Dan Okrent, former public editor of the NYT after getting fire for criticizing NYT columnist Paul Krugman only in his very last piece for the paper:

But I laid off for so long because I also believe that columnists are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data.

From now on, (if you not already do so,) please read any NYT and WaPo, and WSJ, and LAT, … columnist knowing that their paper’s official public editor approved policy is to allow them the ‘instruments’ of:

unfair use of statistics

misleading representation of opposing positions

conscious withholding of contrary data

Yes, maybe you did know that this was their policy all along. But I am still somehow astonished that an official ‘right to lie’ for MSM columnist is put on record, while the same media corp folks bang bloggers for not being "fair and balanced".

Chad, [a Southern Baptist missionary stationed in Madrid, Spain,] .. says it is a tough place to share the gospel and when he approaches people, a typical response is, "Oh, we already know about all that. We don’t need it."

The region is marked by "a spiritual deadness that you can’t believe," Chad notes. "To me it’s the hardest mission field on the planet right now.  .."

The American missionary believes Europe can be viewed as a sort of bellwether for the future cultural and spiritual scene in the U.S. "Living in Europe," he says, "I see Europe as probably 50 years ahead of where the U.S. is going spiritually. In Madrid, the Spanish equivalent of the House of Representatives just legalized same-sex marriages."

What has descended on Western Europe, Chad asserts, is "just a spiritual darkness. …

Western Europe’s Darkness Foreshadows America’s Spiritual Decline

News, views, opinions ..

According to this report there is still no local government formed in the Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq. The election for a local parliament and government were held together with the central election at the end of January.

Four month later, the autocratic leaders of the two main Kurdish parties are still fighting about the choice for and role of a regional president. The elected members of the regional parliament have yet to meet.

Cont. reading: What would I do?

There are political turmoils in France, hidden behind the dis-affirmation of the European constitution, and in Germany now open in the campaigns for the federal election.  In the United States the discussion about Social Security and about the election of judges, who are committed to a pre-Roosevelt state, are extensive.

All these arguments are results of economical problems in these developed countries a decade after three billion "new capitalists" in developing countries entered the global market place.

Central to the discussions, though sometimes hidden, is the role of the state in social welfare – defined as health care, education and unemployment and retirement safety. There are three models for the role of the state in these fields.

Cont. reading: Social Welfare Models And a Revolution

The New York Times editors bow deep to the Pentagon to make it easier for DiRita to screw them. To understand how deep they bowed, I had to read this slowly and twice:

NYT – Editors’ Note

A front-page article yesterday reported on an American military inquiry’s finding that guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba "mishandled" the Koran in five cases. The headline exceeded the Pentagon’s characterization, saying that the investigation revealed "harm" to the Koran. The Pentagon did not give specifics of the mishandling, so it was not known whether a Koran was actually damaged.
NY Times – Corrections, May 28, 2005

Cont. reading: Editors Without Backbone

France votes tomorrow on the EU Constitution. As the latest polls show, the "non" seems likely to win:

The last 3 polls available actually give 51%, 52% and 56% for the "non", so it’s hard to know if it will be close or not. Several commenters, including Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former French President and the main writer of the new Constitution, have made a reference to Liverpool, who came back from a 3-0 score at half time to win the Champion’s League last Wednesday.

We’ll know tomorrow. Below are a few musings on the last days of the campaign:

Cont. reading: EU Constitution Vote Thread

News, views, opinions …

Untitled (detail) by anna missed
pigment/pyro on wood
Full size (180 KByte)

It’s easier to fire workers in Europe than in UNIONISED US plants.
This is the experience of the boss of Valeo, a French car-parts manufacturer that has gone through some tough downsizing in recent years:

Valeo attacks US union system

It is easier to close factories in worker-friendly Europe than in the supposedly free-market US because of the “archaic” practices of American unions, according to the head of one of France’s largest industrial groups.

Thierry Morin, chairman and chief executive of Valeo, the largest listed European car parts maker, has shut or sold 60 factories in the past four years and cut the workforce at many others as he fought to turn round deep losses. The comments come as the United Auto Workers union, which dominates worker relations at the US-owned carmakers, is being pressed to provide financial relief to General Motors, the world’s biggest carmaker by number of vehicles built.

Cont. reading: Unions Are Good

"Noises about rights for women" – On Denial River

France seems increasingly likely to vote "non" in the coming referendum – this Sunday – on whether to approve the EU Constitution or not (that vote is binding).

That prospect depresses me to no end, especially as I have yet to hear a rational argument to vote "non" other than the anti-European sovereignty one, which is not the argument made on the left.

The "non" is essentially a big "fuck you" to the arrogant elites that have proved unable to lead France in the past 30 years, or at least unable to fight unemployment and to give a positive idea of where France was going in the increasingly English-speaking and market-friendly globalized world, despite reasonable success in actually reforming good chunks of the country.

It is also a big "fuck you" to the rest of Europe, which is unlikely to take it very kindly. Who are we to think that we can decide alone where Europe should be going? So the "non" crowd is in fact just as arrogant, and offers no perspective beyond a solitary revolution.

Tell me. What do you know of the French vote? What do you think of what you’ve heard of the debates? What do you think will happen? Do you care?

With a few keystrokes, an official U.S. brochure eliminated some historic arms-control deals,  ..

U.S. Brochure Drops Arms-Control Deals

All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
1984

Cont. reading: Rubbed Out Of Existence

CAIRO, May 22 (Reuters) – The man suspected of being a leader of a cell accused of recent attacks on tourists in Egypt died last week after sustaining self-inflicted injuries while in police custody, the prosecutor general’s office said Saturday.
…
The prosecutor general’s office said Mr. Youssef "was afflicted, while in the room he was detained in, by a state of agitation, during which he purposefully hit his head on the wall of the room."
A Suspect Dies in Egypt, May 22, 2005

"I would say that President Mubarak has taken a very bold step," the first lady told reporters after touring the pyramids here. "You know that each step is a small step, that you can’t be quick."
Laura Bush Endorses Mubarak’s Ballot Plan Tuesday, May 23, 2005

Cont. reading: Laura Speaks, Middle East Listens

ABC’s ‘Nightline’ to Honor ‘The Fallen’

Ted Koppel and ABC News "Nightline" will again pay tribute to the fallen by devoting an extended broadcast to reading the names and showing the photographs of more than 900 service members who have been killed in those countries over the last year.
…
In order to include each name and face, "Nightline" will be extended from 30 to about 45 minutes.

Al-Hurra’s ‘Free Testimony’ to Honor ‘The Fallen’

Al-Hurra, the network for the Middle East devoted primarily to news and information, and its premier show "Free Testimony" will again pay tribute to the fallen by devoting an extended broadcast to reading the names and showing the photographs of more than 100 civilians who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 24 hours
…
In order to include each name and face, the daily "Free Testimony" will be extended from 25 to about 35 minutes.

Someone has kindly pointed out to me an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that puts some light on an earlier, little commented, presentation by ExxonMobil, where they essentially, if implicitly, acknowledge the reality of peak oil, even if in an underhanded way, as shown by this graph:

Source: The Outlook for World Energy – a 2030 view (a bigger version of the graph can be found here (pdf, 1 page))

Cont. reading: ExxonMobil on Peak Oil

The ‘Nuclear Option’ has been postponed.

Under a compromise reached by an assortment of moderates, mavericks and senior statesmen just as the Senate was headed into a climactic overnight debate on the filibuster, three previously blocked appeals court nominees – Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor and Priscilla R. Owen – will get floor votes. No commitment was made on the fate of two others, William Myers and Henry Saad.

In addition, the seven Democrats in the deal vowed that they would filibuster future judicial nominees only under "extraordinary" circumstances. Their Republican counterparts promised to support no changes in Senate rules that would alter the filibuster rule, effectively denying the votes it would take to enact such a rules change.

Coming summer there will be changes on the supreme court. Two new judges will need to be consented on and a new chief justice will have to be named and confirmed. The ‘Nuclear Option’ that has been banned for now, will come back to town.

I have promised to write a piece about the constitutional judicial background of this conflict, but I need to read more background on this and there are some time constrains. There are several good sources for those interested and I will leave you with these for now.

So for why even Scalia, an originalist, is preferable to Owen, a Constitution in Exile activist, you may want to try these links:

Hoover’s Court Rides Again by Cass R. Sunstein in The Washington Monthly

The Unregulated Offensive by Jeffrey Rosen, a NYT Magazine piece via Truthout.

The New Deal Constitution In Exile by William E. Forbath

Supreme Mistake by Jeffrey Rozen in the The New Republic (free sub. req.)

Wikipedia entry on the Commerce Clause as the central constitutional issue at hand.

These threads fill up pretty fast … that’s good

Afghanistan is going down the toilet. Karzai knows it, NATO knows it, Bush denies it.

Germany is sending more Special Forces now and Britain is planing for an emergency deployment of an additional 5,500 soldiers to Afghanistan (to be pulled from Iraq).

So today the mayor of Kabul is visiting the United States.
His requests:
– more control over what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan and
– more economic help for eradicating opium production.

But he is not meeting friends.

Cont. reading: Between a Rock …