Fake but accurate: what if it’s turtles all the way down?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the joke:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?”

“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down.”

I thought of this story the other day, while discussing the France2 case with an exceptionally intelligent young man. He was open to the idea that France2 had been guilty of promulgating a lie in the al Durah affair, but asked me whether it really mattered so very much that it was a lie in that particular instance because, after all, Israel does target Palestinian children. The old, “fake but accurate” argument.

A brief discussion about the nature of collateral damage in asymmetrical warfare ensued, and he agreed that it’s probably unavoidable no matter how careful a military is. But he insisted that Israel must purposely have targeted children in some instance or other, because it was such a well-known fact.

I asked the young man the following question: what if all the reports he’d read about Israelis purposely targeting children were based on lies? If enough reporters truly believed that “fake but accurate” was a reasonable way of reporting things, then what was to stop them from lying about this to make a point they felt to be essentially true?

In other words, what if–like the turtles–it’s lies all the way down?

[NOTE: As a bit of background on journalistic standards for reporting about Israel, here’s a point-by-point debunking of the famous and influential Chris Hedges Harper’s article that alleged Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian children “for sport.” And here’s an excellent overview on the entire topic of the NY Times’s distorted and misleading coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, written by Tom Gross of National Review. The more I’ve learned about the media, the more I’ve come to believe that Hedges was operating under the “fake but accurate” rubric.]

Roya Hakakian and SAVAK: another changer

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was writing about the 1979 Iranian revolution I asked the following question:

The Shah’s secret police–SAVAK, usually referred to with an adjective such as “dreaded” or “hated” before the acronym–was active in Iran to stifle those who would oppose him. There is a great deal of controversy over just how dreadful SAVAK actually was in the larger scheme of things. Was it a wide-ranging and indiscriminate effort to track down, torture, imprison, exile and/or murder all those who dissented, or who even were thought to dissent, much like the operations of the Soviet KGB? Or was it far more benign, only dealing with those who would violently overthrow the government (such as Khomeini and his henchmen), and using torture only sparingly?

Recently I read the book Journey From the Land of No by Iranian-American writer and poet Roya Hakakian. She was raised in Iran in a Jewish family, and as a twelve-year old she experienced the 1979 revolution. Her book is a meditation on the profound dislocations of that time for herself, her relatives, and her friends.

Hakakian touches on her childhood memories of whispers about the dread SAVAK, which became a sort of boogie man to her. She writes:

Like God, SAVAK was ubiquitous and omnipresent in the national imagination…Dignity was what SAVAK deprived the nation of most…To escape its ominous attention, every citizen hid what was on his mind and learned to talk in a way that his true thoughts would not be obvious.

Certainly a frightening portrait.

Right before the Revolution she listened to a revered young woman friend named Bibi talk about the wonderful Ayatollah Khomeini (she refers to him as “Agha”). As in a fairy tale, he would make everything better:

Agha is the one who will set us free…Agha is the angel who’ll chase the devil away…He’ll not have cronies like the evil Shah…A revolution is on the way. Agha will make poverty history. We’ll be free to say and write anything we want because when Agha comes, SAVAK will be history too.

A sensitive and literary child, Roya loved the renowned Iranian children’s classic The Little Black Fish, which she read over and over. But Bibi told her a terrible tale of what had happened to its author:

SAVAK killed him…They snatch you away, torture you, even kill you if you say something against the shah. That’s what they did to the writer of The Little Black Fish. They put his feet in a block of cement and dropped him into the River Aras in Azerbaijan.

Of course, as we now know–and Roya learned–the Revolution betrayed the trust of Roya’s friends and family. Roya reports that by 1984, at the time of Iran’s war with Iraq, she dreamt every night of murdering the Ayatollah. And by then the Shah’s SAVAK had been replaced by the even more dreaded and intrusive SAVAMA, secret police of the mullahs.

And what of Bibi and her veneration for Agha? Kakakian meets an old friend who tells her the news. Just a few disillusioned months after the Revolution, Bibi had joined the People’s Mujahideen, an opposition movement. She’s written a protest essay and read it in class and was reported by a fellow student, imprisoned, and tortured.

Roya suggests visiting Bibi in prison and bringing her a copy of The Little Black Fish, a book they both had loved. But her friend explains that wouldn’t be a good idea. It might depress Bibi too much, because of what she’d learned in prison, to wit:

[The book’s author] Samad Behrangi had not been drowned. There had been no cement blocks. No cruel interrogation by SAVAK. A poor swimmer, he had drowned on his own. When news of the drowning reached several leading anti-shah intellectuals of the time, they saw it as an opportunity to pin it on the shah to fuel the public’s resentment of him. One of the pivotal legends that had tormented a generation and ignited the revolution had been nothing but a hoax. A strategic maneuver! A little lie between revolutionary friends! What of it?

What of it, indeed? Fake but accurate, no doubt.

And I wondered what happened to those anti-shah intellectuals who’d thought up the brilliant deception. Did they end up like so many others, swallowed by the revolution they helped bring about, perplexed at the strange and horrific turn events had taken?

[NOTE: I tried researching the story of the death of author Behrangi to see if I could determine the truth. It was impossible to do so. Different versions are offered, depending on the politics of the writer. Perhaps Wikipedia summarizes it best:

Behrangi drowned in the Aras river. It is rumored that he was killed by the agents of the Pahlavi government of Iran, because of his outspoken manner regarding the corruptness of the regime, while others believe that his death was accidental.]

RIP, Oriana

The New Neo Posted on by

The utterly unique and seemingly fearless Oriana Fallaci has died.

Charismatic, beautiful, outspoken, iconoclastic, articulate, fiery, controversial, in recent years Fallaci had been battling cancer, but she continued speaking out against Islam’s violent incursions into Europe.

Fallaci never was one to pull her punches. Even though she didn’t get quite as much press as the Pope for it, she was far harder on Islam.

[I will write more later on Fallaci.]

The Big Story, according to Google: the Gates of Regensburg

The New Neo Posted on by

My home page is Google, which always contains a feature entitled “Top Stories,” listing what Google considers the five biggest stories of the hour. Usually it has a variety–I’ve never seen it with the same story five times before. But right now it looks like this:

Fadlallah Demands Personal Apology from Pope Over Remarks on Islam
Naharnet – all 706 related »

Key excerpts: The Pope’s speech
BBC News – all 706 related »

Muslims Enraged by Pope’s Remarks on Spreading Islam by Violence
CNSNews.com – all 706 related »

Pontiff’s quote on Islam draws criticism, anger
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription) – all 706 related »

Pope’s remarks anger Muslims
United Press International – all 706 relate

So, what’s new? That Moslems are angry? That Moslems are angry at someone suggesting their religion might have some flaws? That Moslems are angry at someone suggesting their religion might have some connection with the jihadist violence certain groups of Moslems commit in its name? Or is it the fact that it’s the the Pope who made the remarks in question?

[Here are some excerpts from the Pope’s controversial remarks about Islam, for those who aren’t familiar with what he said.]

Update: the wheels of French justice grind fine…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and maybe not so slowly, after all.

Nidra Pollner’s second report, this one focusing on the trial, sounds very, very promising:

It was a beautiful trial. It was held in an atmosphere of respect for justice…

And here is part of Richard Landes’s post on the same subject:

Wow. French Republican values have scored a great first round victory today. This is the France that I fell in love with as a kid, and as a student reading Jules Michelet, and doing medieval history with intellectually vibrant people, the great souled people with wise and fair-minded institutions, and real ideals and commitment to integrity”¦ the people of the Peace of God, and the early, heady days of the French Revolution.

Not to get too excited too soon”¦

Francophiles should be happy, and those who love truth and justice should be cautiously optimistic as well. The verdict will be delivered on October 19, and a few days later the second trial against the second defendant will begin–that is, if there is a second trial.

Of course, judges are notorious for their poker faces. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

Dreyfus and the France2 case: history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes

The New Neo Posted on by

The great Mark Twain wrote, in one of his pithiest and most insightful aphorisms:

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Not all the rhymes of history are beautiful poetry, of that we can be sure. Case in point: the ongoing France2 defamation trial, which has resonance with the famous Dreyfus affair.

The current trial–or trials; there are three–is a story the MSM is virtually ignoring. So once again it falls to the blogosphere to publicize it. Nidra Pollner and Pajamas Media are attempting to emphasize the “rhyme” by channeling Emile Zola and the newspaper L’Aurore (The Dawn), respectively. Pollner’s excellent first article on the case appears here.

The trial begins today. It manages to combine a number of huge issues in one seemingly small package: Palestinian fauxtography, the role of the mainstream press in promulgating it, how to distinguish between what is truth and what is propaganda, and the defamation laws of the French legal system. The overarching question, of course, is whether justice and truth will prevail.

Please read this previous post of mine and the linked Pollner article to get the details. But if that’s too much for you, here’s the briefest of recaps: in September of 2000, the French TV station France2 broadcast videotape allegedly showing the killing of 12-year old Mohammed al Durah by Israeli troops in a Gaza exchange of fire with Palestinians. The tape and the publicity that ensued were instrumental in inflaming international–especially European, and particularly French–public opinion against both Israel and Jews, and was heavily used by the Palestinians as justification for the bloody Second Intifada.

But it turns out the overwhelming evidence indicates the whole thing to be a hoax. What’s more, France2 knew this early on, or should reasonably have known it. The station lied about other aspects of the tape as well, alleging there was even more footage–unshown because it was too graphic and upsetting–proving the death of Mohammed. But there was no such tape. In fact, the tape in question demonstrates quite the opposite: almost a half-hour of blatantly staged scenes, with only a minute of al Durah footage, the end of which catches the boy making voluntary hand gestures after he was supposedly dead.

In the sharpest of ironies, these trials are being brought by the French TV station and its employees under a law originally designed to shield individuals against defamation by the press. Philippe Karsenty, founding director of the online media watch enterprise Media-Ratings, is being sued for public defamation of the honor and reputation of an “individual”–that individual being France 2 and its employees Arlette Chabot and Charles Enderlin.

It’s as though Dan Rather, acting as an individual, had sued Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs for Johnson’s online debunking of the forged the National Guard memos. A French law designed to protect individuals against the power of false press accusations has turned the tables, looking-glass like, and enabled the press to sue online individuals for criticizing lies promulgated by the media itself.

Writers keep invoking the famous Dreyfus Affair, but I’m hoping the better parallel will be to the David Irving trial, in which Irving sued writer Lipstadt for defamation when she accused him of lying and Holocaust denial. He ended up the loser, with his reputation in tatters after the trial proved the truth of her charges against him.

The Irving trial was relatively brief and the verdict against Irving swift. Not so the Dreyfus case; although Dreyfus was exonerated in the end, it took twelve long years for his rehabilitation, and he endured a great deal of suffering along the way.

The Dreyfus Affair demonstrated, among other things, the power of the pen: writer Zola was instrumental in getting the case the public scrutiny that ultimately helped to release Dreyfus. The entire episode also caused a huge and lasting rift in French society and government. But Zola himself, in an example of uncanny “rhyming” with the present case, did not get off scot-free. He–much like the defendants here (and possibly under the same statute?)–was charged with libel in 1898, the same year in which he had written “J’accuse,” his famous piece calling attention to the Dreyfus Affair.

What’s more–and here I sincerely hope that history does not end up rhyming–Zola was found guilty, and forced to flee the country and take exile in England for a few months until granted amnesty.

There are two other famous quotations about history that spring to mind in relation to these matters. One was uttered by James Joyce’s fictional character and alter ego Stephen Daedulus:

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Yes, history has its horrors. But we are part of it, and it of us, and we ignore it at our peril. We can’t change it; we can only try to learn from it. Which brings us to the second quote, by George Santayana:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Of course, even those who do remember the past are often condemned to repeat it, unless enough people remember it and act wisely on its lessons. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what those lessons are. Other times they seem clear, and this is one of these times.

[ADDENDUM: I just came across Richard Landes’s pretrial post, in which he mentions that Dreyfus was tried under the same 1881 law that is operating in this trial.]

The sky of 9/11

The New Neo Posted on by

On this past Monday, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I noticed the sky was clear and blue. But the blue was an ordinary blue, nothing like the intense clarity of the sky five years ago. It’s one of the things many people remember best about 9/11: the piercingly blue sky, so unusual in its intensity as to make the untouched photos seem Photoshopped.

I also recall that the day before 9/11, and for a day or two afterwards, the sky retained that unusual sharpness and essence of blue. I’d never seen it before, nor have I since. I wondered whether the hijackers considered it an omen, a sign that their mission had the approval of the deity.

I also seem to remember reading somewhere about what had caused the unusual sky, and an aviation term to refer to it. But now I can’t find a thing about it. So, dear readers: can anyone help out with this?

Uneasy lies the head next to the head that wears a crown

The New Neo Posted on by

I sense a theme here–two headlines spotted today in the supermarket checkout line, composing the entire front page of the tabloid the Globe:

Camilla Runs Back to Ex-Hubby

Laura Bush’s Nervous Breakdown: “I can’t take any more,” she tells Prez

I assume “Prez” isn’t Elvis Presley–last spotted, I believe, in my local Store 24.

The cycle of violence: revenge on the stingrays

The New Neo Posted on by

When I first read this I thought it was from the Onion. But no, it turns out to be for real.

It appears that some person or persons in Australia are seeking vengence for naturalist Steve Irwin’s death by killing stingrays. No, not that stingray–the one that stung him in the heart and was responsible for his death–but stingrays in general:

Up to eight stingrays were found with their tails removed on Sept. 11 on Dundowran Beach, near the Queensland tourist resort of Hervey Bay…

Then, again, perhaps it wasn’t murder. Or maybe it’s the motive that’s in question.

There is no evidence that the stingrays were killed as an act of revenge following Irwin’s death, Kirsten Phillips, a media spokeswoman for the department, said in a phone interview. Officers are looking into the possibility, she added.

I’m not sure how officers would investigate this particular crime. Forensic evidence would seem scarce. Hidden cameras? Informants? Moles?

[ADDENDUM: Singrays themselves look rather cloaked, spylike, and clandestine, not to mention sinister. Here’s a photo:

As for moles, I nominate the eel.]

Khatami, Cheney, whatever: misunderstanding freedom of speech

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I was talking to my fellow Sanity Squad members after taping this week’s podcast (no, it’s not online yet, but should be soon).

The session you hear is usually just the tip of the iceberg for us. As I’ve said before, we bloggers can talk, and after our tongues are loosened by the thirty or so minutes allotted to the taping, we usually go on–and on and on and on. And of course, we’re even more fascinating–as well as sublimely humorous–with the recording device turned off, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Last night we got into–among many other things–a post-taping discussion of Khatami’s invitation to speak at Harvard. We all agreed that Harvard shouldn’t have tendered the invitation; after all, why give him such an illustrious forum? I said that Harvard’s argument in its defense is that all views should be heard in the marketplace of ideas, and that truth will out. We all were in agreement, however, that in that case he should at least have been invited to debate with someone on the other side. Netanyahu came to mind, or perhaps Dershowitz, but it could have been any number of people.

Of course, that wasn’t done. Why not? Well, for one thing, Khatami probably would have declined the pleasure if he’d had to face an opponent. If there’s one thing Khatami is about, I think we can safely say that it’s not free debate in the marketplace of ideas.

Then today I came across this article by Caroline Glick that appeared in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post. The subject is Khatami’s invitation to speak at Harvard as compared with a visit by none other than Dick Cheney, who entered the Harvard Club through a back door to evade two hundred protesters who greeted him when he arrived to give a speech there recently.

Well, I happened to have been at the Khatami protest (forgot to bring my camera, folks, but here are Sol’s shots) and although I’m not an expert at crowd estimation, I’d say there were a goodly number of protesters there, but that the number came in well under two hundred.

Ms. Glick also seems to feel that there may be more hatred for Cheney at Harvard than for Khatami. And in her article she makes the exact point the Sanity Squad was discussing in our off-the-record talk last night (could she have been overhearing us through some sort of Rovian wiretap?)–that, if Harvard’s intent in inviting Khatami was to offer a free flow of ideas so that truth would emerge, it would have been good to have had an opposing side present at Khatami’s speech. She agrees, however, that such an invitation would probably have put the kibosh on the whole shebang.

No, I’m not saying that every single speaker at Harvard has to have an opposing viewpoint presented at the same time. That would be ludicrous, for either side. But certainly for a speaker who represents such abhorrent polices as Khatami, it would be a good idea.

The bottom line is that there is no requirement that Harvard offer our enemies a bully pulpit, nor is there any prohibition on Harvard’s doing so. It simply is a matter of the school’s judgment and policy. And given the present state of relations with Iran–actually, the same state of relations we’ve had for virtually all the years since the Islamic revolution there in 1979–inviting Khatami to speak at Harvard is a bit like having invited Hermann Goering over to speak at Harvard during the late 30s. I haven’t checked it out yet, but my guess is that it didn’t happen. The Greatest Generation wasn’t quite as stupid and self-destructive as we are.

One of these days I plan to write at greater length about the misconceptions many people have about freedom of speech (we’ll see–I’ve got notes for several hundred as yet unwritten articles, so I’ve got my work cut out for me). But the summary version is that, when last I looked, the Bill of Rights states that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is mainly concerned with prohibiting government intrusion into the right to speak out. It’s not absolute, of course; there are always restrictions, most famously that the government has a right to prohibit the shouting of “fire” in a crowded theater. But there is no requirement that any non-governmental institution invite all comers to spout off from a podium. Of course, if Harvard chooses to do so, the government can’t stop it. That’s why Governor Romney, as a state agent, had no ability to keep Khatami away from Harvard. Instead, he was limited to refusing to supply Khatami with state support for the trip, such as an official state escort (the Federal government provided the main security) or state VIP treatment. The only other thing Romney could do was to use his freedom of speech to harshly criticize Harvard for offering the invite.

But somehow, for some people, the guarantees of prohibition of governmental restriction on freedom of speech has somehow morphed into the thought that one must actively provide an opportunity to speak for those who oppose you or are against you. No. Let them speak on a street corner. Let them publish a leaflet and distribute it in Harvard Square. And yes, of course, if you wish to provide them with a forum in your institution, I can’t stop you. But I can exercise my right to freedom of speech by criticizing you for doing so.

The argument that having someone like Khatami speak at Harvard is a good thing because it furthers discussion in the free marketplace of ideas sounds good on paper (or on the computer screen). But in reality it doesn’t always work that way; it’s best to use some judgment about this. Here’s the much-maligned Wikipedia (how’s that for the marketplace of ideas?) on the subject:

A classic argument for protecting freedom of speech as a fundamental right is that it is essential for the discovery of truth. This argument is particularly associated with the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.”…

This marketplace of ideas rationale for freedom of speech has been criticized by scholars on the grounds that it is wrong to assume all ideas will enter the marketplace of ideas, and even if they do, some ideas may drown out others merely because they enjoy dissemination through superior resources.

The marketplace is also criticized for its assumption that truth will necessarily triumph over falsehood. It is visible throughout history that people may be swayed by emotion rather than reason, and even if truth ultimately prevails, enormous harm can occur in the interim.

“Dissemination through superior resources” does seem to be the very definition of giving a speech at Harvard. So, why encourage Khatami in this way? Granted, he’s not Ahmadinejad (is he next on the speaker invite list?) But he’s bad enough.

Looking at 9/11, half a decade later

The New Neo Posted on by

Does it seem as though five years have passed since that dreadful day of the stunningly blue sky, the orange flames, the plumes of grey-black smoke?

In some ways it seems a lifetime; one looks back at before-9/11 and thinks “never such innocence again.”

But the New York skyline without its two huge exclamation points no longer seems so bereft. Yes, it happened, and somehow we have assimilated that fact, although we still haven’t comprehended all its consequences nor divined its deepest meaning.

But it no longer seems impossible that such a thing happened. Now it seems surprising that it came as such a shock at the time, because the general pattern and the shape of things to come should already have been clear. There was Khobar Towers. The twin Embassy blasts. The Cole.

But the clearest foreshadowing of the event that would henceforth be known only by those numbers, “9/11”–as though words were somehow inadequate to describe it–was its most direct predecessor, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That earlier attack distinguished itself in audaciousness by being the only large-scale Islamist totalitarian terrorist attack within the boundaries of the United States prior to 9/11.

And it was every bit as serious in intent. The only reason it wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been was the seemingly Keystone Cops-like incompetence of its perpetrators. They would learn from their errors, and quickly. It would take us longer to learn what we needed to know.

Another thing that makes 9/11 feel more distant in time than five years ago is the dissipation of the unity that seemed to unite us in the first few months afterwards. I say “seemed” because there were always many dissenting voices, even from the start–voices that blamed the US for the attack, or said that the Jews had stayed home that day. Voices that suggested America deserved what it got. Voices that were against attacking Afghanistan, saying we would kill millions of people in that country.

Yes, 9/11 seems a long time ago. But in other ways 9/11 seems fresh and recent–and especially so on the anniversary, when documentaries revisit the pain and open old wounds. Last night I rewatched much of “9/11,” the documentary film made by the Naudet brothers as they followed a downtown Manhattan fire company on a routine call that turned out to be adjacent to the World Trade Center on that fateful day at that fateful time. The brothers captured many startling images of 9/11, but the most horrifying thing in the movie was not visual. It was auditory: the harsh percussive sounds of the leapers hitting the pavement.

Viewing how events unfolded that day and knowing what we know now, the urge is to say: “Look out! Don’t go to work! Run away, fast! Don’t go up those stairs!” Or to think, “If only.” If only the people on the first planes had known what was in store, for example, they could have united to stop the hijackers the way those on Flight 93 did. If only the FBI and CIA had been allowed to speak to each other. If only. If only.

I recall one of the most poignant “if only’s” from a documentary I saw several years ago. A female air controller was monitoring flights that day, knowing what had happened at the WTC, helpless as the plane she was tracking (I believe it was the one that eventually hit the Pentagon) dropped and disappeared off the radar screen. She said that, ever since, she’s had a recurrent dream. In it, she’s watching that same radar screen. The “blip” of the plane is dropping again, and her heart sinks with it. But this time, instead of being helpless, she reaches into the screen with her hand and scoops the tiny plane out, rescuing all its passengers.

Magical thinking, of course. But very human. Many who were part of the rescue effort that day think they should somehow have done even more, despite the heroism they showed.

And of course we all somehow should have done more, both then and now. The problem, both then and now, is the same: figuring out what that “more” might be. Knowing how to interpret the past and the present in order to be able to foresee the future and act to forestall tragedy.

We can do that perfectly only in our dreams, and not even in all of those. But still we must try, to the best of our ability– because history, like life, can only be understood backwards (if at all). But it must be lived forwards.