabo.
First it's "banning public urination":http://projects.is.asu.edu/pipermail/hpn/2002-July/006385.html in San Francisco and now city workers in Los Angeles can't commit fraud without fear of losing their jobs. Has fascism already descended on California? UPDATE: Apparently other people have noticed this creeping authoritarianism. "ChronWatch":http://www.chronwatch.com/featured/contentDisplay.asp?aid=3810 reports that Los Angeles and San Francisco have made the "mean city list":http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/080503_nw_la_city.html "based on the number of laws passed and measures taken to ban such activities as loitering, begging, public urination and defecation, and camping and sleeping outdoors". These are euphemistically called "life-sustaining activities" by the "Nation Coalition for the Homeless", the gaggle of Idiotarians who put out the report.
Posted by orbital at 3:06 PM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

California Reeling

[source]
[…] France & California are tied for fifth [largest economy in 2001] -- France 1,310 billions, California 1,309 billions. France's state budget deficit is looking like 3.5% of GDP -- California's $38 billion would be about 3% of GSP[Gross State Product]. The French economy certainly suffers from slow growth, but there's also been criticism of overspending on social benefits and a surrender to unions. Ditto California. […] Darrell Issa said p(qq). You know, we’re the fifth-largest economy, but we’re not run like the fifth-largest economy. But, it appears that California is being run like the fifth largest economy -- the other one
Posted by orbital at 8:51 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

Schwarzenegger's Nazi links

[source, source]
Okay, Arnold's not a Nazi. He was born in the Austrian town of Thal, but not until 1947, and thus was technically unable to join the Nazi Party no matter how much he may have wanted to. But he certainly has family ties to the Nazis. His wife's grandfather, Joe Kennedy, was one of America's most prominent Nazi sympathisers.
Looks like Ah-nuld should have done better due diligence before getting married …
Posted by orbital at 8:45 AM | View 2 Comments | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL

UN-reasonable

Professor Anne Bayefsky has put together an excellent listing of details of the fanatical, anti-Israeli bias of the UN. For instance bq. At the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights (only the second world conference on human rights in the history of the UN), efforts to place "anti-Semitism" into the Vienna Declaration failed because, in the words of the Chair of the Drafting Committee, it was too controversial a subject. or bq. At the UN Durban World Conference Against Racism in September 2001, only one country situation was criticized as racist in the world today - Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. One may argue whether Israel is well behaved, but to argue that it is the only or the worst behaved is simply nonsensical. But the UN has long since lost any reason.
Posted by orbital at 8:30 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL