New York Times' owned IHT calling the media "marginal"?!!

Still, Rather insisted, there really did seem to be problems with Bush's Guard record; if the memos were fake, they reflected reality. The whole messy affair probably changed few voters' minds in this discouragingly sordid political year. It did, however, cast light on the growing political role of the sometimes marginal media that helped humble Rather. Foremost among these are Internet blogs - Web logs, or online journals - and broadcast talk shows.

Rather Irrelevant (washingtonpost.com)

Rather Irrelevant (washingtonpost.com)

Media idiot

Peter Clark, Senior Scholar, Poynter Institute on televising hearings on CBS Rathergate.

It's time for public hearings again. What did CBS people know, and when did they know it?

Transparency is the word of the day in journalism standards and practices, and what could be more transparent than testimony taken in public? Televised hearings, it will be argued, would produce posturing and preening aplenty, distorting the details of empirical investigation. Look what happens to big time defense attorneys when they get to work the cameras."

Oh yes. Would be great. Media-appointed investigators questioning media about media misdeeds.

Where do they find these kinds of idiots?

Media idiot

Peter Clark, Senior Scholar, Poynter Institute on televising hearings on CBS Rathergate.

It's time for public hearings again. What did CBS people know, and when did they know it?

Transparency is the word of the day in journalism standards and practices, and what could be more transparent than testimony taken in public? Televised hearings, it will be argued, would produce posturing and preening aplenty, distorting the details of empirical investigation. Look what happens to big time defense attorneys when they get to work the cameras."

Oh yes. Would be great. Media-appointed investigators questioning media about media misdeeds.

Where do they find these kinds of idiots?

ITEM:

BRUSSELS - Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht on Wednesday hit out at the speech given by US President George W Bush to the United Nations where he defended the war in Iraq.
'I hope that in reality he thinks differently to what he was saying,' said De Gucht on Wednesday, adding that he did not believe the optimistic picture given by Bush reflected the true situation. 'If not, then we have a real problem,' he added. 'For Europeans his declarations appear to show he is not living on the same planet.' 'Even the average British politician does not believe these things any more.'

But De Gucht conceded that the reconstruction of Iraq was important and that the UN still had a role to play.

Melanie Phillips is a journalist and she has come to the same conclusion I came to and has titled her essay, The media war against the west.

Dumber than Gore

The National Post has a new blog for their editorial board writers. This one by Lorne Gunter is a gem. (All the ones by Gunter seem very good.)
A friend and fellow journalist discovered the story about the memos, especially the fact that a "third-grader could spot those as fakes."

Michael Berg

Blogger INDC June 4, 2004 INDC Journal Interviews Michael Berg
Citizen Smash on Fellow traveler GILLIAN RUSSOM and friends.
June 5, 2004 (Video) Michael Berg Speaks.
Sept 16, 2004 Berg's father speaks for Kerry

It is incomprehensible to most of us that politics should be so pervasive to a human being that it trumps human decency. The problem with being a True Believer is that it becomes the purpose for living, a fantatical adherence to a cause, whether it is politics or religion.

A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves - and it does this by enfolding them and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole. - Eric Hoffer

This is why mass movements never achieve solutions. They aren't meant to solve problems. They exist to celebrate the disenchantment with society itself, to create a class of the disaffected who are powerless to achieve anything but serve as rabble to bolster the cause of those who organize them. Hoffer was a self-educated longshoreman. True Believer is a classic that helps the reader understand the mass movements that have convulsed Europe with communism, socialism, fascism in the 20th century. You can reread the book fifty times and walk away with new understanding every time.

OTHER BOOKS THAT ADD TO UNDERSTANDING
Psychologist and philosopher Victor Frankl experienced the horrors of national socialism in a concentration camp and came away with a philosophy for our times. Man's Search for Meaning is a slim volume that is readable and inspiring, a gift of life from a truly wonderful man.

Christopher Lasch was a keen observer of cultural. Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy was published after his death and suffers somewhat from lack of his precision editing. The online review by Caroline Miranda sums it up nicely, if Lasch can be summed up. He's more to be savored.

Libertarian nonsense

Blubbering libertarianism from Cathy Young, editor at Reason, writing in the Boston Globe.

As I tried to follow the early debate on the CBS memos, I was utterly confused by the cacophony of agenda-driven charges and countercharges, insults, and clashing pronouncements by self-styled experts whose credentials had to be taken on faith. The pro-Bush blogs shrieked that the incriminating documents were obvious computer-created fakes; the anti-Bush blogs shrieked that, beyond any doubt, typewriters capable of producing these memos were available in the 1970s. No offense to the upstart blogs, but what finally settled my doubts was reporting by mainstream media such as ABC News and The Washington Post.

And this silliness:

In the past, the danger was that the "big media" with their unspoken biases could exert too much unchecked and unbalanced influence over public opinion. Today, the danger is that some people will choke on the overabundance of facts and interpretations, while others will withdraw into a comfortable niche, exposing themselves only to journalism that feeds their prejudices.

Apparently, Cathy can't form an opinion unless it is validated by MSM. If such transparent forgeries can't convince Cathy without waiting for the WashPo to figure it out for her, you wonder if she is capable of any judgement whatsoever. It's why she's Libertarian, I guess.

P.S. Note to Cathy. It isn't old media vs. new media. It's discovering the truth wherever it leads you.

WSJ Opinion Journal raises questions of whether CBS was a "vessel for, if not a willing participant in, a partisan dirty trick" in the Bush bushwacking story. [bolding mine]

And we know that the day after Mr. Rather's report aired, the Democrats unveiled 'Operation Fortunate Son,' a campaign video about Mr. Bush's National Guard service that incorporated footage from '60 Minutes.'

Pretty hard to disagree with that conclusion nor walk away unconvinced after reading this by Balloon Juice.

Right now, they merely appear incompetent, and they have determined incompetence is better than complicit.

Read the whole thing. It's a great article. And Roger L. Simon's take on it is good, too.

Voice of the Left. Whenever anyone quotes Jim Muller and calls him "a physician who battled nuclear weapons," they are being as disingenuous about his leftwing history as he is himself in claiming his "Voice of the Faithful" is a grassroots organization dedicated to reforming the Catholic Church.

This hack job leftwing group is a successor to the anti-war, anti-bomb, ant-west groups of the 1980s. If you needed no more evidence, his interview with the Cinncinnati Enquirer is a media/leftwing collaborative effort. The Enquirer gave the VOTF Cincinnati chairperson a guest column because of the great support of the population -- all 15 of em.

Nice News story

Home Depot is working with the government to hire more veterans, and active duty service members about to be discharged and the military spouses. Good for Home Depot.

CBC squealers

CBC TRIES TO SKEWER COMPETITION
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC home) squealed to Reuters on CanWest.

A CBC reporter contacted the news agency after noticing that a Reuters story in last Tuesday's National Post was altered.

The result was this story that quickly disappeared.

CBS HUMILIATION
Globe and Mail refer to CBS's "humiliating apology" calling it " a huge blow to the credibility of CBS and its 60 Minutes public-affairs program," ending with the unexpected conclusion. HERE

The apology is the latest in a series of scandals that have questioned the journalistic ethics of leading U.S. news media, including The New York Times and USA Today.

It's fair to say that the left leaning Globe and Mail are not happy with the ineptness of our own left leaning media. Since the Globe and Mail has hidden their columnists and editorials and even their letters behind a subscription wall, we can't read Margaret Wente, but it's a safe bet she was gonna skewer CBS too. "After a series of increasingly absurd efforts to defend the indefensible... "

Monsters

He was five-years-old when was lured into a bar where pedophiles paid $12 each to rape him. He was killed the same day. His body has never been found, but the thirteen adults are in court in Germany.

Liars or buffoons

FoxNews "CBS: We Were Duped" is a nice copout, blaming Burkett, as if they didn't know he was a mental basket case.

As for the rest of us, we've all seen the memos. If CBS was taken in by such cheesy forgeries, you have to worry about their ability to judge any news story. The fake-but-authentic-memos story, however, demonstrates to another generation the bias, blather, and blatant incompetence of CBS.

Tim Blair on how the "Authenticity wasn't proven." OUCH

CBS woes grow

From the Globe and Mail (Canada) that is no fan of GW Bush.

In its rush to broadcast a story besmirching George W. Bush's Vietnam-era war service, CBS News has managed to turn a long-running controversy over the President's lacklustre military career into a public accounting of its own judgment.

"I, ah, sent the memos.
But I didn't, ah, create them."

Posted by Hello

Reuters is upset by CanWest's rewrite of their stories.

Papers owned by CanWest Publications, Canada's largest newspaper chain, have been altering words and phrases in some newswire copy stories dealing with the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thereby changing their meaning.

In one Reuters story, the original copy reads: "… the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four-year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank."

In the National Post version, printed Tuesday, it became: "… the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel."

I guess that means not using the word "terrorist" to describe ah, well, "terrorists" also serves to change the meaning?? The editors at CanWest think it does.

Ownership Notes: CanWest is the only "conservative group"of papers in Canada. It includes the National Post (formerly Hollinger) and a number of smaller papers.
Reuters was winner of the 2003 Dishonest Reporting Award for the most skewed and biased reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Honestreporting.com

Emmy ratings

Ratings weren't good for the Emmy's, but even worse than most outlets are reporting.
"The latest figures mark a 22 percent drop from the 17.9 million viewers who watched last year's Emmys on Fox. Ratings dropped even further by 34 percent among viewers aged 18 to 49, the demographic favored by advertisers."
Source: ABC news link

The Gilligan defence

I can't figure out if the Washington Post actually believes this or they are trying to offer CBS a lifeline, a means of scapegoating the White House for the memos.

The papers were hand-delivered at 7:45 a.m. CBS correspondent John Roberts, filling in for Rather, sat down with [White House communications director] Bartlett at 11:15.

Half an hour later, Roberts called "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes with word that Bartlett was not challenging the authenticity of the documents. Mapes told her bosses, who were so relieved that they cut from Rather's story an interview with a handwriting expert who had examined the memos.

Mapes is going to be sacrificed. "Howard said Mapes told him the analysts' concerns had been addressed." [Which is odd when CBS never mentioned having concerns before now and doesn't again until after the broadcast and blogger reaction.]

WashPo offering CBS an out. It's a hoax. [Bolding mine]

As they continue their investigation into whether they were hoaxed, CBS officials have begun shifting their public focus from the memos themselves to their underlying allegations about the president. Rather said that if the memos were indeed faked, "I'd like to break that story." But whatever the verdict on the memos, he said, critics "can't deny the story."

The problem is, they they aren't claiming a hoax, as Mark Steyn points out. "The only reasonable conclusion is that the source -- or trail of sources -- is even more incriminating than the fake documents. Why else would Heyward and Rather allow the CBS news division to commit slow, public suicide?"

WashPo final paragraph unintentially sums up the CBS problem.

As the days begin to blur for Josh Howard, he embraces the same logic: "So much of this debate has focused on the documents, and no one has really challenged the story. It's been frustrating to us to see all this reduced to a debate over little 'th's."

It's a debate over fraud, stupid, and journalistic ethics. The Independent calls it the

"Gilligan defence", pioneered by the BBC journalist in the corporation's 2003 row with the Government over the "sexed-up" Iraq weapons dossier.In both cases, the accused party claims that, whatever the doubts about the supporting evidence, the basic story was true."

Compare the liberal position on gun control and the reality.

FOLLOWUP: Michelle Malkin is following the story of Phil Parlock who was photographed with his 3-year-old daughter crying after a protestor ripped up a Bush/Cheney sign she was carrying.

There is some dispute about whether it was staged. There is a very handsome online apology from the International Union of Painters and Allied trades that Captain's Quarters thinks is unncessary. He has doubts about the family. As do some other conservative bloggers. Michelle will be following.

If it was a stunt, it deserves to be exposed and thankfully, bloggers on both sides are trying to get to the bottom of it. At the minimum, though, I agree with Captain Ed. The man had no business taking a three-year-old to a political rally as an opposition protester.

RUSSIA: Moscow police have defused two car bombs. A suspect was arrested and confessed. He since has died of a heart attack, which strikes me as a very effective start to a war on terrorism.

CUBA: The BBC which usually praises Former Czech president Vaclav Havel is oh so carefully neutral when he predicts the end of Fidel Castro and encourages Cuban "anti-Castro activists." (The BBC reserves the term "dissidents" for those they agree with or for whom they have sympathy.)

SPAIN: Draft legislation for divorce in Spain would not only be no-fault, but no-judge either with the added bonus that Divorce will be final in two to six months. "According to 2002 data from Spain's state-run INE statistics office, the number of single-parent households nearly equals that of families comprising a couple with three or more children." What a surprise.

Game over

When the Independent, home of Robert Fisk, scolds CBS, the game is over.

For Mr Rather himself, the dispute is another acrimonious brush with power in a career studded with them. For the moment, he is adopting what might be called the 'Gilligan defence', pioneered by the BBC journalist in the corporation's 2003 row with the Government over the 'sexed-up' Iraq weapons dossier.
In both cases, the accused party claims that, whatever the doubts about the supporting evidence, the basic story was true.

Oh, and they read ratherbiased.com

The remedy

Richard Reeb relects on a remedy for a media worldview that is alien to our thinking of just "powers from the consent of the governed." We no longer want to consent.

But old media have an overweening sense of their own importance. They believe that they alone can or should guarantee our freedoms or, perhaps more accurately, to restrain our natural inclination to think, speak and act without oppression by the government. As long as we consent to this situation, we are consenting to be misled.

A do-not-miss read: Horsefeathers on warfare and utopian Liberalism sensitivities and John Stuart Mill.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Freedom of the press for those who own one

The Independent's John Lichfield worries about the independence of the French press with the takeover of Le Figaro.

M. Dassault's takeover of Le Figaro has raised fears that the French press is falling under the control of the political-military-industrial establishment. The Lagardère group, formerly Matra and a shareholder in European Airbus, already owns the Hachette empire. It is also the biggest book publisher, book distributor and newsagent. With Dassault's takeover of Socpresse, three-quarters of the press is run by two military-industrial groups, posing the question: is French press freedom about to become a "mirage"?

[Bolding mine]

Getting tough with journalism

New rules in the U.K. would make newspaper editors liable for "wasted costs" and require them to reimburse the government if they are found liable for the collapse of a criminal trial. After several high profile cases in which retrials were ordered after adverse media coverage, the government is taking a harder stand. The ruling would apply equally to jurors, witnesses or members of the public if they are found guilty of "serious misconduct."

Reigning in paraprazzi-style journalism practiced by major media outlets would not be a bad thing.

Someone write a requiem

Sensing on why the documents matter.

The authenticity of the memos is the most important aspect of this whole scandal. If documents can be forged, handed to co-conspiratorial media and used to hammer or destroy a political figure without regard to the fact that the documents are forged, then what the Left has long claimed about America will come true: we are not far removed from a Gestapo regime. Only the Left will itself will have brought it about, and the Left will be the new reichsfuhrers.

Read it all.

It occured to me in reading Sensing that he makes too much sense. He's rational, responsible and entirely lucid and honorable. That's when it struck me that it is those qualities that makes us repel most about CBS's faked memoes. The disregard for the rules of ethics and morality, decency, and fair play, produces in most of us an outrage at the flagrant lie the faked documents represent. But, really, should we be outraged?

It is not a frivilous question. Most of us do not think highly of the MSM and haven't for a long time. Since the 60s and with a constancy that has become so predictable that it is stale, the media has been far more liberal than average Americans. The acceptance of this as universal fact, though, is a rather recent phenomenon when you think about it. It is a consensus that was not reached recently, but assented to only a short time ago, responded to recently in our own form, our own way, on the internet, in blogs.

The Liberalism of the media is no longer something we sense but something we deeply resent. In concert and in chorus. So why should they act differently now and why should we suddenly expect more of them? Because we have caught them so flagrantly lying? That's just it -- they know this isn't an unusual occurrence. They know that when Rather pretended that those documents were genuine, it was not a first time CBS or Dan Rather scammed the American public. In a Joe McCarthy gesture, Dan Rather held up the memos, waved them, and expected us to accept his word. They can't respond with guilt because if they did, they would have to admit that this tactic was nothing new. Shame is a emotion they can't afford to display.

CBS isn't going to apologize and Dan Rather isn't going to quit. To do so would be to undermine the whole concept of a talking head journalist speaking to a one-dimensional audience he can only imagine beyond the lens of the camera out there... somewhere. People he never sees, never meets and never really exist in his reality are hard to address in terms of moral responsibility. How can you feel guilty about lying to people who despise you anyway?

That's what struck me about Rather's appearances this week. Think about his street interview outside the studio that day. Who did he remind you of? He looked like Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger and Judy Woodruff in that gymnasium for the first time in their lives in a live setting where the responses are not scripted, the audience wasn't hand picked, the game wasn't already fixed. They looked like deer caught in the headlights. They looked terrified.

It's what Dan Rather looked like. It was like he walked out into the sunshine for the first time in forty years, blinked, looked around, and was amazed, frightened, and unsure all at once. The MSM cannot operate in the glare of public scrutiny. They know it, too. They're scared.

Turkey to EU: mind your own business

This is heartening. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told the European Union on Friday to mind your own business. This was in response to EU interference and hectoring about Turkey's desire to pass a law making adultery a crime. Naturally, the pantywaist liberals in the Liberal media promptly trotted out the womens' groups to protest this codification of Turkish morality. The Internationalists around the globe had hardly stopped cheering when it looked like they might prevail in derailing another demonstration of national sovereignty. What the cheering did was make Turkey dig in and now plans for a new penal code in conformity with the EU have been delayed.

Whether or not you agree with the the proposed law, the Left Liberals in Europe have gotten their way too long. Ultimately member states have to ask if it is possible to pass any laws that aren't pre-screened by the European Union and the slavish world press?

This is the second time the pantyhose men in the Hague have been slapped down in the last month. The last time it was by Putin.

Dutch proverb: Sweep before your own door before you look after your neighbour's.

Loose Lips

The Germans are taking terrorism seriously, more so than the rest of Europe. They probably have to because Germany is a higher profile. But the news that an German-born American woman who had been living in Canada was arrested and is accused of treason tells you how concerned they are. According to Deutsche Welle, the betrayal would have raised a serious security threat to Germany.

NPR's Undecided Voter

We always knew the liberal media were dog-kicking liars. It took the internet and blogs, though before we could document their fakes and frauds. Like NPR's Undecided Voter.

Tip to Reader David Ragsdale and fraterslibertas. Good job, guys.

Kofi Annan

Interesting background for the Kofi Annan remarks that the war in Iraq was illegal. Thanks to Secular Blasphemy for the tip.

Sustaining resentment

Who said this? "Nobody should expect people to forget the suffering of their ancestors, nor should they. But memories of past trials should translate into efforts to ensure that they don't happen again, not into sustaining resentment."

If you guessed the New York Times (International Herald Tribune), you probably guessed they were talking about Polish reparation claims against Germany, too. The Times, however, is a dollar late on the story as the brief flirtation with the reparation idea was quickly abandoned. Unlike, say, slave reparations in the U.S.

This NYTimes article, oddly, doesn't mention 'sustaining resentment' once. Maybe they should cc the Romantic Revolutionary.

Motor Voter Fraud

Jeff Jacoby, the lonely conservative at the Boston Globe, has written about election fraud before. In 1996 he registered his wife's cat in three states and requested and got absentee ballots from all three venues. He did this to point out the election fraud possibilities of the Motor Voter law very dear to Clinton and the Democrats who crafted and passed it as a priority in Clinton's first term. They never had a chance to enact Pt. II which would have been some sort of measure to allow voting at work so that poll scrutiny of multiple voters would be less likely to discover election fraud. The fraud is very real as he points out in his column.

As journalist John Fund shows in an alarming new book, 'Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy,' the United States has an elections system that would be an embarrassment in Honduras or Ghana. It is so unpoliced, he writes, that at least eight of the 9/11 hijackers 'were actually able to register to vote in either Virginia or Florida while they made their deadly preparations.

Double voting - registering in two different states - is pathetically easy. It's done on university campuses all the time. It's a safe bet, too, that the elite who live in New York also vote in their second home residences. (It's comforting to think that's why Connecticut and Vermont have such screwy politics otherwise it's hard to imagine why anyone would want such disastrously bad governance.)

Jacoby suggests I.D. at a minimum when voting. I think a thumb print and I.D. are better safeguards. I bet those hijackers had exquisitely crafted I.D. I know they all had valid drivers licenses. But a thumb print is a signature to a felony.

Surfing the continent

GERMANY: Germans unhappy with Islam. "When asked what they think of in association with the word 'Islam' some 93 percent of Germans said 'oppression of women', 83 percent said 'terror', 82 percent said 'fanatics and radicals', 70 percent said 'dangerous', 66 per cent said 'backward', 45 percent said 'hospitality' and 6 percent said both 'tolerance' and 'nice'. "

THEN THERE IS THE GOVERNMENT VIEW. Belatedly, the German government is moving to ban an Islamic "Congress" planned for October in Berlin. Previously they had refused to act, deferring to Berlin to take the heat make a decision. The group planning the "First Arab Islamic Congress in Europe" aims to support "the resistance movement against aggression and occupation in Palestine and Iraq." (taken from their web site.) They deny, however, they are catering to Islamic extremists. Interior Minister Otto Schily thinks it would pose a security threat.

But Schily appears loath to take any chances in letting the conference go ahead, especially considering how hard the government has worked to avoid having Germany look like a haven for Arab radicals in the past couple of years.

The authorities became particularly concerned after it became known that several of the men involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington had lived for several years in the northern German city of Hamburg.

ELECTIONS ON SEPT. 19TH don't look promising for Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats. I guess building a social welfare system to buyoff voters based on an economy subsidized by cheap oil smuggled by French firms from Iraq through Syria is, apparently, a poor economic model.

UPDATE: (Sept. 20th) The Lebanese organizer of an Islamic conference with anti-semitic, anti-American overtones planned for August in Berlin has been deported.

SPAIN: It's a matter of semantics. Police raid netted ten Pakistani men in Barcelona from two flats in an investigation of forged passports. The regional police however denied they were part of a terrorist cell. A police spokesman said: "We are not talking about an Islamic terrorist group but a support group for radicals outside Spain." Glad he clarified that.

FRANCE: Nothing good can come of an industry association plan to improve service as the French hotel and catering industry's main trade association, UMIH, plans for the notoriously awful cafe industry. If you've ever encountered a French waiter, you know snottiness is a job qualification and hygiene is a variable standard. Inspections would be a helpful, but with French corruption, no one will hold out for changes anytime soon. But, hey, it sounds good.

NETHERLANDS: The European Parliament finally got around to condemning the violence in Darfur. About 50,000 too late.

Now for something completely different

Alberta, Canada, has a waiting list web site where you can get current information on the expected waiting time for anything from cardiac surgery to radiation and therapy.

Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery at the Univ. of Alberta hospital has, for instance, 150 patients waiting, with most patients (90%) receiving service within --- 8 weeks. Priority 1 (undefined) patients have estimated waiting times for physicians of 3, 5, 4, 4, 2 weeks. (Yes WEEKS, not days).

These times are not for emergency care, but, then Bill Clinton's wasn't either. It would not have been even if we had accepted Hillary's health care that wanted to duplicate the Canadian system. It's only the rest of us that would have to wait 2 weeks, 3 weeks, a month, or 5 weeks for the same procedure.

Hearing from the grownups

The Wall Street Journal on "A Media Watershed."

However the flap over CBS and those National Guard 'memos' turns out, the past few weeks mark a milestone in U.S. media and politics. Along with the Swift Boat Veterans' ads, the widespread challenge to Dan Rather's reporting -- to his credibility -- means that the liberal media establishment has ceased to set the U.S. political agenda.

This is potentially a big cultural moment. For decades liberal media elites were able to define current debates by all kicking in the same direction, like the Rockettes. Now and then they can still pull this off, as when they all repeated the same Pentagon-promoted-torture line during the Abu Ghraib uproar. But the last month has widened cracks in that media monopoly that have been developing for some time.

Good overview, lucid writing (compare it to the Editor & Publisher weed-is-good writing) and a great conclusion, none of which the MSM will listen to or heed.

Editor & Publisher dude weighs in

Or maybe the story is a walking contradiction, partly truth, partly fiction, as Kris Kristofferson (like Killian's typist) would have it.

That's how the editor of Editor & Publisher, Greg Mitchell, "sorts out fact from fiction" in the "60 Minutes Flap" as the "CBS controversy" grows "more curious."

Curious, indeed. Jim Romenesko, the acknowledged official blog of journalism, whose site is hosted at Poynter ("Everything you need to be a better journalist"), the wannabe official home of journalism, finally had a main column item on the CBS faked documents. After what? six days? And the result is a link to aging hippie lookalike Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publishing, ("America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry.") You just know the Boomers have taken over. It's like some alien movie where you keep hoping there is some physical mark at the wrist you can spot to warn you if the writing already isn't clue enough.

In case you need more convincing, there's a neat box to the right of the article with links left out of the article. Under "Concepts" there is word processor, letter writers, news pages, media response, Texas attorney. Talk about high tech. Related Articles, above, has a link to three items, including "Helen Thomas Slams Bush at Newspaper's Summer Social" (Pub. Aug. 03, 2004).

It was too much to hope that the aliens at E&P would act like responsible adults, not when they've spent a lifetime creating an alternate reality for themselves and their readers. You can't expect too much of people who have helped the newspaper industry self-destruct. They didn't need help to do it, but the encouragement was nice. And when you are looking for reasons for the deplorable standards in the media, look no higher than the Editor & Publisher.

Bloggers are so cool. Link

Burkett's lawyer is an activist. Democrat activist.

[Tin hat warning] Burkett writes an opinion piece. says Bush wants to be "king of America." "But I first had to survive. Without a single bit of help, contact and in spite of threats against my life and that of my family, I have had to relearn to walk and to live. "
His "friends" are winners and the online journal is strictly Twilight Music stuff.

Sucker story?

NYTimes trying to add to the confusion. [My comments are indicated.]

CBS has refused to say how it obtained the documents. But one person at CBS, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed a report in Newsweek that Bill Burkett, a retired National Guard officer who has charged that senior aides to then-Governor Bush had ordered Guard officials to remove damaging information from Mr. Bush's military personnel files, [ what date? How does Burkett know and can he prove it? ]had been a source of the report. This person did not know the exact role he played.

Mr. Burkett declined to return telephone calls to his home near Abilene, Tex. [Drudge is running a story that memos were faxed from a Kinkos in Abeline, Tex.] His lawyer, [why does he need a lawyer] David Van Os, on Tuesday repeatedly refused to say in a telephone interview whether the officer had played a part in supplying the disputed documents to CBS. Mr. Van Os said 'the real story is and should be, where was George Bush?' and that Mr. Burkett 'is not the proper object of attention.'

Mr. Van Os called Mr. Burkett 'a man of impeccable honesty who would not permit himself to be a party to anything fake, fraudulent or phony.' He also said, in response to questions, and stressing that he was speaking only hypothetically, 'If Bill Burkett were to later discover that something he was a party to were fake or phony, as a man of honor who lives by a code of honor of the military, he would not permit the falsity to continue.' But, the lawyer hastened to add, 'This is not intended to be any kind of specific statement.'

Asked what role Mr. Burkett had in raising questions about Mr. Bush's military service, Mr. Van Os said: 'If, hypothetically, Bill Burkett or anyone else, any other individual, had prepared or had typed on a word processor as some of the journalists are presuming, without much evidence, if someone in the year 2004 had prepared on word processor replicas of documents that they believed had existed in 1972 or 1973 - which Bill Burkett has absolutely not done'' - then, he continued, "what difference would it make?" [So now the memos are replicas? And someone BELIEVED they existed?]

Designated fall guy?

On'tday aysay anything

Underground (BBC) report on -- shhhhhh -- religion in America.
Do not forward this posting. If you print, please destroy the paper after reading. If the ACLU finds out, they will possibly sue BBC for their honesty. The separation of relgion and media is a sacred tenet of journalism.

Klingon Service

I am excited about this. Deutsche Welle (DW) is celebrating 10 years of its online service by adding Klingon language to their daily translation.

Too bad that Klingon isn't on the DW language selector and the link from the BBC doesn't work. Oh well. On the bright side the Klingon Language Institute KLI offers a postal course in PDF.

UPDATE: They fixed the DW Klingon page. It looks like a one-time though. But it's clever.

Europe

NETHERLANDS: "Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands has launched a blistering attack on Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery on the eve of the 60th commemoration of the costly failure of the Battle of Arnhem in 1944." Speaking on television, Bernhard said the British ahd tried to blame the commander of the Polish forces who took part in the operation.

One little item at the end of the article was worth noting. "Bernhard was a member of the Nazi SS before he married the future Dutch Queen Juliana in 1937." who "has been plagued by rumours that he tipped off the Germans about Market Garden." He has a colorful history. That probably explains the Dutch obsession with euthanansia, abortion ships, and Internationalism.

OTHER NEWS FROM THE HAGUE: "The European Parliament rejected earlier this week a resolution condemning the bloody end to the Beslan tragedy and at the same time demanding attention to Russia's actions in Chechnya. The large parties had been concerned that the resolution could have given the impression that the killing of children could be justified." Link (Third item down.)

Milosevic war crimes trial suspended... again

The mockery of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic has been suspended for a month after 20 defense witnesses refused to testify to protest the court appointment of defense lawyers.

The trial has been a joke, as this Sept 03, 2004 cached CBC item shows.

After 2½ years and 296 witnesses, Milosevic's trial hasn't yet reached the halfway mark.

The timeline of the United Nations "International Criminal Tribunal" trial illustrates the problems that include humiliating cross examination of the prosecution, the retirement and death of a judge, exposure of the utter incompetence of the United Nations to the extent that even the legitimacy of the Tribunal itself is in doubt. Certainly the procedures are confused. Some had doubts even before the trial.

The Tribunal itself is a show piece for Internationalism under UN auspices. Supposedly a descendant of the Nuremburg trials, the problem is that those trials were conducted due to and in absence of a functioning German court system. The UN Tribunals are based upon an international treaty (unsigned by the U.S. under Clinton) in a court unrecognized by non-signees to the treaty, a court where no established law or precedent exists. In addition, the trial itself insults the concept of the nation-state, not to mention the distrurbing similarity to the Russian show trials of the 1930s that became verdicts in search of law.

UN International Criminal Tribunal

UPDATE: An AP story from the Toronto Sun quoted James Bissett, Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia.

In court, Milosevic read a letter from James Bissett, who was the Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia when the Balkan wars erupted in the early 1990s, saying the trial "had taken on all the characteristics of a Stalinist show trial."

"I do not wish to appear," Bissett wrote in the letter. "I have from the outset had serious misgivings about the legitimacy of the tribunal." He wrote that the tribunal, created by the UN Security Council in 1993, "is a political court rather than a judicial body operating in the interests of truth and justice."

Contacted in Canada, Bissett confirmed the accuracy of the letter. "My own view is that the court is trying to find Milosevic guilty as a scapegoat for what went wrong in the Balkans," he told The Associated Press.

He has an article on Serbia that is well worth reading, particularly his criticism of the United States that confirms much of what most of us suspected about the Clinton foreign policies. [Bolding is mine.]

The reason the Americans decided to intervene was because they suddenly discovered that arising out of the Yugoslav turmoil there was an opportunity of pursuing two short term United States foreign policy objectives.

The first of these occasions was the opportunity presented in Bosnia of displaying to the Islamic world that the United States was not anti-Muslim. This was particularly important following the first Iraq war. It was thought that by throwing US support behind Alija Izetbegovic and promising him US recognition for Bosnian statehood that US relations with the Muslim world would be strengthened. Izetbegovic’s dream of becoming the leader of the first Muslim state in Europe since the Ottoman Empire was to be realized.

The certainty that this policy would cause a civil war in Bosnia and lead to the death and displacement of many thousands was of little importance. Similarly, the possibility that in the long term United States intervention on the Muslim side would create a potential base for Islamist terrorists in the Balkans was obviously not considered.

The second opportunity for the United States was offered later by the deteriorating situation in Kosovo. By intervening on the side of the Albanians the USA was able to reassert its primacy over NATO and to revitalize a dormant institution that had lost its reason for existence after the Warsaw Pact armies had gone home.

As for the first reason, there is a distinction between the U.S. under Clinton and other administrations. This was purely a Clinton decision to support Albanian Muslims. It was not to right any perceived injury to Muslim relations after the first Iraq war. That was a war Clinton nor his party supported with any enthusiam. The purpose of supporting the Izetbegovic was expressly to establish a Muslim foothold in Europe. It was just an extension of the Jimmy Carter foreign policy that, after all, created the terrorist-supporting state of Iran.

As for the use of NATO, I suspect that had more to do with the re-admission of France to NATO after twenty years and French desires to gain influence with their Muslim friends.

THE GERMAN CONNECTION

Washington Post's Howard Kurtz ""Media View Kitty Kelley's Bush Book With Caution." is fair warning. The book is expected to be full of lurid allegations, and judging from the glee from blogger KOS, the Kelley book is bound to appeal to the unhinged Left. But not everyone is happy.

Recently, blogger and journalist Melanie Phillips on vacation in the U.S. was stunned by the hate filled books she saw on sales in a Borders store. She's not the only one who finds the current crop of political books hate filled and she isn't the only one stuck by the phenomenon. There is something disturbingly alien in such books. They are not political discussions so much as full length hit pieces, and if they offend our American sense of fair play, they should. A lot of them are German:

BERTELSMANN is a privately owned Germany conglomerate. These are a few of the books they published recently. All are wholly owned Bertelsmann publishing companies.

4 From DOUBLEDAY - Bertlesmann owned

The Real Story of the Bush Family,
by Kitty Kelley
(In the U.K. it will be published under Transworld, another Bertelsmann publisher. )

Sore Winners : (And the Rest of Us) in George Bush's America
by John Powers

4 From RANDOM HOUSE - Bertlesmann owned

Bushwacked
by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose

Intelligence Matters
By Bob Graham and Jeff Nussbaum

4 From CROWN - Bertlesmann owned

The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception
by David Corn Washington editor of leftwing publication, The Nation.

4 From PANTHEON - Bertlesmann owned

In the Shadow of No Towers
by by Art Spiegelman. Pantheon.
"The book is a visceral tirade against the Bush administration ("brigands suffering from war fever") and, when least expected, an erudite meditation on the history of the American newspaper comic strip, born during the fierce circulation wars of the 1890s right near the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan."

- From Amazon site Publisher's Weekly review

4 From ALFRED A. KNOPF link - Bertlesmann owned

Obliviously On He Sails : The Bush Administration in Rhyme
by New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin

Who Let the Dogs In? : Incredible Political Animals I Have Known
by Molly Ivins

Checkpoint, a novel that discusses the reasons to assassinate President Bush
by NicholsonBaker (deplored by Victor Davis Hanson)

4 From ALFRED A. KNOPF - Bertlesmann owned
(Rewarding politicians and journalists.)

My Life, Bill Clinton (Expatica notes that My Life has given Bertlesmann's earnings a boost.)
Big Russ and Me By Tim Russert
Why Courage Matters John McCain
Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue by Jane Pauley
The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokow
Fat Man Fed Up : How American Politics Went Bad by Jack Germond, Baltimore Sun journalist.
Reason, Why Liberals will win the Battle for America by Robert Reich
"Reason is a guide to confronting and derailing what he sees as the mounting threat to American liberty, prosperity, and security posed by the radical conservatives–Radcons, as he calls them–whose agenda has dominated public discourse and radically affected government action since the election, by a minority vote, of George W. Bush. "

LINKS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Joe Klein, Clinton's Asst. Attorney General becomes CEO of Bertelsman U.S. operations.
More on Bertelsmann. Here
Here
Here
Timeline of acquisitions.
Here
Groupe Bruxelles Lambert S.A. owns 25% of Bertelsmann AG.

And those are only a few of the recent publications. Tomorrow publisher Georg von Holtzbrinck, owner of St. Martin's Press.

Dan's BILL

Tim Blair being typically Tim Blair (God love him) has spent considerable time on Expert Bill . That's Bill Glennon, typewriter repairman technology consultant, typewriter expert, Dan Rather's only witness. After Glennon's lengthy explanation on how a typewriter could produce centering exactly, Tim Blair noted Glennon's problems with html.

Glennon is involved in; he might be Mr Typewriter, but complicated modern things -- like HTML coding -- somehow elude him:

Can someone tell me how to italicize a quote from a previous post

Well, Bill, first you order the IBM model D with special bendy font keys handcrafted by blind Bavarian elves and then you put a rubber stopper in front of every third letter making sure to hold the typewriter at a precise 47º angle so as to enable engagement of the front index scale tabulator. Making a note of Chastity Bono's birth date, move the sheet of paper three inches to the right and sell your house. Put the carriage on the middle mark of the front index scale, sacrifice your first-born, and walk around your desk three times backwards. Retype the entire document in Gaelic. Wait for reporters.

Russian reforms or collapse of "democracy"?

From NYTimes' International Herald Tribune:

Putin, meeting in special session with cabinet ministers and regional government leaders, outlined what would be the most significant political restructuring in Russia in more than a decade - one that critics immediately said would violate the constitution and stifle what political opposition remains.

The political opposition?

The Communist Party, marginalized and increasingly disorganized, remains the only pure opposition party.

Radio Free Europe has a Russian news summary that begins to suggest some of the complexity of the current Russian crisis. For a Russian viewpoint, the Moscow Times has this report on the planned reforms and some of the rationale.

Putin said he will submit a bill on how regional leaders are elected to the Kremlin-controlled Duma this fall.

The move would end any of the independence still held by regional leaders, who were allowed to run their affairs pretty much as they pleased under President Boris Yeltsin, and have been a thorn in Putin's side since he took office in 2000.

This is not because of their movement toward independence but because corruption in the region has become so pervasive that total collapse, such as in Chechyna will spread across the whole region. Chechyna, like Afghanistan, is being bought by terrorist organizations and will eventually become a home base for a regional conflict that will spread throughout the Caucasus. Chechnyians want neither the militants who are funded by terrorist organizations, the terrorists, nor their own Russian-sanctioned government. Chechyna is a country in total collapse, much like Afghanistan was before the Taliban assumed control with backing from terrorists. (A policy paper from 2000 illustrates the challenges and complexities in the region.)

Whether you believe Putin is making a power grab or seeking to establish Federalism is a matter of interpretation. It's either "central control for powers sake" or "reform." The outcome, however, will determine the viability of Russia itself, presently torn apart by the proliferation of dozens of political parties, each representing a special interest or even a criminal organization with enough money to buy a seat in the Duma. That's what it has come down to and what Putin appears to be trying to change.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA
For sheer incoherence but an essential clue to the media's central position, Haroon Siddiqui, editorial page editor emeritus for the Toronto Sun has this article. It is important to note that this incoherence is remarkably similar to the anarchy of the region, without purpose, or logic, or even a recognizable end game. It is this intellectual anarchy that the media have fallen prey to and endlessly duplicate, quoting from each other. They are, in fact, in desperate search of a philosophy.

Note: Izvestia is not a Russian state-owned newspaper. The editor was fired by the owner of the newspaper who generally supports Putin. Much of the rest of the Russian press is Liberal in the Guardian, Independent, New York Times , BBC, Toronto Sun mold.

List of links for Afghanistan and the Taliban.

When journalists talk of "democracy" in Russia, they are really referring to "gangster capitalism." That's sorta like New Jersey with oversight by a Janet Reno Justice Department.

Aged documents

When you can't fight them or refute them, you make it up. The Independent isn't home to Robert Fisk for nothing. On the "30-year-old documents" in the CBS report on the Bush military record:

But within 24 hours the aged documents were being challenged - raising suspicions that CBS had fallen victim to a hoax by Bush supporters to discredit critics of the President's military record.

Aged documents? You mean like artificially?

Fruit Loops and other Lefties

You can't make this stuff up. Well, you could, but no one would believe it.

From The Guardian, written by Sarah Left (I kid you not.):

At a press conference in London, paid for by the actor Vanessa Redgrave, Mr Zakayev today condemned the hostage takers, saying they were not representative of any political cause or even the human race.

Zakayev is wanted by Russia for involvement in the terrorist attack on the Beslan school. His rant included this precision in thinking.

"The Chechen tragedy is being hijacked by those who fuel the ideologies of both international terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, who see in the conflict further evidence of the oppression of Muslims at the hands of the so-called great powers," he said.

"The west's reluctance to denounce Putin's approach to the Chechen problem is partly responsible for the fact that the cause of our people is now being manipulated by radical extremists who are at war with the west."

If you figured out what he was saying, you would be as nuts as he is. The Guardian doesn't provide a transcript of the press conference but thats more like a strategy than an omission. They have long since discovered that it's better to hide your allies, especially the fruitcake variety that discredit the cause, including their own writers like Sarah Left, a Californian import, presently the editor of The Guardian's NetNews site. As for "actor" Vanessa Redgrave, she has fans.

Background:
Here.
Here. 6 December, 2002
Here

Hattip to Instapundit for direction to this "Tragedy in Two Acts."
Clever.

Our European friends

BELGIUM: Scarey Big Brother in Belgium. NETHERLANDS: Dutch frigate to Indian Ocean to inspect shipping and gather intelligence in Indian Ocean.

SPAIN: Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero steps in it, probably not unrelated to this. (CIA Factbook: Spain is the entry point for drugs to Europe and a major distribution point as well as a base for drug money laundering.) Spanish media is currently advocating euthanasia.

ITALY: Once she was suspended from Italy's Red Brigade, for failing to turn up on time for a planned fundraising robbery, now "Comrade So" (Cinzia Banelli) is testifying in Italy, giving intimate details about the Red Brigade. It's worth remembering that Mitterand gave sanctuary in 1985 to 100 Italian terrorists in France. In July, The Guardian was incensed when a French court ordered the extradition of one terrorist, who, in the French tradition, promptly disappeared.

Israeli fence

Reported at Deutsche Welle site: German Interior Minister otto Schily in an interview on Deutschlandfunk radio declared the Israeli West Bank security barrier was justified. "In the radio interview, Schily also insisted the security barrier should be referred to as a "fence" and not a "wall," as it is often called in Germany."

"Those who draw comparisons with the Berlin Wall are wrong, because it does not shut people in and deprive them of their freedom," Schily told Deutschlandfunk radio on Monday. "Its purpose is to protect Israel from terrorists."

AND,

"All the efforts undertaken over many years, even decades, have unfortunately failed to bear fruit," he said. "So it is understandable that Israel should try to erect a protective barrier, which furthermore has shown it works, and I think that the criticism is far from the reality."

The most amazing quote was this,

"This responsibility to Israel includes the obligation to support Israel in its fight against terror, and in this context we must be aware that no nation suffered under the scourge of terrorism like Israel," he said on Saturday.

It's an amazing admission.

Newsday Part V

NY Daily News on Newsday circulation woes includes this from Newsday spokesman Stu Vincent.

'Despite the inappropriate behavior in our circulation department, Newsday remains the primary source of news and information for Nassau and Suffolk and the pre-eminent advertising vehicle for our customers.'

Other Taking Notes or poyntless.blogspot coverage:
Here UPDATE: Newsday prompty refused to carry the ads from the car dealers. The dealers went to court and got a judgement that said Newsday had to carry.
Here
Here The organized crime attorneys are a nice touch.
Here
Here
Here

U.N. Watch

It's worth it to make a daily trip to the UN site to check out Annan's daily appointments before going to the UN News Center if only for this gem.
Doesn't Howard Dean look a little strange there?

New York Times' Paris-based International Herald Tribune has this by Simon Chesterman who wonders if it isn't time to reform the UN.

As the United Nations General Assembly opens on Tuesday, the world organization faces twin crises in its effectiveness and its legitimacy.

Widespread belief in journalism dishonesty

American Journalism Review: "Perhaps the most disappointing finding for journalists, however, is the fact that 61 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that 'the falsifying or making up of stories in the American news media is a widespread problem.' "

Some expert

The Washington Post isn't ignoring the fake CBS memos. According to them, Marcel Matley, the expert CBS retained to examine the memos "examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves." However, it took him a looooooong time to do it.

Matley said he spent five to eight hours examining the memos. 'I knew I could not prove them authentic just from my expertise,' he said. 'I can't say either way from my expertise, the narrow, narrow little field of my expertise.'

The question is, what took him five to eight hours??? Then there's the obvious: What was his hourly rate and how much did he charge to authenticate Vince Foster's suicide note?

Trailer parks and voter turnout

Trailer parks in Florida constitute poverty in America, according to this Toronto Sun article.

In the wake of hurricanes Charley and Frances, outsiders got a glimpse of the ramshackle trailer parks that hundreds of thousands of Floridians call home. What was as shocking as the devastation was the fact that so many Americans live in such abject poverty.

AND,

It is hard to reconcile images of glitzy political conventions and dilapidated trailer parks; global economic might and slapdash fiscal policy; flag-draped military coffins and puerile attack ads.

Maybe that is why the U.S. has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the developed world.

It's lack of affordable housing. Logic leading from trailer parks to low voter turnout. Talk about puerile connectivity. For one, people own mobile homes so they are owners, however, the connection we are supposed to make are that they are poor, therefore, black, therefore unlikely to vote. Hence, a poor turnout. It wouldn't make a difference if you told the writer that most of the trailer parks are full of mobile homes that are A) not mobile, and B) cost $90,000 and more, and are, C) holiday homes for the most part, secondary residences, or retirement residences. Few poor people live full-time in trailer parks in Florida. For one, it takes capital to own a mobile home, and two, the recreational vehicle parks cost a fortune even on a short-term basis. That's the problem with bias - it is unconvinced by reality. Besides, it's such a good excuse to hate the U.S.

Left-of-Lenin nuts

This is the nonsense the Associated Press (owned by our major American newspapers) promote the U.S. overseas.

The report by Amnesty International USA also said at least 87 million people — one in three — in the United States are at high risk of being victimized because they belong to a racial, ethnic or religious group whose members are commonly targeted by police for unlawful stops and searches.

Amnesty International is Left-of-Lenin nuts. Is the Associated Press the only one who doesn't know it? Or do they intend this?

EU policy on the Sudan genocide

It's lack of agreement that keeps the EU from "flexing its foreign policy muscles" in the Sudan crisis, according to Deutsche Welle. However, the impasse may be coming to and end.

The EU's mixed signals may come to an end when the ministers' meeting ends, one high-ranking German official in Brussels told Germany's WDR radio station: They may agree to send 25 police to the region.

That's probably a budget breaker for them.

I wonder what Andrew Sullivan would say about this?
Switzerland has placed a Saudi charity on a list of groups linked to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, banning them from opening Swiss bank accounts. The charity shared an address with a mosque in Amsterdam where inflammatory literature, including incitement to the murder of homosexuals, was found in the controversial mosque.

It's one thing to kill Americans and promote terrorism, but murder gays?!!!!

Forgeries

Joseph M. Newcomer, PH.D on his web site declares the CBS memos forgeries. And he should know. He's an expert at the creation of computer typefonts.

If someone had come forward presenting a "lost" painting by Leonardo da Vinci, which used acrylic paints including Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White, art experts would roll of the floor laughing at the clumsiness of the forgery. (Acrylic paints were not known until the 1920s, although some histories date them as late as the late 1940s, and some as late as 1955; Cadmium Yellow was not known until 1840, and Titanium White was not available as an artist's pigment until 1921). Yet somehow a document which could not be created by any of the common office technology of 1972 is touted as "authentic".

It's a long and compelling article that adds to the debate.

More journalistic malfeasance

USA Today unhappily concludes in an article on the CBS phoney documents, titled "Memos debate eclipses content"

No matter how it turns out, for now the controversy over the documents has blunted criticism of Bush's Guard record, which has been a persistent irritant for Bush since he first campaigned for the White House. It has sapped the power from an issue that had appeared to be a weapon for the Democrats against Bush.

"Two retired FBI forensic document examiners who studied the memos at USA TODAY's request said Sunday that they probably are forgeries."

If the documents are fraudulent, how can anyone except the most partisan press think the content important? I am pretty sure Al Gore is nuts, but I am not going to publish obviously fake billing to try to persuade others of my convictions.

A great find

The first time I had heard of Mark Steyn was when The Times of London reviewed a book published by the Social Affairs Unit, a British public affairs group that emphasizes human responsibility. The book of essays was called "Faking It: The Sentimentalization of Modern Society." Stein's essay made me a lifelong fan. I think I have loaned it to twelve people, all of whom have enjoyed the book for its unblinking assessment of modern society. (The book is available at their site.) In all, there are twelve authors, including the always-gracious Balint Vazsonyi and the brilliant Digby Anderson.(See the comment.)

Current essays at their website include one by William D. Rubinstein on Genocide. Don't miss the essay on the Elgin Marbles by Christie Davies."Elgin Marbles Going to Tennessee"

In their view the Greeks didn't and don't deserve them. The Greeks reply that the marbles are part of their national ancestral heritage and should be returned to the Parthenon in Athens where they belong rather than being scrubbed white with brillo pads in the British Museum. The Greeks don't mind ethnic cleansing by their fellow Orthodox Slavs in Serbia but they don't want it applied cavalierly to Greek statuary.

Indeed.

Remembering September 11, 2001

That day - remembered by Cox and Forkum.

The links on their page are to names of those we lost that day. The Falling Man by Tom Junod is poignant to a point until he thinks intruding on a funeral to verify a photograph is acceptable. There were many jumpers that day, people who knew they would not survive the fire and the heat who found courage to look into the abyss and then leap. There is no shame in what they did, as Junod suggests, no hidden, unwanted feelings of inadequacy that makes many even now refuse to look at the pictures. It is because we feel pain for those people. It is because we hurt for them. It is because of the incompleteness that we feel when we could not catch them in our empty, aching arms. We would have if we could. They are ours. They are us.

God, bless them and keep them and shelter them in your arms. They are ours. And yours.

British wing nuts

Wing nut? No. It's Richard Northon-Taylor, Guardian's security affairs editor venting.

It is hard not to conclude that one of the greatest obstacles to the kind of better world Blair says he wants - one with less cause for terrorism, even if terrorists will always be around - is the Bush administration, and notably the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. ....What did Blair think when delegates at last week's Republican convention booed speakers who mentioned the UN?

It's such a peaceful world with the UN in charge. I remember well. Let's see - Cambodia, Bosnia without U.S. military, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, North Korea, the beating to death of whites in Zimbabwe. And having both Libya and Syria on the Human Rights Commission is sooooo helpful. I suppose the 87 dissidents in Cuba are deeply resentful of the U.S. Oh, wait, the U.S. is the only one who complained. And the U.S. and the U.K. are the only countries complaining about genocide in the Sudan.

At least we don't pretend terrorists are "separatists" or "militants" or "hostage takers" or the euphemisms of the Left when they embrace children and women killers. The Guardian ought to be ashamed, but you have to be honest to gain a reputation, you have to have a reputation in order to defend it. And that's the difference between us and the Left.

From World Tribune, a Muslim group apologizes.

After numerous admissions of guilt by Bin Laden and numerous corroborating admissions by captured top level Al-Qaida operatives, we wonder, does the Muslim leadership have the dignity and courage to apologize for 9-11?

If not 9-11, will we apologize for the murder of school children in Russia?

If not Russia, will we apologize for the train bombings in Madrid, Spain?

If not Spain, will we apologize for suicide bombings in buses, restaurants and other public places?

If not suicide bombings, will we apologize for the barbaric beheadings of human beings?

If not beheadings, will we apologize for the rape and murder of thousands of innocent people in Darfour?

If not Darfour, will we apologize for the blowing up of two Russian planes by Muslim women?

What will we apologize for?

It's a very good article that concludes this way,

As to apologizing, we will no longer wait for our religious leaders and “intellectuals” to do the right thing. Instead, we will start by apologizing for 9-11.

We are so sorry that 3000 people were murdered in our name. We will never forget the sight of people jumping from two of the highest buildings in the world hoping against hope that if they moved their arms fast enough that they may fly and survive a certain death from burning.

We are sorry for blaming 9-11 on a Jewish or right wing conspiracy.

We are so sorry for the murder of more than three hundred school children and adults in Russia.

We are so sorry for the murder of train passengers in Spain.

We are so sorry for all the victims of suicide bombings. We are so sorry for the beheadings, abductions, rapes, violent Jihad and all the atrocities committed by Muslims around the world.

We are so sorry for a religious education that raised killers rather than train people to do good in the world. We are sorry that we did not take the time to teach our children tolerance and respect for other people.

We are so sorry for not rising up against the dictators who have ruled the Muslim world for decades.

We are so sorry for allowing corruption to spread so fast and so deep in the Muslim world that many of our youth lost hope.

We are so sorry for allowing our religious leaders to relegate women to the status of forth class citizens at best and sub-humans at worse.

We are so sorry.

Four minute Dan Rather video interview with CNN earlier today. Instapundit thinks he looks and sounds nervous and defensive. Reynolds also thinks that Rather "doesn't help his credibility when he makes an obvious lie: that he stands behind the President in wartime. Riiigghht."

If CBS hoped to distract Americans from tomorrow's anniversary of 9/11, they miscalculated badly.

Circulation figures, excuse me, fraud

Tribune Co, owners of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday and Spanish language Hoy, are revising the circulation figures again for the last two.

The parent company of Newsday and Hoy this morning announced substantial reductions in their respective circulations that are more than double earlier revisions and indicate the circulation scandal is worse than previously disclosed.

How bad? Well, Newsday is no longer in the top 10 newspapers (it was 9.) and, "Newsday's daily sales had been falsely inflated by between 90,000 and 100,000 copies and by between 122,000 and 132,000 copies on Sundays. This is more than double the amount of fraudulent circulation Newsday announced in June, when it first disclosed circulation problems."

That's 90,000 - 100,000 out of an estimated 662,317.
They seem to be, ah, rather big problems.

Speaking of polls

BBC "World 'wants Kerry as president" citing a poll by Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of Maryland quoted the director of the program.

"Only one in five want to see Bush re-elected," said Steven Kull, the director of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

The Questionnaire and results are online.

Out of curiosity I entered all the figures from the tables into Xcel. In doing so, I noticed there were two responses not included by the BBC - "No Difference" and "Don't Know." Of the 36 countries surveyed, the story claims clear leads for Kerry in 30 countries. That's true compared to Bush but significant only if you ignore the fact that 11 of the 30 had higher percentages for combined "No difference" and "Don't know" than for Kerry. Example, Mexico: Bush 18 Kerry 38 ND/DN* 44

Spain is similar:
Bush 7
Kerry 45
ND/DN 49

Argentina
Bush 6
Kerry 43
ND/DN 50

Bolivia
Bush 16
Kerry 25
ND/DN 50

*ND/DN = No difference and Don't know combined.

Overall out of some 34,300 polled, 12,402 or 36% said it made no difference or they didn't know in preference to either candidate. And in countries where Kerry outpolled Bush, only 12 were over 50%. (Brazil, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.) Even in the U.K. there are a lot of unconvinced. Some 47% prefer Kerry, but 37% are DN/ND. (16% are for Bush.)

As for age, most of those polled were 18 year or older except in these countries, where the polled age was 15 years or older.
Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, India, Norway, Sweden, Thailand and Turkey.

Only one survey was conducted by Internet -- Netherlands.

So to quote me, 36% of the world they polled don't give a damn either way. And that's a heck of a lot more than the one in five for Kerry.

Binay Kumar in the Hindustan Times on the nature of terrorism.

Bin Laden and his cohorts are then shown for what they are: psychopath criminals taking cover under religious dogma.

Terrorism by any other name

What a difference an agenda makes. Guardian leader (editorial) begins,
"No one can be absolutely certain about the identity of the terrorists who attacked the Australian embassy in Jakarta yesterday. . ."

In Jakarta, they are terrorists. In Russia, they are "separatists," "militants," "hostage takers" and "militants."

Victor Davis Hanson on Islamic terrorism.

The recent slaughters in Russia were the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back of excusing or explaining away radical Islamic terror. If the Estonians can break away from post-Soviet oppression and free themselves from Russian authoritarianism without slaughtering schoolchildren and blowing up airplanes, then the Chechens can as well - but only if they wish to create democracy rather than an Islamic fascist state.

And our "friends."

Only the Europeans, in their fear and impotence, still pray that obsequiousness might fend off Islamofascism, as if a Madrid is an aberration rather than a harbinger of worse to come.

Hanson is a must read.

"These are serious charges. They have not been leveled by his opponent. Or by a political party. Or by an outside group. They are based on documents from the personal files of Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron commander.

- Terry McAuliffe (from the DNC site)

What were they thinking, Instapundit wonders, to have Tom Harkin speak on Bush's record?

Rallying the troops

Jay Currie has it right, I think.

In fact, the memos were more about encouraging the Kerry supporters than delivering a mortal wound to Bush. But the eagerness with which the Left embraced the memos will leave a filthy taste in their mouths.

He's also right about "Born again Bush hater Andrew Sullivan."

Damned if you do, damned if you don't - the U.S. is to blame

Two articles from the Canadian Globe and Mail. [bolding mine]
"U.S. finds 'genocide' in Darfur
Bush's use of politically charged term could spark international action on Sudan"
by Estanislao Oziewicz

The politically loaded word could trigger action under the international treaty on genocide. But Canada, a party to the treaty along with the United States, again refused yesterday to say whether genocide has occurred.

AND,

But the Canadian government says it is still not in a position to determine whether genocide has occurred.
Certainly we agree that the atrocities in Darfur deserve robust international attention," said Sébastien Théberge, speaking on behalf of Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, who is currently travelling in Europe.

"It does not currently appear to meet the legal definition of genocide. However, we will continue to assess and look for available evidence."

"Conservative Christians pushed hard for G-word"
By MICHAEL VALPY

The U.S. administration's use of the G-word -- genocide -- for the violence in Sudan was lauded yesterday by the American evangelical right and interpreted by a specialist on religion and politics as a direct result of conservative Christians' influence on President George W. Bush.

The specialist? Timothy Shah with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, part of the Pew Foundation.

"The discussion about genocide has been going on for a while, and I think there's been disagreement about whether the G-word applies here. So I think there's another part of the explanation for the timing -- namely that it's taken this long to reach a definitive conclusion."

Asked when the U.S. administration last had used the word genocide, Mr. Shah replied: "They certainly didn't do it with respect to Rwanda. Part of what is happening here is a sense, obviously, of regret about that -- exactly 10 years ago."

You mean the Clinton administration regrets Rwanda?

THIS, while the editorial urges Canada join the U.S. to urge intervention. And this religious hit piece. (See the last paragraph.) The American guilt is in the leftwing Independent, too. While "The European Union has refrained from declaring genocide in Sudan, maintaining that it is for the UN to decide." It's called passing the buck.