Patterico has an exhaustive review of the worst of the year at the L.A. Times . Long but worthwhile. My first reaction after I finished reading it was, "What? Seven pages and nothing about Robert Scheer? That's inexcusable!". My more considered reaction was "Oh my God, seven pages full of examples of outrageous bias, sloppy reporting and unprofessionalism, and he ran out of time before he could even start on Robert Scheer!"
Cataloging the failures of the L.A. Times is a monumental undertaking.
Joseph Farah, an Arab-American Christian, tells of Christians in the Palestinian areas:
In 1948, Bethlehem was 80 percent Christian. Today it is 80 percent Muslim.Farah's column is an effective antidote to the venomous droolings of Floyd McKay.Where do they go?
Are you ready for a shock?
Many of them prefer life in Israel to life under the rule of Yasser Arafat and his friends in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In fact, life would be better just about anywhere else, and those who have the ability to leave have left.
This massive display of ethnic cleansing and population movement has been totally obscured by the Palestinian Authority and covered up by the international media. Worse yet, it has even been blamed on Israel.
But Christians fleeing the Holy Land know why they are leaving. All one needs to do is ask them. It began a long time ago. I know, because my grandparents fled for the safety, security and freedom of America. Christians in the Middle East know very well who their enemy is. They know why are they are oppressed. They know who is attacking them. They know who is occupying them.
And it's not Israel.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer last Friday published a list of memorial tributes to noted people from the Northwest who died during 2003:
They changed the way we worked, played, lived. They made us see the world in different ways. They made us smile. Sometimes, they made us cry. Whether their lives were long and full, or tragically shortened, they became a part of the fabric of who we all are in the Northwest. Here are just some of those who died this year, leaving our lives a little richer for having known them.Among the people on the list was
Rachel Corrie, 23, an activist from Olympia who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer while protesting the destruction of Palestinian homes in the Rafah refugee camp. After its internal investigation, the Israeli military said the driver of the bulldozer could not see Corrie. Corrie's parents were not satisfied with the Israeli explanations, and in September they called for an independent U.S. investigation of her death. Corrie died March 16.How pathetic and reprehensible must be the lives of the people at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, if a cheerleader for terrorism can make their lives richer.
hat tip: Best of the Web
Continuing Monday's topic of editorial page corrections, Linda Seebach posted a query on a listserv for editorial writers asking whether their newspapers publish corrections for factual errors on the editorial page. She forwarded me a selection of responses from columnists around the country asserting "Yes! our paper's policy is to publish corrections on the editorial page and we have done so numerous times".
Okay, I'll allow then that this practice might be more widespread than my own experience has indicated. But if I can ask some of the pro-correction editorialists to consider the following episodes that I blogged about earlier this year:
(a) Robert Scheer in his column of Mar. 18 that also appeared in the L.A. Times and was syndicated to other newspapers around the country:
The United States lied to the world when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had "bulletproof evidence" that Iraq was behind the Sept. 11 attacksThe source for this was presumably a New York Times article of Sept. 27, 2002 (reposted here) which actually said:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that American intelligence had "bulletproof" evidence of links between Al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.the article also said:
Administration officials say there is still no evidence to link Mr. Hussein directly to the attacks on Sept. 11 in the United States.(b) Molly Ivins in her column of Oct. 28:
Not to wish ill on Wolfowitz, but he is the one who promised us this war would be "a cakewalk"I find no evidence that Wolfowitz ever made such a promise, indeed the only original source that I have found tying Wolfowitz to a "cakewalk" prediction is this op-ed by Kenneth Adelman, where Adelman laments the fact that Wolfowitz denounced Adelman's own prediction of a "cakewalk" in Iraq.
I debunked the Scheer claim back in May, and although I didn't contact the L.A. Times directly, my traffic log shows that the blog page had a number of visits from the L.A. Times.. I debunked the Ivins' claim and sent an email to the top editors of the Seattle Times on the day they printed the column, Nov. 3, challenging them to either document Ivins' claim or to issue a retraction. They did neither, but did publish my letter three weeks later.
It's possible that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz really did say what Scheer and Ivins attributed to them. Any documentation to that effect would be welcome and would moot the following. But assuming that both Scheer and Ivins got the above citations wrong, I ask the conscientious editorial writers to answer the following --
1) Did your paper publish either the Scheer or the Ivins column mentioned above?
2) Is it your paper's practice to check the facts of syndicated columns, specifically Scheer and Ivins?
3) If not, is it your expectation that somebody else is checking their facts? Whose responsibility is it?
4) Did your paper ever learn of any factual errors in these columns?
5) If yes to (4), did your paper publish a correction?
6) Comment on the Seattle Times' response to a credible report of an error in Ivins column. Should the Times have issued a correction in its own name?
7) Should Scheer and Ivins personally retract the above statements? In general, should syndicated columnists take responsibility to promptly retract errors that are discovered in their work?
8) Should newspapers continue to publish the unchecked work of syndicated columnists who are habitually sloppy with their facts?
Here in Seattle, the City Commissars are such firm believers in the Religion of Recycling, that they want to force the people to recycle for the hell of it, even when recycling is economically foolish:
Seattle needs to move to this new frontier to achieve its recycling goals, says Mayor Greg Nickels, who has proposed that the city launch a food-waste-recycling program by 2005.unfortunately:
Recycling food waste, "strictly speaking, is not cost-effective," said Tim Croll, community-services director for Seattle Public Utilities. The bottom line is that recycling food waste may cost more than putting it in landfills — as much as $2.8 million a year, according to city estimates.and preserving landfill space shouldn't be anybody's highest priority either, because:
Seattle officials admit the city is at no risk of exhausting its landfill space for decades.Sacrificing food waste and money to the God of Recycling is Seattle's version of the hecatomb.
Today's San Francisco Chronicle reports on the success of a KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter school in Oakland:
On state tests, KIPP students are outscoring most of their public school peers in the Bronx, Houston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. In Oakland and elsewhere, students who never improved are finally seeing their reading scores advance. On an internal test, Oakland students improved their reading one grade level in the 2002-2003 school year.The article quotes one KIPP motherWhile most KIPP middle-school students enroll at a third-grade reading level, studies show they reach their correct grade level in a year, and read above their grade level after two years. By the time they are ready for high school, 99 percent of KIPP students enter prestigious high schools on scholarship.
The statistics are so unheard of in urban education that Levin hosts about 750 visitors a year from all over the world, mainly teachers, principals and superintendents looking for the golden secret.
Tony is flourishing, said his mother, Nakia Shavers. He brings home B's for the first time.The KIPP people would like to bring their successful program to Washington state, but they can't, because the state teachers' union and its Democratic allies in the state legislature have for years blocked the law that would permit charter schools in this state."I think he likes the studiousness of it," she said. "It's cool to be smart at KIPP."
If you live in Washington and care about educational opportunities for our state's children, contact your legislators and encourage them to support charter schools in the January session.
Linda Seebach, a fine editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News, e-mailed in response to my remarks to Instapundit , where I wrote:
Can you recall the last time any newspaper issued a correction for factual errors on the editorial page? I can't.Seebach:
That's a pretty sweeping statement for him to make, isn't it? How would he check?My comment was only that I can't recall any such editorial correction, and I'm certainly pleased that they do occur.The policy at the Rocky Mountain News is to correct factual errors wherever they appear, including editorials, and according to our archives we have published five corrections to editorials in 2003. We'd prefer that none be necessary, but if they are necessary, they run. The last one was Sept. 1.
I can't give you numbers for our competitor, the Denver Post, but it certainly does publish corrections to editorials, although its stated policy is to correct "all errors occurring in its news columns." E.g., Oct. 30,
"Because of an editorial writer's error, the amount of money offered by Arapahoe County to buy out County Clerk and Recorder Tracy Baker was cited incorrectly in a Wednesday editorial on Page 6B. The county offered Baker $325,000."The two papers I worked for before I came to the Rocky did the same. What's Sharkansky's sample?
My own sample consists of the daily newspapers from my recent hometowns: The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times. I have brought numerous editorial page errors to their attention and not one of these errors were ever corrected, although The Seattle Times published one of my letters once (edited and four weeks late). I have also never seen the New York Times correct Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman and I have never seen the L.A. Times correct Robert Scheer. Again, it's possible that all of these newspapers do issue editorial page corrections, I just don't recall seeing any. If anybody can send me a counter-example, I will post it in this space.
UPDATE: Seebach sent in this correction from the San Francisco Chronicle and adds:
Papers do differ on how much oversight their columnists work under, and it also matters whether the columnists are on staff, or syndicated, or part of a wire service.Fair enough, the Chronicle apparently does issue editorial page corrections on occasion, but not as often as it should. And Seebach's other comment would confirm my main point that columnists are not always held accountable for getting their facts straight.
The Seattle Times yesterday was correct to call for serious efforts to improve Seattle's schools:
IT'S time for those who care about Seattle's future to get past the bitterness and finger-pointing of the last year and look ahead to a time when all of the city's children — regardless of race or zip code — have access to a top-notch public education.But the Times repeats the same mischaracterization that it has made many times in the past:
The wide gap between the city's white and minority students is unacceptable.That there is an achievement gap across ethnic lines is undeniable, but it is not as simple as "white" vs. "minority". As I've mentioned before, certain Asian groups consistently outperform whites.
Accordingly to the Seattle School District's own data [large PDF], students of Chinese, Japanese and Korean origin outperform white students, on average, on most standardized tests, and on high school GPA and graduation rates. They also participate in gifted and talented programs at higher rates than do whites. Vietnamese students also have higher high school grades and graduation rates than white students.
Unfortunately, spinning the achievement gap as a difference between "white" and "minorities" is not only inaccurate, but the "white vs. minority" dichotomy implies that racism is at work, and distracts attention from the real problem and its solutions. Perhaps if we focus, for example, on understanding the home environment of the kids (of all backgrounds) who are doing well in school -- high parental expectations? high value on education in the home? -- we might work on promoting the same attitudes and habits in the families of the kids who haven't caught up yet.
Europeaser Union external affairs commissioner Chris Patten said that Israel is not welcome in the EU:
"What we are trying to do is find ways in which they [Israelis] can share our policies and our markets without sharing our institutions," he said.As one of our Israeli correspondents points out:
Patten's European ancestors callled this a "ghetto"UPDATE: A different Israeli correspondent e-mails:
Patten's remark suits Israelis' desire to share European markets without opening the borders to the free immigration of Europeans. A ghetto works both ways.Such are the feelings of a people with historical experience living under the auspices of Patten-style Europeans. Of course, the decision whether to actually apply to join the EU should be left up to the Israelis to debate amongst themselves. That the Europeasers don't even want them to apply speaks for itself.
Today's Seattle Times editorial page made up for many of its recent shortcomings by publishing Dave Barry's hilarious Year in Review [only in the Times' print edition, but also online here]. Example:
FEBRUARYRead the whole thing.... U.S. coalition-building efforts are dealt a severe blow when France announces it will not participate in the impending Iraq invasion, a decision that, in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "could seriously impair our ability to surrender."
Evey Monday the Times publishes Dave Barry's column in the "Northwest Life" section along with Dear Abby and the comics. Meanwhile, the Times Monday editorial page publishes Molly Ivins. The Times would do well to promote Dave Barry to the editorial page and bury Molly Ivins in the funny pages, since Dave Barry has several positive qualities that Molly Ivins doesn't share:
a) Dave Barry is actually funny.
b) Dave Barry only makes stuff up for humorous effect, not to deceive his readers.
c) Dave Barry doesn't plagiarize other people's material.
Glenn Reynolds wrote:
BLOGGERS DON'T NEED EDITORS OR PUBLISHERS: Strangely, this leads Editor and Publisher to dub bloggers "self-important."I'd add "self-correcting", with the emphasis on the correcting.Self-important, self-sufficient. Whatever.
Newspapers generally print corrections for factual errors in news articles, but almost never retract errors on the editorial page. Bloggers, who are more like op-ed writers than news reporters, strive for factual accuracy. You couldn't make the same claim with a straight face about, say, the Seattle Times editorial page, for example. Or for the folks who publish Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Molly Ivins and Robert Scheer, etc., etc..
UPDATE: I respond above to an editorial writer who challenges my assertion that newspapers seldom issue corrections for factual errors on the editorial page.
UPDATE 2 I should highlight the comment posted below by Newsday's Phineas Fiske, that
"Self-correcting" seems inappropriate, since I don't see a self-correction of Glenn's assertion that editorial pages don't run corrections.Glenn Reynolds never asserted that "editorial pages don't run corrections", he merely quoted (without answering) my question: "Can you recall the last time any newspaper issued a correction for factual errors on the editorial page? I can't." An inability to remember an occurrence of a thing (with the implication that said thing is uncommon) is not the same as an assertion that said thing does not exist. Fiske's distortion is precisely the sort of bogus reporting that leads many of us to raise questions about some journalists' competence and motives.
A Washington state man has been charged with trying to kidnap his sister in what police believe was an attempt to punish her for marrying outside her Muslim faith.
Khalil Nassar, 21, and a 24-year-old acquaintance, Antonio Cortez, were charged Wednesday with attempted kidnapping, said Robin Webb-Lakey, a Skagit County senior deputy prosecutor. Nassar also was charged with felony harassment.Khalil Nassar's 18-year-old sister had married a Christian
The young couple relocated to Sedro-Woolley, but the woman's family continued to call her cellular phone and ask for her to return, according to Tucker's statement.But kidnapping is the way Muslim men express their love for the women in their family, experts tell us:During one of these conversations, the woman taped her brother saying he would return her to her family "dead or alive," Tucker said in his affidavit.
Farhat J. Ziadeh, a University of Washington professor emeritus who specializes in Islamic law, said from the Muslim perspective that Islamic law exists to ensure a continuation of the faith.I guess this is what they mean by "Building a Loving Muslim Family""The man is the head of the family and the children follow the man's religion and they don't want anyone to be cut off from Islam," Ziadeh said.
Today's Seattle Times reports on the Seattle School District's evolving plan for narrowing the achievement gap between different groups of students. The proposals include:
efforts to assure that all students are proficient in reading by third grade; a process for assigning the best teachers to the students with the greatest needs; systemwide tests of students in reading, writing and math at the beginning, middle and end of each grade; mandating extra time and instruction for students not making adequate academic progress; and early-childhood education for 4-year-olds in selected areas, with funding from the city and state.School Board member Darlene Flynn's reported response is a bit of a non-sequitur:
Flynn said that rather than take a punitive approach to low-performing students, the district should look at research that supports year-round schools.It's not clear which of the above proposals is punitive -- except for the last one, i.e. to extend the failure of government-monopoly schools to 4-year-olds.
The most obvious way to help raise academic achievement for the kids who have been poorly served by the government-monopoly schools is to offer their parents the choice of independently operated charter schools, such as KIPP schools. If the Washington legislature cares about our state's academically disadvantaged children, it will get its act together in the coming session and finally pass a bill to permit charter schools in this state.
Charter schools are often among the most successful schools in their respective communities, as was just reported in Colorado, for example. At the very least, charter schools offer parents more choices than do the failing government-monopoly public schools. So who could possibly object to charter schools? The keys to the success of charter schools are: (a) independence from the government monopoly school administrators and the teacher unions, along with (b) parental choice and competition. Therefore exactly three groups of people object to charter schools:
[1] Incompetent and/or power-hungry public school teachers and bureaucrats, who feel threatened and/or offended by the thought of independent schools succeeding where government-monopoly schools have failed.
[2] Teacher union officials and their lackey politicians who see the unions' revenues and political power declining as the best teachers opt out of the stultifying govenment-monopoly / teacher union schools for more satisfying careers in independently-run schools.
[3] Lunatic-fringe ideologues who cling to the Stalinist fantasy that government monopolies can deliver services more successfully than can independent organizations that are accountable to consumers.
Today's Seattle Times published 3 letters to the editor from people who are opposed to charter schools. The three letter writers personified categories [2] and [3] above: Deanna Chew-Freidenberg, who believes that privatization and consumer choice are morally wrong. Trevor Griffey, erstwhile campaign manager of Green Party congressional candidate Joe Szwaja ( ran against Jim McDermott from the left). And Catherine Ahl, a teacher union lackey school board member from Kitsap County.
These people are all entitled to their opinions, of course. It just strikes me as creepy that they would spend their free time writing letters to newspapers in order to prevent other people from winning the freedom to make important choices for their children.
Israel offered huminatarian assistance to the victims of the Iranian earthquake, who need all the help they can get:
"We need help, otherwise we will be pulling corpses, not the injured, out of the rubble," Brigadier Mohammadi, commander of the army in southeast Iran, told state television.but the Mad Mullahs also said that
"The Islamic Republic of Iran accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organizations with the exception of the Zionist regime [Israel],"It's a shame that the Mad Mullahs have so much contempt for their own people that they would let more of them die before they would accept help from Israel.
Now that the Mullahs are preoccupied with the earthquake, this would be a good time for Israel to perform a different kind of humanitarian service for the Iranian people and obliterate the Mullahs' nuclear program, which only helps the Mullahs stay in power and abuse their people longer.
Today in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is another hilarious serving of anti-Bush drivel from the delirious Hubert Locke, "retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington".
... the Democratic Party, which faces the opportunity to defeat the most unpopular president since John Tyler...Meanwhile, back in the real world, USA Today today looks at some actual public opinion polls:
President Bush is ending his third year in office with 63% job approval, the highest rating of any president since Lyndon Johnson, who finished 1963 with a 74% rating a month after John F. Kennedy's assassination.It's a good thing at least that Hubert Locke is retired and won't be damaging the brains of any more of our aspiring public policy experts.
Today's headline from the Seattle Times
with the sub-head that Islamic Jihad official assassinated.
Would the Seattle Times likewise refer to an American pre-emptive strike on a terrorist as, say, "Al Qaeda official assassinated?" Of course not.
Even after yesterday's very good editorial about the value of educational testing, the Seattle Times today has a particularly dumb article about Washington's standardized WASL test, with an even dumber headline: Limited English dooms kids on WASL:
For months some state educators have complained that the federal No Child Left Behind Act sets unreasonable standards for immigrants who are just learning English. Now, state officials think they have the data to back up their concerns...Those results, OSPI officials said, underscore their concern that it's unrealistic to think new immigrants can pass the high-stakes testAccording to the Washington State Board of Education the WASL tests
were not designed to be a grading tool. They are intended to measure where students are learning and to help teachers improve instruction about where their students may need to help.So of course immigrants should take the WASL, even if it is understood that some will not score very highly during their first years in the US. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The goal is for all immigrant children to perform at near-native proficiency in English as quickly as possible. If we don't measure their performance, how else will we know how well the schools are doing at achieving that goal?
As I read the article, it sounds like the educrats' concerns are primarily about avoiding accountability for delivering actual results. They conflate "new immigrants" with "limited English speakers", many of whom have presumably languished in public schools for years without adequate expectations or instruction to learn English.
There are many working journalists who are knowledgeable about the Middle East, but for some reason the Seattle Times has selected Floyd McKay to be its featured writer of op-eds about the Middle East. Floyd McKay is a professor of "journalism" at Western Washington University whose only qualifications appear to be his unerring ability to get his facts wrong and his morbid disdain for Israel.
Floyd McKay celebrates Christmas today with a column, Christianity in the Holy Land, where he blames the decline of the Palestinian Christian community on Israel:
The occupation is strangling Christianity in the Holy Land.As an example, he gives these statistics:
Palestinian Christians were historically concentrated in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. But the 1947 creation of Israel forced some 50,000 Christians from West Jerusalem and into exile or the West Bank, where they made up 20 percent of the Palestinian population. By 1966, that percentage was down to 13 percent, and it is now only 2.9 percent in the occupied territories. Muslims have a higher birth rate, but the major factor is emigration to America and elsewhere.As you can see, the demographic trend favoring Muslims over Christians was well underway prior to 1967, when the West Bank was occupied by Jordan.
Although there are Christian-Muslim tensions in the occupied lands, particularly since the increase in suicide bombings and militant Islamic organizations, Palestinian Christian leaders identify the problem as the Israeli occupation, now in its 46th year.46th year??? If he's referring to the 1967 war that Israel didn't want and didn't start as the beginning of the "occupation", then it is not in the 46th year, but in the 37th year. But who's counting?
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the officially Muslim Palestinian Authority, which has been in control of Bethlehem since 1995, has conducted a deliberate campaign of Islamicization to obliterate the city's Christian character. This is consistent with the behavior of the Muslim majorities toward Christians throughout the Middle East, such as in Egypt. Meanwhile, also in the real world that Floyd McKay refuses to visit, there are the Israeli Arab Christians in mixed cities like Haifa and predominately Arab cities like Nazareth, who are faring far better than Christians in Muslim countries. Indeed, the main complaints that Arab Christians seem to have about Israel are that it does not do enough to protect the Christians from Islamic militants.
McKay concludes:
There may be a ray of hope in the recently unveiled Geneva Accords, an ad hoc attempt by moderate Israelis and Palestinians to provide an alternative peace plan.Floyd McKay would probably prefer not to read the results of the latest Palestinian public opinion poll that show his "ray of hope" actively rejected by the Palestinian public 58% to 28%.
If anybody can explain why the Seattle Times continues to publish Floyd McKay, or why Western Washington University continues to pay him to damage the brains of aspiring journalists, please share it with the rest of us.
Democrats Court Vote of Disgruntled U.S. Muslims:
"I want to earn the support of Muslims and Muslim leaders across the United States," Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told a major Muslim conference outside Los Angeles last weekend.Muslim Americans would do well to follow the example of, say, the German-Americans, Japanese-Americans and Italian-Americans during World War II and support our country in the war against this generation's crop of fascists and barbarians. The Democrats would do well not to pander to those Muslims who are fifth columnists for terrorism and tyranny."I very much hope for your support," Democratic front-runner and former Vermont governor, Howard Dean, told the same meeting, the Muslim Public Affairs Council annual convention.
...
Angered by post-Sept. 11 legislation like the USA Patriot Act which Muslims feel discriminates against them, upset about wars against two Muslim countries, and frustrated by a perceived pro-Israeli bias in Middle East peacemaking, many U.S. Muslims are shifting their political allegiance.
The Seattle Times today brought us an op-ed by a self-described "American-Arab journalist" (= pro-terrorism propagandist) who unwittingly displays most of the Arab world's most crippling political psychopathologies all in a single column! -- Seeing a picture of Saddam Hussein in captivity sent Ramzy Baroud into a paroxysm of despair. So now he shares his Conflicted feelings about the capture of Saddam:
"Are We Winning Now?" a headline arrogantly inquired, condescendingly proclaiming the capture of the former Iraqi president.[why are there scare quotes around "capture"??? -Ed.] Baroud, who claims that he grew up in a Gaza "refugee camp", goes on to reveal symptoms of the following maladaptive thought processes.Something inside me was crushed.
I am certainly not a fan of tyranny... BUT seeing Saddam in that cluttered state, willingly opening his mouth to an American military doctor, being treated "like a cow," as the Vatican claimed, provoked an array of emotions that I could hardly contain. Even then, I had no illusions: It was not the "capture" of Saddam that engulfed me with these emotions; it was what Saddam represented or, perhaps, failed to represent. It was the fear of a future undoubtedly bleak, unforgiving.
1) Failure to acknowledge that the Israeli military presence in Gaza, indeed the concept of a "refugee camp" five decades after the birth of Israel, is solely the result of Arab unwillingness to accept Israel's existence.
2) Failure to recognize that many times as many Arabs have been slaughtered by Arab governments than have died under the "brutal Israeli occupation", as he calls it:
In Gaza, my sorrow of losing countless friends and family members to the Israeli occupation forces was the shared destiny of the nearly 1 million refugees in Gaza's camps. With each new innocent casualty, the desire for a collective Arab will became stronger. But time has passed, and the dream of a collective Arab will has yielded to collective Arab chaos.3) Blaming the dysfunctions in the Arab world on American "imperialism":
Maybe this explains the reason behind the love-hate relationship many Arabs had toward Saddam: He was a brutal dictator, yet he defied the United States and its imperialist design in the Arab world. It was not hard for me to fathom why many Iraqis celebrated when Saddam was captured, while at the same time, they vowed to carry on with their attacks against U.S.-led occupation forces. That same paradox struck me watching Saddam's glum photo on America Online.4) Believing that the natural Arab response to the arrest of a mass murderer is more terrorism ... :
I paused to gaze at a 9-11 memorial poster hanging on my wall, anxiously considering the devastating repercussions that could stem from collectively disgracing hundreds of millions of people. It seems that fear and uncertainty are, sadly, among the people of the U.S. and the Middle East, a common sorrow.5) ... while also expressing surprise that Americans associate Arabs with terrorism:
I also learned that in the West, we were all grouped together, in a camp of "hostile Arabs" who must be "contained,"6) Voting with his feet and moving to the evil America, where, unlike in the Arab world, he has the freedom to write editorials and speak out to his heart's content, and where he uses his right to complain first and foremost to blame America for the failures of the Arab world!
UPDATE: Jim Miller wasn't favorably impressed with Baroud's op-ed either.
The first case of Mad Cow Disease in the United States has been discovered in the state of Washington. No, really, and this time I'm not talking about the deranged ladies on the Seattle School Board:
The United States' first probable case of mad cow disease was detected in a cow from a farm in Mabton, near Yakima, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said today.This is a little worrisome for someone like myself on the Atkins Diet who eats beef a dozen times a week. Nevertheless, Veneman reassures us that:
U.S. beef remains "absolutely safe to eat," adding that she plans to serve it at her Christmas dinner Thursday.I can only hope she's right.
The Seattle Times' Susan Byrnes has an uplifting column today about Bemiss Elementary School in Spokane, Washington that has dramatically improved the standardized test (WASL) scores of its student body, many of whom are poor and immigrants. How did Bemiss do it? By insisting on high standards and hard work and frequent testing:
At the core of the Bemiss transformation is a fundamental shift in the way adults perceive disadvantaged students. Like the majority of teachers who work with low-income children, Bemiss teachers want the best for their students. But at Bemiss, teachers and administrators believe the way to help struggling students is to raise the bar, not lower it.and
There's an after-school study center and summer school for 100 kids in July and August. There's a reading nook in the entry hall. There are math contests and reading contests with T-shirts for the winners.Indeed. Byrnes contrasts the success at Bemiss with a swipe at Seattle's loony toons "education leaders", who seem to believe that it's cool to be clueless:At Bemiss, it's cool to be smart.
In too many other places, it's cool to bash the WASL. Brita Butler-Wall, a new member of the Seattle School Board, has said the test does more harm than good. Board member Sally Soriano said labeling groups of students as failures constitutes institutional racism. The Seattle teachers' union opposes the WASL.The only people who could possibly oppose the WASL are those who fear that reporting achievement outcomes will bring pressure on the public school system to actually deliver results.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer today praises Libya for declaring its intention to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction
It's good news, in itself, that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has promised to abandon efforts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The world is safer.The P-I still speculates about what led to Gadhafi's decision to abandon WMD:
It's unclear whether the invasion of Iraq played a role with Libya. Diplomacy may have been the key.Silly P-I, falsely modest as always. Of course the invasion of Iraq and the arrest of Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with Gadhafi's decision to change his behavior. Even more than diplomacy, the key that turned Gadhafi around was the hope that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer would one day write a nice editorial about him.
Two fourth-grade teachers in Spokane, Washington were caught cheating on the state's WASL standardized test. One of the teachers was "reprimanded" (she is still teaching), the other resigned -- to enhance her career as an educator by going back to school for a master's degree. Both of the teachers and their union blame the government and its enforcement of standards for causing the teachers to cheat:
The Spokane Education Association "never condones cheating -- by students, or teachers -- it's wrong," said Spokane Education Association president Maureen Ramos. "BUT when the state and now the federal government decide to use only one test to measure student progress and publish the school and class results, there is an incredible amount of pressure on teachers and students to perform well on that single measure."This is yet another example why I support charter schools for Washington. Charter schools are not a panacea, but among other things, they liberate a portion of the schools from the teacher union extortion mafia and make it easier to rid the schools of teachers who set poor examples for our children, or worse.
From the latest public opinion poll from the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion:
In a survey of 1072 Palestinian adults in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem --
27.5% support the Geneva Initiative
57.9% oppose the Geneva Initiative
[The editorial writers over at the Seattle Times might want to take note of this]
"Which period do you expect for the rule of Mr. Qrei's government ?"
Only 17.2% answered: "6 months and more"
"In case the Palestinians would abide by the truce concluded, which measures do you expect from the Palestinians to carry out in order to accomplish success ?"
Only 33.8% answered: "The Palestinian militants should abide by the cessation of the suiciders' bombings"
"Some people in the west bank and gaza strip support suicidal attacks in Israel , while others support a halt to such attacks now . which is closer to your opinion":
1.Such attacks must halt 35.6%
2.Such attacks must continue 49.5%
If I were a betting man, I would bet on Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan.
Most of today's Letters to the Editor of the Seattle Times were in response to Bruce Ramsey's column last week that argued against a state income tax. Two letters agreed with Ramsey, three disagreed. My favorite was this one:
I take exception to Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey's "The joys of not having a state income tax" (column, Dec. 17). I am particularly disturbed by the notion that there should be a double standard of taxation in Washington state.Jan Sjåvik is an immigrant from Norway, a country which, in the spirit of true fairness, has blessed its citizens with one of the highest tax burdens on the planet. And that helps explain why thousands of Norway's best and brightest, like Jan Sjåvik, continue to flock to the relatively low taxation and high prosperity of the United States, and not the other way around.Ramsey argues that what he calls the "ability to pay" principle should "hold" at what he calls "the low end," while successful people should not be taxed according to their ability to pay since "a tax on success" is "neither fair nor smart."
So, is it fair to tax failure, relatively speaking, but not success? Or is it just "smart" to exploit the poor so that the rich get to keep more of their money?
But the real problem with Ramsey's thinking is that it is based on an atomistic social theory (i.e., having no intrinsic obligations among classes), according to which individual success is credited solely to the "successful" person without regard for the contributions of those who make up that person's social and economic environment.
True fairness dictates that those among us who do well economically shoulder a proportionally greater share of the cost of maintaining an organized society.
Jan Sjåvik, Carnation
The fraudulent Seattle Monorail Project discovered months ago that it was falling far short of its inflated revenue targets, but fortunately the problem has been solved. How? By revising the projections of future revenues -- based on assumptions that are even more wildly optimistic than the wildly optimistic assumptions that failed to predict the current shortfall:
Yesterday's report, by consulting firm ECONorthwest, said car-tax income should grow an average 6.1 percent per year in Seattle. Currently the car-tab taxes are coming in one-third less than monorail backers had planned. But a 6.1 percent growth rate would eventually plug most of the hole in monorail revenues.6.1%, 4.8% who cares, it's only 1.3% off, right? Yes, but:The figure is higher than what Sound Transit forecasts to help fund its light-rail project. And it's also more optimistic than the monorail's own prognostications last year. The new report assumes car values will rise faster than inflation and, as the population grows, more people will own cars.
The report was reviewed by four of the state's best-known economists, who suggested a more cautious figure of 4.8 percent. However, the panel said ECONorthwest's findings were reasonable.
Another question is how many years residents must pay the tax of $140 per $10,000 of car value. If the latest predictions turn out wrong, the tax would go on longer than the roughly 25 years mentioned in last year's pro-monorail campaignStarting with current revenues of $26 million a year, a difference between 4.8% vs. 6.1% annual growth compounded over 25 years amounts to a cumulative difference of $243 million. Sooner or later, we'll be talking real money!
Can the monorail be built even in the face of such a large potential deficit? Nobody really knows, because
The true costs won't be known until next year, when two teams place bids to construct and operate a monorail system connecting downtown to Ballard and West Seattle. The monorail agency has already proposed reducing four miles of the 14-mile line to a single track shared by northbound and southbound trains.The Seattle Monorail Project is a vast moneypit of unbounded depth. It needs to be shut down as quickly as possible and some of the folks who have been deceiving the public probably deserve to be in jail.
The Seattle Times issued a deservedly harsh rebuke today to our loony toons School Board:
The Seattle School Board is making a serious, rookie mistake by pursuing a resolution against charter schools.I would only add that the most egregious affront is not to legislators and educators, but to the children who are trapped in failing public schools.It is not only distracting and time-consuming for board members to take an official stance on a matter outside their jurisdiction. The knee-jerk position is an affront to legislators and educators who have studied the issue for years and are crafting bipartisan legislation that aims to benefit some of the state's most disadvantaged students.
I would also add that the problem is not merely a "rookie mistake" of the four newly elected board members. It's just one symptom of the board's pervasive lunacy. Indeed, two of the three veteran board members also oppose charter schools. (Kudos to Dick Lilly, the Board's sole remaining moderate, who declined to join his colleagues in opposition to charter schools). Furthermore, the new members' opposition to charter schools shouldn't be a surprise to anybody who follows them. Three of the new board members (Stewart, Butler-Wall and Flynn) went on the record opposing charter schools during their campaigns. (See statements here, here and here). The Times didn't report this during the campaign, nor did it report on many of the new boardmembers' other nutty positions. The Times even endorsed both Stewart and Flynn.
I'm pleased that the Times is taking the right stand today. Hopefully in the future it will do a better job vetting the next batch of loony school board candidates so they can't sneak into office without adequate scrutiny.
Now that Seattle's entrenched political class (including the suburban owner/editors of the Seattle Times) managed to kill district elections for city council once more, I remain represented by a collection of nine equally (un)responsive at-large councilmembers. So whom do I contact when I have a problem, question, complaint, or (dare I hope ) compliment for the city council? I contact Peter Steinbrueck.
Why do I contact Peter Steinbrueck? There are four reasons.
a) As a tax-paying homeowner and businessman, I'm at the bottom of the list of every at-large councilmember's dream-team electoral coalition. (Seattle's government exists (a) to serve senior citizens, the disabled, renters, the homeless, non-profit agencies and (b) for the delight and convenience of city employees and their unions. Taxpayers are permitted to live here only so we can pay our fair share). So I don't expect any of the other councilmembers to be any less unenthusiastic about getting my phone calls than Peter Steinbrueck would be.
b) Peter Steinbrueck was one of the councilmembers who were most adamantly opposed to district elections, presumably because as an at-large councilmember he thinks it is easier to ignore people who disagree with him. Peter Steinbrueck can ignore me if he wants to, but I won't ignore Peter Steinbrueck and Google won't ignore me.
c) As Council President, Peter Steinbrueck is an obvious poster-child for the city council's latte-brained Soviet-style anti-economic policies and its equally Soviet-like "consensus" system. For example, although Steinbrueck said he opposed mandatory recycling during the recent campaign, he joined this week's unanimous Politburo vote to impose mandatory recycling -- A victory for mindless over-regulation AND mindless consensus, with bonus points for duplicity!
d) Peter Steinbrueck appears to be the councilmember most likely to go on to higher office. If my attention and feedback can either (a) help Peter Steinbrueck improve the quality of his work product, or failing that (b) help drive Peter Steinbrueck out of public office, I will have performed a valuable service for the People of Seattle.
The loony-toons Seattle School Board justifies its opposition to charter schools with the claim that charter schools "lack accountability". As I pointed out earlier, while most people would define accountability as the understanding that "one must do a good job or face certain consequences", the Seattle School Board members (like most people in the world of public education) seem to define accountability for school employees as "permission to fail without consequences"
Here's yet another example of public school "accountability" at work. As we learned a couple of weeks ago, the drinking water at Seattle's Wedgwood Elementary School has been believed for years to be contaminated . Nevertheless, the School District's director of facilities, John Vacchiery, declared that:
While "there's no question" Wedgwood's water isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's perfectly safe to drinkSome Wedgwood parents paid to have the school's water independently tested and discovered:
lead levels exceeding EPA limits of 20 parts per billion (ppb), and one of the four [drinking fountains] had cadmium levels higher than the 5 ppb EPA limit. One drinking fountain, located in a classroom, had lead levels 10 times over the limit.Vacchiery now says that
there have been numerous facilities directors at the district since the early 1990s, he said, and he's trying to determine at which schools repairs were done.and
After 1993, there was a plan in place to flush water fountains on a regular basis to reduce lead levels, but Vacchiery said he didn't know whether that plan was followed rigorously. Drinking fountains were replaced in many buildings, he said, but repairs "weren't systematic."Of course the repairs weren't systematic, because nobody in the public school system is ever really accountable (in the normal sense of the word) for doing their jobs properly. I think it's reasonable to predict that not a single school employee will face any sort of real-world consequences for having allowed poisonous water in the schools for a decade or longer.
At least the new School Board has taken emergency action to correct the water problem. The Seattle Times' Sanjay Bhatt inappropriately editorializes in today's news report that:
The emergency action is the first concrete example that newly elected board members are delivering on campaign promises to be responsive to community concerns.Fine, but the fact remains that it took years of complaints about the school's water and newspaper articles to elevate the problem to School Board's attention before the problem could fixed. This sort of issue shouldn't require the School Board's intervention in the first place.
Of course, if a charter school had similar problems, parents could pressure the school administrators and expect prompt action on the threat that the parents would take their kids and their funding elsewhere. The Stalinist monopoly school system that the Seattle School Board wants to protect offers no such recourse.
[I should point out that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Deborah Bach reported on the School Board's opposition to charter schools, while the Times did not. Bach's report on the water problem did not have any of Bhatt's needless editorializing. Advantage: Bach and the P-I!].
Commentary from Hebrew University political science professor Ira Sharkansky
Last night was the big speech. For a week we had little more than preliminary commentary, and now we're into the post-speech discussion. The pre- and post- are the same. There was enough in the speech to reward or provoke all perspectives. It was not necessary to know all the words in order to say what you think about it.
The speech was Ariel Sharon's long awaited policy statement. He put the Palestinians on notice that if they did not negotiate in a reasonable fashion they would lose. He talked about dismantling some Jewish settlements that Israel could not keep in any conception of the future, and taking unilateral steps to redefine Israel's lines of defense. He promised not to do anything without taking account of the posture of Israel's great friend, the US government.
The settlers and their supporters are nearly up in arms at the thought of dismantling settlements. Those obsessed with finding a formula that will entice the Palestinians to be reasonable are shreaking that Sharon is flubbing yet another opportunity. The US government adheres to its priorities, and has come out against unilateral actions.
In my modest view, the speech portends very little that is new. Israel is already redrawing the lines of its defense. The security fence/wall/barriers reaches into Palestinian areas in order to protect major Jewish settlements, and for practical purposes will be Israel's new border. It won't be recognized internationally, but Israel has learned to live without internationally recognized borders. I doubt that Sharon will remove settlements really occupied by numerous families. The unoccupied trailer, the lone watch tower, or the tiny and isolated religious hippie group may be something else. What this is really all about is the line of the fence abuilding.
It reminds me of the story of the goat. A sizable family suffering from life in a tiny dwelling asks the rabbi what to do. The rabbi says that they must bring the animals into the house. The family suffers even more, and goes back to the rabbi. He tells them to remove the animals from the house. They do this, and find that the rabbi is a blessed genius. Without the animals the house is better than tolerable.
The goat in this instance is the threat of new unilateral action or the withdrawal of settlements. The status quo ante is the construction of the fence. Once the threat of new actions is seen to be meaningless, the status
quo ante looks pretty good.
It might also help to consider Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR PREVENTING THE CHILDREN OF POOR PEOPLE IN IRELAND FROM BEING A BURDEN TO THEIR PARENTS OR COUNTRY, AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO THE PUBLIC, 1729).
Please don't take Swift seriously, and I am not proposing that Palestinians survive by selling their children. But stewing in their own juice is more apt. Just yesterday the BBC broadcast a plaintive demand of a Palestinian from Gaza insisting on his right to return to a home in Jaffa that his family left two generations ago in 1948. Where this is a crucial national demand reinforced by respected international media there is little hope for serious responses. We don't know the details of the near future, but from all the signs the Palestinians will be worse off as a result of their intifada.
Reminder: Today is National Republican Meetup day. I'll be attending tonight's Seattle Republican Meetup at Piecora's Pizza, 1401 E. Madison at 7pm. Come and join us, won't you?
It's well documented that charter schools often succeed where ordinary public schools have failed. See for example, last week's article in the Rocky Mountain News, which reports that many of the top performing schools in Colorado are charter schools that set high standards. (hat tip: Joanne Jacobs).
All across the country, public school bureaucrats and teacher union treasurers are soiling their underpants when they read such news, as they contemplate a mass exodus of students, teachers and dollars from the failing public school monopolies to independently run, higher functioning and largely non-union charter schools.
Forty of the fifty states permit charter schools. Teacher union pressure has so far prevented Washington students from having access to charter schools. This may soon change, as the state legislature will consider a bill in January to permit charter schools. After several years of trying, it looks like the bill will pass this session, but it will be close.
Unfortunately, the newly inaugurated loony-toons members of the Seattle School Board are digging in their heels and taking a formal position against charter schools. This is not only a stupid position to take but also a waste of the School Board's time, as charter schools are an issue for the state legislature to resolve, not for local school boards.
No surprise that the board members are justifying their irresponsible behavior by citing a teachers' union "research study" that discredits charter schools. It's a shame that the Seattle School Board is more interested in protecting the teachers' union than they are in offering promising alternatives to badly-served students.
For more information on the Washington charter school legislation, visit the Educational Excellence Coalition. If you live in Washington be sure to contact your legislators and encourage them to support charter schools. If you also live in Seattle, contact the school board members and encourage them to get back to work for our public school kids.
Matt Rosenberg, one of the Seattle Times consistently interesting and worthwhile guest columnists, writes about the capture of Saddam Hussein and gives a nod to the blogosphere:
Something more powerful than terrorist attacks and resistance was under way there even before Saddam's dramatic capture. It is reflected partly by a growing cadre of passionate, pro-democracy Iraqis providing firsthand reporting, commentary and pointed media criticism on their own Internet "Web log" sites, or "blogs."Rosenberg goes on to mention Iraqi bloggers Zeyad and Alaa, along with the American bloggers who did the most to help publicize them: Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds.
Now more than ever, the fresh voices of Iraqi bloggers will be an invaluable counterweight to traditional media coverage. In the weeks and months to come, turn to them for crucial, first-person insights on this unfolding, and uplifting, birth of a democracy.I'm not too modest to add that the fresh voices of American bloggers can also be an invaluable counterweight to tradtional American media coverage of American politics.
The Seattle Times' Bruce Ramsey, our favorite local editorial writer, explains why Washington does not, should not and will not have a state income tax.
The Seattle City Council has imposed mandatory waste recycling.
The new rules require Seattle residents to recycle paper, cardboard, glass and plastic bottles, and aluminum and tin cans, starting Jan. 1, 2005. If these recyclable materials are found in garbage cans and trash bins, the containers will be tagged as part of a yearlong education campaignResidential customers who put recyclable materials in the ordinary trash containers will not be fined, but commercial customers, including multi-family housing complexes will be fined.
Landlords can't realistically police their tenants' trash habits, so they will have to deal with added costs of compliance and/or fines which they will eventually pass on to their tenants, who, either way, will have no incentive to recycle.
I am not a landlord, but I have earmarked some of my savings to purchase rental properties in the coming year. It is precisely because of the Seattle City Council's self-destructive anti-housing policies such as this that I expect to make all of my real estate investments in the neighboring cities outside of Seattle. Presumably, many of the potential developers of new housing units have reached the same conclusion. Meanwhile, the Councilmembers will only scratch their heads and wonder why Seattle suffers from a shortage of affordable housing.
The City Council's imbecility would be merely a source of amusement if it weren't also wreaking so much economic damage on Seattle and its residents.
The Seattle Times last month published a delirious editorial that both misreported and misinterpreted an unprecedented interview in the Israeli press by four retired Shin Bet chiefs. Among other things, the Times was wet with excitement that the retired security chiefs called for dealing with Arafat, opposed the security fence and called for an end to the assassination of terrorists. (That the retired officials didn't exactly say what the Times reported, and that the interview was greeted in Israel by a collective shrug of disinterest are besides the point).
In today's Ha'aretz is a report on an equally rare speech by a current Shin Bet chief, Avi Dichter. Dichter praises the separation fence as "critical" to Israel's security, condemns Arafat as having:
betrayed the trust placed in him by Israel and other nations, both during the years of the Oslo process and the last three years of conflict.and calls Iran the "No. 1 terror state in the world".
I wouldn't bet on the Seattle Times to report on Avi Dichter's remarks with the same enthusiasm that it devoted to the misreported words of Dichter's predecessors.
Seattle Congressman "Baghdad Jim" McDermott has been taking heat for the delusional claims he made yesterday about the timing of the Saddam capture. As Jim Miller, master of the gentlemanly put-down, put it:
What can one say to someone who makes an argument like that? That they need to see a psychiatrist? But McDermott is a psychiatrist.McDermott is an easy target, but I'm not convinced he's as insane as he sounds. As a psychiatrist, he's probably pretty good at reading his constituents. He's been elected to Congress eight times. I imagine he says and does things he knows to be crazy because he believes it will help him get re-elected. And he's probably right, judging by reactions to his comments on Seattle call-in radio shows, and letters to the editors of Seattle newspapers about the capture of Saddam.
UPDATE: Andy MacDonald writes that Baghdad Jim is an "embarrassment to the city" and calls on local Democrats to replace him. Andy is even touting ousted City Councilwoman Heidi "Circus Elephant" Wills and Stan "Hypersonic" Lippmann, who earlier ran for Congress on behalf of the Natural Medicine Party. Yes, the local talent pool really is that pitiful.
UPDATE 2 Andy MacDonald stresses that he was jokingabout Stan Lippmann, which of course I knew. But the local talent pool still really is that pitiful.
In today's Letters to the Editor page of the Seattle Times, there are 8 letters, all about the capture of Saddam:
2 applaud the capture and praise the President and/or criticize the anti-war left
3 applaud the capture, but claim that the US is just as bad or worse than Saddam.
1 applauds the capture, but says that Saddam was never a threat to the US and expresses outrage that Osama hasn't been caught yet
1 applauds the capture, but launches into an incoherent ad hominem attack on the Bush family.
1 says the capture will only make things worse for US troops in Iraq
Meanwhile, over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, there are 9 letters today, all about the capture of Saddam:
1 says the capture will only make things worse for US troops in Iraq
3 characterize the capture of Saddam as irrelevant because Osama has not been found
1 says that "The capture of Saddam was not in itself worth the death of one U.S. soldier"
1 blames George H.W. Bush for giving Saddam "millions" and lots of help
1 writes:
Now Bush will go after clean air and senior citizens Hooray! George W. Bush killed thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans to capture the wrong guy. Oh, how we'll sing his praises when he defeats clean air, clean water and senior citizens. Onward Christian soldiers.1 writes:
Dub-Ya has captured his Poppy's old ally, Saddam! Hip, hip, hooray...I can practically hear the celebratory rifle shots in the air around the National Republican Party headquarters...In their version of the neocon "Mein Kampf" titled "The End of Evil" and published this month, Richard Perle and David Frum want the United States to "win it all" in order to implement a grand vision of how things ought to be.Only 1 of the 9 applauds the capture: "Everyone's happy, except for Howard Dean"
Yes, out of 17 letters in today's Seattle dailies, 14 found an excuse to whine and moan about the capture of Saddam Hussein and only 3 did not.
As Drudge reported yesterday, General Wesley Clark is raising money from non-Americans. The Clark campaign's official website lists the following on its "Grassroots Support" page: Canada for Clark and Germans for Clark.
Now I imagine that these websites from the Axis-of-Weasels are independent initiatives that created a Clarky website and some low-level webmaster at the Clark campaign thought that it would be cool to link to them. Still, you've got to wonder what that webmaster was thinking and who was supervising him.
In the meantime, wouldn't it be fun to create some more Weaselly pro-Clark websites, such as France for Clark or Belgium for Clark? Or for that matter, how about Hamas for Clark or North Korea for Clark? I wonder which of these would get links from the Clark campaign. In the meantime, in case the good general changes his website before you have a chance to see it, a jpg of the page in question is here
Today's Knight Ridder "news analysis" piece attempts to explain why Saddam Hussein is "an important symbol in the Arab world"
Arab and Muslim anger is rooted in a long history of humiliation, by British colonial rule, by the creation of Israel, by poverty, by the failure of U.S.-backed governments to allow open democratic government and more broadly by the perceived inability of some Arab and Muslim countries to succeed in the modern world.Let's look at these one at a time to see how well they really explain "Arab and Muslim anger":
1. a long history of humiliation: Yes, in the sense that Osama bin-Laden is chiefly concerned with the "tragedy of Andalucia" that occurred in 1492.
2. British colonial rule: Of course, many countries that have enjoyed British colonial rule (e.g. the United State, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India) don't worship genocidal maniacs. It's also interesting that only the British are mentioned but not the less enlightened colonial powers such as the French, Italians and Turkish.
3. the creation of Israel: Yes, the violent refusal of the Muslims to tolerate the political autonomy of non-Muslims is well-established.
4. poverty: nonsense
5. the failure of U.S.-backed governments to allow open democratic government: As opposed to all those open democratic governments in the Arab world that are not backed by the U.S.?
6. the perceived inability of some Arab and Muslim countries to succeed in the modern world: As opposed to the fabulous success of the vast majority of Arab and Muslim countries that is somehow underappreciated due to incorrect perceptions?
Seattle Congressman "Baghdad Jim" McDermott is whining and moaning about the capture of his erstwhile host and mentor Saddam Hussein. Listen to this clip from this morning's Dave Ross Show as the crazy psychiatrist and Congressman for Life tells his constituents that "we could have arrested Saddam a long time ago", but that the arrest was timed so that Bush could exploit it when he was most in trouble.
UPDATE: The Washington Post has the story.
Der Spiegel is whining and moaning about the capture of Saddam Hussein:
The Resistance is Tougher Than SaddamThe word they use for "resistance" is Widerstand, the same word commonly used in German to describe, for example, Charles de Gaulle and the French Resistance against the Nazis.Following the arrest of Saddam Hussein, US agents have arrested other key figures of the Iraqi resistance. Despite this, terrorism experts fear that the resistance against the occupation troops will only grow stronger.
I am falling out of my chair with anticipation, as my copy of "UNCOVERED: the whole truth about the Iraq war" just arrived in the mail.
Naturally, I'm quite curious to learn the whole truth about the Iraq war. And that's why I paid good money for this video. Naturally, I expect this video to contain the whole truth, otherwise that would be a deceptive business practice known as false labeling with intent to defraud. And I can't imagine that the people who are behind the movie would ever do anything like that.
John Kerry, during the debate over the pending liberation of Iraq, January 23, 2003
I say to the President, show respect for the process of international diplomacy because it is not only right, it can make America stronger - and show the world some appropriate patience in building a genuine coalition. Mr. President, do not rush to war.John Kerry, on the capture of Saddam Hussein, Dec. 14, 2003
If we had done this with a sufficient number of troops, if we had done this in a globalized way, if we had brought more people to the table, we might have caught Saddam Hussein sooner.In other words, not only would a "genuine globalized coalition" have enabled Saddam Hussein to stay in power longer, but it also would have enabled us to capture him sooner!
The Seattle Times this week has an investigative series on Washington public school coaches who molest students -- and quietly transfer to new school districts, where they continue to teach, coach and molest. The Washington public schools are competing with the Catholic church for the honor of being the nation's largest tax-exempt paedophilia club:
The Times' investigation found that school administrators often conduct cursory inquiries of sexual-misconduct complaints against coaches, and rarely alert police to complaints of sexual abuse — despite a Washington law that says they must do so within 48 hours.Yet another reason why the teachers unions should be treated as criminal organizations and prosecuted under the RICO act.Even when school officials find wrongdoing, they often bow to pressure from the teachers union, handing out mild punishments or none at all.
Representatives from Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Ireland and the European Union are set to file a criminal complaint against Attorney Khader Shkirat, the lawyer for jailed Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti and the former head of LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, which received a hefty amount of funding from these states.
The complaint hints at a host of improprieties and suspicions of criminal wrongdoing and alleges that huge amounts of money were stolen from the organization.There's nothing newsworthy, you might say to yourself, that a Palestinian "human rights" organization would turn out to be little more than a collection of gun-toting thieves.
The comic relief here is that the criminal complaint was filed with the Palestinian Authority:
One of the delegates told Haaretz, "this is a test for the Palestinian legal system and the representatives of its civil society...""the Palestinian legal system"? Please, no wagering.
Meanwhile, the Europeasers are all set to hand over hundreds of millions more dollars to the Peculastinian Authority. It's tempting to say "no questions asked". But that's not the case. Questions were asked. The Europeasers just don't seem to care about the answers.
Here's an interesting article about Christian communities in Israel and the disputed territories. While the Christian minority in Israel has enjoyed more freedom and prosperity than other Christian communities in the Middle East, the fate of Christians who would live in a predominately Muslim future Palestinian state is not one that I would envy.
 | The image of Saddam Hussein being examined like a homeless drunk arrested for public urination should have a devastating effect throughout the Arab region. Al-Jazeera is showing the photographs. And this article's headline describes Iraqis "dancing in the streets" and the caption of the top photograph says that Iraqis in Nassariya are "celebrating Saddam's arrest". |
Disbelief and gloom seized many Palestinians on Sunday at news of Saddam Hussein's capture while Israel, which came under Iraqi Scud missile attack in the 1991 Gulf War, hailed the United States for capturing Saddam.We must never forget that Palestinian terrorism is not fueled by "despair", but out of a sense of hope that terrorism will destroy Israel. Some more disbelief and gloom are needed to convince the Palestinians that terrorism will only make their own conditions worse. It's a criminal shame that the United States and the "world community" continue to protect Yassir Arafat and Ahmed Yassin from enjoying Saddam's fate which they also deserve.
Hamas slams Mideast peace moves, vows more attacks
The Islamic militant group Hamas vowed on Friday to resume suicide bombings against Israel as tens of thousands of Palestinians demonstrated against diplomatic efforts to achieve Middle East peace.Imagine that.
Canadian native Jennifer Meeks explains why she fled her homeland for the relative freedom, prosperity and superior healthcare of the United States:
Living in Canada made me feel like a barn animal in George Orwell's "Animal Farm." My only worry is that someday the United States will resemble Canada. Sort of like one giant Seattle. That would be my nightmare.Welcome aboard, Jennifer. You're among friends.
Less than three months ago I weighed 190lbs. Today, thanks to the Atkins Diet, I reached my goal weight of 165. I celebrated by treating myself to a Krispy Kreme Donut. Tomorrow, back to the rigorous maintenance regime of butter, eggs and cheese.
All together now, "All That Meat and No Potatoes"
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on a University of Washington class dedicated to slain gangster-rapper Tupac Shakur. It reads like a self-parody, but it's actually for real:
Georgia Roberts holds two of the texts that will play a part in a course she’s teaching this fall on the late hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur.
Roberts
uses Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Mumia Abu Jamal's "Live From Death Row" to teach her class about revolutionary figures within a stabilized society, something Shakur was considered to be by many before and after his death.and
Currently, the course is examining Shakur as a black Jesus figure, a theory popularized by Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago and author of the book "Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur," which Roberts uses in the class.As a nice Jewish boy, I'm no expert on Jesus, but to the best of my knowledge he was never convicted of sexual assault as was Tupac Shakur.
Hat tip: a friend of the university in Olympia, who observes that "adventures in higher learning like this" do little to help the university's request for more money from the state legislature.
As far as I can tell, today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer does not report on Iraq's massive anti-terrorism protest yesterday. Presumably the P-I doesn't want to interrupt the fairytale that the terrorists who have been slaughtering more Iraqis than foreigners are some sort of a popular anti-colonial resistance movement.
Today's Seattle Times carries this report from Knight-Ridder:
Thousands of Iraqis call for end to violenceand:BAGHDAD, Iraq — Five thousand to 10,000 Iraqis tried to send terrorists a cease-and-desist message yesterday from downtown Baghdad in the biggest demonstration against violence to date.
Chanting "No, no terrorism" and "Yes, yes Islam," they carried photographs of religious leaders and unfurled banners that read "The Iraqis Should Not Forget Palestine."The Iraqis are doing well to remember the main lesson of Palestine, which is that a society which glorifies terrorism will only remain mired in poverty, corruption and despair.
Richard Gere is in Israel, making peace moves with Hanan Ashrawi. But will Gere make an honest woman out of the aging terrorism concubine?
Regarding the desire of the dictators of certain "developing" countries to have the UN control the Internet
Hans Klein, chairman of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, said governments are legitimately worried that the U.S. government can suddenly impose policies contrary to their interests. For instance, Klein said, the United States might remove from central databases the domain names for countries deemed sponsors of terrorism, essentially kicking them offline.That's a pretty funny application of "Social Responsibility".
Another item from this year's fall line of Jew-exterminating Palestinian schoolbooks. The cover of the 2nd grade "National Education" reader includes this picture of a postage stamp from the British Mandate period:
The circled word in the lower right says "Palestine" in Arabic. Fair enough. What is most interesting is what doesn't appear in the lower left.
Here is an actual photo of another stamp from the same series.
This enlargement shows what is missing from the lower left corner of the stamp on the textbook cover
Those are the Hebrew words for "Palestine (Land of Israel)".
Raise your hand if you believe that these Palestinian efforts to obliterate the Jews from history are not meant as a precursor to obliterating the Jews from the present.
More information on the Palestinian schoolbooks may be found at EUFunding.org
On Tuesday, the Seattle Times editorial page fantasized into existence an entire Middle East peace process. On Wednesday, the Times editorial page fantasized out of existence one of the city's largest ethnic groups. In an editorial about high-school dropout rates ironically headlined The dropout crisis: bring on the clarity, the Times favors obfuscation over clarity:
Native Americans, African Americans and Hispanics drop out at much higher rates than whites.I agree that the first step should be to quantify the problem properly. The Times, on the other hand, leaves out the Asians, who comprise 23.1% of the School District's enrollment, making them a larger ethnic group in the schools than African Americans (22.5%), Latinos (11.1%) and Native Americans (2.4%). Asians as a group also have a lower dropout rate than whites as a group (8.7% vs. 9.9% in the most recent year for which I've found data), and the identifiable sub-groups that have the lowest dropout rates of all are the Japanese (2.5%) and Chinese (4.1%).The first step in addressing the troubling dropout problem is quantifying it with clear, understandable numbers.
The Seattle Times consistently maintains the line that there is "a nagging achievement gap between white and minority students", which carries a subtext that institutional racism must somehow be involved . At the same time, the Times consistently ignores the academic success of certain Asian minorities, which on most measures exceeds that of whites. This misplaced emphasis on the artificial story of "whites vs. minorities" diverts attention from addressing the deeper differences between academically successful vs. unsuccessful students that exist across ethnic lines.
(Source: Seattle School District Student Information Services Office)
Have you wanted to take a trip back in time to, say, the year 630 A.D. to see how people lived and to learn what their views and attitudes were? Well, now it's possible! No, there is still no such thing as a time machine, but we have the next closest thing.
Just go to this page and click on the link where it says Start Saudi TV.
Xrlq took a spill off his motorcycle yesterday. He seems to have escaped serious injury, but is still out of commission. Wish him a speedy recovery.
The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer are settling their dispute over the Joint Operating Agreement, at least for now. The P-I should stay in business until at least 2007. Certainly, it's better to be a two-newspaper town than to be a one-newspaper town. Competition usually raises the bar for everybody. Unfortunately, the Times and the P-I seem to be competing to see who can put out the silliest editorial page.
From a public opinion survey of Palestinian adults in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, October 26, 2003
Q: In case the Palestinian emergency government and the Palestinian National Security Council issue an order to Fatah organization and to other organizations not directly belonging to the security organs of the Palestinian Authority to hand over their arms for confiscation or destruction purposes. How do you think how Fatah and the other organizations should react?What's the point of trying to discuss peace with a Palestinian "Authority" that doesn't have any authority to enforce its commitments?1.Should they hand –over their arms to be confiscated and destroyed 11.6%
2.Hide their arms 56.2%
3.Not to do anything 32.2%
Source: Palestine Center for Public Opinion poll #115, by Dr. Nabil Kukali. Posted on Miftah.org "Your Key to Palestine"
I can't imagine how to explain Tuesday's hallucinatory editorial from the Seattle Times. Did someone spike the office coffee pot with LSD? Are their writers sequestered in a sensory deprivation chamber and forbidden to read the news? Are they bored with their jobs and just make this stuff up for the hell of it? Or do they misinform their readers on purpose?
An alternative peace plan making the rounds of the Middle East is opposed by most everyone with the notable exception of the Israeli and Palestinian people.They are talking about the Geneva "Agreement", which was promoted by the losers of the last Israeli election and which has been soundly rejected by the Israeli people.
Palestinians would concede the right of return for four million refugees.Such a concession exists only in the Seattle Times hallucinations about the "Agreement". The Palestinians are split on the question of what the "Agreement" actually says. Those who fear that the "Agreement" renounces the "right of return" are shooting at the Palestinians who supported the "Agreement". On the other hand, some of the Palestinians who smiled at the "Agreement" deny that the "Agreement" relinquishes the "right of return".
The most effective remedy after reading such a reality-bending editorial is twofold: (1) Go read what the Israeli people really are saying about the Geneva "Agreement" (start with Tal, Shai and Allison) (2) Send an email to Seattle Times owner/publisher Frank Blethen (fblethen@seattletimes.com) and let him know that printing such nonsense on the editorial page diminishes his newspaper's otherwise fine reputation.
The Seattle teachers' union posed the following question in a survey to candidates in the recent school board election. The answers of the winning candidates (recently inaugurated to the board) follow.
What does accountability mean for teachers? For superintendents? For school board members?Irene Stewart:
For all three, accountability means saying what you’re going to do, doing it, and then reporting the results of what you did and what you’re going to do in the future. All of the information must be accurate, and if any step is missing then accountability is lacking.Brita Butler-Wall:
For anyone, accountability means walking the talk--ensuring that your actions are in alignment with your words. Within the district, it means having mechanisms so that those we interface with can help us in this effort. Our 'critical friends' are very valuable to us but are not always perceived this way by the current Board.Darlene Flynn:
· Agreement with stakeholders about goals and outcomes to be measuredPublic education is the only sector of the American economy where "accountability" is defined as "permission to fail without consequences".
· Development of a strategic plan to get there
· Alignment of resources and implementation of plan
· Collection of feedback on the effectiveness of the plan implementation
· Adjustments to the plan as needed to improve outcomes
With fava beans and a nice Chianti: Even the libertarians here at the Shark Blog agree that there are limits to what should be permitted to "consenting adults".
Here is a peek into the rapidly decomposing brain of Noam Chomsky.
No Jewish Need Apply. The United Nations continues to shrug off the problem of rising anti-Semitism, this time with the active complicity of Ireland.
A lesson in life: The best looking babes always go for the best looking guys, even if they still live with their parents. If your looks are merely average, it doesn't matter how charming or successful you are, don't bother to dream about the cheerleader, you can't have her and you'll only get hurt.
The Seattle City Council voted yesterday to revise the city's taxicab regulations to permit cabbies to drive their taxis wearing costumes.
Some will ridicule this. But it doesn't bother me that the City Council devotes its time to so trivial a matter. Better this than, say, spending large amounts of the taxpayers' money on worthless nonsense, or offering safe harbor to criminal aliens. Besides, anytime a legislature unshackles the people from pointless infringements on their liberties, it can only be a good thing.
On the other end of the spectrum, the newly inaugurated loony-toons members of the Seattle School Board want to tighten the shackles of bondage on the city's children who are trapped in failing schools: They are considering taking a formal position against charter schools.
Molly Ivins is bleeding with excitement for Howard Dean
No one has been waiting with bated breath for me to make up my mind about the Democratic presidential candidates, but I have, and you might be interested in how I got there. [not really -- Ed.] I'm for Howard Dean -- because he's going to win.Now there are many valid reasons to support Howard Dean -- if you wanted to leave Saddam Hussein in power, for example; if you believe in executive branch secrecy; or if you want Ted Rall and David Duke to join your team; But supporting Howard Dean because you think he is the Democrat with the best chance of beating George W Bush doesn't make much sense.
The concept of actually winning a political race does not, traditionally, influence the bleeding heart liberal one iota -- certainly not in the primaries.It's not only Molly's heart that is bleeding on behalf of Dean, but also her brain. She should probably have her head examined. Which is also what psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer says about Dean himself.
Solly Ezekiel attended a dinner party where the guest of honor was Daniel Pipes. Solly gives us a complete debriefing with Pipes' remarks on the War on "Terrorism", the failure of Oslo, modern-day Islamic anti-Semitism and prospects for peace in the Middle East.
This is a page from a 2nd grade Palestinian textbook that is currently in use 
The text at top:
There are many cities in Palestine and among them is this city: Al-Quds [Jerusalem] and it is the capital of PalestineThe picture below the text is of the Old City of Jerusalem as viewed from the east, with the skyline of Jewish West Jerusalem in the background. The text continues:
There are other cities in Palestine, for example, Gaza, Khan Younis, Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Tulkarm, Jenin, Jaffa, Haifa and many others.The map below is from the same 2nd grade reader. The title reads "The Palestinian people is part of the Arab Islamic nation".
The yellow patch where Israel is supposed to be is labelled "Palestine" (The word Israel does not appear).
 | The map at left is from a 7th grade Palestinian textbook called "The Geography of Palestine". The map shows that Palestine includes the Galilean Hills, Haifa, Jerusalem, Beersheba and Ashkelon, as well as well known Arab towns. Tel Aviv is omitted totally. |
The textbooks in which these lessons appear carry the legend
“The (Palestinian) Ministry of Education welcomes the support, which it has received from institutions and organizations all over the world. In particular, it would like to thank UNESCO, Arab countries, and other friends, including the governments of Belgium and Italy, for the professional and financial assistance given to further this project.”Source: EU Funding.org, which has more examples of textbooks and larger image files from which the above graphics were taken. (The full page images for the above, all very large, are here, here<