A truly excellent example of truly lousy news coverage

LA Times

I just encountered this tonight but it does provide an excellent example of how news coverage can totally distort a situation by insisting on he-said/she-said construction.

a verdict that follows a long legal battle that pitted the Bush administration against civil liberties groups over how terrorism suspects are detained and should be prosecuted.

....

The conviction of Padilla, 36, and two codefendants was a boost for an administration that had received sharp criticism for holding Padilla as an "enemy combatant" for 3 1/2 years without due process until the courts insisted he be charged with a crime or set free.

The government's success in the Padilla case could now encourage officials to bring other enemy combatants into federal courtrooms.

"This clearly shows that in some cases, yes, the process can handle it," Morford said. "You have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. And these particular charges did work in a regular criminal trial."

Donna Newman of New York, Padilla's initial attorney who fought for months just to get a lawyer-client meeting with him, agreed, saying the administration was wrong not to "trust the courts" for so long.

"I don't necessarily agree with the verdict," she said. But in the future, "the government should be hard-pressed to say the [criminal justice] system doesn't work. It shows you can bring forth the evidence and try someone in court."

But Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said the jury's decision was not a blanket approval of how the administration had dealt with terrorism defendants.

"This verdict, if it stands, cannot be seen as an endorsement of a regime of unreviewable executive detention," he said. "President Bush should not take today's ruling as permission to continue to hold Americans outside the law at his whim."

If, as has been argued, the guilty verdict proves that the Criminal justice sytem CAN deal with terrorist cases then how is the conviction a boost for the administration which has insisted all along that it cannot? The answer is of course that it isn't and this particular reporter is full of malarky.

Don't forget...we were insane.

While I'm not going to sit here and exclaim that 9-11 changed everything, I will point out that it did make a lot of people who were reasonably secure suddenly feel helpless. There was a lot of importance to the idea that we DO SOMETHING even if what we did didn't bear any particular relationship to the causes of our discomfort. Whenever the subject comes up, I always like to remind people what happened to the Dixie Chicks. The reaction to Natalie Maines's comment can be described many ways but rational is not among them.

We were led into Iraq because at the time we were ready to be led anywhere and Bushco saw an opportunity in our confusion. To this day, they're still trying to exploit the confusion (see AQ vs AQI) but we're slowly waking up and people aren't buying it anymore.

More religion.....

This remains a danger

For a person to think that most or all Christians are like the Hagee groups would be a mistake as I have found many that are not in any way like these particular folks are.

As one well versed in Dawkins and Shermer and Dennett, I am well aware of the tendency to paint all Religious people as equally misguided but it's both politically inexpedient and logically fallaceous to do so. (My personal view is that the Universe as a whole should be given at least as much credit for being conscious as we give the subset we refer to as Humanity.)

However, to take a late interpretation of a allegorical story and turn it into a course of political action that includes the wholesale slaughter of innocent people, pretty thoroughly flies in the face of anything that any thinking person could possibly consider sacred.

Again quoting myself....

One of the tactical mistakes that far-left types frequently make is that they write off people with strong religious convictions as being unreachable or unreasonable. What they fail to realize is that one of the reasons that Christianity is so popular is that many of its moral precepts make perfect sense whether you happen to believe in magic or not.

When Jefferson wrote "we hold these truths to be self-evident" he of course meant that certain things are so obvious that they don't need to be defended. One of these self-evident truths is that if you're of the opinion that human life is sacred then you should oppose war with at least the same degree of fervor that you spend opposing abortion.

If on the other hand, your theology is based on the premise that pleasure is sinful but that pain is desirable, then it makes perfect sense to cheerlead warfare. Such thinking should be exposed at every opportunity.



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Josh nails it..

What I've been trying to say....

And groups all over the Middle East, who have little if any actual connection to al Qaeda, are adopting the name al Qaeda in vicarious support or sympathy or, perhaps mostly and most damningly, because we've managed to make it a strong brand.


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Words matter.....

But these are stories you haven’t been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.
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I sometimes find it useful

To remind myself that we humans are in fact a just bunch of apes with a modicum of extra neural circutry that allows us to communicate more effectively. The core forces that drive our behavior remain the same ones that drive chimps to gather in bands and sort themselves by rank.

I need to remind myself of that because otherwise the part of me that thinks rationally and believes that "all men (and women) are created equal" just gets overwhelmed with the galling cruelty and stupidity that permeates our existence

Words Matter

I've always thought that the word "terrorist" should be defined as anyone who has committed an act of terrorism or anyone who plans on committing an act of terrorism in the future. It seems perfectly reasonable and it encompasses thousands of dangerous people. Unfortunatetly now "terrorist" has been redefined to include anybody who doesn't like the USA plus anybody who happens to occupy any real estate we're targeting at the moment. So we've instantly gone from facing thousands of terrorists to facing millions! No wonder the chickhawks are so scared!

What you've described in your post, is the redefinition of the word "insurgent" in precisely the same manner. It does make things more difficult when insurgents are routinely elected in the Democracies we're so busy imposing. But nevertheless in this Orwellian world we now occupy, "insurgencies" are bound to be springing up all over the place. All we have to do is target a building and "POOF", its instantly filled with insurgents!

A discussion on religion arose at swampland

Here are my contributions:

Whether one beleives in a diety or not, its hard to ignore the fact that religion is pretty ubiquitous among us humans. If you count choosing who gets elected President among your goals, then you ignore this fact at your peril.

Many people confuse freedom of religion with freedom from religion and the Republicans of course use this confusion to their advantage.

I've always felt that anyone who thinks the Creator of the Known Universe plays favorites among separate religious practices (let alone political affiliations) is suffering from a supreme failure of imagination.

Stressing that the message of the Democratic Party is one of inclusion should ring true among believer, agnostics and athiests alike. If not, we're just not getting the message across adequately.


Religion is simply politics seasoned with the extra confidence that comes from thinking that the Creator of the Universe has your back.

As such it's very powerful (I happen to think there's a strong genetic component) but at the end of the day, those of us who were taught that God is loving, compassionate and forgiving will believe it to the grave as will all those who think he is vengeful and jealous will do the same.

We'll leave the question of which group votes for which party as an exercise for the reader.


"and the insistence that there is a "natural" explanation for all unexplainable phenomena is no less "faith based" than the belief in God."

I'm not sure if you meant that the way I'm taking it but it's certainly incorrect.

History and experience have shown time and again that the assumption of a natural explanation for all observed phenomena is vindicated regularly and repeatedly. Without such an assumption, we'd still be having difficulties figuring out how to use twigs to harvest termites. Note that you needn't be an athiest in order to insist on natural explanations. The universe is quite sufficiently miraculous on its own without having to postulate uncaused effects.


"a kind of evolving spirituality that is a mix of Buddhism and string theory/quantum physics"

My belief is reasonably easy to state. The Universe should be given at least as much credit for consciousness as it's contents. It is therefore at least as self aware as we are. Like us, I beleive it strives to become more self aware. After that, it's physics all the way down.


"but with what exactly do you disagree when it comes to Jesus' exhortation to lead moral lives and love each other?"

That would be the people who twist the "lead moral lives" part into a reason to hate each other.

"When a woman was brought before Him for her transgressions, Jesus preached mercy, but then told her to go and sin no more."

This is a continuation of the whole "log in your eye vs. a speck in your brother's" message. We humans are imperfect and are not in a position to judge each other let alone invoke God's name when doing so. Those who miss this simple message, as mudcat pointed out in the original post can be reasonably accused of blasphemey Of course the accusation itself would be subject to the exact same logical failure.

In the end the message is clear, that we should be tending to our own transgressions first and formost and leave those of our neighbors in more capable hands.

re: Rural voter

I think the issue of whose Urban vs Rural is less important that the issue of who has experienced actual exposure to people who are unlike them. While city dwellers encounter people of differing religion and/or race or ethniciity routinely, people who live in small towns have less such exposure but unfortunately so do people who live in the vast suburban enclaves that surround our major cities.

The cultural inexperience we're associating with the "rural" mindset is far more widespread than the actual membership in the rural demographic.

El Cid comments at GG...

American security policy under Republicans is like an pest exteriminator company run by bitter ex-pro wrestlers who are blindfolded and given only methamphetamine, Red Bull, and axes and told to go into every home with full force in order to teach those damn insects a lesson, so that their insect sisters and brothers will hear about what horrible things happened in the house torn apart by the confused blind muscleheads.

-- El Cid

Link

I comment at WaPo re: Libby

I've always thought that the reason we have courts and rules of evidence and Grand Jury proceedings was to insure that when someone was indicted, that it was based on a preponderance of evidence and when convicted, it was based on evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now I realize that things said in forums such as this or "the court of public opinion" don't necessarily have to meet these stringent tests, but don't we think that by this time "Libby was framed!" would have outlived its usefulness?

Just asking?

Once again I cut & paste one of my GG comments to post here.

Two conclusions are inescapable....

Have you conveniently forgotten that atheists killed more people than religionists by a substantial multiple, last century? Stalin and Mao alone evened the score for a large portion of human history. So much for "reason".

1: Many people have killed many other people.

2: Many people have religious beliefs.

Any conclusions beyond these two are unsupported BS.

For the record, what all the mass murderers have in common is a willingness to classify people into arbitrary but reasonably easily delineated groups and declare members of one of the groups to be "unclean". The stated goal is inevitably the betterment of "mankind" ignoring the fact that mankind is made up of individuals each "created equal" with an equally sacred stake in living, loving and raising families who share their goals and values.

If you are among those, willing to condemn such a group to the point of wishing death upon their members, then you share in the evil that the mass-murderers represent.

Failure of Education....

Since I never raised children, I had the luxury of being able to ignore whatever has been happening in our schools for quite a while now. It's clear to me now that whatever it was, its now a major contributer to the current pollution of our discourse.

While individual reporters are merely churning out whatever is rewarded institutionally by their organizations, in the meantime those higher up in the organization are concentrating their efforts on determining whatever will do the most to enhance revenue flow.

We can all see the results of this process, which of course moves expensive haircuts and continuing saga's of missing pretty white women to the fore of news coverage. (Never underestimate the power of that photo that accompanies the 10 second teaser for the next segment)

So, if as I assert, the lousy news coverage is demand driven, how can we create demand for substantive coverage? Why, in school of course. If we were doing an adequate job of teaching that the demands of citizenship include paying attention, developing informed opinions and voting, then (eventually) the demand for decent serious news coverage would grow.

Needless to say, the process takes years to accomplish, but it is simply one of the better investments we can make in our future.

I always enjoy when libertarianism is discussed...

Because it usually causes everyone to examine their core assumptions. During the Viet Nam era, I was too young to be subject to the draft, but it certainly profoundly affected my attitude toward the coercive power of the state. When you peel away all the pretty words, what remains are people with blue uniforms and guns who reserve the right to shoot you if you don't come quietly. The rest is simply arguing over who deserves to be on the receiving end of such treatment

What is winning?....II

I made a comment several threads back that speaking of "winning" or "losing" in Iraq was misguided and counerproductive..

Leave it to someone much smarter to explain in detail why...

TPM:

With Harry Reid's controversial 'war is lost' quote and with various other pols weighing in on whether we can 'win' or whether it's 'lost', it's a good time to consider what the hell we're actually talking about. Frankly, the whole question is stupid. Or at least it's a very stilted way of understanding what's happening, geared to guarantee President Bush's goal of staying in Iraq forever.

Important questions from Kevin Drum

So here are some questions for every one of the 2008 presidential candidates: Do you care about Muslim public opinion? Do you think it impacts U.S. national security? Which aspects of American foreign policy do you think contribute to these attitudes? What concrete steps would you take to change these parts of our foreign policy

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The amount of ignorance that permeates our discourse is astounding and depressing. The sad fact remains, these are NOT the questions the candidates will face.

What is victory?

We need to work very hard to get past the idea that the Iraq war is a contest that be lost or won. It is in fact a situation that can improve or degenerate. But as long as people are thinking in terms of "winning" or "losing" they are imagining an outcome or end state after which there's no longer a contest. This is of course nonsense. But unless I'm wrong, this whole Harry Reid flap is based on this persistent illusion. By using the term "losing" he bought into the frame.

We need to work past it or it will continue to bite us in the ass.

Re: The surveillance State....

In times like these....
it always fun to regurgitate the outrage that Republicans expressed over the Clipper Chip proposals during the Clinton years.

John Ashcroft

But doing so reminds us that the battle for personal privacy cuts across party lines and that there are no shortage of Democrats who are willing to sacrifice freedom if they think it will give them "law and order" or "war on terror" cred.

I've always assumed that every link I've ever clicked as well as every case of beer I've ever purchased was available as a data point for anyone willing to dig for it. And who even knows how many servers the photos we take with our cel-phones end up on.

One of the downsides of technological advancement is that anything that can be done will be done at some point. Does everyone remember the talk of internet-enabled refrigerators?

Needless to say, the more connected we all are, the more irresistable the urge to monitor and control will become. It's just plain human nature.

Re: Michael Goldfarb and "near dictatorial power"

Anyone with a passing knowlege of history and the Constitution know why this "dictatorial" thinking is misguided and wrong. What I personally find more interesting is the insights into human nature which were apparent to the founders that caused them to frame the founding documents the way they did in the first place.

They knew that they had to impart the war-making powers to the legislature specifically because as the representatives most closely accountable to the people, they would be the ones least likely to use military engagements as a tool of self aggrandizement. They understood well how the combination of a fearful populace and ambitious leaders could result in evil forces acting under the umbrella of arbitrary law.

To those who think of themselves as individuals first and then members of society, is is indeed excruciatingly basic and obvious. To those who subsume their individuality to their tribal loyalties, it needs to be explained....again....and again.....and again....