Mark Steyn: The axis of evenhandedness

Great Steyn piece on Isreal and Liberal "evenhandednness"

There's a hoary old joke from a few years back in which the Secretary-General proposes that, in the interests of global peace and harmony, the world's soccer players should come together and form one United Nations global soccer team.

"Great idea," says his deputy. "Er, but who would we play?"

"Israel, of course."

And so, on a tour of residential areas of Beirut, UN humanitarian honcho Jan Egeland accused Israel of "excessive use of force" and "a violation of humanitarian law," whatever that is. His colleague, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Canada's Louise Arbour, went further and accused Israel of being guilty of "war crimes" under the Geneva Conventions.

Really? Hezbollah is an organization of unlawful combatants that as a matter of policy uses civilians as shields: under Geneva, that's a war crime. But Mme. Arbour and Mr. Egeland couldn't care less. So the value of their observations lies less in their interpretation of "international law" than as a reminder of the peculiar psychology of the post-nationalist, indeed postmodernist, "civilized world." It's not just that the terrorism and the resistance to terrorism are seen as morally equivalent: perish the thought. In the eyes of the UN, the resistance to terrorism is the real crime.


...

"The Jews are a peculiar people," wrote America's great longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer after the 1967 war. "Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem . . . But everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab . . . Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world."

Read the whole thing...

Media Hoaxes Du Jour

Little Green Footballs has a posted a video expose of a media hoax accusing the Isrealis of using chemical weapons.

And they also link to a Fox exposure of the Red Cross Ambulance hoax. Brit Hume is one of the few mainstream journalist with the courage and the honesty to shine the light of truth on his own industry.

Meanwhile over at Hot Air we get “E&P editor attacks bloggers over Reutersgate, misrepresents pretty much everything.” Greg Mitchell the editor of "Editor and Publisher" should really shut up. Now that people have access to original sources via the Internet, his kind of defense of the purity of the press is pathetic.

Here is a picture of a man whose world is coming apart and does not know how to deal with it. Denial is not working Greg.


Here is the essence of the MSM argument in a nutshell and tells you all you need to know:

I wasn’t at Qana, but Tim Fadek was. If he says photos weren’t staged, then that’s good enough for me.

This kind of "because I say so" proof of the truth once convinced the rubes, but to use this as an argument today is so sophomoric that it defies belief. Let me put it as gently as I can: if Tim Fadek told me that the sun rose in the East and set in the West, knowing he was a photojournalist at Qana, I would begin to demand more evidence.


UPDATE: It now turns out that "media watchdog" Greg Mitchell is editing his own bio to make his earlier journalistic lying seem less harmful. Greg, what are we going to do with you.

UPDATE 2: Mary Katharine Ham Has a column in Townhall.com: Why we don't believe you

The Iraq "Civil War"

So, what’s the latest on the Iraq civil war, the bombs going off ever few minutes in Baghdad? The Drive By Media tell us time and again that we’re on the losing end of the stick in Iraq, that the situation is out of control, that we should cut our losses and leave.

Well, don’t look now, but putting a few thousand more troops into Baghdad actually had an effect other than the one the MSM emphasized: it reduced the fighting.

IraqPundit has the story, in case you missed it in the NY Times.

The Decline of Amnesty International

I never had much use for Amnesty International, so I am not unhappy to see them becoming more blatant in their bias. They have accused Israel of war crimes. Here from David Bernstein in Volokh has a few juicy comments. (read the whole thing):

"[In a report accusing Israel of war crimes, Amnesty International] accused Israel of applying an overly broad interpretation of what constituted a military objective when it attacked power plants, bridges, main roads, seaports and Beirut's international airport, all of which are 'presumed to be civilian.'"

I'm no military expert, but every book, movie, documentary, etc., I've ever seen on war assumes that at least bridges [how many WWII movies have a scene focused on taking a bridge?], roads and seaports are important military targets, and in modern times I'd have to put airports on that list, too. The idea that a country at war can't attack the enemy's resupply routes (at least until it has direct evidence that there is a particular military shipment arriving) has nothing to do with human rights or war crimes, and a lot to do with a pacifist attitude that seeks to make war, regardless of the justification for it or the restraint in prosecuting it [at least if it's a Western country doing it], an international "crime."* Not to mention that the Beirut airport was only temporarily shut down with minor damage, and is already reopen. [If Amnesty International wants to make the case that the Party of God would not and could not use any of the relevant targets for resupply, and Israel knew it, that's a different story, but I'd love to see such evidence, which, to say the least, would be counter-intuitive.]

...

*Relevant excerpt from the Amnesty report: "However, even if it could be argued that some of these objects could qualify as military objectives (because they serve a dual purpose), Israel is obligated to ensure that attacking these objects would not violate the principle of proportionality. For example, a road that can be used for military transport is still primarily civilian in nature. The military advantage anticipated from destroying the road must be measured against the likely effect on civilians, especially the most vulnerable, such as those requiring urgent medical attention."

In other words, no country can ever attack road, port, bridge, etc., facilities used by an irregular, guerrilla army, because by the very nature of such an army, these facilities will primarily be used by civilians. Or, put another way, a country at war must sacrifice the lives of its own soldiers and perhaps civilians by avoiding attacking military targets that are also used by civilians, unless you can come up with some sort of cockamamie calculation that somehow proves that the military benefit is greater than the harm to the other side's civilians. I'm sure there are people out there who believe this, but again, this is a highly ideological position that reflects a strongly pacifist sentiment, and should not be confused with the sort of objective human rights standard (e.g., don't lock up someone for writing a newspaper article critical of the government) that all "liberals" of good will could agree on.

What Else Are They Keeping Silent About?

Powerline writes that the Swedish Foreign Ministry kept quiet about the oil for food scandal because ...

Henrik Thune of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs told Aftenposten that Kolby was caught between competing interests, including fear of fueling the push for war in the Bush administration if he revealed corruption in the Oil for Food program.

And asks: What else are the anti-Bush governments and media keeping from us?

Over and Covert Enemies

From Powerline

Michael Barone has long been known as a moderate, nuts-and-bolts observer of the political scene. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that only over the last few years, as Michael has observed the impotence--at best--of the Democratic Party in the face of existential threats to our civilization, has he come out as a conservative. In today's column he lays it on the line:

In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. ***
Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.

[T]he default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong. That assumption can be rebutted by overwhelming fact: Few argued for the Taliban after Sept. 11. But in our continuing struggles, our covert enemies portray our work in Iraq through the lens of Abu Ghraib and consider Israel's self-defense against Hezbollah as the oppression of virtuous victims by evil men. In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant.

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. *** They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.


That is a very measured critique of a segment of our society that wields great power and wishes its own country great ill. I would only add that these liberals want us to lose, not just in some small corner, but with their whole hearts; in fact, our defeat is the only thing they whole-heartedly work for.

Mark Steyn: World is watching as Iraq war tests U.S. mettle

One way to measure how the world has changed in these last five years is to consider the extraordinary address to his nation by General Musharraf on Sept. 19, 2001. Pakistan was one of just three countries in the world (along with "our friends the Saudis" and the United Arab Emirates) to recognize the Taliban -- and, given that the Pakistanis had helped create and maintain them, they were pretty easy to recognize. President Bush, you'll recall, had declared that you're either with us or you're with the terrorists -- which posed a particular problem for Musharraf: He was with us but everyone else in his country was with the terrorists, including his armed forces, his intelligence services, the media, and a gazillion and one crazy imams.

Nonetheless, with American action against Afghanistan on the horizon, he went on TV that night and told the Pakistani people that this was the gravest threat to the country's existence in over 30 years. He added that he was doing everything to ensure his brothers in the Taliban didn't "suffer," and that he'd asked Washington to provide some evidence that this bin Laden chap had anything to do with the attacks but that so far they'd declined to show him any. Then he cited the Charter of Medina (which the Prophet Muhammad signed after an earlier spot of bother) as an attempt to justify providing assistance to the infidel, and said he'd had no choice but to offer the Americans use of Pakistan's airspace, intelligence networks and other logistical support.

He paused for applause, and after the world's all-time record volume of crickets chirping, said thank you and goodnight.

That must have been quite the phone call he'd got from Washington a day or two earlier. And all within a week of Sept. 11. You may remember during the 2000 campaign an enterprising journalist sprung on Gov. Bush a sudden pop quiz of world leaders. Bush, invited to name the leader of Pakistan, was unable to. But so what? In the third week of September 2001, the correct answer to "Who's General Musharraf?" was "Whoever I want him to be." And, if Musharraf didn't want to play ball, he'd wind up as the answer to "Who was leader of Pakistan until last week?"

Do you get the feeling Washington's not making phone calls like that anymore?

Read the whole thing...

Thomas Sowell: Point of No Return?

For once I hope Sowell is wrong. Pray for our people, our country and our leaders.

It is hard to think of a time when a nation -- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean that it is only a matter of time before there are nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorist organizations. North Korea needs money and Iran has brazenly stated its aim as the destruction of Israel -- and both its actions and its rhetoric suggest aims that extend even beyond a second Holocaust.

Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

This is not just another in the long history of military threats. The Soviet Union, despite its massive nuclear arsenal, could be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred.

Fanatics filled with hate cannot be either deterred or bought off, whether Hezbollah, Hamas or the government of Iran.

The endlessly futile efforts to bring peace to the Middle East with concessions fundamentally misconceive what forces are at work.

Hate and humiliation are key forces that cannot be bought off by "trading land for peace," by a "Palestinian homeland" or by other such concessions that might have worked in other times and places.

Humiliation and hate go together. Why humiliation? Because a once-proud, dynamic culture in the forefront of world civilizations, and still carrying a message of their own superiority to "infidels" today, is painfully visible to the whole world as a poverty-stricken and backward region, lagging far behind in virtually every field of human endeavor.

There is no way that they can catch up in a hundred years, even if the rest of the world stands still. And they are not going to wait a hundred years to vent their resentments and frustrations at the humiliating position in which they find themselves.

Israel's very existence as a modern, prosperous western nation in their midst is a daily slap across the face. Nothing is easier for demagogues than to blame Israel, the United States, or western civilization in general for their own lagging position.

Hitler was able to rouse similar resentments and fanaticism in Germany under conditions not nearly as dire as those in most Middle East countries today. The proof of similar demagogic success in the Middle East is all around.

What kind of people provide a market for videotaped beheadings of innocent hostages? What kind of people would throw an old man in a wheelchair off a cruise liner into the sea, simply because he was Jewish? What kind of people would fly planes into buildings to vent their hate at the cost of their own lives?

These are the kinds of people we are talking about getting nuclear weapons. And what of ourselves?

Do we understand that the world will never be the same after hate-filled fanatics gain the ability to wipe whole American cities off the face of the earth? Do we still imagine that they can be bought off, as Israel was urged to buy them off with "land for peace" -- a peace that has proved to be wholly illusory?

Even ruthless conquerors of the past, from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, wanted some tangible gains for themselves or their nations -- land, wealth, dominion. What Middle East fanatics want is the destruction and humiliation of the west.

Their treatment of hostages, some of whom have been humanitarians serving the people of the Middle East, shows that what the terrorists want is to inflict the maximum pain and psychic anguish on their victims before killing them.

Once these fanatics have nuclear weapons, those victims can include you, your children and your children's children.

The terrorists need not start out by wiping our cities off the map. Chances are they would first want to force us to humiliate ourselves in whatever ways their sadistic imaginations could conceive, out of fear of their nuclear weapons.

After we, or our children and grandchildren, find ourselves living at the mercy of people with no mercy, what will future generations think of us, that we let this happen because we wanted to placate "world opinion" by not acting "unilaterally"?

We are fast approaching the point of no return.

I, A Muslim

The controversial Czech TV documentary “I, A Muslim,” in which a reporter used a hidden camera to record inside mosques, has been posted (with English subtitles) at Google Video by LGF reader “Abu Kafir:”

Click on the link; it's fascinating.

BBC Admits Engaging in Staged Photos

From Litte Green Footballs:

In this Lebanon report, the BBC (probably inadvertently) admits that they stood by and took photographs as Hizballah put a child’s life in danger:

Click on the link.

Support for Rudy from the Anchoress

As of this moment, I am not going to retract my support of Giuliani, because I see no one else “in the running” whom I trust to carry forth the war on terror as it needs to be carried.

I think sometimes we think these candidates are not human, and are not touched by the same circumstances as the rest of us, that somehow we peons “grow” in grace and are capable of change while politicians and celebrities do not grow, are not capable of change. But God raises up whom He will, and very often He uses the most flawed material to do His bidding. Ask St. Augustine. Ask Moses.

Is Giuliani the perfect man? No. Will be he a perfect president? Hell no, no such creature can exist. But I do trust him to bring us strict constitutionalist SCOTUS judges. I trust that he’ll say issues like gay marriage and abortion, etc, belong to the states, which they do. I frankly think overall he will be a better president than anyone currently on the scene.

Would I prefer that Giuliani’s leadership skills fell completely in line with my creed and my own values? Of course I would. But you know, I go to church every Sunday and see huge lines of people receiving Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, and I know that most of them haven’t been to confession in ages. Some Catholics have fits about that - “how dare they consume the Flesh and Blood of Christ unworthily,” they gasp. While it would be nice to know that every Catholic is receiving Holy Communion only while in a state of grace - which is the ideal - I am aware that perhaps the only way some souls may ever be touched by grace at all is via the reception of Christ in the Eucharist, consumed unworthily (who among us is truly worthy), but by that act given intimate access. The less-than-perfect avenue can still be the opening in which Christ imparts His grace.

Read the whole thing

Kevin Drum: I Don't Criticize Iran Because It Might Help Bush

Bush derangement syndrome is on full display when Kevin Drum explains that:

…we need to engage more energetically with the war on terror and criticize illiberal regimes more harshly.
Maybe so. But this is something that’s nagged at me for some time. On the one hand, I think Beinart is exactly right. For example, should I be more vocal in denouncing Iran? Sure. It’s a repressive, misogynistic, theocratic, terrorist-sponsoring state that stands for everything I stand against. Of course I should speak out against them.

And yet, I know perfectly well that criticism of Iran is not just criticism of Iran. Whether I want it to or not, it also provides support for the Bush administration’s determined and deliberate effort to whip up enthusiasm for a military strike. Only a naif would view criticism of Iran in a vacuum, without also seeing the way it will be used by an administration that has demonstrated time and again that it can’t be trusted to act wisely.

So what to do? For the most part, I end up saying very little. And Beinart is right: there’s a sense in which that betrays my own liberal ideals. But he’s also wrong, because like it or not, my words — and those of other liberals — would end up being used to advance George Bush’s distinctly illiberal ends. And I’m simply not willing to be a pawn in the Bush administration’s latest marketing campaign.

Via Junkyardblog.

Arafat's Widow Gets $22 MILLION A Year

She has remarried. The man who she's marrying threw over her sister because of her (Suha's) fortune. Pity the poor Palestinians.

Editor & Publisher on Photofraud

Photojournalism in Crisis
Amid the controversy over certain pictures from Lebanon, a longtime student of war photography asks, "I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both."

I'm betting on suicide.

The Wall Street Journal on The Press Spilling Government Secrets

I have been a big fan of the WSJ’s editorial page. The rest of the paper is filler for the recycle bin. There are some things that I disagree with the Journal on – such as immigration – but on the whole they have been on the side of the angels.

So it is with a great deal of sorrow that I have to say that today’s “Rule of Law” opinion piece by THEODORE J. BOUTROUS, Jr. is a piece of tendentious crap.

It begins:

While the subpoenas and contempt orders that came out of the Valerie Plame leak investigation sent a shiver through journalists and other champions of a free press, an equally chilling lawsuit between two congressmen slowly plodded through the courts, barely noticed. No longer. Now, the D.C. Circuit has made a ruling in this dispute that, if it stands, will blow a hole through the First Amendment.

The opinion piece give us a history of the case Boehner v. McDermott in which the

“D.C. Circuit upheld a $60,000 judgment for statutory and punitive damages against Mr. McDermott. (Mr. Boehner is now claiming an additional $500,000 in attorney's fees.) Since Mr. McDermott supposedly knew that the tape had been illegally recorded when he received it, the court ruled that he got it "unlawfully" and could be punished, like someone who "is guilty of receiving stolen property."

Boutrous then goes on to state:

It can be extremely tempting to scale back on traditional First Amendment freedoms in the area of national security during war time. The government does have the right to protect information in the name of national security and other compelling interests, and to impose secrecy obligations on government officials to avoid harmful disclosures. But the First Amendment, as a check on government power and an instrument of self-government, tasks the press with ferreting out information that the government wants to keep secret. [Italics mine]

Whoa! To be sure that I was not hallucinating, I pulled out my pocket Constitution and re-read the First Amendment. My version reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances

.

Strangely enough, there is no reference here to the press ferreting out government secrets and publishing them. There is no reference to the press ferreting out my secrets and publishing them, or Mr. Boehner’s, or – for that matter - anyone else’s.

Now I’m not saying that the press may not want to publish secrets so that it can satisfy the prurient interest of certain readers and thereby charge ever higher advertising rates, but that is a business decision made by the paper’s owners, not part of the First Amendment.

It should be obvious, even to Mr. Boutrous, that the First Amendment's restriction on Congress from writing laws prohibiting a free press is not a hunting license for the press. Read the First Amendment again: it puts free speech by individuals, the freedom to worship and a free press on the same plane. It does not elevate the press above the people. It does not elevate the press above the laws that apply to a free people. It does not allow them to do anything to anyone without penalty.

To defend the publication of secrets Boutrous states:

That information, after all, really belongs to the people, who have delegated the power to govern to elected officials.

Well, yes. And those elected officials have decided that certain government actions should be kept secret because their revelation will help an enemy kill us. It does not behoove the press to attempt to elevate itself above the people and their representatives. To do so is to create a self created, unelected super-legislature; a group of superior beings whose will stand above the will of the people and their representatives. That is an incredible amount of hubris for a commercial enterprise. It may be more credible in a country with authoritarian leanings. But in a representative Republic, not so much.

It is especially unfortunate for the press that it should attempt to elevate itself above the people and its elected officials when there is a major scandal brewing about the press’ publishing faked and staged pictures designed to lie to its readers about what happened in Lebanon.

Boutrous again:

Sometimes the only way the public can learn about government wrongdoing, or questionable government policies, is through leaks.

That may be true, but it’s also irrelevant. If the leaks are stolen information, the press is acting as a “fence.” Fencing stolen good is illegal for ordinary people, and the press is made up of a whole lot of ordinary people. More ordinary, in many cases, than most.

Remember the Prosecutor Who Went After Limbaugh for Painkillers? He Refuses To Prosecute a Child Molester!

O’Reilly Accuses Limbaugh Prosecutor of Cover-up

The prosecutor who vigorously pursued the case against conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has been accused of going easy on a wealthy Democrat accused of sex crimes with kids.

Billionaire Palm Beach financier Jeffrey Epstein, 53, was indicted last month on a charge of felony solicitation of prostitution.

But Palm Beach County Police Chief Michael Reiter wanted Epstein to be charged with the more serious crime of sexual activity with minors.

Florida State Attorney Barry Krischer of Palm Beach County rejected that call – even though police believe Epstein regularly brought girls as young as 14 to his mansion for sex, and they reportedly found pictures of underage girls when they raided his home.

Read the whole thing.

Those Irritating BP Ads

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I am irritated by the BP ads because they feature people who have no blooming idea of how to get energy, do not participate in getting us energy., and are simply irritating.

Why is BP running these ads? It’s hush money.

From Townhall.com:

In Ann Coulter’s latest best selling book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she notes that individuals who have suffered personal tragedy are shielded from criticism. Notwithstanding the controversy over the “The Jersey Girls”, her astute observation of special immunity rings true not only for these proponents of liberal dogma but also for CEOs who are disciples of corporate social responsibility. In this instance, the Left welcomes these converts from capitalism with open arms - as long as they promote the social activist agenda.

CEOs of some of the largest companies have become the biggest advocates for expanding the responsibility of business beyond financial performance to include social and environmental goals. With the public outraged over executive compensation, and high profile cases of corporate fraud, CSR is an insurance policy for image-sensitive CEOs.

Read the whole thing.

Mark Steyn: It's breeding obvious, mate

Forget global warming. The real catastrophy is demographic.

None of these pillars of what we used to regard as conventional society is quite as sturdy as it was, and most of them have collapsed. Many mainstream Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left political cliches. In this world, if Jesus were alive today he’d most likely be a gay Anglican vicar in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally-friendly car with an “Arms Are For Hugging” sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.

[and]

And, speaking of business, even the heirs of those Big Businessmen C D Kemp wrote about feel obliged to join the ranks of the civilizational self-loathers. I notice that in its commercials the oil company BP – that’s to say, British Petroleum – now says that BP stands for “Beyond Petroleum”: the ads are all about how it’s developing environmentally-friendly ways to conserve energy; in other words, it’s ashamed of the business it’s in.

Mark has enunciated what has always irritated me about BP ads.

Much of western civilization does not have any future. That’s to say, we’re not just speaking philosophically, but literally. In a very short time, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries we regard as part of the western tradition will cease to exist in any meaningful sense. They don’t have a future because they’ve given up breeding. Spain’s population is halving with every generation: Two grown-ups have a total of one baby. So there are half as many children as parents. And a quarter as many grandchildren as grandparents. And an eighth as many great-grandchildren as great-grandparents. And, after that there’s no point extrapolating, because you’re over the falls and it’s too late to start paddling back. I received a flurry of letters from furious Spaniards when the government decided to replace the words “father” and “mother” on its birth certificates with the less orientationally offensive terms “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B”. This was part of the bureaucratic spring-cleaning of traditional language that always accompanies the arrival in law of “gay marriage”. But, with historically low numbers of progeny, the designations of the respective progenitors seem of marginal concern. They’d be better off trying to encourage the average young Spaniard to wander into a Barcelona singles bar and see if anyone wants to come back to his pad to play Progenitor A and Progenitor B. (“Well, okay, but only if I can be Progenitor A…”)

Seventeen European nations are now at what demographers call “lowest-low” fertility – 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you’re so far down the death spiral you can’t pull out. In theory, those countries will find their population halving every 35 years or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters figure there’s no point sticking around a country that’s turned into an undertaker’s waiting room. So large parts of the western world are literally dying – and, in Europe, the successor population to those aging French and Dutch and Belgians is already in place. Perhaps the differences will be minimal. In France, the Catholic churches will become mosques; in England, the village pubs will cease serving alcohol; in the Netherlands, the gay nightclubs will close up shop and relocate to San Francisco.

Katrina - One Year Later. Do Reporters Ever Suffer for Bad Reproting?

Lorie Byrd wrote a column in Townhall.com : Media get's an F on Katrina.

So what is the result of getting it wrong? Do reporters ever suffer the consequences of making mistakes?

Well, yes and no. Dan Rather left his anchor chair earlier than he planned, but is still feted and fawned on by his colleagues. A few other examples come to mind … Jason Blair who was fired for simply making it up. Janet Cooke who was fired for the same thing. But what about those people who screwed up in a big way, not through dishonesty but through incompetence. As a FOX News watcher, I remember Shep Smith emoting for the cameras during the hurricane “reporting” the same bull that the others were about snipers, rapes and the non-reaction of the National Guard. And watching Smith during his news show I am convinced that he is the FOX News anchor because of his blue eyes and boyish good looks, not the fluff between his ears.

And from the LA Times:

Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an "alert" as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of "robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness."

Other news outlets were not as restrained.

So as we get to the anniversary, the media will be anxious to “report” on everyone else’s culpability while setting in stone some of the myths that they created during the storm. Perhaps it will be the role of the blogs to throw some cold water on this pack of curs and bring some justice to those who failed us during Katrina: the press.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard

The Belmont club is an invaluable resource for analysis of geopolitical events, and its host is incredibly adept at reminding us of the wisdom of the past. I have been in awe of Solzhenitsyn since I began reading his novels, especially the Gulag Archipelago. More than a history of brutal Stalinist repression, it is a study of human nature stripped to its essentials. On “freedom” Solzhenitsyn has truly said that no man is really free unless he has nothing. How true, because we never know whether we own our possessions or do they own us?

Click the link and get a complete transcript of Solzhenitsyn’s address to the Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises, Thursday, June 8, 1978. And see how accurately he has foreseen the future:

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand. [In 1978 the split was between the USSR and the US, today it is between Islam and the West]
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A Decline in Courage ...may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. [See Jimmy Carter]

the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment. So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country? [It’s amazing that we have so many brave soldiers in our military willing to give their all]
Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.
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A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy. [see George Allen and the “macaca” comment]
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The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?
Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance. [See the faked and staged pictures from Lebanon]
…Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.
Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?
There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend. [True in 1978, true today]
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And yet -- no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal…The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.
Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?
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Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.
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The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism. The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.