Jingoes and the fascist impulse

Americans labor under the delusion that fascism "can't happen here" because of the nation's history as an open, democratic society.

This is a peculiar blind spot, because in fact fascism is only possible as an outgrowth -- a metastasis, if you will -- of democracy. Historically, fascism has only taken root in democracies when they stumble. It seems not to occur to Americans that if their democracy stumbles, the dark face of fascism awaits to take its place.

It is also peculiar because Americans, in reality, are all too familiar with the fascist impulse in their midst. Perhaps it is this familiarity that disguises the reality of what it is. But as Robert O. Paxton observes in his superb new text, The Anatomy of Fascism:

It may be that the earliest phenomenon that can be functionally related to fascism is American: the Ku Klux Klan. Just after the Civil War, some former Confederate officers, fearing the vote given to African Americans in 1867 by the Radical Reconstructionists, set up a militia to restore an overturned social order. The Klan constituted an alternate civic authority, parallel to the legal state, which, in the eyes of the Klan's founders, no longer defended their community's legitimate interests. Bu adopting a uniform (white robe and hood), as well as by their techiques of intimidation and their conviction that violence was justified in the cause of their group's destiny, the first version of the Klan in the defeated American South was arguably a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe. It should not be surprising, after all, that the most precocious democracies -- the United States and France -- should have generated precocious backlashes against democracy.

Earlier, Paxton cites a passage from Alexis de Tocqueville as a "glimmer of premonition" about the darker impulses that shadowed democratic societies, particularly "the majority's power to impose conformity by social pressure, in the absence of an independent social elite":

The kind of oppression with which democratic peoples are threatened will resemble nothing that had preceded it in the world; our contemporaries would not find its image in their memories. I myself seek in vain an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that I form of it for myself and that contains it; the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. The thing is new, therefore I must try to define it, since I cannot name it.

Paxton suggests that it finally took a name in the 20th century: fascism. He sums up neatly the essence of fascism as a political force: "dictatorship against the Left amidst popular enthusiasm."

And the notion that this force is relegated to distant history is belied by the reality that American democracy -- particularly under the Bush regime -- is increasingly showing signs of dysfunction, amid increasing intolerance for the Left, as well as a certain enthusiasm for silencing dissent.

I've discussed at length elsewhere the signs of incipient fascism in the American body politic. Now, as we reach a boiling point where the war in Iraq is turning into one of history's great quagmires and the likely disempowerment of the ruling conservatives looms larger, the potential for significant manifestations of the fascist impulse becomes greater.

The chief form of this is the desire to suppress all dissent, specifically under the guise of a 21st-century version of the Dolchstosslegende, as liberals and dissenters are increasingly depicted as "stabbing in the back" our soldiers and, by extension, the national interest.

It's important to understand as well that fascist dictatorships are top-down in hierarchy but rely on substantive popular support. They are dictatorships which are carried out not only under threat of state punishment, but with the open embrace of average citizens, and the full participation of many enthusiasts (who are all, of course, deeply persuaded of their own civic virtue).

So the kind of suppression that indicates a fascist impulse appears not only from the top -- with administration officials impugning the patriotism of their critics, and conservative talk-show hosts and pundits ranting at length about the treason of liberals. It also appears in local libraries, city councils, local police forces. And, of course, school districts.

Which brings us to the case of Bill Nevins.

Nevins is an English teacher at Rio Rancho High School in New Mexico, which is the largest high school in the state and a model of state-of-the-art education. He also taught a poetry class, and encouraged students in pursuing "poetry slams" that gave them full freedom of expression. But because students used the forum to attack Bush and the Iraq invasion, he was not only fired, he was held a virtual prisoner by an apparently vindictive principal. The students' poetry club was also terminated.

As Bill Hill recently explained in the Daytona Beach News-Herald:

The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived.

In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.

A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.

The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.

Nevins had meanwhile been offered a job at another high school -- and the principal, a fellow named Gary Tripp, refused to process a simple transfer form that would allow him to move on.

An Associated Press version of the story provides more details:

Nevins contends problems began last December when an assistant principal visited his class twice during so-called poetry slams, or performances when students read their poetry aloud.

In February, Nevins alleged Passell told him his classes were not meeting educational standards and that the students "were showing a lack of respect."

When one of Nevins' students read a poem over the school's closed-circuit television system later that month, the school's military liaison complained to Tripp about the poem's content, calling it "disrespectful speech," the lawsuit said.

"This is the land of the free," a bit of the poem goes. "You drive by a car whose bumper screams God bless America. Well, you can scratch out the B and make it Godless because God left this country a long time ago... ."

Some had alleged the poem contained obscenities and inferences inciting violence, and school officials launched an investigation, the lawsuit said.

As it turned out, none of the poems in fact were obscene or violent.

According to another report, the school administration's suppressive actions were not relegated merely to the poets, but extended to anyone who questioned Tripp's moves:

In March, 2003, Nevins was suddenly suspended from teaching and from coaching the Write Club/Poetry Team, which then disbanded. Public readings of student poetry were banned by the RRHS administration. A multicultural poetry assembly set for April was cancelled. Student protests against Nevins' removal were silenced by the school administration and at least one student who refused to stop speaking out was encouraged to drop out of RRHS.

That wasn't the end of Tripp's power trip. As one account describes:

The lawsuit also claims that at a school event in May the school’s military liaison read a poem written by a solider that instructed those expressing their desire for peace to "shut their faces." At the same event, Tripp hoisted a U.S. battleship flag from Afghanistan.

An account in Green Left Weekly notes that Rio Rancho High School is (as the Microsoft piece above suggested) perhaps the face of education's future, with a substantive role played by major corporations:

Why would a US public school district behave in this way? Rio Rancho School District and its high schools, RRHS (the largest in New Mexico) and Independence High, were established in the late 1990s with major funding from Intel Corporation, the largest employer in Rio Rancho, a relatively new city located north-west of Albuquerque. Reports in the Albuquerque Journal and Tribune cited RRHS principal Tripp as stating that he intends to ask Intel Corp and the Bank of America for guidance in addressing what he identifies as "racial conflict" problems at RRHS.

It's not unreasonable to expect students to observe certain basic standards of behavior, but educators like Gary Tripp are well beyond that line. Tripp is in the business of suppressing opposition to an increasingly narrow viewpoint -- namely, one that identifies the Bush agenda with true Americanism, all dissent as treason, and that substitutes blind jingoism for patriotism.

The problem with this impulse to control students' minds, and to stigmatize dissent, goes well beyond the simple question of what level of control corporate funders of education may be seeking. It goes to the root of something much deeper and darker, but very likely related.

[Thanks to the Buzzerman for bringing the Nevins case to my attention.]

GOPspeak: Multiculturalism breeds terrorism

Gosh, with things going to hell in a handbasket over in Iraq, it sure is good to know that the Republican Congress still has its eye on making sure our troops clamp down on that major front in the War on Terror known as the Brown Peril.

According to the Brownsville (Texas) Herald, the GOP-led House seems to have trouble distinguishing between illegal immigrants and terrorists:

The U.S. House on Wednesday passed an amendment to a defense bill that would place soldiers along the nation's borders.

The amendment, submitted by U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., is part of the National Defense Authorization Act designed to bolster national security by providing more aircraft, missiles, missile defense systems and personnel.

The bill -- House Resolution 4200 -- will be negotiated in House and Senate committees to determine further details, including whether soldiers would be placed at both the northern and southern borders.

U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, opposes the amendment, calling it an "insult" to border communities.

"We already have personnel to take care our borders," Ortiz said, referring to Border Patrol agents.

"Soldiers are trained to kill. They’re trained to kill the enemy."

The story goes on to point out that in situations where military personnel have been placed on the borders, violence has a propensity for cropping up. Moreover, soldiers are not trained at handling border crossings; that's what we pay a Border Patrol for.

"Once again Republicans are attempting to use the men and women of our armed services to promote an anti-immigrant agenda," Rodriguez said. "We all agree that we need to find ways to secure our borders, but immigrants from Mexico and Canada are not our enemy.

"Our troops are already over-extended serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are continuously hearing reports that they need more resources and more manpower to fulfill their duties."

It's not surprising, I suppose, that this confusion occurs. Shutting down the borders and conflating illegal immigration with terrorism is, after all, a staple not only of Michael Savage's radio show, but of the anti-immigration crowd that has been ratcheting up its rhetoric to extremist levels in the past year or more.

It's even being used to attack moderate Republicans who oppose the anti-immigrant agenda, including Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, who is sponsoring a bill to make it legal for "guest workers" to remain undocumented. He's being attacked in the GOP primary by an extremist anti-immigrant outfit called the Coalition for the Future American Worker (which, you may recall, has also insinuated itself in a Texas congressional race):

"Chris Cannon's bill comes at a time when immigration is costing Utah taxpayers millions," says the radio advertisement playing on several stations along the Wasatch Front.

"When Utah's classrooms are overcrowded, the state is facing water shortages and 15 million Americans can't find full-time jobs. When we now know two of the first World Trade Center bombers were -- you guessed it -- agricultural guest workers driving taxis in New York."

Cannon's campaign said the ads are misleading, especially since the wording is not clear that the message is referring to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, not the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that leveled the two towers.

Meanwhile, up in Oklahoma, state legislators decided to stamp their collective foot and urge the federal government to get tough on illegal immigrants.

The problem? They're too insular. They form their own communities and refuse to learn English:

State Rep. Carolyn Coleman, R-Moore, introduced the resolution May 3. It was signed out of committee without a hearing two days later and approved by the full House on a voice vote May 12.

There was no debate.

"It's over. It's gone," Coleman said Tuesday. She said she was prepared to respond if House members tried to describe the measure as anti-Hispanic, but she never got a chance.

"It just didn't come up," she said.

House Concurrent Resolution 1083 is now before the Senate, where Hispanic activists, playing catch-up, hope to kill it.

The resolution urges President Bush, Congress and the Department of Homeland Security "to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to deal with illegal immigration in the United States."

Coleman said she introduced the resolution because she is tired of illegal immigrants in this country.

"If they want to come in legally through the right channels and integrate into the American culture, that's great. But when they don't integrate and live in their own little subculture, that's not fair to them. They don't learn English. That's not right. We are not multicultural," Coleman said.

Students of history are familiar with these complaints, since they have been leveled against virtually every group of immigrants to come to the United States. Of course, the language complaint also bespeaks a peculiarly American bit of unthinking arrogance about other languages; Americans are possibly the only people on Earth who are positively insulted that people from other nations have failed to learn how to speak English.

The Midwest, as we've noted previously, is quickly becoming a racial and ethnic flashpoint as its Hispanic population continues to swell, particularly in previously heterogeneous white communities.

The attack on multiculturalism, however, is particularly noteworthy here in this context. Because this is the same point at which the far right's most virulent extremists hope to exploit irritation with various immigrants and the appearance of different cultures.

Take, for instance, the recent dustup in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck, where the public broadcast of a mosque's evening calls to prayer were recently approved by city noise ordinance. The response, as Laura Berman reported recently in the Detroit News including attracting the National Alliance:

The National Alliance, a neo-Nazi-like group whose national clubhouse is based in West Virginia, is circulating fliers to oppose the noise ordinance change, which allows a Hamtramck mosque to broadcast its call to prayer by loudspeaker.

The ordinance has made international news. At a recent City Council meeting, a charismatic Christian group from Ohio drove 5 1/2 hours to protest the mosque's "noise."

One little mosque's request for a legal variance has been heard around the world, largely because it's viewed as an emblem of the ongoing culture wars: multiculturalism versus Eurocentrism, religious freedom versus freedom from religion.

So many rights. So little time to fight about them.

Or, as the National Alliance flier sneers, "Has alarm clock technology not found its way to the Middle East?"

The National Alliance, whose hotline recording describes itself as an advocacy group for "white people," is attempting to insinuate itself into a Hamtramck petition drive to overturn the ordinance. Hamtramck organizers have insisted they aren’t allying themselves with the fringe-group Alliance, which likes to say it's a "race-based organization."

I've discussed previously the ways that the current immigration debate are feeding extremist fires. Attacks on multiculturalism particularly have a dark underside to them, since the chief alternative to multiculturalism is white supremacy; and as we can see in all these cases, that force is an important driver in this debate.

Outsourcing the Bush campaign

An alert reader directed us to this piece in the Asia Times:

How India funds Bush's campaign

The story asserts that the Bush campaign outsourced a chunk of its national fundraising work on phone banks, apparently disguising their origin by making them primarily automated calls:

While the Internet provides fertile ground for spoofs on Bush's job being outsourced to India, his task is certainly being made a lot easier by Indians. Until recently, HCL eServe, the business process outsourcing (BPO) arm of Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Technologies, handled Bush's nationwide fundraising campaign over the telephone.

HCL has been very reluctant to provide information about the project, but now that it is over it is more forthcoming, though strictly off the record. According to reports, for 14 months between May 16, 2002, and July 22, 2003, HCL eServe had more than 100 agents working in seven teams soliciting financial contributions for the Republican Party. A report that appeared in the Hindustan Times this Sunday says the task was to mobilize support for President Bush and solicit political contributions ranging between US$5 and $3,000 from legions of registered Republican voters. The report further adds that the voters' database was provided by the Republican National Committee (RNC), the party's premier political organization. The contract for running the campaigns was originally awarded by RNC to Washington-based Capital Communications Group, which provides consulting services to government and private clients for cultural and political networking. For cost and efficiency gains, the company outsourced the work to HCL Technologies, which in turn sent it offshore.

Nobody from HCL BPO Services is willing to go on record to talk about the deal, but sources in the company told Asia Times Online that such a project was under way for a long time, with more than 10 million registered Republican voters contacted for pledging funds. Estimates put the extent of funds pledged due to efforts from India at more than $10 million, with the retrieval of the money being followed up by the RNC. According to the sources, the calling process involved a high degree of automation in order to limit human intervention, with voice recording and recognition technology. In this way the US respondents would not have any idea where the calls were coming from, with foreign-accented instead of Indian voices being used.

It's important to note that the story does not cite anyone on the record from either the Bush campaign nor from HCL -- so at this point, it's anonymously sourced. That alone should be grounds for caution.

It's probably also worth remembering that the claim that Bush was outsourcing his campaign work dates back to early last year, when the New Delhi Business Standard reported a GOP-HCL connection. Buzzflash, you'll recall, picked this up and briefly carried it.

However, the Republican National Committee immediately issued a denial of sorts, through a UPI political report:

The Republican National Committee, through spokesman Kevin Sheridan, completely denies the allegation, telling UPI, "Any report that the Republican National Committee has hired HCL eServe -- the firm mentioned in the original Business Standard article -- is a case of bad reporting, bad business practices or both. The RNC has no affiliation with HCL. Any inference to the contrary is flat out wrong. The RNC has informed both HCL and rediff.com of the inaccuracy of this report."

This was a carefully worded denial with holes large enough to drive large trucks through. The RNC, for instance, is a separate entity from the Bush re-election campaign. Or HCL could even be operating as a subcontractor, meaning the RNC might not have any affiliation with HCL, but one of its contractors might.

So the story has been ignored, at least until the most recent report from the Asia Times. That report, incidentally, does not shed any more light on just which arm of the "Bush campaign" was doing the outsourcing, though it does seem to point the finger directly at the RNC. And while its sources remain anonymous, the paper itself is nonetheless credible enough that its assertions should not be dismissed utterly.

It's worth noting that the report makes clear why Indians are sympathetic to Bush -- namely, as a response to Kerry's anti-outsourcing campaign positions:

The 2004 US elections are witnessing Indian-Americans reaching out to Republican Bush as a reaction to the virulent anti-outsourcing campaign being orchestrated by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Further, given the strides that Indo-US relations have taken under Bush, politically, economically and militarily, the Indian community feels much more comfortable in maintaining this continuity. Bush has himself indicated his pro-India proclivities by promising that he will visit the country next year if he wins re-election. Although India has been unhappy with some of the recent steps taken by the Bush administration, including the granting of special non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) status to Pakistan, India's relations with the United States have been by and large on the ascent.

HCL BPO remains mum about the Bush campaign connection, but it has been covering its bases, if nothing else. If you visit HCL BPO's Web site and thumb through the white papers, a piece titled "The outsourcing-offshoring edge," there's a section addressing "Challenges" that describes "Managing outsourcing backlash from U.S.A."

I think it should be possible to discuss outsourcing without getting xenophobic, but I'm leery of at least some anti-outsourcing sentiments I've heard expressed because that tendency seems latent in them. (I'm reminded at times of the racist activism of much of the labor movement from the 1860s until the 1940s.) Nonetheless, there is something disturbing about the prospect that deeply discounted labor from another nation might be playing a significant role in the election.

Certainly, it would be worth asking someone at the Bush campaign -- and the RNC too -- whether anyone affiliated with Bush's relection phone campaign was outsourcing the work to India. And asking them more questions if they continue to parse their words.

Repeating history

Remember Dolchstosslegende -- the Legend of the Stab in the Back?

It was one of the cornerstone myths of the Nazis, fueling both their rise to power, as well their justification for the Holocaust. The "stab in the back" of the German military in World War I -- and thus the source of German defeat -- you see, was a product of Communists and Jews.

Well, now that the invasion of Iraq is turning out not so well, we're getting a fresh version of the legend, tailored for the 21st century (Josh Marshall noticed it being trotted out awhile back).

Dean Esmay rather approvingly provides us with a recent example.

Back soon

Please forgive the temporary absence. I'm catching up with a lot of untended real-life chores, which are hitting right as my blogging energy is running a little low.

I'm also gestating a lot of the contributed material for the Media Revolt Manifesto and hope to have something like a finished product up this weekend.

In the meantime, please be sure to go to Eschaton and kick in on his pledge week. One of the keys to making blogs effective is having places like Atrios' that function as major clearing houses, places where people gather for information-sharing, community discussion and organizing. Of course, one of the real virtues of Eschaton is that it also features Atrios' commentary, which I consider a model of clear thought and sensibleness. Do what you can to keep it going.

Freeing Lolita

[Lolita/Tokitae at Miami Seaquarium. Photo by Kelly Balcomb-Bartok]

Until she was about seven years old, the whale called Tokitae enjoyed the life of a typical Puget Sound orca: feeding from wild salmon, playing with her family, following her mother's lead as the pod swam through its home waters.

Then, in 1970, she was among a large clan of nearly 100 orcas driven into a Whidbey Island cove by Sea World captors. Five orcas drowned in the capture, their corpses slit open and weighted down with chains to hide the evidence. The captors selected seven whales for sale to various marine parks around the world.

Tokitae was one of them; she was sold to Miami Seaquarium and shipped there in late August. They gave her the performing name of Lolita.

Since then, her life has been a steady routine of confinement in a tiny, acoustically noisy tank that is 30 percent smaller than the old Reino Aventura pool that held Keiko, the whale of "Free Willy" fame whose plight inspired a long campaign to set him free. For the first 10 years, she had the companionship of Hugo, another Puget clan orca, but since his death in 1980, she has been alone in the tank with only the companionship of dolphins and her human trainers.

A typical day for Lolita now entails entertaining the crowds who pack the aging concrete confines of the Miami Seaquarium. The paint is peeling on the underside of the benches, but crowds still come to get a splash from one of Lolita's big breaches. They really applaud when she caps off the show with a giant breach, straight out of the water, with her trainer standing astride her two pectoral fins.

She's been doing it that way for more than 25 years. Day in, day out. Her original veterinarian, the late Jesse White, described her best: "So courageous, and so gentle." Like the late Keiko, she is a charismatic animal, and a big hit with the children.

Lolita is only 32 years old. In the wild, females typically live 60 years, sometimes as long as 90. In captivity, it's quite another story: whale activists say the average lifespan of any orca, male or female, in captivity is nine years (a figure disputed by the industry).

Lolita already has beaten those odds. At 34 years, she is the second-longest-lived captive orca (Sea World's Corky, a Johnstone Strait, B.C., orca, was captured seven months before Lolita). And she is the last surviving orca from the 11 years of Puget Sound captures, which ended with a nasty lawsuit filed by the state of Washington against Sea World in 1975.

That makes her a rare -- indeed, unique -- commodity to a scientist like Ken Balcomb. His life's work has been largely devoted to documenting and monitoring the orcas of Puget Sound; indeed, the 100 or so San Juan orcas are probably the most thoroughly studied wild cetaceans in the world.

A key to understanding orcas' behavior is their unique social structure -- they organize along matriarchal lines, and speak in distinctive dialects. (Using tapes of Lolita's calls and cross-referencing them with wild orcas' calls, Balcomb in 1995 identified Lolita as a member of the Puget Sound resident orcas' L pod.) Reuniting a captive orca with her family in the wild would offer a tremendous amount of valuable information about orcas: their strictures and mores, not to mention their memories. As a relatively unpolluted female orca, she also represents potentially important reproductive stock to a population on the verge of extinction.

Balcomb wants Lolita out of her tiny, decaying tank in Miami. "We propose to retire her to a seapen here in the San Juans, where she can at least live out her days in a natural environment," he says. "And if she establishes contact with her family, and shows an inclination and ability to hunt and roam free, then we may choose to reunite her with her family. But that's far from a given."

So he and his longtime cohort (and half-brother) Howard Garrett have mounted a campaign to accomplish just that (which has now become an adjunct of the larger campaign to rescue the orcas in Puget Sound. It's not just a fly-by-night effort, either: former Washington Gov. Mike Lowry (a Democrat) and ex-Secretary of State Ralph Munro (a Republican) signed on early as supporters.

Balcomb, with his beard and tangled hair and tie-dyed shirts, may have a bit of a wild-eyed image in the stuffed-shirt circles of the aquarium industry, but he's a brilliant and widely respected scientist, and is astute about using the pull such status accords.

Political weight, on the other hand, so far hasn't been able to budge the owners of the Miami Seaquarium.

Arthur Hertz is the president of Wometco, the holding company that owns the Seaquarium and the rights to Lolita. Hertz doesn't talk to the press. And he sure as hell doesn't talk to Ken Balcomb.

His son, Andrew, recently did give an interview to the Seattle P-I's Robert McClure in a recent story about Lolita:

"She's a member of our family, and we're not going to experiment with her just for a vocal minority," says Andrew Hertz, general manager of the theme park on Key Biscayne, just east of downtown.

The Seaquarium is a member in good standing with the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums, the industry lobbying organization, which is largely sponsored by the mega-corporations such as Anheuser-Busch that operate and profit from places like Sea World. And the Alliance has made it clear for years that it opposes any of the plans suggested so far for releasing captive orcas to the wild. Not even Keiko.

"Our position on release in general, is that we do not oppose proper, scientifically based programs for returning animals to the wild that are anchored in principles of conservation biology and have the ultimate goal of sustaining marine mammal species," Marilee Keef, then-director of the Alliance, told me in 1996. "Since killer whales are not endangered, obviously release of killer whales would not have any goal of sustaining the species."

That position hasn't changed appreciably. At the FAQs on its Web site, the Alliance responds to the notion of freeing captive orcas and dolphins thus:

The issue of releasing to the wild whales and dolphins that are currently cared for in marine life parks, aquariums, and zoos can be challenging both emotionally and scientifically. However, to experts concerned about the risks to which release exposes both the individual animal and the wild population, the issue is a simple one. Without a compelling conservation need such as sustaining a vulnerable species, release may be neither a reasoned approach nor a caring decision.

____

[Finna and Bjossa, the Vancouver Aquarium's captive orcas, in 1994. Finna died of a bacterial infection and pneumonia in 1997; Bjossa died in 2001 at Sea World from a chronic respiratory ailment.]

The unhappy outcome of the effort to "free Willy" -- which culminated in the death of Keiko from a respiratory disease he appears to have picked up in the wild -- is now Exhibit A in the Miami Seaquarium's insistence on keeping Lolita. This was mentioned prominently in the P-I piece:

Rose says the "Free Willy" example proves his point. Keiko, the orca released in Iceland after languishing in a Mexican attraction, never did take up with other orcas, instead preferring to hang out around people. Keiko died last year in Norway. Alone.

Activists, though, point out an important difference with Lolita: Everyone knows that her family, the L pod, can be found at regular intervals in Washington's inland sea. She still "speaks" in the native "tongue" of Puget Sound orcas. Keiko, on the other hand, was set free hundreds of miles from where he was captured, where he was unlikely to encounter whales he could relate to.

Still, Rose maintains, "the similarities are greater than the differences."

The differences between Keiko and Lolita's cases run even deeper than described here. However, it's worth noting that Keiko could just as easily have died in captivity of the disease that killed him in the wild. The respiratory ailment that killed Keiko was in fact nearly indistinguishable from the similar infections that regularly kill (at far earlier ages) captive orcas -- the most notable cases, from the Northwest perspective, being the deaths of Finna and Bjossa, the Vancouver Aquarium's two captive orcas, who died in 1997 and 2001, respectively, of lung infections.

In any event, both the Seaquarium and the Alliance maintain that Lolita's situation is similar enough to Keiko's to warrant keeping her captive.

Keef said Lolita has been in captivity too long, adding that she might might carry diseases. Keef thought much of the social and language-skill information that could be gained from releasing Lolita in the wild could be just as simply obtained using telecommunications technology and hydrophones in her tank. She claimed a meeting of Alliance members even urged such a course of action.

Miami Seaquarium officials, though, have refused every opportunity to discuss such experiments. The Alliance has declined to get further involved. "It's not my business to get into the business of one of my members and what he's going to do with one of his animals," said Keef. "We don't take a position on anything like that. That’s Arthur Hertz's decision."

Hertz has refused to even discuss Lolita's sale with the Puget Sound group, though the offers so far are reportedly in the $2-3 million range. Hertz has even refused to discuss selling her to another aquarium; Vancouver Aquarium officials inquired about her availability when they were considering moving one of their own whales, but were turned down.

Hertz's strategy has been to expand his facility. The Seaquarium reportedly made $10 million in profits last year, and it wouldn't make sense for him to sell his star attraction. It's not likely a show without an orca would even come close to those kinds of figures.

But while Hertz digs in his heels, the sand is giving way beneath him. The Seaquarium itself is an aging facility badly in need of repair. As details of just how creaky the tank is have trickled out, local public pressure has risen.

Lolita's pool is the smallest for an orca in the U.S.: only 73 feet wide and 80 feet long. Its upper third is blocked by a large "work island" that the big whale slides across in her big entrance. And the sides of the pool slope out from only 12 feet of depth. The remaining living space for the 22-foot-long whale is only 68 feet wide and 34 feet deep.

Damning video footage, taken by Russ Rector of the Dolphin Freedom Foundation and played on local news stations, offered a view of the underside of Lolita's tank: a Kafkaesque maze of temporary jacks and supports, jury-rigged to keep the steadily leaking tank bottom in one piece. An algae-covered window looks out into the tank; Rector says that when he put his hand on one of these windows as Lolita did her big breach, the glass panel moved a half-inch.

Hertz has promised to improve the pool, but faces one big hitch: he can't. Not yet, anyway.

The Seaquarium is actually located on Key Biscayne, connected to the Miami mainland by bridge. Residents of the Key have clamped down on business expansions as they've tried to rein in growth and traffic problems. They fear that a business like the Seaquarium, which draws more cars across the bridge, would worsen their problems by growing.

So far, all of Hertz's requests for permits to expand anything other than his parking lot have been turned down by Dade County.

What the public campaign involving letter-writing by schoolchildren may not accomplish, however, may in the end be remedied by the harsh realities of building regulations. Hertz appears to be in a corner, since the county's Department of Planning and Development Regulation is threatening to crack down on the Seaquarium because of its growing decrepitude. At the same time, the USDA officials responsible for issuing the Seaquarium's permits may be forced soon to take a closer look at whether or not Lolita's tank even meets federal standards -- which whale advocates say it fails by a wide margin.

Hertz meanwhile has steadily promised improvements and expansions that have never come. For several years, Wometco has been in negotiations with Key Biscayne and Dade County officials for a proposal that would give Lolita a new 2.5-million-gallon tank, about the size of Keiko's luxurious former digs in Newport, Oregon.

As the Orca Network has been documenting, most of Hertz's promises have gone nowhere. Many of the details about the miserable state of the Seaquarium facility can also be found at the "parody" Web site Miami SeaPrison.

The P-I story noted that putting the law to work is proving far more successful in achieving the first objective, which is to get Lolita out of the Seaquarium:

Now the activists are changing their approach. Mother's Day vigils and disrupting the Lolita show with bullhorns or banners have given way to getting the government on their side.

Starting last year, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., activist Russ Rector began calling in government inspectors to remedy dozens of building and electrical code violations.

Seaquarium officials say they are working diligently to correct those problems.

On the heels of the Miami-Dade County building inspectors came those from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Rector also tried, without success, to convince the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service that Lolita's tank is too small to meet regulations.

Rector, a former dolphin trainer who cuts a fearsome appearance with his black eye patch, promises more revelations in the weeks and months to come. His goal: "I'm making them hemorrhage money. ... This is not 'Free Lolita.' This is 'Close the Miami Seaquarium.' "

Were the Miami Seaquarium able to overcome the odds and build a new pool for Lolita, many of the most pressing concerns about her situation -- namely, the size and conditions of her creaky old tank -- would be answered. With the pressure off, Hertz could continue Lolita's captivity indefinitely.

However, that no longer appears to be an operative scenario. Hertz no longer discusses the options for improving Lolita's pool. All that Andrew Hertz has to say is not exactly optimistic:

"I would not be an intelligent man if I were not planning to live without her at some point," Hertz says.

Even the people working to free her don't know how long they have. "We know that whales in captivity only live a few years," says Howard Garrett. "She's already lived far beyond what anyone could expect.

"For Lolita it's just be a matter of time. They very well could wake up one morning and find her dead. That's what usually happens to these orcas."
_____

[Keiko and his handler, Karla Corral, in Newport, Oregon, January 1996.]

Release to the wild was supposed to mean a happy ending for Keiko. In the mind's eye, the idea is almost as simple as the end of the movie: the whale, in a Herculean leap, simply jumps over a retaining wall and is free to return to his family.

The realities of reintroduction are much more complex -- as Keiko's death demonstrated.

"Releasing animals back to the wild can work," says marine biologist Greg Bossert of the Univeristy of Miami, who has studied both Keiko and Lolita and considers them "unfit" for reintroduction. "It can work quite well, if you take certain criteria and do it within those channels.

"We've been releasing manatees, since the 1970s, and we have a very high release rate when certain criteria are met. Those criteria include length of time under the care of man, whether or not there's disease transmission potential, on and on and on."

Keiko had three well-known strikes against him: his weak health, embodied in the papilloma virus that causes skin lesions around his pectoral fins; a lack of hunting skills; and language and social skills, both crucial to survival in the wild, though there was no evidence Keiko did not have them, either.

He overcame the health issues quite readily at the Oregon pool. His food consumption doubled, largely because he became more active; he also permanently shed the skin lesions from his papilloma virus infection. Once transferred to his seapen in Iceland, however, his progress slowed considerably, since he was reluctant to learn how to hunt. He never connected with any of the wild orcas who passed by, either.

Nonetheless, he was released -- some have suggested prematurely -- and he appeared to do well. He thrived in more or less open seas for nearly six weeks, then took to a Norwegian fjord where he was able to obtain human contact. It was clear he hadn't hooked up with his family. And he died suddenly in Norway from a respiratory illness that could have been contracted anywhere, including at an enclosed tank.

As the Orca Network observed:

The only obstacle Keiko could not overcome was that of finding his family, and unfortunately, the lack of human knowledge about Atlantic orcas hampered efforts for his successful reintegration into his wild orca community. Little is known about Atlantic orcas, it is not even known whether the Icelandic and Norwegian populations are one large group or several different communities. Though recordings were made of the wild orcas, and calls similar to Keiko's calls were found, it isn't known if he ever came close to any of his relatives or to orcas that spoke the same language and dialect.

Lolita, by contrast, appears to be a better candidate for release not simply because her health is better, but because scientists have a much better handle on her home social group, which, as Keiko's case demonstrated, could prove crucial to her survival.

But she, too, faces some serious obstacles. The biggest problem for Lolita is that she has been in captivity for so long. "The issue here is you've got a whale that's been under the care of man for [34] years," says Bossert. "My goodness, she's desensitized to just about everything a wild orca would be exposed to."

Bossert speaks from years of reintroducing animals from birds to manatees: "If you look at the figures, the longer an animal stays under the care of man, the less likely it's going to be that the animal is going to be able to survive."

However, orcas and other cetaceans may be unique in their ability to adapt to challenging circumstances because of their clearly superior intelligence. Lolita -- who was, after all, captured when she was nearing adulthood, while Keiko was captured as a young calf of about a year -- could well prove to have the memory and the smarts to regain her old skills. And there's no evidence to suggest orca releases would follow the same survival trends of other lesser species.

Indeed, the argument in favor of reintroducing Lolita to her home pod got a shot in the arm last year when Canadian and American wildlife officials enjoyed a rather spectacular success in reuniting a lost calf who had been dubbed "Springer" to her family members in British Columbia water. The calf was orphaned and wandered into southern Puget Sound, well beyond the boundary where the Canadian orcas ordinarily travel. She made news by cuddling up to boaters in the West Seattle and Vashon Island areas, and many were concerned about the continued ill effects of her exposure to humans.

So federal and state officials ganged up to capture Springer, nurse her back to health, and return her to the waters near where her family was known to roam. Sure enough, she hooked up with them, established herself with them, and has positively flourished since.

Lolita obviously has a similar advantage. And while her long captivity is a big strike against her, her longevity at the same time is a sign she's well-suited to the rigors of reintroduction. "She's incredibly strong, incredibly tough," says Howard Garrett. "If she can survive that much captivity, she probably can do fine on her own."
___

[A wild orca spy-hops in Haro Strait.]

As with Keiko, a whole litany of other reasons not to release Lolita are trotted out by those in the industry: There aren't enough fish in Puget Sound. In a few years, orcas might be as unwelcome as sea lions have become. Lolita might carry some unknown disease with her from Miami, even though she's never been diagnosed with one.

All of the criteria questions raised about Lolita ignore her special status as the last survivor of the Puget Sound captures. Setting other orcas free might have a feel-good effect, but setting Lolita free might provide real scientific data, and important data at that. The potential scientific gains -- which could in fact affect the ability of researchers to sustain the dwindling population in Puget Sound -- might be considered enough to overrule concerns about sticking to standard criteria.

This is, in fact, the one significant change in the landscape that that logically may force at least the Alliance, if not the Seaquarium, to change its position at least as far as Lolita is concerned. The Puget Sound orcas are now in fact a genuinely endangered population -- and the Alliance, at least, continues to state as part of its mission support for projects that enhance their recovery.

When I first began studying orcas in the early '90s, the population of Puget Sound's reswidents was at a relatively healthy -- and seemingly steady -- 90-100 killer whales. But in the late '90s, the numbers began to decline precipitously. Now we're down to about 70 residents, which is likely the genetic-pool tipping point. If they decline much further, they will no longer have a viable population, and their eventual decline and disappearance will be written in stone.

The most recent development on this front was the news that state wildlife officials intend to put the orcas on the state's endangered-species list, event though, as I've been reporting, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to avoid giving the orcas -- or any wildlife -- ESA protection:

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife proposed [March 2] that Puget Sound's orcas be added to the state's list of endangered species, citing a dramatic decline in resident whales.

Providing endangered status at the state level doesn't do as much as a federal listing -- which is being reconsidered -- but environmentalists and orca researchers hope it will help.

"The state is in the driving role when it comes to pollution-control issues and habitat restoration and habitat destruction," said Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound. "The state can do a lot. This is very helpful."

"It's a good idea to list them," said David Bain, a researcher with the University of Washington who studies the effects of sonar and other noise on marine mammals. "The population is small. ... They made the right decision there."

The resident orca population once numbered about 200, but has dropped to a current estimate of 83. A shortage of salmon, their favorite food, combined with high levels of toxic substances in the orcas and harassment by overzealous whale watchers are blamed for the decline.

The National Marine Fisheries Service decided in June 2002 that the Puget Sound killer whales did not qualify for federal endangered-species protection.

In December, a U.S. District Court judge struck down that decision and ordered the agency to review its position by the end of this year. NMFS decided to protect the killer whales under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which is less stringent than endangered-species protection.

The Canadian government already has listed the orcas as endangered.

It's difficult to say to what extent Lolita's return would help with species recovery -- though obviously, if she's still capable of bearing calves (and female orcas are known to reproduce into their 40s) simply adding her to the available genetic pool would be helpful. There may be other useful data as well, particularly regarding their behavioral patterns -- though what that data might be, of course, remains unknown.

In any event, all that's been proposed so far is to retire Lolita to a natural seapen, where she can at least live out her days in a native environment. Alliance officials have so far formulated no response to that plan, though one scientist noted that no one's applied for permits for such a project yet.

In many respects, Lolita makes a superior candidate for release, since her original family is easily located and often passes through the waters where he pen would be. Her health is good, she was older when she was captured and so is more likely to have retained hunting skills, and her history and family origins are fully detailed.

"Personally, I think she's an excellent candidate for release," says John Hall, the former Sea World research director who now advocates against captivity.

Nonetheless, the biggest obstacle for Lolita is probably the most difficult: The successful return to the wild of any orca would increase public demand on the industry to set other whales free.

"Setting Lolita free would set a precedent," says Hall. "They're terrified. They say it won't work, they're going to die, they're going to grow wings and fly to Mars, or pick another reason why it won't work.

"But if it does work, then what the hell do they say? Their credibility goes right out the window."

If it were a mere matter of public opinion, the Alliance's position wouldn't be an obstacle. But its money and influence is pervasive in the scientific community that makes the decisions and guides government policymakers. Scientists who speak out in favor of release tend not to get industry grants later.

If the outlook is bleak for killer whales ever going free, though, it is only because big money is involved. And the cash flow in the captive-orca industry is so high because the animals themselves are so popular.

The very tide of people exposed first-hand to the animals could eventually force the industry itself to change. Orcas have a way of pleading their own case by their very presence. And the public is seeing more of them, and more about them.

"I think there's some of that, where they've had the opportunity to see the animals up close and personal at Sea World or another oceanarium, and then they begin to compare and contrast what they see at Sea World with what they're seeing from documentary movies," says John Hall.

"And then, of course, the kids come home from school, where the kids are using documentaries and CDs and what not -- and I gotta tell you, they are big-time into whales. And the kids get an educational viewpoint at school, as you might expect. They don’t get, 'This Bud's for you.' "

Learning about the animals has bred an unprecedented level of respect for them, hence the desire to treat them better. Moments like the campaign to free Keiko were the first steps in that direction.

There are serious scientific questions that have to be answered before wholesale freeing of orcas could ever occur. In some cases -- especially for the captive-born -- wild release may well be out of the question.

Nonetheless, ending captivity for orcas who can be released ultimately makes sense because it is, indeed, the right thing to do. Anyone who has seen what life is like for a big, free-roaming whale in the wild knows that if they can be returned to their families, they should be.

The people who own orcas eventually will have to confront growing doubts about the wisdom of what they do.

"I've never believed these whales were put here to entertain us," says Ken Balcomb. "These whales belong to themselves, not to us. It's time we treated them that way."

Attracting the centrists

Mark D Lew writes in from vacation:

I like the introduction much more than the manifesto itself. The manifesto is way way too long and needs to be edited back by 50 percent or more. If you're serious about this being an issue that should matter to all Americans and not just liberals, and I think you should be, then you need to cut out all of the partisan stuff. Factual examples of misinformation which happen to align with the left are OK, but there's a whole lot of "this is bad because it put an idiot Republican in office" kind of talk. If you want this to have centrist bipartisan legs, then that stuff has got to go.

Find some real centrists -- you know, people who honestly haven't decided whether to vote for or against Bush -- and have them read it and tell you which sentences turn them off. These people are great at spotting snarky partisan sniping which we tend to overlook because it just seems normal to us. I think the thoughtful center, including "grown-up" Republicans, is the natural engine for this movement. A large percentage of liberals would be perfectly happy with misinformation as long as it supports our side instead.

I might have more later, but that's my overwhelming reaction: that this movement be made non-partisan and as currently stated it is not.

The consumer is the problem

Lorne Colmar writes in with a provocative angle:

[The Manifesto] succinctly summarised many of my own feelings regarding the decline in journalistic and editorial standards across the media over the last decade or so. The increasing emphasis placed upon trivia, banality and superficiality substantially contributed to my decision to curtail my journalism career here in the UK several years ago. Though effectively an outsider since then, I have nevertheless continued to note the progressive decline in quality and relevance of both print and broadcast reportage.

As indicated, as a UK resident I am not exposed to the full range of US media so am perhaps not best placed to make authoritative observations on the specific issues you raised. Such impressions as have been gained about the dire straits of contemporary American journalism have come through the likes of the Web and satellite television broadcasting of US news output. In spite of this somewhat arbitrary exposure though, I have discerned considerable similarities between the news environments of the US and UK. Principal amongst these is the discernable shift away from delivering hard news and analysis in favour of the bastard concept "infotainment".

So it was with considerable sympathy that I read your call-to-arms. And yet, for all I may endorse both the sentiment and proposals, I can't but help feel they are doomed to failure. This is not to say one should never try -- quite the contrary. But the pessimism is born of what is to my mind *the* major obstacle in the way of improving the quality of news delivery. It also happens to be an issue that was not touched upon in your piece. It is one that I feel is so important that I felt the need to draw attention to it.

This problem? This blight? This mighty obstacle? This barrier to a Brave New World of journalism?

The Consumer.

Beyond any shadow of a doubt in the US (and to a lesser -- though still noticeable -- extent in the UK) news is a commercial product. It is just another commodity in the product range of media companies. Media companies of any size, shape or form ranging from the News International behemoth right down to the most modest local community newspaper. In order to continue in operation, they must deliver a product that a sufficient number of consumers are willing to pay for.

And that's the crux. It strikes me that the news agendas and policies drive the quality, accuracy and innate newsworthiness of reportage. These agendas and policies are, in turn, driven by the perception of public demand -- encapsulated in that unforgiving beast of the ratings figures. Of course, there's nothing new in ratings or circulation wars -- they were as evident back in the days of Hearst and Rothermere as they are today. The difference now though is that the battlefield has become so much more fragmented. There is now such a plethora of news outlets that the consumer is overwhelmed by choice. In order to attract attention and, consequently, ratings the presentation of news has inevitably strayed into the realm of entertainment rather than analysis. All an effort to differentiate one outlet from another. To my mind, there is no other reason to explain why, for instance, we've witnessed the dramatic rise to prominence of the abjectly terrible Fox "News".

Further to that, the ever-increasing influence of broadcast news as an opinion-former and the commensurate decline in that of the print media does not augur well for the future. At the pinnacle lie the 24-hour news channels. In order to survive commercially, they must deliver a product that is continually attractive to their consumers. They all aspire to be modern-day Nathan Bedford Forrests by being "fastest with the mostest". But therein lies an endemic weakness that will inevitably erode any desire to deliver a quality news product. Since news doesn't arrive on the scene per a predictable timetable, the need to fill broadcast time gives two options -- repeat what you have already shown (something you can only do for so long before viewers get bored and change the channel) or fill the vacuum with op-ed pieces, pundit commentaries or, more often than not, outright speculation. Driven by the ratings, the 24-hour news channels have discerned an appetite amongst viewers for this kind of insubstantial fluff masquerading as pertinent commentary. Conflict makes news, so the philosophy is that it's better to have a raging argument rather than a calmer, reasoned discussion. So the downward spiral starts. To sate the thirst for such vicarious "entertainment", the protagonists become ever more outrageous, the "facts" used ever more questionable and so forth. We have returned to the sphere of entertainment yet again.

But it works. It is commercially successful. And the blame can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of the consumer. This is not to exonerate the purveyors of sloppy or partisan reporting of their transgressions against the main principles of traditional journalism. But it remains the case that they, their sub-editors, editors and producers are all only part-players in the greater drama. So while all of us frustrated and disappointed with the current dire state of journalism may bemoan that fact, I remain convinced that the finger of blame must be pointed where it deserves to be. Rather than advocating a new manifesto to govern the practise of objective journalism I really do think the first step has to be at grass roots. For without a sea change in the apathetic, naive, ignorant, isolationist and trivia-obsessed attitudes of Joe Public the environment will remain too poisonous to allow a reformed journalism to blossom and flourish.

Overlapping interests

Charles Sanson write in:

I have only one major objection: the underlying assumption that the degredation of journalism has something to do with its absorption of a conservative agenda. I'm not conservative, and I'm highly partisan, but it's clear to me that conservatives have no monopoly on bad journalism.

Plus, if the revolt is to be successful, the left AND the right are going to have to put some of their differences aside to confront the big media monoliths. And we all know that some of the most vociferous critiques of the mass media are levelled by right wingers and conservatives. On my blog I've spent a great deal of time attempting to show that the demands and interests of the left and the right (both of which are marginalized in the mainstream press) overlap on some of the most important issues of the day, and media reform is not the least important among them. When the FCC voted last year to ease restrictions on media ownership, Congress acted almost immediately to criticize the ruling because groups across the political spectrum immediately rose up to voice stringent disapproval of the FCC ruling. The NRA and conservative Christian radio groups suddenly found themselves allied with the likes of Pacifica Radio media activists, anti-globalists and left wing anti-corporatists.

I think if you were to substitute references to the two-party system or the political mainstream for what you basically term "conservative influence," your critique would not only be more accurate, it would not automatically alienate conservatives who would otherwise agree with your overall point.

Some Ivan Weissdom

Ivan Weiss writes in from Vashon Island:

I read the entire manifesto. Having spent most of my life in daily newspaper journalism, most of it rang true to me. Since I read your blog every day, I know where you're coming from with this.

Rather than respond to all of it point by point, please let me offer a couple of things to think about. Hopefully these will clarify and refine the message somewhat.

1) In discussing the role and the potential of the blogosphere, you danced all around the central point, but never nailed it. Each mass media outlet is "one-to-many" communication. Blogs are "many-to-many" communication. In mass media, the feedback channels are constricted. In blogs, they are wide open. The "many-to-many" nature of the blogs gives them the "self-correcting" nature you referred to.

There's nothing new about the term "many-to-many," of course. I mention it because of the effect I have seen it have on people who haven't heard it before. I can almost see the light bulb going on over their heads as they begin to comprehend what it means,and where it might go.

2) It means democratization of news gathering and news analysis. It means real and serious competition for the mass media. It is making manifest, in relative warp speed, the full flowering of the process described in Daniel Boorstin's "The Americans: The Democratic Experience," and R. Buckminster Fuller's "Utopia or Oblivion" (both highly recommended).

3) Boorstin also described the process in the volume that preceded "The Democratic Experience," "The Americans: "The National Experience," in which he presented an irrefutable case for the American genius for ad hoc social organization. I do not know if you have read this book, but your call to action is in this grand tradition.

4) Boorstin again. If you haven't already, please read "The Image," in which he rails against made-up shit (he calls it "pseudo-event") which is created as an abstraction, or a derivative, and covered as if it were real news. In this scenario, celebrity becomes its own reason for existence, which you allude to. This book was written in the mid-sixties (!) Thirty years later, I was still getting blank stares from newspaper editors when I told them they were wasting too much time on pseudo-events.

I blog on Daily Kos. I am not interested in being a gatekeeper, even though that's exactly what I was in 30-plus years on the wire desk at the Seattle Times. And I'm not interested in pontificating about events in Iraq or in Washington DC.

I'm here in Seattle, and there's plenty to write about that I see and hear and participate in first-hand. somebody needs to observe. There are enough people out there who just bloviate. I like to think I know where what I see and hear fits in the big picture, and that I know who my audience is.

Scoring lots of points

Bob Snodgrass writes in from Pasadena:

I'm very impressed with your manifesto. It can and should be shortened and improved. Many of the comments were excellent, including Burt Humburg's comments. My experiences as a Dean worker are relevant: The Deanies bogged down in November & December with blogging, mutual admiration and Internet communications, which just don't reach enough people. Quite a few of my college classmates, for example, either have no Internet access at all or their Internet life is limited to checking email once a week.

1) The manifesto is excessively anti-Republican and anti-Conservative. This may indulge our emotions, but we need traction with the general public. I dislike George Will's politics and his attitude, but he uses words carefully, we can learn from him, and he had an column on the disintegrating Bush Iraq policy: Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice ... "I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be" -- quoting Alexander Hamilton, That is the core of conservatism. Yes, we want people to see the world as it is, not as portrayed by advertisers or the media. See The Realities of Iraq. This is a difference between science and any religion: science says let's do an experiment or trial project, whereas many religions say just turn to the Bible, Qu'ran, etc.

2) Fair and balanced is now a garbage term, just like "judicial activism." Also, Humburg is absolutely right that scientific issues should not be treated in an equal manner. There are a small number of scientists who don't accept evolution and others (occasionally the same ones) who a. don’t believe either that global warming is occurring or b. that it has nothing to do with human activities. It's reasonable to start out with the majority point of view, explain how we know that it's the majority point of view, admit that it could be wrong and give a small (less than equal time) to the minority. A non-American commentator often helps enormously to balance some of these issues. Science is not a collection of facts, it is a process and the process does not operate by taking polls or voting. It is most reliable when based upon experiments. There is excellent experimental evidence for evolution but very little that bears closely on the origin of life.

3. Science is very important in many ways. Our country and our world face major problems that can be handled on the basis of ideology, but would be better handled by a science-based approach:

1. We have major water problems in the Western United States now, approaching Dust Bowl proportions. Do we allow developers to add thousands of homes to Arizona, Southern California and other desert states? Do we allow private companies to buy water, hoard it and sell it later at high prices?

2. World grain production has been dropping; world grain reserves are the lowest that they've been in 30 years. While higher grain prices may help ADM, the question is how the country and the UN can best deal with the serious hunger issues now visible coming over the horizon.

3. Oil poses a whole set of problems -- the media would encourage the government to reduce gasoline taxes and pollution controls because high prices are hurting us. We need a long-term view that includes higher taxes on low mileage vehicles. By the way, the idea of hydrogen fuel cells for cars is no slam dunk. Separation of hydrogen and oxygen from water requires energy input. Other kinds of fuel cells may be better because they add fewer easy targets for terrorism and require less energy up front (e.g. methanol fuel cells among others).

4. What about the twin disasters of Social Security and health care? Social security can actually be handled easily by small increases in the payroll tax, if we can insure that all the money collected goes to social security not to the DOD. Medicare and health care in general are much less tractable than social security. I'm 67, but I see no reason to provide better healthcare to the elderly than to children or any other group. The number of uninsured people is rising; many Wal-mart employees fall into this group. You and I pay for Medicaid, which covers some Wal-mart employees (nobody knows how many) so we subsidize Wal-mart's low wage, minimum benefit policy. While we can have a small effect by favoring Costco over Wal-mart (Costco provides decent wages and benefits), none of these problems: water, food, pollution, transportation, retirement and health care can be handled without a long term viewpoint and massive revision of our crooked tax codes. Getting Bush out won't solve any of these problems?

5. We should be against dogmatism, not religion. It's dogmatism when groups of the disabled insist that we must keep touch screen voting in spite of its facilitating gross errors and fraud simply because it permits a blind voter to vote without any hum an assistance. The first priority must be honest and believable elections -- Egypt has elections, but nobody believes the result. It's destructive for every group to putting its needs first. Why did the air traffic controllers' union insist that the 9/11 tapes be destroyed?

6. There must be some fun in life. Blogs are fine, but they aren't fun. Music can provide fun especially if there is a wide range of music -- Monday, Appalachian folk music, Tuesday, Colombian cumbias, etc. I'm talking about a radio station, not NPR and not dogmatic like AirAmerica nor Pacifica which are combat vehicles.

7. We can't reach average people if we use words like blogosphere.

Getting face to face

Jay Taber writes in:

OK, so maybe it's time for a face-to-face group discussion. Personally, I prefer no media, no bosses, no elections, and no representatives, kind of along the Bolivian neighborhood council model, but we can hash out details.

As for providing useful information, accessible to community organizers, you're already doing it. Movement professionals can help those who fight back, but we can't mobilize them in any authentic, lasting fashion. They have to do that for themselves. While we're waiting, we can prepare communication infrastructure and educational materials in anticipation of what we think will be helpful, but ultimately, we'll have to assist in providing what resisting communities themselves determine they need.
Consider me as standing by.

Focus on what's missing

Chris Montgomery writes in:

What we really should be attacking is not the media directly but the government policies behind it. This should be priority No. 1. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 compounded the problem and the FCC is making matters worse. Limits on media ownership must be put back in place. Without these actions we're spinning our wheels.

Propaganda and infotainment "news" must be outed for what it is. Crank up that blogsphere echo chamber and expose the truth. Try to embarass into action whatever real journalists are actually left. The right has done this with the liberal media myth and look how much traction that has.

Try to stay focused on what's missing in mainstream news, objectivity and analysis. This is something I believe the Left, Right and Center can agree on. We have way too many opinions and not enough facts. As much better men have said, "The truth will set you free." Only ideologues would take issue with that (Fox News, are you listening?).

Accuracy, science and the 'digital divide'

Paula (aka Stonerwitch) writes in with three very good points:

-- Accuracy in reporting events and in analysis should, in every single case without exception for the forseeable future, trump "balance" as the highest journalistic value and measure of journalistic integrity.

Accuracy is by its very nature already "fair" and "balanced." The fact of any matter does not need to be "balanced" by the inclusion of opinions based on inaccuracy. It is my personal belief that the press have become so paranoid of being labeled "biased" by conservatives that the actual facts of most issues have been watered down to the point of being meaningless. For example, it is simply a fact that the president gave Americans false reasons for making war on Iraq, whether by accident or by design. The story here is not whether this is a fact, as it has been largely covered. The story here is whether he lied on purpose or whether he is simply a puppet of his neocon masters. The only purpose "balance" serves in this case is to maintain the president's unaccountability to voters.

At this moment in time, "balance" is a code word for the inclusion of conservative propaganda in what should be a watchdog press. It serves no purpose except to maintain confusion, ignorance, and fear among the citizenry. Opinions belong on the op-ed page, NOT mixed in with the reporting of actual facts. It has gotten so bad almost all issues appear to be he-said/he-said situations, which detracts from the importance of real issues and contributes to the polarization of American politics.

Furthermore, it ties journalists' and editors' hands insofaras as time and column inches must be allocated for "balance," when that time and space would be better spent on reporting actual facts and exploring issues in depth.

Until the word "balance" can again be used in its original meaning and intent, it should be abandoned in favor of accuracy.

-- The blogosphere should actively recruit trained scientists of all stripes, especially those trained in the hard sciences, to report and analyze the science-based policy stories that arise.

A vast number of current events are grounded in the sciences, about which the American public is left to make decisions based on whether they "believe" or "disbelieve" the science, as if science were a matter of faith. Stem-cell research, all environmental issues, all health issues, the Mars plan, peak oil, computer technologies, emerging technologies such as nanotech and bioengineering, the fight against science in the classroom, and countless other stories are all grounded in science that the general populace does not understand. Moreover, the ongoing terrorist threat to Americans also involves a great deal of chemistry, physics, engineering and biology about which most people are ignorant. Without genuine scientific information, Americans cannot make informed political choices and are subject to government, corporate, and special-interest propaganda regarding these and other critical science-related issues.

-- The blogosphere may be a great democractizer, but steps need to be taken to insure that the work done in the blogosphere makes it into the hands of those on the far side of the digital divide. IMO, the best way to do this is to reinvigorate the American traditions of the alternative press and pamphleteering. This involves costs; however, printing technology is now immeasurably simpler and more affordable than it was in the past. If those who came before us could pull it off, we certainly should be able to in this age of print-on-demand, laser printers, word processors and the like.

A Manifesto feedback day

I've been getting tons of mail about Media Revolt: A Manifesto, as you might expect. Some of the best of it appears in the comments to the original post. Some of it has been e-mailed.

Today I'm going to publish a pile of the e-mails, at least those that made me think the most. As you'll see, I'm blessed with smart and often erudite readers with a lot of great ideas themselves. You can see why I wanted to make this a kind of open process.

While I'm at it, I should mention again that the post has spurred some excellent discussion on the Web. While my earlier update links to most of these, a latecomer is my friend Jeremy's piece at Fantastic Planet, which is definitely worth a read.

Also, be sure to check out the excellent and insightful analysis at cassandra was right!.

Finally, the lovely and talented Jo Brooks at WildHorse.com and thousand yard glare (and a fellow American Streeter) has created another PDF file that you can download right here. The links work on this version.

Sour Krauthammer

We already knew that Charles Krauthammer is an ethically vacuous dissembler prone to fits of bizarre narcissism and projection. So perhaps this latest column should not come as a big surprise.

But still.

Here, check it out:

The Abu Ghraib Panic

Democrats calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation invoke the principle of ministerial responsibility: a Cabinet secretary must take ultimate responsibility for what happens on his watch. Interesting idea. Where was it in 1993 when the attorney general of the United States ordered the attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, which ended in the deaths of 76 people?

Janet Reno went to Capitol Hill and said, "It was my decision, and I take responsibility." This was met with approving swoons and applause. Was she made to resign? No. And remember: This was over an action that did not just happen on her watch but that she ordered -- an action that resulted in the deaths of, among others, more than 20 children.

Well. Where to start, where to start.

How about by first pointing out that unlike Janet Reno, Secretary Rumsfeld has deflected all blame onto lower-ranking military personnel, while even leaving intact such walking disaster areas as Stephen Cambone, Jerry Boykin and Peter Schoomaker. Reno, in contrast, actually offered her resignation, but it was refused by President Clinton. (Her real mistake, it must be said, was in not firing Louis Freeh -- the Bush pere holdover whose poor oversight was at the core of the disaster.)

As for the notion that Reno's response was "met with approving swoons and applause," the rality is that a number of Republicans in Congress in 1993-94 did call for Reno to resign over Waco. These House members were considered part of the "far right" contingent, but their increasing empowerment by the GOP establishment was clear when more than a few of them (e.g., Bob Barr) could be seen parading before the Senate as members of the House impeachment committee in 1999.

It's useful, too, to recall the reaction from the far right, which began referring to Reno as "the baby-burning Witch of Waco" and "Janet Nero." Republicans such as Rep. Helen Chenoweth (who did in fact call for Reno to resign) led congressional hearings into the "abuse of police powers" that provided an official stage for an interesting mix of conspiracy theories, which overwhelmed any serious issues. And within a few years, all of this indeed migrated to the "mainstream" right, where sneering abuse of Reno became a commonplace for right-wing pundits. Of course, in 1999, Sen. Trent Lott, then the Majority Leader, in fact began issuing calls for Reno's resignation over Waco.

But the reeking lie at the heart of this column lies in this sentence:

This was over an action that did not just happen on her watch but that she ordered -- an action that resulted in the deaths of, among others, more than 20 children.

As I've just gotten done recounting, the fact is the assault plan that unfolded on the Waco compound was not the one approved by Reno. Rather, it was a secondary plan that had been placed in the wings as a backup, and was only to have been pulled out in dire circumstances. But it was the plan that the tactical unit preferred. Within minutes of the operation approved by Reno, the agents on the scene pulled the plug and resorted to their preferred plan. (One of the conditions under which they were allowed to do so was if the Branch Davidians fired on FBI agents; when this occurred about seven minutes into the gradual-gassing assault, Plan B went into effect.)

The final irony: The two Delta Force officers whose advice led to the formulation of the ultimately disastrous Plan B that Krauthammer decries here are none other than Jerry Boykin and Peter Schoomaker -- two figures now at the center of the Abu Ghraib fiasco.

So, just for those keeping score of things in Krauthammer Bizarro World:

Abu Ghraib is a fiasco just like Waco. Which is why Rumsfeld shouldn't resign, but Janet Reno should've. Even though Rumsfeld prominently involves at Abu Ghraib the same men who made Waco a fiasco.

Taking terrorism seriously

I've been critical on more than one occasion of the failure of the Bush administration generally and Ashcroft's Justice Department particularly to take domestic terrorism seriously. So it's only appropriate to take note when it's clear that this is not always so.

In Florida, where a right-wing extremist with Ranger training was preparing to launch an Eric Rudolphesque terror rampage, prosecutors are not shying away at all from calling the case one of "domestic terrorism":

Feds ask judge to sentence clinic-bomb plot suspect as terrorist

Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to sentence a deeply religious former Army Ranger as a terrorist for planning an abortion clinic bombing spree.

Stephen John Jordi, 35, a father of four who lived in a trailer park in Coconut Creek, pleaded guilty to a single count of attempted arson in February.

But the charge doesn't reflect the nationwide campaign of terror Jordi planned to unleash to force abortion clinics out of business, prosecutors John Schlesinger and Gerald Greenberg said in court papers.

They are asking U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn to send Jordi to prison for more than the mandatory minimum term of five years dictated by federal sentencing guidelines. The prosecutors plan to announce the specific sentence they're seeking at a June 11 hearing in Fort Lauderdale.

It's worth noting that the prosecution is occurring under the aegis of the anti-terrorism law that was passed in 1996 in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and the mounting attacks on abortion clinics.

Most of all, it's worth noting both the scope of Jordi's plans and the likelihood he was fully capable of carrying them out:

Jordi scouted several potential bombing targets last summer in Fort Lauderdale, the court papers state. Talking about his mission to save the lives of unborn children, Jordi told the informant: "Yep, there's a war going on, with casualties." He said he planned to carry out clinic bombings "for the next 30-40 years, or at least until I get caught."

On the tapes, Jordi spoke of being a disciple of Paul Hill, who was executed in September for the 1994 murder of a Pensacola doctor who performed abortions. Jordi wrote to Hill on Death Row, and Hill wrote back thanking him for his support, according to court records.

The informant accompanied Jordi to Hill's execution in Starke. During a demonstration outside the prison, Jordi was photographed with leaders of the Children of God, described in court papers as an underground group that thinks violence is justified to end abortion.

But unlike Hill, Jordi said he wasn't interested in killing doctors.

"I don't have the means to hunt them down, to do surveillance and shoot them down," he told the informant. "But I do have the means to take out abortion clinics, which is more monetary and still very frightening." A few moments later, he added, "Right now Planned Parenthood has been bombed so much that they cannot have insurance. ... They have to provide their own insurance."

Court records indicate Jordi was motivated by Hill's execution as well as the capture of serial bomber Eric Rudolph a year ago. Rudolph, accused of orchestrating bombings of abortion clinics, gay bars and Atlanta's Olympic Park, disappeared into the Appalachian Mountains for five years before he was apprehended. He is awaiting a federal trial in Alabama.

We're very fortunate this man was caught before he had a chance to carry out those plans. This is mostly due to the man's relatives alerting authorities; but, once alerted, the FBI did a superb job of investigating the man and short-circuiting his planned bloodbath. The Justice Department's prosecution so far is consonant with that work.

The Brown Peril: GOP values in action

If anyone wanted a nice, clear example of the way supposedly educated and informed minds can be muddled by propaganda and smear campaigns, they should check out what the Washington Times recently reported happened in Palo Alto:

Stanford University students have voted to stop funding the Chicano group MEChA after a series of articles in the conservative Stanford Review accused the organization of racism.

In what is believed to be the first such vote on any college campus, Stanford students voted 1,357 to 1,329 to withhold MEChA's special fees, which amount to more than $40,000. The students voted about five months after articles in the Review cited anti-white statements in MEChA documents and compared the group to the Ku Klux Klan.

The anti-MEChA campaign bore all the hallmarks of Scaife-funded operations like Stanford Review: divisiveness, overheated hyperbole, and outright smears, all for the sake of scoring a symbolic victory against a multiculturalist institution:

"This was a huge, huge victory for us," said Mr. Cohen, a Stanford junior. "We were the only group calling for students not to fund MEChA, and we've been calling for this for years now. We didn't really expect it to happen, so we were pleasantly surprised."

However, campus MEChA leaders said the vote was based on "misinformation," insisting that the modern club no longer subscribes to all the views in the founding documents, according to the Stanford Daily, the school newspaper.

Indeed, the Times report itself repeats this same misinformation as fact, as in this "factiod":

The plan's motto, "Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada," means, "For the race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing."

In reality, this is a phony translation, as I explained some time back:

A more accurate translation of the slogan would recognize that though "Por" translates to the English "For," it is used in a very specific sense of the word -- namely, "On behalf of" or "In the service of". "Fuera" is not "for those outside" but rather refers to the speaker, and means "Apart from." So what the slogan actually says is this:

In the service of the race, everything
Apart from the race, nothing

There is nothing remotely racist, particularly in the sense of being exclusionist or derogatory, about this, of course. The second line clearly only refers to the need to maintain one's ethnic and cultural identity. It is only racist if you deliberately mistranslate it: "For those outside the race, nothing."

Regular readers will recall that I've discussed MEChA at length several times on this blog, including here, here, here and here(Probably the most thorough post is the one cited above.)

Well, as you can tell from the report in the Times, the embarrassing Stanford vote is being hailed as a bicoastal victory against invading brown hordes everywhere.

Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, we discover that Maryland's governor has similarly, er, interesting ideas about the proper behavior of Latino immigrants:

Ehrlich Calls Multiculture Idea 'Bunk'
Radio Show Remarks Offend Latino Leaders

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. thinks that multiculturalism is "bunk" and that immigrants should assimilate to their new surroundings by learning to speak English.

And he said so on Baltimore talk radio this week, wading without hesitation into the controversy triggered by Comptroller William Donald Schaefer's earlier public complaint about an awkward encounter he had with a Spanish-speaking fast-food worker.

"I reject the idea of multiculturalism," Ehrlich (R) said on WBAL-AM (1090) radio. "Once you get into this multicultural crap, this bunk, you run into a problem. With respect to this culture, English is the language. Should we encourage young folks here to be assimilated, to learn the culture and values? Of course."

Ehrlich said his views on this topic are "very similar" to those of Schaefer (D), the cantankerous former governor who often uses meetings of the Board of Public Works as a public forum to gripe about the daily indignities of life. In this case, that meant sounding off about not being able to communicate with a Spanish-speaking McDonald's employee as he tried to buy a breakfast sandwich.

"I don't want to adjust to another language," Schaefer, 82, said Wednesday. "This is the United States. I think they ought to adjust to us."

A few days later, the stench from Ehrlich's remarks still lingered. He of course refused to apologize:

A week into the controversy, Ehrlich said he "didn't mean to offend anyone" and blamed criticism on "the politically correct crowd."

"I really believe the incredible support my statement has received all around the state reflects the view of the state," he added.

Of course, I'd just remind everyone of a small point I made some time back regarding multiculturalism: Castigate it for its many sins if you will, but keep in mind that multiculturalism arose as a direct response to, and repudiation of, white supremacism. It would behoove those who attack it now to explain to us just what they have in mind to replace it with.

Why was Nick Berg detained?

It's already been widely reported that the family of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old Pennsylvania man gruesomely beheaded on videotape, allegedly by one of Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenants, largely blames the Bush administration for their son's death:

The slain man's father, Michael Berg, laid the blame for his son's death Thursday at the feet of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in the interview with radio station KYW-AM of Philadelphia.

... Berg, who put a sign on the front lawn reading "War Is Not The Answer," also attacked Bush administration for its invasion of Iraq and its sponsorship of the USA Patriot Act, which gave increased powers of surveillance to the federal government.

Berg described the Patriot Act as a "coup d'etat." He added: "It's not the same America I grew up in."

The Bergs were notably opposed to the Iraq war, unlike their son, who was a supporter of the invasion and the Bush administration generally. So perhaps some of this can be explained as a matter of emotion.

But the problem is that there's a real mystery around Nick Berg's abduction, and getting answers to it should be important. See what else the family has to say, which is not so easy to dismiss:

Questions about Berg's stay in Iraq remain, including the time and place of his abduction. U.S. and Iraqi officials have offered varying accounts of their contacts with Berg. U.S. officials have said Berg was detained by Iraqi police, but his family says he was in the custody of coalition forces who should have seen to his safety.

To back its claims that Berg was in U.S. custody, the family showed The Associated Press an e-mail message dated April 1 from Beth A. Payne, the U.S. consular officer in Iraq.

"I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly," the message said.

CBS News reported Thursday that Berg was questioned by FBI agents who discovered that he had been interviewed before because a computer password he used in college had turned up in the possession of Zacarias Moussaoui, who is charged with conspiracy in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

CBS said the FBI had concluded that there was nothing sinister in that. The FBI had no comment on the report.

Nicholas Berg's brother, David Berg, called on the government to come clean about its contacts with Berg before he died. He is believed to have been kidnapped within days of his release by either Iraqi police or coalition forces.

Dan Senor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, had insisted Wednesday that Berg was held by Iraqi, not U.S., authorities. He said, however, that the FBI visited Berg three times before he was released April 6.

Other U.S. officials said Wednesday that Iraqi police arrested Berg in Mosul on March 24 because they believed he may have been involved in "suspicious activities." Berg had told friends that he was arrested in Mosul because he had an Israeli stamp in his passport.

In an e-mail message his family gave to The New York Times, Berg wrote to his parents after his April 6 release that federal agents had questioned him about whether he had ever built a pipe bomb or had been in Iran.

The police chief in Mosul, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi, said Thursday that his department never arrested Berg and maintained that he had no knowledge of the case.

Another recent report from CNN raised further questions about who detained Berg and why:

Slain American Nicholas Berg told a friend that he had been arrested by Iraqi police, detained briefly, and then handed over to U.S. troops who held him in a coalition facility for almost two weeks, the friend said.

Chilean freelance journalist Hugo Infante told CNN that weeks before the videotape of Berg's grisly death emerged on the Internet, "Nick told me, 'Iraqi police caught me one night, they saw my passport and my Jewish last name and my Israeli stamp. This guy thought I was a spy so they put me with American soldiers and American soldiers put me in a jail for two weeks.'"

Infante stays at the $30-a-night Al Fanar Hotel, where Berg was staying, and regularly chatted and shared drinks with him.

Infante said Berg told him that Iraqi police were suspicious of the electronics equipment he was carrying for his work on radio communications towers when he was arrested in Mosul.

Infante's comments about Berg's whereabouts during that time period echo those made by Berg's family.

Infante's statements come a day after coalition authorities in Baghdad denied they had held Berg between March 24 and April 6, saying that he was in sole custody of Iraqi police.

Who, of course, deny that he was ever in their custody.

Why was Nick Berg detained in the first place? And just who was detaining him? The answers so far have been murky. The power relationship between Iraqi police and American authorities is underscored by the three visits Berg said he received from FBI agents.

A recent report from Break For News certainly raised some eyebrows in this regard, suggesting that Berg was detained because his family's business had been placed on a Free Republic "enemies list" that included the following entry:

"Michael S. Berg, Teacher, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc."

The Freeper posts are, as always, conspicuously odious. The worst:

"I believe this [Michael S. Berg appears in the "enemies list"] is the father of Nick Berg - I wonder what he thinks about his Muslim buddies now..."

The Break For News report goes on to detail some instances in which Free Republic retaliation may have actually occurred against targets in the real world, but no evidence is given that any of them actually occurred -- a problem, given that so many Freepers are prone to fantasizing.

Then it goes rather completely off the rails by suggesting that the assassins were someone -- perhaps even Karl Rove operatives? -- other than Musab al-Zarqawi, who the article paints as mostly a "propaganda creation." Again, there's no evidence, only supposition.

These are at best interesting possibilities, but the evidence for them is scant. As always, it's best to focus on the serious questions with a factual basis.

What needs explaining now are the issues raised by Berg's family and friends. Was Berg actually held at an American facility, as his journalist friend said? Why did a government official send an e-mail explaining he was in custody of the U.S. military?

And while it may be premature to ask whether a Free Republic list was used by personnel in Iraq to target possible "enemies", it's certainly not a reach to ask why Nick Berg's business was a target of suspicion, and how he came to be detained.

The chest-thumping jingoes who have been so quick to exploit this death, however, may yet be chagrined to discover it does not reflect at all well on their side.