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Hey, Dad? I've got some good news for you,...

An Italian court has ruled that parents have to provide child support, even if their "children" are adults, rich, and highly educated. This case involved a 30-year old lawyer with a several hundred thousand dollar trust fund who had turned down job offers that didn't interest him. But that didn't matter to the court:

The judges said a parent's duty of maintenance did not expire when their children reached adulthood, but continued unchanged until they were able to prove either that their children had reached economic independence or had failed to do so through culpable inertia. An adult son who refused work that did not reflect his training, abilities and personal interests could not be held to blame.

"You cannot blame a young person, particularly from a well-off family, who refuses a job that does not fit his aspirations," the judges said.

I can't? Why not? What do his "aspirations" have to do with anything?

Commentators warned the decision could depress Italy's already low birth rate and discourage people from leaving home, getting married and having children.

Did anybody warn that the decision is simply insane?

Not everyone saw the ruling as a loafer's charter, however. "The verdict is innovative because of its precision," said lawyer Cesare Rimini. "The time limit must be reasonable, as must the aspirations of the young person."

Oh. Well, I take it back. That is precise. I bet it won't lead to further litigation. And people wonder why the European economies continue to stagnate.

But what's instructive is that all the news coverage of this ruling, including the people (for and against) chosen by the media to be quoted, focuses on the wisdom of this ruling as social policy. The idea that it's just wrong to be confiscating property from adults to be given to other, able bodied, adults is never even broached.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/06/2002 06:17:00 PM |

 

Wet is dry, black is white, and mandatory is voluntary

The New York Times is upset because the Bush administration has announced its new "ergonomic" policy for workplace safety, and that policy is voluntary. You can tell the Times is upset, because they lead their coverage not with the justification for the policy, but with the criticism:

Democratic lawmakers and union leaders were quick to attack the new policy, calling it toothless and far weaker than the Clinton administration regulations that a Republican-dominated Congress repealed 13 months ago, with President Bush's encouragement.

Business groups, on the other hand, were mostly pleased. They had vigorously fought against mandatory ergonomic measures, contending that they could cost American companies $100 billion or more.

Note that the Times doesn't mention the jobs that will be lost; only the money. That way they can frame it as injured workers vs. greedy corporations. But then they add this puzzling statement:

At a news conference at the Labor Department, Mr. Henshaw promised to put some teeth behind the voluntary guidelines, warning that OSHA would bring enforcement actions against industries that had high injury rates and took few steps to reduce them. He declined to identify the industries that government safety officials might focus on, saying only that the government would concentrate on industries with the highest rates of injuries.

Huh? "Teeth" behind "voluntary" guidelines? "Enforcement actions"? To paraphrase Sesame Street: one of these words is not like the others. And knowing that government only gets bigger, never smaller (no matter who's in charge), I can guess which word will turn out to be applicable. After all, whatever the ideology of the Bush administration, regulators themselves only have jobs if they have regulations to enforce.

Still, the Times has to give voice to the usual suspects to complain, from union lobbyists to Teddy Kennedy:

"Once again, the administration handed a win to big business at the expense of millions of average workers — especially women — who risk workplace injuries every single day," Mr. Kennedy said. "Today's announcement rejects substantive protections for America's workers in favor of small symbolic gestures."

See, the administration isn't just being anti-worker; they're also anti-women. The Times doesn't challenge this -- of course -- and it's not clear to me that Kennedy isn't just pulling it out of thin air. More importantly, the Times never begins to address the notion that there's any argument against such regulations except money. You're either pro-regulation or you're anti-worker, in the Times' worldview There's simply no acknowledgement that increasing business costs can cost jobs, which obviously hurts workers. Of course, one could argue that the tradeoff is worth it -- but the Times doesn't even try. (Let alone the thought of broaching the idea that workers should decide on their own whether the tradeoff is worth it.)
posted by David Nieporent at 4/06/2002 06:22:00 AM |

 

On Thursday, George Bush made a major speech on the Israeli/Palestinian war, exciting those who felt that Bush "needed to do more" and annoying those who felt that Bush was appeasing terrorists. Everyone agreed, though, that this was a significant speech, signalling a change in direction for the United States. Everyone except Robert Fisk, that is. To Robert Fisk, there's no question of "balance." He doesn't think that Bush needs to condemn Israel as well as the Palestinians; he thinks that Bush should only be condemning Israel.

Ariel Sharon could not have done better. The heaping of blame upon an occupied people, the obsessive use of the word terror – by my rough count there were 50 references in just 10 minutes – and the brief, frightened remarks about "occupation" and (one mention only) to Jewish settlements and the need for Israeli "compassion" at the end were proof enough that President Bush had totally failed to understand the tragedy he is supposedly trying to solve.

The mugger became the victim and the victim became the mugger.

That's how I feel every time I read a Fisk piece -- like I've been mugged. It's as if he thinks the history of Israel starts in 1967, that Jews landed an expeditionary force on the shores of Haifa that year and conquered the country of Palestine, enslaving its people.

But of course, the White House, which according to the Israeli press has repeatedly been asking Mr Sharon how long he intends to reoccupy the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, is to give the Israeli Prime Minister more time to finish his invasion, destroy the Palestinian infrastructure and dismantle the Palestinian Authority.

Bingo! That's what Israel is trying to do -- destroy the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure and dismantle the Palestinian Authority. I'm not sure why Fisk thinks this is a bad thing -- except, of course, that he writes as if he's on Yasir Arafat's payroll.

The speech was laced with all the "war on terror'' obsessions: Iraq as a sponsor of terror for donating money to a family of Palestinian "martyrs'', and Syria for not making up its mind if it is "for or against terror''.

What the hell is up with Bush, being "obsessed" with terror? If he were only like a less "simplistic" European leader, who had the time to regulate the lumpiness of vegetable sauce.

The Palestinian suicide bombings, however, were the core of Mr Bush's address. He talked of the 18-year-old Palestinian girl who blew herself up and killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the Jewish state's "dream'' of peace with its neighbours. "Terror must be stopped ... no nation can negotiate with terrorists ... leaderships not terror ... you're either with the civilised world or you're with the terrorists ... all in the Middle East ... must move in word and deed against terrorists ... I call on the Palestinian Authority to do everything in their power to stop terrorist activities.'' Arafat had agreed to control "terrorism'' – "he failed'.' The reoccupation of the West Bank was a "temporary measure'', Mr Bush announced, trusting the word of the Israeli occupiers. "Suicide bombing missions could well blow up the only hope of a Palestinian state.''

A few years ago, there was a Japanese cartoon that induced epileptic seizures in viewers through flashing lights. Fisk appears to have the same problem with the word "terror." Bush uses it, Fisk has a fit.

By the way, Fisk mentions "the reoccupation of the West Bank." Does that mean he's conceding that it wasn't occupied before the recent Israeli moves?

Only a heart of stone could not respond to the suffering of those Israeli families whose loved ones have been so wickedly cut down by the Palestinian suicide bombers. But where was Mr Bush's compassion for the vastly greater number of Palestinians who have been killed by the Israelis over the past 19 months, or his condemnation of Israel's death squads, house demolition and land theft? They simply didn't exist in the Bush speech.

So Fisk joins the "but"-head community: killing Israelis is bad, but there's an occupation. Killing Israelis is bad, but what about suffering Palestinians? And the Fisks of the world love the moral equivalence of totalling the number killed, rather than looking at the reasons why they were killed.

The money for "martyrs" does not, of course, only go to the kin of suicide bombers – it goes to families of all those killed by Israelis, most of whom have been struck down by American-made weapons. Certainly, America has never offered to make reparations for the innocents killed by the air-to-ground missiles and shells it has sold to Israel.

Oh, it doesn't go only to the kin of suicide bombers. It also goes to the kin of suicide gunmen. Well, that makes it okay, then. Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. Fisk.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/06/2002 03:01:00 AM |

 

And Europe wonders why it's irrelevant?

I don't generally link to Glenn Reynolds, because I figure anyone who reads this page also reads him, but I have to, here. He reports that the Nobel Prize Committee has finally started questioning that 1994 Nobel Peace Prize that was given for the Oslo accords. But not Arafat's prize! Rather, these jackasses are questioning Shimon Peres' prize.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/05/2002 01:29:00 PM |

 

What he said

I wanted to take down the latest idiocy from Mary McGrory, but Juan Gato got there first. A sample:

He did no such thing. Nobody knows exactly what Arafat wants -- it sure isn't peace -- but he wants above all to bait the brute Ariel Sharon. When he was interviewed in his bunker by cell phone and flashlight, Arafat told the Arabic-language al-Jazeera, "I want to be a martyr, martyr, martyr, martyr." His apologists say that shared death is the only thing he can proffer to the young, who have no homes, jobs or hopes.

Mary..."Nobody knows what Arafat wants"? He wants Israel destroyed! Pay attention here.

But if Arafat is not helping with deranged and despairing Palestinian teenagers, who blew up Jews at their Seder, what reason does anyone have for thinking Sharon's way will work any better?

I have composed a haiku to make her tired point more interesting:

Ariel is bad
Sharon equals terrorist
blah, blah, f-ing blah

Yes, Mary, they are all equally bad. Sure thing.

posted by David Nieporent at 4/05/2002 03:31:00 AM |

 

Nothing up my sleeve...

Steven Den Beste discusses diversionary tactics in war, noting that these are exactly what Saddam Hussein is using.

Right now, Iraq is trying to do that kind of thing to us. Rightfully fearing a straightforward military campaign by the US to conquer Iraq, the Iraqi government is trying to stir up enough trouble elsewhere to distract us and prevent us making the attempt. The most fruitful result of that has been from Iraq's overt and covert investment in the Palestinian Intifada; it's been extremely cost effective. Their hope is that continuing conflict in Israel will force us to postpone our attack on Iraq by waiting until peace has been imposed on the area. If they can manage to prevent that, they have the possibility of deferring our attack indefinitely.

Unfortunately, Tony Blair has fallen for it. He is reportedly going to ask Bush to postpone any operations against Iraq until the situation in Israel has stabilized.

And that's exactly why I've been saying we need to go after Hussein now, rather than later. The people who really have no enthusiasm for going after Iraq at all are setting up an impossible condition: solve Israeli/Palestinian conflicts first. But that's backwards; when Hussein is gone, the Palestinians, and the other Arab nations, will be much more willing to make peace with Israel.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/05/2002 02:57:00 AM |

 

Hey, it's just like the real United Nations

That Arab nations are anti-Israel is news to absolutely nobody. But the extent of their hatred for Israel, how far they're willing to go, would shock many. Damian Penny reports on a story from Bahrain, where a Model United Nations program condemned the American ambassador to Bahrain for asking for a moment of silence for Israeli civilians killed, after the delegates had already had a moment for the Palestinian dead.

Al Hekma International Model School student Hanan Al Mawla was angry. "I would have never expected that a day will come in this Arab Muslim country where we will be asked to show support for the Israeli citizens, who are killing the Palestinians on a daily basis."

Note: Israeli citizens, not Israel. As Damian notes:

I'm just stunned. As soon as I saw this, I wanted to smash something. This is absolutely unbelievable. Honest to God, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!?

The message is clear: as far as the people of Bahrain are concerned, there is no such thing as an innocent Israeli. The death of an Israeli citizen, even a child, is something to be ignored, if not celebrated. This is just sick.

But after fifty years of being told by their leaders that Israel is illegitimate, after being forbidden to even hear other views, what would one expect?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/05/2002 02:34:00 AM |

 

Didn't I just say that?

Mickey Kaus, in Slate, analyzes the campaign finance "reform" bill, including the editorial coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times, and comes to the same conclusion I did: McCainShaysFeingoldMeehan is unconstitutional, and the Times and Post are being two-faced in their support of this law. Kaus looks at the role played by Paul Wellstone in passing the most egregiously unconstitutional part of the law:

Then along came Paul Wellstone, the Senate's most liberal member. Wellstone saw McCain-Feingold's protection of "advocacy" groups as a "loophole" allowing "special interests" to run last-minute election ads. (Since corporate and union money was already banished in the bill, Wellstone was presumably worried mainly about money from rich individuals.) Last year, Wellstone pushed an amendment to extend McCain Feingold's ban on last-minute ads to non-profits like "the NRA, the Sierra Club, the Christian Coalition, and others." Under the Wellstone Amendment, these organizations could only advertise using money raised under strict "hard money" limits—no more than $5,000 per individual. So if you wanted to give the Sierra Club $6,000 to denounce some environment-raping legislator, you'd be out of luck.

We can only hope the Supreme Court sees this as clearly.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/05/2002 01:47:00 AM |

 

Mean ol' Israel forces Lebanese peace activists to beat up U.N. peacekeepers

Everything else is the fault of Ariel Sharon, so why not this, from the AP:

Three unarmed U.N. observers and two armed peacekeepers were injured in scuffles with Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon Thursday, the U.N. peacekeeping force commander said.

I'm sure there's some way we can blame Israel. Perhaps Hezbollah was so upset by the battles in Bethlehem that they couldn't control themselves and had to release their anger on the U.N.

The scuffle with Hezbollah forces broke out after an unarmed U.N. observer patrol reached the village of Mari, near the disputed Chebaa Farms area.

The observers - from Ireland, Norway and France - were confronted by Hezbollah gunmen who would not let them pass, a U.N. observer force officer said on condition of anonymity. An argument broke out, resulting in the gunmen beating up the observers.

A separate U.N. peacekeeping patrol - manned by armed Indian officers - was nearby at the time and intervened in the scuffle. This sparked a fist fight in which two Indians were hurt. Two U.N. vehicles were also damaged.

Kofi Anan "strongly condemned" the attack. And Hezbollah promised, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they wouldn't do it again. Oh good. But this is the priceless part (with emphasis added):

Col. Amol Astana, commander of the Indian peacekeeping contingent, said the patrol and the observers were confronted by eight to 10 armed Hezbollah members. Astana said his forces did not respond because their role is to act as peacekeepers. They reported the scuffle to Lebanese authorities.

This is the logic of the United Nations. A fight breaks out -- so the "role" of peacekeepers is to run and hide, as far from the fight as possible. These are the people Israelis are supposed to rely upon to protect them once there's a Palestinian state?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/04/2002 09:37:00 PM |

 

What the heck is he thinking?

After showing strength for a week, Bush reverses himself in the face of European whining, agreeing to send Colin Powell to Israel and asking Israel to withdraw from the so-called Occupied Territories. Bush did harshly criticize Arafat, saying "The situation in which he finds himself today is largely of his own making. He has missed his opportunities and thereby betrayed the hopes of his people," but then he rewarded Arafat by interfering with Israel's efforts to root out terrorists.

The most charitable interpretation of events is that Bush is publicly giving Arafat something -- Powell's visit -- so that Arafat can save face, and then in private Powell is going to deliver an ultimatum to Arafat. But Bush really doesn't have anything to offer Arafat, except the threat that he'll let Israel finish what it started. But Arafat has already seen that escalating the violence can create pressure on Israel. The problem with bluffing is: what if someone calls your bluff? The Arabs have already snubbed George Mitchell, George Tennet, Anthony Zinni, and Dick Cheney. What happens when they don't give Colin Powell the assurances that Bush wants? Or what happens if they do, and then a day later go back on their word? Does Bush finally admit his double standard, the one which insists that Israel act differently towards Arafat than Bush acted towards Bin Laden? Or does he join with the Europeans in selling out Israel?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/04/2002 08:57:00 PM |

 

True colors

The very sad thing about Middle Eastern politics is not that terrorism against Israel is so vicious, but that people refuse to admit it, even when Palestinians proudly proclaim it.  For instance, Hamas leaders say that "Our spirit is high, our mood is good,"

By their estimation, the organization's two recent attacks — the one at a Seder on Passover night in a Netanya hotel that killed 25 people, and the other in a Haifa cafe that killed 15 — were the most successful they have ever made. That is true partly, Mr. Shanab said, because Hamas is now using weapons-grade explosives instead of home made bombs manufactured using fertilizer, a fact the Israelis have confirmed.

"Forty were killed and 200 injured — in just two operations," another of the leaders, Mahmoud al-Zahar, said with a smile.

Do they sound "desperate" to you? Does it sound as if they acting out of "frustration?" Too many people are operating under the delusion that individual Palestinians get so upset about their mistreatment that they run out and start shooting or bombing -- a sort of Middle Eastern Columbine. But as this article makes clear, these are centrally planned assaults on Israel. Someone gives a specific order to bomb, and provides the material with which to do it. And don't fall for the line that Arafat can't control them. These aren't secret sleeper cells; the leaders of Hamas are widely known.

Moreover, they openly proclaim their goal:

Hamas, the second most popular Palestinian movement, behind Fatah, is directed by a "steering committee," as Dr. Zahar put it, with five principal members. Interviews with four of them — a cleric, an engineer and two medical doctors — showed a leadership unyielding, determined and increasingly confident of achieving their goal, the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state.

...

The goals of Hamas are straightforward. As Sheik Yassin put it, "our equation does not focus on a cease-fire; our equation focuses on an end to the occupation." By that he means an end to the Jewish occupation of historical Palestine.

Hamas wants Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of all Israeli settlements and full right of return for the four million Palestinians who live in other states. After that, the Jews could remain, living "in an Islamic state with Islamic law," Dr. Zahar said. "From our ideological point of view, it is not allowed to recognize that Israel controls one square meter of historic Palestine."

Mr. Shenab insisted that he was not joking when he said, "There are a lot of open areas in the United States that could absorb the Jews."

And people want Israel to negotiate with these thugs? They think that the problem is Ariel Sharon? They think the problem is the "occupation?" I'm really reluctant to resort to Nazi analogies, but sometimes they become so overwhelming that you just can't ignore them. When someone openly proclaims his ultimate goal is your elimination, pretending that he has legitimate grievances that can be negotiated away is suicide, not statesmanship. This is Neville Chamberlain all over again -- the idea that if we just give them what they ask for, they'll settle down and stop menacing us, and we can all live happily ever after. But this time, when it goes horribly wrong, nobody can shrug and say, "But we didn't know what he intended."
posted by David Nieporent at 4/04/2002 06:25:00 PM |

 

First things first

Michael Ledeen gets it. In the National Review, he writes:

Isn't it amazing how easily policymakers can be deflected from the main mission? Back when we were trying to bring down the Soviet Empire, our diplomats and analysts were forever finding treaties to negotiate, agreements to be reached, embassies, and consulates to open, confidence-building measures to be launched, and peacekeeping units to be dispatched. As if these had anything to do with the price of eggs, if you see what I mean. And yet these epiphenomena ate up enormous chunks of time, when time was at a premium.

So it is with the Middle East. A few years ago when Oslo was in vogue I won quite a number of bets from people who believed that peace was at hand. I took the position that you couldn't have peace without a convincing defeat of one side or the other, and that in any case you couldn't even address the Israel-Palestine issue unless the terror states — Iran, Iraq and Syria — were on board. And they weren't on board.

I don't think those who favor peace are evil; they're well-meaning. They just don't understand that peace is more than the absence of shooting. Talking to dictators can bring about a cease-fire, but it can't bring peace. Peace will come when the dictators are gone, not when they're "engaged" in a "peace process."
posted by David Nieporent at 4/04/2002 04:34:00 AM |

 

The shinbone's connected to the kneebone...

William Saletan in Slate explains why the Middle East peace process is a joke:

The Middle East is going to hell. Palestinians are blowing up Israelis. Israelis are shooting Palestinians. What is the United States doing about it? Not much. But don't worry, says U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Eventually, the Israelis will pull out of the West Bank, "and Tenet and Mitchell will be waiting for them."

If you don't know what Tenet and Mitchell are, you need a lesson in the three languages of the peace process: Hebrew, Arabic, and bureaucratic bullshit. Officially, Mitchell refers to an April 2001 list of recommendations for conducting peace talks, and Tenet refers to a June 2001 list of security measures each side must take to halt violence so that talks can proceed. Unofficially, Mitchell and Tenet, like Zinni, Oslo, and Madrid, are buzzwords designed to create an impression of progress where none exists.

The theory put forward by Powell, President Bush, the U.N. Security Council, and other peace process exponents is that Zinni will lead to Tenet, which will lead to Mitchell, which will lead to Oslo, which will lead to peace. But the history of the invention of these steps suggests the opposite. Mitchell was created because Oslo failed. Tenet was created because Mitchell failed. Zinni was created because Tenet failed. The peace process is growing ever more complicated not because each stage leads to the next but because it doesn't.

What Mr. Saletan could have added is that the entire concept of a "peace process" is doublespeak. Peace is not a "process." Negotiations are a process. Peace is the result of the process. To speak of the current situation as a "peace process" is to put the cart before the horse. It's a way to pretend that people who are shooting at each other aren't really shooting at each other.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/04/2002 03:08:00 AM |

 

But what about the Eskimos?

The New York Times reports that the New York Fire Department is going to try to recruit more minorities, "addressing a historical problem: its failure to hire enough blacks, Hispanics and women as firefighters." Note that there's no accusation of discriminatory hiring; the mere "failure to hire" them is sufficient to complain about. But the Times notes, disapprovingly:

But some in the department have long resisted any kind of quota, primarily because of a sense that the physical and written tests for firefighters are a form of merit system that should not be eliminated because that could put the safety of firefighters and the public at risk.

The nerve of those racist bastards! Putting safety ahead of diversity! That can't be allowed. But what on earth does the Times mean that there's a "sense" that the tests are "a form of merit system"? Is the Times arguing that they aren't? Might there not also be the "sense" that "any kind of quota" might be constitutionally suspect?

The Times is also upset that the department is going to raise standards, in particular by increasing the educational qualifications required. It will hurt the effort to increase the number of minorities, don't you know:

Sgt. Noel Leader, a co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, criticized the Police Department's current effort to recruit candidates at Ivy League and other elite universities because those places "do not reflect the diversity" of New York City's population.

Yeah, those people are smart. (Okay, except Penn students.) And clearly the goal of the department should be to hire a reflection of the city's diversity. After all, the purpose of a fire department is to be a public relations campaign, right? They don't have some other function, do they?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/04/2002 12:02:00 AM |

 

Breaking news: The Berlin Wall is Down

The State Department has apparently just figured out that Israel is a dangerous place to live in or travel to. They've warned Americans in Jerusalem to leave, and issued a travel advisory against visiting Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza. Just in case there were any who hadn't worked this out for themselves by now.

So if we judge the State Department by this standard, Colin Powell ought to figure out that Yasir Arafat is a terrorist by the year 2078 or so. Good luck, Colin. We'll wait for you to catch up.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/03/2002 06:14:00 AM |

 

Just brainstorming here

Ariel Sharon is floating the idea of exiling Yasir Arafat from Israel. As expected, Colin Powell is dismissive:

"Sending him into exile will just give him another place from which to conduct the same kinds of activities and give the same messages that he's giving now," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told ABC's "Good Morning America." "So, until he decides that he's going to leave the country, it seems to me we need to work with him where he is."

Sure, Colin. Because that has worked so well so far.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/03/2002 05:14:00 AM |

 

At least they didn't blame global warming

The New York Times writes a followup to a story about a federal prosecutor who was killed six months ago. Apparently there are no leads. Of course, you couldn't fill a whole article with that, so the Times has to find an angle. So they pick gun control.

There aren't any facts to relate the story to gun control, so the Times uses insinuation. The article starts by describing Mr. Wales as a "prominent advocate of gun control," and then says that "the attack had all the signs of a professional hit." Then we get the obligatory quotes from anti-gun activists:

National gun-control and gun-safety groups are also stepping up calls for progress in the investigation. Mr. Wales, they say, was by far the most prominent gun-control advocate to die from gun violence, and many leaders of those groups fear that his killing may have been tied to that work.

"It's terrifying for anybody working in this field to think there could be a killer out there targeting them," said Matt Bennett, director of public affairs for Americans for Gun Safety, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C.

And if that doesn't inflame the readers, the Times adds:

He was even singled out in an Internet discussion forum for gun proponents, described as "Tom Wales, yet another arrogant, gun-banning Jew, out in the open, unafraid." (Mr. Wales was not Jewish.)

The Internet forum is the Usenet newsgroup talk.politics.guns, and it is not "for gun proponents," but for a discussion of gun policy, for and against. And one single poster described him that way, but it fits the Times' perspective of gun owners as racist rednecks, so they feel obliged to mention it.

Anyway, after all that, seven paragraphs which set the victim up as a martyr to gun policy, the Times then finally admits that there's no real story there.

There is no firm indication that any opponent of gun control was involved in his death, and many pro-gun groups have expressed great ire at the suggestion. Moreover, Mr. Wales had also prosecuted many people in 18 years here in the United States attorney's office, specializing in fraud and white-collar crime. Investigators have been exhaustively combing over those cases, looking for anyone who could be a suspect.

Yeah, but isn't it far more sexy to insinuate that the killing is the work of a political group the Times hates?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/03/2002 03:44:00 AM |

 

Alas, poor Hosni

Don't you feel sorry for him? The New York Times wants you to.

After more than 20 years of standing alongside American presidents in building peace in the region, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is feeling undermined by Washington, upstaged by Saudi Arabia and vulnerable before an angry Arab population, officials here say.

Aww. My heart is breaking. Now, remind me exactly what Hosni Mubarak has done for the last twenty years "in building peace"? Last I recall, the United States begged Mubarak to put pressure on Yasir Arafat to go along with the Camp David talks -- and Mubarak refused. The talks collapsed, and here we are. Of course, there's no guarantee that Mubarak could have influenced Arafat, but he didn't even try.

Egypt, an important ally, is the largest recipient of American foreign aid after Israel. One Western diplomat who has been in frequent contact with him says the Egyptian leader fears that with growing numbers of student demonstrators and louder calls for an "Arab response" to Israel's military mobilization, he may be forced to put down the protests violently.

Is there a definition of "ally" of which I am unaware? Why does the Times always seem to think that hostile Arab states that do not cooperate with the U.S. in any aspect of foreign policy are our "allies"?

"They don't want to have to put down their own people," the diplomat said.

They don't? Since when? Has there been a sudden outbreak of freedom and democracy in the Arab world?

You should pity Hosni:

Mr. Mubarak, officials say, is seething over President Bush's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He is working the presidential phone lines to make what a spokesman described as a "forceful" appeal to President Bush to take a more muscular and balanced stance over the violence in the West Bank.

Ah, yes. Mubarak wants the U.S. to take a "more balanced stance." Except that, as the article notes:

Like most Arab leaders, Mr. Mubarak has avoided denouncing in any sustained or forceful manner the Palestinian suicide bombings, which have both fueled Israel's military mobilization and created a convergence between antiterror statements by Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon.

Maybe Mubarak should take a "more balanced stance" if he wants the U.S. to do so.

The Times also includes this howler:

The Arab view that the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the cruelties of 50 years of occupation have stirred a virulent new radicalism that will take years to get under control has far less resonance in the Bush administration.

Well, gee -- perhaps that's because if "the Arab view" is that there have been "50 years of occupation," that means they're counting the entire state of Israel -- not just the West Bank and Gaza -- as "occupation." I wonder why that doesn't have "resonance" in the Bush administration.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/03/2002 02:06:00 AM |

 

Following a script

Charles Johnson has a series of Talking Points for Arab Spokesmen:

* First, be sure to "condemn all forms of terror." (Nudge nudge, wink wink.) This is VERY IMPORTANT. It must be the FIRST THING you say. Americans have some kind of silly hangup about this.

* After getting that out of the way, move on to the REALLY IMPORTANT subject: Israeli "terror." Try to avoid using the word "but" in your segue; American interviewers are starting to get sensitive about this. Use the word "occupation" as much as possible.

There are more; check them out, and then watch the news to see how many of them each PLO apologist uses.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/02/2002 03:32:00 PM |

 

Hypocrisy continued

The Washington Post, despite publishing an excellent column the other day by George Will exposing McCainShaysFeingoldMeehan for what it is, joins the ranks of newspapers who see no problem with censoring others who wish to get involved in the election process. Responding to the Will editorial, the Post says:

Mr. Will seems worried that the National Rifle Association might be helpless to respond to a Post editorial.

Note, once again, the reference to the demonized NRA, rather than the more ideologically compatible ACLU, which the editors of the Post would be more uncomfortable silencing.

The worst part is that the Post touts the discriminatory nature of the law as though it were an asset:

It is true that the law treats the press differently from other corporations; the limited restriction McCain-Feingold places on the NRA would not apply to The Post. But this is nothing new.

Oh, so that makes it okay? Picture an editorial which says, "It's true that this law requires blacks to sit at the back of the bus. But this is nothing new." I can't imagine them printing this "argument."

Corporations, after all, have long been banned from direct campaign spending, but the law has also made clear that this restriction does not include spending on "any news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, [or] magazine." The Supreme Court, ruling on a similar Michigan statute in 1990, upheld the distinction, saying that "the media exception ensures that the Act does not hinder or prevent the institutional press from reporting on, and publishing editorials about, newsworthy events." Importantly, the exemption protects the press only in its role as the press.

See -- it's okay, as far as the Post is concerned, to censor political speech, not in spite of, but because the Post is exempt from that censorship. Most importantly, note that what the Post includes "in its role as the press" is publishing editorials. In other words, the newspaper is free to use so-called unregulated corporate funds to put out an editorial, right before an election, which says, "George Bush is evil, and must be defeated at all costs. We therefore endorse Ralph Nader" But the NRA is not free to buy time on television to put out its own editorial rebutting this Post piece.

But of course a newspaper doesn't have to do that, because a newspaper owns its own soapbox. The Post here also joins the ranks of those who misrepresent the bill by claiming that it only affects ads "supporting or opposing" a particular candidate. But in fact the law bans ads before an election which mention a candidate.

The Post, as well as some other apologists for the campaign finance law, argue that because there are some methods by which the NRA can get around the restrictions, the law is not really censorship and not really unconstitutional. But even if these methods were not extremely restrictive and burdensome, these are exactly the sort of exceptions that later become "loopholes" in the discourse of "reformers." If these methods were not restrictive, there wouldn't be any point to the law. The authors of the law know that. The Post knows that. So the only conceivable explanation for their continued lies is that they know the law will benefit the media at the expense of everyone else.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/02/2002 02:33:00 PM |

 

Lovefest

I don't think Susanna Cornett likes David Sanger of the New York Times very much.

SANGER IS AT IT AGAIN: Doesn't this man have a bias-o-meter? On Sunday he wrote a flagrantly biased article about Bush and the response to the bombing at Haifa, which I posted about then. Today, with the collaboration of Michael Gordon, Sanger goes at it again with such outlandish bias that it should be on the editorial page, but isn’t even nominally labeled a “news analysis”. This was so meaty I just had to deconstruct it extensively.

WASHINGTON, April 1 — President Bush, under rising criticism for his handling of the growing violence in the Middle East, expressed frustration today that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has failed to denounce what he called the "constant attacks" of suicide bombers.

Mr. Bush, his voice tinged with resentment during brief comments in the Oval Office this morning, also grew testy about suggestions that he had kept his distance from the conflict. He said those who maintained he was insufficiently engaged "must not have been with me in Crawford when I was on the phone all morning long talking to world leaders."

“Tinged with resentment” and “testy” – who are you, Mr. Sanger, to make those value judgments? Maybe he was just thinking you were stupid. Who are “those who maintain he was insufficiently engaged”? You and the editorial board at the Times?

Sanger is the author of the outrageously biased anti-Bush piece that I discussed a couple of days ago.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/02/2002 01:04:00 PM |

 

Note to self: learn to write as clearly as this

As usual, Megan McArdle does an excellent job breaking down an issue into straightforward logic. In explaining why Kyoto isn't a good idea, she responds to the suggestion that we consume too much:

Which goes to show that deciding which things we need and which ones are superfluous sounds great – when you’re doing the planning. But they’re not going to just poll Thomas – they’re going to ask the other 270 million people in the country too. And you’d be surprised at how much of the stuff you like the majority might consider superfluous. The internet, for example. Or they might decide that you don’t need the option of not working for 3 years if you lose your job. They might decide that it’s not in society’s best interest to have you taken out of the labor force, what with the looming demographic crisis and all, and seize your “excess” savings. Or they might decide that being single (I’m presuming, from your posts), you’d be more energy efficient in a barracks with other single men, leaving apartments for families who “need” it more. Start imagining all the things that neighbors who don’t particularly like you might find superfluous in your lifestyle, and you begin to see what a world of trouble you might be letting yourself in for by trying to decide what we need and what we don’t.

As always, I say: read the whole thing.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/02/2002 01:40:00 AM |

 

Where are the human rights protesters?

The Guardian reports, in its usual evenhanded fashion, that Palestinians are executing accused "collaborators" en masse. The Guardian at least admits that the treatment of the "collaborators" is brutal, but still manages to blame it on Israel.

Their bodies were dumped in a side street as a gruesome warning to anyone else contemplating spying for Israel against their own people.

Really. Perhaps it's a gruesome warning to anyone else who thinks that the Palestinian Authority is a group that can be dealt with as though it were civilized. And note that to the Guardian, they're not informing on terrorists or criminals, but "spying on their own people."

The police and guards did not try to stop the gunmen, who also belonged to the al-Aqsa martyrs, because they did not want to raise tensions in the city which is surrounded by Israeli tanks, the security sources said.

See? It's not because the so-called "police" are really terrorists. It's all Israel's fault.

The Palestinian attacks on collaborators have been based on well-founded suspicions about the level of penetration by the Israeli intelligence agencies of Palestinian society.

Confessions by arrested collaborators in the last 18 months have revealed the extent of the use of paid informers - often working for no more than a few hundred dollars - who have been recruited either through blackmail after being arrested by the Israelis, or because they were known to have a grudge against key militant figures.

And of course, these "confessions" must be legitimate, because Palestinian "police" wouldn't coerce them. And of course, these people couldn't be working for Israel because they think terrorism is wrong -- it has to be because Israel is blackmailing or bribing them.

At the very end, the Guardian slips in this little factoid:

In the last intifada, from 1987-93, more than 800 suspected collaborators were killed by fellow Palestinians.

I repeat: where are all the protests from human rights groups?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/02/2002 12:47:00 AM |

 

Quote of the day

From a discussion on Libertarian Samizdata, about the European Union's latest boondoggle, a European global positioning system:

[T]he EU is riven with all the drawbacks of a totalitarian state and none of the advantages.

Does the EU really think that they can government-plan their way back to relevancy?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/01/2002 11:30:00 PM |

 

Free speech for me, but not for thee

The New York Times was a key figure in two of the landmark free speech cases in United States history. In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court ruled that the freedom to criticize public officials was so important that even mistakes in that criticism didn't justify defamation suits, unless those mistakes were made recklessly or deliberately. And in the Pentagon Papers case, the Court ruled that even claims of dangers to national security couldn't justify prior restraint by the courts -- that is, a judge preventing something from being published. (*)

(*) For all my fellow attorneys out there, I know I'm oversimplifying. The nuances are unimportant here.

Thus, the Times' extremist views on campaign finance censorship are particularly galling. It's not merely their position on the so-called "reform" policy that is so irksome, but their willingness to distort and misrepresent in order to justify the unjustifiable.

Opponents of the law, starting with the National Rifle Association, have rushed into court to argue that it violates the First Amendment. Those arguments should be rejected.

Actually, one would think one should "start with" the American Civil Liberties Union, which is generally identified as being an organization devoted to free speech -- but the Times finds it less satisfying to demonize the ACLU than the NRA, so the misrepresentations begin.

What is being regulated here is not speech but money, and it is being done in ways the Supreme Court has expressly endorsed in its past decisions.

No, what's being regulated here is speech, and the Supreme Court has expressly rejected the idea that such speech can be regulated. In fact, in past decisions, the Supreme Court has held that money is speech. What the Supreme Court has said is that campaign contributions -- that is, money actually given to a candidate -- can be limited. But McCainShaysFeingoldMeehan goes far beyond that, banning many television and radio advertisements by independent parties in the days before an election.

The court has long drawn a distinction between pure issue advocacy, which merits the highest level of First Amendment protection, and campaign ads, the financing of which Congress can regulate to protect the integrity of the electoral process.

Actually, the court has never drawn any such distinction. The Times is -- what's the word? Oh yeah -- lying. What the court has said is that the money spent on a campaign ad which is coordinated with a campaign can be treated as a contribution, and thus regulated. An independent campaign ad, on the other hand, is completely protected free speech, though it may have an impact on an organization's tax-exempt status. All of this is a red herring, though, since McainShaysFeingoldMeehan doesn't limit itself to "campaign ads."

In recent years, special interests have done an end run around contribution and spending rules by running ads in the days leading up to an election that purport to be about an issue but are actually campaign ads intended to help one candidate win. ("Call Congressman Smith," the paradigmatic phony issue ad goes, "and tell him to stop trying to destroy Social Security.")

One would think that if Congressman Smith were trying to destroy Social Security, that this is a very appropriate issue ad to run, particularly right before the election. But not to the Times -- except if you took out a full page ad in The New York Times saying the same thing, in which case they'd take your money happily. The Times, as usual, pretends that the law can, or does, make distinctions between "phony" issue ads and "real" issue ads. In fact, the law simply declares that any ad which mentions a candidate is what the Times would call a "phony" issue ad.

Under the new law, such television ads would fall under the campaign finance limits if they were run within 60 days of an election, or 30 days of a party primary. The law's critics argue that this restriction violates freedom of expression, but they are wrong. Anyone has a right to buy genuine issue ads at any time, and they also have the right, under McCain-Feingold, to spend their quota of campaign donations to finance ads that are intended to help one particular candidate or party. No one is prohibited from speaking.

That's true; they're only prevented from speaking on television or on the radio, and only prevented from speaking about a candidate. If they'd like to talk about the weather, they can do so all day. The Times doesn't think this violates freedom of expression. I would disagree. So would the ACLU.

The only thing the campaign finance reform law prohibits is spending in excess of federal campaign limits to pay for a campaign ad masquerading as something else. The Supreme Court has long recognized that distinction. The McCain-Feingold law simply builds on that reasonable principle and sets out an improved, and updated, definition for when advertising crosses the line.

With that "definition" being "any ad which mentions a candidate." Few would call that "reasonable," unless they stood to profit directly from the law, as the Times does.

Opponents of the reforms protest that in some cases legitimate issue advocacy could be deterred in the final days of an election just because the ads mention the name of a candidate. An example they cite is a recent advertisement that urged House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is up for re-election, to take action on a bill. But it does not unduly burden free expression to require that an ad run in a candidate's district close to Election Day be financed with money that is not illegal under campaign finance law.

The Times here is pulling a bait-and-switch, the equivalent of arguing that it's no big deal to prevent black people from voting because, after all, black people shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway. Since the entire issue is whether the money can be declared "illegal," one can't justify such a declaration by saying that the money is illegal. (Incidentally, the unnamed "opponents" the Times mentions is the ACLU, which used that specific Dennis Hastert example in a press release.)

Besides, bona fide issue ads that mention a specific candidate but are unrelated to a campaign are exceedingly rare in the days leading up to an election, when ad rates are high and everyone's attention is directed at the campaign.

Those not trained as attorneys might squint and twist ones head looking at the Constitution for a "These are exceedingly rare" exception to the first amendment. But the New York Times knows better.

Well, I'd like to run a campaign ad here: call the New York Times, and demand that they stop lying about this law. (If this works, I expect that the TImes will call for the outlawing of Blogger next.)
posted by David Nieporent at 4/01/2002 02:45:00 AM |

 

Well, that's rich

Bill Clinton regrets having pardoned Mark Rich. Many people would regret pardoning an indicted tax evader who fled the country to avoid a trial, because, after all, someone should have to face a jury before being absolved of any wrongdoing. But The Man Without Shame doesn't care about any of that. He

regrets a last-minute pardon he gave to fugitive financier Marc Rich because it has tarnished his reputation.

Isn't that a little like causing the Fresh Kills landfill to smell?

Speaking of a stinking mass of garbage, read the whole interview, and try not to retch as Clinton explains that the contributions from Rich's wife were just a coincidence, and that Clinton really did it to advance the mideast peace process (!)
posted by David Nieporent at 4/01/2002 01:57:00 AM |

 

Better late than never

Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist who helped create the Saudi peace proposal scam, has finally figured out that it's a sham.

Israelis are terrified. And Palestinians, although this strategy has wrecked their society, feel a rising sense of empowerment. They feel they finally have a weapon that creates a balance of power with Israel, and maybe, in their fantasies, can defeat Israel. As Ismail Haniya, a Hamas leader, said in The Washington Post, Palestinians have Israelis on the run now because they have found their weak spot. Jews, he said, "love life more than any other people, and they prefer not to die." So Palestinian suicide bombers are ideal for dealing with them. That is really sick.

The world must understand that the Palestinians have not chosen suicide bombing out of "desperation" stemming from the Israeli occupation. That is a huge lie. Why? To begin with, a lot of other people in the world are desperate, yet they have not gone around strapping dynamite to themselves. More important, President Clinton offered the Palestinians a peace plan that could have ended their "desperate" occupation, and Yasir Arafat walked away. Still more important, the Palestinians have long had a tactical alternative to suicide: nonviolent resistance, à la Gandhi. A nonviolent Palestinian movement appealing to the conscience of the Israeli silent majority would have delivered a Palestinian state 30 years ago, but they have rejected that strategy, too.

The reason the Palestinians have not adopted these alternatives is because they actually want to win their independence in blood and fire. All they can agree on as a community is what they want to destroy, not what they want to build. Have you ever heard Mr. Arafat talk about what sort of education system or economy he would prefer, what sort of constitution he wants? No, because Mr. Arafat is not interested in the content of a Palestinian state, only the contours.

Let's be very clear: Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice, not out of desperation. This threatens all civilization because if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually lead to a bomber strapped with a nuclear device threatening entire nations. That is why the whole world must see this Palestinian suicide strategy defeated.

But how? This kind of terrorism can be curbed only by self-restraint and repudiation by the community itself. No foreign army can stop small groups ready to kill themselves. How do we produce that deterrence among Palestinians? First, Israel needs to deliver a military blow that clearly shows terror will not pay. Second, America needs to make clear that suicide bombing is not Israel's problem alone. To that end, the U.S. should declare that while it respects the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism, it will have no dealings with the Palestinian leadership as long as it tolerates suicide bombings. Further, we should make clear that Arab leaders whose media call suicide bombers "martyrs" aren't welcome in the U.S.

Eloquent, simple, straightforward, and obvious. The only question is, why on earth was this so hard for him to work out before? Was it just because he was in love with the sound of his own cleverness in jumpstarting the Saudi "peace proposal"?

(Well, I shouldn't say that this is "the only question." Another important question is when Europe will figure this out.)
posted by David Nieporent at 4/01/2002 12:04:00 AM |

 

And speaking of media bias...

The New York Times is free, of course, to feel however it wants about the president's middle eastern policy. But shouldn't it keep the blatant editorializing on the editorial page? David Sanger writes a piece about Bush's reaction to the current crisis in Israel:

Breaking a two-day silence on events in the Middle East, Mr. Bush summoned reporters to the gates of his ranch here during a driving rainstorm. He had just received news of yet another deadly bombing, this one in Tel Aviv, he said, and he pointedly made no effort to sound evenhanded about who was to blame for the rising violence.

Whether Bush "sounds evenhanded" is a question for the reader, not for the reporter, to determine. Moreover, Sanger makes clear that he thinks Bush should sound "evenhanded," as opposed, say, to sounding accurate.

Mr. Bush's strong statement went beyond similar comments on Friday by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. They were also striking for their clear association of the Palestinian leader with almost daily acts of terrorism, exactly the kind of comments the White House has tried to avoid in recent weeks for fear of further undercutting the chances of resuming peace negotiations.

While it's certainly newsworthy to point out a change in administration strategy, the Times could at least avoid making it sound as if Bush is committing a blunder. Instead, though, they emphasize the point that they don't believe Bush knows what he's doing.

Mr. Bush made a series of other phone calls today to affirm to Arab leaders that he remained committed to the peace process and planned to keep Gen. Anthony C. Zinni in the Middle East in the hope that talks might resume. But administration officials acknowledged that while the president had to keep alive talk of a peace process, his comments were detached from the reality in Jerusalem today. And Mr. Bush, at times drumming his fingers on a conference table, had the demeanor of a man who recognized the limits of his powers of persuasion, and had few illusions that he had the ability to change Mr. Sharon's strategy or Mr. Arafat's use of terror.

What exactly is "the demeanor of a man who recognizes the limits of his powers of persuasion?" I can picture "happy," "confused," or "frightened," but "recognizing the limits of ones powers" is a little too complex for me to imagine.

The article goes on in this vein, making it clear that in David Sanger's view, the formula for peace is for Bush to restrain Ariel Sharon, and disapproving of Bush's decision not to do so. Now, that may or may not be correct, but it seems to go slightly beyond the scope of the news section to determine.
posted by David Nieporent at 3/31/2002 11:32:00 PM |

 

Who's running things around here?

A day after backing a U.N. Security Council resolution which was critical of Israel, President Bush put the blame for events on the Palestinians, said that Arafat has to do more, and said that Israel has the right to defend itself.

Palestinian officials had hoped that pressure by Arab nations on the Bush administration would prompt it to restrain Israel. But speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr. Bush, who has refused from the beginning of his term even to shake Mr. Arafat's hand, said only that Israel should "make sure there is a path to peace as she secures her homeland."

I have no inside information, but my guess is that this reflects the longstanding State Department/national security split. The U.N. votes are overseen by the diplomats, including Colin Powell, whose first instinct is to smooth things over with our middle eastern "allies." Bush, though, is listening to his national security team - Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Rice - who are a little more pragmatic.
posted by David Nieporent at 3/31/2002 10:42:00 PM |

 

Woohoo!

My first InstaPundit link. For anybody visiting for the first time, welcome, and note that I really don't intend to make this an All-Middle East, All-The-Time blog. It's the primary focus of my attention right now, for obvious reasons, but I'd like to get back to domestic politics soon.
posted by David Nieporent at 3/31/2002 08:25:00 PM |