With the voting over in the first presidential election in the history of Afghanistan, the media is virtually unanimous in declaring failure. Google News search results tell the story.
Jeff Jarvis is confused and dismayed at the negativity. One can only conclude he’s been hiding under a rock for the past three years.
So I tried a few others….
Your search – “Afghan voters killed in blast” – did not match any documents. Your search – Afghan “polling station blast” – did not match any documents. Your search – Afghan “polling station violence” – did not match any documents.
Reuters couldn’t even dig one up, though they did record a possible interception.
Results 1 – 1 of about 1 for afghan voters-killed. (0.10 seconds)
Bloomberg.com:
Afghans turned out in “massive” numbers for the nation’s first direct presidential election, a United Nations spokesman said.
“We don’t have numbers have yet, but there was a massive amount of voters and a great deal of enthusiasm,” Manoel de Almeida e Silva said by telephone from Kabul, the Afghan capital. A preliminary count may be ready within two days, and a total count may take up to three weeks, he said.
[…]
There were no reports of voters killed or injured, U.S. Maj. Scott Nelson, spokesman for the Combined Forces Command, said by telephone from Kabul. There was a report of an ambush in Uruzgan province by suspected Taliban militants that left three police officers dead, he said.
I call that a success. And so would the New York Times, WaPo, the LA Tmes and every other major media outlet in North America had it happened with a Democrat in the White House. Get with the program, Jeff!
Globe And Mail, Alan Freeman:“Once again last night, U.S. President George W. Bush grimaced and looked irritated when he faced tough questions about the war in Iraq and the record of his four years in office.
Winnipeg Sun, Charles Adler “It gives some of us the impression that last night was the president’s eleventh hour. And his time may be up.”
Toronto Star, Tim Harper” He was seen winking at somebody in the audience twice, raising his eyebrows in mock exasperation another time and tapping his left foot on the ground as he sat on his stool, a mannerism which has betrayed impatience in the U.S. president in the past.”
The European rags are ceding the debate to Bush. The downright cranky nature of Canadian coverage this morning means they are, too.
Sorry about that big cowboy bootprint on your ass, Charlie…
GIBSON: Mr. President, let’s extend for a minute…
BUSH: Let me just – I’ve got to answer this.
GIBSON: Exactly. And with Reservists being held on duty…
(CROSSTALK)
BUSH: Let me answer what he just said, about around the world.
GIBSON: Well, I want to get into the issue of the back-door draft…
BUSH: You tell Tony Blair we’re going alone. Tell Tony Blair we’re going alone. Tell Silvio Berlusconi we’re going alone. Tell Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland we’re going alone. There are 30 countries there. It denigrates an alliance to say we’re going alone, to discount their sacrifices. You cannot lead an alliance if you say, you know, you’re going alone. And people listen. They’re sacrificing with us.
GIBSON: Senator?
Heh.
This was the first debate I watched – the other two I listened to on radio. The person I watched with is probably poltiically somewhat to the left of myself – (yes, I know, not a difficult achievement) and it was pretty clear that he thought Bush had won.
James Joyner liveblogged.
As a Canadian, the response Bush gave on lowering health care costs by relying on Canadian imported drugs was badly explained – though the “safety” response might play well with a US audience, it sounded flat out goofy from this side of the border. The real problem with importing Canadian drugs is that our prices are contained legislatively. US drug companies tolerate the situation because our share of the market is relatively small. The idea that they would agree to having the bulk of their US profits slashed by an export-import run through Canada is naive. They can stop exporting any time they like.
And was James Varner a Rove operative or just a guy with a mean streak a mile wide?
“Senator Kerry, would you be willing to look directly into the camera and, using simple and unequivocal language, give the American people your solemn pledge …”
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”
Paul Bremer has an op-ed in the New York Times today. I believe registration is required, so I”m going to quote generously.
In recent days, attention has been focused on some remarks I’ve made about Iraq. The coverage of these remarks has elicited far more heat than light, so I believe it’s important to put my remarks in the correct context.
In my speeches, I have said that the United States paid a price for not stopping the looting in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations and that we did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish that task. The press and critics of the war have seized on these remarks in an effort to undermine President Bush’s Iraq policy.
[…]
The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president’s strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush.
The president was right when he concluded that Saddam Hussein was a menace who needed to be removed from power. He understands that our enemies are not confined to Al Qaeda, and certainly not just to Osama bin Laden, who is probably trapped in his hide-out in Afghanistan. As the bipartisan 9/11 commission reported, there were contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime going back a decade. We will win the war against global terror only by staying on the offensive and confronting terrorists and state sponsors of terror – wherever they are. Right now, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Qaeda ally, is a dangerous threat. He is in Iraq.
President Bush has said that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He is right. Mr. Zarqawi’s stated goal is to kill Americans, set off a sectarian war in Iraq and defeat democracy there. He is our enemy.
[…]
Mr. Kerry is free to quote my comments about Iraq. But for the sake of honesty he should also point out that I have repeatedly said, including in all my speeches in recent weeks, that President Bush made a correct and courageous decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s brutality, and that the president is correct to see the war in Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism.
A year and a half ago, President Bush asked me to come to the Oval Office to discuss my going to Iraq to head the coalition authority. He asked me bluntly, “Why would you want to leave private life and take on such a difficult, dangerous and probably thankless job?” Without hesitation, I answered, “Because I believe in your vision for Iraq and would be honored to help you make it a reality.” Today America and the coalition are making steady progress toward that vision.
Don’t expect any of it to be quoted on the nightly news. (Via Powerline and crossposted to the Shotgun)
I’m having problems getting my site to load properly in Opera today (the sidebar, blogroll, etc won’t load at all), and am trying to figure out if the issue is local, or if it’s a broader problem with MT. It seems fine in Mozilla. I run Linux, so I have no access to Explorer. If anyone else is encountering problems, post a comment or send me an email at kate@the. link.ca
Southwest trying to hold on to health care
CLIMAX – People in the southwest corner of the province say they will pay for health care alone if they have to.
They are upset that hours of service at the Border Health Centre in Climax are going to be cut next month.
Nancy Kirk, mayor of Climax, says her area is home to oil and gas workers, as well as a large manufacturing plant. Kirk says accidents happen, and people need an emergency room around the clock.
“We’re not really asking for a lot. We know we’re a health centre. We know we don’t probably need a full-fledged acute care facility here. We need some solutions as they have done in other parts of the province where people are isolated. We need some the solution to have some of our emergency needs met beyond the eight-hour day.”
Kirk says a number of people in her area are willing to spend local tax dollars on extending the health centre’s hours. Kirk estimates keeping open the emergency room would cost up to $300,000 dollars a year.
Good for them. If First Nations are going to be permitted to establish private, for profit MRI services in the city of Saskatoon, with three major hospitals in a 10 mile radius, any argument to deny rural residents the right to find their own solutions in a “remote” region without a hospital or emergency care at all is going to require a intellectual contortionist.
That person, of course, would be Premier Lorne Calvert.
A foreign mercenary who apparently came from Canada has been killed while fighting Russian forces in Chechnya, the headquarters of the counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus told the RIA-Novosti news agency on Friday.
“The documents found on the killed African-American testify to the fact that he had arrived from Canada,” the agency’s source said. The source noted, however, that the authenticity of these documents was yet to be verified.
“At present we are translating and checking the numerous visas in his passport. The expertise to check their authenticity will be held in the nearest future,” the HQ source said.
Official spokesman of the North Caucasus HQ, Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, said that the killed African-American was an expert in explosives and that he had arrived in Chechnya to replace Algerian fighter Abu Muskhab who was recently taken prisoner by Russian troops. (Kamal Burrakhlia, AKA Abu Muskhab was detained by Russia’s FSB in Chechnya on September 17, 2004. Before arriving in Chechnya in 2001, the mercenary had lived in Great Britain for almost 10 years.)
“The mercenary and three Chechen gunmen who accompanied him were killed on Thursday near the village of Niki-Khita in the Kurchaloi District of Chechnya,” Shabalkin said. The gunmen belonged to a group headed by the warlord Avdorkhanov who is under the immediate command of Aslan Maskhadov, he added.
A grenade launcher, a machine gun and two assault rifles were found on the killed fighters, the spokesman said.
Writing for the National Post, J. Kelly Nestruck, — that’s “J.” Kelly, not just “Kelly” — has written an article about bloggers and the blogosphere. JKelly’s article is entitled “Why the revolution won’t be blogged” and subtitled “Bloggers talk about their importance, but it’s just talk.”
[…]
JKelly’s own blog, On the Fence can be found here. Read it, especially if you just can’t get enough of reporters talking about what events they’re covering and putting down their colleagues. Maybe that doesn’t matter, though, given that he acknowledges his readers don’t all read the National Post. Tsk. Tsk. After reading his blog, I, myself, doubt that he’s doing much to improve NP readership, either, especially given that he seems to double-dip — writing about a topic on his blog and then spinning that yarn into a news article later. Yawn.
In response to the reaction his piece generated (as well as a reply in the Heart of Canada link above), he does attempt to clarify his thoughts with these obvious points, and frankly, I’d be surprised if the majority of media critic – news junkie bloggers would disagree with them.
But, yes, as someone writes in the comment to the post below, I guess I am arguing against a position that is not widely held. How many bloggers actually believe that it’s “new media vs. old media”? Most smart ones recognize the symbiotic relationship between the two.
The question is, why does he think it had to be said at all, if he’s as familiar with the blogosphere as he purports to be?
Some, unaware that I was involved in bloggage before I started at the Post, have seen the article as another mainstream journalist scared for his job thing. (If I am, trust me, it’s not because of bloggers.) I guess what I wanted to say, and only really did at the end of the article, is that blogs aren’t hurting the “old media,” but actually helping it become better. The New York Times, for instance, has improved since Jayson Blair. Maybe Dan Rather will survive Memogate, maybe he won’t; CBS News, however, will work really hard to restore its reputation.
Nobody that I’m aware of is seriously setting out to replace old media – it’s not a primal “us vs them” showdown. Most are happy enough to simply snap at their heels, and in the final analysis – improvement in the quality of reporting is the goal. Sifting through information on current events is a lot of work – I’d rather someone else did it for me. It’s what they’re paid to do, after all. I didn’t rip into David Kirton today because I seek to steal his audience – I ripped into him because I’m tired of being treated like an absolute idiot who needs to be told what to think about the news, as though I will swallow it whole without tasting (and without Google).
I’m tired of searching for transcripts to verify that the quotes extracted aren’t misrepresented. I’m tired of double standards and having actual coverage of events interrupted by some self-important jerk with a microphone who interprets it for me, through the lens of an opponant’s view.
So, J. Kelly – it’s not hard to keep people like me off your back – just strive to represent the facts as they become known, and present them in their honest context. Do bona-fide followup and correct with the enthusiasm with which you reveal.
And, stop playing the gotcha game. You probably aren’t Bob Woodward and it’s probably not Watergate. Identify opinion for what it is, and whose it is. Don’t try to recreate history or subject it to an arbitrary 48 month cut off.
I’m not your competitor – I’m the consumer. I ask simply as that you remember your role and respect mine – you report, I decide – it’s not just a cute slogan.
So, yeah, don’t for a minute think that things have changed all that much over the past nine months. Blogs are fun, blogs are great, I love blogs. But there are people out there saying that blogs are to the 2004 presidential race what television was to the 1960 campaign. (Sidenote: I’ve never really bought into that whole “TV won the election for JFK” myth, personally.) The fact is that blogs are still only visited by a small segment of the voting public. Stories like Rathergate would have never hit if it wasn’t for the back- up of the old media.
And there you go again. Rathergate would have never hit if it wasn’t for the back-up of Drudge.
Stories like Rathergate would never have broken in the first place if it were up to the old media. Old media (the NYT and Boston Globe, for example) tried very hard to ignore, then refute it.
Perhaps he’s right and bloggers have really hit their peak as an influence over public opinion. Perhaps it’s true that the best that the blogosphere can aspire to is an esoteric, exotic niche, and that it will never come within a sniff of the audience share enjoyed by old media (though there are plenty of bloggers who have higher daily readership than some mid-sized city newspapers who put the lie to that).
TZ has words of encouragement, too.
Anyhow, Kellygreen can just stop whining. The internet will never replace print journalism. After all, you can’t line a birdcage with computer monitors.
On the other hand, as I write this, there’s an old quote that persists in tapping me on the shoulder;
“Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.” – Mary PIckford
I just sent the following email to our local news-talk radio station’s “news reader” David Kirton. He’s heard that there’s a report out from the Iraq Survey Group.
Emphasis on “heard about”.
Judging by the hyperbolic “George Bush LIED” he just claimed was contained therein, he’s not actually, eh… read anything about it.
Subject: Where’s The “Rest Of The Story”?
What was I just listening to? A news report or op-ed????
You know, the “no WMD” reporting has rather been done to death over the past 6 months. It makes you wonder why the “France, Germany and Russia were being bribed through OIL-FOR-FOOD and assisting Saddam to get sanctions lifted so his WMD programs could resume” portion of this latest report is being virtually ignored in North America news media coverage, apparently, including yours.
Though, you must take credit for creativity – tacking on the “George Bush lied” line.
****************************************** http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1167592004″ “Just as I have had to accept that the evidence now is that there were not stockpiles of actual weapons ready to be deployed, I hope others have the honesty to accept that the report also shows that sanctions weren’t working” – Tony Blair SADDAM HUSSEIN believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night. Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France – having been granted oil contracts – would veto any American plans for war. But the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which returned its full report last night, said Saddam was telling the truth when he denied on the eve of war that he had any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He had not built any since 1992. The ISG, who confirmed last autumn that they had found no WMD, last night presented detailed findings from interviews with Iraqi officials and documents laying out his plans to bribe foreign businessmen and politicians. Although they found no evidence that Saddam had made any WMD since 1992, they found documents which showed the “guiding theme” of his regime was to be able to start making them again with as short a lead time as possible.”
*************************************
Honesty indeed. This is the singular reason that the news networks are bleeding market share to the internet and cable news. News consumers are sick to death of reporting that has begun to resemble an uncompleted Paul Harvey “rest of the story” schtick.
In a world where schoolchildren are considered legitimate targets by a religious death cult that is sworn to attacking Western civilization by any means possible, yet 95% of coverage is devoted to American “failure” and “lies”, one wonders which side some in our media are on.
David Kirton of Rawlco Radio – we deserve better. update – not surprisingly, Powerline is better and exerpting actual content.
This item is tantalizing:
[D]uring the mid-to-late 1990s Saddam issued a presidential decree directing the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] to recruit UNSCOM inspectors, especially American inspectors. To entice their cooperation, the IIS was to offer the inspectors preferential treatment for future business dealings with Iraq, once they completed their duties with the United Nations. Tariq �Aziz and an Iraqi-American were specifically tasked by the IIS to focus on a particular American inspector.
I can’t see that the report ever says whether the Iraqis were successful in bribing the American weapons inspector. The obvious candidate, of course, is Scott Ritter. We do know that Saddam succeeded in penetrating the U.N.’s inspection teams, so that he had advance knowledge of the inspectors’ intentions:
IIS personnel were directed to contact facilities and personnel in advance of UNMOVIC site inspections, according to foreign government information. Former Regime officials state that the IIS developed penetrations within the UN and basic surveillance in country to learn future inspection plans.
Keep a watch on Powerline, as they are continuing to post updates as they read the report.
Left this morning around 7 for Calgary, and just got home an hour ago – 12 hours on the road, plus dicking around taking paperwork to customs, etc. Hence, a very quiet blogging day.
I used up most of my drive home raging at Paul Martin for the military penny pinching that has now cost a Canadian submariner his life. (*see note below)
“…He gave his life saving his country, and we pay him our profound respects and his family our deepest condolences.”
No, Mr. Martin, you insipid, unthinking, flaccid little man – he didn’t. He died trying to save his own life and that of his crewmates, because your government devoted more skill and effort to setting up secret funds to funnel money to Liberal ad agencies than it did ensuring that our military was provided with dependable, current equipment and supplies.
You converted our once proud armed forces into an international joke that was never funny. And once again, it’s turned tragic.
May you sleep as restlessly tonight as are the stranded men in the North Atlantic. Update Oct. 7 – a second sailor is now in critical condiiton [*Something strange has gone on at that link. The google cache displayed the quote above – yet it does not appear in the text of the report. Airbrushing by the National Post? CNN has it.]
The difference between the two: Dick Cheney could be President.
That’s all that matters, in the final analysis. James Joyner has a lengthier one and a gazillion trackbacks for the insomniac.
A truck driver calls in to talk radio’s Jerry Doyle:
“Edwards reminds me of Tattoo on Fantasy Island… up in the tower …calling out “da plan, da plan” and not much else … which is not to say that Kerry is Ricardo Montalban.”
As details begin to trickle in about the emergency in the North Atlantic, people all over the world are asking themselves the same question – Canada has a submarine? backdate: It’s not a torpedo malfunction.
Just in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a big poof of smoke there at the moment.
BIG POOF. update – in case you missed it, right click on the thumbnail to get the full size version
John Kerry: See? Wasn’t that easy? We negotiated like reasonable adults, gave you nuclear fuel and now you have clean electricity.
Iran: We’re forever indebted.
John Kerry: Well, I’ll be going. I’ll just need that spent fuel to take back with me.
Iran: Spent fuel?
John Kerry: The spent fuel you promised to give back under the terms of our agreement…
Iran: …
John Kerry: Don’t you know who you’re talking to?
Iran: Oh … perhaps you have us confused with a country without nuclear arms?
John Kerry: You lied!!
Iran: Nuance.
John Kerry: Lies!
Iran: A compromise, then. Stop jumping up and down.
Iran: Now, have a nice day and don’t be missing that plane.
Iran: And say hello to that stupid fuck Jimmy for us, would you?
Even as we speak, several prominent Hollywood actors may be calling their lawyers to check on slander laws. GLAAD is certainly drafting a press release condemning the film, and North Korean madman Kim Jong II may have a case as well.
[…]
“Team America” is certainly destined to be a cult classic, but it may have a rocky road getting to that status. Watching the movie means being slack- jawed for its 90-minute running time.
When I saw it over the weekend, the only other person in the screening room kept looking around to make sure a) I was all right and b) that we were really seeing what we were seeing.
I’m going to be first in line for this one.
Seriously.
