25 February 2005
Bush un-spun
The president is wonderfully un-European - refreshingly so in the view of those of us who have worked in Brussels.
He is unsmooth. He stumbles over his sentences. He uses short, plain, sometimes almost babyish words, while the sophisticated multilingual Euro crowd prefer obfuscatory long ones.
And he gets a clear message across, like it or not. He has no need of spin.
It was interesting that on the White House bus back into town, the journalists did not need to compare notes or discuss the president’s words and what they meant.
On the other hand, for Chirac and Schroeder there was a discussion that would have made an old-style Kremlinologist blush. . . .
Some people think Schroeder said one thing about Nato and some think he actually meant another. Others claim that Chirac really believes Schroeder wanted to say… etc etc.
Welcome to Europe, Mr Bush.
Took them long enough to figure that out.
24 February 2005
It's over, move on
Javier Solana refused to play along with the EU’s enforced lovefest with George Bush this week, telling the International Herald-Tribune that the Iraqi elections meant little in terms of vindication for Bush’s policies in the Middle East:
The EU’s foreign policy chief cast public doubt on the health of the transatlantic partnership yesterday, puncturing the euphoric claims by European and American officials that President George W Bush had opened a new era in relations.
Javier Solana disputed the American view that last month’s elections in Iraq had vindicated the US decision to invade and questioned whether the Bush administration’s promises of a new era in relations with Europe meant anything. […]
Mr Solana made his deeply pessimistic remarks in an interview with the International Herald Tribune. He disputed the American view that the Iraq elections vindicated the decision to invade.
“Is this a vindication when you count how many billions of dollars have been spent, how many people have been killed, how many soldiers have died? It is a little too early to say.”
Well, I have to agree that the elections don’t vindicate the decision to invade. That was vindicated long ago. Besides, since the lives and money aren’t European, who is Solana to say whether it was well spent?
As for the new era for the transatlantic alliance, I agree that President Bush is starting one. It will be one where the USA has given any hope of Europe being useful and so will simply say nice things about an old relationship while moving on to new ones.
It's bad enough I have to write for it, I don't want to have to read it as well
A good ripping on the delusional state of on the New York Times editorial writers, Frank Rich. Rich claims that Old Media was all over the Eason Jordan controversy but ignored the Jeff Gannon story. Through excellent linking this is shown to the case only for an alternate reality.
Where do they get this stuff?
An American soldier overseas is fuming over letters he received from Brooklyn middle-school children accusing GIs of destroying mosques and killing civilians in Iraq.
Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.
That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.
Most of the 21 letters Jacobs provided to The Post mentioned some support for the armed forces, if not the Iraq war, and thanked him for his service. But nine of the students made clear their distaste for the president or the war.
One girl wrote that she believes Jacobs is “being forced to kill innocent people” and challenged him to name an Iraqi terrorist, concluding, “I know I can’t.”
Another girl wrote, “I strongly feel this war is pointless,” while a classmate predicted that because Bush was re-elected, “only 50 or 100 [soldiers] will survive.”
A boy accused soldiers of “destroying holy places like mosques.”
As it turns out, Jacobs is currently stationed in South Korea, not Iraq. Now, it’s an obvious assumption that perhaps the teacher “helped” with these letters, but I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if the kids picked this kind of thing up from their parents. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t excuse the teacher and school for passing on the letters.
23 February 2005
Kick their ass, don't pee on them
Three years ago, Israel faced near-daily suicide bombings. Prime Minister Sharon responded by hastening construction of a security fence and launching a military crackdown in the West Bank and Gaza. Sharon also refused to negotiate with Arafat. The idea that harsh Israeli counter-terrorist measures must inevitably backfire is rooted in the view that the Middle East conflict is a “cycle of violence.” According to this theory, Palestinians attack Israelis because Israeli repression makes them desperate and angry. Yet the last Palestinian uprising began as a response not to excessive Israeli strength but to a perception of Israeli weakness.
Something that needs to be kept in mind. My take away is that once again, half way measures are the worst of both worlds.
22 February 2005
And the hits just keep coming
Stability, a theme sounded by Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, in a landmark foreign policy speech this month, could be over-rated, [USA President] Bush said. “In the Cold War, Europe saw the so-called stability of Yalta (the division of postwar Europe into communist and capitalist spheres of influence) as a constant source of injustice and fear,” he said. Only the spread of freedom would guarantee Europeans peace.
Given the current flap over Bush attacking FDR’s legacy in Social Security, how long until there are complaints that Bush is undermining FDR’s legacy at Yalta?
21 February 2005
Old Media reporter exposed to facts, does not spontaneously combust
[source]
Washington Post reporter Mary Beth Sheridan spent some time with the troops in Iraq, and came away with some valuable lessons:
…[Sheridan] said she was “overwhelmed by the military,” but she did learn by being embedded that members of our armed forces were not “blood-thirsty maniacs.” Yes, she really did say that.
In fact, she said, they were “really decent people.” And even “sweet.” Of course, after being shot at they were eager to shoot back — a military attitude that seemed to surprise her.
Why am I not surprised that a reporter for a major Old Media organization sent to cover the troops in Iraq is surprised about the fact that soldiers were eager to return fire? Still, I have to give her a credit for being open to actual evidence instead of using her opinions to rewrite facts.
It's not enough for us to look stupid, we need to make the other side look smart
[source]
Yesterday Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) hosted a community forum in Ithaca, New York, on The Future Of Social Security.
An LGF reader was present in the audience and happened to be recording as Rep. Hinchey launched into a barking moonbat conspiracy rant worthy of Democratic Underground, telling the audience he believed the fake CBS memos were planted by Karl Rove to discredit Dan Rather, and divert attention from President Bush’s “draft dodging.”
When our reader asked Hinchey if he had evidence for these charges, he first said, “Yes, I do,” but when asked a second time he admitted he did not.
I’m still missing something basic here. Suppose Hinchey’s conspiracy theory is cold hard fact. Doesn’t that still mean that Dan Rather and CBS News chose to put out a story based on forged evidence? Didn’t Rather&Co. still overlook numerous red flags? It’s like Gary Hart and his little escapade — the central issue remains the bad judgement and political bias of Rather&Co, that they were willing to go ahead even with alarms ringing and then hunker down even after it was obvious that the evidence was forged.
19 February 2005
But all those bits look the same!
[source]
What started with a bang has ended with a whimper. The U.S. Energy Department admitted late Friday that two allegedly “missing” secret computer disks that had triggered a major purge at one of the nation’s premier nuclear weapons laboratories never existed in the first place.
I think I can go with the view that if the Department of Energy can’t keep track of its classified data, there’s a security problem.
17 February 2005
2 degrees of separation
Billionaire financier George Soros, whose opposition to President Bush’s conduct of the war on terror caused him to pour millions of dollars into the effort to defeat the president, made a substantial donation to the defense fund for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who last week was found guilty of giving aid to Islamic terrorists.
According to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute, or OSI, gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.
As pointed out in the source, this is as strong a connection between the Democratic Party and Stewart as anything claimed about the Swiftboat Veterans. But on the other hand, is the Democratic Party really an independent organization or just a front for people with the same political agenda as Soros?
UN-appropriate
[source]
I didn’t read this Slate article beyond the subhead, “Adult Impersonators at the Model UN, and the Perils of ‘Exceeding Your Brief’,” but it led me to wonder… If a member of the Model UN molested little kids, just like they do in the real UN, what would be the criminal charge that they wouldn’t imagine themselves subject to? And isn’t “exceeding one’s briefs” a particularly unfortunate turn of phrase?
I can’t wait for the next step, a fight between conservatives and liberals over whether descriptions of the actual activities of UN controlled forces are appropriate for children. “But Mom, why can’t I talk about that? It’s what real UN peace keepers do!”
The cycle of violence
WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.
What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.
“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”
Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”
Imagine that - violence begets violence! I’m waiting for the first complaints about how the evil oil traders created this cycle of violence.
16 February 2005
Yeah, yeah, rescued, escaped, what's the difference?
[source]
U.S. forces in Iraq stormed a house in Baghdad on Monday and freed two of the four Egyptian telecommunications engineers who were kidnapped Sunday, the head of their Egyptian parent company said.
Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, said U.S. troops raided a villa, possibly in the mainly Sunni Muslim district of Adhamiya, and freed the two. The other two managed to escape on their own from a car they had been locked in, he added.
It turns out that in fact that all of the hostages were freed by USA forces. Sloppy reporting or blatant bias? Also, the source notes that in the old days, newspaper men would be trying to get the exclusive on the troops who performed the rescue. Modern day journalists apparently don’t think it’s a story even worth reporting accurately.
Democracy choo-choo
Iraq’s Arab Sunnis will do a U-turn and join the political process despite their lack of representation in the newly elected national assembly, Sunni leaders said yesterday.
Yeah, the old “you can be on the train or under it” technique is effective as usual.
15 February 2005
UN-morality
The merest glimpse of a freaky West Virginia tramp leading an Abu Ghraib inmate around with girlie knickers on his head was enough to prompt calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation, and for Ted Kennedy to charge that Saddam’s torture chambers were now open “under new management”, and for Robert Fisk to be driven into the kind of orgasmic frenzy unseen since his column on how much he enjoyed being beaten up by an Afghan mob: “Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi,” wrote Fisk. “No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash.”
Who’s straining at the leash here? Down, boy. But, if Lynndie’s smashed to pieces our entire morality with just one tug, Bush’s Zionist neocons getting it on with Congolese kindergarteners would have the Independent calling for US expulsion from the UN - no, wait, from Planet Earth: slice it off from Maine to Hawaii and use one of those new Euro-Airbuses to drag it out round the back of Uranus.
But systemic UN child sex in at least 50 per cent of their missions? The transnational morality set can barely stifle their yawns. If you’re going to rape prepubescent girls, make sure you’re wearing a blue helmet.
Once more it’s about who did it, not what.
14 February 2005
Oh, they'll learn something
I was going to comment on this article (via Brothers Judd) about how young people don’t believe in free speech as described by the First Admendment
At least that’s what they think of the First Amendment once it’s explained to them. After interviewing 100,000 teens in the largest study of its kind, the John S. and James C. Knight Foundation reports fast shrinking respect for bedrock constitutional freedoms of speech, press and assembly. Among the findings widely commented on last week—but not widely enough—only 51 percent said newspapers should be allowed to publish content without state approval. Three-quarters actually thought flag burning was illegal—and didn’t care—while almost one-fifth said Americans should not be allowed to express unpopular views.
Naturally this is blamed on conservatives and their efforts to “silence” Ward Churchill by the odious tactic of publicizing his statements. I have a slightly different theory, but I was preempted by BroJudd regular “Bart”:
Everywhere a 17 year old looks nowadays there are rules concerning his ‘speech’ rights so why shouldn’t he believe that it’s OK to restrict unpopular speech. You can’t open up a Christian club in most public schools, even those where the entire student body is made up of Christians. You can’t wear an 8 Ball jacket because it is a gang symbol(I’m not Mr Blackwell so I will not try to imagine why someone would want to wear an 8 Ball jacket). You can’t even play ‘Smear the Queer’ because someone’s widdle feelings might get hurt.
That’s the real lesson being taught by the excessive “tolerance” of modern American public education.
Load up on the other end
Northwest [Airlines] got into a feud with the wholesalers in 2002 when a Wayne County beer distributor caught the airline paying to have beer trucked from Minnesota to Metro Airport for departing flights. Northwest said it was cheaper than buying from Michigan distributors.
[…]
A liquor commission investigator determined that the airline was illegally importing alcohol into Michigan and was breaking the law by purchasing from an unlicensed source.
[…]
Northwest, the dominant carrier at Metro, argued that it wasn’t breaking the law because the alcohol from out of state was meant for passengers in interstate commerce, not for consumption in Michigan. Therefore, state law did not apply, the airline said.
And, the airline pointed out, it was buying beer from in-state wholesalers to serve at its four WorldClubs at the airport.
Sadly, I’ve been persuaded that such protectionist measures are in fact Constitutional. The 21st Admendment language is somewhat ambiguous, but overall the case for such restrictions being permitted is (IMHO) significantly stronger than the case against. There isn’t much of a slippery slope either, as the basis for this exemption to the Commerce Clause is the explicit mention of “intoxicating liquors” in the Admendment.
Castro News Network
[source]
I thank you very much for being here tonight. Let me also thank Fidel Castro. In the earliest days of CNN, when CNN was meant to be seen only in the United States, the enterprising Fidel Castro was pirating and watching CNN in Cuba. Fidel was intrigued by CNN. He wanted to meet the person responsible. So Ted Turner, who at that point had never traveled to a Communist country or knowingly met a Communist, [went to Havana]. It was big deal for Ted and during the discussions Castro suggested that CNN be made available to the entire world. In fact it was that seed, that idea that grew into CNN International, which is now seen in every country and territory on the planet.
— Eason Jordan, former Chief News Executive for CNN
I suppose this goes in the “what did you expect?” category.
What real targeting looks like
A BBC producer has died after being shot in the Somalia capital Mogadishu yesterday just weeks after an Islamic cleric reportedly issued a fatwa against westerners entering one of the world’s most lawless cities.
Kate Peyton, 39, a producer in the BBC’s Johannesburg bureau, had just arrived in Somalia to make a series of reports about the country when she was hit at least once in the back by a shot from a pistol as she left her hotel.
How likely do you think it is that this kind of thing will be brought up at media conferences in Davos? Smears like Eason Jordan’s not only tar the USA military but also whitewash the people who commit acts like this. Is the Old Media elite so obsessed with anti-Americanism that this, too, is an acceptable price to pay?
12 February 2005
I would have gotten away with it except for those pesky bloggers
[source]
Hugh [Hewitt] had me on the air earlier in the show to talk about Eason’s Fables, and I went on briefly again for a reaction. Needless to say, the audience erupted in delight and disbelief, and Hugh told them to watch the news coverage of Jordan’s resignation. The man who probably was the most responsible for the blogswarm of Eason’s Fables pointed out that the networks, which had yet to address the issue, now needed to report the resignation of the head of a news organization for a scandal they never reported to their viewers.
Given the set of people being brought down through exposure by the blogosphere, I wonder how long it will be before Old Media starts treating that section of the blogosphere as the re-incarnation of HUAC.
Please let us win!
Senate Democrats watched in dismay last autumn as their longtime leader, Thomas A. Daschle, fell to steady attacks by national Republican and conservative groups. Yesterday they said they won’t let it happen to Daschle’s successor, Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.).
Each of Reid’s 43 Democratic colleagues, plus a Democratic-leaning independent, signed a letter to President Bush, urging him to halt the “counter-productive attacks” against Reid by the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Top Democrats released the letter at a Capitol news conference, in which they fired back at the GOP for a fourth straight day.
So the Democratic Party’s idea of “defense” is to beg their opponent to stop? Seems to be a lot of that going around these days.
10 February 2005
See, the problem was the lack of multi-lateral coordinating committees
The new Secretary of State is reportedly pursuing a proposal to raise money for danegeld, er, that is, a pension fund for jihad terrorists who promise to stop murdering people. Israel National News states that Rice “has proposed a $100 monthly allowance to terrorists who agree to lay down their arms and retire or find another profession. The money would be part of a $350 million package deal announced by U.S. President George Bush this past week.
I have to agree that this would be a stupid plan even for the typical State Department appeaser. Even if poverty were the cause of terrorism (which it’s not), welfare programs have proven to not be a solution to poverty. One must also wonder what Rice thinks of all of those Islamic immigrants in Europe living on the dole and supporting jihad.
Sometimes the simplest plan is best
The Defense Department’s new personnel rules will jettison parts of a civil service system that for decades have meant steady pay increases for civilian workers and several layers of protection against arbitrary firings or discipline, according to a Pentagon briefing for Congress yesterday.
All you need to do is put the new system to a vote of civil servants and then fire the ones who vote “no.” Then you don’t even need to implement the new system.
— David Cohen
09 February 2005
Lobster Tech
The team of researchers at UCSD’s Institute for Nonlinear Science (INLS) led by Henry Abarbanel, professor of physics, Misha Rabinovich at INLS and Allen Selverston, professor emeritus of biology, has successfully integrated an electronic neuron within a group of 14 biological neurons from the California spiny lobster. The artificial neuron was accepted by the real ones and its signaling rhythm fell into place with the other cells.
[…]
The finding comes after two years of research, using $7.50 worth of circuit parts from a Radio Shack store and dozens of spiny lobsters from La Jolla Cove purchased from a local fisherman.
It is the first time that researchers have been able to get artificial and biological neurons to function together in a network family. In their normal function, the 14 neurons control the rhythmic way food is passed from the stomach to the lobster’s digestive system.
[…]
The next step is to gradually replace each of the neurons with electronic ones.
I wonder if there is how the Cylons got started.
You go, girl!
Unlike a long line of other leaders who paid some kind of homage to Arafat’s grave at the entrance to the Mukata, when visiting PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), [US Secretary of State Condoleeza] Rice’s car simply pulled into the compound, passed the grave and Rice got out and walked into the building.
On the way out, she also made no acknowledgment of the grave, unlike other leaders, like EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana who laid a wreath or British Prime Minister Tony Blair who walked by and nodded.
While emitting various bodily fluids on the grave might seem more appropriate, complete indifference is probably the most insulting thing she could do.
08 February 2005
With enemies like these, who needs friends?
[source]
One has to wonder who’s really fooling whom. What do you think would have happened to Michael Moore’s cash flow under a Kerry administration?
07 February 2005
Oooh, that's gotta hurt
Couldn’t someone just once say to Teddy on national TV,’Should we come up with a plan to save Social Security before it becomes a crisis or do we just drive off that bridge when we come to it?’
— Bart
06 February 2005
Best 2 out of 3?
The leading Shiite candidate to become Iraq’s next prime minister welcomed overtures on Saturday by groups that boycotted national elections and declared that he and others were willing to offer “the maximum” to bring those largely Sunni Arab groups into the drafting of the constitution and participation in the new government.
But Adel Abdel-Mehdi, the current finance minister and a powerful figure in the coalition expected to dominate Iraq’s parliament, rejected a key demand of those groups — a timetable for a withdrawal of the 150,000 U.S. troops in the country.
“We are hearing some positive remarks coming from their side. That’s very good. We are encouraging them,” he said in an interview. “We are really willing to offer the maximum. . . . It’s a balanced view — from them, from us — to see what the future has.”
It would seem a reliable sign that one is losing when one is reduced to begging one’s opponent for a win.
Someday, Brussels willing, we may have actual troops
Via Brothers Judd we have this article on the impending doom of the American Hegemony. I’ve commented at length elsehwere, but this article had such a great line:
Consider, as well, the EU’s rapid progress toward military independence.
Who could possible read past that for other than humor value?
The turning of the tide
Iraqi police have investigated a case in the village of al-Mudhariya, which is just south of Baghdad. The villagers there say that before the election insurgents came and warned them that if they voted in last weekend’s election, they would pay.
Now the people of this mixed village of Sunni and Shia Muslims, they ignored the threat and they did turn out to vote.
We understand that last night the insurgents came back to punish the people of al-Mudhariya, but instead of metering out that punishment the villagers fought back and they killed five of the insurgents and wounded eight. They then burnt the insurgents’ car. So the people of that village have certainly had enough of the insurgents.
This is the kind of thing that the election was designed to achieve. People don’t fight back against this kind of thing unless they think that it can be defeated. That psychological state is the point and over time it will re-enforce itself and make the insurgency far more difficult to maintain.
But it rolls so trippingly off the keyboard!
In the first week after the elections, the Iraqi Interior Ministry and the Mosul police chief are turning the tables on the insurgency here in the north by using a tactic - videotaped messages - that the insurgents have used time and again as they have terrorized the region with kidnappings and executions.
But this time the videos, which are being broadcast on a local station, carry an altogether different message, juxtaposing images of the masked killers with the cowed men they become once captured.
The broadcast of such videos raises questions about whether they violate legal or treaty obligations about the way opposing fighters are interrogated and how their confessions are made public. [emphasis added]
What possible treaties could this article be talking about? Apparently “treaty obligations” is simply a catch phrase, placed as a garnish without regard to any actual facts.
02 February 2005
At least we lead the world in something!
The EU’s embassies in Havana will now craft their guest lists in accordance with the Cuban government’s wishes. […]
Try to imagine what will happen: At each European embassy, someone will be appointed to screen the list, name by name, and assess whether and to what extent the persons in question behave freely or speak out freely in public, to what extent they criticize the regime, or even whether they are former political prisoners. Lists will be shortened and deletions made, and this will frequently entail eliminating even good personal friends of the diplomats in charge of the screening, people whom they have given various forms of intellectual, political or material assistance. It will be even worse if the EU countries try to mask their screening activities by inviting only diplomats to embassy celebrations in Cuba.
I can hardly think of a better way for the EU to dishonor the noble ideals of freedom, equality and human rights that the Union espouses — indeed, principles that it reiterates in its constitutional agreement. To protect European corporations’ profits from their Havana hotels, the Union will cease inviting open-minded people to EU embassies, and we will deduce who they are from the expression on the face of the dictator and his associates. It is hard to imagine a more shameful deal.
That’s the EU, always making it hard to imagine a more shameful deal.
Is that what passes for values in the Democratic Party?
I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization
The generation of the Summer of Love final lets it all hang out.
Reading, eh? Is that were those "facts" come from?
[source]
Journalism students don’t read newspapers and magazines, a Detroit News columnist discovers. She asked University of Michigan-Dearborn students to name their favorite columnist.
Slowly, one hand rises. A sports columnist is mentioned.
Nobody else in the room hints at any recognition of the sports columnist’s name: Anyone?
“My generation is very visually oriented,” explains Ryan Schreiber, a U-M Dearborn junior from Dearborn who — like most in the class — is majoring in journalism but doesn’t read much of it.
“My generation grew up watching MTV. We are used to short spurts of words, lots of images…We’re used to immediate gratification.”
He points out that columns like this one are blocks of text, decorated only with a thumbnail photo and a headline.No dancing images, no colorful pop-ups, no audio.
Words on paper. Blah.
The newspaper columnist likes immediate gratification, too. And imagining a future filled with non-reading writers doesn’t provide such gratification. It is, in fact, a terrifying thought.
In another UM-D class, the professor discovered only four or five of 35 journalism students read a newspaper regularly. He required students to bring a paper to class twice a week. Students complained.
Another bit of evidence in favor of the “too clueless to have an ideology” theory.
What are these "facts" you keep asking about?
[source]
[Eason] Jordan, CNN’s news boss, appeared in a panel at Davos and the official blog reported:
Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.
The blogger, Rony Abovitz, said a crapstorm ensued with some troubled by what Eason alleged and others — antiAmericans and Arabs are singled out — grabbing onto it as if it were truth and Jordan finally pulling back:
To be fair (and balanced), Eason did backpedal and make a number of statements claiming that he really did not know if what he said was true, and that he did not himself believe it.
The best theory I’ve seen is that Eason is right and these reporters were stringers who were targeted while bearing arms against Coalition forces (one man’s terrorist is CNN’s journalist). We already know that there are close connections between the two groups and Eason has a history of cooperating with violent killers in exchange for news.
Or maybe he’s just lieing to curry favor with CNN’s base audience.
01 February 2005
Old Media credibility watch
[source]
On the eve of the election in Iraq, the Associated Press went around the world, looking for people who didn’t think anything good would come of the democratic process there. The AP’s article, datelined Paris, is titled “Skeptics Question Worth of Iraq Election.”
[…]
But who exactly are these “skeptics?” The AP quotes a handful of individuals and a couple of newspapers—not exactly a meaningful sample of world opinion. Let’s take the AP’s “skeptics” one at a time.
It’s worth reading, but the skeptics consist of
- A Gaza City resident, who would naturally be an expert on the situation in Iraq
- The spiritual leader of Hezbollah
- A columnist suffering from Bush Derangment Syndrome
- A German newspaper that considers pictures of President Bush and Vice President Cheney wearing photoshopped mouse ears as sage political commentary
What’s really depressing is the distinct possibility that in fact, compared to the AP staff, these guys really are better informed and objective.
Never before has the phrase "useful idiot" had more meaning
Some caliphascists reported that they had captured a US Marine as a hostage and posted a picture of him. Fortunately, it turns out to have been a GI Joe doll. Really. Check it out and see.
At some point I have to wonder if Old Media isn’t on the other side because they’re not sufficiently aware to actually have a side. Could they simply be masses of prejudices and shallow opinions masquerading as human beings?
What do you think it is, your country?
Iraqis have clashed with demonstrators against the election outside a polling station in Manchester.
About 200 demonstrators were chased by another group who burned their flags, while other Iraqis clashed with police.
[…]
The demonstrators were from Hizb-ut-Tahrir - an Islamic group which is against the elections in Iraq.
David Kahrmann, from the Iraq Election Team, said the protesters “were not even Iraqis”.
“The Iraqi community here were saying, ‘Why are these people who are not even from Iraq protesting against these elections?’,” he said.
The anti-election, anti-invasion factions in Britian have consistently excluded Iraqis, why change now?
Old Media credibility watch
The Obsidian Order reports on some strong evidence that terrorist attacks are being staged in Iraq for the purpose of generating news in the West. Gosh, color me surprised!
The curve of non-binding accountability
[source]
New York students can pass the Math A Regents exam by answering 31 percent of questions; 40 percent earns an “honors” pass.
The exam, the simpler of two math tests and a requirement for graduation, is comprised of 30 multiple-choice questions worth 2 points each and nine computation questions worth up to 4 points.
Answering just 13 of the multiple-choice questions right — each question provides four possible answers — guarantees a passing grade.
“It is unreasonable that a student who gets the minimum passing score has achieved only slightly better results than a student who guesses,” said Stanley Ocken, a math professor at City College of New York and a critic of the grading system.
In 2003, two-thirds of students failed the exam, so the passing score was adjusted.
Apparently the unreasonableness of being able to pass by doing slightly better than guessing is less unreasonable that the test pointing out the failing educational system.