Category: Miscellany

In a post yesterday, Andrew Sullivan quotes former Israeli Prime Minister Barak describing the Palestinian leadership:

“They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie…creates no dissonance. They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn’t. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as ‘the truth’.”

This troubles me a bit. If Barak is referring to the culture of the PA itself, then I’m with him 100%. But he seems to be referring to Palestinian culture more generally.

To be clear: I’m willing to accept the possibility that Palestinian culture does have genuine defects, and that one of them may be a more tolerant view of deception. I do not suffer from the liberal disease of assuming that all cultures and religions are equal, and that none of them have any inherent flaws. But if you’re going to fling out an accusation like this, I’d like to see some evidence or basis to back it up. (And no, the fact that Arafat is a liar does not prove the point: one man does not a culture make).

Anyway, this smacks to me of a statement that Sullivan has picked up on because it happens to agree nicely with his worldview (and for the record, at least with respect to the PA, it also syncs with mine). But that doesn’t make it a valid argument.

And by the way: How exactly is Barak separating Palestinian culture from Judeo-Christian culture? Last time I checked, “Palestinians” included some Christians as well.

Anyone else with a firmer grounding in Palestinian or Arab culture care to chime in here? I’d welcome input from people who actually have knowledge in this area.

Finally: Yes, this is yet another post which criticizes Mr. Sullivan (at least a little bit), so I think I’d better put my cards on the table here. I actually like Sullivan, and enjoy his writing. He’s got a sharp mind, and a good moral sense that does not reduce down to “everyone should do what I think is right”. I think he’s got a blind spot with respect to Bush, but nobody’s perfect. And I also think he’s been letting his weblog run on autopilot a bit lately, which I suspect is because he’s devoting his energies to his stage performance in “Much Ado About Nothing” (and more power to him for it!) And finally: I’ve sent Sullivan an email each time I’ve commented on him in my weblog, which is my standard practice with anybody. Yes, I certainly wouldn’t have minded a link; no, I didn’t get one. But that’s his right; no complaints here.

Got it? Good…

The terror of HIV

draws our attention to a speech by U.S. Senator Bill Frist in which he warns that HIV “is increasing the possibility of terrorism”. The story is also commented on by SK Bubba at Yes, But…

There are two parts to Frists’ (alleged) claims, and I’ll take them in turn:

1) HIV is causing a massive collapse of the social, economic, and (eventually) political structures in Africa, and that will create a breeding ground for terrorism (my words, not his, but this is clearly Frists’ argument).

This, I think, is irrefutable, and is something we absolutely must pay attention to. If the fact that millions of people are dying isn’t enough to move us to action through sheer human decency, then perhaps the motivation of preventing future terrorism will. (No, I do not have a magic bullet suggestion on how to solve the problem; it’s complicated. But doing nothing, which is essentially what we’ve been doing, is definitely not the answer).

2) HIV could be used as a biological weapon to commit bioterrorism attacks.

Here, the problem is, I’m not sure that this is actually what Frist said, or what he meant. Bubba thinks it is, responding: “he DOES seem to be suggesting, by lumping HIV in with anthrax and smallpox and plague, that HIV could be used as a biological weapon? This IS totally irresponsible. As an M.D., Frist should and does know better. How are the terrorists going to spread this agent — by forcing us all to have unprotected sex with infected martyrs? “

If that’s truly what Frist meant, I’m all with Bubba here. The problem is, the only basis for drawing that conclusion in the original article is this statement: “Frist drew a parallel between the tiny HIV virus and the equally minute biological agents – including anthrax, smallpox and the plague – that terrorists could use as weapons.” Note that this is not a direct quote, so we’re relying on the reporter’s interpretation of what “drawing a parallel” means. I think it’s a bit of an interpretive leap, without any clear quote from Frist, to say that he’s suggesting HIV is going to be used as a weapon in the way Bubba describes.

What I think we can clearly conclude, though, is that he is at least suggesting that there are similarities between the problem of solving the HIV crisis, and the problem of combating bioterrorism. To me, that’s a perfectly sensible argument, although as Bubba points out, Frist may well be drawing that comparison to gain public support for a major funding initiative he’s promoting. But that doesn’t necessarily make it an invalid comparison.

The UN is out loud about death threats, arrests, and outright murders taking place in Afghanistan which may be politically motivated.

From my read of the UN briefing, it looks like one major problem area is Herat. This is not a big shock, since Herat is under the control of Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has always seemed to be a classic example of a stereotypical warlord thug (here’s another link to an interview with Dostum. Hint: never trust anybody who with a military background who refers to themselves in the third person). I don’t think he “gets” democracy, and I don’t think he has any interest in learning.

Obviously, the Loya Jirga process is going to be extremely interesting. Not surprisingly, the press (at least, the U.S. press) seems to have totally forgotten that there’s a country over in central Asia which still needs a real government, so I think we’re going to have to rely on surfing the UN web site for a while…

Eugene Volokh a web site which posts photos of women who are suspected of getting abortions (taken from outside the clinics) in an effort to shame them into… well, feeling ashamed, I guess.

Question to Prof. Volokh (or anyone else): Could any kind of an “improper use of name or likeness” argument be made here? I poked around the web site in question, and didn’t see any requests for donations, which might have made that kind of attack easier. But surely some benefit is accruing to the fellow hosting this web site by using these women’s photos.

Update: Professor V has swiftly responded to my query, and in a nutshell answers, “Nope”. I actually should have known that, but it’s been quite a few years since my Comm Law class…

Robert Crawford wrote in to respond to my … well, it wasn’t a claim, let’s call it wishful thinking that General Musharraf is a secular leader:

As I understand it, Pakistan is essentially an Islamist state. Article 2 of its constitution ([here]) says “Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan”. Also, look at “The Objectives Resolution”:
[here]

While Musharraf’s coup suspended some of the Constitution, his “Provisional Constitutional Order No. 1” specifically exempts the Islamist parts of the Constitution from exemption: [see here]

Musharraf’s not a secularist holding out against the fanatics; he’s just a more pragmatic fanatic.

Mmmmm. You’re not brightening my day here, Robert…

Update (Wednesday): Robert has a blog, here.

Remember that nice little PR campaign designed to convince us all what wonderfully cuddly teddy-bears our arm-choppin’, terrorist-fundin’ friends are?

Well, NPR program On The Media has an interview with Michael Petruzzello, the poor bastard who led the campaign for the PR firm which drove the ads, Quorvis Communications. (What, he couldn’t get the Marlboro gig?) He has a rather hard time of it explaining why nobody wants to run his ads.

Check it out . It’s in RealAudio, but they will likely have a transcript up on their home page soon too. (You might have to advance through the show to the proper segment; the link doesn’t seem to work as I expected… I believe it starts at 33:54)

PS – Yeah, yeah, NPR = Evil Liberal Media, I know. Get over it — some of their programs are well worth listening to, and On The Media IMHO is one of ’em.

Did you know that InstaMentions now come with free editing?

Not only did kindly cite my Amnesty post below, but he also pointed out a grammatical error (now corrected) in my ‘graph beginning “But reading through their report…”

A gentleman and a scholar, that Reynolds…

Update: Sheesh. Meryl twists the knife by pointing out that I misspelled “grammatical” the first time around. No gentleman, she, but a scholar, perhaps…

I’ve decided to leave the Memorial Day page header up at least through the end of today; traffic was rather low over the weekend and I’m expecting a surge of back-to-workers today (if that’s you: get the hell back to work, slacker! But not before you finish reading all my stuff.)

And besides: I think this year, I’m just fine with devoting an extra day to showing appreciation towards our soldiers.

Amnesty International has released their Report 2002 today.

Unlike some of my esteemed colleagues in the blogosphere, I don’t think Amnesty is wrong about everything. I tend to think of them in the same mental bucket as the ACLU: each group represents an extreme viewpoint which forms a useful and necessary component of the overall cultural and political debate. If they didn’t exist, we’d quite likely have to invent them.

But reading through their report, I’m struck not so much by the specific points they raise — some of which I agree with, some of which I do not — as by the tone of the document, particularly where it comes to criticism of the United States. And I think I’ve put my finger on the problem. Try this experiment, as you read the report: imagine, each time you see a statement critical of the U.S., that it was prefaced with the following:

“Amnesty recognizes that the United States is, bar none, the world’s foremost defender of human rights in the world today. The contributions made by the U.S. to the freedoms and human rights of both its own citizens and those of the world are unparalleled in the history of nations. From the founding documents of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to its repeated intervention to avert humanitarian catastrophes in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, America has contributed greatly to the cause of human rights throughout its history; leading the way in enshrining such rights in law, and defending them, where necessary, with force of arms. However, the U.S., like any state of fallible human beings, is not perfect, and therefore, in the spirit of improving an already-great civilization, we offer the following criticisms of recent U.S. policy…”

Amnesty, I think, does themselves a severe disservice simply in the way they present their criticisms. I suspect people often react negatively to their complaints on items such as civilian casualties during our bombing of Afghanistan not because they think bombing civilians is a good thing, but because Amnesty takes such a combative and accusatory approach, with seemingly no recognition at all of the contributions the U.S. (or other Western democracies that they place in their sights) have made to the cause of human rights worldwide.

I guess what I’m saying is, it’s not the fact that they criticize U.S. policy that bothers me; it’s the fact that they’re just, well, such jerks about it.

Examples:

Foreward, Page 1:As the “war against terrorism” dominated world news, governments increasingly portrayed human rights as an obstacle to security, and human rights activists as romantic idealists at best,”defenders of terrorists” at worst.

Ignore the actual thrust of the statement for now: just focus on that first phrase. Why is “war on terrorism” in quotes? Which part of that phrase is being questioned? War? Terrorism? Er, “On”? With two little punctuation marks, Amnesty manages to make themselves sound skeptical that there is an actual war going on, thereby alienating that large segment of the world that has not been in a coma for the last nine months. Not bad for the very first page !

Introduction, Page 1: On 7 October the USA, in collaboration with its coalition allies, began a sustained bombing campaign in Afghanistan as part of President Bush’s declared “war on terrorism”. By the end of the year, an as yet unknown number of Afghan civilians had been killed or injured or had their homes or property destroyed, in circumstances that led AI to call for investigations by competent authorities to determine whether violations of international humanitarian law had been committed.

Wouldn’t this be a nice spot to recognize, even in passing, that regardless of the acknowledged negative of civilian casualties (the existence of which is not debated; the magnitude of which is) , there was equally inarguably a massive positive achievement for human rights here — i.e., the removal from power of one of the most repressive regimes on the planet? I don’t even ask that Amnesty agree with my view that the positive outweighed the negative — all I ask is that they at least acknowledge that the positive exists.

And we haven’t even gotten to the, shall we say, slanted presentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The headline for that section of the Introduction is “The intifada“, so I guess we can’t accuse Amnesty of not getting their bias out on the table right up front. This section is a great example of how to slant a story by the selective use of space and detail: following an introductory paragraph which matter-of-factly states statistics about deaths on each side, the report devotes a bit over two full paragraphs to Israeli offenses, with a grand total of one — count it, one — sentence devoted to Palestinian terrorism (not a word you’ll see Amnesty use).

Despite these problems, there are some things to agree with in Amnesty’s report. Such as:

Foreward, Page 2: We must turn the debate about security and human rights on its head – human rights are not an obstacle to security and prosperity, they are the key to achieving these goals. Human security comes only with human rights and the rule of law. Human rights are the basis for creating strong and accountable states, without which there can be no political stability or economic and social progress. Yup. Though I expect we might disagree on the methods to achieve this particular goal.

Foreward, Page 3: The same governments that denounced the human rights abuse of women by the Taleban government of Afghanistan remained silent about the plight of women in Saudi Arabia. Another big Yup.

And that’s the frustrating part. Amnesty’s mission is a vital one, and one that I support from the bottom of my heart. Torture is bad. Human rights abuses are bad. There is no argument between us here. But Amnesty continues to miss the story by focusing disproportionately on the abuses perpetrated by the civilized democracies of the planet. It has been argued that this is deliberate: that Amnesty knows that they are more likely to be able to affect change in these nations, simply because they do care about human rights.

But that is a coward’s way out, and it is a betrayal of the noble mission which Amnesty has taken upon itself. The mission is clear, and it is a just one. I only wish they’d do a better job at it.

The New York Times has a piece today the last hours and moments of the Twin Towers, which people I trust speak highly of. I haven’t read all of it yet, but certainly will soon.

If you find that story compelling, I also would recommend listening to the broadcasts on the emergency radio channel of the NY fire and police departments, which are available on the ‘net here.

A few warnings/notes about that link: first, you will probably hear an advertisement before the actual clip starts. It’s entirely possible that it will be for products that are staggeringly inappropriate to be hawking on such a serious broadcast. Second, this outfit seems to think they are a real radio station, and so when you open the link you apparently get dumped into a broadcast “in progress” with no ability to control start/stop time. Many months ago, I found a much better site that allowed you to review individual chunks of the broadcasts at will, but I can’t seem to find it now — if anyone else has a a better link, please send it my way.

But, if you can get past those issues, the broadcast is riveting, and if you had begun to lose that sharp feeling of anger and sadness from last September, is guaranteed to bring it back in full force.

Need more? WavSource.com has audio clips. Try this 911 call from the morning of the attacks. Or David Letterman’s concise, moving summary of the attacks on his first broadcast following them. And if you need to be reminded of the resolve necessary for the fight ahead, try President Bush’s statement to Congress, or even better, John McCain’s simple declaration of September 12th.

For me, today is a deeply appropriate day to review material like this. For although those that lost their lives on September 11th were not, for the most part, soldiers, they were without question causalities in a war. A war which started long before September 11th, and which stretches ahead of us into the future to an end we cannot now know: except that we know it will most certainly end with our victory.

What we also know is that we must remember those we have lost, and that the only way to truly honor their memories and their sacrifice is to continue the fight against the cowards who robbed them of their lives. The fight will take us on a long road; one which merely began in Afghanistan, and which winds through the capitals of Islamabad, Baghdad, Riyadh, and others. The pressure to allow the regimes who solemnly claim to be our allies in public to remain in power, quietly supporting the murderers in the darkness through funds, arms, or simply words of hatred against our nation; that pressure will be great. There will never be sufficient evidence to convince the world that these regimes are evil. There will always be those who cry “racism”; “oppression”, and “national sovereignty” in defense of the tyrants, the religious fascists, and the murderers.

But to reject those voices, and press on with the fight, is simply what we must do. And it is the only way to truly remember our lost from this war, and those that came before, with honor.

Update 5/31: I’ve removed the actual .wav sound files which the links above; I had temporarily stored them on my personal server but need to conserve bandwidth (it costs $$$) — especially with the flood of Salon folks coming through today. If you want to hear them, go directly to the WavSource site above — they are all there.

The BBC has some early reaction to Musharraf’s speech on Pakistani television today, in which (the BBC indicates):

General Musharraf answered Indian claims that Islamabad was allowing militants to carry out attacks by saying that Pakistan would not allow terrorism to be launched from its soil…He said no infiltration was taking place into Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Hmmm. That statement about “not allowing terrorism” from their soil would sure be a lot more reassuring if I had any faith that the statement about “no infiltration taking place” was true. Which I don’t.

The BBC also shows here that they do know how to do things right on the web with excellent background coverage surrounding the main article here, including a grim little map which shows the striking range of both Pakistan and India’s missiles, along with data on the nuclear payloads which can be mounted on them. (Bottom line: Both sides have the capability to nuke any site in the other’s territory, as well as quite a bit of real estate in surrounding countries if they chose).

CNN also covers the story (with background that isn’t so shoddy either), and includes this quote from the general:

He said Pakistan wanted dialogue, but he added: “If war is thrust upon us, every Muslim is bound to respond in kind.”

I find it worrisome that Musharraf is using this kind of vaguely Islamist rhetoric in his call-to-arms. I’ll confess up front that I haven’t paid nearly as much attention to the general as I probably should have (and there are lots of people out there who know more than I on the subject, including this fellow ). But isn’t he supposed to be the secular guy holding the fundamentalists in check?

Tonight on FOX: Who Wants to Marry a Terrorist?

Corner (whose permalink seems busted, but whose main page is here) points out a story in a Portuguese newspaper which describes one of the 13 Church of the Nativity exiles as “Single, with a free house and a reliable allowance, all he needs is a bride”, quoting a PA spokescritter as stating: “He is not married, he does not have a girlfriend. We are looking for a bride for him.”

David Grant, call your office! This is a reality show begging to happen. “We’ve provided this handsome gunman with twelve sexy infidel daughters of the Great Satan. Which will he choose to make his bride?”

This is totally Lair’s schtick, so I leave it to him to pick up from here…

By the way, in poking around for this piece I came across this page from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which provides detail on exactly who each of the 13 men are and what they are accused of. It’s not an objective source, of course. But it provides a convincing level of detail (even includes sources, in some cases) and frankly, I’m far more inclined to take the Israeli’s statements at face value than those of the PA. I would, however, like to see a similar document from the PA perspective (or any other opposing view) — so if it anyone has a pointer, send it my way. You don’t have to agree with it, just pass it on, I’ll post it, and intelligent people can make up their own minds. The wonders of a free market of ideas in action, baby.

More from Bennett

Everyone else getting as tired of this as I am? Good. Like bloody pulling teeth, it is.

Anyway, Mr. Bennett has deigned to provide us with an actual source of data to substantiate his arguments. He posts the following his page in response to my last assessment of his responses:

“Maybe this will help. Twenty percent of lesbians died of murder, suicide, or accident–a rate 487 times higher than that of white females aged 25-44. The age distribution of samples of homosexuals in the scientific literature from 1989 to 1992 suggests a similarly shortened life-span.”

All-righty then. We’ve now got two documents on the table available for fact-checking; and gee, I only had to ask twice.

With that, I’ve accomplished my objectives from my original challenge: first, to ensure that his reprehensible comments did not go unanswered and to make my opinion of them and his conduct clear; and second, to encourage him to put some actual facts on the table to support his statements (or, alternatively, to demonstrate that he had no facts to provide.) Now, both his readers and mine can make that judgment for themselves (and I encourage anyone interested to check the source he provided on partner abuse among lesbian couples as well. ) Justice is served.

I don’t intend to spend any further time on the matter; to be frank, I’m skeptical regarding the veracity of the sources Mr. Bennett provided, but fair is fair: he has provided them, so that’s worth something. Again, the key is that now anybody interested can check for themselves. As it happens, I’m not actually all that interested (never was): my interest was in getting Mr. Bennett to put his cards on the table; not in spending the next few weeks debating this issue.

I encourage anyone interested in further pursuing this matter to continue checking Bennett’s page; I’m sure he’ll have a nice dose of invective about my ending this conversation; probably something along the lines of declaring victory and claiming that he’s proven his case. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that bringing assertions to the table of discussion is the beginning of productive argument and debate; not the end of it.

This will be my last post on this issue barring extraordinary occurrences; in the immortal words of Ms. Rosenberg: “Bored now.”

Update (Monday): I won’t be investing any more of my time in this, but I will post any (reasonable) information readers send my way, out of courtesy to those investing their time. On that note, Jody over at NakedWriting pointed me to this page by UC Davis Professor Gregory Herek, which at first blush, appears to give a thorough Fisking to the source Bennett quoted. For the record, Bennett has now withdrawn the citation on his site after folks pointed him to the same resource. Update Redux: Alex Elliott points out this piece by Andrew Sullivan, which provides some additional debunking. Kinda figured Andrew would have something to say about this fellow.

New page header for a day or so, but I suppose that’s obvious. I believe it speaks for itself.

Evil Lesbian Update

In own comments section, Bennett has responded to my challenge as follows (I include my original questions, Bennett’s responses in quotes, and my own commentary)

1) Women who choose other women as sexual partners are more likely to inflict domestic abuse on their partners than heterosexual males.

Bennett: “See Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian Relationships by Claire M. Renzetti. It reports that fully one-half of lesbian relationships are violent; the corresponding figure for straight relationships is around 1-3 percent, depending on how you define “violent.”

Okay, we have one source; it’s a start, I suppose. And it’s on Amazon, so it must be true.

In seriousness, though, I have not read Ms. Renzetti’s work so I can’t comment on it positively or negatively. I’d welcome feedback from any readers with additional information or opinions, certainly. But let the record show that Mr. Bennett has honorably provided us a source to investigate for this claim.

(Note: I replaced Bennett’s link to the $83.95 hardcover edition with a link to the nice cheap $29.95 paperback edition. Oh, and if you use my link you won’t be kicking back cash to Mr. Bennett, either, which I believe the original link would have).

2) Women who choose other women as sexual partners are more likely to suffer from the following potentially fatal diseases: X, Y, and Z. (I leave Bennett to fill in the blanks).

Bennett: “Life-span data is easy to come by, and it supports my other claims, which didn’t come out of thin air.”

Trust me, Richard, thin air isn’t where I thought they came out of. But I’m sorry, you get zero points for this answer: vague hand-waving that data is “easy to come by” doesn’t cut it.

BearPower Revealed!

Following TTLB exclusive regarding Mr. Bennett’s hypocrisy with regard to matters linky, it appears that Bennett has quietly redesigned his right navbar to no longer separate out ‘pro’ journalists from bloggers (the very offense for which he castigated Virginia Postrel).

Coincidence? We think not; particularly since TTLB sent Mr. Bennett an email referring to the aforementioned post which he acknowledged receipt of.

Let the record also show that said navbar changes occurred without any public acknowledgement of TTLB’s comments (or links to the post on the matter), which, if I understand Bennett’s own standards correctly, makes him a bloghole.

TTLB is now flush with triumph, and we see near-endless possible uses for this newfound power to inflict site redesigns at will (which, we promise, will be used only for Good, not Evil). The dilemma is simply which to affect first. Should we convince CNN that five characters is too goddamned small to make a search dialog? Dissuade Ain’t It Cool News from vomiting up pop-up ads like a drunken sailor? Or simply convene an intervention with Jacob Weisberg to assure him that no, those slide-out ads that cover the whole page are not the coolest thing since Microsoft Bob ?

Possibilities, possibilities.

PS – I promise to leave Mr. Bennett alone for at least a little while (‘cept maybe responding to any follow-ups he might lob my way re: evil lesbians). I’m starting to go all Sullivan-Krugman-y on him, I know…

Mr. Roboto vs. The Lesbians

“Mr. Roboto” Bennett is trolling for hits, and has decided to beat up some lesbians to get ’em.

Ok, I’ll bite, although I should probably know better (Bennett’s comments are arguably of the “best left just ignored” variety).

Bennett picks up on a question raised by Eugene Volokh and followed up by Charles Oliver: why don’t more fathers want their daughters to be lesbians? Bennett enlightens us as follows:

Charles has the answer, but allow me to summarize, as a father of three young women and one who’s had the experience of doing battle with lesbians for several years in the California legislature as they relentlessly stick their noses into the corpus of family law even where it doesn’t remotely concern them: lesbians are gross.

They don’t look like normal women and they don’t act like normal women. They beat up their partners more often than men do, they suffer from a myriad of life-shortening diseases, and they believe an entire universe of things that aren’t true, even abstractly true. They’re bitter, twisted, and miserable, and they want others to share their pain. I’d rather my girls be prostitutes, heroin addicts, or Mormons than lesbians.

I don’t particularly care for the term “homophobe”, so if you are waiting for that word to pop up here, sorry. My preferred label for folks who fling broad insults towards large groups of individuals is simply “asshole”, and I think it sums up my assessment of Mr. Bennett’s rude behavior more precisely.

Bennett is fond of statistics and nice graphs when they suit his purpose, so I challenge him here to back up the following claims with scientific research or other cold hard facts:

1) Women who choose other women as sexual partners are more likely to inflict domestic abuse on their partners than heterosexual males.

2) Women who choose other women as sexual partners are more likely to suffer from the following potentially fatal diseases: X, Y, and Z. (I leave Bennett to fill in the blanks).

And by the way, even if we take Bennett’s claims at face value and accept, for an intellectually painful moment, his assertions that lesbians “beat up their partners more often than men do, they suffer from a myriad of life-shortening diseases, and they believe an entire universe of things that aren’t true” — does Bennett really mean to say he’d rather have his daughters become heroin addicts (which to my understanding has a high probability of wrecking your life entirely) than suffer an increased risk of spousal abuse and disease, and/or — even worse! — believe things Bennett disagrees with? Sheesh, to think he was criticizing Glenn Reynolds for poor fatherhood.

BBC: Bringing you the best (and worst) in online journalism. All at once!

Check out this Flash presentation entitled “US Missile Defence: How it could work” over at BBC News.

It strikes me that the BBC has presented us with something really good, and really shoddy at the same time.

The good part is the quality of the polished animation. Despite now having been at it for years, Big Media still doesn’t quite get the fact that they can use their web presence to actually present information in new and different forms that aren’t possible in print, pure audio or video. This graphic is a good example of just such a use: it isn’t earthshattering, but it is a good use of a common web technology (Flash) to present information in a clear, interesting and dynamic manner.

The bad part, though, is that the information which it does present — the hypothetical technical operation of a missile defense shield — is floating in an absolute context-free void. (If you want to see where it is on the BBC’s site, check here, it’s on the right about halfway down). Given how controversial missile defense has been on practically every level — political implications, economic cost, technical feasability — you’d think the Beeb might have provided some of that information with the graphic.

But for some unfathomable reason, none of that is there — it’s just a cool slideshow with some missiles getting zapped.

For the record, I’d class myself as a skeptical agnostic on missile defence — I haven’t studied the issues closely enough to have formed a hard judgement, but what I have heard about the technology makes it sound pretty squirrelly, and the political implications are complicated, to say the least. On the other hand, with every rogue state on the map popping up longer and longer range missiles each year, it certainly would make a West-coaster like me sleep better to know that even when Pyonyang gets that super-duper-long-range-missile working, we have some line of defence to ensure I don’t end up glowing in the dark.

But anyway, I don’t think you have to be a full-blown disbeliever to agree that providing a teesy bit of context (any context ! ) might have made this a more helpful piece.

Update: Aha. I knew the BBC couldn’t be that silly. Turns out there is a story with context — but to reach it, you have to select the non-Flash version of the presentation and go through ’till the very end. Still demerits for the Beeb, but we’ll raise their grade a bit…

Update II (Sunday 8am): The link is now no longer on the main news front page, although it is similarly placed on the Americas front page (not sure if it was there before).

PS – Full disclosure: I never have completely forgiven the BBC for cancelling Dr. Who, so maybe I’m biased…

PS II – Light blogging this weekend; like everyone else in the blogsphere, I’m enjoying family time…

Okay, as promised, read the transcript of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the National Commission on Terrorism in June 2000 . It isn’t that interesting.

But what is interesting is that I managed to find the Commission’s full report online.

I’m reading it full through now, but at first blush, I’d say that it did indeed make many of the recommendations that we’re seeing discussed now back in 2000. I’ll have a more detailed analysis up later this weekend, but until now, you can check out the report itself (it is quite readable, with a nice executive summary and clearly bullet-pointed recommendations. Makes sense; it was written to be understood by Congresscritters, after all. )

Update: I found another, presumably ‘official’ copy of the report here on a .gov server. This version is broken up with a table of contents that routes to PDF files, so I’m leaving the other link up too as it is in more straightforward HTML. I have not attempted any serious verification to check if they are word-for-word identical.

Also: My more detailed followup ain’t going to be ready this weekend; it is turning into a more involved piece. Sorry, but hopefully the end result will be worth the wait.