The ailing NY Times: the watchdog has rabies

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently the NY Times has been engaged in what appears to be a campaign of its own: the publication of security secrets in the current war (on terror, on jihadis, call it what you will) waged by the US. Why is the Times bent on forcing the issue, publishing secrets that appear to violate no known rule or law, using as its excuse the public’s need to know?

Yesterday, in response to that question, I discussed one possible motivation for the Times’ behavior: to relive the glory days of the Pentagon Papers case. But there’s more.

The issues are large; see Alexandra’s post of today for a further discussion and roundup of the case against the Times. Also today, columnist Michael Barone ups the ante, asking, “Why does the NY Times hate us?”, writing that the paper’s editors, “have gotten into the habit of acting in reckless disregard of our safety.”

Towards the end of the piece, Barone asks:

Why do they hate us? Why does the Times print stories that put America more at risk of attack? They say that these surveillance programs are subject to abuse, but give no reason to believe that this concern is anything but theoretical.

I submit the following answer:

The press has long seen itself as a watchdog protecting the people. I’m not sure when this attitude began, but it was certainly present in the activities of the muckrakers of the early years of the twentieth century, journalists and writers who saw it as their calling to expose and publicize some of the excesses of big business, especially trusts. As such, they were crusaders, but they never (at least as far as I can determine) published secret information that threatened national security. Their concerns were almost exclusively domestic.

That changed, as so much did, during the Vietnam and Watergate era, in which national security concerns were added to the muckraking function of the press. I’ve delineated and explored the change in many previous posts (see this and especially this, for example).

Here’s an especially relevant quote from the latter:

The antiwar movement that rose as a result of the Vietnam War had a distrust of American power and intelligence gathering and of agencies such as the CIA. The events of Watergate only “deepened the aversion,” since the burglars included former intelligence officers, and Nixon also used the CIA to obstruct the work of the FBI in trying to investigate the break-in. Furthermore, the CIA was engaged in some domestic spying scandals and other acts considered excesses, such as attempts to assassinate foreign leaders (investigated by the Congressional Church Commission of the mid-70s). The upshot of all this was, among other things, a desire to limit the power of the executive branch of government and of intelligence-gathering, because the fear was that these entities, unchecked, could (and would) combine in corrupt ways to undermine our liberties.

Some have said, cynically, that the Times editors are simply out to sensationalize and boost readership. This certainly may be operating, at least in part. But in my opinion that it’s not the main motivation. I see the driving force for this campaign as the editors’ deep conviction that providing this information to us is their way of protecting us: it’s the muckraking impulse gone mad.

In the decades since the 60s, the press has come to see itself as a sort of secret society, bound to protect and serve us by curbing what it sees as a government that–as in Watergate, as in 1984–is bound and determined to spy on us and curb our liberties. As such, editors make the decisions as to what is in our best interests, and they have deemed the threat from the actions of our own government to be far greater than any threat from jihadis.

This is both arrogant and an inappropriate throwback to the Vietnam-Watergate era, but I actually believe (and call me naive, if you like) that the vast majority of these MSM campaigners (such as Keller, Times editor) are convinced of their own rightness and self-rightousness, and that this is primarily what fuels them. And their arrogance has continued to grow because they have suffered virtually no consequences for their actions; they have become a law unto themselves.

Alexandra’s post quotes Glenn Reynolds, who makes the important point that:

The founders gave freedom of the press to the people, they didn’t give freedom to the press. Keller positions himself as some sort of Constitutional High Priest, when in fact the “freedom of the press” the Framers described was also called “freedom in the use of the press.” It’s the freedom to publish, a freedom that belongs to everyone in equal portions, not a special privilege for the media industry.

Reynolds refers to the Times editor’s position as “hubris,” and I think he is exactly right, at least in the metaphoric sense. And Austin Bay sums it up quite succintly when he says that, “exposing the terrorist finance-monitoring operation information amounts to spying for terrorists.”

There is really no other way to put it. The press considers itself to be a watchdog, but the Times is a rabid one that has turned on its owners and keepers, the people.

What to do? One possibility is the passage of a National Secrets Act, as I’ve discussed here and here. But perhaps that’s not necessary. The current Espionage Act may be enough, as Barone suggest in his column; rather than prosecute the Times itself, the leakers who are breaching national security by divulging information to the Times could themselves be prosecuted, and in the course of discovery for such a case, the Times would have to testify as to who the leakers are or face contempt of court charges.

Would that be enough? Hard to say, but I think it should be done. The watchdog is ill, and needs to be curbed.

NY Times cruising for a court battle?

The New Neo Posted on by

The Anchoress has an excellent roundup of posts about the recent publications by the NY Times of security leaks.

The Anchoress asks whether the Times “is trying to force a legal confrontation”¦are they actively trying to have members of the fourth estate brought up on charges of treason? To what purpose?”

I submit the following answer to the Anchoress’s question: The Times is trying to relive its glory days. Don’t forget that, as I described in this post, a lawsuit by the Nixon White House against the NY Times to stop the publication of Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers in 1971 was a seminal step in determining the freedom of the press to publish national security secrets. Although the security breaches involved in the publication of the Pentagon Papers were smaller than those involved today, the precedent is there. The Times was victorious, and the case set the stage for the publication of today’s security leaks.

In that earlier post, I quoted from a book on the Court’s decision in the Pentagon Papers case, written by David Rudenstine and entitled The Day the Presses Stopped. I’ll quote the book again:

Despite Americans’ constitutional right to a free press, certain government information–particularly that concerning military affairs–has been placed beyond the realm of public access. A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1971, however (brought about when the Nixon administration sued the New York Times) knocked a howitzer-sized hole in that theory when the case allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to print excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000- page document regarding U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Why wouldn’t the Times think that history will repeat itself? After all, it’s been clear for a while that Vietnam is the liberal template for the Iraq war. The left is counting on it.

Islam: tear down this wall

The New Neo Posted on by

San Francisco is one of the most “progressive” (read: liberal) cities in the US. And, as this NY Times article describes, there’s a movement there to modernize Islam, at least in a small way.

As part of renovations to the Darussalam mosque in San Francisco last fall, a wall separating the women worshippers from the men was demolished and not reconstructed. This was the result of a campaign by what the Times calls “a small if determined band of North American Muslims, mostly younger women,” to change practices they feel are discriminatory, and not a necessary part of Islam.

The women point to the fact that the tradition of separation is a relatively recent one, the result of Wahabism’s ascendance in 18th-century Saudi Arabia. Wahabism is, of course, the extremely strict sect of Islam, still based in Saudi Arabia, responsible for much of the growth of what might be called fundamentalist Islam, and to which many jihadis, including Osama Bin Laden, ascribe.

It’s a commonplace to say that Islam needs a reformation; but in fact, technically, Wahabism was a reformation. But let’s not get so technical; I think what is meant is that Islam needs a reforming and modernizing movement–as in, for example, Reform Judaism. And of course, anyone who is aware of Reform Judaism knows that one of its changes was exactly the one that has occurred in the Darussalam mosque: the mixing of men and women in worship.

Reform Judaism was a product of the Enlightenment and the relative assimilation and freedom afforded Jews in 18th century Germany (hmmm, same century as Wahabism, different direction). We tend to associate Germany and Jews with the later horrific events of the Holocaust, so its easy to forget that–as far as human and civil rights for Jews went–Germany was probably the most “enlightened” country in the world in the 18th century. And it was that freedom that allowed and fostered the changes and modernizations resulting in the birth of reform Judaism.

I’m not equating Judaism with Islam; there are tremendous differences. But if Islam requires reform–and I believe it does–it stands to reason that reform would begin in the climate of the freedoms afforded by a Western country such as the US or Canada.

Of course, as the Times article states, reform and change can cause backlash and retrenchment. And there isn’t much cross-fertilization between what happens in a mosque in the US and what happens in mosques in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

But it’s still an encouraging sign that this was allowed to go forward. And the spread of such changes in the Moslem third world, not just in the West, is one of the possible benefits of events such as the Iraq war, and increasing freedom in that country. A backlash is possible, but so is a ripple effect.

The tearing down of the wall in the Darussalam mosque is a small change, it’s true. It may not even rise to the level of a pebble being dropped in a lake; perhaps, instead, a tiny grain of sand. But even a grain of sand can cause ripples.

Patience

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of you who read this blog regularly have no doubt noticed that trolls have virtually taken over many of the comment threads. You’ve also probably seen me state that a reordering of the blog is going to be occurring soon in order to eliminate the problem.

It can’t happen soon enough; I agree. Trolls are edifying up to a point, because they’re instructive about a certain mindset and a particular type of puerile emotional behavior. However, enough is enough–and it’s definitely been more than enough, here. We get it; no further demonstration is necessary.

But there are various options to be studied and considered, and this takes quite a bit of time. Then, implementing the change takes time as well. And I have an enormous number of other backlogged things to do after getting back from my vacation. So, although I’m working on this and I definitely plan to get to it some time this coming week (or almost definitely the next), I ask for your patience and forbearance. I am aware of the problem, I am on the task, and it will be done.

In the meantime, I can only repeat that you not feed the trolls, although the temptation seems to be great–and, for some, apparently irresistible. Feeding the trolls brings the worst out in everyone.

WMDs and true believers

The New Neo Posted on by

There are those who remain convinced that prewar intelligence was not incorrect–that Saddam was still cranking out WMDs prior to the war, and that these weapons are hidden somewhere and could be found if a proper search were ever to be mounted.

And, according to this NY Times article, this group is not limited to fringe-y lunatics. Those espousing the view, and who are still trying actively engage an effective search, include such figures as:

…retired Air Force lieutenant general, Thomas G. McInerney, a commentator on the Fox News Channel who has broadcast that weapons are in three places in Syria and one in Lebanon, moved there with Russian help on the eve of the war.

“I firmly believe that, and everything I learn makes my belief firmer,” said Mr. McInerney, who retired in 1994. “I’m amazed that the mainstream media hasn’t picked this up.”

Also among the weapons hunters is Duane R. Clarridge, a long-retired officer of the Central Intelligence Agency who said he thought that the weapons had been moved to Sudan by ship.

“And we think we know which ship,” Mr. Clarridge said in a recent interview.

Are these guys the equivalent, on the right, of those who believe that 9/11 was planned and orchestrated by Bush (the latter of whom, by the way, are not shy about spamming me to tell me so, day after livelong day)?

No; McInerney and Clarridge seem more rooted in realistic possibilities, although I have come to believe that the probability of their being correct at this point is 10% or less (and probably much less, at that).

But the task of ascertaining whether any post-1991 WMDs are still kicking around somewhere is a difficult one. How can one prove whether something purported to be hidden does or does not exist?

The only way the issue could be absolutely resolved is by either of these two things occurring:

(1) A post-1991 WMD cache is found; or

(2) Every inch of the earth, including underground to a reasonable depth, is searched and found to be empty of post-1991 WMDs.

Since #2 is not possible, the possibility of #1 remains, although the likelihood of its occurrence shrinks over time.

When a person is heavily invested in a particular thing being true, it is ordinarily very difficult to give up the idea that it is so. This is the case whether the believer is on the left or on the right. In my opinion, those in the middle are less likely to be so firmly anchored to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence, for the simple reason that their identities are not so deeply and rigidly tied to them in the first place.

Why we should consider a National Secrets Act

The New Neo Posted on by

Dr. Sanity has this to say on the most recent spilling-of-the-national-security-beans by the MSM (see this for Jeff Goldstein’s take on the story, as well).

For those of you who may have missed it, back in early May I posted an in-depth discussion of the basic issues involved, offering a possible remedy based on a law in Britain known as the National Secrets Act. It provides penalties not only for national security employees who leak, but also for the press publishing such secrets, as well.

When I wrote that post, I stated I wasn’t sure exactly where I stood on the issue of whether such a law should be passed in this country. However, since then, I have become more convinced that penalties–at the very least, for the leaker–would be a good idea.

After all, it’s not as though there aren’t other avenues to follow short of disclosure to the press and to the world. A relevant excerpt from my post:

It seems logical to me that in order to have any sort of workable national security at all, it should only be breached for extremely serious governmental offenses, and then only after other ordinary channels have been exhausted and found wanting. My suggestion would be penalties for national security leakers who go to the press first, without trying other remedies, as well as penalties for the press if the information damages national security as defined by the courts (and I would hope they would define it at least somewhat less narrowly than in the Pentagon Papers decision).

Amnesty International tiptoes around third-world torturers

The New Neo Posted on by

Amnesty International is oh so very careful not to offend the tender sensibilities of those responsible for the brutal torture, killing, and mutilation of two captured US soldiers.

Note the two qualifiers in the Amnesty statement: “if” and “may.” It’s the “may” part that Belmont Club–and myself–find so especially offensive.

{And see this for my own small previous efforts to try to communicate with the folks at Amnesty.)

Home again

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m back!

The redeye flight was fine and uneventful, just as a flight should be–but of course I’m exhausted, although I also slept a few hours in an actual bed on my return.

The garden’s overgrown. The mail has to be picked up. The bags need to be unpacked. Groceries must be bought. My mother should be visited. And on and on and on….

I’m taking the rest of the day (evening?) off from blogging.

See you tomorrow!

Mondegreens

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was about three years old I liked to listen to the music from “Guys and Dolls” on our scratchy old record player.

For some reason–perhaps because I was fond of animals–I particularly loved the lyrics of “Fugue for Tinhorns,” which I’d often warble semi-tunefully for a small audience of my parents’ friends (yes, I know, shameless self-aggrandizer).

Do you know the song? It offers advice for betting on horse races. Here’s a little sampler:

I got the horse right here
The name is Paul Revere
And here’s a guy that says that the weather’s clear
Can do, can do, this guy says the horse can do
If he says the horse can do, can do, can do.

What did I understand about the words? Not very much, although I did know that they had something to do with horses and racing, and that “Paul Revere” and the other names in the song (I especially liked “Valentine”) referred to the animals.

But much of the meaning of the song was unintelligible to me. The many parts I didn’t comprehend (“I’ve got the feed box noise”??) I memorized in a sort of phonetic, syllable-by-syllable rote way, trying to give them meaning as I went along, or ignoring meaning when I couldn’t divine any.

“Feed box noise,” for instance, was just that–a lot of noise, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing. I couldn’t make it into any words at all, so it remained something like “fee pox voize” in my mind.

But other parts seemed to include recognizable words, although those words didn’t always make a whole lot of sense. There was this: “It’s from a handicapper that’s real sincere,” which I turned into “It’s from a handy capper that’s real sincere.” A handy capper: someone good with his hands who made caps, or who wore caps–whatever.

And in my mind there it stayed–as “handy capper.”

I hardly ever thought of those song lyrics again, until one day well into middle adulthood, when for some reason the song came up. I was discussing the lyrics with a friend, and I started to say, “One thing I don’t understand; what’s a ‘handy capper’?” But as those words were about to come out of my mouth, they suddenly coalesced into a single word, one I actually knew and connected to horse racing–“handicapper”–and I burst out laughing at my own stupidity.

What I’d done was to create something known as a “mondegreen,” and by no means one of the most amusing ones around. But the internet comes to the rescue; here’s a site with some wonderful mondegreens. Especially fine, I think, are the following:

All my luggage, I will send to you.
(Actual lyric: All my loving, I will send to you–Beatles)

Baby come back, you can play Monopoly.
Actual lyric: Baby come back, you can blame it all on me.
(Player “Baby Come Back”)

Come shave my heart.
Actual lyric:Unchain my heart.
(Ray Charles)

Donuts make my brown eyes blue.
Actual lyric:Don’t it make my brown eyes blue.
(Crystal Gale)

Give me the Beach Boys and free my soul.
Actual lyric:Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul.
(Dobie Gray “Drift Away”) (I think I may have succumbed to this one myself.)

Hold me closer, Tony Danza
Count the head lice on the highway.
Actual lyric: Hold me closer, tiny dancer.
(Elton John “Tiny Dancer”)

Just brush my teeth before you leave me, baby.
Actual lyric:Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.
(Juice Newton “Angel of the Morning”)

Last night I dreamt of some bagels.
Actual lyric:Last night I dreamt of San Pedro.

he’s got a chicken to ride.
Actual lyric:She’s got a ticket to ride.
(Beatles)

She’s got electric boobs, a mohair too.
Actual lyric:She’s got electric boots, a mohair suit.
(Elton John “Benny and the Jets”)

Sugar fried honey butt.
Actual lyric:Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch.
(Four Tops “Can’t Help Myself”)

Got any of your own?

By their works shall ye know them: barbarians and sadists

The New Neo Posted on by

The news was all but inevitable: the bodies of the two missing soldiers have been found in Iraq, and spokespeople say they have been “tortured in a barbaric fashion.” No details have as yet been provided.

Pajamas Media has a roundup of reactions from both sides of the political spectrum.

All thoughtful people–myself included–mourn their loss, and the suffering they endured before their deaths.

When I read the sad news, however, the use of the word “barbaric” caught my eye. Like many familiar words, ordinarily we hardly think about what it really means.

Here are some synonyms:

barbarian, barbarous, boorish, brutal, coarse, cruel, fierce, graceless, inhuman, lowbrow, primitive, rough, rude, tasteless, uncivilized, uncouth, vulgar, wild

The word is the essence of cultural non-relativism. Its origins are in antiquity:

…from Latin barbaria, from Latin barbarus, from the ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros) which meant a non-Greek, someone whose (first) language was not Greek. The word is imitative, the bar-bar representing the impression of random hubbub produced by hearing spoken a language that one cannot understand, similar to blah blah or rhubarb in modern English.

Many cultures traditionally have had terms for “the other.” Even if those appellations don’t start out as pejorative, they usually wind up that way. And so it is with “barbarian” and “barbaric,” which have come into general use to mean especially vicious, cruel, and sadistic.

It’s really that last definition–sadistic–that seems to be the most important element here. When a soldier kills, there is always violence, no matter how the killing is accomplished. But barbarism implies a gratuitous level of mayhem, a sort of overkill, which indicates an emotional element that drives the perpetrator towards inflicting the maximum amount of pain for personal enjoyment and sensations of power.

One of the hallmarks of jihadi violence has been this element of barbarism–or, perhaps more correctly, sadism. There is a practical and strategic goal as well, which is to instill fear. Sadism and strategy are not mutually exclusive, however; they can coexist, and both may be driving this particular behavior. No one who has watched the beheading videos–or even read descriptions of them–can avoid the sense that those doing the deed are reveling in their own barbaric power, unleashed.

Sadism traditionally has been linked to sexual kinkiness. If you Google the word “sadism,” most of the definitions you find will have some connection to sex. Many have also remarked on the disturbances in Arab culture’s treatment of women and their sexuality (see this, for example), so it’s easy to surmise that there’s a connection between the two.

But it’s certainly not as simple as that–sadism is probably overdetermined among the jihadis. And another one of the elements that go into it are the backgrounds and personality disorders of some of those who rise to positions of power, such as the late and unlamented Zarqawi, who was clearly both a sadist and a psychopath in the classic sense.

But sadism and psychopathology are not limited to Arab culture, of course. In fact, the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal clearly involved elements of sadomasochism of the sexual sort, although the sadism did not even begin to rise to the level of that seen with the jihadis.

Then there were the Nazis, who came from a culture with enormous cultural achievements, one that was thought to be almost ultra-civilized prior to WWII. That’s one of the reasons the deeply barbaric turn many Germans took at that time was so very shocking: the degree of sadism that was unleashed in the concentration camps, for example, rivaled anything in history, classical or otherwise (and yes, I’m aware that not all the guards were German, but the guiding vision sprung from that society, and was largely a product of German or Austrian nationals).

The bottom line is that barbarism and sadism are possibilities for all human beings. But some societies and some historic times seem to encourage their fuller expression. And the task of a “civilized” military is to reduce the elements of sadism, while preserving the ability to kill.

I’ve written previously about how US soldiers are trained to kill without sadism, here. It’s not an easy task, but it’s the goal of the US military to reduce combat stress and make atrocities far less likely to occur (read the post for the details of how this is done). In contrast, the goal of the Nazis was to maximize the expression of sadism in their concentration camp guards. Likewise, this seems to be the goal of the jihadis, or at least many jihadi elements.

And they’re not the only ones who are drawn to the admiration of the barbaric. As the Wikipedia article on barbarians indicates, in a discussion of the fictional Conan the barbarian (and with an interesting connection to German history):

The modern sympathetic admiration for such fantasy barbarians as Conan the Barbarian is a direct descendant of the Enlightenment idealization of the “Noble Savage”. The German Romantics recharacterized the barbarian stereotype. Now it was the civilized Roman–or that modern Romanized Gaul, the Frenchman–who was effeminate and soft, and the stout-hearted German barbarian who exemplified manly virtue. The reforming of Arminius as “Hermann” the noble barbarian countering evil Rome provided a prototype from the 16th century onwards.

In fantasy novels and role-playing games, barbarians (or berserkers) are still depicted as brave uncivilized warriors, often able to attack with a crazed fury. Conan is simply best known of the type.

Many of those who defend jihadis, make excuses for them, and/or sympathize with them, may indeed be feeling these sorts of Rousseauvian/Romantic stirrings.

One petite step for womankind

The New Neo Posted on by

Not that I ever shop there–but still, I’m happy to know that Saks has bowed to popular demand from its vertically challenged female shoppers and announced it will revive its petite section.

The ripple effect has already been felt. As a result of Saks’s return to the petite biz, designer Ellen Tracy, who had opted out of the petite game, is coming back.

For those who are wondering what I’m talking about and why, see this previous post of mine.

And, in the interests of rigorous honesty, I confess that the title of this post was suggested to me by a thoughtful reader.