Memo to NYTimes: Buena ain’t your region

July 25, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A nine year old in Bue­na went joyrid­ing in a bright yellow-school bus. Strange enough as that is, what’s even stranger is that the New York Times cov­ered it as a “local” story.

The only thing that sur­pris­es me about the inci­dent is that the hijack­er isn’t one of my very own next-door neigh­bor kids (for­mal­ly known as “the Delin­quents”). Sure, why not steal the bus and dri­ve to your friends house?

“He want­ed us to all get on,” said Mil­lie, 13, who lives just up the block from the boy. “He let go of the wheel, and was beep­ing and wav­ing at us. He could have killed somebody.”

No, what’s real­ly bizarre is that this arti­cle appears in the New York Times, who placed it in their “New York Region” sec­tion. Since when is Bue­na the New York region? It’s eas­i­ly a 2 – 1/2 hour dri­ve from Times Square, it’s below the Mason-Dixon line for good­ness sake (or to be tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, below it’s merid­i­an since the line was­n’t drawn through Jer­sey). They help­ful­ly tell us that it’s “pro­nounced BYOO-na” but I would have loved lis­ten­ing in on the phone when the reporter called down for “Bu-EN‑a” as she sure must have. Two weeks ago the Times put the Oak­lyn, NJ would-be mass mur­ders in the “New York Region” sec­tion too. Do we need to buy a cou­ple of maps for the erst­while Old Gray Lady? South Jer­sey just ain’t your region, a fact for which every native I’ve ever met is very hap­py. Every dri­ver on the roads around Bue­na were sure­ly mut­ter­ing “go home shoo­bie” when your New York plates drove by.

UPDATE: Oh no, even blog­gers are tak­ing the Times’ cue that Bue­na belongs in NYC News!

Feds targeting activists at airports

July 25, 2003
· Martin Kelley

There is now some hard evi­dence in the charges that the fed­er­al agency over­see­ing air­lines has com­piled a list that tar­gets and har­rass­es activists. A Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request has not turned up the names or who they rep­re­sent but has dis­cov­ered that the list itself is 88 pages long.
There have been a num­ber of activists who have expe­ri­ence extra scruti­ny and spe­cial search­es, espe­cial­ly in the San Fran­cis­co and Oak­land air­ports. The FOIA case, filed by the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia ACLU, is the first to start shed­ding light on the prac­tice. Dis­sent is always chal­lenged as unpa­tri­ot­ic in times of war and scan­dal. Con­trary to the opin­ions of the many cranks who write in to Non​vi​o​lence​.org, it’s not the mil­i­tary who has ever pro­tect­ed our right to free speech – it’s groups like the ACLU fight­ing to bring harass­ment to pub­lic attention.

Constituting Mediocrity: the new National Constitution Center

July 25, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It’s obvi­ous that the Cen­ter is just a hold­ing pen for big bus trips. It’s not as much a muse­um or nation­al shrine as it is a high­way rest stop. On your left­’s the super-sized cafe­te­ria, on your right the store for crap­py hats and t‑shirts. And for this we rip up Philadelphia?

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Blunt assertions, no evidence, no investigation

July 21, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The Wash­ing­ton Post has an arti­cle about the Bush White House­’s com­mon prac­tice of mak­ing unat­trib­uted state­ments about Iraq with­out get­ting CIA feed­back. Some of the whop­pers include:

Sept 26: Iraq “could launch a bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal attack 45 min­utes after the order is given.“Sept 28: “there are al Qae­da ter­ror­ists inside Iraq”

Oct 7: “Sad­dam Hus­sein aids and pro­tects ter­ror­ists, includ­ing mem­bers of al Qaeda.”

All of these claims were strong­ly dis­put­ed by intel­li­gence experts at the time and only the most die-heart Adminstration-booster would want to claim now that any of them are true.

The 45 minute claim has got­ten a thor­ough rebuk­ing in the U.K.

This is the sec­ond time in as many weeks where a Bush quote has sud­den­ly tak­en me back to the Rea­gan years. That 45 minute claim just echos in my head of Rea­gan’s “the San­din­istas are just two days dri­ve from Har­lin­gen, Texas.” They both have that “oh my god, the bar­bar­ians are at the door” urgency. Both also posit an arch-enemy that turned out to be a paper tiger when all the pro­pa­gan­da was peeled back. (For the young’ins out there, Rea­gan respond­ed to the two-drive fear by min­ing Nicaragua’s har­bors, an act which was lat­er declared ille­gal by the World Court).

Non​vi​o​lence​.org syndicated

July 20, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A lit­tle bit of house­keep­ing: There have been a few behind-the-scene changes on the Non​vi​o​lence​.org home­page this week­end. I’ve switched the blog­ging soft­ware over to Move­able­type.
The hard-core blog read­ers will appre­ci­ate that Non​vi​o​lence​.org now has an syn­di­cat­ed news feed. That means that you can now read the home­page with soft­ware like Sharpread­er, News­ga­tor, etc.
even the more-casual read­ers will appre­ci­ate that you can now com­ment direct­ly on every arti­cle. There will be oth­er sub­tler fea­tures added over time. Let me know if there are any problems.

White House smear campaign: Gay and Canadian

July 18, 2003
· Martin Kelley

This would be fun­ny if it weren’t seri­ous. This would be seri­ous if it weren’t pathet­ic. A few days ago ABC News cor­re­spon­dent Jef­frey Kof­man ran a sto­ry about low morale among U.S. troops sta­tioned in Iraq. The next day some­one in the White House tipped off gos­sip king Matt Drudge that Kof­man was open­ly gay and (maybe worse) a Cana­di­an. Lap­dog Drudge com­plied with the head­line “ABC NEWS REPORTER WHO FILED TROOP COMPLAINT STORY IS CANADIAN.” It’s amaz­ing what tid­bits the White House thinks are news­wor­thy. You’d think the mile­stone that U.S. casul­ties in Iraq have sur­passed those of the 1991 War might just get the Pres­i­den­t’s attention.

“Have you ever felt like the fall guy?”

July 18, 2003
· Martin Kelley

In strange and sad news, the man who was prob­a­bly the unnamed “senior offi­cial” who first told the BBC that Britain “sexed up” its Iraq weapons dossier has turned up dead in the woods near his home. Dr. David Kel­ly gave evi­dence to the UK for­eign affairs com­mit­tee just days ago, where he asked the com­mit­tee “Have you ever felt like the fall guy?” One mem­ber of the com­mit­tee told the Guardian that “We thought he’d been put up quite delib­er­ate­ly to dis­tract us from the case of the gov­ern­men­t’s case for war.”

David Kel­ly has been described as a “soft spo­ken” man not used to the pub­lic glare he’s been under. Reports haven’t even giv­en the cause of death, so con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries will have to be put on hold. It’s quite pos­si­ble that this faith­ful civ­il ser­vant and sci­en­tist final­ly cracked under the pres­sure of the media onslaught and took his life. It is a tragedy for his family.

Army of None

July 17, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I’ve always found U.S. Army recruit­ing adver­tis­ing fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s not just that the ads are well-produced. They catch onto basic human yearn­ings in a way that’s the teen equiv­a­lent of self-help books. “Be all that you can be” is won­der­ful – who would­n’t want that. And the cur­rent ads mak­ing the Army look like a extreme sport also hits the nexus of cool and inspir­ing. The cur­rent US Army slo­gan is “An Army of One,” which might almost make poten­tial recruits for­get that a basic cor­ner­stone of mil­i­tary train­ing is wip­ing away indi­vid­u­al­i­ty to mold recruits into inter­changable units. The link above is to “Army of None,” a smart par­o­dy of the offi­cial recruit­ing site.