EU = European Comrades?

As a person interested in studying the European Union, who finds kitsch and/or historical value in anything with a Soviet hammer and sickle on it, you know I was intrigued by this:



It's grainy, and for that I apologize, but I couldn't resist.

You might not be surprised to learn it comes from a British Euroskeptic blog, namely eurealist.blogspot.com.

It makes me think of a bumper sticker I saw here in the states, which also featured a hammer and sickle, and said this:

"Seatbelt laws? Helmet laws? What's next, comrade?"

82nd Airborne and torture allegations

Sometimes I get lost in thick text. I have to hold a bookmark under the lines to mark my place.

But I didn't have that problem with this Human Rights Watch report.

Ok. We know the intelligence community, including military intelligence, achieves much greater results when they apply a bit of pressure to the questionees. But there has to be a line.

Of course, "the line" has been demarcated in the Geneva Conventions, but it's time to:

1. Hold another convention to clarify the definition of "torture" and resolve other unclear issues.
2. Require US citizens -- or anyone who supplies us intelligence, as much as is possible -- to follow the Geneva Conventions. Seriously.

If you're a fan of torture (and I know lots of folks are), a good case study is the French army's Battle of Algeria.

Here's the Cliff Notes version: Soldiers didn't make good interrogators, torture backfired, the public turned on the occupiers. Failure.

Multiple mistakes in brief (AP) NY Times article

The NY Times had an AP article up for 10 or 15 minutes that was riddled with errors -- it has since been fixed and the correct version can be found here.

But why bother putting it online before it's ready?

I count four or five minor mistakes in the first version, the six-paragraph article posted here.

Here are the problem spots:

Neither Compass nor Mayor Ray Nagin would say whether Compass was pressured resign.

"It's a sad day in the city of new orleans when a hero makes a decision like this," Nagin said. "He leaves the apartment in pretty good shape and with a significant amount of leadership."

Earlier in the day, the department said that about 250 police officers -- roughly 15 percent of the force -- could face face discipline for leaving their posts without permission during Katrina and its aftermath. [emphasis added]

I first wondered if the Nagin quote was from an e-mail, and thought that perhaps they had kept the mistakes in for the "integrity" of the quote.

But: Apartment? Is he moving out? Is he getting his deposit back?

WTF, as they say.

I know we're in a hurry with online journalism, but my opinion is that too many papers (apparently following examples like this) are sacrificing accuracy for speed. Does QC go out the window?

Take a minute and read stuff over, especially when you're The New York Times.

International relations: thinking about thinking about it

Fascinating international relations reading at Duck of Minerva about a series of conferences seeking to find middle ground between realism and constructivism.

I do wonder, though, how much time IR scholars spend on questions such as these, which I had originally thought were primarily the territory of those in the political theory subfield.

(At many/most U.S. universities, political science departments contain the subfields of international relations, political theory, comparative politics, and American politics.)

Of course, every academic should know the theories behind his or her area of study, but as some of the commenters at this Abu Aardvark post, which inspired the above Duck post, point out -- policy makers probably don't give a second thought to the structure of any of these camps.

Again, I do appreciate that scholars must know the root of what they study, and it is intruiging to see informed minds argue over the type of motor driving the gears. Or rather, whether gear movement is caused by the the conditions of the factory workers, or if it's inevitable...

I am concerned that undergrads at other universities learned a lot more about this topic than I did. We lightly covered rationalism, constructivism, etc. in maybe two classes only.

On another note, but rather related to the idea of peeling back multiple layers of knowledge to better understand the topic:

A professor of mine, who received his Ph.D at Chicago, liked to say:

"If you go to Harvard or one of those other places, you think about how to think about political science, but at Chicago, you think about thinking about how to think about political science."

I always thought that was neat. I think.

Wolf Blitzer's blackness

Yes, more old news, but check out Wolf talking about how the Katrina victims are "so black."

That's really black.

From the fine folks at YTMND, who make some funny videos, most of which are targeted at (and probably made by) sixth graders.

Yes I will do some serious writing here soon.

'Anti-Syria' Lebanese journalist wounded in car bomb

The explosion, which has already resulted in two amputations for May Chidiac, went off under the seat in her car.

It's the same style of bomb that killed another anti-Syrian journalist, Samir Kassir, three months ago.

Would Thomas Friedman pay to read himself?

Slate brings up a good point from Friedman's book "The World Is Flat," where he says this:

But I believe that all online newspapers should be free, and on principle I refuse to pay for an online subscription to the Wall Street Journal.

There's more to Friedman's comment than that, so see the link.

It's "only" $50 a year to access these guys, but I think the best point I've read about the issue (from Steve Klein of George Mason University in this Editor & Publisher article) is this:

"Even if the Times picked up most of its existing online readers, how are they going to grow a new generation of online Op-Ed readers if they keep the columnists behind a pay firewall?"

Update: If you didn't know, John Tobain at Never Pay Retail is posting links to NY Times columns for free.

California Grammar?

This is kind of old news, but perhaps you had noticed the hyphen placement in the film "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," which is one "s" away from implying a movie about two scores of yearling innocents.

Editor & Publisher wrote an interesting piece about the dilemma newspapers face in printing incorrect content.

N. Korea, DHS cronyism, the $ NYTimes $

An outstanding distillation of what's been up with North Korean talks is here.

###

And since I've been on vacation, with only CNN International to watch, I just heard about the recent DHS appointment -- to head Immigrations and Customs, as I was looking around in blogs today.

Even conservative Fox News talking faces like Michelle Malkin are pissed.

The line you don't want to skim over is that the under-qualified appointee just married DHS Secretary Chertoff's chief of staff. She got a husband and a job, that's a two-fer.

We'll see what Congress says.

So far, it's been interesting. Sen. George Voinovich represented Ohio, in the urban vernacular meaning of "represented":

"I think that we ought to have a meeting with [Homeland Security Secretary] Mike Chertoff ... to ask him ... why he thinks you're qualified for the job," Mr. Voinovich said. "Because based on your resume, I don't think you are.

Zing!

That's in this Washington Times article from Sept. 16.

###

The NY Times is charging $8 a month to read its op-ed columnists!

I'm telling you, even though the great Information Superhighway is supposed to be fantastic for its flow of information unimpeded by financial status or geographical location, perhaps it will only stay that way for so long.

Newspapers need to make money, and subscribers are dying off while youngsters just read online. I know this.

But my generation is quite used to getting all our info online, pretty much for free.

It's just like stealing Wi-Fi from you neighbor who pays for it. It's only a matter of time before it's all encrypted... but kids are growing up now used to "sharing" their neighbors' service.

Then again, maybe it will be like cable -- stolen regularly by masses of folks.

Whatever.

Update: I mentioned my hope (in the comments area below) that you could bypass the fee by checking the sites of free newspapers that syndicate the columns. This will not be possible, because the NYT has asked all free papers to not post their columns online unless it is in a pay-only section.

Some pirates, however, have committed to post them online illegally.

Or, to cut to the chase, here is Friedman's most recent column.

###

I've been reading/thinking about the European Union and future of war a bit, and I'll put something on here soon.

I was out of town.

Thomas Friedman returns

He's back from vacation with this, and it's good to see him.

I was beginning to wonder if Tom had gone to Louisiana for his vacation.

About the column, though -- I'm not sure Katrina will have as much of a catastrophic impact on Bush's presidency as Friedman predicts, but we'll see.

He says "If Bush learns the lessons from Katrina..." and suggests that there is a chance the president is going to go green and hop in a hybrid. Don't hold your breath on that, or any sort sign of culpability or that a Democrat would have been better prepared for the hurricane.

With politics as partisan as they are, it seems all the left is blaming Bush, while most of the right is saying Bush did all he could.

There will be hearings, not much will be accomplished, each side will spin away.

I guess that's cynical.

Hurricane's effect on U.S. media

The BBC questions whether the storm and its aftermath have perhaps "saved" the American media, and there is some merit to the question (and their implicit "yes" answer).

Two forces have negatively affected the media recently: Blogging has reduce credibility and visibility, while increased corporate ownership has reduced credibility because public-service journalism is arguably less profitable and might even embarrass sponsors or owners.

The hurricane's effects have given the media a chance to shake off some of these stigmas.

First, while some bloggers in the affected area got powerful messages out, most did not have the electricity to do so. This allowed the media to do what has been somewhat rare these days: actually break news.

Second, the media jumped up into its watchdog/public-service role by reporting on government deficiencies, particularly those of the federal government.

This CNN article is a surprisingly good presentation of FEMA head Michael Brown's lack of awareness of the situation.

One unfortunate, yet inevitable, note about print journalism in this situation is that online media outshined print once again. We've seen 24-hour updates as they happen, breathtaking photo slide shows, and first-person blog entries from reporters on the scene that make evident the horror the reporter is experiencing.

And these blog entries aren't the typical mainstream media pompous "ooh, here we are behind the scenes" garbage that no one cares about - usually these "blogs" are just an poor attempts to mimic real blogs.

But recently, because of the media's access and efforts, they've contained actual news.

Also, the Times-Picayune hasn't printed a paper edition since the storm, and no one has probably missed it. Except, of course, the people without electricity who would like to know the news... But the Picayune has done a fine job with its online-only work.

The Picayune wrote a hell of an editorial, with slams such as this:

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, [FEMA Director Michael Brown] said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Brown is the guy who clearly got his job because of political connections, not experience -- He hadn't done any real work in emergencies, but his college roommate ran Bush's campaign. I know this happens in both parties, but still.

Amazing.

Anyway, of course print journalism is still important, and I love sitting down with a paper as much as the next fella, but online news took care of business last week.

And they did it better than the bloggers, so that means that those of us in journalism will still have jobs, at least for a while.