Nuclear Beef

Morgan Spurlock Muslim Exploitation Video Beef Today. It's your right as an American to blast Duran Duran and Tom Petty.

Here's a fun little clip from Morgan Spurlock's (Super-size Me) new FX show, 30 Days. I wasn't particularly impressed by Super-size Me, because Spurlock's style is a bit like Michael Moore on a McDonalds crash diet. He clearly thinks he's a lot more well informed than he actually is, so his incompetent agenda-pushing is particularly grating. Plus, as sleepy points out, he's got a pretty annoying voice. Sorta like Michael Moore.

Some of the things he's asking people to do are ethically suspect, like the episode where a man agrees to go on Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone injections to body-build for 30 days. If Spurlock actually cared about anything but self-promotion, I can't imagine how he'd be willing to watch someone risk their sperm count for a reality TV show. It's one thing to conduct experiments with yourself, but 30 Days takes this concept a bit further than, say, the BBC's Faking It.

This clip, for example, is from an episode where Spurlock finds a Christian (the Entertainment Weekly Blurb calls him a "fundamentalist" but he seems pretty low-key to me...) from West Virginia and gets him to agree to live (in Dearborn, Michigan) as a Muslim for 30 days. What's particularly galling about this episode is the lack of education available to this poor guy, who is expected to say prayers that he does not understand. As the Christian faith is quite clear about worshipping false idols, isn't it slightly sadistic to expect this guy to pray to a God he does not worship? Half-way through the episode, he calls Spurlock who gives him a lecture about "The Rules" and tells him to get to praying! I'm not quite sure that Spurlock is sending the message he thinks he is...

MORGAN SPURLOCK : Recently, controversy has swirled over the call to prayer at the Al Islal Mosque in Hamtramck, just down the road from Dearborn. In the Muslim faith, Mosques broadcast the call to prayer five times a day. For Muslims, it's the equivalent to church bells. But in this working class town, people don't see it that way.

WOMAN : Our bells are not putting words in your ears. It's a sound.

MORGAN SPURLOCK : Now what seemed like a case of 'Not In My Back Yard' has become a full-blown civil rights issue, complete with petitions, political recalls and even death threats. That's where Haaris Ahmed, a lawyer for the Council On American-Islamic Relations comes in.

And of course the Muslims here are.. victims! How do we know that they're victims? Because a lawyer from the Council On Islamic-American Relations, a PR group with ties to terrorist groups and numerous critics, says so! He provides his side of the story, and balance is provided by.. the hysterical woman quoted above.. and this guy:

MORGAN SPURLOCK: If there was a building next door to your house that was like, blasting that out of a speaker, what would you think?

PISSED WOMAN: I'd be pissed.

DURAN DURAN GUY: I'd go crank up my stereo with a bunch of Tom Petty or, you know, maybe some Duran Duran... and give them some payback. Because that's my right, as an American!

Damn straight. U-S-A! U-S-A!

(But wait.. isn't Duran Duran from England? Wouldn't it be more patriotic to crank up some Creedence?)

UPDATE: Video link was broken, is fixed now. D'oh. Thx to the tongue for the heads up.

Posted by darwin at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This entry probably deserves to be in the category 'Stupid Stuff' as well as '(Music) Journalists Are Incompetent.'

MD: Still on the subject of the Internet, Pitchfork gave you a big fat “10” for Source Tags & Codes. Are you guys worried at all about this record living up to that? Pitchfork has a tendency to turn on a lot of bands; they gave a 6.7 to Secret of Elena’s Tomb and 3/5 for the “Worlds Apart” single. Are you guys worried about them turning on you?

CK: If I lived my life worried about what Pitchfork thought would you consider me a very intelligent person?

MD: No.

CK: Last thing I heard about Pitchfork from one of our friends that worked there was that all those guys have not been laid in three years. Seriously, none of them have had sex. They are just really angry at the world and they just need some pussy, you know, they just need to get fucked.

So that explains it!

(I must confess, I know nothing about the band Mr. Keely is in.. but I'm far more likely to check them out now that I know we're on the same page about Pitchfork. And before anyone points out the obvious, yes, I really need to get fucked too. Doesn't everybody? Everybody deserves to be fucked, anyway...)

Posted by darwin at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(From incitor: I'm privileged to be one's of darwin's closer friends, and he's been trying to get me to write something at least a little coherent to contribute to 'Beef for some time. Boy, is he going to be red!) [ed -- are you calling me a Communist?]

Bob Herbert's recent article for the New York Times is possibly one of the most poorly reasoned I've read in a long time. Considering the terrible quality of journalism, and in particular of editorial writing, these days, that's saying quite a lot, I think.

Witness:

You might think that the debacle in Iraq would be enough for the Pentagon, that it would not be in the mood to seek out new routes to unnecessary wars for the United States to fight. But with Donald Rumsfeld at the apex of the defense establishment, enough is never enough.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not Iraq is truly a 'debacle' as there is so much disagreement, I choose to lament Herbert's phrasing, 'enough is never enough.' Let's face it, Bloom County was a pretty damn amusing comic in its time, and the whole Lee Iacocca - Too Much Is Never Enough bit was damn funny. But Herbert can't even get it right.

Pentagon officials are putting together a plan that would give the military a more prominent role in intelligence gathering operations that traditionally have been handled by the Central Intelligence Agency. They envision the military doing more spying with humans, as opposed, for example, to surveillance with satellites.

As Jason Van Steenwyk pointed out, is there any evidence that more satellites (whose launches so pollute the environment! horror!) will prevent attacks such as those of 9/11? No, there is no such evidence. Many in the military and intelligence communities have been complaining for decades that our lack of HUMINT - HUMan INTelligence assets, has been a serious threat to our security. It was a problem at Desert One in Iran, it's a problem in China and North Korea now I'm certain. Spies, yes spies, are needful to the security of a nation.

Further encroachment by the military into intelligence matters better handled by civilians is bad enough.

Wait. Why is this bad? What proof is there that intelligence is better handled by civilians. Uh, didn't the CIA allegedly screw up big time both before 9/11 and before the resumption of war in Iraq? Perhaps Mr. Herbert, if he can bear learning anything about Israel that isn't fed to him by the left, should consider Aman also known as Agaf ha-Modi'in, Israel's military intelligence. Although they've had their share of mistakes over the years, many would consider them the most important part of Israel's intelligence community. While the Mossad is widely feared by leftwingers and conspiracy theorists the world over, it is Aman who does much of the most vital intelligence work. They don't always get the sexy jobs, but intelligence isn't about saving the world from supervillians and then banging scary looking seven foot tall black chicks.

Consider the overall success of Israel's military and intelligence efforts since 1948. Consider that since the 60s, Israel has faced terrorism in a variety of forms. Now explain to me again why their system isn't worth emulating, even a little?

The geniuses in Washington have already launched one bogus war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and provoked levels of suffering that are impossible to quantify

Please, resumed a bogus war! Aha.

I suspect that reason we cannot quantify the level of suffering is that the terrorists just aren't transparent in their operations. Although that seems to be changing. It's a shame Saddam isn't still in power, he kept things nice and pleasant for Iraqis.

We don't need to be contemplating new forms of warfare waged for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence.

Why? Why should we not contemplate new means for gathering intel? Not, mind you, that the means are truly new. One of the first things a military commander must do is figure out where his enemy is. That is a form of intelligence gathering, and many of our special forces capable units has that as one of their primary missions already. All we really need to do is unleash them.

The war in Iraq was the result of powerful government figures imposing their dangerous fantasies on the world. The fantasies notably included the weapons of mass destruction, the links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the throngs of Iraqis hurling kisses and garlands at the invading Americans, and the spread of American-style democracy throughout the Middle East. All voices of caution were ignored and the fantasies were allowed to prevail.

As opposed to fantasies propagated by the mainstream media of Iraq unilaterally destroying its chemical weapons stockpile, while simultaneously forcing out inspectors... *cough* Syria. *cough* And which agency was responsible for the WMD claims? The CIA, a civilian agency, run by George Tenet who famously claimed that the case was a 'slam dunk.'

This latest overreach by Mr. Rumsfeld is a sign that the administration, like a hardheaded adolescent, has learned little or nothing from the tragic consequences of its wrongheaded policies. The second term is coming, so buckle up. It promises to be a very dangerous four years.

I think that this administration has very much learned a lesson about policies. Looks to me like they're giving the go ahead for real intelligence reform, and the development of improved methods and actors. A dangerous four years? Yes. For our enemies.

Posted by incitor at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A while back I had a conversation with some peers about when Bush declared an end to "major combat operations" in Iraq. They gave me the approximately standard line that Bush was trying to say that the war was over, and of course he was wrong! Very, very wrong.

Bush was right, although his language was imprecise.

Doctrinally, the military draws a distinction between 'high intensity, 'mid-intensity,' and 'low-intensity' warfare, and there's a doctrinal difference between levels of insurgency. A 'level 1' insurgency is essentially the 'bandit' stage of an insurgency. Level 1 Insurgents do not get the same protection under international law as Level II and Level III insurgencies do.

So when Bush gave that speech, he was recognizing several technical operational things:

• We expected to be done with maneuver operations at division level and higher.
  
• The Army is still conducting a "movement to contact," but it's relying on the "search and attack technique" rather than the "approach march" technique.
  
• Civil Military Operations moved towards the top of the priority of work--replacing offensive operations as a priority on staff planning time.
• In terms of the principles of war, "Security" and "Economy of Force" recieved greater consideration, moved to the top slot, probably replacing "Mass" and "Maneuver."

There were a whole series of staff planning gear changes in place at that point.Supply operations changed a good deal--we could move construction supplies in, for example. All available cargo space did not have to be taken up by ammunition and immediate sustenance.

Everything changed.

The legal status of the Iraqi government changed. We were now working WITH large segments of the Iraqi population. But that was happening at the grassroots level.

It was a huge grinding of the gears, taking place behind the scenes. Bush never promised that hostilities would cease. Anyone who says he said the war was over is repeating a lie.

You can have wars without 'major combat operations.' I.e., operations, say, at division level or above.

Think Belfast.

Jason

Posted by darwin at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's Alan Moore making an unfortunate mis-step while ranting about politics. I wish artists I like would keep these sorts of opinions to themselves, frankly. Do I really want to know that Alan Moore bought the "firing blanks" line regarding Jessica Lynch or that Dave Sim is a he-man woman hater? Goddamn it!

This is what wars are; it's not Hollywood, not that ridiculous manipulation of Jessica Lynch, where they had soldiers shooting blanks into the air to make it look as if they were rescuing her under fire. It's Jerry Bruckheimer warfare; they even had to dress it up to make it seem as if she was sodomized or raped by her captors. And there's no evidence of this, she doesn't remember it, and it seems that the people looking after her were trying to get her back to the Americans. The whole thing is a movie.

Like, totally deep man.

Except that in order to fire blanks out of a M16, you need a blank firing adapter.

Disregarding the fact that no commander in their right mind would send troops into hostile territory with weapons loaded with blanks, you can't easily switch between blanks and real ammunition. The "blanks" claim from an Iraqi witness never passed the laugh test, but apparently Alan Moore is still really convinced!

Posted by darwin at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Thomas C Greene

According to a recent thread at BugTraq, an executable file is automatically and silently installed on the user's machine when the CD is loaded. The file is said to be a driver that prevents users from ripping the CD (and perhaps others), and attacks both Windows boxen and Macs.
...
On Windows, when a CD is loaded, a text file called autorun.inf is read,and any instructions within it are executed. In this case, the machine is instructed to install some manner of DRM driver that prevents copying. We haven't seen either the .inf file or any of the executables, so we can't say how or at what level it accomplishes this - or if indeed it actually does accomplish this.

But assuming that the unconfirmed reports are accurate, we have here a media company infecting users' machines silently with a file that affects a computer's functionality, without first obtaining informed consent: a likely violation of pretty much every jurisdiction's anti-hacking laws.

Wow, that's one quality piece of "journalism" there, Thomas Greene!

I mean, how would he have been able to obtain a copy of the Beastie Boys CD to verify this? Must have been prohibitively difficult, which is why his editor had to go to press without verifying, you know, the thing that the article is about. It's not like Greene could have gone down to the music store and bought a copy, right?

Amazon Release Date :
Audio CD - June 15, 2004

Inadequately Researched Article Publishing Date :
Published Wednesday 23rd June 2004 11:18 GMT

Stunning.

The infected CD is being distributed worldwide except in the USA and UK, which prevents us from giving a firsthand report. However, according to hearsay, we gather that the Windows version exploits the 'autorun' option, and that the Mac version affects the auto play option.

Oops. My general point about reporting on things a journalist cannot personally verify stands, but I acknowledge that his laziness is not as extreme as it previously appeared. I still believe that Greene should verify matters of fact before reporting on them, as any journalist should. I'm not a journalist, but I'm quite sure I could aquire a non US/UK version of this CD given a week or so.

Posted by darwin at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jill LaVine, Sacramento County's top elections official, didn't expect her cable television debut to go like this.

LaVine, still in her first year on the job, had just given a full explanation of the threats facing California's electoral system when her interviewer asked for clarification.

"Now, can you take that long-ass answer and put it in a nutshell like I asked you?" said Rob Cordrry, one of the satirical correspondents for "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," Comedy Central's Emmy-winning send-up of the media, public officials and the news.

LaVine stammered, and a perplexed look crossed her face. She started again. "Elections in California are a mess," she said.
...
LaVine, for one, said she feels a bit "hoodwinked" by her treatment during the interview.

She had never heard of "The Daily Show" before agreeing to the interview.
...
"Don't you think blacks should be given more than one vote to make up for that whole slavery thing?" Cordrry asked LaVine. "P. Diddy's got to be worth two votes, and Justin Timberlake, he's worth two votes, even though he's not black or anything."

Without cracking a smile, LaVine deadpanned, "That doesn't address the issue here."
...
"We just distill it to, hopefully, its most humorous nugget," [Stewart] said. "And in that sense it seems faked and skewed just because we don't have to be subjective or pretend to be objective. We can just put it out there."

Apparently Jon Stewart doesn't want you getting your political viewpoint from the Daily show either! At least it's on the surface with these guys.. not like those partisan hacks at The Onion.

August on the hooks.

Posted by darwin at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My name is Mishka and Darwin invited me to join this forum :-) I'll introduce myself gradually as I post.

So there is a fairly important Supreme Court ruling today in the Pledge of Allegiance case:

Newdow ruling

But it's impossible to get even a barely accurate picture from The New York Times.

This is the prime example of journalism incompetence, almost beyond belief:

Court Ruling Keeps Pledge Intact but Leaves 'God' Issue Unsettled

The court held today that the plaintiff, Michael Newdow, did not have standing to bring a suit challenging the pledge as presently worded. Eight justices agreed that Dr. Newdow, a nonpracticing lawyer who is also a physician, cannot qualify as a legal representative of his 10-year-old daughter, on whose behalf he filed suit.

[...]
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas wrote separately, concurring with the Stevens opinion that Dr. Newdow lacked standing to sue. But the three justices went further, asserting in language that many people had hoped would come from the Supreme Court as a whole, that the pledge with the "under God" phrase is indeed constitutional.

Of course, it's all wrong. Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Thomas dissented from the ruling that Dr. Newdow lacked the standing to sue. They decided that he has the standing. Which is why they considered the merits of the case, and decided that it's OK to have "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Hence they've concurred in the judgement reversing the decision that "under God" is unconstitutional, but not in the opinion. It's amazing that the guy cannot even report a relatively short decision without a super-distortion...

Posted by Mishka at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When it's wrong, of course!

President Reagan's February 6, 1986 State of the Union address included this specific passage where he says the word "AIDS" five times: We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS.

This is significant, because critics of Reagan's response to AIDS cite the date he first talked publicly about AIDS (May 31, 1987) as being callously late in the course of the epidemic. Murdock uses the appearance of AIDS in such a major speech to attempt to falsify the claim that Reagan did not give AIDS due public attention.

Unfortunately for Reagan and Deroy Murdock, the quotation given is not from Reagan's Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the State of the Union on February 4th, 1986.

We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. It is unclear whether this "message" was given as a speech, but speeches seem to be listed in the Public Papers of the President: Ronald Reagan, 1981-1988 as "Address to" or "Remarks to" instead of "Message to." Its formatting also seems to indicate that it was not delivered as a speech. This is not, of course, conclusive proof that Reagan did not speak the words of his "message." Nevertheless, it is clear that the public profile of this "message" from Reagan could not possibly approach that of a State of the Union Address. Timeswatch noticed this mistake on December 17th, 2003.

With Reagan's passing, Murdock's inaccurate cite has been making the blog rounds again. I happened to notice it was inaccurate today, after searching for the original cite. If anyone has a copy of the source he cites (The Age of Reagan, 1964-1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order), I'd be curious whether its author (Steven F. Hayward) also cites Reagan incorrectly.

A Google search produces no correction. This must be that fabled accuracy and accountability they have in journalism!

I have emailed Murdock via the NRO and will update if I receive any response.

UPDATE : Reagan URLs were reversed. Oops!

UPDATE: To clarify, my curiousity regards the 1986 cite which Murdock incorrectly attributes to the SOTU, not the 1985 press conference cite. As noted, Reagan answered a question about AIDS in 1985. The perspective Murdock attempts to refute is the idea that Reagan did not give sufficient public profile to AIDS. Two public statements about AIDS in two years (85-87) do not materially support his case. A mention in the nationally televised State of the Union would, however, which is why I consider this error notable.

Posted by darwin at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney's office "coordinated" a multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract awarded to his former employer Halliburton, Time magazine reported on Sunday.

The e-mail, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003, said Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, provided arrangements for the RIO contract, or Restore Iraqi Oil, between Halliburton and the U.S. government, Time said.

The e-mail said Feith, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH (White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's (vice president's) office."

Why are people starting to tune out mainstream media? Maybe it's because of breathless non-story "stories" like this one.

Pop quiz, Reuters.. is there any difference between "coordinated by" and "coordinated with"? It even says that Douglas Feith (not in the Vice President's Office) was responsible for the contracting. If the Pentagon kept the White House informed, that seems like uh.. their.. job.

Where's the beef, guys?

A. on the hooks.

Posted by darwin at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems as if the San Francisco Chronicle REALLY wants us to know that the "US kill[ed] 40 civilians in village attack." I noticed this earler in the day and then saw it mentioned over at O,TLM.

Apparently through some technical glitch, three different stories have had the phrase "US kills 40 civilians in village attack" prepended to their titles.

This is what google news currently shows : US Kills 40 [1]

PRISON SCANDAL: Soldier says he's sorry, gets a year in jail for actions at Abu Ghraib [2]

BLUNT ASSESSMENT: S.F.'s Pelosi calls Bush 'incompetent' and lacking in judgment [3]

DESERT ASSAULT: Infiltrators were target, but witnesses say a wedding party was hit (the original?) [4]

The one about Abu Ghraib is the perfect synthesis of two news stories that would make any sensationalist, anti-Bush journactivist salivate.

That said, I don't think this was a conscious attempt at subliminal messaged like Max-Headroom. I'm sure it's just a silly technical glitch.

Even computers can hate freedom!

Posted by darwin at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Journalist strike closes down major newspapers

The Norwegian Union of Journalists and the National Association of Mediacompanies failed to come to an agreement, despite arbritation several hours on overtime.

A dispute over pensions and a special increment for the lowest salaried employees were the main reasons for the strike.

Major national and regional newspaper like Aftenposten, VG, Dagbladet, Adresseavisen, Bergens Tidende, Sunnmoersposten and Nordlys will not be published from Thursday on. The National News Agency (NTB) is also closed down, as are a couple of commercial TV stations.

This is the flip-side of the impact that commercial media consolidation has had on the journalistic profession. How can these journalists claim to represent the public interest when they are willing to strike over pensions? They don't even want to spend the time being incompetent reporters if they aren't properly compensated! Gooooo Union!

Thanks to J. on the hookup.

Posted by darwin at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perception of Bias Undermines Media

A recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press finds that the public believes the news media are politically biased. So what else is new? Several things, actually, all of which bode ill for both journalism and democracy.

When the Pew Center did the same survey in 1987, a solid majority believed that election coverage was free of bias. Today, only 38 percent do ? including the usually high number of conservative skeptics but now, notably, more liberals than ever. Fewer Americans of whatever political stripe trust the media to give them political news straight.

And fewer Americans rely on traditional news media for political news. Pew found that more of us, especially young adults, are turning to the Internet for political news and - heaven help us - to political comedy programs. Naturally, those who get campaign information from The Daily Show prove to be poorly informed. An increasing number of us seem interested in learning political news only from media that tell us what we want to hear.

This editorial from The Dallas Morning News (via O,TLM!) speaks clearly to blurring of the thin line between news and entertainment in the television news era.

It's also a newspaper Op-Ed which disses people who get their news from the Daily Show. As my friends can surely tell you, I get cranky when I meet people with strong political views who appear to have been educated solely by Jon Stewart's comedic patter.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Daily Show is hilarious. I just think many of my peers take it, like SNL before it, too seriously. It is, after all, just comedy, and Al Franken has convinced himself he's a political activist! Isn't he 'Pat'?

Continue reading "Getting Your News From The Daily Show" »

Posted by darwin at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Family Guy Coming Back

It's official: Stewie Griffin's plans for world domination shall continue! Stewie, the animated ankle-biter with the killer vocabulary and the endless string of plots to kill his mom and enslave the human race, will return in all-new episodes of Fox's cult hit cartoon Family Guy, the show's creator, Seth MacFarlane, confirms.
...
The uncertainty of where Family Guy will land continues the show's erratic history. It premiered, post-Super Bowl in 1999 to 22 million viewers, received rave reviews from critics, was bounced around the weekly schedule by Fox, got canceled in 2002, became one of the all-time bestselling TV shows on DVD last year, added to its fan base, as MacFarlane stated, when it joined Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" lineup last year and, now, is getting an almost unheard of second shot at prime-time success.

Well, it's a good thing that Family Guy is coming back. It's set in Rhode Island, you know.

The funny thing about this article is that someone got paid to write that crap. There's 70 words in that there sentence.

10 commas.

Footnote: "Canceled" is a valid alternate spelling of "Cancelled." You learn something new every day.

Posted by darwin at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)