"Freedom of the press" and "unnamed sources"

July 19 - "Freedom of the press" has long been interpreted to include the right of reporters to protect their sources. In turn, the public has to trust that there really is a source that has leaked sensitive material to a reporter, and, since Jayson Blair of the NY Times is only the latest in a series of reporters who have fabricated sources and stories, we are in a dilemma when it comes to trusting reports based on "unnamed officials".

In other words, "unnamed officials" is sometimes journalistic code for "I made it up."

I also try to remember that there is more than one possible explanation and that it is wise to wait until the facts are in before I jump to any conclusions. But, oh the temptation . . .

My desire to remain open-minded is further offset by my tendency to evaluate who benefits the most from sensationalist headlines and aim my suspicions accordingly (sort of a political application of "follow the money").

Having said all that, it appears to me that the BBC, the Conservative Party (UK), and the anti-war leftists have everything to gain by making Dr. David Kelly's death look as though he was either hounded to commit suicide or outright murdered by shadowy government officials. (I have yet to see the last in print, but I trust the Idiotarians to be, well, idiotic.) As all of them, but especially the BBC, gain politically from Dr. Kelly's death, I don't believe that they are going to keep open minds but that they will exploit this to an absurd degree.

I am already sure of a few things. The Tories in the UK are as stupid as the Tories in Canada, and may even be stupider than the Democrats in the USA. The UK Tories have everything to gain by forcing the BBC to be more accountable (as the Tories are often maligned by the BBC) but, like their Loyal Opposition counterparts in North America, they take the simple-minded approach of being the Opposition. That's opportunism, not leadership.

According to the CNN webpage report UK police confirm expert's death, UK PM Tony Blair was asked if Dr. Kelly's death was "in some way on your conscience", if government officials would be asked for their resignations, and at the conference's end a journalist shouted "Have you got blood on your hands prime minister? Are you going to resign?"

I think I am entitled to doubt both the objectivity and integrity of journalists so ready to implicate PM Blair's government in the tragic death of Dr. Kelly so my Skepto-meter needle is already in the red zone as I read reports on this matter.

Even though I enjoy reading the Daily Telegraph (UK), I don't forget that they tend to support the Conservtive Party. As for CNN, I don't know for a fact if they support the Dems but I do know that, with a few exceptions like Lou Dobbs and Jack Cafferty, they are deeply stupid.

On to the feeding frenzy:

>From the Daily Telegraph (UK) report (even the title is not objective!) Death of the dossier fall guy:

Tony Blair was plunged into the biggest crisis of his premiership last night after a leading Ministry of Defence adviser who became caught up in No 10's vitriolic battle with the BBC was found dead in woodland near his Oxfordshire home.

Dr David Kelly had been named as the likely source of the BBC allegation that the Government "sexed up" intelligence reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

His suspected suicide shocked Westminster and Whitehall as the Government faced up to the prospect that Dr Kelly could have been driven to his death by the attempts to identify him as the mole.

If they felt responsible, where is the quote that would support that contention? Could he have felt guilty for speaking out of school and causing such an uproar? After all, that's another possible explanation and, as there's no mention of a note, it's going to be easy to make a lot of assertions that are speculation rather than fact.

This article is from the same paper MoD official was not main source of Iraqi dossier story, says MPs filed July 16 which explains Dr. Kelly's involvement in this investigation and tends to exclude him as the leak:

They [the MoD] believe that identifying him will show that the BBC's story was unreliable, because Dr Kelly was not senior enough to have first-hand knowledge of how the final draft of the dossier was compiled.

That the MoD believes that identifying him will cast doubt on the BBC story is outright conjecture, not fact. What is a fact is that when anyone in the Ministry (or Department) of Defense of any country leaks information, that leak must be tracked and stopped. Some of the documents retrived in Iraq strongly implicated journalists and news agencies as being on Saddam's payroll [as opposed to paying bribes to stay in Iraq] as well as at least one Labour MP, George Galloway. PLUGGING THAT LEAK is of primary importance to security.

We engaged in a war against terrorism. I know that this isn't an everyday reality for a lot of people, but it is a truth that we mustn't forget. Terrorist's chief weapons are fear and surprise; our chief weapon is gathering intelligence from all departments and trying to connect dots. Loose lips sink battleships, etc.

Although Dr Kelly contributed to the document, he only wrote the historical sections, not the material based on up-to-date intelligence. Yesterday Dr Kelly told the committee that he confessed to his MoD bosses that he had met Gilligan because he thought he might have "contributed" to the story.

Gilligan is the BBC reporter who made serious charges against the veracity of PM Blair's case for the war on Iraq.

In particular, Gilligan said his source had told him that there was a 30 per cent probability of Iraq possessing chemical weapons. Dr Kelly said that was "the sort of thing" he might have said.

Gilligan said he was told by his contact that Alastair Campbell was to blame for the fact that the controversial claim that Iraq could deploy WMD in 45 minutes was inserted at the last minute. Mr Campbell, the Prime Minister's communications chief, strongly denies this.

Dr Kelly told MPs he discussed Mr Campbell's name with the journalist but, when Gilligan's exact words were put to him, he said: "I cannot recall using it in that context. It does not sound like anything I would say."

Although Dr Kelly was at times evasive, he insisted that he did not believe he was the "main source" of the BBC story.

He was more decisive when Richard Ottaway, a Tory, put it to him that he could not be the central source because he did not know that the 45-minute allegation was included late or that it came from a single source. "Correct," Dr Kelly replied. (Emphasis added)

It will be interesting how the independent investigation is reported by the international media. Or should I say predictable?

Posted by: Debbye at 01:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Influence of the American left on Canada

July 10 - The Canadian has been investigating the sorry state of the educational system in Canada and how the values being taught in schools are in contradition to traditional ones. He writes: "For over 40 years students have been hearing a left wing philosophy in this country that goes clear back to the Vietnam War and a 'stampeding herd' of pony-tailed Liberal 'profs' that thundered north to Canada rather than serve their country."

I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I'm not going to be too quick to dismiss it either. I moved here in 1974 to marry a Canadian so my relocation wasn't a rejection of the USA and I have no insight on those who came here for other reasons. I might be able to see it better if I knew during which years this migration peaked and how many came here.

I would tend to think that the drift to the left occurred much earlier than the 60's. The Soviet Union gained legitimacy when they became our allies during WWII. The crimes of Stalin were either ignored or went unreported because outwardly, at least, we (the Allies) downplayed our distrust of them in order to defeat Hitler. It was a hateful, necessary policy, and I think it a source of regret for many Western countries because the Eastern bloc countries paid the true price.

Skip forward to 1968 when Trudeau was in office. (Note please that Trudeau was in office so something must have already happened on the Canadian political scene.)

A lot happened in the world that year. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, a moderate peace candidate, did surprisingly well in the New Hampshire primaries. A very tired LBJ announced he wouldn't seek re-election. There was the Prague Spring and Dr. King was murdered. There was riots, and my high school in Berkeley, CA, walked out en masse the following day because if the Bd. Of Education wouldn't cancel classes we would. The 1968 Civil Rights Bill was finally passed (of added significance because Title VII outlawed discrimination against women but added a new charge, conspiracy, to those who traveled across state lines with the purpose of causing a riot intended, by the way, to be used as a tool against the KKK and their ilk.) There was the Tet offensive and a Jordanian who didn't like Robert F. Kennedy's stance on Israel murdered him. There were demonstrations in Paris over the peace talks between the US and North Vietnam. The student demonstrations in Paris led to a General Strike in France. The 1968 Olympics in Mexico City took place just after some violent demonstrations there, and the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. The Democratic Party convention was held in the midst of rioting by, among others, anti-war activists, Yippies and Bobby Seale (of the Black Panthers.) There were student uprisings in Germany, Italy and Japan. In Canada there were massive anti-war demonstrations too (far smaller than the ones held to protest the Iraq War). It seemed as though the entire world was on fire except for Russia and China. (In retrospect, I should have thought about that more, but I didn't.)

I may have some of the events in the wrong order because the memories are gushing out. Even now as I read it I find it inconceivable that so much happened in the space of only one year, and I suspect I forgot a few things.

In some respects, Americans encountered her first major case of self-hatred that year most especially because two beloved and highly respected men were slain. We asked ourselves what kind of people we were that our heroes could be cut down like that. Grim anger set in, and there were no answers or light to guide us. Nixon vs. Humphrey? It was easy to explore alternative politics and many of us did.

How did each of those events impact, if at all, in Canada?

I guess all countries have reactions to events that they can't really share with outsiders (no offense). None of you will ever be able to understand how I feel about Dr. King's death. You may empathize, but that is light years away from deep-to-the bone knowing.

Now, by the same token, I will never be able to fully appreciate the shock and impact on Canadians triggered by the events in Quebec in 1970. I had lived under martial law a few times in Berkeley but I found it inconceivable that, up here, the entire country was placed under martial law. I remember reading about the FLQ and what happened up here, but it is not a part of my emotional memory.

But I don't think that those events in Quebec can be blamed on imported American subversives. I think you have to accept it as Canada's alone, and even if you blame De Gaulle you must allow that the ground was fertile.

The Canadian also states his belief that "Something really nasty is going on south of the border. It started when Chretien and his gang thumbed their collective noses at Bush and the USA (shades of those "feet get thee gone" profs that buggered off 40 years ago). NOW it is beginning to sink in as the Canadian cattle industry is in tatters, the softwood lumber file has become a disaster - and we hear today that our defence industry contributions are under the gun.

I don't believe that the problems with the softwood and cattle industries are entirely the result of the Liberal government's attitude to Washington but probably more due to protectionist lobbies in the US and a bureaucracy that is ponderous and weighed down with regulatory procedures that Canadians are all too familiar with up here. Separation of powers makes the President far less powerful than many Canadians realize.

As for the defense industry contracts, I am totally with the US Congress on this one. It comes down to one very simple fact: The US-based industries in the US are under the watch of the FBI and they are responsible to Congress. We are at war, and concerns about industrial sabotage and spying are on high alert for obvious security reasons.

Production facilities in Canada are under the watch of the RCMP and they are responsible to Parliament (or to the Minister assigned to that portfolio, I guess). The findings of the The MacKenzie Institute (if the report still isn't on their website, link to the National Post article) make it clear that terrorists are operating openly in Canada and that the Federal government is reluctant to shut them down. I regret the loss of Canadian jobs can't sanction endangering American lives to safeguard Canadian jobs.

The point is that this is not being done in revenge for Canada's refusal to join the US in Iraq or the rudeness of Canadian officials.

Please believe that Americans remember Canada's honourable role during the 1979 takover of our embassy in Tehran. We remember the down-home goodness of Newfoundlanders on Sept. 11. There may be some hurt feelings right now but there is not the degree of outrage that we feel toward the cough*French*cough and although many wonder what is going on up here most are content to let bygones be bygones.

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Misunderstanding Americans

July 6 - It still amazes me how little the rest of world understands how angry Americans still are. It's easy to turn that into a complaint that they don't respect us, but I think it is closer to the mark to say that they don't understand the nature of a free people. They watch our (shudder) television shows and wear our baseball hats, but they don't understand the demands that living in a country with an armed citizenry makes on her citizens.

Our inherent right to bear arms places an incredibly deep obligation upon us. The defense of our country and our liberties is the duty of every citizen. We are a standing army. We are a thinking, standing army, and we have high expectations of ourselves and our government.

The rest of the world has got to try to understand that people who know they have the right to bear arms also know that they have the right and the means to defend themselves. That means we can refuse to be afraid.

We simply do not consider submission to the tyranny of terrorism an option.

It was an eye-opener to finally grasp that they don't get the depth of our hatred of terrorism because there is a values-gap. It offends our sense of values that some slimy bastard (or bitch) would deliberately target kids at a rock concert or people in a pizza parlour. It offends our belief that all men and women are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We hold those values as dearly as we hold our guns, and for the same reason. Because we believe in living boldly and with dignity.

Americans aren't dumb nor are we uneducated. We express ourselves in simple terms because we have the ability to cut through nonsense to see things with clarity and we have too much self-respect to engage in needless obfuscation. We feel that if you must obscure what you want to say, then give the world a break and shut up.

It is true. I never got James Joyce.

I know that the big problem is simply a lack of communication but usually it's because they don't listen to what we are saying but tend to hear what they think we are saying. They could just pay attention to the words we speak and write, but nooo, they simply must try to analyze and deconstruct. Fools.

President Bush said it best when he pointed out that we can disagree without being disagreeable. Of course, that would require having issue-based discussions, and that hasn't gone too well even back home.

So I admit it. I am at a point where it's hard to care if the rest of the world understand us. I try to be civil and use the soothing conversation-ender "we'll have to agree to disagree" but inside I'm just dismissing them because I've said what I have to say and others can take it or leave it.

But I can't not care. I live in Canada, and I feel I owe it to this wonderful country to keep trying to find common ground not because of the ubiquitous "keeping the border open for trade" but because we really are brothers and sisters, both descendent of Mother England along with Australia, New Zealand and other countries in the Commonwealth.

That of course brings up the whole sticky thing with Quebec, but I want to keep it civil and my solutions would be, um, not civil.

Posted by: Debbye at 01:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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