McSame McCain

McSame McCain:

John McCain Votes to Filibuster Minimum Wage Hike.

McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion

Selective Prosecution and Enforcement, part II

As if right on cue, my Google Reader leads me to Pandagon, who brings home the issue of understanding structural violence and instututional bias right here in L.A.:

Uh huh. Here’s yet another reason why there is distrust out there about law enforcement “protecting and serving” everyone equally.

Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they investigated more than 300 complaints of racial profiling against officers last year and found that none had merit — a conclusion that left members of the department’s oversight commission incredulous.

It is at least the sixth consecutive year that all allegations of racial profiling against LAPD officers have been dismissed, according to department documents reviewed by The Times. I’m sure the vast majority are claims that cannot be proven since you have to prove the officer’s intent to say, pull over a black driver more often than a white one. But the LAPD has a sorry history, and that makes it difficult for some to believe the outcome of the report.

In February, the inspector general released a report that concluded investigators frequently failed to fully investigate citizen complaints against allegedly abusive officers, often omitting or altering crucial information.

The report, and extensive media attention, sparked calls by commissioners for a review of the complaint investigation process. The issue of racial profiling reaches back into one of the department’s darkest periods. Since 2000, the department has been working to implement scores of reforms included in a federal consent decree that stems from the Rampart corruption scandal. As part of the decree, the department is required to gather and analyze racial data involving vehicle and pedestrian stops.

But conclusive figures that might indicate whether systemic racial profiling is a problem in the LAPD have remained elusive. Department and city officials early on acknowledged that the raw data collected by officers when they make a stop are unhelpful because they do not include factors such as the race of the officer, the predominant race of the neighborhood in which the stop was made, and whether the stop resulted in an arrest and conviction.

Of course it’s hard to prove, but none of the cases had any merit? Come on, let’s be real. The problem here is that the profiling is less about race in some instances, but a focus on a particular demographic (dressed in hip-hop wear, in the “wrong” neighborhood, etc.), and in that case, you will end up with young minority youth getting pulled over or searched more often. When does a law enforcement officer’s “hunch” cross the line into straight-out bias — remember, as Francis Holland pointed out in an earlier post, you can be a black police officer and be color-aroused. Check out the comments in the LAT article’s thread — they run the gamut.

The question here is about the effort to curtail the bias. Collecting all the data about the officer and the suspect/victim doesn’t

Selective Prosecution and Enforcement

Whittier College is consistently ranked as the most diverse liberal arts college in the U.S. Teaching topics such as globalization and first-year seminar here, I frequently encounter one of the challenges/strengths of having a diverse student body. For example: while Whittier students are definitely engaged, entrepreneurial, and have a very good sense of social justice, many of them, like me, come from upper-middle class backgrounds and are not exposed to structural or institutional violence such as police repression, severely underfunded schools or selective prosecution of crimes. Therefore, helping people to see through other lenses and to look at their society in novel ways has become a veritable leitmotif of my teaching, regardless of the context (global studies, language courses, first-year seminar, theater, etc.).

Well, here's a case even the most privileged can understand. The RIAA has been sending out thousands and thousands of letters to universities and colleges around the country. Somehow, Harvard has been exempt. Something tells me that it's not because Harvard freshmen are significantly more honest than the average person, so there must be something else afoot. Read to the end of the Wired posting for their take, which I tend to agree with.

It must be the water at Harvard University.

Illegal online trading of digital music files is running rampant in universities across the nation, but not at Harvard, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

The RIAA, the legal lobbying group for the music industry, has sent out hundreds if not thousands of letters to universities asking them to "remove or disable access" to infringing materials the RIAA has detected on IP addresses linked to schools ranging from MIT, Stanford, University of Chicago to UC Berkeley and dozens more.

THREAT LEVEL reported Wednesday that there is a sudden surge in these so-called take-down notices, which often are the precursors to legal action by the RIAA seeking the student's identity behind the IP address who is oftentimes then sued.

Harvard, however, seems immune from the RIAA's file-sharing campaign that commenced last year against universities. Perhaps it's something in the water system at the Cambridge, MA.-based university that is hindering Harvard students from doing what their fellow students area doing at other universities.

"Harvard hasn't gotten prelitigation letters or subpoenas asking for identification of an IP address," said Wendy Selzter, a Berkman Center for Internet & Society fellow. (A prelitigtion letter is one in which the RIAA sends to the school, and asks the school to forward to its students asking them to settle for thousands of dollars or face court action.)

Whether it’s the water, the RIAA says Harvard students are exercising file-sharing restraint.

"While we have detected incidences of theft on the Harvard network, the levels are not sufficient enough to warrant legal action. Of course, this could always change, depending on what we find," RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth tells THREAT LEVEL.

Duckworth said no school was "immune," not even Harvard.

"We try to manage our program in the most efficient and effective way possible with the resources that we have," Duckworth said. "When we detect certain levels of piracy on school networks we reserve the right to bring legal action."

Seltzer had her own theory about the RIAA's tactics. "It might be that somebody doesn’t want to go against the Harvard legal team or endowment or law faculty or brand," she said.

Perhaps the RIAA doesn't wish to make waves with the next-generation of the rich and powerful. Also, Charles Nesson, of the Berkman Center at Harvard, has told the RIAA in an open letter "to take a hike." [my emphasis]

Nesson, as part of his evidence class, also requires students to draft motions quashing a subpoena from the RIAA demanding the identity behind a university IP address.

Sarkozy Judged Harshly..

Le Monde has a new poll out that shows Sarkozy's popularity flagging. I don't see this as anything surprising. Sarkozy's cozy relationship with the press brought him into power on his law-and-order populist campaign. Now that the people are seing what he is actually like, they begin to have second thoughts. That will sound familiar to most Americans.

Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, les Français portent un regard critique sur son bilan. L'action du président et de son gouvernement n'a pas permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français, estiment 79 % des personnes interrogées par l'Ifop pour le Journal du Dimanche. Ils n'étaient encore que 59 % à le penser en novembre 2007.

Selon ce sondage publié dimanche 20 avril, 49% des Français estiment même que l'action du chef de l'Etat et du gouvernement n'a "pas du tout" amélioré la situation. Même chez les sympathisants de l'UMP, l'action du gouvernement n'obtient pas plus de 50 % d'approbation.

Une certaine impatience se lit également dans ce sondage, puisque parmi les réponses suggérées à la question posée - " Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, diriez-vous que l'action du président et de son gouvernement a permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français ?" -, aucun sondé (ou trop peu pour être comptabilisé) n'a répondu qu'il était "trop tôt pour juger".

Par ailleurs, la cote de popularité de Nicolas Sarkozy a encore fléchi, pour atteindre son niveau le plus bas depuis son élection en mai 2007. Elle se situe désormais à 36% (- 1 point), loin derrière celle du premier ministre, François Fillon, 52% (- 6 points).

I don't think Sarkozy will be remembered fondly by the French, but that has nothing to do with his power. The thing to remember is this: the press will continue to fluff him up for he is one of them, a creature of sound bites and photo-ops. That said, at least in France oppositional politics function in their dysfunctionality, that is, they allow for some stasis comparatively.

As much as I jump on the MSM for what they write, occasionally they provide an article that allows the average citizen to cut through the crap. The lates revelation from the Times is this piece on the cozy relationship of our teevee and our military:

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, by David Barstow, Message machine, NY Times: In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. ... [...continue reading...]

Telling the truth because of fears of loosing access. Secrecy has many powers, not the least of which is that it creates a group mentality of those who are "in the know," even when that content is dubious. Is it unpatriotic to call these people whores?

I don't think so.

If You Don't Read Greg Mitchell...

You should. Editor and Publisher has been a mainstay of my blog reads and rss feeds for the last 4-5 years. I can only say "You haven't read the news until you've read about the newsroom." The public (which booed Charlie Gibson after the debate--betcha won't see that on teevee), knows better, but only some of the time thanks to Greg Mitchell, Media Matters and the inimitable, groundbreaking Daily Howler.

Here's Greg Mitchell on last night's debate:

NEW YORK In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former '60s radical -- a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And so on.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing their homes and other key issues. Gibson only got excited when he complained about anyone daring to raise taxes on his capital gains.

Yet neither candidate had the courage to ask the moderators to turn to those far more important issues. But some in the crowd did -- booing Gibson near the end.

Yet David Brooks' review at The New York Times concluded: "I thought the questions were excellent." He gave ABC an "A."

But Tom Shales of The Washington Post had an opposite view: "Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances."

Calitics has a nice round up:

"The debate is over, and I feel like I need a shower. [...] The crowd here is starting to boo Gibson. Like, a lot. Hilarious and well-deserved."
-Chris Bowers

"No Charlie. It hasn't been a "fascinating debate." It's been genuinely awful."
-Josh Marshall

"What matters to this network is money, and that is where we need to go. Starting tomorrow, my spare time, meager as it is, will be dedicated to revealing the advertisers of this network, for the purpose of organized boycotts."
-Dartagnan (top Recommended Diary on Dailykos)

"Light'Em Up
Complain about this atrocity.
Main ABC switchboard: 212-456-7777
...complain here."
-Atrios

"My friend Dan McQuade calls this the lowest moment in American history -- I think he's giving it too much credit, frankly."
-Will Bunch

"George and Charlie were just rumor-mongering right wingers. Charlie thought it was "fascinating." Wrong. It was just very pathetic and disturbing. If you ever question the sad state of affairs in the American political dialogue, tonight's debate was Exhibit A."
-Joe Sudbay

"This debate was just horrible. Too much time wasted on useless nonsense. From a media perspective, I am not sure why Stephanopoulos was in the mix at all. He didn't add much, and if anything, his history with the Clintons had the potential to take something away. I thought Gibson was especially rough on Obama, and I think ABC did not do themselves any good with this debate. If I weren't liveblogging, I would have switched to AI."
-Jacki Schechner

"This is the most disgraceful and dispiriting debate of all time."
-BooMan

"In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia."
-Editor and Publisher

"Reflecting what seemed to be the main consensus of the night - that ABC botched this debate, big time - Charlie Gibson tells the crowd there will be one more, superfluous commercial break of the night and is subsequently jeered. "OH..." he declares, hands raised in defense. "The crowd is turning on me, the crowd is turning on me.""
-Huffington Post

So much for the information age? (A Follow up)

Maybe you didn't read my critique of the Chronicle's "So much for the information age." In it I found some faults with Prof. Gup's complaint about his students' ignorance, a complaint in which he said that blogs and new media were not reshaping the landscape for the better since obviously his students weren't any more informed. Well, I had some problems with that.

On a not unrelated topic, Dave Niewert has a new post up on the media reaction to the president's admission that he condoned torture. In any normal world this would be a scandal of tremendous proportions. Instead, our mainstream media has let it slide into oblivion. I'll past the whole posting since it addresses several of the issues I was getting at in my critique of Gup and outlines the whole MSM problem as well.

You may have noticed that the blogosphere is abuzz with the ABC reportage revealing, as Marcy puts it, "what we already knew: the torture was approved--in excruciating detail--by the most senior members of the Bush Administration." And as Eli points out, this flies in the face of everything the Bush administration was telling the public at the time.

They were lying to us. And it tells us just how degraded our public discourse has become both at the hands of the conservative movement, embodied in the Bush administration, and of the mainstream media -- particularly the Village Idiots -- that this apparently is no big deal.

As usual, Digby puts it best:

There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.

The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president's cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn't occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.

And most of all, as she later points out:

This news was buried in a Friday news dump, but even so you would think news organizations would highlight this amazing story on the front page of their web site and mention it in their newscasts. Who would have ever thought you'd have a president casually say something like this?

He was willing to say it because he knows full well by now that the Washington press corps, fearful of being accused of insufficient patriotism, won't call him on it -- won't make it what, in a world in which traditional news judgment held sway, should be the one of the most pressing and discussed issues on the lips of the Beltway poobahs. Instead we get phony controversies, whipped up by right-wing talkers but fully embraced by every mainstream media outlet, like the Obama "pastor problem" and -- oooh! look! -- this week we'll all talk about how Obama dissed the rural folk!

Pfheh. Pardon me while I fwow up.

This is has been an increasing problem with the mainstream media for the past decade and more, and it's been acute since 9/11 -- the abject willingness to play propaganda organ for the right-wing Wurlitzer is not only one of the main reasons we invaded Iraq in the first damned place, it's also a large part of the reason we're enmeshed in such a quagmire there even today. It was obvious to a handful of dirty hippie bloggers back in 2003 that the Bush administration had neither any occupation strategy nor any exit strategy in place when we invaded, but you would be hard-pressed to find any mainstream pundits who thought that such shortsighted planning might be a long-term problem.

And of course, it's why we now stand alone in the world as the one supposedly "First World" nation that condones, and sponsors, the use of torture on detainees. The likelihood in fact that the Bush administration was in the process of committing war crimes was raised as early as March 2003, before the invasion of Iraq. It came front and center briefly during the uproar over Abu Ghraib -- at which time, as we noted here, there was plenty of evidence that the support for torture came from high up the chain of command.

Recall that at the time, Human Rights Watch insisted:

The promised U.S. investigation into the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners should not stop with the lower-level soldiers who were immediately involved, Human Rights Watch said today. The United States should also investigate the superiors of these soldiers to see whether they ordered or knowingly tolerated these abuses.

Yet in fact, what happened was that the media largely swallowed the administration's line:

U.S. President George W. Bush claimed the acts were in no way indicative of normal or acceptable practices in the United States Army.

The public denunciation of torture of prisoners by the president and other US officials contradicted the fact that Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, created a distinction between forbidden "torture" and the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning which they advanced as permissible. The vice president's office played a central role in eliminating limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration later described as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials. The Geneva Convention, which has been ratified by the U.S. and is therefore the law of the land, is explicit and categorical in banning torture, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony.

Initially, the media responded with some vigor -- several major outlets, notably the New York Times, called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld remained -- in no small part because the rest of the media, particularly the broadcast crowd, stayed largely mum or "neutral."

Of course, then there was Rush Limbaugh:

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of emotional release?"

In the end, no one beyond the low-level soldiers involved in the actual abuse suffered any kind of serious consequences. So much for going up the chain of command.

So much for the information age?

The Chronicle has an article up (that I rather like but have some major problems with) about a professor's discussion regarding rendition. It's called "So Much for the Information Age."

I teach a seminar called "Secrecy: Forbidden Knowledge." I recently asked my class of 16 freshmen and sophomores, many of whom had graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores, how many had heard the word "rendition."

Not one hand went up.

This is after four years of the word appearing on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, on network and cable news, and online. This is after years of highly publicized lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and international controversy and condemnation. This is after the release of a Hollywood film of that title, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.

I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, and the student sheepishly asked if rendition had anything to do with a version of a movie or a play.

I nodded charitably, then attempted to define the word in its more public context. I described specific accounts of U.S. abductions of foreign citizens, of the likely treatment accorded such prisoners when placed in the hands of countries like Syria and Egypt, of the months and years of detention. I spoke of the lack of formal charges, of some prisoners' eventual release and how their subsequent lawsuits against the U.S. government were stymied in the name of national security and secrecy.

The students were visibly disturbed. They expressed astonishment, then revulsion. They asked how such practices could go on.

I told them to look around the room at one another's faces; they were seated next to the answer. I suggested that they were, in part, the reason that rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamo detention, warrantless searches and intercepts, and a host of other such practices have not been more roundly discredited. I admit it was harsh.

[...]

Still, it is hard to reconcile the students' lack of knowledge with the notion that they are a part of the celebrated information age, creatures of the Internet who arguably have at their disposal more information than all the preceding generations combined. Despite their BlackBerrys, cellphones, and Wi-Fi, they are, in their own way, as isolated as the remote tribes of New Guinea. They disprove the notion that technology fosters engagement, that connectivity and community are synonymous. I despair to think that this is the generation brought up under the banner of "No Child Left Behind." What I see is the specter of an entire generation left behind and left out.

It is not easy to explain how we got into this sad state, or to separate symptoms from causes. Newspaper readership is in steep decline. My students simply do not read newspapers, online or otherwise, and many grew up in households that did not subscribe to a paper. Those who tune in to television "news" are subjected to a barrage of opinions from talking heads like CNN's demagogic Lou Dobbs and MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his dizzying "No Spin Zone." In today's journalistic world, opinion trumps fact (the former being cheaper to produce), and rank partisanship and virulent culture wars make the middle ground uninhabitable. Small wonder, then, that my students shrink from it.

Then, too, there is the explosion of citizen journalism. An army of average Joes, equipped with cellphones, laptops, and video cameras, has commandeered our news media. The mantra of "We want to hear from you!" is all the rage, from CNN to NPR; but, although invigorating and democratizing, it has failed to supplant the provision of essential facts, generating more heat than light. Many of my students can report on the latest travails of celebrities or the sexual follies of politicos, and can be forgiven for thinking that such matters dominate the news — they do. Even those students whose home pages open onto news sites have tailored them to parochial interests — sports, entertainment, weather — that are a pale substitute for the scope and sweep of a good front page or the PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer (which many students seem ready to pickle in formaldehyde).

I sympathize with professor Gup. As one of the teachers of the Introduction to Global Studies course here at Whittier, I have felt first hand this frustration with students' apparent ignorance of current events, and all too often their apathy. That said, I cannot completely agree. First of all, students today actually seem quite engaged in issues regarding the environment, they are far more anti-war than most students I can remember in the early 80's (or, said another way, they can see first hand some of lies and contradictions of our government), and students sense on some level that things are really changing, for better and/or worse, in the wake of globalization. (Note to self: There are people who study this. I should find out who and see if students are more engaged or less. Maybe those researchers even have a blog!)

Prof Gup's premise seems quite problematic to me as well. He is assuming that reading newspapers and watching CNN is the portal to being informed. I'm not so sure. The last century during which major newspapers and television channels dominated local markets did NOT lead our citizenry to become better citizens. Participation in our system of government was declining and a whole political party (Republicans) sought office for 40 years on the basis that government was in general a bad thing, that they should, to paraphrase Grover Norquist, "starve the beast." (Except for the military, of course). Political blogging and the internet have become a viable and informative way to engage in the political process, and that power is being courted by the big players--key evidence that, in spite of his "uninformed" students, something is afoot.

His premise also assumes that these major news factories are really informing the public. The record here is mixed too. Are people who watch Fox News more or less informed than someone who does not? Some interesting studies have shown that viewers of ol' Rupert's news outlet are somewhat likely to be ill-informed rather than well-informed. And CNN? What do Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs inspire in their viewers other than fear and loathing? I'm sorry, Dr. Gup, you're letting these news outlets off far too easily and you are not considering the ground-breaking work done by Talking Points Memo or Media Matters (and any other number of groups). Do I need to bring up Judith Miller or the Washington Times (Go Moonies!!!)?

The information age will never be a panacea for the problems of our world until we accept that the media that we do have do not really represent us. Millionaire "reporters" and pundits by definition and constitution will not serve the public's interest well because they are simply too far removed from those concerns. The electoral process, as imperfect as it is, is still less forgiving than the clubby major newspapers and networks. I mean, the average income of the fictive families on television during the 50's was about 35K (adjusted for inflation). The average family in sitcoms now earns approximately 200k per year. I say this just for comparison's sake. Our media has become more elitist and less engaged with the public all while pandering more. I think that our mainstream media--those who bear the biggest responsibility for informing the public over the public airwaves and with their publicly chartered corporations--are much more to blame for the state of things than any other single thing. If we are going to begin casting blame, let's start with news corporations that have been thinking a lot more about their shareholders than about their public responsibilities. Indeed, we have decades of interesting data, so let's look there and let blogging reach its second decade before we start casting stones about technology.

But I will agree with Prof. Gup on this:

The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchins said, decades ago: "The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens." He warned that "the death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." I fear he was right.

So do I. It's just that I fear that this apathy will come to us via our media outlets determined to tell us everything about Britney Spears and nothing (or something on A22) about that little thing called rendition.

Expelled: The Lies!!!

Scientific American now has a whole series dedicated to the misrepresentations and pandering of Expelled.

No one could have been more surprised than I when the producers called, unbidden, offering Scientific American's editors a private screening. Given that our magazine's positions on evolution and intelligent design (ID) creationism reflect those of the scientific mainstream (that is, evolution: good science; ID: not science), you have to wonder why they would bother. It's not as though anything in Expelled would have been likely to change our views. And they can't have been looking for a critique of the science in the movie, because there isn't much to speak of.

Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, "You can't handle the truth!") Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie—which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.

Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film's attacks—all recycled from previous pro-ID works—would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.

Expelled wears its ambitions to be a creationist Fahrenheit 911 openly, in that it apes many of Michael Moore's comic tricks: emphasizing the narrator's hapless everyman qualities by showing him meandering his way to interviews; riposting interviewees' words with ironic old footage and so on. Director Nathan Frankowski is reasonably adept at the techniques, although he is not half the filmmaker Michael Moore is (and yes, I do mean in both senses of the phrase).

The film begins with the triumphant entry of financial columnist, media figure and former Nixon White House speechwriter Ben Stein to a filled college lecture hall. (If this review were styled after the movie, I'd be intercutting clips of Nixon flashing a victory sign with Stein's scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off and his eyedrop commercials, but you get the idea.) Stein explains that he is speaking out because he has "lately noticed a dire trend" that threatens the state of our nation: the ascendance of godless, materialist, evolutionary science and an unwillingness among academics to consider more theistic alternatives. A montage of short clips then shows Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and other scientists scorning religion or ID without context. "Freedom is the essence of America!" Stein insists, and he frets that scientists who like their empiricism with a dash of deus ex machina are oppressed. He and Expelled charge that scientists, in their rejection of religious explanations, have become as intolerant as Nazis. Or maybe Stalinists—the film clips were ambiguous on that point.

(The newsreel footage from the old Soviet days kept confusing me. Stein does know that the Stalinists rejected the theory of evolution as a biological rendition of capitalism, doesn't he? And that they replaced it with their own ideologically driven, disastrous theory of Lysenkoism? Does Stein think that moviegoers won't know this?)

That last paragraph is my favorite! Isn't it funny how every authoritarian political movement wants to change history and science for political expediency (think: GB)?

There's plenty more.

Expelled: The Stupidity!!!

As you may know, a new movie is out about the "flaws" of evolution. It's called Expelled and Ben Stein is in it. It is such a good movie that BIOLA University, that paragon of truth-seeking, gave ol' Ben a prize:

In light of Stein’s contribution to the pursuit of liberty and truth, particularly as it relates to the field of Intelligent Design, he is being honored with the 2008 Johnson Award. The award ceremony will feature premiere clips from the forthcoming movie, the personal appearance of scientists who were expelled from their jobs because they are sympathetic to Intelligent Design, and will include a brief address by Stein.

Clearly there is a lot of money floating around to promote "truth." But let's forget all the dubious "science" of the Intelligent Design movement. Let's look at Ben's decision to be in this film for what is isn't (a search for the truth) and for what it is: a lucrative venture that allows him (and those like him) to further the rightwing movement by portraying the Right as a "reasonable" everyman under attack by an elitist Left.

As D. Niewert recently posted on Jonah Golberg (columnist for the LA Times), the right, as a rule, is more bigoted than the left and much less willing to consider other points of view. What must be understood, though, is that the Right, almost by definition, portrays itself as constantly under attack and as the defender of "truth" and "values." Ironically, ideas themselves are never in combat for their actual truth or value, so we must understand that the battle is not about truth per se, but about the righteousness of those who defend it. Take a look at what Niewert's argument:

Still, it's hard to top the claptrap that Goldberg propagated in his most recent L.A. Times column:

I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there's the smugness. The undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less sophisticated than we Darwin fishers.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing random motorists that "hate is not a family value." But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance; similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.

It might be helpful to come to grips with the concept in question here: Bigotry is usually defined as "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own," and a bigot as "a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices." Bigotry, as we have known it historically, is not based on rationality or reason -- as the scientific belief in evolution is -- but founded instead on prejudice, inbred beliefs, and supernatural reactionarism.

And what we also know about bigotry historically is that it has largely been a characteristic of the right, particularly the cultural conservatives who enforced the segregation and oppression of nonwhites for much of the 20th century.

You can see in Golberg's and Steins' argumentation two clear elements: the Left are the "elite," they are "smug" and "intolerant" of "our community." They portray this as a battle between people, not ideas. Moreover, they paint themselves as under attack: look we're being eaten up by that giant fish!

Somehow I just can't feel sorry for two relatively rich people who get important space in major newspapers. How are they in the minority? Remember: they are not, they just like to say they are.

So next time a member of some group (Republicans, Christians, Environmentalists, whatever) tells you that they deserve a hearing just because they consider themselves an oppressed minority, ask yourself a few questions: is group x truly oppressed? is group x really seeking dialogue, or are they looking for a platform? is group x interested in the truth and open, or are they more interested in being a victim? Of course, there are many shades of grey here, which is why the NYT regularly and stupidly inserts references to ID movement ideas into its articles out of a false idea of journalistic fairness. Just remember this: you can respectfully decline to listen to unscientific insanity. It's not bias, it's logic.

The End is NIE

Iran,Neocon,Bush,Politics

Well, the new NIE is certainly a revelation.  Now the neocons have to figure out another strategy for bombing Iran.

Friedman: Liar, war-monger... respected.

Friedman takes a lot of flack... and it is all deserved. That he is one of the leading opinion-makers is both travesty and tragedy.

I should have linked to Greenwald earlier:

But tragically, there is nothing unique about Tom Friedman. What drives him is the same mentality that enabled the administration's invasion of Iraq and, so much worse, it is the mentality that is keeping us there and will keep us there for the indefinite future. We stay in Iraq in pursuit of goals we know are fantasies, because to do otherwise requires the geniuses and serious establishment analysts to accept responsibility for what they have done -- and that is, by far, the most feared and despised outcome.

Cafferty puts Blacks in their place...

I hope everyone caught the Situation Room yesterday. Cafferty really let into Black people.

Let's go to New York, Jack Cafferty with the Cafferty File.

CAFFERTY: NAACP president Bruce Gordon says that despite his objections to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he would listen to calls for help from Washington. The question we asked is how can African Americans help the United States end the war in Iraq?

Richard, "Blacks could confront the administration with the need to face reality and confront them and confront them and confront them. It may not make an impact on the Alice-In-Wonderland leaders of our government, but it would be nice to see some backbone, some consistent standing up to them, unlike most of our Congress.

Ger in Seaside, California, "They can't. This is our problem. I don't see how they can do anything but make it worse for themselves and I'm sure Black people will let their government know that they disprove of the idea." Paul writes, "Every warm body in the trench will help stabilize the situation. This is a good opportunity for George Bush to end the era of unilateralism and cowboy diplomacy. He should ask for and accept the assistance. Every non-U.S. soldier over there decreases the odds of our family members getting killed."

Eric in Chicago, "No thanks NAACP. We must look at this from their perspective. What's their incentive? Obviously it's more than just a peaceful world as they have passed on promoting peace on multiple occasions. Blacks being such a self-serving people, maybe we should dig a bit deeper before we decide to accept the offer."

James in Fresno writes my favorite, "What say we send a few busloads of Blacks to Baghdad? I can't think of a better way to help the Iraqis realize that there are indeed things less tolerable than the presence of American troops."

And John in Madison, Wisconsin, "It's about time. Blacks could teach al Qaeda how to surrender.:

If you didn't see your e-mail here you can go to CNN.com/CaffertyFile and read more of these online, Wolf.

BLITZER: See you in New York tomorrow, Jack. Thanks very much, Jack Cafferty. Let's find out what's coming up at the top of the top of the hour. Paula's standing by. Hi Paula.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi Wolf, Jack didn't enjoy those last two e-mails at all, did he?

BLITZER: No, not at all.

ZAHN: His laughter said it all. Thank you...

If Cafferty says it, it must be true, right? I mean he's a straight-shooter, an everyman, and an insightful journalist who can cut through the newspeak.

I should mention that I adapted the above transcript and replaced the word "France" with "NAACP" and French with "Black." Sorry, Jack, it was just so easy to do, sort of like your form of commentary.