29 November 2005 @ 10:21AM >> When a Democratic politician argues that we should leave Iraq, it gets front page treatment. After Democratic Representative John (”Jack”) Murtha recently called for an immediate pullout in Iraq, it was the top news item for several news cycles. But in order to spin Murtha’s position as a major defection from the ranks of the war supporters, the media had to overlook his comment in the spring of 2004 calling the war “unwinnable.” If we can assume he didn’t support the war when he made that statement—politicians usually don’t go on record supporting unwinnable wars—then Murtha’s call for a pullout is a stunning example of non-news dominating the headlines for days.

An old adage about media coverage stipulates, “When dog bites man, it’s not news. When man bites dog, that’s news.” But Democrats maligning the war effort has been dog-bites-man non-news for a couple of years now. Yet whenever it happens, it seems to get top billing in each news cycle.

Now, if you really want news of the dog-bites-man variety, there is at least one Democratic politician of national stature who can still articulate a compelling reason for finishing the job in Iraq. You may remember him; in 2000, he was the Democrats’ nominee for Vice President. That’s right, Joe Lieberman (emphasis mine):

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood—unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

[...]

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

[...]

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.

None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq’s duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America’s commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November’s elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

If only there were more Democrats with the backbone on Senator Lieberman. Unfortunately, politicians live off publicity, and Democratic politicians know the way to get on the news is to trash the war effort. Because it doesn’t fit the model of the story the media wants to report, Lieberman’s man-bites-dog stance on the war isn’t going to get any attention. But some things—like security for our nation and freedom for the 27 million people of Iraq—are a little more important than winning the next election or getting your mug on the nightly news. It might be hard for this nation of cynics to believe, but there was a time when politicians put their own ambitions behind the best interests of the country. Will that ever happen again?

28 November 2005 @ 12:29PM >> The political discussion forum Debate for America asked me to do an interview a short while ago. My schedule finally complied recently, and I was able to return my responses to the forum’s questioners. The questions, along with my answers, are now available on that site.

(Don’t be confused by the fact that all the messages were posted by Bart Hook, the site administrator. He e-mailed the questions to me and posted my responses after I sent them back.)

26 November 2005 @ 10:07AM >> Your tax dollars at work, in the Vermont school system.

23 November 2005 @ 11:49AM >> They learned something about economics, the hard way. If only more politicians would heed the lesson.

23 November 2005 @ 4:12AM >> An open-minded professor who tolerates intellectual diversity e-mails a freshman student: “I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like your won’t dare show their face on a college campus.” The pro-people professor also argues that “[r]eal freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors.”

22 November 2005 @ 12:49PM >> My earlier post on CNN’s X-ing of Cheney has been picked up by a number of websites and is driving a lot of readers here who are unfamiliar with my site. Some people are interpreting my position as a sign of my own bias. One reader e-mailed:

Puh-leeze....if Fox News had pulled this stunt by placing a “X” over Bill Clinton or Hillary or any Democrat for that matter, all hell would break loose. For you to give CNN a pass is showing your bias against Cheney.

The day I am accused of bias against Vice President Cheney is a day that I let out a robust belly laugh. But it is also a sign that people on the right can be too overzealous with their charges of media bias. Anyone who has read this site consistently knows the work I’ve done to document the media’s left-leaning slant. The key word there is document. Absent of any evidence, you can’t just assume that an apparent video glitch is the same thing as a doctored quote, an omitted set of facts, or an artfully crafted phrase. In those cases, a conscious act must be committed by the journalist in order to skew the reporting. We can’t tell whether the “X” mark is the result of a conscious act.

I am willing to be proven wrong on this, but it will take evidence to do so. In the meantime, I hope that conservatives don’t go too far down the road of conspiracy-mongering. Recently, that has been the exclusive domain of the left, much to their detriment. Such a mentality can be equally destructive to conservatives if they’re not careful.

22 November 2005 @ 12:55AM >> Apparently, either a video glitch or not-glitch resulted in a few flashes of an “X” over Vice President Cheney’s face while he was delivering a speech. A number of conservative bloggers are criticizing CNN under the assumption that the glitch (or not-glitch) was both deliberate and an example of political bias.

Sorry guys, I don’t see it. I recognize the possibility, but I also recognize a much larger number of possibilities for actual glitches in video production. True, I don’t work in live video, but I’ve seen software bugs and unintuitive behavior cause bizarre flashes where one video track has been accidentally merged onto another. It looks to me like something similar happened with CNN. This could have happened at the venue, or anywhere between bouncing the feed up to a satellite and back to earth, or maybe in CNN’s studios in Washington or Atlanta. It could have been because someone was sitting on a button or briefly brushed one a few times.

If you watch the video, additional text seems to appear below the X, partially obscuring the news ticker on the bottom. The online version isn’t of high enough resolution to make that text legible. But perhaps someone who recorded it can decipher the rest. My assumption is that a placeholder track got superimposed on the live feed by mistake.

There are plenty of examples of media bias that are far more provable. To latch onto a few flashes of an “X” as major evidence of bias—when no such evidence exists beyond the act itself—undercuts the possibility of being taken seriously when talking about the more tangible stories.

Maybe CNN should get the benefit of the doubt. There’s an old saying: Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. Given CNN’s recent performance in the marketplace, that statement seems apt.

21 November 2005 @ 12:57PM >> Slowly but surely, the corruption of French and U.N. officials is being exposed:

One of France’s most distinguished diplomats has confessed to an investigating judge that he accepted oil allocations from Saddam Hussein [...]

Jean-Bernard Merimee is thought to be the first senior figure to admit his role in the oil-for-food scandal, a United Nations humanitarian aid scheme hijacked by Saddam to buy influence.

The Frenchman, who holds the title “ambassador for life”, told authorities that he regretted taking payments amounting to $156,000 [...]

The money was used to renovate a holiday home he owned in southern Morocco. At the time, Mr Merimee was a special adviser to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general.

[...]

The ambassador said the French authorities had known of his every move. France has been gravely embarrassed by oil-for-food allegations against senior figures, including Charles Pasqua, the former interior minister. He has denied receiving any benefit from the oil allocations issued in his name.

Inquiries have also found that French firms benefited disproportionately from oil-for-food contracts as part of an Iraqi policy to influence French votes on the UN Security Council.

18 November 2005 @ 3:25AM >> According to London’s Guardian newspaper, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the process of purging political opponents from the Iranian government:

Iran is facing political paralysis as its newly elected president purges government institutions, bringing accusations that he is undertaking a coup d’etat.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s clearout of his opponents began last month but is more sweeping than previously understood and has reached almost every branch of government, the Guardian has learned. Dozens of deputy ministers have been sacked this month in several government departments, as well the heads of the state insurance and privatisation organisations. [...]

Ahmadinejad took power in Iran in what some described as a flawed election where certain reform candidates—and all women—were barred from running for office. After Ahmadinejad’s election, several newspapers were shut down when it became known that they would print a critical letter from a reform candidate who had earlier lost to Ahmadinejad.

Known as a hard-line Islamist, Ahmadinejad is believed to be one of the terrorists responsible for the hostage crisis that consumed the final 15 months of the Carter Administration. Some of the 52 American hostages that were held in Iran for 444 days are “convinced” that Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders who orchestrated the holding of the hostages. More recently, Ahmadinejad has been making news by saying that Israel “must be wiped out.” Of course, like any good Jihadist, Ahmadinejad didn’t stop there. Here are some other choice quotes:

“And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”

[T]he “new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away.”

“[Any country that] recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.”

Sounds like a pretty reasonable guy, right?

These recent developments are quite disconcerting in a country with very active nuclear ambitions. And it raises an interesting question for the peace-at-all-costs crowd. Their entire ideology is based on the mistaken notion that everybody behaves in a way that we would find rational. If a terrorist running a country in the process of enriching radioactive uranium turns out to be someone who can’t be reasoned with, what is the proposed solution? How do you broker a deal?

If you’re Israel—certainly under more immediate threat from Iran than the U.S. is—what concessions could you possibly make to satisfy an enemy that seeks no less than your complete destruction? Such threats from Iran don’t seem to leave much room for a face-saving compromise that would leave all parties smiling and shaking hands at a bargaining table. And even if you could arrange a deal, would it be wise to trust someone who uses this sort of apocalyptic rhetoric? History is littered with dupes who tried to make peace with aggressors hell-bent on war. It rarely worked out well for the dupes.

So, if there are any anti-war activists out there who truly believe the slogan “war is never the answer,” kindly send me an e-mail and explain how war can be avoided if a nuclear-armed Iran decides to launch a few missiles at Tel Aviv. What would you pacifists suggest if Iranian warheads start raining down on Israel—or on us? Peace is only possible when no parties want war. As soon as there’s one that does, you’re pretty much screwed.

17 November 2005 @ 10:43PM >> The iTunes Music Store now features the video podcast for Brain Terminal. That means you can now access all the videos on this site without having to enter the podcast URL. If you have iTunes installed, this link will take you directly to the video podcast page. From there, you can download individual Brain Terminal videos for playback within iTunes or on your iPod. You can also find the podcast from within the iTunes Music Store by searching for “Evan Coyne Maloney.”

Once you find the video podcast page, you can click Subscribe to receive all future updates, or you can download individual videos by clicking Get Episode.

Assuming you have your iPod set to automatically copy all podcasts, the next time you sync your iPod, the videos that you’ve downloaded from the podcast will be copied to your iPod. Videos will appear in your iPod’s Video > Video Podcasts menu.

16 November 2005 @ 7:40AM >> Daniel Pipes notes a shift in attitude after the recent terrorist attack in Amman, Jordan:

A suicide bombing in Hadera, Israel, on October 26 that killed five people inspired the usual Palestinian joy: some 3,000 people took to the streets in celebration, chanting Allahu Akbar, calling for more suicide attacks against Israelis, and congratulating the “martyr’s” family on the success of the attack.

But Palestinian Arabs were uncharacteristically morose after three explosions went off on November 9, killing 57 persons and injuring hundreds, in Amman, Jordan. That’s because, for the very first time, they found themselves the main victim of those same Islamist “martyrs.”

The massacre at a wedding in the Radisson SAS hotel ballroom took the lives of 17 family members attending the nuptials of what the London Times called a Palestinian “golden couple, beloved of their prominent Palestinian families and friends.” The bombing also killed four Palestinian Authority officials, notably Bashir Nafeh, head of military intelligence on the West Bank.

After two decades of doling out this horror against Israelis, some of whom were also attending festive events (a Passover dinner, a Bar Mitzvah), Palestinians, who form a majority of the Jordanian population, unexpectedly found themselves at the receiving end.

And, guess what: They did not like it.

The brother of a woman injured in the attack told a reporter, “My sister, I love her. I love her to death, and if something happened to her, I’d be really...” Choked, he stopped speaking and cried. Another relative called the terrorists “vicious criminals.” A third cried out, “Oh my God, oh my God. Is it possible that Arabs are killing Arabs, Muslims killing Muslims?”

I extend my deepest sympathy to the family. I also hope that Palestinian Arabs, who have established a worldwide reputation not just for relying heavily on suicide murder but for doing so enthusiastically, will benefit from this unique learning opportunity.

14 November 2005 @ 10:55AM >> Jennifer Jacobson of The Chronicle of Higher Education covers Brainwashing 201: The Second Semester in the latest issue.

11 November 2005 @ 2:53PM >> Now you can watch all the Brain Terminal videos on your iPod! More >>

11 November 2005 @ 3:07AM >> Former news producer Mary Mapes is still defiant.

Shortly before last fall’s election, Mapes was forced to resign in disgrace from CBS News after she and Dan Rather were caught peddling bogus memos intended to hurt President Bush’s chances for re-election. But Mapes still can’t figure out why people questioned her reporting:

In her first television interview since the National Guard story, Mapes sat with ABC’s Brian Ross to talk about the events surrounding the story and her book. She defended the story and asserted, “I think I’m somebody who got fired for trying to do their job in a difficult atmosphere,” adding, “I don’t think I committed bad journalism. I really don’t.”

Ross asked Mapes if she still believed the story on President Bush’s National Guard service was true and she answered, “absolutely.” She said of the Killian memos, which were used to validate the story before their authenticity came under intense scrutiny, that they have not proven to be inauthentic, adding, “I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof I haven’t seen.” Ross asked Mapes if the standard ought not to have been for her to prove their authenticity, to which she responded, “I don’t think that’s the standard.”

Mapes assumes everything she sees is true, assuming it fits with her preconceived political notions. Apparently, she’s not alone in the media these days.

Many media outlets have breathlessly reported the charges of Jimmy Massey, a former Marine who became a prominent peace activist after witnessing what he says were war atrocities in Iraq. Problem is, none of the reporters who repeated his accusations ever bothered to check them out. And now that Massey’s been exposed as a fraud, it leaves a bunch of credulous reporters with egg on their faces:

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

[...]

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Editors at some papers look back at the Massey articles and are surprised that they ran them without examining whether the claims were true or without ever asking the Marine Corps about them.

“I’m looking at the story and going, ‘Why, why would we have run this without getting another side of the story?’” said Lois Wilson, managing editor of the Star Gazette in Elmira, N.Y.

David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.

“I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today,” he said.

Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper’s story about Massey could have “benefited from some additional reporting.” But he didn’t necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.

[...]

“You could take any day’s newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test,” he said.

“Yes, it would have been much better if we had the other side. But all I’m saying is that this is unfortunately something that happens every day in our newspapers and with practically every story on television.”

11 November 2005 @ 1:24AM >> Media bias isn’t limited to the U.S., obviously. If anything, the left-wing domination of the media may be even more pronounced in Europe.

Case in point: French newsman Jean-Claude Dassier, who readily admits to skewing coverage of the recent French riots. As violence and fires raged in some 300 French cities and towns, Dassier, the general director of the French TCI news channel, was doing his best to downplay them. Why? He feared that showing images of the riots would build support for right-wing politicians. Not only did he hide certain images from the public, but he readily admits his motivation:

“Politics in France is heading to the right and I don’t want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television,” Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today.

“Having satellites trained on towns across France 24 hours a day showing the violence would have been wrong and totally disproportionate ... Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you’re broadcasting,” he said.

The American media plays similar tricks. Throughout my life, I’ve seen the horror of President Kennedy’s assassination replayed countless times—despite it happening nearly a decade before my birth—yet the horrors of people jumping from the World Trade Center towers are never shown on television, not anymore. That, I guess, might inflame passions.

In the French media, Dassier isn’t alone:

“Do we send teams of journalists because cars are burning, or are the cars burning because we sent teams of journalists?” asked Patrick Lecocq, editor-in-chief of France 2.

Once could ask the same question about terrorist attacks in Iraq, which seem designed to demoralize the American public and weaken our resolve as much as they’re designed to strike fear into the souls of Iraqis. Yet each attack ends up being the top story on the news. Could it be that political calculations are shaping news coverage here at home, too?

You’ve got to give Dassier credit for one thing: at least he owns up to his bias. Our media isn’t honest enough to do that.

9 November 2005 @ 2:38PM >> Many commentators are saying that last night’s election results bode ill for the Republicans in 2006. But the two headline races—the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey—don’t seem like major defeats for the Republican party as a whole. In each case, a Democrat was elected to replace a Democrat, and even when you factor in Governor Schwarzenegger’s defeated ballot initiatives in California, what you’re left with is Democratic victories in places where Democrats have either been dominant for years or have been successful in recent elections. The one exception, of course, is New York City, where Mayor Mike Bloomberg won re-election in a landslide. This is no victory for Republicans, however; Bloomberg can barely be considered a Republican at all. He switched parties shortly before his first run for mayor, and likely did so only to avoid a bruising Democratic primary, which he would not likely have won in the first place.

So, while last night’s results don’t seem to send much of a signal one way or the other, Republicans in Congress should still be wary. Why? Because with the 2004 presidential election a distant memory, Republican voters no longer have to fear a Kerry presidency rehashing all the greatest hits of the Carter era. A Republican criticizing a Republican no longer has the effect of indirectly helping someone like John Kerry get the keys to the White House. So the supporters who have been relentlessly defending President Bush and the Republicans against the scurrilous smears of the Democrats and the anti-war left can now take stock of their own leaders. And many of them don’t like what they see.

Unfortunately, the structure of our government encourages each Congressman to go to the voters every two years with a laundry list of goodies brought back to the district courtesy of U.S. taxpayers everywhere. When I was growing up, House Speaker Tip O’Neill was the embodiment of the tax-and-spend Democrats. Every time you’d see his face on TV, you knew money was magically evaporating from your pocket. And day by day, his nose seemed to balloon with the size of the Federal government. Tip, you see, lived by the dictum that “all politics is local.” He knew how to buy votes by handing out goodies to his district, and he didn’t care what it did to the size of the budget or the rest of the country.

In 1994, the Republicans took over the House for the first time since the Eisenhower Administration. Faithful Republican voters were promised a class that would clean house. And they did, for a while, until they got comfortable in their jobs, propped up by the perks, and then all of a sudden various planks from the Contract With America went down the memory hole. (Does anyone remember term limits?) Over a decade after the Republicans took over, they seemed to have gotten as fat and lazy as the Democratic leadership they replaced. They’re now spending like drunken sailors in a fashion that would make Tip O’Neill proud (and maybe a little jealous). And on important issues like protecting our borders, the Republicans in Congress have followed President Bush’s lack-of-lead and taken no action. Millions of people stream across our borders illegally—providing a big gaping hole for not just immigrants seeking work, but terrorists seeking destruction—and Republicans turn the other way out of fear of alienating potential voters. With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?

2006 may be a nasty year for the Republicans, and if it is, it won’t be because the Democrats are making gains with the public. It’ll be because many Republican voters see little point in supporting candidates who are indistinguishable from their opponents on such important issues. In these days of a hyper-polarized electorate, the importance of each party’s base becomes paramount. If Democrats emerge victorious in 2006, it’ll be because their base is energized while the Republican base is dispirited.

So even though last night’s results aren’t really the wake-up call that some commentators are claiming, perhaps Republican politicians should interpret it that way just the same. Because unless something changes between this November and next, I don’t think there are going to be very many Republican voters enthusiastic about pulling the lever for their party.

8 November 2005 @ 10:38AM >> Senator Norm Coleman describes the threat:

It sounds like a Tom Clancy plot. An anonymous group of international technocrats holds secretive meetings in Geneva. Their cover story: devising a blueprint to help the developing world more fully participate in the digital revolution. Their real mission: strategizing to take over management of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web. Does it sound too bizarre to be true? Regrettably, much of what emanates these days from the U.N. does.

The Internet faces a grave threat. We must defend it. We need to preserve this unprecedented communications and informational medium, which fosters freedom and enterprise. We can not allow the U.N. to control the Internet.

Absolutely. Any organization that lets Libya, China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia sit on its Commission on Human Rights clearly can’t be trusted to keep the Internet free. Do we really want the likes of Fidel Castro having a say in what is and is not acceptable online discourse?

7 November 2005 @ 9:10PM >> Before Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr was killed in Iraq, he left a note on his laptop to be read by loved ones in the event of his death. Last week, The New York Times found itself embroiled in controversy after the paper was caught selectively editing Starr’s letter to remove any mention of his support for the war effort. Now, Starr’s surviving girlfriend Emmylyn Anonical is blasting the paper, saying that she was “upset about what they took out of that letter”:

In her first public comments since the letter scandal erupted, Anonical told The [New York] Post that going public with the private letter was one of the hardest decisions of her life.

Seeing it used by the Times to misrepresent her boyfriend’s beliefs about the war stung deeply, she said.

“The reason I chose to share that letter was the paragraph about why he was doing this, not the part about him expecting to die. It hurt, it really hurt,” she said by phone from Seattle.

The fallen Marine’s family and conservative critics are now accusing the “paper of record” of inserting its anti-war stance into news pages.

Starr’s uncle, Timothy Lickness, told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that the family’s reaction to the Times and its editing “was not so much anger as it was disappointment.” Apparently, even before this incident, the Times was not held in high regard by the family. “[T]his being the story in the Times, I don’t think anybody is all that surprised,” Lickness said. He’s now waiting to hear back from the paper:

We really are not a bitter family. We are not a family that holds grudges. We want to honor Jeffrey, and so we wanted the rest of his story to be told. I did write to the Times, and I asked them, I thought very politely, if they would run the rest of the story. I did not get a reply.

Meanwhile, in the context of a hard-to-locate correction from Times columnist Nick Kristof, Mickey Kaus discovers another possible explanation for the paper’s decision to hide some content behind the $50-a-year firewall known as TimesSelect. It turns out that TimesSelect is the new dumping ground for corrections that the paper would rather not print:

Kristof may have hit on the marketing breakthrough that will save TimesSelect. Call it TruthSelect. Here’s the plan: Have the op-ed columns in the print edition contain flagrant inaccuracies. Figure out what the factual version of events is, but print the corrected, accurate version only on the restricted, premium portion of the Web site, where people have to pay $49.95 to get at it. The B.S. is free. The truth you have to pay for! It’s so simple and intuitive it’s genius.

7 November 2005 @ 10:55AM >> British news outlet Sky News will be running a segment on my documentary efforts. I will be participating in a live interview by satellite from New York, and the segment may also include clips from Brainwashing 101 and the unreleased Brainwashing 201: The Second Semester.

The piece will be broadcast during the 8PM-9PM hour, London time. (The producers currently expect it to air around 8:30, but these things sometimes have a way of shifting around at the last minute.)

4 November 2005 @ 12:16PM >> Three years ago, I warned about music CDs that were deliberately corrupted by manufacturers in order to prevent copying. Because such CDs were really not CDs at all—they violate the published standard for music CDs—some computers had trouble handling them, and the corrupted discs could cause those computers to crash.

Now Sony Music, in an attempt to stem piracy, is putting out a new form of CD containing copy protection code that hides itself on your computer. The software, which is technologically similar to spyware and computer viruses, has no uninstall feature, and attempting to remove it manually can render your CD drive inoperable.

The Washington Post reports:

The CDs in question make use of a technique employed by software programs known in security circles as “rootkits,” a set of tools attackers can use to maintain control over a computer system once they have broken in.

People may differ over what exactly a rootkit is, but the most basic ones are designed to ensure that regular PC monitoring commands and tools cannot see whatever has been planted on the victim’s machine. Because rootkits generally get their hooks into the most basic level of an operating system, it is sometimes easier (and safer) to reformat the affected computer’s hard drive than to surgically remove the intruder.

Sony’s anti-piracy program installer pops up when you drop one of these content-protected CDs into your drive. If you agree to install it, there is no “uninstall” feature. [Mark Russinovich, who discovered Sony’s rootkit software,] was able to use his knowledge of rootkits and the Windows operating system to zero in on the offending driver files needed to run the software. Unfortunately, he found that removing the program also erased the system files that power his CD-ROM drive, rendering it useless.

Russinovich also discovered that the Sony program drivers are configured to load themselves in “Safe Mode” (a diagnostic mode of Windows that is useful for fixing problems with the operating system), which he said could make system recovery extremely difficult if any of the program drivers has a bug that prevents the system from booting.

3 November 2005 @ 10:05AM >> When you turn on the news or open the paper for reporting from Iraq, what do you see? These days, news coverage is little more than a recitation of the latest casualty reports on our side. One solider was killed by a roadside bomb. Another soldier was killed in a helicopter crash. Do you ever wonder what these soldiers were doing while they were alive? You’ll rarely hear that. Are you ever curious about any of our military operations? If we still had the media of World War II, you might actually learn something beyond the latest death count. But today’s media can’t be bothered with that.

And how about the political progress in Iraq? There have been two historic national elections, one to fill a parliament, and another to ratify the country’s new constitution. Iraqis literally risked death just to vote, and they still had higher turnout than American elections do. Yet I saw more media coverage of long lines at polling places in Ohio than these two Iraqi elections combined. It’s pretty damn remarkable that a country went from a brutal dictatorship to a struggling but hopeful democracy in two years. So why aren’t we hearing more about it?

Whether it’s bias, laziness, incompetence, or just a fascination with the bloody, if you get all of your news from the establishment media, you’re getting a pretty skewed vision of the new Iraq. Many people have noticed this for a long time, soldiers especially. Recently, CNN interviewed one soldier who gave a critique on the media’s coverage:

[I]t is kind of disheartening sometimes to see everything focused on just the, the death and destruction and the IED strikes and not focused on how well the U.S. and coalition forces are doing building up the Iraqi police services and the Iraqi army. It really is a tremendous effort being put into that infrastructure and building a self-sufficient government over there. And they’re absolutely making progress.

But you almost never see that progress covered. Instead, you see the exact same story—with a few variables changed—repeated over and over.

The media’s decisions about what to cover and not cover are made by a handful of people in New York and Washington, DC. If they all share similar views, that may explain why virtually all coverage of Iraq is identical: the latest death count, and little more. It’s been this way for so long that even journalism students are beginning to notice. In the Columbia Journalism Review, certainly no bastion of neo-conservatism, one columnist questions the state of Iraq reporting:

[T]he 2,000th military death in Iraq happened to fall on exactly the same day as the Iraqi constitution was officially passed. The constitution story, though appearing on many front pages, paled in placement and headline size to the 2,000-death story, with many papers boldfacing and enlarging the number “2,000,” so that it eclipsed any other nearby story. As one would expect, conservative critics jumped at this as further proof that, once again, the liberal media was trumpeting the bad news and suppressing the good news.

The columnist did a quick search and found that “[i]n the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times there was just one story each about the constitution passing. Whereas the 2,000 deaths story inspired three to four stories and a couple op-eds and editorials per paper.”

In my mind, every soldier who dies is significant. The first, the fiftieth, and the five-hundredth death are equally worthy of our sorrow and our gratitude that some people are willing to sacrifice their lives for others. But the 2,000th death is a story only because we happen to use a base-10 counting system. Is one number a bigger story than another because it has a few zeros on the end? Is it a big enough story to eclipse something as historic as a freed people voting themselves a new constitution?

In the media’s reporting, the storyline for each event in Iraq is set even before it happens. To the small clique of media bigwigs who make these decisions, negative stories get prominence and virtually everything else gets ignored. So what happens when reality doesn’t quite fit the predetermined model? Well, that’s just a minor inconvenience that can be fixed with a little selective editing. Take, for example, The New York Times and its body count watch for the 2,000th soldier killed in Iraq. The Times coverage mentioned Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr, who died earlier this year on Memorial Day. Starr left a note for his loved ones to be read in the event of his death. Here’s some of what he wrote:

Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I’m writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I’m pushing my chances. I don’t regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.

Here’s how the Times reported Starr’s statement:

Sifting through Cpl. Starr’s laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the Marine’s girlfriend. “I kind of predicted this,” Cpl. Starr wrote of his own death. “A third time just seemed like I’m pushing my chances.”

Starr’s words posed a problem for the predetermined storyline, so the Times just left most of them out. That’s how a statement in support of the operations in Iraq became a simple fatalistic prediction of death. And that’s far from the first time the Times has shaped quotes to fit its worldview.

So what does this all mean? For now, it means that the media’s artificially negative portrayal of Iraq is sapping U.S. support for the war. But in the long run, it’s proof that the establishment media is willing to destroy itself in the process of furthering a political agenda. The media’s only real asset is their credibility, and they’re pimping out that credibility every time they try to jam current reality into a Vietnam-era model of the world.

Psychologically, it is understandable. The media has never been as powerful as it was when it turned the nation against the Vietnam war. Some people have a hard time letting go of their glory days. But for an industry that’s already in decline, selling a product with so many obvious flaws makes about as much sense as shooting yourself in the head while you’re jumping off a skyscraper.

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(Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously referred to Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr as the 2,000th U.S. soldier who died in Iraq. His profile was included in New York Times coverage of the 2,000 mark, but was not himself the 2,000th soldier killed.)

2 November 2005 @ 7:08AM >> Professor Glenn Reynolds gives a history lesson to the apparent amnesiac who leads the Democrats in the Senate.

I tried performing a similar educational service nearly two years ago, to little avail. I guess it takes a while for facts to sink in.

1 November 2005 @ 12:50PM >> While schoolchildren elsewhere were eating candy corn and cutting pumpkins out of construction paper, kids in Toronto public schools were “writ[ing] health warnings for all Halloween candies.” Why? Because Halloween is the latest target of political correctness.

Last week, teachers in Toronto received a memo from the District School Board advising them to “forego traditional classroom Halloween celebrations because they are disrespectful of Wiccans and may cause some children to feel excluded.”

Canada’s National Post reports:

“Many recently arrived students in our schools share absolutely none of the background cultural knowledge that is necessary to view ‘trick or treating,’ the commercialization of death, the Christian sexist demonization of pagan religious beliefs, as ‘fun,’ ” says the memo.

Entitled “Halloween at TDSB Schools: Scarrrrrry Stufff,” the document seeks to clarify for teachers and principals the extent to which Halloween activities should be pursued in multicultural settings. [...]

The memo goes on to remind teachers that, “Halloween is a religious day of significance for Wiccans and therefore should be treated respectfully.”

As is usual, the people who have decided to take offense to Halloween on behalf of Wiccans don’t necessarily have the support of the Wiccans:

Nicole Cooper, a first-degree priestess of the Wiccan Church of Canada’s Toronto Temple, agreed. “Frankly, Wiccans are a minority — an extreme religious minority,” she said.

The Halloween celebrations of North American pop culture, she added, are “not actually threatening to my religion anymore than eggs and cute little bunnies are threatening to Easter.”

[...]

“If I had children I wouldn’t deprive them of that — it’s a really fun thing to do. It’s engaging in the spirit of the season; it’s exciting for kids,” Ms. Cooper said.

That argument won’t get you very far, though. “Fun” is a concept completely foreign to the High Priests of Political Correctness, the mentally disfigured intellectual dwarves who dwell in the twilight of the mind concocting new ways to get upset on behalf of other people who often don’t want the “help” in the first place.

But it makes me wonder: what kind of culture will we be left with if we rid ourselves of everything that makes us unique just so we don’t offend any new arrivals? We bend over backwards to accommodate every foreign and fringe culture, but at the same time, we don’t even show half that respect to the culture that already exists here.

Are the High Priests of Political Correctness really concerned with being open to other cultures? Or is their real goal to destroy ours?