Heretics' almanac

Trashing Aftenposten's op ed pages

Arnt Folgerø is apparently a journalist in NTB who for reasons that remain unclear appears to hate Olaf Thommesen, a prominent politician within the tiny Liberal Party in Norway. So he wrote an article that pretty much is an ad hominem attack on Thommesen. Which prompted another journalist, Carl-Erik Grimstad, to call it for what it was. Folgerø responded, saying that Thommesen should have been "politically dead" given all his transgressions, implying somehow that it was his duty to point out that Thommesen appears to be immune from his own political demise because he's handsome and has a pretty wife.

I really don't have much of a view about Thommesen, except that I'm not too impressed by his blog, (especially because anyone who gives shmuck Thomas Hylland-Eriksen a media outlet has at least questionable judgment, and I'm not too impressed by the others, either. Even my former fencing buddy and distant relative Paal Frisvold seems a little lost in his writings).

All the news that fits the narrative

For a brief while this morning, Aftenposten.no had as its headline that "a rabbi is suspected of terrorism" in Israel. According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency and various other wires, a 51-year old Israeli, described as a rabbi, expressed his intention of attacking targets on Mount Moriah to those gathered at the lobby of a Tel Aviv Hotel. The security guard at the hotel called the police, and the man was arrested and referred for psychiatric evaluation.

Anyone who is remotely familiar with Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular is also familiar with the "Jerusalem syndrome" that seems to give its victims strange delusions that they will with their actions change the course of the world, presumably for the better. It sounds like this 51-year old rabbi is deranged, though of course one shouldn't assume that he is harmless.

The question is why Aftenposten thinks such an item is newsworthy.

Aftenposten's right to speak yet never be offended

The Norwegian press is commemorating the anniversary of the Mohammad cartoon debacle, with a lot of self-righteous pontificating about freedom of speech, etc. I write self-righteous because it would appear that most newspaper editors feel that "freedom of speech" means that they have the right to print whatever they want without being criticized or condemned. To criticize speech in Norway is - absurdly - an assault on the speech.

For most Norwegians, I suspect freedom of speech means "anything that I don't find annoying, offensive, or disagreeable."

You'd be hard pressed to find a more principled proponent of free speech than me. I think Nazis, racists, homophobes, antisemites, Holocaust deniers, and other despicable characters have every right to air their contemptuous convictions. I don't think it's an absolute right - it shouldn't be derived from people being hurt, and it shouldn't incite crime, for example. But if people want to let everyone know how just vile they are, I don't think a law should stop them, though hopefully decency might, in some cases.

The shameful self-righteousness of the Norwegian media

Document.no reports that the Norwegian press took note of the criticism against their coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, reflected over it for about 2 nanoseconds, and then dismissed it. If the Israelis feel bad about the way the press treats them, they only have themselves to blame.

At this point, I think that most people and certainly Norwegian Jews, would rather put this whole thing behind them and leave the status quo alone.

Obviously, the Norwegian editorial elite really doesn't care. They are so steeped in their own superiority complex, prejudice and left-wing dogma that any appeal to reason, compassion, or decency gets shrugged off like annoying flies. It doesn't matter that you prove error after error, fallacy after fallacy, after their writing. They're editors, so it must necessarily follow that they're pretty close to infallible.

(Norwegian) rejected article for Aftenposten

Selvfølgelig er det lov å kritisere Israels politikk. Som alle demokratiske land, har Israel godt av kritikk, og enhver israeler ville uten videre medgi at det er mye som er kritikkverdig. Men om det er lov å kritisere Israel, er det også lov å kreve at kritikken er saklig, rimelig og konstruktiv.

Blaming Israel, just in case

The formerly broadsheet tabloid Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has toned down its rabidly anti-Zionist bias in the last several months, but couldn't resist a swipe today, with this headline:

Voting at Israel's mercy

This kind of headline lays the groundwork for:

• Blaming Israel if the election doesn't get the stamp of approval from international observers
• Giving lots of credit to the Palestinians if the election does get the thumbs up

The Norwegian reporter on site takes Saeb Erakat at face value when he says that Israel has failed to ease a single restriction on travel within the West Bank and Gaza, and he intimates that low turnout will diminish Abbas's legitimacy.

Norwegian tsunami casualties

It turns out there were/are a lot of Norwegians in areas hit by the tsunami.  13 Norwegians are confirmed dead, but there is conflicting information about the number of Norwegians still accounted for.

Aftenposten provides a headline today indicating that 446 Norwegians are missing, but this turns out to be a misleading number.  There are actually 1376 Norwegians that remain unaccounted for, but of those "only" 446 were known to definitely be staying near the affected beaches.  Aftenposten seems to assume that the remaining 930 are not missing, though nobody has heard from them.

There is still much uncertainty around this, but it seems to me that Aftenposten is messing up the numbers.  The number of Norwegian casualties may turn out to be higher than 446, and it's wrong to leave the readers with the impression that 446 is the upper end of the range.  The death toll from this disaster keeps reaching new, dizzying heights every day, and this may turn out to be one of the biggest natural disasters to befall Norwegians.

Failure or fear to act

What with all the discussion about intelligence overhaul, a recently retired CIA official told NPR the other day that the intelligence failure leading up to 9/11 had nothing to do with lack of information; it had everything to do with a failure to act.  This is why, he said, he favors a director of national intelligence - a single point of failure contact that will overcome the inertia of bloated government organizations.  (I'm trying to remember a single case in which such "czar" arrangements really worked and coming up short, but hey, it's always worth trying again.)

Does anyone remember a recent presidential campaign in which the candidates were held to an unreasonable standard of infallibility, and in which one of them said that he didn't think he'd made a single mistake in his time as president, and the other was accused of "flip-flopping" because he did?  Does anyone remember that Carter lost his reelection because he did act?

Today's political environment severely punishes mistakes, or at least appearances of mistakes.  The failure to act on 9/11 warnings was due to many things, but some of it had to do with risk aversion.  There is always some uncertainty related to risk assessments, and you'll usually get punished severely for acting on uncertainty. 

The Daily Show pointed out the other day that Rumsfeld owes his continuing role in the DOD on the fact that he committed a "colossal blunder," and firing him would amount to admitting as much.   Perhaps much of this can be blamed on particular shortcomings of the Bush administration, but an equal amount can be blamed on a media that doesn't understand the basic concept that taking risks means you sometimes fail. 

The press should be completely free and unfettered, but it's time to more openly discuss their responsibility.  I don't think there are any easy answers, but it's time to ask the questions.  Or else this director of national security will end up being more concerned about his next press conference than protecting people's lives.

Undermining a Norwegian fourth estate

Ester Kristoffersen lodged an official complaint against the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) for misrepresenting her views and several aspects of events she led to highlight the effects of terrorism.  Read more about this here, here, and here, but the bottom line is that NRK a) misled Kristoffersen about the intentions behind their report; b) guided her response during the taping; and b) aired a report that selectively used quotes, facts, and other pieces of information to give viewers an inaccurate impression of what was actually said.

Well, the organization Kristoffersen complained to what can be loosely translated to the Select Committee on Journalistic Standards (Pressens Faglige Utvalg), and this group couldn't find anything wrong with what NRK had done.  In other words, Norwegian journalistic standards allow a reporter to:

Read Veiled Conceit

I am not sure what the creators of Chez Miscarriage and Veiled Conceit would talk about if they ever met, but they're both very funny, and I know some connection could be made between their respective subjects.  As it turns out Veiled Conceit is written by my yoga instructor's best friend's boy friend.  (I don't think I am revealing his identity by disclosing this, am I?). 

The subject of Veiled Conceit is the wedding announcements in the New York Times.  This is of peripheral interest to me, as supposedly my wife's mother picked my wife's name from one of those announcements in February of 19xx (see, I can be discreet) and signed the birth certificate before my father-in-law got a chance to stop her.  The name was supposed to be Sidrah, by the way.