Friday, 22 July 2005
Thursday, 21 July 2005
Topic: Breaking News
London Again: The Second-String Executes Badly
Small explosions Thursday morning in London hit three subway trains and a bus. There was one injury and no fatalities. NBC offers this summary:Small explosions struck London's subway system and a bus at midday Thursday in a chilling but bloodless replay of the suicide bombings that killed 56 people two weeks ago.
NBC News has learned that British authorities told their U.S. counterparts that the backpacks used in Thursday's planned attacks and the explosives found in the backpacks are identical to those used in the July 7 attacks - evidence that strongly suggests the two sets of attacks were connected.
In Thursday's attack at lunch hour, Londoners were shocked and the capital disrupted, but no one was hurt.
However, information derived from police sources who have collected eyewitness accounts suggests that the attackers, who once again targeted three subway stations and a bus, intended to carry out suicide bombings and cause the kind of mayhem seen two weeks earlier, but failed because their detonators failed, NBC News has learned.
Earlier, Police Commissioner Ian Blair said forensic evidence collected from the crime scenes could provide a "significant break" in solving the case, and hours later police announced two arrests in connection with the latest attacks.
Late reports indicate those arrested were from Pakistan, or British citizens of Pakistani descent. Early reports were playing with the idea this may have been a "copycat" amateur thing, but it has become clear now that the original group is still active. The first-string players did the deed two weeks ago, and the second-string tried to replicate the original event - with a "we're still here and can do the same exact thing any time we want" message. Something went wrong. Whoever assembled the backpack bombs, with, it seems, a somewhat more powerful explosive this time, didn't read the instructions carefully enough, or perhaps the instructions were badly written. One assumes, if the British authorities don't break up the group with careful questioning and lots of probing investigation, there's probably the third, fourth, fifth and sixth layer of players. As they say in sports, one assumes these guys have a deep bench.
There was massive coverage on the news, but a bit less than on the 7th with the first bombs. Less surprise, fewer bleeding bodies, no death. It led all the newscasts, but there was room in the twenty-two minutes for other stories.
SLATE.COM runs a daily review of blog reaction - not very extensive but something - and has these notes:Health care director David Kitchenham of
Duenna Care Ltd. approves of the sparse media coverage. "Terrorism is a media fed fire, if it was not for the countless television channels then such actions would be futile," he writes. "Media may well be the capitalist's tool, but it is the terrorist's proffered weapon and they know how to use it." Christian blogger J. Marcus Xavier of
Very Small Doses, on the other hand,
is incensed by the mild response: "Has it totally escaped the notice of everyone that the only reason that there isn't another field of dead in London right now is that the people who orchestrated this thing screwed up? ... The prospect of having to live in a situation like Israel - where massive random orgies of death are a common occurrence - does not sit well with me at all."
Australian artist Toxicpurity of
One Dog Said to the Other sneers, "
Bloody amateurs. They not only deserve contempt for their sheer callousness, but also for being both inept and unimaginative."
ThinkingMountain's John Pilger, an environmental management consultant, directs his
contempt elsewhere: "Blair brought home to this country his and Bush's illegal, unprovoked and blood-soaked adventure in the Middle East. Were it not for his epic irresponsibility, the Londoners who died in the Tube and on the No 30 bus almost certainly would be alive today."
Yeah, well, regarding the point about media coverage, the day after the earlier London bombings Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit (very influential on the right) said this:I bet if the media voluntarily stopped showing any pictures of all terror attacks, that the terror would stop. Thus ending the GWOT without a shot. This policy would be NO DIFFERENT than how they cover folks who run on to baseball fields: they do NOT show them on TV; they ignore them. Would the media ever put peace above their ratings/profits? Never.
Huh? Well, that's one idea, and the best response I saw was from Andrew Sullivan, who called it idiocy:? I suppose I see the underlying point: that terror needs media oxygen to survive. But the notion that we should somehow not cover mass murder, or that it's equivalent to misbehavior at sporting events, or that the only reason for covering it is "ratings/profits" is nutty. People have a right to know what's going on in their own countries and around the world. If the mainstream media decided to stop reporting terror attacks, bloggers would fill the gap. Yesterday, for example, was remarkable for the first-hand accounts of terror we were able to read - within hours of the massacres - by citizen journalists. Would Glenn like to see them silenced? Yes, these events shouldn't be hyped; yes, they should be put in context. But this out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality is a form of denial. The same goes for abuse and torture accusations. Instapundit won't actually link to credible accounts. By ignoring them, he somehow thinks they don't exist or will go away. They won't. Similarly, exposing the violence perpetrated by the Islamists is simply what the media does. Moreover, it doesn't always help the terrorists; it also hurts them. We need to see the atrocities these fanatics commit, however appalling, however vile. The job of the media, even in wartime, is to relay facts, not to skew coverage for purposes of morale.
Is the Bush administration listening? No?
As for who is to blame for what, after the first London bombings, Ken Livingston, the left-wing mayor of London ("Red Ken") surprised everyone with this:This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful; it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers; it was aimed at ordinary working class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christians, Hindu and Jew, young and old, indiscriminate attempt at slaughter irrespective of any considerations, of age, of class, of religion, whatever, that isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith, it's just indiscriminate attempt at mass murder, and we know what the objective is, they seek to divide London. They seek to turn Londoners against each other and Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack... I wish to speak through you directly, to those who came to London to claim lives, nothing you do, how many of us you kill will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another, whatever you do, how many you kill, you will fail.
And everyone cheered.
Ah well, two weeks later he is now saying this (interview on UK Channel 4 reported in The Scotsman) about what's going on -You've just had eighty years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil. We've propped up unsavory governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic.
And he goes on to suggest the bombers just might have been motivated by concrete grievances, rather than free-floating homicidal rage.
Tresy over at Corrente comments -? Really? Ya think? Four Arab youths with apparently no history of even political involvement, let alone radical activities, happily strap on backpacks full of explosives to kill as many innocent civilians as they can, and you think there might be an articulable motive (however morally unjustified)?
Certainly Tony Blair wants such DoublePlus Ungood thinking rubbished out, and the sooner the better. Doing what struck me as an uncannily creepy impersonation of President Pinocchio on CBC Television, Blair blathered on about the bombers' unappeasable armageddonite fantasies while familiar spasmodic smirks flickered across his face, his jaw periodically jutting forward like a barroom drunk trying to pick a fight. Is this tic diagnostic of the compulsive liar generally, I wonder?
Somewhere I read that one sign of the delusional mind is the conviction that the laws of the universe don't apply. And what else is this dogged belief that Western actions have no negative reactions, than a denial of Newtonian physics? On
Riggsveda's recommendation last week, I went out and bought a copy of Paul Williams Roberts'
A War Against Truth. Among its many virtues (controlled outrage, verbal dexterity, caustic irony) one that I did not expect was its merciless recounting of the cynical betrayal of the Arab world by the Western powers after World War I (and one that continues to this day) - a story I, at least, knew only in general, if also unflattering terms. It was only then that I realized the larger actual scope of the book's title.
Betrayed people have long memories.A Canadian neighbor remarked to us the other night that during her years living in San Francisco in the late 80s, she was struck by how, even then, Americans still couldn't talk honestly to one another about Vietnam. I remarked that it looked like our collective neurosis was on its way to siring an offspring in Iraq. "Oh, but Iraq is even worse, because you have no idea how to get out."
As long as politicians can't even state the most elementary truths about the course they've set us on, that's not going to change.
And the bombing will continue. (And more of the same argument here from Patrick Cockburn.)
The counterargument is here:
The Neoconservative Convergence
Charles Krauthammer, The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, July 21, 2005
A few hours before the second set of London bombings he says this:In Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world, the forces of democratic liberalization have emerged on the political stage in a way that was unimaginable just two years ago. They have been energized and emboldened by the Iraqi example and by American resolve.
? The Iraqi elections vindicated the two central propositions of the Bush doctrine. First, that the desire for freedom is indeed universal and not the private preserve of Westerners.
Second, that America is genuinely committed to democracy in and of itself. Contrary to the cynics, whether Arab, European or American, the U.S. did not go into Iraq for oil or hegemony but for liberation - a truth that on Jan. 30 even al-Jazeera had to televise.
And few hours later the bombers tried London again. They just don't see the truth? Guess not.
Wednesday, 20 July 2005
Topic: Local Issues
Big Doings in Los Angeles: Hip is Out, Atheism In, and the Media is in Turmoil
Catapultam habeo. Isi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane.
(I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.)
Ah, it always about the money. The editor of the Los Angeles Times resigned today. The Times' own coverage opens with this: "Editor John S. Carroll, who led the Los Angeles Times to thirteen Pulitzer Prizes in five years as the newspaper struggled with declining circulation, announced his retirement today and will be succeeded by Managing Editor Dean P. Baquet." Things haven't been the same since the Tribune group - the
Chicago Tribune and the Cubs - bought the paper.
The city is changing. Baquet is an African-American who grew up in New Orleans. Our new mayor, Antonia Villaraigosa, is Hispanic - his folks came from Mexico in the days before we had the current armed citizen vigilantes (the
Minutemen) watching the border. It's back to the good old days of our mayor back in the 1860s - Joseph Mascrael (Don Jose), born in Marseille in 1816 and fluent in French and Spanish but unable to manage English at all. See
this about him from the Consulat Général de France à Los Angeles - "… capitaine de navire, immigré en 1844, maraîcher installé au nord de l'actuel Gower Street à Hollywood, ouvre un grand magasin en 1849, maire de Los Angeles de 1865 à 1866." (See
this - in English - about how French Los Angeles really was in the old days.) The city is back to its multicultural roots.
But back to the
Times. Over at
Editor and Publisher we get some
inside information about the problems:
The Times has cut positions and delayed editorial initiatives because of revenue shortfalls. In May, the paper reported that average daily circulation for the six-month period ending March 31 declined 6.5 percent, compared with the previous year.
... in recent years, the paper has taken a financial drubbing. Even when it won five Pulitzer Prizes in 2004, the second-most ever for a single paper in one year, the accolades were somewhat overshadowed. Two months after the Pulitzer sweep, Tribune Co. announced mandated layoffs of 200 employees, with the Times bearing the brunt. One hundred and sixty jobs were eliminated at the paper, including 60 editorial positions. Two-thirds of the departing journalists took voluntary buyouts.
In addition, two Times-owned newspapers in the nearby Inland Empire were shut down, while the Times national edition folded on Dec. 31, 2004.
The paper also took huge hits in circulation over the past two reporting periods. For the six months ending September 2004, daily circ slid 5.5% and Sunday dropped 6.3%. For the latest period, ending March 2005, daily copies decreased 6.4% and Sunday fell 7.9%. Total advertising revenue for the paper rose less than 1% in the second quarter of 2005.
Of course it didn't help that since April you would find not one advertisement for any General Motors product, or any display ad for any GM dealership, anywhere in the
Times. The Pulitzer Prize winning car columnist Dan Neil on April 6 reviewed the new Pontiac G6 and said it was crap, and GM was producing crap, and said it colorfully. Oops. GM spent twenty million in the
Times in 2004 and now....
But see
this - "To my editors' everlasting credit, there hasn't been even a hint of reproval. As a public relations move, I think it's fair to say GM's ad-pulling did them more harm than good. My estimate is that perhaps two million or so people read the article than would have otherwise and the debate on GM's woes has been given another good public chewing. And I have been transformed from cranky columnist to St. George slaying the dragon." (The orginal G6 review is
here and Neil is often mentioned in these pages as in
this item and
this item.)
His editor, John Carroll, may have paid the price for those dead dragons.
In any event, Kevin Roderick at
LA Observed is covering the
Times story - he used to work there - and he lists some
first reactions.
Of course this is a local story of limited interest, but it is about the press and money and editorial decisions. What you cover and how you cover it can cost you. It's a mini-version of what was covered here earlier in
News Notes: Non-Stories. Same thing.
Of course, the
Times writers can be contrarians, as in this:
If it's hip and trendy, they're not interested In an age saturated with microtrends, some people are turning their backs on cool.
Christian M. Chensvold, July 20, 2005
This may be more subversive than attacking General Motors, as after the requisite human interest anecdotal introduction (meet Melinda Wilferd), you get this:
The hypnosis of hipsterism is entrenched among many of L.A.'s urban sophisticates, especially those who work in the trend-driven industries of media, music and fashion. But for many twenty-, thirty- and fortysomethings, the appeal of being cool and edgy is rapidly deteriorating. "The last identity you would want to claim now is a hipster," says John Leland, author of "Hip: The History." "It's the worst of insults."
Just what is hip has become nebulous in a digital age of microtrends, when a cultural blip goes from underground to overexposed in one season. Likewise, the original concept of hip as something outside the purview of the mainstream has been replaced by the hipstream: mainstream cool packaged by corporate marketing departments.
The inevitable backlash - not against the bohemian veritas but the sycophantic consumer of cool - is well underway.
"The whole point of being hip in the pure sense of the word is to essentially be oblivious to it," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Now the only thing you can describe a hipster as being is a 'hipster' in quotation marks. Almost by definition a hipster is a wannabe."
This backlash could destroy my neighborhood!
Chensvold too goes on to detail how hard it is to keep up with what's in and what not - and how people are just walking away from the whole concept of being on top of things. "So if everybody's hip, then let's be unhip, and indeed, what a very hip idea. Some people are just fed up with the whole enterprise."
The end of Los Angeles as we know it!
And note this from the world of New York hip:
Any hip community eventually becomes a parody of itself, says Robert Lanham, author of "The Hipster Handbook" (2002), which many perceived as a marketing gimmick put out by corporate media but which was, in fact, a skewering of Williamsburg hipsters by the 34-year-old humorist and co-founder of freewilliamsburg.com, a neighborhood blog and culture guide.
Lanham's follow-up, last year's "Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic," takes the parody a step further and includes a chapter on "cryptsters," or aging hipsters. "There's also this new breed of pseudo-bohemians or fauxhemians," says the author, "a facade of hipsters trying to play the bohemian role, but their parents are paying their rent."
Dropping out of the hipster scene has made Bernbaum use his time in more personally fulfilling ways, he says. "And it's a lot cheaper." The downside is that he's floating in social limbo. "The youth of New York is geared toward hipster things. I've just withdrawn from the people I didn't feel it was worth my time hanging out with. But I haven't really found an alternate world of people."
Well, Hollywood has always a parody of itself. In fact, the
Just Above Sunset staff car for five years - the black Mercedes SLK convertible - was officially known as The Ironymobile. Its replacement, the Mini Cooper, has its own irony built in too. (Watch
this movie and you'll see.)
What's the alternative to the useless hip (or would that be
Tragically Hip) here in Los Angeles? The
Times recommends Adrienne Crew's
LA Brain Terrain with its calendars of literary, cultural, scientific and political events around town. And this:
In hipster and media-driven Los Angeles, it's easy to forget that most Angelenos ages 25 to 40 don't wear checkered Vans with distressed blazers or go to downtown gallery openings or Echo Park dive bars.
Craigslist.org, once an underground website for hipsters seeking jobs and apartments, now boasts an activities section packed with people seeking irony-free social connections in such humdrum activities as chess, badminton, lacrosse, foreign language study, outrigger canoeing and the Hermosa Beach Lawn Bowling Club.
Best get involved now, before they become hip.
Well, that posits the idea that there is such a thing as an irony-free social connection. In Los Angeles? Really? And wouldn't lawn bowling down in
Hermosa Beach be rife with irony, layers and layers of it?
Oh well.
But the
Times is not just subversive on social matters - the requisite level of hip posturing needed to thrive here. They are on the story of atheists uniting to mount some kind of resistance to the evangelical, fundamentalist Christian fervor sweeping America. They actually write about such people!
A Time of Doubt for AtheistsWith the religious making inroads in popular culture and politics, nonbelievers yearn for higher power in Washington.
Gina Piccalo, July 18, 2005
The set-up:
It's been years, decades even, since the Almighty was so hot.
The evidence is everywhere. President Bush rallied the faithful to hold on to the White House. A book by an Orange County preacher extolling God's purpose in our lives stays a bestseller for more than two years. And Hollywood, frequently seen as a den of iniquity, is courting a more spiritual audience in movies and TV.
Faith is the new must-have, evident when a major leaguer points skyward after his base hit, when a movie star credits the Big Guy for his Oscar, when the Justice Department backs the display of the Ten Commandments at two state capitols, and when it defends the Salvation Army's requirement that employees embrace Jesus Christ.
So where does that leave the fraction of Americans who define themselves as godless? Although the percentage of Americans who claim no religion is about 14%, less than a quarter of them identify themselves as atheists, according to recent polls.
Yes, indeed. Where does all this leave this tiny minority?
The item spends some time with Stuart Bechman, co-president of Atheists United, a local affiliate of Atheist Alliance International who compares things now to the McCarthy era and is calling for unity. And that's hard!
Atheists aren't by nature of one mind. There's a godless organization for every wrinkle of nonbelief - the prayer-never-hurt-anyone, live-and-let-live atheists; the prove-the-God-fearing-world-wrong, keep-America-secular atheists; and the contrarian I-don't-believe-in-God-but-don't-call-me-an-atheist atheists.
Fear, however, is a great motivator, and politically active atheists know that they need an advocate in government to be heard. Unfortunately, as one activist noted, most politicians are as eager to align with the godless ranks as they are to lobby for pedophiles. Hence the need for an image makeover.
Ah, it comes down to PR of course - stress integrity, patriotism and respect for the faithful while staying true to a commitment to the separation of church and state.
We also learn that the first godless march on Washington drew thousands in fall 2002, and a few months later the Godless Americans Political Action Committee was formed. And this Veterans Day, so-called foxhole atheists (servicemen and women who are nonbelievers) will be honored in the capital.
And there is this:
Mynga Futrell and Paul Geisert of Sacramento hope to change that with a new name and an online community. They founded the Brights' Net (the-brights.net) in 2003 to create a place for people who share "a worldview free from supernatural and mystical elements." They chose the term "brights" because, unlike "godless," "atheist" and "nonbeliever," it did not define them in religious terms. By creating this label, Futrell and Geisert hope to "level the playing field" and recast members of their community as independent thinkers who celebrate knowledge without identifying themselves as vociferous anti-theists.
They want to build a large, influential community, similar to MoveOn.org, to sway public opinion. So far, they say, there are Brights in more than 115 countries.
"There's this tremendous feeling of being a second-class citizen when you know you're patriotic and working for all kinds of good things for the country, and yet you're ranked with the pedophiles," Futrell says. "You have to have political influence in order to get cultural change of any kind."
Works for me.
But what is the
Times up to, offending General Motors, telling people in Hollywood they don't need to be hip, and explaining that there are still, in our midst, atheists, whoa aren't evil and may not even be pedophiles?
Circulation is down, advertising is down, and the do these sorts of things? The new editor, Dean Baquet, had his work cut out for him.
