The Lincoln Plawg - the blog with footnotes |
|
|
Politics and law from a British perspective (hence Politics LAW BloG): ''People who like this sort of thing...'' as the Great Man said
NEW!!!
XML Feeds:
Search the Plawg:Archives
Email the Plawg at johnsmith0903
How Appealing 
|
Thursday, October 31, 2002
Another procurement nightmare for UK Defence DepartmentThe firm that gave you the tank that seizes up in the desert now proudly presents: the helicopter which shoots its own tail rotor when it fires its missiles! And full deployment of this fine aircraft will be at least two years late: the planes are on time, but pilot-training is not. Some comfort can be taken from the fact that the Apache helicopter wasn't due to come into service till 2005 - the Iraq war won't be directly affected. On the other hand, the same shower bought the kit that will be used in Iraq..... | Turkey: generals' silver lining in invasion cloud?Rather neglected here, I'm afraid, in the runup to their general election. But a couple of interesting points from the New York Times: The first, that the latest incarnation of Islamist sentiment, the Justice and Development Party, is set to win enough seats (with a 30% share) to govern on its own, despite its leader (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) being banned from being a parliamentary candidate! Naturally, the viscerally secular Turkish establishment hates the prospect. But, with the EU carrot still dangling, both the civil and military components will wish to tread cautiously. The second offers the prospect of relief: if war plans proceed, and a new Islamist government obstructs the US in its preparations, a pretext would exist for a 'wholly exceptional' intervention of the National Security Council (the vehicle for the exercise of military influence - or control - over the country's government), the banning of the JDP and restoration of secular civilian rule. (The NSC avoids the bad PR of a actual coup while allowing the military to achieve similar objectives!) Any whining from the EU would be be paid little heed, given the recent example of the endless series of rebuffs the Turks have received to their bid to start entry talks. | Does it matter that the Vietnam-experienced generals are gone?I'm just reading an interview of James Fallows about his Atlantic Monthly piece on post-Saddam Iraq (to which I'll return (SEE BELOW)). But, in the interview, he makes an interesting point:
Since Vietnam was the last extensive war the US participated in (as well as being its last big defeat), you'd have thought the loss of personal (as opposed to folk) memory of the war might have an effect on the upcoming conflict at every stage. He mentions the fact in connection with the Powell Doctrine, supposedly not as compelling an issueas during the first Gulf War. But is there a wider point? I'm troubled by the experience of 1964-65, when the average shooting war experience amongst the brass hats was at its highest. Yet knowing what war was like first hand did not stiffen their sinews sufficiently to set aside inter-service rivalry and put the Johnson Administration on the spot about war objectives and the resources needed to achieve them [1]. So far as I'm aware, no Powell Doctrine resulted from the most Powellian WW2. Post-War strategy was dominated by the existential Soviet threat, making planning for large conventional deployments out of the NATO area less of a priority, no doubt. But, as I understand it, the JCS in the pre-July 65 period generally favoured a much stronger action than the OPLAN 34-A raids and De Soto coastal patrols (that led to the Tonkin Gulf Incidents); and, at each stage of the escalation, wanted a larger force sent than the Adminstration decided would be adequate. (Korea and Indo-China should in theory have led to a more robust JSC response; but, in view of the MacArthur experience, the lessons of the wars were perhaps overshadowed by personal considerations of job security!) Are there other respects in which a war-hardened senior general or admiral tends to operate differently than his less experienced colleague? Someone must have written a Ph D on the subject, surely! And that's about as far as I've got with the thought....
UPDATE The promised piece on the article is now up. | Wednesday, October 30, 2002
Now, step forward the Old Dominion! In what might politely be called an act of heroic legislating, in 1999 they pass a law not dissimilar to the one struck down by the Supremes shortly beforehand. Naturally, there's a 1st Amendment case (PSINet v Chapman): but so badly does the law shape up that not only do the plaintiffs get a temporary injunction, they soon afterwards (October 2001) win the case on summary judgement [2]. The order lists several similar state laws that have also been struck down [3]. Amazingly, the Commonwealth's Attorney-General failed to quit while he was behind. Earlier this week, a panel of the 4th Circuit was hearing arguments on his appeal. A ruling may take some months: a decision for the Commonwealth would, on the basis of outcomes in similar litigation, seem to be rather unlikely [4]. I'm not aware that any state law covering similar ground to the Virginia law has been judicially passed as constitutional. On the other hand, there could be state laws that haven't yet been injuncted, perhaps because of a lack of prosecutions. Conclusion? The courts seem to be holding the line fairly vigorously (the Ashcroft Supreme Court decision being the only real setback that I'm aware of). But who knows what the great legislative ideas factory of the 50 states will come up with? Probably, next up before the Supremes will be the Ashcroft case - again! By which time, perhaps, there will have been a change in personnel.....
UPDATE Howard Bashman has a piece (with links) on the Ashcroft case: a hearing on the remand took place yesterday! | 'Harmful' internet content - Virginia tries again!New readers start here..... Once upon a time, a Federal law (CDA) was enacted to protect children from pornography on the net. [To clarify, we're not talking about
In 1997, the US Supreme Court struck down the CDA in Reno v ACLU (Reno I) on 1st Amendment grounds: the collateral damage to content outside its target area was too great. Then another Federal law was passed (COPA), supposedly more tightly focussed. And the ACLU brought another Federal case (Reno II until the change of Administration) for an injunction to stop the law being enforced until its constitutional validity had been established. To get the injunction, the ACLU had to show they would probably win. They got their injunction. On the appeal, the 3rd Circuit had a brainwave - ignored the submissions of all parties, and decided the case on a ground of their very own [1]. The Supreme Court in what was now Ashcroft v ACLU decided in May this year against the ACLU on the narrow point of the 3rd Circuit decision. The case is back with the 3rd Circuit to decide all the points they should have decided first time round! (A bunch of Congress folk have filed an amicus brief - seems to be all there is online for now.) (continued.....) | And what are baroudeurs?It's a great French word - and, so far as I'm aware, without an exact synonym in English. Derived from baroud d'honneur, of which the core definition [1] is:
The essential idea in baroudeur, then, is not a tough or stubborn fighter, but a man who decides to fight in the knowledge that there is no military purpose in so doing, for reasons of honour or pride or similar ridiculous notions - to which Falstaff in Henry IV Part One [2] is an indispensable guide! These dangerous specimens can be found, I suppose, in any rank, from general down. Most dangerous of all, no doubt, when in charge of the political direction of war. No need, I think, for an all-or-nothing approach. Where an element of the war is pursued despite its acknowledged futility, that element would usefully be accounted a baroud, even though the war as a whole was soundly based. A failure to recognise the futility of recognising sunk costs (diplomatic and financial as well as military) might turn a soundly-based war policy into a baroud; the electoral requirement for consistency in government policy - no U-turns, standing firm - could do so. An other-worldly foreign policy objective based on wishful thinking could start a war that was a baroud from the outset. But it's not the amount of the cost in blood and treasure that matters - the Western Front in World War 1 as a whole wouldn't qualify, despite the millions of French and British casualties. A useful concept, all told.
| Iraqi armed forces - quitters or baroudeurs?Here's another infuriating article on the war - and it's on the sceptical side, too! Like so much one reads on the war, it's pitched at such a high level of generality as to offer little more than emotional reassurance to those that appreciate its conclusions. Case in point: One can't at once maintain...that Iraq's military forces will readily defect and can easily be walked over....and also that this same pathetic military presents a coherent international threat. Logical contradictions in opponents' arguments are always good news. Except when the contradictions arise mostly from the critical blurring of the distinction between some and all. For example, in terms of threat, Iraqi WMDs and terrorist methods are causing more concern than its conventional forces, so far as I can gather. And, again, Iraqi forces are a heterogeneous bunch, in capabilities, motivation, equipment, etc - it's certain that a range of reactions to US invasion would be found, dependent on a host of factors. A more satisfactory approach is to be found in this CSIS paper [1], which exposes, rather than obscures, the enormous range of information to be mastered on Iraqi units, facilities, weapons, etc; and stresses the dynamic aspect of war planning. In making its assessment of likely performance of Iraqi forces, the Cordesman paper offers a dauntingly long list of 'intangibles' (p13-15), and considers separately a series of alternative US responses, from the status quo through to a full-scale invasion. (Though he says it's the US's war to lose (p76), his list of Iraqi warfighting options (p74-6) offers little comfort: every indication that, if there is strong resistance, it'll be in Baghdad.) Though no definite conclusions are possible, one gets a clear impression of the complexities and contingencies to be taken into accounting in formulating Iraq strategy. It's not that Cordesman has the last word on the subject: on the contrary, for the benefit of laymen (like me!) on steep learning curves, competing treatments of strategy options are needed at the level of detail he provides - and fewer feelgood pieces offering over-generalised arguments that fail to recognise the complexities and dynamic nature of the Iraq problem.
| Gaddis refers to the Afghan Agincourtbut does not attempt to show how the victory over the Taliban remotely resembles that of either version of Agincourt. So far as I can see, whether Gaddis was talking about the real Agincourt or Shakespeare's version, my original points 1-4 cover the case. However, the Agincourt point really operates only as
Iain Murray says I doubt the wisdom of issuing Prof. Gaddis' arguments.That's good enough for me! Quod erat demonstrandum, in fact.
| The Yale Professor, the War and the Bard of Avon.....Iain Murray over at Edge of England's Sword queries my interpretation of Professor Gaddis's reference in his article on Bush's National Security Strategy to Henry V in general and the battle of Agincourt in particular. I should say, straight off, that the Agincourt analogy is far from the greatest defect in Gaddis's piece - it was only what initially got my goat, having studied the period a little in the past. However.... I must confess that, reading the piece several times, it had not crossed my mind that he was referring to Shakespeare's character Henry V, rather than the historical king. (That the man is a history, and not an English, professor had something to do with it, I suspect!). The Shakespeare might still helpreference I assumed to be a rather lame segue from his previous reference to Hamlet. Now, I see the alternative reading. Fine. Let's rework assuming Gaddis was talking about Shakespeare's Henry. (I'm no more an Eng Lit than an international relations expert, but...) Having skimmed the text [1], I can't see that his piece fits the fictional version any more than the historical. First, on Gaddis's point that For Henry, the demonstration was Agincourt,there is nothing in the opening Act, which deals with Henry's justification for war against France, which suggests that he has any other power in mind than France and all her almost kingly dukedoms (I ii 227). The historical Henry's pre-invasion diplomacy took in a range of European powers, most notably the emperor Sigismund [2], but all in the cause of depriving his only target, France, of support; and none of it mentioned in the play, so far as I can see. Second, in the play, as in real life, Agincourt was no part of Henry's strategy. He was doing all he could to evade the French forces and reach home without a fight. I do not seek him now, (continued....) | Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Usual suspects prevent wide anti-war coalitionLittle has been done to turn large swathes of war doubters on both sides of the pond into an effective opposition (as bemoaned in a piece here). Case in point: the UK Stop the War Coalition has demonstrations planned for this Thursday. After six paragraphs explaining themselves (in dismal prose), they reach the killer point:
If they wished to cite the single name calculated to turn off the maximum number of potential supporters, that would be the name; and, civil disobedience? The impression given is that they have given up all chance of stopping the war, and prefer to retain their ideological purity. Much the same goes for the list of supporters on the (US) Not in Our Name site: a rag tag and bobtail army of left-wing groups, many identified with causes that centre- and right-wing war doubters would viscerally oppose. But the namechecks were evidently deemed worth the loss in support. Problem is, I don't see anyone around whom a broad range of doubters could coalesce, either in Britain or the US. In the US, those with the highest profile in the centre-right opposition to the current Administration policy seems to be politicians and elements in the military (in each case, active and retired): that doesn't seem a likely source of the necessary leadership. (In Britain, we've been even worse off for non-left opposition, so far as I'm aware: not helped by the absurd yes-man role played with such enthusiasm by Ian Duncan-Smith.) Perhaps there's simply not enough time: whatever the faffing about in the UN, the limiting variable has always been the Iraqi winter - by the second week in January, no doubt we will have already kicked off in the Gulf. | Monday, October 28, 2002
Iraqi armed forces - quitters or baroudeurs?Here's another infuriating article on the war - and it's on the sceptical side, too! Like so much one reads on the war, it's pitched at such a high level of generality as to offer little more than emotional reassurance to those that appreciate its conclusions. Case in point: One can't at once maintain...that Iraq's military forces will readily defect and can easily be walked over....and also that this same pathetic military presents a coherent international threat. Logical contradictions in opponents' arguments are always good news. Except when the contradictions arise mostly from the critical blurring of the distinction between some and all. For example, in terms of threat, Iraqi WMDs and terrorist methods are causing more concern than its conventional forces, so far as I can gather. And, again, Iraqi forces are a heterogeneous bunch, in capabilities, motivation, equipment, etc - it's certain that a range of reactions to US invasion would be found, dependent on a host of factors. A more satisfactory approach is to be found in this CSIS paper [1], which exposes, rather than obscures, the enormous range of information to be mastered on Iraqi units, facilities, weapons, etc; and stresses the dynamic aspect of war planning. In making its assessment of likely performance of Iraqi forces, the Cordesman paper offers a dauntingly long list of 'intangibles' (p13-15), and considers separately a series of alternative US responses, from the status quo through to a full-scale invasion. (Though he says it's the US's war to lose (p76), his list of Iraqi warfighting options (p74-6) offers little comfort: every indication that, if there is strong resistance, it'll be in Baghdad.) Though no definite conclusions are possible, one gets a clear impression of the complexities and contingencies to be taken into accounting in formulating Iraq strategy. It's not that Cordesman has the last word on the subject: on the contrary, for the benefit of laymen (like me!) on steep learning curves, competing treatments of strategy options are needed at the level of detail he provides - and fewer feelgood pieces offering over-generalised arguments that fail to recognise the complexities and dynamic nature of the Iraq problem.
| Google search censorship - againAn interesting piece on what Google is secretly leaving out of its search results. Depending...... It mentions DCMA and Scientology; but also the peculiar censorship operated on www.google.fr and www.google.de. Items (Nazi stuff and the like) which occur in a search on google.com mysteriously fail to appear when the same search is done on 'fr' and 'de'. The nonsense is, of course, that those in France and Germany can as easily use 'com' as New Yorkers. And everyone knows it. Politics, no doubt, explains it. But governments are surely unlikely to be satisfied by this charade. UPDATE: Chris Bertram from Junius has thrown a quantity of cold water on my Pollyanna-ish theory of the 'com' bypass: it seems, if users in Belgium try to get up the 'com' site, they're shunted off to google.be without a by-your-leave. Damn reality! | Saturday, October 26, 2002
Kennewick Man: Indians mount further war-partyAfter admitting the case for science, Judge Jelderks has decided that mumbo-jumbo should have a final day in the sun. Several Indian tribes [1] - who, in several years of litigation, had stood on the sidelines - now suddenly demand to be joined in the case. Why? Because
Aliter, someone in government has woken up and decided that to destroy vital archaeological and anthropological evidence in the cause of rimming the Indians was bad news all round. James Baker famously (is supposed to have) said:
The Indians, surely, are an a fortiori case. There is absolutely no sleazy political inhibition whatsoever on doing what is right. Which is, without a shadow of doubt, to examine these remains. Just to state what others seem shy of doing: if it turns out that the Indians were not the first inhabitants of North America, but were Johnny-Come-Latelys who (one way or the other) eliminated the indigenous population, that would annihilate their entire case for special treatment. Goodbye casinos, goodbye guilt. No wonder the Indians are squirming! Apparently, the case, now bound for the 9th Circuit, may take another 6-7 years to resolve. Not that the bones have anywhere to go to. So long as the Government keeps them intact, time is no object. Links to the legal paperwork (opinions, etc) are available here . (Scientific doubts shed on Indians' Kennewick hypothesis.) [1] Nez Perce, Umatilla, Colville and Yakama | Ayatollah calls for 'heretic' Rabbi Sacks' book to be destroyedAnother illustration of the old story from the Far North: the man on the sled chased by wolves, who throws some meat out hoping to satisfy them; but only succeeds in whetting their appetite. Previously, Sacks, under investigation by some kind of modern Inquisition, was pleased to recant stuff he wrote in a recent book. Now , he has been accused of heresy by no less a personage than
(One might pause to reflect on the dangers inherent in the title of life president - this article includes a roll-call of life presidents, whose characters or actions it scarcely improved.) For the Life President, recantation is insufficient degradation to inflict on the leader of Orthodox British Jewry: it is essential, it seems, for all copies the book to be destroyed. He does not, apparently, say burned. It may be because he is an keen conservationist (I almost said 'ardent'!) and prefers to see the evil tomes recycled - perhaps by Messrs Andrex; or it may be that he is aware of certain historical resonances.... Of course, his fellow ayatollahs may now step forward and disown the Life President's demand. On the other hand, since Sacks has retreated once, they may think he will do it again. And thereby diminish the office of Chief Rabbi - and, as a result, enhance their own power. Those up-and-coming rabbis eyeing Sacks' spot will no doubt be taking notes. | Friday, October 25, 2002
Who got Marian Anderson to the Lincoln Memorial?An unsung heroine (pun intended!), apparently. Though, as I suggest in a piece here, the heroism, if that's what it was, seems to have been unintended. | Roosevelt's Realpolitik: Court-Packing and the Primary Purge[A continuation of a theme that somehow got started here.] Were these two remarkable initiatives the result of temporary insanity? Or Homer not so much nodding as falling into a state of catalepsy? Isn't it rather more likely that the cunning old fox decided to take a dive, with a view to passing the responsibility for the Roosevelt Recession and general policy drift onto a hostile Congress. Oops, Congress is a pussy-cat! But not by the time FDR's finished yanking on its tail..... I ponder the possibility that Tammany's boy might not have been a complete boy scout in the matter here. | Back on trackCommunications with the 21st century having in the last few minutes been restored (at long last), blogging (and related activity) will hopefully return to normal in short order. Many thanks for your patience. | Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Not so innocent - FDR's racket in LouisianaWhile on the subject of American Innocence and 1930s politics, I was reminded of a quote in William Manchester's journalistic history The Glory and the Dream (something in the style of John Gunther). Notoriously, Franklin Roosevelt shamelessly used taxpayers' money to buy votes for his re-election campaigns. After his initial political success in getting elected to the New York Senate as an insurgent in 1910, he was persuaded by the likes of Tammany Hall boss Charles Murphy that, if he wanted to make a career of it, politics (Democratic politics in New York, at least) required regularity. Evidently, he was also paying attention to Tammany's ways of getting in the vote. One of the key agencies employed in this way by FDR in his 1936 re-election bid was the Works Progress Administration. While its ostensible mission was to use unemployed labour in large civil engineering projects - and tunnels, bridges and dams were certainly built, it killed two birds in offering the opportunity to favour state and local allies with patronage. Whoever was best placed to deliver votes to FDR got control of the WDA goodies. Thus, in New York City, Republican Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had a separate office of the WDA on which to work his influence - because he was best placed to deliver votes in quantity in the presidential race [1]. Louisiana was run by the only man who ever looked like a serious challenger to the incumbent. And, naturally, the WDA was used to challenge Huey Long's machine. In Manchester's book, Hodding Carter is quoted thus (on p114):
Rather like a movie mafioso bewailing the decline in moral standards: once bought, a voter should stay bought!
| American Innocence and Mr Smith Goes To WashingtonAfter 9/11, there was no shortage of US media references to loss of innocence. Outside observers may have been puzzled the phenomenon, given the quite clear conclusions from similar sources that America had lost its innocence in Somalia or Vietnam or World War 2 or some other time and place. Does this innocence work like the evergreen variety some Japanese girls secure from their doctors prior to getting married? Since the topic seems to have been recently revived as part of the transatlantic bile exchange on American crassness versus European sophistry, I take a lengthy look at it, with the Frank Capra movie as my guide. A movie which, on close inspection, turns out to mean the polar opposite of what appears on the surface. A very un-innocent movie indeed, in fact! | Post hasteStill blogging on the fly, due to minor telecoms disaster. Time for more reflection, perhaps, as in the piece below. | Monday, October 21, 2002
War doubters and the usual supects: more guilt by associationThe churchyards of England are strewn with the bodies of 'intellectuals' who enjoyed a long period of infatuation with the farther shores of the Left, only at some point to be visited by some angel or other, and suffer a Damascene conversion to sound conservative values. Strangely, the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 1939 didn't seem to put many off the Workers' Paradise; Hungary in 1956 winkled a few more out; and by the time the Prague Spring came round, the model was the safely martyred Trotsky (who was never put to the totalitarian test) and revolutionaries of duskier hue. Those Britons of a certain age will remember Malcolm Muggeridge; the slightly younger, Paul Johnson. The Great Apostate of the current generation is destined, it seems, to be Christopher Hitchens. Just in time to join the chorus of the War Party in its current oratorio - to which he has happily just contributed a lengthy solo. Which I give the consideration it deserves in a slightly shorter effort here. | Owing to a little local technical difficulty, blogging (and other electronic communication) has been difficult to impossible over the past few days. Apologies to all - replies to emails will be forthcoming shortly - with a bit of luck! Today, I have a piece up to be getting on with - and hopefully normal service will be resumed in the next couple of days. | Friday, October 18, 2002
After Alabama dildoes, it's Georgia Fornication!Margaret Mitchell must be spinning in her grave! The fair city of Atlanta witnessing an assault on a bulwark of the defence of the chastity of the Flower of Southern Womanhood...... Or perhaps not. But, following on from the delights of the Dildo Law case, the battle against the Georgia Fornication Law - waged by a 17 year old boy caught in the act by his girlfriend's mother, no less! - is no less fascinating. I delve into the Georgia case here. | Thursday, October 17, 2002
Israel: in settlements farce, pie in face for Ben-EliezerAnother settlement, another rout for the IDF. Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer, vote-grubbing in search of Labour's nomination for prime minister, teases the moderates with a list of 24 illegal settlements to shut down. It's something of a fantasy, Joe McCarthy-style list, since only 5 are actually inhabited - one of which
A dozen have been closed, apparently - but at Havat Gilad, in as neat a piece of asymmetric warfare as you could wish to see, the tide was turned - or should that be, Red Sea parted? - and the enemy repulsed without a shot being fired. The forces of Eretz Israel were Churchillianly magnanimous - they agreed they'd keep farming the land, but wouldn't actually sleep there - land and a warm bed at night! And, on top, they get an IDF lookout post. And this they call a 'compromise'? Still, silver lining in IDF Chief of Staff Ya'alon's cloud: the more 'healthy cells' in Judea-Samaria, the less room for the 'cancer'. UPDATE: A he said, she said developing between Ben-Eliezer and the settlers about whether the 'compromise' exists. I reckon I'd put my money on the settlers! | Challenger 2 Tanks: at last, some action on sand problemsOne of the less friendly aspects of Lend-Lease was the Americans foisting 7,000 of their lethal (to their crews!) M-4 A-4 Sherman tanks on the British - 95% of production, apparently (the M-4 A-3 version (reserved for the US Army?) was better, it says here)! The special qualities of M-4 A-4s led them to be affectionately known to the Wehrmacht as 'Tommy cookers'. Their millennial equivalent, the (previously discussed) Challenger 2 - the tank that gives up when it has sand thrown in its face - is finally to get 'desertified' - or so the brass hats are planning. The expenditure has yet to get authorisation - and only 234 out of the British Army total of 616 [320KB file, p49] main battle tanks (all Challenger 2s? - can't check, MoD site is down!) will be 'fixed'. If the modifications go as well as those to the SA-80 rifle....it's probably as well not to speculate. | Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Al Qaida, al-Qaeda - why not just AQ?Thinking about it for the first time, it seems a no-brainer: with so many variants (spelling and punctuation) for such a common, high-profile expression, why hasn't it been standardised as AQ. ETA and the IRA (in UK security forces jargon PIRA, pronounced pie-ruh) are so treated; BR is (according to Google) fairly common for the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse); Greece has its N17. All minnows in terms of world media namechecks compared to AQ. So why not? Does it stand for something 'rude' in some key country? (AQ is the TLD (top domain name - I had to look it up!) for Antarctica, apparently. But nothing else that leapt off the page.) | Credibility Gaps, Old and New: McCarthy, Vietnam - and IraqI've a copy of a fascinating little book, published in 1971, called The Unholy Hymnal, in which statements of dubious veracity from the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, mostly concerned with the Vietnam War, are paired with explanations of the true position [1]. The book's own credibility is somewhat diminished, however, by the astonishing assertion in the foreword that In previous periods of history, as Walter Lippman has noted [I can't find a reference for this], there seems to have been no need for such a phrase. Supposedly, LBJ ushered in both a quantitative and a qualitative change. Problem is, journalists of the generation of the author [2] had a considerable personal interest in distinguishing the Johnson-Nixon era from earlier times when they had quite happily regurgitated undigested every scrap, be it fillet steak or pig-swill, that any branch of government put out for them, under the pernicious doctrine of objective reporting. Journalists of that and earlier generations were doubly culpable in that there was an equal gap - call it an honesty gap - between the evidence they had about what was going on and what they told their readers. Not direct and incontrovertible evidence, perhaps, but good enough to damage the credibility of government actors sufficiently to open them up to questioning. Joe McCarthy Take the case of Sen Joseph McCarthy. Of course, the credibility gap with Tailgunner Joe that continues to this day is that he didn't start McCarthyism - he came way late to the party in 1950 as a little known and less regarded freshman Senator whose main achievement was to have finished off the La Follette dynasty in Wisconsin in 1946. Both the Smith and McCarran Acts were passed by Democratic-majority Congresses and signed by Democratic Presidents; HUAC was still active (though less gaudily so than hitherto) in the Democratic-controlled 81st Congress, and Truman had introduced the regime of loyalty oaths for the government service in 1947. The Wheeling, WV speech of Thursday, 9 February 1950 was too a feeble a seed to take root in any but the most fertile soil. But the fact that the 205....members of the Communist Party...working in the State Departmentbecame 207 bad risksin Denver on the Friday, and 57 card-carrying membersin Salt Lake City later that day; and his mention of four names in a speech at Reno on February 11, whom he spun to journalists as Communists, but deliberately avoided calling Communists in his speech, were all quite sufficient to put the average political journo on notice right from the start that McCarthy was not to be believed. And some wrote as much at the time. As early as the following Tuesday, February 14, the Washington Post editorial, under the title Sewer Politics, accused McCarthy of foul play....Rarely has a man in public life crawled and squirmed so abjectly. The vast majority, however, were playing Sergeant Joe Friday and asking for, and printing, just the facts: which, under objective reporting, were the words the Senator said - whatever the absurdity or internal contradictions. [All of this taken from the excellent Joe McCarthy and the Press by Edwin Bayley, pp17-32.] So, if there was never a time at which McCarthy wasn't under suspicion as a manipulator of facts, if not an outright liar, why weren't Pulitzer-hungry journos falling over themselves to expose him at every turn? Some had a good go (like Murray Marder and others from the Washington Post); but their impact was evidently limited for a good while. Bayley blames institutional factors (the way the wire services operated and the use the newspapers made of them) and the general post-War climate of fear staying the hand of the average publisher. But, in essence, people believed what they wanted to believe - a story consistent with the Commie threat narrative they'd got accustomed to - on and off - since the Woodrow Wilson days of the Espionage Act and the Palmer Raids. And the average publisher was no Clayton Smith. Vietnam Again, though most of the facts were classified at the time, there was sufficient material in the public domain during the critical period running up to the definitive commitment of US combat forces in 1965 - not to mention information available 'on background' from official sources - to allow journalists to ask searching questions. (The Uncensored War by Daniel C Hallin covers the period.) For instance, as early as May 1961, Johnson had been despatched to Saigon on a fact-finding mission to make nice with Ngo Dinh Diem. While in South Vietnam, he publicly compared Diem to Winston Churchill (it's that man again!). Back on the plane, so the story goes (reference searched for high and low....), he was quizzed on the remark by one of the journalists, and was supposed to have replied to the effect that Diem was
This admission evidently did not shake the listening journos' confidence sufficiently to get them questioning what they were being told. By mid-1963, no inside information was needed to see that Diem was devoid of both legitimacy and authority, ineffective militarily against the Communists (Ap Bac), and unnecessarily repressive towards his own people (Pagoda raids) (interesting CIA paper on Johnson's Decision To "Go Big" in Vietnam covering 1963-1965). If Homer Bigart's motto was correct, and the Kennedy Administration's policy was Sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem (as it then seemed to be), the US effort in SVN was already more than half submerged! (Diem's successors were, equally obviously, not up to the job either.) Journalists based in SVN, such as David Halberstam, wrote critical pieces from this time on; but they were up against the editorial line of their papers and op-ed writers, which was pretty much uncritical of US policy - and often hostile to criticism coming from reporters whose judgement had supposedly been warped by spending too much time 'in the field'. Even when a prestige source like Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield called for a rethink of policy in SVN (as apparently happened after the November 1963 coup against Diem), the story was buried in the inside pages of the New York Times. The (supposedly 'unprovoked') Tonkin Gulf Incidents were reported in strict accordance with official US reports. In particular, US newspapers made no use in questioning such reports of the public complaints by North Vietnam about the OPLAN 34-A raids mounted against its coast. The twin explanations given by Hallin for this lack of probing journalism - Cold War ideology and objective reporting - go only so far. One needn't have doubted the ultimate goal of policy - stemming the global spread of Communism - in questioning the strategy employed by the US in SVN. (Even though Halberstam and Co criticised particular US policies and actions, they were for some time generally supportive of US military involvement in the country.) And expressions of doubt from 'official sources' like Mansfield could have been used as cover for such questioning. There was (so far as I am aware) no equivalent to the Washington Post McCarthy 'Sewer' editorial during the key period running up to the commitment of major ground forces. As far as I know, the only journalist questioning the Administration version of events in the weeks following the Incidents was maverick 'radical' I F Stone [3] - who, needless to say, did not have quite the profile or clout of the Post! Iraq Things are rather different today. No Cold War, much less popular deference to authority, a multiplicity of news and comment media (much of it online): surely the current news environment is as hostile to a persistent credibility gap as a global perfect market to the arbitrageur? After all, running a credibility gap is only bearable to a government so long as it isn't being effectively called on it; or if its voters are of a mind to ignore those calls. Right now, the Bush Administration is currently being called on a goodly number of dubious statements relating to Iraq (as previously discussed) - and by prestigious news organisations, too (including the Washington Post). And, according to the polls, the public is far from convinced that the Bush Iraq policy is without flaw. In the New York Times-CBS poll previously mentioned, 51% thought that Congress wasn't asking enough questions about the policy (Q58 - a worrying 20% thinking it was asking too many!). However, if the American public's support for war against Saddam is soft, its reservations and doubts seem unfocussed, despite the breadth and depth of the opinions available to it. My hunch (no source, not for want of looking!) is that the prime news source for most American citizens is local TV news; whilst 'if it bleeds, it leads' may be an oversimplified characterisation of its news agenda, nevertheless I'd be surprised to see much time in a 22 minute local news bulletin given over to teasing out the strands of the aluminium tubes or the Atta Prague meeting stories! What could turn this unfocussed popular unease towards the war into outright, faxing-Congressmen opposition? A whole mess of inconsistencies and evasions won't do it - we've got that already! Written proof of the Administration's intention to deceive? Email encourages stupidity, but I wouldn't hold my breath. An Administration figure like Colin Powell bailing? Perhaps - but would it ever happen? The bleating of the Usual (liberal) Suspects merely consolidates the War Party's hold on opinion - much like the opposition of Sen Wayne Morse - according to Stanley Karnow, the Typhoid Mary of Capitol Hill! [4] - to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution reassured its supporters that they were right. Perhaps what is needed is a guy (or three) from the Right, a solid friend of the armed services with a record of support for US military action, to choose the right moment (whatever that is) to declare his opposition to the Administration's plans. Back in 1964, the telephone recordings in the LBJ Library show that the President's mentor, Sen Richard Russell (D-Ga) - a man about as far from a peacenik as it was possible to get! - confided to Johnson his deep concerns about getting out of SVN once combat troops had been deployed in large numbers (conversation on May 27 1964 at 10.55 am: transcribed in Beschloss Taking Charge (p363ff), streamed here) Russell kept his doubts private - his present-day equivalent, if there is one, would be under less institutional pressure to do so.
| Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Nike 1st Amendment case latestThe nub of the case (discussed previously) is whether, as a commercial concern, Nike's 1st Amendment rights in public debate are less than those of a private individual. Nike's 128 page petition to the US Supreme Court for certiorari in the case is now available. [Link via Howard Bashman, where other relevant links can be found.] | Monday, October 14, 2002
The Alabama Dildo Law case (no kidding!)A case to fascinate historian, lawyer and feminist alike that I discuss at some length here. If George Wallace could tolerate these aids to female pleasure being sold in his state, it beats me how the Alabama legislature could have got sufficiently riled by the vibrator and its cousins to ban their sale as late as 1998. But, as a result, we get a useful history of sex laws in America (the facts very much against the popular impression, I suspect), including an exquisite few paragraphs on medical 'massage' and the first coming (pun intended) of the vibrator coinciding, more or less with the Comstockery era; recognition of a fundamental constitutional right to adult sexual privacy; and, in Alabama itself, common sense restored. All courtesy of the Federal judiciary. (Pending appeal, of course.) | Sunday, October 13, 2002
Likudnik journo's 'modest proposal'Former associate of Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Post columnist Ms Caroline B Glick sets out a radical vision for 'peace' across the Middle East, which appears be principally inspired by the filmic oeuvre of Messrs Stallone and Schwarzenegger. I take issue with her here on several points where reality and she seem momentarily to have parted company - Tony Blair a supporter of anitsemitism, for instance; or George Bush assisting those seeking to deny Israel's right to exist. Of course, there's no necessary implication that the once again up-and-coming 'Bibi' shares her views.... | Saturday, October 12, 2002
Kennewick Man: Study supports scientists' methodologyAfter the scientists scored their win in the courts to have the Kennewick bones made available for research, it seems (though I'm no expert in anything like the field) that a newly published study supports their method of analysis. (Discrediting politically-motivated research findings of early last century - plus ça change......) Nothing I can find as to whether the Department of the Interior have decided to appeal the ruling against it. | Friday, October 11, 2002
CIA in Vietnam: Iraq parallels?Having inveighed against 'crude pseudo-historical read-across' myself, I could only offer this quote from a (to the layman) rather interesting CIA paper on the agency's role in the Vietnam War for examination with due circumspection:
Any resemblance to current events is purely coincidental, surely? | Plaguing Question #1 (Iraq/al Qaida) Again!Having now got hold of the text of the Tenet letter of 7 October, the questions I raised yesterday [1] on the flakiness of the Adminstration's case for an Iraq/al Qaeda tie-up seem a little closer to resolution. Given that he is relying on sources that cannot be independently verified, the claims he makes are pretty slight:
doesn't say anything about what - if anything - they might have agreed to do for one another; or what - if any - joint actions they actually carried out. Talk is cheap; the UK government talked to the Provisional IRA during the bombing campaign, for Heaven's sake! And again
They're talking about not attacking one another! The Mandarin prose of the WMD paragraph I mentioned yesterday. In fact, Bush's Cincinnati speech doesn't go much further - only his claim
isn't supported by Tenet in the letter. Use of words like 'active ties' (the Post article) or 'links' begs the relevant questions - and not by accident either. The gap is not so much between 'gung-ho' Bush and cautious bureaucrat Tenet, but between what Bush says (not much) and what he implies: some kind of active alliance. Indeed, in March 2002 Tenet himself apparently
Another statement that implies more than it says. On the supposed Atta meeting in Prague, the conflict between the Administration and the spooks seems more clear cut: according to Time, in August, Pentagon officials succeeded in dragging an admission from the FBI that the meeting was 'possible' - no doubt they would have liked more. But, in general, beneath the packaging, the Adminstration's claims don't seem to go much further than the intelligence agencies' positions - which isn't far. [1] Qv for references. | Tenet Letter and Iraq/al Qaida linksThe only online text of the letter from George Tenet to Sen Bob Graham (Chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee) dated October 7 2002 is apparently this PDF file. For ease of quotation, I have copy-typed the paragraphs relating to Iraq-al Qaida (oh, the pre-cut/paste nostalgia!):
| More Guardian Wade/Pinyin confusionIn their piece that I discussed here about the Rape of Nanking (kow-towed to the Pinyin Nanjing in honour of soixante-huitard, Little Red Book nostalgia or rimming for trade, according to the speaker's ideological bent [1]), I mentioned the inconsistent use, alongside Nanjing, of the old Wade-Giles system of transcription from the Chinese in rendering Kuomintang. Now, answering a reader's question on an Italian 'colony' in Tientsin (W-G), all pretence at consistency has been jettisoned, apparently. The piece (written by another reader, but surely subbed?) refers to the Qing (P) dynasty (Ching W-G) but Chiang Kai-shek (W-G). And this time, the KMT is rendered as Guomindang (P)! On the face of it, a thoroughly good thing, a sign of the erosion of the 'PC before there was PC' Pinyin fetish in UK news organisations. I tend, however, to think ignorance and a slapdash approach to detail is more likely to be the explanation. [1] But not in the expression 'Rape of N', according to the believe-it-or-not Google search: on its own, Pinyin beats Wade 271k to 52k; in 'R of N', Wade triumphs 8k to 2k! | SA 80 Rifle - the whole grim storyThe background to the procurement nightmare (previously discussed here) that is the standard issue British Army infantry weapon (aka Saddam's Best Friend - only the Challenger II 'I Seize Up in Sand' 'tank' runs it close!) is laid out for those with strong enough stomachs here. [Link via Ian J Coleman] | Thursday, October 10, 2002
Plaguing Question #1: Iraq-al Qaida links (cont)And only this week in his Cincinnati speech, the President renewed the claims. This time, Tenet gives a little on the links:
But the choice of words is bureaucratically correct to a degree: firstly, distinguish 'contacts' from 'cooperation', still less joint operations. Secondly, note 'sought' - no intelligence, then, that they actually ever even met for tea! Ex-CIA men and anonymous sources (caveat lector!)
One of the former, Vincent Cannistraro, told the Post of the
The fact that the agency has given (albeit qualified) support to the Administration on Iraq-al Qaida links at the same time as seemingly undermining its case on the risks of a WMD attack also seems a tad suspicious. Factor in the strange case of Mohamed Atta's Prague 'meeting', not to mention general intelligence woes post 9/11, and the reasons for doubt - of competence if not of good faith - are scarcely less than cogent. | Plaguing Question #1: Iraq-al Qaida linksTwo things stand out about this question: (a) the Administration's persistence in claiming the links exist despite their being inessential to its case for removing Saddam; and (b) the extraordinary and continuing difficulty of the Administration to provide cogent evidence of such links. I discussed before the Rose Garden press conference of September 26: there, on the basis of supposed 'new intelligence' from Al Qaeda prisoners - 'new' to explain why the matter had not been highlighted before - the President claimed the link was
Only for the intelligence community (led, it seems, by CIA chief George Tenet, who had apparently briefed senators the previous day without making any such claims) to pipe up denying that any such new intelligence existed. Rumsfeld next day said the link was 'bulletproof': though he admitted that
>>>>>>>>>>> | Wednesday, October 09, 2002
War: 'What's your solution?' debating trick won't stop questionsThere's an argument of the War Party that boils down to this: 'If you can't offer a solution to Saddam, you have no right to be heard about the war.' The source of the attraction of its (utterly specious) logic lies, I think, in the expectation of a tendency in life towards facial equality: in sports, each team generally has the same number of players, innings, equipment and so forth; in judicial proceedings, each side a chance to lead evidence and cross-examine. And so on. The war debate is completely different. Pretty well all on both sides are kibbitzers. And, I strongly suspect, few have the professional and technical competence to take any sort of leading role - diplomatic or military - in resolving the Iraqi question. There are such people - in government. We bear to them the same relationship as a layman towards the professional - architect, doctor, lawyer or whatever - that he hires. A man who's his own lawyer has a fool for a client, as the saying goes - doubly a fool if he's paying for a lawyer as well! The layman's role requires trust in the professional's abilities and good faith; but an active exercise of critical judgement too. He does not have the expertise to do the job himself; but - for his own peace of mind, if nothing else - he will test the professional's work with questions, research relevant matters, audit the work as it proceeds. Many patients, I believe, with chronic illnesses now, with the help of the Net, know more about their illness than the average doctor. But, though they may have the information to challenge the doctor, that doesn't mean they can treat themselves! When it comes to the war, though large swathes of opinion in the US are prepared to approve an attack on Saddam, they are, I believe, plagued by questions that seem not only to go unanswered, but to be actively evaded by the Administration. (Proxies for their fears come out in polls such as the much talked of New York Times poll I discussed yesterday (partial details here). In the general questions on pre-emptive attacks (Q36 and 37), respondents are respectively tied and opposed to such action; there are clear majorities for waiting for Congressional approval (Q44), UN efforts to get in inspectors (Q43), and allies to rally to US support (Q 45). Examples of such plaguing questions? Read on.... | New York Times 'bias' outcry - objective reporting fallacy all over againIs the high dudgeon about anti-war bias in the New York Times's news pages - Kissinger, polls - justified? Or does the complaint set up a standard of unattainable perfection in order to see the paper fail? So-called objective reporting gave Joe McCarthy free rein with 'Communists' for a long while and Kennedy and Johnson the same with Vietnam and Laos: like Voltaire's Holy Roman Empire, it was scarcely more objective than that of the era of Hearst and Colonel McCormick and was reporting only in the sense that printing the NASDAQ is reporting. That, and a 'matter arising' from the original Krauthammer article, I expand on here. | Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Abuse of history - Guardian gets it right for once (more or less)As longstanding purveyors of anachrobollocks, false historical analogy and general historical disinformation (generally in the cause of whitewashing their beloved 'oppressed peoples of the Third World'), the Guardian is the last place one would look for a little sanity on the subject (previously addressed by me: here and here). The Munich analogy, comparisons (according to taste) of Saddam, George Bush, Tony Blair, Ariel Sharon, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all to Adolf Hitler - all receive something of the disdain they deserve. Credit where credit is due; for those requiring the normal Guardian service, I believe there is a Monbiot piece up.... | Poll: UK support for Iraq war slipsThe Labour Party Conference speech of the Great Leader apparently failed to do the trick: according to the latest poll (fieldwork October 4-6), only 32% of British people support an attack on Iraq to get rid of Saddam: for/against/don't know split 32/41/27. An earlier poll (September 27/29) showed a 33/44/24 split: Excel file with details here. (Earlier Iraq polls here.) | Israeli Defence Minister's Peace Plan - damn those bilingual Arabs!Toward the end of a somewhat meandering article on the prospects for peace in general, and the Israeli public's attitude to various forms of peace settlement in particular, my eye was caught by this:
Amongst several 'differences' mentioned in the article is this:
Alerted to this alarmingly ineffectual and naive piece of duplicity on Ben-Eliezer's part, a 'spokesman'
Just as soon as they'd finished rounding up the usual subjects, I suppose..... | Israeli PR effort 'uncoordinated': Official!Interesting news from a guy those of us in the West seldom if ever hear from. The Israeli State Comptroller (role described here) has reported that
So the modicum of testiness sometimes displayed by the sharp-suited young men sent in by the Israeli authorities to battle the Western media may not (as might previously have been thought) solely be due to their loathing their interlocutors! And as for Israeli preparedness for the forthcoming war:
Which, being translated from the understated bureaucrat-ese, sounds like a fairly dire warning of potential trouble.... | Monday, October 07, 2002
UK Attorney-General: Regime-change war illegalThe UK Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, has apparently advised Blair ('confidentially') that war to get rid of Saddam would be contrary to international law. What the piece - mere taxpayers are not allowed to see the actual advice, of course! - does not deal with is 'mixed motives': what if regime change were only a secondary reason? Or a reason not shared by all belligerents? Nor do we see Goldsmith 'show his workings': how precisely does he contend such a war would contravene international law? When was the opinion given? Why has it been leaked now? To get Bush to dial back his 'Saddam must go' talk? Good luck with that..... | Sinn Fein Raids: Blair's Ulster fantasy succumbs to realityIf it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is..... It seems The Hand of History has at long last grasped St Tony warmly by the throat. Perhaps only the accountants at Enron could have kept up for so long an illusion as patently implausible as Tony's: that the IRA had given up 'the armed struggle' for ever, and were now good little democrats. Rather than merely taking a time-out in preparation for the next round. The lie fundamental to the fantasy was to falsify the nature of Sinn Fein's obligation in the Good Friday Agreement in relation to 'decommissioning' of weapons: Tony and his team wove a neat tissue of deception implying that Sinn Fein-IRA had agreed to decommission. Whereas what Sinn Fein had actually signed up to is this:
(The IRA, of course, wasn't a party to the agreement.) Sinn Fein-IRA got all the benefits (release of terrorists, seats in government); and all Sinn Fein had to do was 'use its influence' to gain decommissioning! It's like selling your house, where the buyer only has to use his influence to find the agreed price. If he can't, you still have to hand over the house! Clearly, no one participating in the devolved government charade believed in Tony's fantasy. I seriously doubt whether Tony ever did. And, when it comes to Ulster, voters on the mainland understand nothing and care less (at least so long as the bombers are moonlighting at home kneecapping and shooting 'drug dealers') - if Tony said it was sorted, they ticked the box and moved on. You can bet Brian Faulkner is smiling somewhere over his bottomless Bushmills...... | Sunday, October 06, 2002
MMR - despite new study, when will voodoo stop?Having just namechecked Creationist County, GA [1], in the cause of transatlantic equity let's salute its British equivalent, those darlings of the Oprah-ised media, the Fred Karno's Army of retards crusading against the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine. Science, schmience! The sheer chutzpah of this rabble in front of the camera, spouting anecdote and half-truth, glorying in their ignorance, brow-beating scientists with the tricks learnt from those academies of higher learning, Kilroy, Esther and Trisha, evidently gives them credibility with the Great British Public beyond the reach of any doctor. So don't expect the latest review of MMR studies to cast more than a glimmer in the murk.
it says. Meaningless. Which is just how the British media and their customers like their 'science', apparently. [1] Cobb County, actually...... | UK military shambling towards Iraq warAfter the dismal news concerning the SA-80 rifle, there's little apparent comfort to be had from the latest word on UK (lack of) military preparedness for what now seems an inevitable Iraq war. Overstretch seems an understatement, with leave being cancelled to supply troops for training as firemen (to provide a replacement fire brigade if the planned fire service strike happens); but no training being provided, it seems, for the potentially difficult war ahead. The shortcomings of the British Army, in particular, the performance of equipment in desert conditions, were illustrated by the Saif Sareea II exercise in Oman (National Audit Office Report (HC 1067) [1.5MB file, Google-cached]; among which
So when
we have evidence suggesting they have good reason to do so! Pun in subject-line very much intended. [It has crossed my mind that this is cynical disinformation on the part of the brass hats with a view to scoring emergency budget allocations to their respective empires; or even avoiding their troops' exposure to combat altogether. Possibly: but the documented deficiencies in equipment and training seem, to this layman, sufficiently demonstrated by more or less objective evidence to place the burden of proof on those maintaining that the UK is ready for action against Iraq with the forces that are likely to be called upon.] | Saturday, October 05, 2002
Cobb County Creationists: updateDespite the furore in August over their proposal to treat science and 'creationism' as equally valid, the Cobb County, Georgia school board last week approved the proposal - without a single dissenting vote. | 'Jerusalem Recognition Act' - Bush declines the offerUpdating my earlier post on the subject, the President duly signed HR 1646 into law on September 30. Section 214 (Congress's quasi-recognition of undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel) provides, inter alia:
But Bush says of section 214 :
A vigorous assertion of the constitutional authority of the Executive. Now expect one or two citizens to ask for new passports...... | Sinn Fein police raid - timing?There's something fishy about the fact that the raid should have taken place on the very day that the hapless trio out in Colombia should have come up for trial. It seems clear that John Reid and the Northern Ireland Office have known what was going on for some time. The raid could, it seems, have happened at a time of his choosing without affecting its success. So, was this meant to be a sort of PR D-Day for Sinn Fein-IRA, Colombia and Stormont? (The shooting last week of bus driver Danny McBrearty, supposedly by Provos, is the latest outrage to poison the climate in which such a coup might be thought timely.) On the other hand, the Blair government's policy toward continued PIRA terrorist activity has been an endless pub-crawl of 'last chance saloons'. (In July. a similar warning to Blair's yesterday.) If Gerry Adams were to shoot John Reid in front of his nose, you feel Blair would have some excuse ready not to throw Sinn Fein out of the Executive. There was some suggestion on the BBC yesterday that Reid would say that the activities which gave rise to the Stormont raid were known about in July, and were somehow 'grandfathered' by the July statement, so as not to give rise to a fresh cause of ejecting Sinn Fein. In which case, why raid at all? | Virtual child porn - Senate hearing rubbishes House billVirtual child pornography, it seems, is pretty much at the frontier of First Amendment law. And now Congress's struggle to fashion a virtual child porn bill that will pass constitutional muster has started up again. Before the recess, the House passed (413-8) a bill (HR 4623) (originally transmitted by Attorney-General Ashcroft in somewhat high dudgeon) which it maintained would meet the tests laid down in Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition by a Supreme Court distinctly hard-line when it comes to the First Amendment. On October 2, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on a bipartisan bill altogether more limited in scope (S 2520). Not only Chairman Patrick Leahy (where partisan motives might be suspected!) but also the two academic lawyers speaking at the hearings attacked the House bill for failing to meet the demands of the FSC decision, and risking - inviting, perhaps - another rebuff from the Supremes. I'm not sure what time there will be to get anything for the President to sign this session. Apparently, it's not clear that there will be a lame-duck session; other, more urgent matters will command attention; and the gulf between House and Senate on virtual child porn would make for an 'interesting' conference...... | Rape of Nanking: Japanese revisionism reaches GuardianWhilst the abuse of history for political ends is in full spate in Anglo-America - the Munich analogy (as previous discussed here and here) very much to the fore - the Japanese are still doing their bit when it comes to their own historical 'warhorses'. It's the Rape of Nanking - again. But this time, the Ethiopian in the fuel supply is none other than the much-beloved Guardian (or Manchester Guardian, as it then was), and its correspondent Harold Timperley: according to some Yasukuni yacker, the guy is supposed to have made the massacre story up, as agent for the Kuomintang! On behalf of the Japs, the article suggests that
(Bizarrely, the paper uses the Pinyin form of the city's name (Nanjing) - so a search on 'Nanking' will not pick up the article. But the Wade-Giles for the KMT - 'Guomindang' in Pinyin. Go figure!) | UK 'Pedophile' satire site, the Met and the Internet Watch Foundation (cont)[Continued from here.] The thinkofthechildren case is, of course, reminiscent of the furore concerning the Chris Morris 'Brass Eye' programme on (UK) Channel 4. But far more important is the general question: how many similar faxes have been sent by police in the UK, 'requesting' that perfectly legal sites be shut down based on the police view that they 'could be interpreted as' giving rise to criminal offences? (Given the pusillanimity of ISPs and the ease of switching hosts, I'm not counting on getting an answer any time soon - no reason to stop asking, though.) | Friday, October 04, 2002
UK 'Pedophile' satire site, the Met and the Internet Watch FoundationIn the land of Tony 'Don't Say Anything If You Can't Be Pleasant' Blair, any victory for freedom of speech is worthy of celebration. The fact that thinkofthechildren - a site satirising anti-pedophile lynch-mobs - has for the moment repelled a thoroughly meritless challenge from the Metropolitan Police is something to be savoured. The trouble started with a fax from one Jim Pearce of the Met's Clubs and Vice Obscene Publications and Internet Unit:
'....could be interpreted as inciting violence', of course, describes a substantial proportion of political material on the net, and falls woefully short, so far as I am aware, of the standard of evidence required to mount a successful prosecution of any criminal offence, even in the UK. [Further details here and here.] Notable is the confusion about the role of the IWF: the police say the IWF
But the IWF deny this, saying that
I've raised the peculiar nature of the IWF before: a paper appeared on the IWF site called Racially Inflammatory Material on the Internet which carried the Home Office emblem, and which had been drafted by
but did not appear anywhere on the Home Office site. The IWF would not, of course, be the first NGO to enjoy an ambiguous relationship with government. [continued here] | Israel: 'Transfer of Arabs' gets more supportIn times, past, an exchange of population was a common solution to international problems where groups found themselves 'the wrong side of the border' - between Greece and Turkey in 1922, for instance; and millions of ethnic Germans were 'encouraged' to leave Czechoslovakia and Poland after World War 2. But, in these multi-culti days, it's the solution that dare not speak its name. Except in Israel, it seems. An interesting article - in the Guardian, of all places! - by Benny Morris gives numerous examples dating from before independence of support - from Arabs and Jews - for exchange of population (Theodore Hertzel, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, as well as King Abdullah of Transjordan and Prime Minister Ibrahim Pasha Hashim of Egypt); and posits the counterfactual, whether all concerned might not have been better off with a mono-ethnic Israel. | Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Democratic candidate for NY Governor - more sleazeApparently, Carl McCall's job extortion activities extended beyond his immediate family. After the revelation of his heavy-handed suggestion to Verizon to give a job to his daughter (and later fortunate felon) Marci McCall, now one reads he did much the same thing for the benefit of a cousin, one Elaine Mason. The target this time was the Coca-Cola Company, of whose stock the New York state pension fund then owned $700 million worth; that the executive concerned was also black might suggest that an appeal to racial solidarity accompanied the implied threat to dump the stock at an inconvenient moment. At a time when, supposedly McCall was supposed to be benefiting from the attention of big Democratic hitters like Hillary Clinton, the latest poll - taken before the 'Lettergate' revelations - shows McCall in some difficulty: either slipping from 11 to 15 points behind Pataki in a week (two different polls) or sticking at 16 points behind over the same period (same poll). The fact he's 6 points behind in New York City must be particularly troubling. The fact that, it seems, Pataki's kitty is 400% larger than McCall's no doubt has a deal to do with it. On the other hand, it's not pension fund money he's using. | Michigan University - second affirmative action case for Supreme Court?Already, there is one case involving affirmative action - Grutter v Bollinger - relating to the university's Law School - where application to the US Supreme Court for certiorari is pending. Now, a couple of plaintiffs who had sought and failed to get undergraduate entry to the University of Michigan are trying to get their affirmative action challenge heard by the Supremes despite the fact that the 6th Circuit has not yet issued a ruling in their case! Both the law school and the undergraduate cases were heard by the 6th Circuit at the same time. [Link via Howard Bashman] | Antisemitism smear, Harvard-styleI subject the recent speech of Harvard President Lawrence Summers to a modest fisking here. Supposing (on slight foundations) something of a Golden Age of Tolerance in the recent past, he proceeds to cite a catalogue of indications - the electoral success of Le Pen in France, attacks on synagogues, the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, proposed academic boycotts of Israel by European academics, the dismissal of Israeli members from the board of a UMIST journal, anti-globalisation and other demonstrations, and - of course - the proposal, in Harvard and elsewhere, to divest university endowments of Israeli investments - of a sudden growth in anti-semitism in the last year or so. The factual basis is unsubstantiated - the assertions in the speech are not referenced in the version on the university website - and in some cases demonstrably misleading. The rhetoric - including references to Hitler and Kristallnacht and a deliberate attempt to blur the distinction between opposition to the policy of the current Sharon government and antisemitism - is meretricious. Not a happy product of one of the world's foremost seats of learning! | free website counter 
|
