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Is wearing costume a New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition, like Halloween? I couldn't say, but in one of the most questionable decisions I've ever seen a politician make (and in another of a long line of questionable decisions for this particular politician) NO Mayor Ray Nagin just showed up for his Today Show interview wearing desert fatigues -- with four stars, no less.
Some one should at least inform the Mayor that combat ribbons are not worn with BDUs.
Why no posts? Well, my hard drive just up and crumped, I mean that sucker is just gone -- and on the weekend before I give a test in a class of 200 to boot. So as tech supports works to revive it or install a new one, I'm frantically answering student emails and typing the exam.
Keep a good thought, and hopefully I'll be back to a normal schedule by Wednesday.
Speaking of doing the math.
The New York Times has an article about a group that for all intents and purposes is engaged in terrorist operations in Nigeria that are threatening the oil industry there. As part of the reporting for the article, the journalist, along with several others, apparently went out into rural Nigeria, met with members of the group.
Fine, good, terrific. Intrepid reporting, slap the gal on the back for her courage and determination.
But here's where I have very serious problems:
Dressed in military fatigues and white T-shirts, dozens of men armed with Kalashnikov machine guns and grenade launchers sat aboard speedboats decked with the white flags of Egbesu, the Ijaw god of warfare. They showed one of the nine hostages they seized last week from a barge operated by an oil company contractor, and said they were prepared to seize more hostages and blow up more oil facilities if their demands were not met. (My emph.)
And, given the credit on the photo that accompanies the article, the photog who accompanied the reporter took that opportunity to snap an obviously staged picture of that hostage, surrounded by his obviously posing captors, a picture that the hostage, according to the caption a Mr. Macon Hawkins, would have had no choice about participating in.
In other words, not only is the New York Times, by publishing this photograph -- publishing it in quite large size in the paper edition, by the way -- giving the terrorists the opportunity to give emotional punch and credibility to their threats that they would not otherwise have, the Times' representative is apparently the one who staged the text they are using to begin with. This is not a photograph of a historic event or a text that teaches us about the group because they provided it. This is a staged photograph of a group of people, but the terrorists are staged in such a way as to showcase the fact that they pose a threat to their hostage. Thus the Times creates for them the chance to publicize their threat, a chance they would not otherwise have, and a critical chance. I was originally going to criticize the Times for making the decision to publish the photograph, which gives their threat legitimacy, but in fact the Times complicity here goes far deeper.
Imagine this article without the image. Their ability to represent themselves as threatening to American hostages is far less.
Is their hostage in greater or lesser danger with the image published?
Impossible to say; you can make the argument either way.
Unlike the situation with hostage videos released from those holding Jill Carroll, of course, "proof of life" is irrelevant -- the reporters had met the hostage, so they knew he was alive. All that matters here, therefore, is the normative argument. In general, should the press act to facilitate terrorists' ability to create the impression they seek to make? Since we don't know how this will impact the individual's case, we can speak about the policy implications, and ask: if terrorist groups believe their actions will be met with a willing partner in the western press, will that make them more or less likely to continue to engage in terrorist activities such as the taking of hostages? Does it continue to be productive to take hostages knowing that the necessary second step -- getting publicity in the western press -- will in fact occur?
You do the damn math.
I meant to do this yesterday, and time got away from me.
Remember last week there were several days when I wasn't really blogging because I needed to polish up a conference presentation?
Well, as it turns out, that was time well spent. Arkin certainly didn't need to provide a link back here; that was quite lovely of him.
I find this Times article about Muslim-Christian tension breaking out into violence in Nigeria simply astonishing. Many people look to the Times to fill in the blanks, to educate them about the world. That's a responsibility they should take seriously -- and one I thought they did.
But look: first, there's this description of recent violence.
Conflicts between religious and ethnic groups are common and deadly in Nigeria. In 2002, riots over a beauty contest held in Kaduna in northern Nigeria left more than 200 people dead, and thousands of others have died in such clashes in the last few years.
Given the topic of the article, it might have been helpful to know that the violence in that case was coming largely from the Muslim community in the country. Ironically, the issue was, once again, perceived offense from the press to the Prophet. The Times wording here carefully elides both the cause of the violence and who was responsible for it.
Far more important, and by far the larger absense -- indeed, a gaping hole -- in this article, is the fact that Muslim majority states in Nigeria are permitted to choose Sharia as the basis for their legislation for every citizen living in that state. Non-Muslims are not subject to the same penalties, so it's only Muslims who can be caned, stoned to death, or have their hands amputated. But non-Muslims are still living without music or dancing, much less alcohol.
So tell me, how do you write an article about tension and violence between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria and leave that little detail out?
The situation in Iraq is just flat bad, and there's no point trying to sugar coat any of it. All we can do is wait and see how things break.
Update: That said, it is important to note (as the Post does) that this marks the distance the country has come since 2004. There would have been absolutely no way, during that earlier crisis, for the American military to step back and let Iraqi forces take the lead in restoring order.
Side note: this current crisis might be easier to deal with if, during that one, Sadr had been dealt with in a more permanent manner. (Say, by having the original arrest warrant against him for murder served.) He always managed to back down at just the right moment to preserve his options and keep himself in play, and he's never been anything but an enormously destabilizing influence.
Update: Compare the Post's reporting to this hyper-descriptive wording from the Times, which seems to me to leave the conventions of calm, objective news reporting behind in the first sentence:
After a day of violence so raw and so personal, Iraqis woke on Thursday morning to a tense new world in which, it seemed, anything was possible.
Only in paragraphs 12, 13, and 14 do we get this:
Still, the neighborhood itself did not divide along sectarian lines: Shiite residents also condemned Wednesday's assaults. Neighborhoods all over Baghdad reported similar camaraderie.
"As a Shiite, I do not accept this," said Saadiya Salim, a 50-year-old homemaker. "These acts will lead to violence, because the Sunnis will attack" Shiite mosques.
As the afternoon dragged on and law enforcers were nowhere to be seen, neighborhoods seemed to shrink into themselves, setting up makeshift roadblocks out of the trunks of palm trees and, pieces of castaway metal stoves.
It's clear that Shia restraint is barely holding, but this observation is important:
Many Shiites condemned Wednesday's violence, while at the same time acknowledging that their sect had been responsible for it.
First, more journalists are tragically killed in Iraq, and although it appears they were specifically targeted, there is -- at least in this AP report -- still no consideration of the possibility that Iraq is dangerous for journalists because they have been specifically targeted as the result of a strategic and tactical choice made by the terrorists.
Second, given that they were clearly targeted, it is reprehensible for the AP to include in the report a reference back to prior deaths of reporters when they were accidentally killed by American firepower. This creates a suggestion of equivalence that is utterly inappropriate.
Every broadcast outlet is breathlessly warning (again) that the destruction of the Dome yesterday could plunge Iraq into Civil War, although one wonders if at some point people will tire of hearing them claim event X may plunge the country into Civil War. (Particularly since they use the same experts to make the claim time after time.)
But the Post (and I assume other print outlets) are including several factors in favor of restraining the mob after yesterday's initial outbursts of rage: first, Sistani, who so far has managed to keep the situation in check, is calling for restraint, going so far as to appear on television. (Although it does appear as if his patience is wearing dangerously thin.) Second, even Sadr, who could have ordered a bloodbath, demurred, diverting people's attention from their coreligionists to the usual suspects (that is, us and the Jews.) (Hey, I didn't say it was Shangri-la, I said it was something.)
Writing does not work, at least for me, when the writer is too obviously self-aware of the portent, the weight, the importance of his words even as he wrote them. Newspaper reporter as essayist has just never been a form that I've found particularly attractive.
Unfortunately, that is the form the Post's second writer on the desctruction of the sacred Dome yesterday (writing in a piece labelled "Images," which I take is a softer form of "News Analysis") slips into. As a result, it is difficult to know if his description of what terrorism is and how it works is literal, or meant to be purely descriptive.
Well, either way he's wrong.
Was. Is. Terrorism functions by conflating the categories. Old grievances are renewed, old tensions rekindled. The past, filled with the sting of injustice -- there's always enough to go around, no matter what small niche of the human race you occupy -- isn't so much remembered as it is constantly relived. There's no time for reflection, no time to come off the boil; humanity finds itself in a state of perpetual adolescence, short-fused and remarkably indifferent to whether it wants or expects to have a future.
Dude, whatever. Terrorism works by attacking things that will get the terrorist attention, and symbolic targets most definitely fit the bill. In fact what yesterday's attack demonstrates is why al Queda, which likes their attacks plenty bloody, has always aimed at targets with a symbolic component whether such targets were likely to produce a high body count or not, or, at the very least, continued to keep such targets on their list.
I've heard some suggest that until proven otherwise there was no reason to take Zarqawi's boys off the suspect list, and that makes sense to me.
